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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Dop Doctor</p> +<p>Author: Clotilde Inez Mary Graves</p> +<p>Release Date: February 2, 2009 [eBook #27966]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOP DOCTOR***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Christine D.,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>The Dop Doctor</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>Richard Dehan</h2> + +<p class='center'>Author of</p> + +<p class='center'> +"Between Two Thieves," "The Headquarter Recruit,"<br /> +"The Cost of Wings"<br /> +</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class='center'>Popular Edition</p> + +<p class='center'>LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.</p> + +<p><i>First printed 6s. Edition, April, 1910.</i></p> + +<p><i>New Impressions, May (three times), July, August, September, October, +November, 1910; January, July, October, 1911; New Edition, May, 1912; New +Impressions, September, October, December, 1912; February, May, 1913.</i></p> + +<p><i>Popular Edition, July, August, September, 1913; April, 1914; June, 1915; +July, September, 1916; September, 1917; February, October, 1918; January, +1920; January, 1922; July, 1924; January, 1927; February, 1930; May, 1932; +March, 1934, March 1936</i></p> + +<p class='center'>PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p> + +<p class='center'>THE WINDMILL PRESS, KINGSWOOD, SURREY</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="TO_ONE_ACROSS_THE_SEA" id="TO_ONE_ACROSS_THE_SEA"></a>TO ONE ACROSS THE SEA</h2> + + +<p><i>What have the long years brought me since first, with this pen for +pickaxe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world about +me, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the hearthplace, and +chiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should honour you who, above all on +earth, I hold most in honour—a name among the writers of books that +live!</i></p> + +<p><i>What have the long years brought me! Well, not the things I hoped. Just +bread and clothing, fire, and a little roof-tree; the purchased soil to +make a grave, and a space of leisure, before that grave be needed, to +write, myself, this book for me and for you. Hope has spread her +iridescent Psyche-wings and left me; Ambition long ago shed hers to become +a working-ant. Love never came to sit in the chair beside the ingle. An +ocean heaves between us, only for nightly dreams and waking thoughts to +span. Were those dear eyes to see me as I am to-day, I wonder whether they +would know me? For I grow grey, and furrows deepen in the forehead the +dear hand will never smooth again. Remember me, then, only as I used to +be; my heart is the same always; in it the long, long years have wrought +no change.</i></p> + +<p><i>But what have the long years brought me? Experience, that savoury salt, +left where old tears have dried upon the shores of Time. Knowledge of my +fellow men and women, of all sorts and conditions, and the love of them. +Patience to bear what may yet have to be borne. Courage to encounter what +may yet have to be encountered. Fortitude to meet the end, where faith +holds up the Cross. Much have the long years brought me—besides your +first smile and your last kiss. For your next, I look past Death, God +aiding me, to the Eternal Life beyond....</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">South Wales</span>,</p> + +<p><i>April 22, 1909.</i></p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + + +<p>Upon a day near the end of August, one long, brilliant South African +winter, when the old Vierkleur waved over the Transvaal, and what is now +the Orange River Colony was the Orange Free State, with the Dutch canton +still showing on the staff-head corner of its tribarred flag, two large, +heavily-laden waggons rolled over the grass-veld, only now thinking about +changing from yellow into green. Many years previously the wheels of the +old voortrekkers had passed that way, bringing from Cape Colony, with the +household gods, goods and chattels, language and customs of the Dutch, the +slips of the pomegranate and peach and orange trees, whose abundant +blossoming dressed the orchards of the farms tucked away here and there in +the lap of the veld, with bridal white and pink, and hung their girdling +pomegranate hedges with stars of ruby red. But days and days, and nights +and nights of billowing, spreading, lonely sky-arched veld intervened +between each homestead.</p> + +<p>The flat-topped bills were draped and folded in the opal haze of distance; +the sky was perfect turquoise; the rounded kopjes shone like pink topaz, +unclothed as yet with the young pale green bush. To the south there was a +veld fire leaping and dancing, with swirling columns of white smoke edged +with flame. But it was many miles away, and the north-west wind blew +strongly, driving some puffs of gold cloud before it. Perhaps there would +be rain ere long. There had been rain already in the foremost waggon, not +from the clouds, but from human eyes.</p> + +<p>The broad wheels crashed on, rolling over the yellow grass and the dry +bushes. Lizards and other creeping creatures scuttled across their wide +tracks. The patient oxen toiled under the yoke, their dappled nostrils +widespread, their great dewy eyes strained and dim with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> weariness. They +dumbly wondered why they must labour in the daytime when all night long +they had travelled without rest. The glorious sunrise had flamed in +crimson and gold behind the eastern ranges full five hours before. They +were weary to death, and no dorp or farm was yet in sight. The Cape boys +who tramped, each leading a fore-ox by the green reim bound about the +creature's wide horns, had no energy left even to swear at their beasts.</p> + +<p>The Boer driver was wearied like the ox-team and the Cape boys. His +bestial face was drawn, and his eyes were red-rimmed for lack of sleep. +The long whip, with the fourteen-foot stock and the lash of twenty-three +feet, had not smacked for a long time; the sjambok had not been used upon +the long-suffering wheelers. Huddled up in his ill-fitting clothes of tan +cord, he sat on the waggon-box and slept, his head nodding, his elbows on +his knees. He was dreaming of the bad Cape brandy that had been in the +bottle, and would be, with luck, again, when the waggon reached a tavern +or a store.</p> + +<p>A Kaffir drove the second waggon. It held stores and goods in bales, and +some trunks and other baggage belonging to the Englishman, for you would +have set down the tall, thin, high-featured, reddish-bearded, +soft-speaking man who owned the waggons as English, even though he had +called himself by a Dutch name. The child of three years was his. And his +had been the dead body of the woman lying on the waggon-bed, covered with +a new white sheet, with a stillborn boy baby lying on her breast.</p> + +<p>For this the man who had loved and taken her, and made her his, had wept +such bitter, scalding tears. For this his dead love, with Love's blighted +bud of fruit upon her bosom, had given up her world, her friends, her +family—her husband, first and last of all. They had played the straight +game, and gone away openly together, to the immense scandal of Society +that is so willing to wink at things done cleverly under the rose. They +were to be married the instant the injured husband obtained his decree +absolute. The State sanctioned the re-marriage of the divorced if the +Churches did not. Their church should thenceforwards be the State. But +there was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> <i>decree nisi</i> even, the injured husband possessing a legal +heir by a previously-deceased wife. Besides, in a cold way it gave him +pleasure to think of that purpose foiled. He soon knew that his wife's +lover had sold his commission in the Army, and he learned, later, through +a communication forwarded through a London firm of solicitors, that +although he had chosen to ignore a certain appointment offered upon the +opposite side of the Channel, the other man would merely consider it +deferred until a suitable opportunity should occur. Meanwhile the writer +was travelling in South Africa, not alone.</p> + +<p>Never to be alone again, she had promised him that not quite four years +ago. And to-day he sat on a box beside the waggon-bed where she lay dead +with her dead boy, and the only thing left to him that had the dear living +fragrance and sweet warmth of her slept smiling on his knees—their +daughter.</p> + +<p>The long fine beard that he had grown swept the soft flushed cheek of the +little creature, and mingled with her yellow curls. Within the last few +hours—hours packed with the anguish of a lifetime for him—there were +sprinklings of white upon his high temples, where the hair had grown thin +under the pressure of the Hussar's furred busby, the khaki-covered helmet +of foreign service, or the forage-cap, before these had given place to the +Colonial smasher of felt, and the silky reddish-brown beard had in it +wide, ragged streaks of grey. He had worshipped the woman who had given up +all for him; they had lived only for, and in one another during four +wonderful years. Hardly a passing twinge of regret, never a scorpion-sting +of remorse, spoiled their union.</p> + +<p>But they never stayed long in any town or even in any village. Some sound +or shape from the old unforgotten world beyond the barrier, some English +voice that had the indefinable tone and accent of high breeding, some +figure of Englishman or Englishwoman whose rough, careless clothing had +the unmistakable cut of Bond Street, some face recognised under the grey +felt or the white Panama, would spur them to the desire of leaving it +behind them. Then the valises would be repacked, the oxen would be hastily +inspanned, and their owners would start again upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> that never-ending +journey in search of something that the woman was to be the first to find.</p> + +<p>At last, when the sun was high and the worn-out beasts were almost +sinking, a group of low buildings came in sight a few miles away beyond a +kloof edged with a few poplar-like trees and the kameelthorn. A square, +one-storey house of corrugated iron, with a mud-walled hovel or two near +it, had a sprawling painted board across its front, signifying that the +place was the Free State Hotel. Behind it were an orchard and some fields +under rude cultivation, and a quarter of a mile to the north were the +native kraals.</p> + +<p>At the sight the Boer shook himself fully awake, and sent the long lash +cracking over the thin, sweat-drenched backs of the ox-team. They laboured +with desperation at the yoke, and the waggon rumbled on.</p> + +<p>The Englishman, hidden with his sorrow under the canvas waggon-tilt, +roused himself at the accelerated motion. He rose, and, holding the +sleeping child upon one arm, pushed back the front flap and looked out. He +spoke to the taciturn driver, who shook his head. How did he, Smoots +Beste, know whether a minister of the Church of England, or even a Dutch +predikant, was to be found at the place beyond? All he hoped for was that +he would be able to buy there tobacco and brandy cheap, and sleep drunken, +to wake and drink again.</p> + +<p>The waggon halted on the brink of the kloof. Little birds of gay and +brilliant plumage, blue and crimson and emerald-green, rose in flocks from +the bush and grasses that clothed the sides of the coomb; the hollows were +full of the tree-fern; the grass had little white and purple flowers in +it. At the valley-bottom a little stream, that would be a river after the +first rains, wimpled over sandstone boulders, the barbel rose at flies. +There was a drift lower down. It was all the goaded, worn-out oxen could +do to stay the huge creaking waggons down the steep bank, and drag them +over the river-bed of sand and boulders, through the muddied, churned-up +water that they were dying for, yet not allowed to taste, and toil with +them up the farther side.</p> + +<p>The Englishman was not cruel. He was usually humane and merciful to man +and beast, but just now he was deaf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> and blind. Beside him there was her +corpse, beyond him was her grave, beyond that....</p> + +<p>Both he and she, in that world that lay beyond the barrier had observed +the outward forms of Christianity. They had first met in the Park, one May +morning, after a church parade. They sat on a couple of green-painted +chairs while Society, conscious of the ever-present newspaper-reporter, +paraded past them in plumage as gorgeous as that of the gay-coloured birds +that flocked among the tree-fern or rose in frightened clouds as the +waggons crashed by. And they discussed—together with the chances of the +runners entered for the second Spring Meeting at Newmarket, and the merits +of the problem play, and the newest farcical comedy—the Immortality of +the Soul.</p> + +<p>She wore a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shades +of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Her +hair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the +sunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like +shells, and a delicate, softly-tinted skin undefiled by cosmetics. She +thought it wicked to doubt that one waked up again after dying, +Somewhere—a vague Somewhere, with all the nice people of one's set about +one. He said that Agnosticism and all that kind of thing was bad form. Men +who had religion made the best soldiers. Like the Presbyterian Highlanders +of the Black Watch and the "Royal Irish" Catholics—but, of course, she +knew that. And she said yes, she knew; meeting his admiring eyes with her +own, that were so grey and sweet and friendly, the little gloved hand that +held the ivory and gold-bound Church Service lying in her lap. He longed +to take that little white, delicate hand. Later on he took it, and a +little later the heart that throbbed in its pulses, and the frail, +beautiful body out of which the something that had been she had gone with +a brief gasping struggle and a long shuddering sigh....</p> + +<p>He kept the beloved husk and shell of her steady on the waggon-bed with +one arm thrown over it, and held the awakened, fretting child against his +breast with the other, as the sinking oxen floundered up the farther side +of the kloof. Amidst the shouting and cursing of the native<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> voor-loopers +and the Boer and Kaffir drivers, the rain of blows on tortured, struggling +bodies, and the creaking of the teak-built waggon-frames, he only heard +her weakly asking to be buried properly in some churchyard, or cemetery, +with a clergyman to read the Service for the Dead.</p> + +<p>Before his field-glass showed him the sprawling hotel-sign he had hoped +that the buildings in sight might prove to mask the outskirts of a native +village with an English missionary station, or a Dutch settlement +important enough to own a corrugated iron Dopper church and an +oak-scrub-hedged or boulder-dyked graveyard, in charge of a pastor whose +loathing of the Briton should yield to the mollifying of poured-out gold.</p> + +<p>But Fate had brought him to this lonely veld tavern. He watched it growing +into ugly, sordid shape as the waggon drew nearer. To this horrible place, +miscalled the Free State Hotel—a mere jumble of corrugated-iron +buildings, wattle and mud-walled stables for horses, and a barbed-wire +waggon-enclosure—he had brought his beloved at the end of their last +journey together. He shuddered at the thought.</p> + +<p>The waggons were halted and outspanned before the tavern. The drivers went +in to get drink, and Bough, the man who sold it, leaving the women to +serve them, came forth. He ordinarily gave himself out as an Afrikander. +You see in him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man of +twenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either insolent or +cringing, according to circumstances, and whose smile was an evil leer. +The owner of the waggons stood waiting near the closed-up foremost one, +the yellow-haired child on his arm. He looked keenly at the landlord, +Bough, and the man's hand went involuntarily up in the salute, to its +owner's secret rage. Did he want every English officer to recognise him as +an old deserter from the Cape Mounted Police? Not he—and yet the cursed +habit stuck. But he looked the stranger squarely in the face with that +frank look that masked such depth of guile, and greeted him with the +simple manner that concealed so much, and the English officer lifted his +left hand, as though it raised a sword, and began to talk. Presently +Bough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> called someone, and a smart, slatternly young woman came out and +carried the child, who leaned away from her rouged face, resisting, into +the house.</p> + +<p>The English traveller would take no refreshment. He needed nothing but to +know of a graveyard and men to dig a grave, and a minister or priest to +read the Burial Service. He would pay all that was asked. He learned that +the nearest village-town might be reached in three days' trek across the +veld, and that the landlord did not know whether it had a pastor or not.</p> + +<p>Three days' trek! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious landlord back, and +went up into the foremost waggon, drawing the canvas close. He faced the +truth in there, and realized with a throe of mortal anguish that the +burial must be soon—very soon. To prison what remained of her in a +hastily knocked-together coffin, and drag it over the veld, looking for +some plot of consecrated earth to put it in, was desecration, horror. He +would bury her, and fetch the minister or clergyman or priest to read +prayers. Later, if it cost him all he had, the spot should be consecrated +for Christian burial. He came forth from the waggon and held parley with +the landlord of the tavern. There was a wire-fenced patch of sandy red +earth a hundred yards from the house, a patch wherein the white woman who +was mistress at the tavern had tried to grow a few common English +flower-seeds out of a gaily-covered packet left by a drummer who had +passed that way. She had grown tired of the trouble of watering and +tending them, so that some of them had withered, and the lean fowls had +flown over the fence and scratched the rest up.</p> + +<p>That patch of sandy earth brought a handsome price, paid down in good +English sovereigns—the coinage that is welcome in every corner of the +earth, save among the scattered islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, where +gin, tobacco, and coffee are more willingly taken in exchange for goods or +souls.</p> + +<p>The Englishman was business-like. He fetched pen and ink and paper out of +that jealously closed-up waggon, drew up the deed of sale, and had it +witnessed by the Boer driver and the white woman at the hotel.</p> + +<p>He had made up his mind. He would bury her, since it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> must be, and then +fetch the clergyman. Knowing him on the road, or returning to the +fulfilment of his promise, she would not mind lying there unblessed and +waiting for six lonely days and nights. He whispered in her deaf ears how +it was going to be, and that she could not doubt him. He swore—not +dreaming how soon he should keep one vow—to visit the grave often, often, +with his child and hers, and to lie there beside her when kind Death +should call him too.</p> + +<p>Then he left her for a moment, and sent for the Kaffir driver and the Boer +to come, and, with him, dig her grave....</p> + +<p>But Smoots Beste was already in hog-paradise, lying grunting on a bench in +the bar, and the Kaffir had gone to the kraals with the Cape boys. The +English officer looked at the rowdy landlord and the loafing men about the +tavern, and made up his mind. No hands other than his own should prepare a +last bed for her, his dearest.</p> + +<p>So, all through the remainder of the long day, streaming and drenched with +perspiration, which the cold wind dried upon him, he wrought at a grave +for her with spade and pick.</p> + +<p>It should be deep, because of the wild-cat and the hungry Kaffir dogs. It +should be wide, to leave room for him. The ground was hard, with boulders +of ironstone embedded in it. What did that matter? All the day through, +and all through the night of wind-driven mists and faint moonlight, he +wrought like a giant possessed, whilst his child, lulled with the +condensed milk and water, in which biscuits had been sopped, lay sleeping +in the tavern upon a little iron bed.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He had had the waggon brought close up to the wired enclosure. All the +time he worked he kept a watch upon it. Did claws scrape the wide wheels +or scurrying feet patter across the shadows, he left off work until the +voracious creatures of the night were driven away.</p> + +<p>The pale dawn came, and the east showed a lake of yellow.... When the +great South African sun rose and flooded the veld with miraculous liquid +ambers and flaming, melted rubies, the deep, wide grave at last was done.</p> + +<p>He climbed out of it by the waggon ladder, struggling under the weight of +the last great basketful of stones and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> sandy earth. He dumped that down +by the graveside, and went to the waggon and removed all stains of toil, +and then set about making the last toilette of the beautiful woman who had +so loved that everything that touched her should be pure, and dainty, and +sweet.</p> + +<p>He had dressed her silken, plentiful, squirrel-brown hair many times, for +the sheer love of its loveliness. With what care he now combed and brushed +and arranged the perfumed locks! He laid reverent kisses on the sealed +eyelids that his own hands had closed for ever; he whispered words of +passionate love, vows of undying gratitude and remembrance, in the +shell-like ears. He bathed with fresh water and reclad in fragrant linen +the exquisite body, upon which faint discolouring patches already heralded +the inevitable end. When he had done, he swathed her in a sheet, and +fetched a bolt of new white canvas from the store-waggon, and lined the +grave with that.</p> + +<p>And then he placed a narrow mattress in it, and freshly covered pillows, +and brought her from the waggon, and to the grave, and carried her down +the light wooden ladder, and laid her in her last earthly home, with a +kiss from the lips that had never been her husband's. It was so cruel to +think of that. It was so hard to cover up the cold, sweet face again, but +he did it, and lapped the sheet over her and brought the canvas down. +Remained now to fill in her grave and fetch the man whose mouth should +speak over it the words that are of God.</p> + +<p>But first—fill in the grave.</p> + +<p>The cold sweat drenched him at the thought of heaping back those tons of +earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert +matter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soul +hovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his +garments with imploring, impalpable hands.</p> + +<p>The thing must be done, though, before the sordid life stirred again under +the roof of the tavern, before the vulgar faces, with their greedy, prying +eyes, should be there to snigger and spy.</p> + +<p>He loaded a great basket with fine gravelly sand, and carried it down and +laid it on her by handfuls. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> were his livid, parched lips muttering? +Over and over, only this:</p> + +<p>"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ..."</p> + +<p>Soon the white swathed-up form was hidden with the sandy gravel. That was +a terrible pang. It wrenched the first groan from him, but he worked on.</p> + +<p>More and more of the sandy gravel, but for precaution the stones must lie +above. Should the voracious creatures of the night come, they must find +the treasure in impregnable security. That thought helped him to lay in +the first, and the second, and then greater and greater stones. He was +spent and breathless, but still he laboured. He tottered, and at times the +tavern and the veld, and the waggons on it, and the flat-topped distant +mountains that merged in the horizon, swung round him in a wild, mad +dance. Then the warm salt taste of blood was in his mouth, and he gasped +and panted, but he never rested until the grave was filled in.</p> + +<p>Then he built up over it an oblong cairn of the ironstone boulders, made a +rude temporary cross out of a spare waggon-pole, working quite +methodically with saw and hammer and nails, and set it up, under the +curious eyes he hated so, and wedged it fast and sure. Then he knelt down +stiffly, and made, with rusty, long unpractised fingers, the sacred sign +upon his face and breast. He heard her still, asking him in that nearly +extinguished voice of hers, to pray for her.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Dicky!..."</p> + +<p>Ah! the tragedy of the foolish little nickname, faltered by stiffening +lips upon the bed of death!</p> + +<p>"Catholics pray for the souls of dead people, don't they? Pray for mine +by-and-by. It will comfort me to know you are praying, darling, even if +God is too angry with us to hear!"</p> + +<p>He held her to his bursting heart, groaning.</p> + +<p>"If He is angry, it cannot be with you. The sin was mine—all mine. He +must know!"</p> + +<p>Later she awakened from a troubled sleep to murmur:</p> + +<p>"Richard, I dreamed of Bridget-Mary. She was all in black, but there was +white linen about her face and neck,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> and it was dabbled dreadfully with +blood." The weak, slight body shuddered in his embrace. "She said our +wickedness had brought her death, but that she would plead for us in +Heaven."</p> + +<p>"She is not dead, my beloved; I heard of her before we left Cape Colony. +She has taken the veil. She is well, and will be happy in her religion, as +those good women always are."</p> + +<p>"I was not one of those good women, Richard——"</p> + +<p>He strained her to him in silence. She panted presently:</p> + +<p>"You might have been happy—with her—if I had never come between you!"</p> + +<p>He found some words to tell her that these things were meant to be. From +the beginning ...</p> + +<p>"Was it meant that I should die on these wild, wide, desolate plains, and +leave you, Richard?"</p> + +<p>He cried out frantically that he would die too, and follow her. Her dying +whisper fluttered at his lips:</p> + +<p>"You cannot! Think!—the child!"</p> + +<p>He had forgotten the child, and now, with a great stabbing pang, +remembered it. She asked for it, and he brought it, and she tried to kiss +it; and even in that Death foiled her, and her head fell back and her eyes +rolled up, and she died.</p> + +<p>He remembered all this as he tried to say the prayer, without which she +could not have borne to have him leave her.</p> + +<p>The curious, mocking faces crowded at the tavern door to see him +praying—a strange, haggard scarecrow kneeling there in the face of day.</p> + +<p>But he was not the kind of scarecrow they would have dared to jeer at +openly. Too rich, with all that money in the valise in the locked-up +waggon-chest; too strong, with that sharp hunting-knife, the Winchester +repeating-rifle, and the revolver he carried at his hip.</p> + +<p>"<i>Our Father Who art in Heaven....</i>"</p> + +<p>He knew, the man who repeated the words, that there was no One beyond the +burning blue vault of ether Who heard ... and yet, for her sake, +supposing, after all, some great Unseen Ear listened, was listening even +now....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>"Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come...."</i></p> + +<p>And if it came, should those have any part in it who had lived together +unwed in open sin?</p> + +<p><i>"Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven...."</i></p> + +<p>The words stuck in his dried throat. Be done, that Will that left him +desolate and laid her away, a still fair, fast-corrupting thing, under the +red earth and the great ironstone boulders!</p> + +<p><i>"Give us this day our daily bread...."</i></p> + +<p>Her love, her presence, her voice, her touch, had been the daily bread of +life to him, her fellow-sinner. Oh, how many base, sordid, loveless +marriages had not that illicit bond of theirs put to shame! And yet as a +boy he had learned the Seventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not commit +adultery." Had she not believed all along that the price of such sweet +sinning must be paid, if not in this life, then in the life hereafter, and +could it—could it be that her soul was even now writhing in fires +unquenchable, whither he, who would have gladly died in torment to save +her from outrage or death, had thrust her?</p> + +<p><i>"Forgive us our trespasses...."</i></p> + +<p>O Man of Sorrows, pitying Son of Mary, before Whom the Scribes and +Pharisees brought the woman taken in adultery, forgive her, pardon her! If +a soul must writhe in those eternal fires they preach of, in justice let +it be mine! Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing white and +shameful in the midst of the evil, jeering crowd, with the wicked fingers +pointing at her, say to this other woman, lifting up Thyself before her +terrified, desperate soul, confronted with the awful mystery that lies +behind the Veil....</p> + +<p><i>"Neither do I condemn thee...."</i></p> + +<p>And do with me what Thou wilt!</p> + +<p>The ragged, wild-eyed man who had been kneeling rigid and immovable before +the wooden symbol reared upon the new-raised cairn of boulders swayed a +little. His head fell forward heavily upon his breast. His eyes closed in +spite of his desperate effort to shake off the deadly, sickening collapse +of will and brain and body that was mastering him. He fell sideways, and +lay in a heap upon the ground.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + + +<p>They went to him, and took up and carried him into the tavern, and laid +him down upon a frowzy bed in the room where the child lay upon the +iron-framed cot.</p> + +<p>He lay there groaning in the fierce clutches of rheumatic fever. They +tended him in a rude way. A valise and an iron-bound leather lady's trunk +had been brought from the waggon by his orders, and set in the room where +he was in his sight. These contained her clothes and jewels, and he +guarded them jealously even in delirium. About his wasted body was buckled +a heavy money-belt. Bough could feel that when he helped the woman of the +tavern to lift the patient. He winked to her pleasantly across the bed. +But the time was not ripe yet. They must wait awhile. The English +traveller was not always delirious. There were intervals of consciousness, +and though he seemed at death's door, who knew? That strong purpose of his +might even yet lift him from the soiled and comfortless bed, and send him +on the trek again. Meanwhile the oxen were hired out to work for a farmer +fifty miles away. That was called sending them to graze and gain strength +for more work; and there was the keep of two Cape boys, and the Kaffir and +the Boer driver, and the cost of nursing and sick man's diet, and the care +of the child. A heavy bill of charges was mounting up against the English +traveller. Much of what the belt contained would honestly be Bough's.</p> + +<p>There was no doctor and no medicine save the few drugs the sick man had +carried, as all travellers do. The milk for which he asked for himself and +the child, which was procured from the native cattle-kraals for a tikkie a +pint, and for which Bough charged at the price of champagne, kept him +alive. Broth or eggs he sickened at and turned from, and, indeed, the one +was greasy and salt, the others of appalling mustiness. He would regularly +swallow the tabloids of quinine or lithia, and fall back on the hard, +coarse pillow, exhausted by the mere effort of unscrewing the nickel-cap +of the little phial, and tell himself that he was getting stronger. +Sometimes he really was so, and then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> child sat on his wide hollow +chest, and played with the beard that was now all grey and unkempt and +matted, until some word in her baby prattle, some look of wondering +inquiry in the innocent eyes, golden-hazel and black-lashed, like his own, +that were almost too beautiful to be a man's, people used to say, like the +weak, passionate, gentle mouth under the heavy moustache, would bring back +all the anguish of his loss, and waken anew that torturing voice that +accused him of being false to his compact with the dead. Then he would +call, and send the child away, borne in the arms of the Hottentot +chambermaid to breathe the fresh air upon the veld. And, left alone, he +would draw up the rough sheets over his head, with gaunt clutching +fingers, and weep, though sometimes no tears came to moisten his haggard, +staring eyes.</p> + +<p>One night, while the flat gold hunting-watch ticked above his head in the +little embroidered chamois-leather pouch dead hands had worked, Knowledge +came to him with a sudden rigor of the muscles of the wasted body, and a +bursting forth from every pore of the dank, dark-hued sweat of coming +dissolution.</p> + +<p>He was not ever going to get well, and fetch the clergyman to pray over +and bless her resting-place. He was going to die and lie beside her there, +under the red earth topped by the boulder-cairn. He smiled. What an easy +solution of the problem! He had been too intent upon gratifying her last +desire to entertain for a moment the thought of suicide. He had always +held self-destruction as the last resource of the coward and the criminal, +and besides there was the child.</p> + +<p>The child!...</p> + +<p>With a pang of dread and terror unfelt by him before, he raised his gaunt +head with an effort from the uneasy pillow, and looked towards where she +lay, with staring, haunted eyes. The window was open a little way at the +top, and for fear of the night-chill his fine leopard-skin kaross had been +spread over her.... One dimpled, rounded, bare arm lay upon the soft +dappled fur, the babyish fingers curled one upon the other. Rosy human +tendrils that should never twine again in a mother's hair. Her child, her +daughter!... Born of her body, sharing her nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> and her sex, soon to be +orphaned. For he who could not even lift himself from bed, and drag his +body across the floor to cover that lovely babyish arm, would soon be no +better protector than the restless ghost that tugged at his heart with its +unseen hands. He knew now why it could not rest.</p> + +<p>What would become of the child! Another fiery scourge, wielded by the Hand +Unseen, bit deep into his shrinking conscience, into his writhing soul. +His own act had brought this about. Be a cur, and accuse Destiny, blame +Fate, lay the onus upon God, as so many defaulters do—he could not. He +lay looking his deed in the foul face until the dawn crept up the sky, and +learning how it may be that the sins of their fathers are visited on the +children.</p> + +<p>He called for ink and paper as soon as the house was awake, and with +infinite labour and many pauses to recover spent strength and breath, for +he was greedy of life now, for the reason that we know—he wrote a letter +home to England, to a relative who was the head of his family, and bore a +great historic title—so great that those who spelled it out upon the +envelope were half afraid to slip the heated knife under the crested seal. +But Bough did it, and opened, and read.</p> + +<p>It was not going to be the soft snap he had thought, but it would be good +enough. Wires might be pulled from Downing Street that would set the +Government at Cape Town working to trace the tall thin Englishman who had +travelled up with two waggons from Cape Colony in the company of a child +and the woman now dead, and for whose sake he had given up those almighty +swell connections. What a fool—what a thundering, juicy, damned fool the +man had been! whose gaunt eyes were even now making out the landfall of +Kingdom Come through the gathering mists of death.</p> + +<p>The letter worried Bough. To have the English Government smelling at your +heels is no joke, thought he. Any moment the mastiff may grip, and then, +if you happen to be an ex-convict and deserter from their Colonial Police, +and supposing you have one or two other little things against you ... the +most honest of speculators being occasionally compelled to dirty his +hands, if only to tone down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> those immaculate extremities to something +approaching the colour of other people's—then what becomes of the risky +but profitable business of gun-running from the English ports through to +the Transvaal?</p> + +<p>For by men like Bough and his associates vast supplies of munitions and +engines of war were wormed through. The machine-guns in carefully numbered +parts came in cases as "agricultural implements," the big guns travelled +in the boilers of locomotives, the empty cases of the shells, large and +small, were packed in piano-cases, or in straw-filled crates as +"hardware"; the black powder and the cordite and the lyddite came in round +wooden American cheese-boxes, with a special mark; and the Mauser +cartridges were soldered in tins like preserved meat. How handsomely that +business paid only Bough and his merry men, and Oom Paul and his burghers +of the Volksraad, knew.</p> + +<p>But Her Majesty's Government, bound about with red-tape, hoodwinked by +Dutch Assistant-Commissioners of British Colonies, and deceived by +traitorous English officials, were blind and deaf to the huge traffic in +arms and munitions. Not that there were no warnings. To the very end they +were shouted in deaf ears.</p> + +<p>What of that letter sent from the Resident Commissioner's office at +Gueldersdorp, that little frontier hamlet on the north-east corner of +British Baraland, September 4, 1899, little more than a month before the +war broke out, the war that was to leave Britain and her Colonies bleeding +at every vein?</p> + +<p>The Boers were in laager over the Border. A desperate appeal for help had +been made to the Powers that were, and the reply received to the now +historic telegram, through the Resident Commissioner, has equally become a +matter of history.</p> + +<p>"All that was possible" was being done by the Imperial authorities, His +Excellency assured the inquirer, to safeguard the lives and property of +the inhabitants of the Gold-Reef Town in the event of an attack by a +hostile force.</p> + +<p>Also the military armament of the place was about to be materially +increased.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + +<p>And yet up to the little frontier town upon which so much depended not a +single modern gun had been despatched.</p> + +<p>An easy prey had the little town upon the flat-topped hill, set in the +middle of a basin, proved to the Boer General and his commandos but for +one thing. For weeks after the bursting of the first shell over +Gueldersdorp three sides of the beleaguered town were so many open doors +for the enemy. Only upon the threshold of each door stood Fear, and +guarded and held the citadel.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + + +<p>That hard taskmaster, Satan, is sometimes wonderfully indulgent to those +who serve him well. While Bough, the keeper of the tavern, was yet turning +about the open letter in his thick, short, hairy hands, weighing the +chances attending the sending of it against the chances of keeping it +back, the woman who served as mistress of the place thrust her +coarsely-waved head of yellow bleached hair and rouge-ruddled face in at +the room door, and called to him:</p> + +<p>"Boss, the sick toff is doing a croak. Giving up the ghost for all he's +worth—he is. Better come and take a look for yourself if you don't +believe me."</p> + +<p>Bough swore with relief and surprise, delayed only to lock away the +letter, and went to take a look. It was as he hoped, a real stroke of luck +for a man who knew how to work it.</p> + +<p>Richard Mildare—for Bough knew now what had been the name of the +Englishman: Captain the Hon. Richard Mildare, late of the Grey +Hussars—was dead. No hand made murderous by the lust of gold had helped +him to his death. Sudden failure of the heart is common in aggravated +cases of rheumatic fever, and with one suffocating struggle, one brief +final pang, he had gone to join her he loved. But his dead face did not +look at rest. There was some reflection in it of the terror that had come +upon him in the watches of that last night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bough stayed some time alone in the room of death. When he came out he was +extremely affable and gentle. The woman, who knew him, chuckled to herself +when he met the Kaffir serving-maid bringing back the child from an airing +in the sun, and told her to take it to the mistress. Then he went into the +bar-room to speak to the Englishman's Boer driver.</p> + +<p>Leaning easily upon the zinc-covered counter he spoke to the man in the +Taal, with which he was perfectly familiar:</p> + +<p>"Your Baas has gone in, as my wife and I expected."</p> + +<p>Smoots Beste growled in his throat:</p> + +<p>"He was no Baas of mine, the verdoemte rooinek! I drove for him for pay, +that is all. There is wage owing me still, for the matter of that—and +where am I to get it now that the heathen has gone to the burning?"</p> + +<p>Smoots, who was all of a heathen himself, and regularly got drunk, not +only on week days, but on Sabbaths, felt virtuously certain that the +Englishman had gone to Hell.</p> + +<p>Bough smiled and poured out a four-finger swig of bad Cape brandy, and +pushed it across the counter.</p> + +<p>"You shall get the money, every tikkie. Only listen to me."</p> + +<p>Smoots Beste tossed off the fiery liquid, and returned in a tone less +surly:</p> + +<p>"I am listening, Baas."</p> + +<p>Said Bough, speaking with the thickish lisp and slurring of the consonants +that distinguished his utterance when he sought to appear more simple and +candid than usual:</p> + +<p>"This dead toff, with his flash waggon and fine team, and Winchester +repeating-rifles, had very little money. He has died in my debt for the +room and the nursing, and the good nourishment, for which I trusted him +all these three weeks, and I am a poor man. The dollars I have paid you +and the Kaffir and the Cape boys on his account came out of my own pocket. +Rotten soft have I behaved over him, that's the God's truth, and when I +shall get back my own there's no knowing. But, of course, I shall act +square."</p> + +<p>The Boer's thick lips parted in a grin, showing his dirty, greenish-yellow +teeth. He scratched his shaggy head, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> said, his tongue lubricated to +incautiousness by the potent liquor:</p> + +<p>"The waggons, and the oxen, and the guns and ammunition, and the stores in +the second waggon are worth good money. And the woman that is dead had +jewels—I have seen them on her—diamonds and rubies in rings and +bracelets fit for the vrouw of King Solomon himself. The Englishman did +not bury them with her under that verdoemte kopje that he built with his +two hands, and they are not in the boxes in the living-waggon."</p> + +<p>"Did he not?" asked Bough, looking the Boer driver full in the face with a +pleasant smile. "Are they not?"</p> + +<p>Smoots Beste's piggish eyes twinkled round the bar-room, looked up at the +ceiling, down at the floor, anywhere but into Bough's. He spat, and said +in a much more docile tone:</p> + +<p>"What do you want me to do?"</p> + +<p>Bough leaned over the counter, and said confidentially:</p> + +<p>"Just this, friend. I want you to inspan, and take one of the waggons up +to Gueldersdorp, with a letter from me to the Civil Commissioner. I will +tell him how the man is dead, and he will send down a magistrate's clerk +to put a seal on the boxes and cases, and then he will go through the +letters and papers in the pocket-book, and write to the people of the dead +man over in England, supposing he has any, for I have heard him tell my +wife there was not a living soul of his name now, except the child——"</p> + +<p>"But what good will all this do you and me, Baas?" asked the Boer +subserviently.</p> + +<p>Bough spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Why, when the magistrates and lawyers have hunted up the man's family, +there will be an order to sell the waggons and oxen and other property to +pay the expenses of his burying, and the child's keep here and passage +from Cape Town, if she is to be sent to England ... and what is left over, +see you, after the law expenses have been paid, will go to the settlement +of our just claims. They will never let honest men suffer for behaving +square, sure no, they'll not do that!"</p> + +<p>But though Bough's words were full of faith in the fair dealing of the +lawyers and magistrates, his tone implied doubt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Boer lawyers are slim rogues at best, and Engelsch lawyers are duyvels as +well as rogues," said Smoots Beste, with a dull flash of originality.</p> + +<p>Bough nodded, and pushed another glass of liquor across the bar.</p> + +<p>"And that's true enough. I've a score to settle with one or two of 'em. By +gum! I call myself lucky to be in this with a square man like you. There's +the waggon, brand-new—you know what it cost at Cape Town—and the team, I +trust you to take up to Gueldersdorp, and who's to hinder a man who hasn't +the fear of the Lord in him from heading north-east instead of north-west, +selling the waggon and the beasts at Kreilstad or Schoenbroon, and living +on a snug farm of your own for the rest of your life under another man's +name, where the English magistrates and the police will never find you, +though their noses were keener than the wild dogs?"</p> + +<p>"Alamachtig!" gasped Smoots Beste, rendered breathless by the alluring, +tempting prospect. Surely the devil spoke with the voice of the +tavern-keeper Bough, when, in human form, he tempted children of men. +Sweat glistened on Smoots' flabby features, his thick hands trembled, and +his bowels were as water. But his purpose was solidifying in his brain as +he said innocently, looking over Bough's left shoulder at the wooden +partition that divided off the bar from the landlord's dwelling-room:</p> + +<p>"Aye, I am no dirty schelm that cannot be trusted. Therefore would it not +be better if I took both teams and waggons, and all the rooinek's goods +with me up to Gueldersdorp, and handed it over to the Engelsch landrost +there?"</p> + +<p>The fish was hooked. Bough said, steadily avoiding those twirling eyes:</p> + +<p>"A good notion, but the lawyer chaps at Gueldersdorp will want to look at +the Englishman's dead body to be able to satisfy his people that he did +not die of a gunshot, or of a knife-thrust; we must bury him, of course, +but not too deep for them to dig him up again. And they will want to +ferret in all the corners of the room where he died, and make sure that +his bags and boxes have not been tampered with—and then there is the +child. In a way"—he spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> slowly and apologetically—"the kid and the +goods are my security for getting my own back again—if ever I do. So you +will inspan one of the waggons—the best if you like, with a team of six +beasts, and you will trek up to Gueldersdorp—you will travel light enough +with only the grub you will need, and the Cape boys, and you will hand +over the letter to the Resident Magistrate, and bring back the man who +will act as his deputy."</p> + +<p>But at this point Smoots Beste set down his splay foot. He would undertake +to deliver the letter, but he objected to the company of the coloured +voor-loopers or the Kaffir driver. He was firm upon that and, finding his +most honeyed persuasions of no avail, Bough said no more. He would pay off +the niggers and dismiss them, or get rid of them without paying; there +were ways and means. He sent up country, and the team came down, six thin, +overworked creatures, with new scars upon their slack and baggy hides, and +hollow flanks, and ribs that showed painfully. Smoots Beste was about to +grumble, but he changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up in +the flapped pocket of his tan-cord jacket, and the long whip cracked like +a revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs of the wincing oxen, and +the white tilt rocked over the veld, heading to the nor'-west.</p> + +<p>"When will the Dutchy be back, boss?" asked the woman, with a knowing +look.</p> + +<p>Bough played the game up to her. He answered quite seriously: "In three +weeks' time."</p> + +<p>Then he strolled out, smoking a cigar, his hat tilted at an angle that +spoke of satisfaction. His walk led him past the oblong cairn of ironstone +boulders in the middle of the sandy patch of ground enclosed with zinc +wire-netting. At the foot of the cairn was a new grave.</p> + +<p>For the lover did not even lie beside his beloved, as he had vowed once, +promised and planned, but couched below her feet, waiting, like some +faithful hound that could not live without the touch of the worshipped +hand, for the dead to rise again.</p> + +<p>Why is it that Failure is the inevitable fate of some men and women? +Despite brilliant prospects, positions that seem assured, commanding +talents nobly used, splendid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> opportunities that are multiplied as though +in mockery, the result is Nothing from first to last; while the bad +flourish and the evil prosper, and the world honours the stealer of the +fruit of the brains that have been scattered in frenzied despair, or have +become so worn out from the constant effort of creation that the worker +has sunk into hopeless apathy and died.</p> + +<p>Bough was not one of those men whose plans come to nothing. He had +prospered as a rogue of old in England, really his native country, though +he called himself an Afrikander. Reared in the gutters of the Irish +quarter of Liverpool, he had early learned to pilfer for a living, had +prospered in prison as sharp young gaol-birds may prosper, and returned to +it again and again, until, having served out part of a sentence for +burglary and obtained his ticket-of-leave, he had shifted his convict's +skin, and made his way out to Cape Colony under a false name and +character. He had made a mistake, it was true, enlisting as a trooper of +Colonial Police, but the step had been forced upon him by circumstances. +Then he had deserted, and had since been successful as a white-slave +dealer at Port Elizabeth, and as a gold-miner in the Transvaal, and he had +done better and better still at that ticklish trade of gun-running for Oom +Paul. Though, get caught—only once get caught—and the Imperial +Government authorities, under whose noses you had been playing the game +with impunity for years, made it as hot as Hell for you. Bough, however, +did not mean ever to get caught. There was always another man, a +semi-innocent dupe, who would appear to have been responsible for +everything, and who would get pinched.</p> + +<p>Such a dupe now trudged at the head of the meagre three-span ox-team. +When, after a hard day's toil, he at length outspanned, the waggon-pole +still faithfully pointed to the north-west. But before it was yet day the +waggon began to move again, and it was to the north-east that the +waggon-pole pointed thenceforwards, and the letter Bough had given Smoots +Beste for the Chief Resident Magistrate at Gueldersdorp was saved from the +kindling of the camp-fire by a mere accident.</p> + +<p>The cat's-paw could not read, or the illegible, meaningless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> ink scrawl +upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused his +suspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, +understood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, not +elaborate—a mere stage property, nothing more. But yet he gave it in full +belief that it would be burned, and that, the boats of Smoots Beste being +consumed with it, according to the thick judgment of the said Smoots, it +would be as a pillar of fire behind that slim child of the old +voortrekkers, hastening his journey north-eastwards. It is typical of the +class of Smoots that it never once occurred to him to go north.</p> + +<p>But Smoots Beste never bought a farm with the price of the oxen and the +high-bulwarked, teak-built, waterproof-canvas tilted waggon that had cost +such a good round sum. There was a big rainfall on the third day. It began +with the typical African thunderstorm—deafening, continuous rolls and +crashes of heavy cloud-artillery, and lightning that blazed and darted +without intermission, and ran zigzagging in a horrible, deadly, playful +fashion over the veld, as though looking for dishonest folks to shrivel. +One terrible flash struck the wheel-oxen, a thin double tongue of blue +flame sped flickering from ridge to ridge of the six gaunt backs ... there +was a smell of burning hair—a reek of sulphur. The team lay outstretched +dead on the veld, the heavy yoke across their patient necks, the long +horns curving, the thin starved bodies already beginning to bloat and +swell in the swift decomposition that follows death by the electric fluid.</p> + +<p>Smoots Beste crawled under the waggon, and, remembering all he had heard +his father spell out from the Dutch Bible about the Judgment Day, and the +punishment of sinners in everlasting flame, felt very ill at ease. The +storm passed over, and the rain poured all through the night, but dawn +brought in a clear blue day; and with it a train of eight +transport-waggons, and several wearied, muddy droves of sheep and cattle, +the property of the Imperial Government Commissariat Department, +Gueldersdorp, being taken from Basutoland East up to Gueldersdorp, under +convoy of an escort of B.S.A. Police. To the non-commissioned officer in +command Smoots Beste,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> resigned to the discharge of a trust, handed the +letter for the Civil Commissioner.</p> + +<p>The sergeant, sitting easily in the saddle, looked at the boldly-written +direction on the envelope, and smelt no rats—at least until he coolly +opened the supposed letter. The scrawled sheet of paper it contained was a +surprise, but he did not let Smoots see that. Then the following brief +dialogue took place:</p> + +<p>"You were trekking up to Gueldersdorp," he said to the decidedly nervous +Smoots, "to fetch down a Deputy Civil Commissioner to deal with the +effects of a dead English traveller, at a house kept by the man who wrote +this letter—that is, three days' trek over the veld to the southward, and +called the Free State Hotel?"</p> + +<p>Smoots nodded heavily. The dapper sergeant cocked his felt smasher hat, +and turned between pleasantly smiling lips the cigar he was smoking. Then +he pointed with his riding-whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smart +silver top, to the north-west.</p> + +<p>"There lies Gueldersdorp. Rum that when the lightning killed the ox-team +you should have been trekking north-east, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Smoots Beste agreed that it was decidedly rum.</p> + +<p>The sergeant said, without a change in his agreeable smile:</p> + +<p>"All right; you can inspan six of our drove-bullocks, and drive the waggon +with us to Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Baas!" said Smoots, without enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>"If you like to take the risk," added the sergeant, who had not quite +finished. He ended with an irrepressible outburst of honest indignation: +"Why, you blasted, thieving Dutch scum, do you think I don't <i>know</i> you +were stealing that span and waggon?"</p> + +<p>And as Smoots, sweating freely, unyoked the dead oxen, he decided in his +heavy mind that he would be missing long before the convoy got to +Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>Nine waggons rolled on where only eight had been before. The mounted men +hurried on the daubed and wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. Smoots +Beste drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as water +within his belly, and there was no resonance in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> smack of his whip. +When the convoy came to a town, he vanished, and the story thenceforth +knows him no more. The discreet sergeant of police did not even notice +that he was missing until several days later, when the end of the journey +was near at hand. He was a sober, careful man, and a good husband. He +shortly afterwards made quite a liberal remittance to his wife, and his +troopers pushed Kruger half-sovereigns across most of the bars in +Gueldersdorp shortly after the purchase by a Dopper farmer of a teak-built +Cape waggon that a particular friend of the sergeant's had got to sell. +And they were careful, at first, not to wag loose tongues. But as time +went on the story of the English traveller who had brought the body of the +woman to the Free State Hotel, so many days' trek to the southwards from +Gueldersdorp, trickled from lip to lip. And years later, years too late, +it came to the ears of a friend of dead Richard Mildare.</p> + +<p>The sergeant maintained silence. He was a careful officer, and a discreet +man, and, what is more, religious. In controversial arguments with the +godless he would sometimes employ a paraphrase of the story of Smoots +Beste to strengthen his side.</p> + +<p>"A chap's a blamed fool that doesn't believe in God, I tell you. I was +once after a bung-nosed Dutch thief of a transport-driver, that had +waltzed away with a brand-new Cape cart and a team of first-class mules. +Taking 'em up to Pretoria on the quiet, to sell 'em to Oom Paul's +burghers, he was. Ay, they were worth a tidy lump! A storm came on—a +regular Vaal display of sky-fireworks. The rain came down like +gun-barrels, the veld turned into a swamp, but we kept on after the +Dutchman, who drove like gay old Hell. Presently comes a blue blaze and a +splitting crack, as if a comet had come shouldering into the map of South +Africa, and knocked its head in. We pushed on, smelling sulphur, burnt +flesh, and hair. 'By gum!' said I; 'something's got it'; and I was to +rights. The Cape cart stood on the veld, without a scratch on the +paintwork. The four mules lay in their traces, deader than pork. The +Dutchman sat on the box, holding the lines and his voorslag, and grinning. +He was dead, too—struck by the lightning in the act of stealing +those mules<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air after +that trying to persuade me that there isn't such a thing as an overruling +Providence!"</p> + +<p>Thus the sergeant: and his audience, whether Free-thinkers, Agnostics, or +believers, would break up, feeling that one who has the courage of his +opinions is a respectable man.</p> + +<p>As for Bough, in whose hands even the astute sergeant had been as a peeled +rush, we may go back and find him counting money in gold and notes that +had been taken from the belt of the dead English traveller.</p> + +<p>Seventeen hundred pounds, hard cash—a pretty windfall for an honest man. +The honest man whistled softly, handling the white crackling notes, and +feeling the smooth, heavy English sovereigns slip between his fingers.</p> + +<p>There were certificates of Rand stock, also a goodly number of Colonial +Railway shares, and some foreign bonds, all of which could be realised on, +but at a distance, and by a skilled hand. There were jewels, as the Boer +waggon-driver had said, that had belonged to the dead woman—diamond +rings, and a bracelet or two; and there were silk dresses of lovely hues +and texture, and cambric and linen dresses, and tweed dresses, in the +trunks; and a great cloak of sables, trimmed with many tails, and +beautiful underclothing of silk and linen, trimmed with real lace, over +which the mouth of the woman of the tavern watered. She got some of the +dresses and all the undergarments when Bough had dexterously picked out +the embroidered initials. He knew diamonds and rubies, but he had never +been a judge of lace.</p> + +<p>There was a coronet upon one or two handkerchiefs that had been overlooked +when the dead woman had burned the others four years previously. Bough +picked this out too, working deftly with a needle.</p> + +<p>He was clever, very clever. He could take to pieces a steam-engine or a +watch, and put it together again. He knew all there is to know about +locks, and how they may best be opened without their keys. He could alter +plate-marks with graving tools and the jeweller's blow-pipe, and test +metals with acids, and make plaster-cast moulds that would turn out +dollars and other coins, remarkably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> like the real thing. He was not a +clever forger; he had learned to write somewhat late in life, and the +large, bold round hand, with the capital letters that invariably began +with the wrong quirk or twirl, was too characteristic, though he wrote +anonymous letters sometimes, risking detection in the enjoyment of what +was to him a dear delight, only smaller than that other pleasure of +moulding bodies to his own purposes, of malice, or gain, or lust.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + + +<p>There was a child in the tavern on the veld; it lay in an old orange-box, +half-filled with shavings, covered with a thin, worn blanket, in the +daub-and-wattle outhouse, where the Hottentot woman, called the +chambermaid, and the Kaffir woman, who was cook, slept together on one +filthy pallet. Sometimes they stayed up at the tavern, drinking and +carousing with the Dutch travellers who brought the supplies of Hollands +and Cape brandy and lager beer, and the American or English gold-miners +and German drummers who put up there from time to time. Then the child lay +in the outhouse alone. It was a frail, puny creature, always frightened +and silent. It lived on a little mealie pap and odd bits of roaster-cakes +that were thrown to it as though it were a dog. When the coloured women +forgot to feed it, they said: "It does not matter. Anyhow, the thing will +die soon!" But it lived on when another child would have died.... There +was something uncanny about its great-eyed silence and its tenacious hold +on life.</p> + +<p>It had only been able to toddle when brought to the tavern. The rains and +thunderstorms of spring went by, the summer passed, and it could walk +about. It was a weakly little creature, with great frightened eyes, +amber-brown, with violet flecks in their black-banded irises, and dark, +thick lashes; and the delicately-drawn eyebrows were dark too, though its +hair was soft yellow—just the colour of a chicken's down. Many a cuff it +got, and many a hard word, when its straying feet brought it into the way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +of the rough life up at the tavern. But still the scrap of food was tossed +to it, and the worn-out petticoat roughly cobbled into a garment for its +little body; for Bough was a charitable man.</p> + +<p>It was a poor orphan, he explained to people, the child of a consumptive +emigrant Englishman who had worked for the landlord of the tavern, and +left this burden for other shoulders when he died. Charitable travellers +frequently left benefactions towards the little one's clothing and keep. +Bough willingly took charge of the money. The child strayed here, there, +and everywhere. It was often lost, but nobody looked for it, and it always +came back. It liked to climb the cairn of boulders, or to sit on the long, +low hillock at the cairn's foot. The wire fencing had long been removed +from the enclosure; it had gone to make a chicken-pen in a more suitable +spot. The cross had been taken down when a prop was wanted for the +clothes-line.</p> + +<p>The child, often beaten by Bough and the woman of the tavern, might have +been even worse treated by the coloured servants but for those two graves +out on the veld. Black blood flows thick with superstition, and both the +Kaffir cook and the snuff-coloured Hottentot chambermaid nourished a +wholesome dread of spooks. Who knew but that the white woman's ghost would +rise out of the kopje there, some dark night, and pinch and cuff and thump +and beat people who had ill-used her bantling? As for the dead man buried +at her feet, his dim shape had often been seen by one of the Barala +stablemen, keeping guard before the heap of boulders, in the white blaze +of the moon-rays, or the paler radiance of a starry night, or more often +of a night of mist and rain; not moving as a sentry moves, but upright and +still, with shining fiery eyes in his shadowy face, and with teeth that +showed, as the dead grin. After that none of the servants would pass near +these two graves later than sundown, and Bough welted the Barala boy with +an ox-reim for scaring silly jades of women with lying tales. But then +Bough avoided the spot by day as well as by night. Therefore, it became a +constant place of refuge for the child, who now slept in the outhouse +alone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the long, brilliant winter nights she would leave the straw-stuffed +sack that had been her bed ever since the orange-box had been broken up, +and climb the stone-heaps, and look over the lonely veld, and stare up at +the great glowing constellation of the Southern Cross. In spring, when +pools and river-beds were full of foaming beer-coloured water, and every +kloof and donga was brimmed with flowers and ferns, she would be drawn +away by these, would return, trailing after her armfuls of rare blooms, +and thenceforward, until these faded, the ridgy grave-mound and the heaped +cairn of boulders would be gay with them. She never took them to the +house. It might have meant a beating—so many things did.</p> + +<p>Late in November, when the apricots and plums and peaches were ripening on +the laden, starling-haunted boughs, she would wander in the orchard +belonging to the house, while the heavy drenching rains drummed on the +leaves overhead, and sudden furious thunderstorms rent the livid-coloured +clouds above with jagged scythes and reaping-hooks of white electric fire, +or leaping, dancing, playing, vanishing tongues of thin blue. Once this +fire struck a krantz, under the lee of which the child was sheltering, and +made a black scorched mark all down the cliff-face, but left the child +unscathed.</p> + +<p>No one had ever taught her anything; no one had ever laid a gentle hand +upon her. When she first saw mother and daughter, friend and friend, +sweetheart and sweetheart kiss, it seemed to her that they licked each +other, as friendly dogs do. She had no name that she knew of.</p> + +<p>"You kid, go there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. You kid, go to the +drift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out the +room there—do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast when +at last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she was +very young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A real mother's +heart—all mothers are not real ones—would have ached to see the dirt and +bruises on the delicate childish limbs, and the vermin that crawled under +the yellow rings of hair. How to be clean and tidy nobody had ever shown +her, though she had learned by instinct other things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + +<p>That it was best to bear hunger and pain in silence, lest worse befell. +That a truth for which one suffers is not as good as a lie for which one +gets a bigger roaster-cake, or the scrapings of the syrup-can. That to +little, weak, and feeble creatures of their race grown human beings can be +marvellously cruel. That the devil lived down in the kraals with the +natives, and that God was a swear. It is a wonder that she had not sunk +into idiocy, or hopelessly sickened and died, neglected, ill-used, +half-starved as she was. But when the little one might have been six years +of age, the Lady began coming. And after the first time, with very brief +intervals of absence, she came every night.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + + +<p>As soon as you lay down on the sack of straw in the corner of the +outhouse, slipping out of the ragged frock if the weather were hot, or +pulling the thin old horse-blanket over you if the night were a cold one, +keeping your eyes tight shut, for this was quite indispensable, you looked +into the thick dark, shot with gleams of lovely colours, sometimes with +whirling rings of stars, and gradually, as you looked, all these +concentrated into two stars, large and not twinkling, but softly radiant, +and you were happy, for you knew that the Lady was coming.</p> + +<p>For she always came, even when you had been most wicked: when you were +sent to bed without even the supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body and +arms and legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you you +deserved. The stars would go a long way off, and while you tingled and +trembled and panted with expectation, would come back again as eyes. +Looking up into them, you saw them clearly; the rest of the person they +belonged to arrived quite a little while after her eyes were there. Such +eyes—neither grey, nor brown, nor violet, but a mingling of all these +colours, and deepening as you gazed up into them into bottomless lakes of +love.</p> + +<p>Then her face, framed in a soft darkness, which was hair—the Kid never +knew of what colour—her face formed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> itself out of the darkness that +framed those eyes, and a warm, balmy breath came nearer, and you were +kissed. No other lips, in your short remembrance, had ever touched you. +You had learned the meaning of a kiss only from her, and hers was so long +and close that your heart left off beating, and only began again when it +was over. Then arms that were soft and warm, and strong and beautiful, +came round you and gathered you in, and you fell asleep folded closely in +them, or you lay awake, and the Lady talked to you in a voice that was +mellow as honey and soft as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of the +wild pigeons that nested in the krantzes, or the sighing of the wind among +the high veld grasses, and the murmur of the little river playing among +the boulders and gurgling between the roots of the tree-fern. You talked, +too, and told her everything. And no matter how bad you had been, though +she was sorry, because she hated badness, she loved you just as dearly as +she did when you were good. And oh! how you loved her—how you loved her!</p> + +<p>"Please," you said that night when she came first—you remember it quite +well, though it is so long ago—"please, why did you never come before?"</p> + +<p>And she answered, with her cool, sweet, fragrant lips upon your eyelids, +and your head upon her breast:</p> + +<p>"Because you never wanted me so much as now."</p> + +<p>"Please take me back home with you," you begged, holding her fast. And she +answered in the voice that is always like the sigh of the wind amongst the +tree-tops and the murmur of the river:</p> + +<p>"I cannot yet—but I will come again."</p> + +<p>And she does come, and again and again. By degrees, though she comes to +you only at night, when the outhouse is dark, or lighted only by the stars +or the moonshine, you learn exactly what the Lady is like.</p> + +<p>She wears a silken, softly-rustling gown that is of any lovely colour you +choose. The hue of the blue overarching sky at midday, or the tender rose +of dawn, or of the violet clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of the +sunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment is +sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendid +pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> her form even to the eyes of an +untaught, neglected child. Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as of +shadow, and her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. The +sorrow of all the world and all its joy seem to have rolled over her like +many waters, and when she smiles the sweetness of it is always almost more +than the Kid can bear.</p> + +<p>Who is the Lady!</p> + +<p>She has no other name than that. She is very, very good, as well as +beautiful, and you can bear to tell her when you have been most wicked, +because she is so sorry for you. She can play with you, and laugh so +softly and clearly and gaily that you, who have never learned but to dread +grown people's cruel merriment, join in and laugh too. When she laughs the +corners of her eyes crinkle so like the corners of her lips that you have +to kiss them, and there are dimples that come with the laughter, and make +her dearer than ever.</p> + +<p>Who is the Lady, tall, and strong, and tender? That dead woman lying out +there under the Little Kopje was small, and slight, and frail. Who may the +Lady be? Is she a dream or a mere illusion born of loneliness and +starvation, physical and mental? Or has Mary, the Mother of Pity, laid +aside her girdle of decades of golden roses, her mantle of glory, and her +diadem of stars, and come stepping fair-footed down the stairway that +Night builds between Earth and Heaven, to comfort a desolate child lying +in a stable who never heard the story of the Christ-Babe of Bethlehem?</p> + +<p>You ask no questions—you to whom she comes. You call her softly at night, +stretching out your arms, and the clasp of her arms answers at once. You +whisper how you love her, with your face hidden in her neck. The great +kind dark that brings her is your real, real daytime in which you live and +are glad. Each morning to which you waken, bringing its stint of hunger +and abuse and blows renewed, is only a dreadful dream, you say to +yourself, and so can face your world.</p> + +<p>Oh, deep beyond fathoming, mysterious beyond comprehension is the hidden +heart of a child!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + + +<p>One afternoon when the Kid was quite as tall as the broom she swept the +stoep with she had gone to the drift for water. It was a still, bright, +hot day. Little puffs of rosy cloud hung motionless under the burning blue +sky-arch; small, gaily-plumaged birds twittered in the bushes; the tiny +black ants scurried to and fro in the pinkish sand of the river beach. She +waded into the now clear, sherry-pale water to cool her hot bare limbs, +and, bending over, stared down into the reflected eyes that looked back +out of the pool.</p> + +<p>Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a curling tousle +of matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little +figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock. +She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before, +though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the +bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were +swing toilet-glasses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred +in her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "<i>It is good to be clean</i>," +and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the womanly purpose +framed.</p> + +<p>She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from head to foot in the +warm clear water. She took fine sand, and scrubbed her head. She dipped +and wrung and rinsed her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in the +shallows, the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming her +slight girlish body through and through as she spread her washed rags to +dry on the big hot stones.</p> + +<p>There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was a rustling sound +among the green bushes. She had never heard of modesty, but she cowered +down among the boulders, and the heavy footstep passed by. She hid among +the fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, and went back +with her filled water-bucket to the hotel. How could she know what injury +the kind peremptory voice, bidding her be foul no longer, had done her! +But thenceforwards a new cruelty, a fresh peril, attended her steps.</p> + +<p>Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> often. She was no wife +of his. He had not brought her from Cape Colony. When the hotel was built +he had gone up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and brought +her back with him from an establishment he knew. He was generally not +brutal to her except when she was ailing, when he gave her medicine that +made her worse, much worse—so very ill that she would lie groaning upon a +foul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with the coloured women +and the customers in the bar. Then, still groaning, she would drag herself +up and be about her work again. She did not want to go back to the house +at Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, poor bought +wretch.</p> + +<p>She had quarrelled with him many times for many things, and been silenced +with blows, or curses, or even caresses, were he in the mood. But she had +never quarrelled with him about the Kid before. Now when he bought some +coloured print and a Boer sunbonnet, and some shifts and stockings of a +traveller in drapery and hosiery, and ordered her thenceforwards to see +that the girl went properly clothed, a new terror, a fresh torture, was +added to the young life. The woman had ignored, neglected, sometimes +ill-used her, but she had never hated her until now.</p> + +<p>And Bough, the big, burly, dark-skinned man with the strange light eyes, +and the bold, cruel, red mouth, and the bushy brown whiskers, why did he +follow her about with those strange eyes, and smile secretly to himself? +She was no longer fed on scraps; she must sit and eat at table with the +man and his mistress, and learn to use knife and fork.</p> + +<p>She outgrew the dress Bough had bought her, and another, and another, and +this did not make Bough angry; he only smiled. A man having some secret +luxury or treasure locked away in a private cupboard will smile so. He +knows it is there, and he means to go to the hiding-place one day, but in +the meantime he waits, licking his lips.</p> + +<p>The girl had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger with +unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable than +his smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to the +kraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables, +or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, +padding footsteps coming after her, and would turn and pass him with +downcast eyes, and go back to the inn, and take a beating for not having +done her errand. Beating she comprehended, but this mysterious change in +the man Bough filled her with sick, secret loathing and dread. She did not +know why she bolted the door of the outhouse now when she crept to her +miserable bed.</p> + +<p>Once Bough dropped into her lap a silver dollar, saying with a smile that +she was getting to be quite a little woman of late. She leaped to her feet +as though a scorpion had stung her, and stood white to the very lips, and +speechless, while the big silver coin rolled merrily away into a distant +corner, and lay there. The frowzy woman with the bleached hair happened to +come in at that moment; or had she been spying through a crack of the +door? Bough pretended he had accidentally dropped the coin, picked it up, +and went away.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That night he and the woman quarrelled fiercely. She could hear them +raging at each other as she lay trembling. Then came shrieks, and the dull +sound of the sjambok cutting soft human flesh. In the morning the woman +had a black eye; there were livid weals on her tear-blurred face. She +packed her boxes, snivelling. She was going back along up to Johannesburg +by the next thither-bound transport-waggon-train that should halt at the +hotel—thrown off like an old shoe after all these years. And she was not +young enough for the old life, what with hard work and hard usage and +worry, and she knew to whom she owed her dismissal....</p> + +<p>Ay, and if she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil she +would have done it! Only—there would have been Bough to reckon with +afterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of +hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers +and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, +blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburg +transport-rider's waggons returning from the district town not yet linked +up to the north by the railway came in sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bough poured her out a big glass of liquor, his universal panacea, and +another for the transport-rider, with many a jovial word. He would be +running up to Johannesburg before she had well shaken down after the +journey. Then they would have a rare old time, going round the bars and +doing the shows. Though, perhaps if she had got fixed up with a new +friend, some flash young fellow with pots of money, she would not be +wanting old faces around?</p> + +<p>Then he turned aside to pay the transport-rider, and the exile dabbed her +swollen face with a rouge-stained, lace-edged handkerchief, and went out +to get into the waggon.</p> + +<p>The girl stood by the stoep, staring, puzzled, overwhelmed, afraid. A +piece of her world was breaking off. As long as she could remember +anything she had known this woman. She had never received any kindness +from her; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but—she wished she +was not going. Instinctively she had felt that her presence was some +slight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzy +skirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and +the padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the woman passed her +now, a rage of unspeakable, agonising fear rose in her bosom. She cried +out to her, and clutched at her shabby gay mantle.</p> + +<p>The woman snatched the garment from her hold. Her distorted mouth and +blazing eyes were close to the white young face. She could have spat upon +it. But she snarled at her three words ... no more, and passed her, and +got into the waggon.</p> + +<p>"Halloa, there!" said Bough, coming forward threateningly, "what you +rowing about, eh?" But no one answered. The girl had fled to the +boulder-cairn, and the woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary, +goaded teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad-beamed +vehicles lumbered away.</p> + +<p>But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the dust of the +bosom from whence it had first drunk life sat there immovable until the +sun went down, pondering.</p> + +<p>"<i>Missis now, eh!</i>"</p> + +<p>What did those three words mean?</p> + +<p>Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> as waitress of the +bar that day, and the men who drove or rode by and stopped for drinks, +chatting in the dirty saloon, or sitting in the bare front room, with the +Dutch stove, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they called the +coffee-room, to discuss matters relative to the sale of cattle, or sheep, +or merchandise, stared at her, and several made her coarse compliments. +She refused to touch the loathly-smelling liquor they offered her. Her +heart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly conscious +of those light eyes of Bough's following, following her, with that +inscrutable look.</p> + +<p>When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught her arm, and pulled +her near him, and said between his teeth:</p> + +<p>"You will sleep in the mistress's room to-night."</p> + +<p>Then he went away chuckling to himself, thinking of that frightened look +in her eyes. Later, he went out on horseback, and did not return.</p> + +<p>The slatternly bedchamber, with its red turkey twill window-curtains and +cheap gaudy wallpaper, which had belonged to the ruddled woman with the +bleached hair, was a palace to the little one. But she could not breathe +there. Late that night she rose from the big feather bed, and unfastened +the inner window shutters, and drew the cotton blind and opened the +window, though the paint had stuck, and looked out upon the veld. The +great stars throbbed in the purple velvet darkness overhead. The falling +dew wetted the hand she stretched out into the cool night air. She drew +back the hand and touched her cheek with it, and started, for the fresh, +cool, fragrant touch seemed like that of some other hand whose touch she +once had known. She thought for the first time that if the woman who had +been her mother, and who slept out there in the dark under the +boulder-cairn, had lived, she might have touched her child so. Then she +closed the window quickly, for she heard, afar off, the gallop of a +hard-ridden horse drawing nearer—nearer. And she knew that Bough was +coming back.</p> + +<p>He came.</p> + +<p>She heard him dismount before the door, give the horse to the sleepy +Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among the +glasses and bottles. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on +the landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the room +where she was.</p> + +<p>Then his voice bade her rise and open the door. She could not speak or +move.</p> + +<p>She was dumb and paralysed with deadly terror. She heard his coaxing voice +turn angry; she listened in helpless terrified silence to his oaths and +threats; then she heard him laugh softly, and the laugh was followed by +the jingle of a bunch of skeleton keys. He always carried them; they saved +trouble, he used to say.</p> + +<p>They saved him trouble now. When the bent wire rattled in the lock, and +the key fell out upon the floor, she screamed, and his coarse chuckle +answered. She was cowering against the wall in a corner of the room when +he came in and picked up the key and locked the door. But when his +stretched-out, grasping hand came down upon her slight shoulder, she +turned and bit it like some savage, desperate little animal, drawing the +blood. Bough swore at the sudden sting of the sharp white teeth. So the +little beast showed fight, eh? Well, he would teach her that the master +will have his way.</p> + +<p>There was no one else in the house, and if there had been it would have +served her not at all. God sat in timeless Eternity beyond these mists of +earth, and saw, and made no sign. It was not until the man Bough slept the +heavy sleep of liquor and satiety that the thought of flight was born in +her with desperate courage to escape him. The shutters had been left +unbolted, and the window was yet a little way open. She sprang up and +threw it wide, leaped out upon the stoep, and from thence to the ground, +and fled blindly, breathlessly over the veld into the night.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + + +<p>Bough, as soon as it was dawn, sent three of the Kaffirs from the kraals, +in different directions, to search for her, and, mounted on a fresh pony, +took the fourth line of search himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> + +<p>He had chosen the right direction for riding down the quarry. At broad +high noon he came upon her, in a bare, stony place tufted with milk-bush. +She was crouching under a prickly-pear shrub, that threw a distorted blue +shadow on the sun-baked, sun-bleached ground, trying to eat the fruit in +the native way with two sticks. But she had no knife, and her mouth was +bleeding. Bough gave the tired pony both spurs when the prey he hunted +came in sight. She leaped up like a wild cat when the mounted man rode +down upon her, and ran, doubling like a hare. When overtaken, she fell +upon her face in the sand, and lay still, only shaken by her long pants. +Bough dismounted and caught her by the wrist and dragged her up with his +bandaged right hand. He beat her about her cheeks with his hard, open +left. Then he threw her across his saddle, but she writhed down, and lay +under the pony's feet.</p> + +<p>He kicked her then, for giving so much trouble, lifted her again, and +tried to mount, holding her in one arm. But the frightened pony swerved +and backed, and the girl writhed, and struggled, and scratched like a wild +cat. She did not know what mercy meant, but she saw by the look that came +into those light eyes that this man would have none upon her. She fought +and bit and screamed.</p> + +<p>Bough took an ox-reim then, that was coiled behind his saddle, and bound +her hands. He tied the end of the leather rope to the iron ring behind his +saddle, and remounted, and spurred his weary beast into a canter. The +little one was forced to run behind. Again and again she fell, and each +time she was jerked up and forced to run again upon her bleeding feet, +leaving rags of her garments upon the karroo-bushes and blood-marks on the +stones. And at last she fell, and rose no more, showing no sign of life +under the whip and the spur-rowel. Then Bough bent over and drew his long +hunting-knife and cut the reim, leaving her hands still bound. If any +spark of life remained in he girl, he could not tell. Her knees were drawn +in towards her body; her eyes were open, and rolled upwards; there was +foam upon her torn and bleeding mouth. She was as good as dead, anyway, +and the wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> dogs would be sure to come by-and-by. Already an aasvogel +was hovering above; a mere speck, the great bird poised upon widespread +wings, high up in the illimitable blue.</p> + +<p>Presently there would be a flock of these carrion feeders, that are not +averse to fresh-killed meat when it is to be had.</p> + +<p>Bough remounted, and, humming a dance tune that was often on his lips, +rode away over the veld.</p> + +<p>The great vulture wheeled. Then he dropped like a falling stone for a +thousand yards or so, and hovered and dropped again, getting nearer—ever +so much nearer—with each descent. And where he had hovered at the first +were now a dozen specks of black upon the hot, bright blue.</p> + +<p>A wild dog crept down from a cone-topped spitzkop, and stood, sniffing the +blood-tainted air eagerly, whining a little in its throat.</p> + +<p>The great vulture dropped lower. His comrades of the flock, eagerly +following his gyrations and descents, had begun to wheel and drop also. +Another wild dog appeared on the cone-shaped kop. Other furry, sharp-eared +heads, with eager, sniffing noses, could be seen amongst the grass and +bush.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the higher vultures rose. They wheeled and soared and flew, +a bevy of winged black specks hurrying to the north. They had seen +something approaching over the veld. The great bird hanging motionless, +purposeful, lower down, became aware of his comrades' change of tactics. +With one downward stroke of his powerful wings, he shot upwards, and with +a hoarse, croaking cry took flight after the rest.</p> + +<p>The wild dogs stole back, hungry, to covert, as a big light blue waggon, +drawn by a well-fed team of eight span, came lumbering over the veld.</p> + +<p>Would the ox-team veer in another direction? Would the big blue waggon +with the new white tilt roll by?</p> + +<p>The Hottentot driver cracked his giant whip, and, turning on the box-seat, +spoke to a figure that sat beside him. It was a woman in loose black +garments, with a starched white coif like a Dutchwoman's kapje, covered +with a floating black veil. At her side dangled and clashed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> a long rosary +of brown wooden beads, with a copper crucifix attached. There were two +other women in the big waggon, dressed in the same way. They were Roman +Catholic nuns—Sisters of Mercy coming up from Natal, by the order of the +Bishop of Bellmina, Vicar-Apostolic, at the request of the Bishop of +Paracos, suffragan to North-East Baraland, to swell the numbers of the +Community already established in Gueldersdorp at the Convent of the Holy +Way.</p> + +<p>The oxen halted some fifty yards from that inanimate ragged little body, +lying prone, face downwards, among the scrubby bushes that sprouted in the +hot sand. Little crowding tiny ants already blackened the bloodstains on +the ground, and the wild dogs would not have stayed long from the feast if +the waggon had passed on.</p> + +<p>One white-coifed, tall, black-clad figure sprang lightly down from the +waggon-box, and hurried across to where the body was lying. A mellow, +womanly cry of pity came from under the starched coif. She turned and +beckoned. Then she knelt down by the girl's side, opened the torn +garments, and felt with compassionate, kindly touches about the still +heart.</p> + +<p>The other two black figures came hurrying over then, stumbling amongst the +stones and karroo-bushes in their haste. Lifting her, they turned the +white, bloodless young face to the blue sky. It was cut and scratched, but +not otherwise disfigured. Her bound arms, dragged upwards before it, had +shielded it from the thorns and the sharp stones. They were raw from the +elbows to the wrists.</p> + +<p>They listened at the torn childish bosom with anxious ears. They got a few +drops of brandy between the clenched little teeth. The sealed lips +quivered; the heart fluttered feebly, like a dying bird. They gave her +more stimulant, and waited, while the Hottentot driver dozed, and the +sleek, well-fed oxen chewed the cud patiently, standing in the sun.</p> + +<p>Then the Sisters lifted her, with infinite care, and carried her to the +waggon. The twenty-four-foot whip-lash cracked, and the patient beasts +moved on. Very soon the big white tilt was a mere retreating speck upon +the veld.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> The ants were still busy when the wild dogs came out and +sniffed regretfully at those traces on the ground.</p> + +<p>Coincidence, did you say, lifting your eyebrows over the book, as the blue +waggon of the Sisters rolled lumberingly into the story? The long arm of +coincidence stretched to aching tenuity by the dramatist and the novelist! +Nay! but the thing happened, just as I have told.</p> + +<p>What is the thing we are agreed to call coincidence?</p> + +<p>Once I was passing over one of the bridges that span the unclean London +ditch called the Regent's Canal. I had walked all the way from Piccadilly +Circus to Gloucester Crescent, haunted by the memory of a man I had once +known. He was the broken-down, drunken, studio-drudge of a great artist, a +splendid Bohemian, who had died some years before. Why did the thought of +the palette-scraper, the errand-goer, the drunken creature with the +cultivated voice and the ingratiating, gentlemanly manners, possess me as +I went? I recalled his high, intellectual, pimply forehead, and large +benevolent nose, in a chronic state of inflammation, and seedy +semi-clerical garb, for the thing had been an ordained clergyman of the +Church of England, and I grinned, remembering how, when a Royal visitor +was expected at the great man's studio, the factotum had been bidden to +wash his face, and had washed one half of it, leaving the other half in +drab eclipse, like the picture-restorers' trade-advertisement of a canvas +partially cleansed.</p> + +<p>Idly I tossed the butt of a finished cigar over the bridge balustrade. +Idly my eye followed it down to the filthy, sluggishly-creeping water that +flows round the bend, under the damp rear-garden walls below.</p> + +<p>A policeman and a bargeman were just taking the body of an old man out of +that turbid canal-stream. It was dressed in pauper's garments, and its +stiffened knees were bent, and its rigid elbows crooked, and a +dishonoured, dripping beard of grey hung over the soulless breast.</p> + +<p>The dreadful eyes were open, staring up at the leaden March sky. His face, +with the dread pallor of Death upon it, and the mud-stains wiped away by a +rough but not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> unkindly hand, was cleaner than I had ever seen it in life.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, I recognised in the soaked body in its workhouse livery the +very man the thought of whom had haunted me, the great Bohemian painter's +drunken studio-drudge.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + + +<p>School at the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp was breaking up, +suddenly and without warning, very soon after the beginning of the +Christmas term. Many of the pupils had already left in obedience to urgent +telegrams from relatives in Cape Colony or in the Transvaal, and every +Dutch girl among the sixty knew the reason why, but was too astute to hint +of it, and every English girl was at least as wise, but pride kept her +silent, and the Americans and the Germans exchanged glances of +intelligence, and whispered in corners of impending war between John Bull +and Oom Paul.</p> + +<p>That deep and festering political hatreds, fierce enthusiasms, inherited +pride of race, and instilled pride in nationality, were covered by worked +apron-bibs, and even childish pinafores, is anyone likely to doubt? +Schoolgirls can be patriots as well as rebels, and the seminary can vie +with the college, or possibly outdo it, occasion given. Ask Juliette Adam +whether the bread-and-butter misses of France in the year 1847 did not +squabble over the obstinacy of King Louis Philippe and the greed of M. +Guizot, the claims of Louis Napoleon and the theories of Louis Blanc, of +Odilon Barrot, and Ledru-Rollin? And I who write, have I not seen a North +Antrim Sunday-school wrecked in a faction-fight between the Orange and the +Green? Lord! how the red-edged hymnals and shiny-covered S.P.G. books +hurtled through the air, to burst like hand-grenades upon the texted +walls. In vain the panting, crimson clergyman mounted the superintendent's +platform, and strove to shed the oil of peace upon those seething waters. +Even the class-teachers had broken the rails out of the Windsor +chair-backs, and joined the hideous fray, irrespective of age or sex.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Miss Maloney—Miss Geoghegan—I am shocked—appalled! In the name of +decency I command yees to desist!"</p> + +<p>"Hit him again, Moggy Lenahan, a taste lower down!"</p> + +<p>"Serve you right, Mulcahy! why would you march wid the Green?"</p> + +<p>Thirty years ago. As I gaped in affright at the horrid scene of strife, +small revengeful fingers twisted themselves viciously in my auburn curls, +and wresting from my grasp a "Child's Own Bible Concordance," a birthday +outrage received from an Evangelical aunt, Julia Dolan, aged twelve, began +to pound me about the face with it. As a snub-nosed urchin, gifted with a +marvellous capacity for the cold storage and quick delivery of Scripture +genealogies and Hebrew proper and improper names, I had often reduced my +mild, long-legged girl-neighbour to tearful confusion. Now meek Julia +seemed as though possessed by seven devils. I had been taught the +elementary rule that boys must not hurt girls, but the code had no precept +helpful in the present instance, when a girl was hurting me. Casting +chivalry to the winds, I remember that I kicked Julia's shins, and she +fled howling; but not before she had reduced my leading feature to a state +of ruin, which created a tremendous sensation when they led me home. +Later, during the election riots, two young women fought in the Market +Place, stripped to the waist, and wielding boards wrenched from the side +of a packing-case, heavy, jagged, and full of nails. And when the soldiers +were called out, we know how many a saddle was emptied by the stones the +children threw....</p> + +<p>Only a day previously the centipede-like procession of girls of all ages, +in charge of nuns and pupil-teachers, in passing over the Gueldersdorp +Recreation-Ground, had sustained an experience with which every maiden +bosom would have been still vibrating had not an event even more exciting +occurred between the early morning roll-call and prayers-muster and +breakfast.</p> + +<p>Greta Du Taine had had another love-letter!</p> + +<p>The news darted from class-room to class-room more quickly than little +Monsieur Pilotell, the French literature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> professor; it spread like the +measles, and magnified like the mumps.</p> + +<p>The Red Class, composed of the elder girls, "young ladies" who were +undergoing the process of finishing, surged with volcanic excitement, +hidden, but not in the least repressed. The White Class, their juniors, +who were chiefly employed in preparing for Confirmation, should have been +immersed in graver things, but were not. They waited on mental tiptoe for +details, and a peep at the delicious document. The Blue Class, as became +mere infants ranging from six to ten years old, remained phlegmatically +indifferent to the missive, yet avid for samples of the chocolates that +had accompanied the declaration, made to eighty girls of all ages by one +undersized, pasty, freckled young man employed as junior clerk and +chain-assistant in a surveyor's office, and who signed at the end of a +long row of symbolistic crosses the unheroic name of Billy Keyse.</p> + +<p>He had seen and been helplessly stunned by the vision of Greta Du Taine +out walking at the head of the long winding procession of English, German, +Dutch, Dutch-French, Dutch-American, and Jewish girls. They are sent now +to be taught in Europe, those daughters of the Rand millionaires, the +Stock Exchange speculators, the wealthy fruit-farmers, or cereal-growers, +or cattle and sheep breeders, who are descended themselves from the old +pioneers and voortrekkers, but they do not get a better education than was +to be had at the Convent school at Gueldersdorp, where the Sisters of +Mercy took in and taught and trained coltish girl-children, born in a +strongly stimulating climate, and accustomed to lord it over Kaffir and +Hottentot servants to their hearts' content. These they tamed, these they +transformed into refined, cultivated, accomplished young women, stamped +with the indefinable seal of high breeding, possessed of the tone and +manner that belongs to the upper world.</p> + +<p>What shall I say of the Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Way at +Gueldersdorp, I who know but little of any Order of Religious? They are a +Community, chiefly of ladies of high breeding and ancient family, vowed to +feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, comfort the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> dying, and +instruct the ignorant. Like the Fathers of the Society of Jesuits, those +skilled, patient, wise tillers in the soil of the human mind, their daily +task is to hoe and tend, and prune and train, and water the young green +things growing in what to them is the Garden of God, and to other good and +even holy people, the vineyard of the devil. Possibly both are right?</p> + +<p>I have heard the habit of the Order called ugly. But upon the stately +person of the Mother Superior the garb was regal. The sweeping black folds +were as imposing as imperial purple, and the starched guimpe framed a +beauty that was grave, stern, almost severe until she smiled, and then you +caught your breath, because you had seen what great poets write of, and +great painters try to render, and only great musicians by their +impalpable, mysterious tone-art can come nearest to conveying—the earthly +beauty that has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the white +fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could not +have loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; the +point of her sarcasm was keen as any thrusting blade of tempered steel; +her will was to be obeyed, and was obeyed as sovereign law, else woe +betide the disobedient. Also, though kind and gracious to all, tenderly +solicitous for, and incessantly watchful of, the welfare of the least of +her charges, she never feigned where she could not feel regard or love. +Her rare kiss was coveted in the little world of the Convent school as the +jewel of an Imperial Order was coveted in the bigger world outside it, and +the most rebellious of the pupils held her in respect mingled with fear. +The head-mistresses of the classes had their followers and admirers. It +was for the Mother Superior to command enthusiasm, and to sway ambition, +and to govern the hearts and minds of children with the personal charm and +the intellectual powers that could have ruled a nation from a throne.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Well, she has gone to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon +earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in +her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her +Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> of earthly +love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were +swayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well as +Martyr. And there is One Who knows.</p> + +<p>It was not until recess after the midday dinner that Greta Du Taine could +exhibit her love-letter. She was a Transvaal Dutch girl with old French +blood in her, a vivacious, sparkling Gallic champagne mingling with the +Dopper in her dainty blue veins. Nothing could be prettier than Greta in a +good temper, unless it might be Greta in a rage. She was in a good temper +now, as, tossing back her superb golden hair plait, as thick as a child's +arm, and nearly four feet long, she drew a smeary envelope from the front +of her black alpaca school-dress, and, delicately withdrawing the epistle +enclosed, yielded the envelope for the inspection of the Red Class.</p> + +<p>"What niggly writing!" objected Nellie Bliecker, wrinkling her snub nose +in the disgust that masks the gnawing tooth of envy.</p> + +<p>"And the envelope is all over sticky brown," said another carping critic.</p> + +<p>"That's because <i>he</i> put the letter inside the chocolate-box," explained +Greta, "instead of outside. And the best chocolates—the expensive +ones—always go squashy. Only the cheap ones don't melt—because they have +got stuff like chalk inside. But wait till I show you as much as the +envelope of my next letter—that's all, Julia K. Shaw!"</p> + +<p>Julia K. wilted. Greta proceeded:</p> + +<p>"It's directed 'To My Fair Addored One,' because, of course, he didn't +know my name. I don't object to his putting a d too much in adored; I +rather prefer it. His own name is simple, and rather pretty." She made +haste to say that, because she felt doubtful about it. "Billy Keyse."</p> + +<p>"<i>Billy?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Billy Keyse?"</p> + +<p>"B-i-l-l-y K-e-y-s-e!"</p> + +<p>The name went the round of the Red Class. Nobody liked it.</p> + +<p>"He must, of course, have been christened William. Shakespeare was a +William. The Emperor of Germany,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> stated Greta loftily, "is a William. +Mr. Pitt and Mr. Gladstone were both Williams. Many other great men have +been Williams."</p> + +<p>"But not Billies," said Christine Silber, provoking a giggle from the +greedily-listening White Class.</p> + +<p>Greta scorched them into silence with a look, and continued:</p> + +<p>"He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner in the firm of Gadd +and Saxby, on Market Square, but something very near it." (Do you who read +see W. Keyse carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out the +office when the Kaffir boy forgets?). "He saw me walking in the Stad with +the Centipede," Greta added.</p> + +<p>This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenading +upon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search of +exercise and fresh air.</p> + +<p>"Go on!" said the Red Class in a breath, as the White Class giggled and +nudged each other, and the Blue Class opened eyes and ears.</p> + +<p>"He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by my eyes and my figure +and my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from London +through chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp" (do you +hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). "And if I'll +only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on +the Rand as Marks or Du Taine—isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine +is my father?—and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class English +drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes the +colour of my eyes."</p> + +<p>Greta threw her golden head back and laughed, displaying a double row of +enviable pearls.</p> + +<p>"But I've got to wait for all these things until Billy Keyse strikes +pay-reef. Poor Billy! Hand over those chocolates, you greedy things!"</p> + +<p>Somebody wanted to know how the package had been smuggled into the +Convent. Those lay-Sisters were so sharp....</p> + +<p>"They're perfect needles—Sister Tarsesias particularly, and Sister +Tobias. But there's a new Emigration Jane among the housemaids. You've +seen her—the sallow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe in +curlers, who walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expecting +to hear her quack.... Well, Billy got hold of her. She didn't know my +name, being new, but she recognised me by Billy's description, and +sympathised with him, having a young man herself, who doesn't speak a word +of English, except 'damn' and 'Three of Scotch, please.' I've promised to +translate her letters; he writes them in the Taal. And Billy gave her two +dollars, and I've given her a hat. It's the big red one mother brought +back from Paris—she paid a hundred francs for it at the Maison Cluny—and +Emigration Jane thinks, though it's a bit too quiet for her taste, it'll +do her a fair old treat when she trims it up with a bit more colour and +one or two 'imitation ostridge' tips.... I'd give another hundred francs +for the Maison Cluny <i>modiste</i> to hear." Again the birdlike laugh rang +out. "Now you know everything there is in the letter, girls, except the +bit of poetry at the end, which only my most intimate friends may be +permitted to read. Lynette Mildare!"</p> + +<p>Lynette, bending over a separate table-desk in the light of the north +window of the long deal match-boarded class-room, looked up from her work +of tooling leather, the delicate steel instrument in her hand, a little +gilding-brush between her white teeth, a little fold of concentrated +attention between her slender brown eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Did you want anything?"</p> + +<p>Greta jumped up, leaving the rest of the box of chocolates to dissolve +among the White Class, and came over, threading her way between the long +rows of desk-stalls.</p> + +<p>"Of course I want something."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Lynette, laying down the little tool.</p> + +<p>"What everyone has a right to expect from the person who is her dearest +friend—sympathy," said Greta, jumping up and sitting on the corner of the +desk, and biting the thick end of her long flaxen pigtail.</p> + +<p>"You have it—when there is anything to sympathise about."</p> + +<p>Greta tapped the letter, trying to frown.</p> + +<p>"Do you call this nothing?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You have saved me from doing so."</p> + +<p>"Lynette Mildare, have you a heart inside you?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly; I can feel it beating, and it does its work very well."</p> + +<p>"Am I, then, nothing to you?"</p> + +<p>Lynette smiled, looking up at the piquant, charming face.</p> + +<p>"You are a great deal to me."</p> + +<p>"And I regard you as a bosom-friend. And the duty of a bosom-friend, +besides rushing off at once to tell you if she hears anybody say anything +nasty of you behind your back—a thing which you never do—is to +sympathise with you in all your love-affairs—a thing which you do even +seldomer."</p> + +<p>Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe that rested on the +beeswaxed boards of the class-room, and kicked the leg of the desk with +the heel of the other.</p> + +<p>"Please don't spill the white of egg, or upset the gold-leaf. And as I +shall be pupil-teacher of the youngest class next term, I suppose I ought +to tell you that 'seldomer' isn't in the English dictionary."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me, my own self. I +should be ashamed to owe everything I say to silly Nuttall or stupid old +Webster. You're artful, Lynette Mildare, trying to change the +conversation. I say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs of +the heart—and you never, never tell me about yours."</p> + +<p>The beautiful black-rimmed, golden-tawny eyes laughed as some eyes can, +though there was no quiver of a smile about the purely-modelled, +close-folded lips.</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any," scolded Greta. "You're +too lovely by half. Don't try to scowl me down—you are! I'm pretty enough +to make the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them to, but +you're a great deal more. Also, you have style and grace and breeding. +Anybody could tell that you came of tremendously swell people over away in +England, where the Dukes and Marquesses and Earls began fencing in the +veld somewhere about the eleventh century, to keep common people from +killing the deer, or carving their vulgar names on the castle walls, and +coming between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> wind and their nobility. There's a quotation from your +dear Shakespeare for you! He does come in handy sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't he!" agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush.</p> + +<p>"And you're descended from some of the people he wrote about," pressed +Greta. "Own it!"</p> + +<p>There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips.</p> + +<p>"Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of Kings and noblemen."</p> + +<p>"If you were a clown, you wouldn't be what you are. The very shape of your +head, and ears, and nails, bespeaks a Princess, disguised as a finished +head-pupil, going to take over a class of grubby-fingered little +ones—pah!—next term. And don't we all know that an English Duchess sends +you your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts! Come, you might as well +speak out, when this is my last term, and we have always been such dear +friends, and always will be," coaxed Greta, "because the Duchess lets you +out, you know!"</p> + +<p>She said it so quaintly that Lynette laughed, though there was a pained +contraction between the delicate eyebrows and a vexed and sorrowful shadow +on her face. Greta went on:</p> + +<p>"We have all of us always known that you were—a mystery. Has it got +anything to do with the Duchess?"</p> + +<p>The round, shallow blue eyes were too greedily curious to be pretty at the +moment. Lynette met them with a full, grave, answering denial.</p> + +<p>"No; I am nothing to the Duchess of Broads, or she to me. She is sister to +the Mother-Superior, and she sends to me at Christmas and Easter, and on +birthdays, by the Mother's wish. Doesn't the Mother's second sister, the +Princesse de Dignmont-Veziers, send Katie"—Katie was a little Irish +novice—"presents from Paris twice a year?"</p> + +<p>Greta's pretty eyebrows went up. Her blue greedy eyes became circular with +surprise.</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course—out of charity, because Katie was a foundling, picked up +in the Irish quarter in Cape Town."</p> + +<p>Lynette went on steadily, but, looking out of the window at the great +wistaria that climbed upon the angle of the Convent wing in which were the +nuns' cells.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If Katie was a foundling, I am nothing better."</p> + +<p>"Lynette Mildare, you're never in earnest?"</p> + +<p>The shocked tone and the scandalised disgust on Greta's pretty face stung +and hurt. But Lynette went on:</p> + +<p>"I speak the truth. The Mother and the Sisters, who have always known it, +have kept the secret. In their great considerate kindness, they have never +once let me feel there was any difference between me and the other +girls—not once in all these years. And I can never thank them +enough—never be grateful enough for their great goodness—especially +<i>hers</i>." The steady voice shook a little.</p> + +<p>"We all know that you have always been the Mother's favourite." There was +a little cool inflection of contempt in Greta's high, sweet, birdlike +tones that had been lacking before. "And she is the niece of a great +English Cardinal, and the sister of a Duchess and a Princess, and her +step-brother is an Earl." The inflection added for Greta: "<i>And yet she +turns to the charity child!</i>"</p> + +<p>Lynette said in a low voice:</p> + +<p>"It is because she is perfect in the way of humility. She is beyond all +pride ... greater than all prejudice ... she has been more to me than I +can say, since she and Sister Ignatius and Sister Tobias found me on the +veld seven years ago, when they were trekking up from Natal to join the +Sisters who were already working here."</p> + +<p>Greta's face dimpled, and the bright, cold eyes grew greedy again. There +was a romance, after all.</p> + +<p>"My gracious! How did you get there? Did your people lose you, or had you +run away from home?"</p> + +<p>The delicate wild-rose colour sank out of Lynette's cheeks. Her eyes sank +under those bold, curious, blue ones of Greta's. She said, with a painful +effort:</p> + +<p>"I—had run away from the place that was called my home. I don't remember +ever having lived anywhere else before."</p> + +<p>"My! And ...?"</p> + +<p>"It was a—dreadful place." A little convulsive shudder rippled through +the girl's slight frame. Little points of moisture showed upon the +delicate white temples, where clung the little stray rings and tendrils of +the red-brown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> hair. "I wore worse rags than the children at the native +kraals, and was worse fed. I scrubbed floors, and fetched water, and was +beaten every day. Then"—she drew a deep, quivering breath—"I ran +away—and—and ran until I could run no more, and fell down.... I don't +remember being picked up. I woke up one day here at the Convent; and I was +in bed, and my hair was cut short, and there was ice upon my head. I said, +'Where am I?' and the Mother-Superior stooped down and looked into my +eyes, and said, 'You are at home.' And the Convent has been my home ever +since, and I hope with all my heart it always will be!"</p> + +<p>Greta descended from the desk. She drew her embroidered cambric skirts +primly about her, and said in a shocked voice:</p> + +<p>"And I asked you to visit me—to come and stay with us at our place near +Johannesburg—you who are not even respectable!"</p> + +<p>Lynette grew burning red. One moment her eyes wavered and fell. Then she +lifted them and looked back bravely into the pretty, shallow, blue ones.</p> + +<p>"That is why I have told you—what you know now."</p> + +<p>"Of course," Greta said patronisingly, "if you wish it, I shall not tell +the class."</p> + +<p>Lynette deliberately put away her tools and the calf-bound volume she had +been working on, and shut and locked her desk. Then she rose. Her eyes +swept over the long room, its lower end packed with giggling, whispering, +squabbling, listening, gossiping, or reading girls. She said very clearly:</p> + +<p>"It will be best that you should tell the class. Do it now. The girls can +think it over while they are away, and make up their minds whether they +will speak to me or not when they come back. Make no delay."</p> + +<p>Then she went, moving with the long, smooth, light step and upright, +graceful carriage that she had somehow caught from the Mother-Superior, +out of the room. Curious eyes followed her; sharp ears, that had caught +fragments of the colloquy, wanted the rest; eager tongues plied Greta with +questions, as she stood reticent, knowing, bursting with information +withheld, in the middle of the class-room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> where honours she coveted had +been won and prizes gained by the charity-bred foundling.</p> + +<p>You may be sure that Greta told the story. It lost nothing by her telling, +be equally sure. But all that heard it did not take it in Greta's way. The +stamp of the woman who ruled this place was upon many minds and intellects +and hearts here, and her teaching was to bear fruit in bitter, stormy, +bloodstained years of days that were waiting at the very threshold.</p> + +<p>"I tell you," said Christine Silber, the handsome Jewess, with a fierce +flash of her black Oriental eyes, "foundling or charity girl, or whatever +else you choose to call her, Lynette Mildare is the pride of the school."</p> + +<p>Silber's father was President of the Groenfontein Legislative Council. A +hum of assent followed on her utterance, and an English girl got up upon a +form. She was the niece of a High Commissioner, daughter of a Secretary of +Imperial Government, at Cape Town, who wrote K.C.M.G. after his name.</p> + +<p>"Silber speaks the truth. Not a girl here is a patch on the shoes of +Lynette Mildare. I am going home to London next winter to be presented, +and we shall have a house in Chesterfield Gardens for the season, and if +Lynette will come and visit us, I can tell her that she will be treated as +an honoured guest. As for you, Greta Du Taine, who are always bragging +about your father and his money, tell me which three letters of the +alphabet you would find tattooed upon his conscience—if the strongest +microscope ever made could find his conscience out? Shall <i>I</i> tell you +them?" She held up her finger. "Shall I tell you how he bought those +orange-groves at Rustenburg—and the country seat near Johannesburg—and +the drag with the silver-mounted harness and the team of blood bays?"</p> + +<p>"No, please!" begged Greta, flinching from the torture.</p> + +<p>But the English girl was pitiless. She checked the letters off upon her +fingers:</p> + +<p>"I. D. B."</p> + +<p>A shout went up from the Red Class.</p> + +<p>Greta turned and ran.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + + +<p>The cell was a large, light, airy room on the first-floor of the big +two-storied Convent building that stood in its spacious, tree-shaded, +high-fenced gardens beyond the Hospital at the north end of the town. Tall +stained-wood presses full of papers and account-files covered the wall +upon one side. There also stood a great iron safe, with heavy ledgers +piled upon it. Upon the other three sides of the room were bookshelves, +doubly and trebly laden, with Latin tomes of the Fathers of the Church, +and the works and writings of modern theologians, many of them categorised +upon the "Index Expurgatorius." Rows there were of English, French, +German, Italian, and Spanish classical authors, and many volumes of +recently-published scientific works. It might have been the room of a +business man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. There were +roller maps upon the walls, and two or three engravings, Bougereau's +"Virgin of Consolation," the "Madonna dei Ansidei" of Raffaelle, and a +"Crucifixion" over the chimneypiece, which had three little statuettes in +tinted alabaster—a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of Padua at the +other; in the middle, the Virgin bearing the Child.</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior sat writing at a bare solid deal table of the kitchen +kind, with stained legs to add to its ugliness, and stained black-knobbed +fronts to the drawers in it. Her pen flew over the paper.</p> + +<p>Seated though she was, you could see her to be of noble figure, tall and +finely proportioned. The habit of the nun does not hide everything that +makes for beauty and for grace. The pure outlines of the small, +perfectly-shaped head showed through the thin black veil that fell over +the white starched coif. The small, high-instepped foot could not be +hidden in walking; the make of the thick shoe might not disguise its form. +The delicate whiteness and smooth, supple beauty of her hands, larger than +the hands of ordinary women, their owner being of more heroic build, as of +ampler mind and keener intellect, betrayed her to be a woman not yet old, +though there were some deep lines and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> many fine ones on the attentive +face that bent over the large square sheet of paper.</p> + +<p>It was a curious face; its olive skin bleached to dull whiteness, its +expression stern almost to severity. I have heard it likened to a +Westmoreland hill-landscape. Lonely tarns lie under the black brows of the +precipice; one feels chilly, and a little afraid. But the sun shines out +suddenly from behind concealing mists, and everything is transformed to +loveliness. I can in no other words describe the change wrought in her by +her rare, sudden, illuminating smile. Her voice was the softest and the +clearest I ever heard, a sigh made most audible speech; but in her just +anger, only turned to wrath by the baser faults, the fouler vices, it +could roll in organ-tones of thunder, or ring like a silver trumpet. And +her eye made the lightning for such thunder, and the sword-thrust that +followed the clarion-note of war.</p> + +<p>She could have ruled an empire or a court, this woman who managed the +thronged, buzzing Convent with the lifting of her finger, with the softest +tone of her soft West of Ireland voice, devoid of all trace of the +unbeautiful brogue, cultured, elegant, refined. As I have said, the +lessons that she taught bore great fruit during that red time of war that +was coming, and will bear greater fruit hereafter.</p> + +<p>A little is known to me of the personal history of Lady Bridget-Mary +Bawne—in religion known as Mother Mary of Bethlehem—that may be here set +down. Some twenty-three years previously that devout Irish Catholic +nobleman, the Right Honourable James Dominic Bawne, tenth Earl of +Castleclare, Baron Kilhail, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and D.L. for +West Connemara, not contented with the possession of three very tall, very +handsome, very popular daughters—the Right Honourable Ladies +Bridget-Mary, Alyse, and Alethea Bawne—consulted his favourite spiritual +director, and, as advised, offered his thin white hand and piously +regulated affections to Miss Nancy McIleevy, niece and heiress of McIleevy +of McIleevystown, the eminent County Down brewer, so celebrated for his +old Irish ales and nourishing bottled porter.</p> + +<p>This lady, being sufficiently youthful, of good education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> and manners, +and of like faith with her elderly wooer, undertook, in return for an +ancient name and the title of Countess of Castleclare, to find the widower +in conjugal affection for the rest of his mortified life, and to do her +best to supply him with the grievously-needed heir. There was no wicked +fairy at Lord Castleclare's wedding, distinguished by the black-browed +beauty of the three bridesmaids, his daughters; and two years later saw +the beacons at the entrance of Ballybawne Harbour, on the West Connemara +coast, illuminated by the Castleclare tenants in honour of the arrival of +the desired heir, upon whom before his birth so much wealth had been +expended by Lord Castleclare in pilgrimages, donations, foundations, and +endowments that, some months after it, his lordship conveyed to his three +daughters that, in the interests of the Viscount, to whose swollen gums a +gold-set pebble enclosing a pious relic of an early Christian martyr was +at that moment affording miraculous relief, he, their father, would be +obliged by their providing themselves as soon as possible with husbands of +suitable rank, corresponding religion, and sufficient means to dispense +with the customary marriage portion.</p> + +<p>Lady Alyse saw the justice of her father's views, and married the Duke of +Broads, an English Catholic peer; her younger sister, Alethea, went +obediently to the altar with the aged and enormously wealthy Prince de +Dignmont-Veziers. Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, eldest and handsomest of the +three, pleaded—if a creature so stormy and imperious could be said to +plead—a previous engagement to an Ineligible.</p> + +<p>"We have all heard of Captain Mildare of the Grey Hussars, my dear child," +said Lord Castleclare, going to the door to make sure that those shrieks +that had proceeded from the Viscount's sumptuous suite of apartments, +situated at the top of the staircase rising at the end of the corridor +leading from his father's library, were stilled at the maternal fountain. +Finding that it was so, he ambled back to the centre of the worn Bokhara +rug that had been under the <i>prie-Dieu</i> in the oratory of James II. at +Dublin Castle, and resumed. "We have all heard of Captain Mildare. At the +taking of Ali Musjid—arah!—at Futtehabad, with Gough—arah!—and at +Ahmed Khel, where Stewart cut up the Afghans so tremendously, Mildare +earned great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> distinction as well as the Victoria Cross, which I am +delighted to see, in glancing through the <i>Army and Navy Gazette</i>, Her +Majesty has been pleased to confer upon him. As a gentleman and a soldier +he presents all that is desirable; as a member of an old Catholic family, +he certainly commands my suffrages. But as the husband of my eldest +daughter I cannot look upon a younger son with—arah!—toleration. +Honourable reputation is much, bravery is much, but my son-in-law must +possess—arah!—other—other qualifications." The old gentleman stuttered +pitiably.</p> + +<p>"<i>One</i> other qualification, you mean, father, if that term can be given to +the possession of a certain amount of money," said Lady Bridget-Mary, +standing very straight and looking very proudly at her father. "Will you +object to telling me plainly for how much you would be content to sell +your stock, with goodwill?"</p> + +<p>Lord Castleclare was a thin, courtly old gentleman, who had conquered, he +humbly trusted, all his passions, except the passion for early Catholic +Theological Fathers and the passion for Spanish snuff. But he was stung by +the irony. He spilt quite a quantity of choice mixture over the long, +ivory-yellow nail of his lean, delicate thumb as he looked consciously +aside from the great scornful grey eyes that judged and questioned and +condemned him as a mercenary old gentleman. And he caught himself wishing +that this fine fiery creature had been born a boy. He looked back again at +his eldest daughter. Her white arms were folded upon her bosom, her +pearl-coloured silk evening gown was swept aside from the fire, to whose +warmth she held an arched and exquisite foot. Her noble head, with its +rich coronet of silken black coils, was bent; her broad brows had ceased +to be stormy. With a half-dreamy smile upon her beautiful firm mouth, she +was looking at a green flashing ring she wore on the third finger of her +left hand. And the sight of her so sent a sudden pang of remembrance +leaping through the old man's heart. He forgot his spoiled pinch of snuff, +and stepped over to her, and took the hand, and looked at the emerald ring +with her in silence.</p> + +<p>"My dear daughter," he said, more simply and more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> sweetly than Lady +Bridget-Mary had ever heard him speak before, "I think you love this brave +gentleman sincerely?"</p> + +<p>His daughter's large, beautifully-shaped hand closed strongly over the old +ivory fingers. The great brilliant dark grey eyes looked at him through a +sudden mist of tears, though she lifted her head and held it high. She +said in a low, clear voice:</p> + +<p>"Father, you remember how my mother loved you? And Richard is as dear to +me as you were to her. I want words when it comes to speaking of so great +a thing as the love I feel for him. But it is my life.... I seem to +breathe with his breath, and think his thoughts, and speak with his voice, +since we found out our secret, and we are each other's for Time and for +Eternity." Then she added, with a lovely smile that had a touch of humour +in it: "And he will be quite content to take me with only my share of +mother's money."</p> + +<p>"Tschah!" said the old father. "Nonsense! Of course, St. Barre will be +delighted to provide for you. Excuse me ... I must go."</p> + +<p>St. Barre, in the Castleclare nursery, had set up another squeal.</p> + +<p>Thenceforwards the course of true love might have been expected to run +smoothly for Lady Bridget-Mary and her gallant lover. But she had +reckoned, not without her host, but without her Grey Hussar. In love there +is always one who loves the more, and Lady Bridget-Mary, that fine, +enthusiastic, tempestuous creature, was far from realising that she was +less to her Richard than he was to her. The reason was not farther to seek +than a few doors off in London, when the Ladies Bawne occupied their +sombre old corner-house in Grosvenor Square. It was Lady Bridget-Mary's +dearest Lucy and bosom-friend, who had married that handsome, +grey-moustached martinet, Richard's Colonel. In Lady Lucy Hawting's +drawing-room Lord Castleclare's elder daughter had met Captain Mildare, +the hero of Futtehabad and Ahmed Khel. The Colonel's wife was a pretty, +delicate, graceful creature, some three years older than her black-browed +handsome friend, and much more learned, as, of course, befitted a married<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +woman, in the ways of the world. And Lady Lucy saw the budding of young +passion in the heart of her junior ... and it occurred to her that it +would furnish a very excellent excuse for the constant presence of Captain +Mildare, if ...! the sweetest and most limpid women have their turbid +depths, their muddy secrets—and she had confided everything to dearest +Bridget-Mary, except the one thing that mattered!</p> + +<p>Well! We all know for what reason Le Roi Soleil addressed himself to the +wooing of La Vallière. Louis fell genuinely in love with the decoy, not +quite so Richard. But sometimes, when those proud lips meekly gave back +his kisses, and that lofty beauty humbled itself to obey his will, he +almost wished that he had never met the other. A day came when the secret +orchard he had joyed in with that other was threaded with a golden clue, +and the hidden bower unveiled to the cold-eyed staring day.</p> + +<p>Captain Mildare and Lady Lucy Hawting went away together, and from Paris +Richard wrote and broke to the girl who loved him, and had been his +betrothed wife, the common, vulgar, horrible little truth. Bridget-Mary +had been deceived by both of them from the very beginning. Estimate the +numbing, overwhelming weight of that blow, delivered by a hand so +worshipped, upon so proud a heart. Those who saw her, and should have +honoured her great grief with decent reticence, say that she was mad for a +while; that she grovelled on the earth in her abandonment, calling upon +God and man to be merciful and kill her. Pass over this. I cannot bear to +think that the mere love of a Richard Mildare should bring that lofty head +so low.</p> + +<p>While the scandal lived in the mouths of Society, Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne +remained unseen. She was pitied—oh, burning, intolerable shame! She was +commiserated as a catspaw, and sneered at as a dupe. Her sisters and her +stepmother, her father and her seven aunts, her relatives, innumerable as +stars in the Milky Way, found infinite relish in the comfortable +conviction that every one of them had said from the very outset that +Bridget-Mary would regret the step she had taken in engaging herself to +that Captain Mildare. Sharp claws of steel were added to her scourge of +humiliation by a thousand petty liberties taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> with this, her great, +sacred sorrow, as by letters of sympathy from friends, who wrote as if she +had suffered the loss of a pet hunter, or a prize Persian cat.</p> + +<p>A suitor ventured to propose for that white rejected hand, addressing +himself with stammering diffidence to Lord Castleclare. A young man, the +son of an industrious father who had consolidated the sweat of his brow +into three millions and a Peerage, hideously conscious of the raw newness +of his title, painfully burdened with the bosom-weight of a genuine, if +incoherent love, he seemed to Lady Bridget-Mary's family tolerable, almost +desirable, nearly quite the thing....</p> + +<p>"He has boiled jam into sweetness for the whole civilised world," said the +most influential and awful of Lord Castleclare's seven sisters, a +Dowager-Duchess who was Lady-in-Waiting, and exhaled the choicest essence +of the Middle Victorian era. She still adhered to the mushroom-shaped +straw hats of her youth, trimmed with black velvet rosettes, in the centre +of each of which reposed a cut jet button. She went always voluminously +clad in black or shot-silk gowns, their skirts so swelled out by a +multiplicity of starched cambric petticoats, adorned with tambour-work, +that she was credited with the existence of a crinoline. She had, in +marrying her now defunct Scots Duke, embraced Presbyterianism, and though +her brother believed her, as far as the next world was concerned, to be +lost beyond redemption, he entertained for her judgment in the matters of +this planet a great esteem.</p> + +<p>"He has boiled jam enough to spread over the surface of the civilised +globe, and now proposes to hive its concentrated extract for the benefit +of our dearest girl, in the shape of a settlement that a Princess of the +Blood might envy. I call the whole thing pretty," pronounced the Dowager, +"almost romantic, or it might be made to sound so if a person of superior +intelligence and tact would undertake to plead for the young man. His +terrible title has quite escaped me. Lord Plumbanks? Thank you! It might +have been Strawberrybeds, and that would have increased our difficulty. No +time should be lost. Therefore, as you, dear Castleclare, with your wife +and the boy, who, I am gratified to hear, has cut another, are going to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +Rome for Holy Week, perhaps you would wish me in your absence to break the +ice with Bridget-Mary?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Lord Castleclare's long, solemn face and arched, lugubrious eyebrows bore +no little resemblance to the well-known portrait of the conscientious but +unlucky Stuart in whose service his ancestor had shed blood and money, +receiving in lieu of both, a great many Royal promises, the Eastern carpet +that had belonged to the monarch's Irish oratory, and the fine sard +intaglio, brilliant-set, and representing a Calvary, that loyal servant's +descendant wore upon his thin ivory middle finger. He twiddled the ring +nervously as he said:</p> + +<p>"She has gone into Lenten Retreat at a Convent in Kensington. I—arah!—I +do not think it would be advisable to disturb salutary and seasonable +meditations with—arah!—worldly matters at this present moment."</p> + +<p>"Fiddle-faddle!" said the Dowager-Duchess sharply.</p> + +<p>Lord Castleclare lifted his melancholy arched eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"'Fiddle-faddle,' my dear Constantia?"</p> + +<p>"You have the expression!" said she. "Young women of Bridget-Mary's age +and temperament will think of marriage in convents as much as outside +them. Further, I dread delay, entertaining as I do the very certain +conviction that this weak-minded man who has thrown your daughter over +will be back, begging Bridget-Mary to forgive him and reinstate him in the +possession of her affections before another two months are over our heads. +That little cat-eyed, squirrel-haired woman he has run away with, and +against whom I have warned our poor dear girl times out of number"—she +really believed this—"is the sort of pussy, purring creature to make a +man feel her claws, once she has got him. Therefore, although my family +may not thank me for it, I shall continue to repeat, 'No time is to be +lost!' Still, in deference to your religious prejudices, and although I +never heard that the Catholic Church prohibited jam as an article of +Lenten diet, we will defer from offering Bridget-Mary the pot until +Easter."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But Easter brought the news that Lady Bridget-Mary had decided upon taking +the veil, and begged her father<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> not to oppose her wishes. The +Dowager-Duchess rushed to the Kensington Convent.... All the little +straw-mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like chaff +before the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as she bore down upon the +most disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought the +grey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, +demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacal +decision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited that this +tall, pale, quiet woman in the plain, close-fitting, black woollen gown +could be Bridget-Mary at all. Realising that it could be nobody else, she +began to cry quite hysterically, subsiding upon a Berlin woolwork covered +sofa, while her niece rang the bell for that customary Convent +restorative, a teaspoonful of essence of orange-flower in a glass of +water, and returning to the side of her agitated relative, took her hand, +encased in a tight one-button puce glove, saying:</p> + +<p>"Dear Aunt Constantia, what is the use of crying? I have done with it for +good."</p> + +<p>"You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully composed, and I always was +sensitive. And, besides, to find you like this when I expected you to beat +your head upon the floor—or was it against the wall, they said?—and pray +to be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, as though +anybody would be wicked enough to do it ..."</p> + +<p>A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's white cheeks.</p> + +<p>"All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have done, and drink a +little of this. The Sisters believe it to be calming to the nerves."</p> + +<p>"To naturally calm nerves, I suppose." The Dowager accepted the tumbler. +"What a nice, thick, old-fashioned glass!" She sipped. "You hear how my +teeth are chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown here in +such a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your father that you have +decided to enter the Novitiate at once."</p> + +<p>"It is true," said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very tall and dark and +straight against the background of the parlour window, that was filled in +with ground-glass, and veiled with snowy curtains of starched +thread-lace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + +<p>"True! When not ten months ago you declared to me that you would not be a +nun for all the world.... You begged me to befriend you in the matter of +Captain Mildare. I undertook, alas! that office...."</p> + +<p>The Dowager-Duchess blew her nose.</p> + +<p>"A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt?"</p> + +<p>"'Dear aunt,' when you are trampling upon my very heart-strings! And let +me tell you, Bridget-Mary, you have always been my favourite niece. '<i>For +all the world,</i>' you said with your own lips, '<i>I would not be a nun!</i>' +Three millions will buy, if not the world, at least a good slice of it.... +Figuratively, I offer them to you in this outstretched hand!" The Dowager +extended a puce kid glove. "The husband who goes with them is a good +creature. I have seen and spoken with him, and the dear Queen regards me +as a judge of men. 'Consie,' she has said, 'you have perception....' What +my Sovereign credits may not my niece believe?"</p> + +<p>Lady Bridget-Mary's black brows were stern over the great joyless eyes +that looked out of their sculptured caves upon the world she had bidden +good-bye to. But the fine lines of humour about the wings of the sensitive +nostrils and the corners of the large finely-modelled mouth quivered a +little.</p> + +<p>"Drink a little more orange-flower water, dear, and never tell me who the +man is. I do not wish to hear. I decline to hear."</p> + +<p>The Dowager-Duchess lost her temper.</p> + +<p>"That is because you know already, and despise money that is made of jam. +Yet coal and beer are swallowed with avidity by young women who have not +forfeited the right to be fastidious. That is the last thing I wished to +say, but you have wrung it from me. Have you no pride? Do you want Society +to say that you have embraced the profession of a Religious, and intend +henceforth to employ your talents in teaching sniffy-nosed schoolgirls +Greek and Algebra and Mathematics, because this Mildare has jilted you? +Again, have you no pride?" She agitated the Britannia-metal teaspoon +furiously in the empty tumbler.</p> + +<p>Lady Bridget-Mary took the tumbler away. Why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> should the humble property +of the Sisters be broken because this kind, fussy woman chose to upbraid?</p> + +<p>"You ask, Have I no pride?" she said. "Why should I have pride when Our +Lord is so humble that He does not disdain to take for His bride the woman +Richard Mildare has rejected?"</p> + +<p>"You are incorrigible, dearest," said the sobbing Dowager-Duchess, as she +kissed her, "and Castleclare must use all his influence with the Holy +Father to induce the Comtesse de Lutetia to give you the veil. All of you +think I am damned, and possibly I may be, but if so I shall be afforded an +opportunity (which will not be mine in this life) of giving Captain +Mildare a piece of my mind!"</p> + +<p>So the Dowager-Duchess melted out of the story, and Lady Bridget-Mary +Bawne became a nun.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + + +<p>This is what the Mother-Superior wrote to her kinswoman, with her mobile, +eloquent lips folded closely together as she thought, and her grave eyes +following the swift journey of the pen as it formed the sentences:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"Now let me speak to you of Lynette Mildare. I have never +thought it necessary to make the slightest disguise of my +great partiality for this, the dearest of all the many +children given me by Our Lord since I resigned my crown of +earthly motherhood to Him."</i></p></div> + +<p>She stopped, remembering what another great lady, also a relative of hers, +had remarked when it was first made public that she intended to enter the +Novitiate:</p> + +<p>"Indeed! It would seem, then, that you are devoid of ambition, my dear, +unlike the other people of your house."</p> + +<p>She had said, paraphrasing a retort previously made:</p> + +<p>"Does it strike you as lack of ambition that one of our family should +prefer Christ before any earthly spouse?"</p> + +<p>What a base utterance that had seemed to her afterwards! How devoid of the +true spirit of the religious, how hateful, petty, profane! But the great +lady had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> greatly struck by it, and had gone about quoting the words +everywhere. She, who had spoken them, repented them with tears, and set +the memory of them between her and ill-considered, worldly speech, for +ever.</p> + +<p>She wrote on now:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"She has no vocation for the life of a religious. I doubt +her being happy or successful as a teacher here, were I +removed from my post by supreme earthly authority, or by +death, either contingency being the expression of the Will +of God. She has a reserved, sensitive nature, quick to feel, +and eager to hide what she feels, indifferent to praise or +popularity among the many, anxiously desirous to please, +passionately devoted where she gives her love...."</i></p></div> + +<p>The firm mouth quivered, and a mist stole before her eyes. Being human, +she took the handkerchief that lay amongst her papers and wiped the +crowding tears away, and went on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"I could wish, in anticipation of either eventuality named, +that provision might now be made for her. Those who love +me—yourself I know to be among the number—will not, I feel +assured, be indifferent to my wish that she should be placed +beyond the reach of want."</i></p></div> + +<p>She wrote on, knowing that the implied wish would be observed as a +command:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"We have never been able to trace any persons who might +have been her parents—we have never even known her real +name.—Those among whom her childhood was spent called her +by none. As you know, I gave her in Holy Baptism one that +was our dear dead mother's, together with the surname of a +lost friend. She is, and must be always, known as Lynette +Mildare."</i></p></div> + +<p>Her eyes were tearless, and her hand quite steady as she continued:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"You must not be at all alarmed or shaken by this letter. I +am perfectly well in health, be quite assured; I trust I may +be spared to carry on my work here for many long years to +come. But in case it should be otherwise, I write thus:</i></p> + +<p><i>"The country is greatly disturbed, in spite of the +reassuring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> reports that have been disseminated by the Home +Authorities. I do not, and cannot, imagine what the official +view may be in London at this moment, but it is certain that +the Transvaal and Free State are preparing for war. Every +hour the enmity between the Boers and the English deepens in +intensity. It will be to many minds a relief when the storm +bursts. The War Office may think meanly of the Africanised +Dutchman as a fighting force, but the opinion of every loyal +Briton in this country is that he is not a foe to be +despised, and that he will shed the last drop of his own +blood and his children's for the sake of his independence.</i></p> + +<p><i>"Above the petty interests of greedy capitalists looms the +wider question: Shall the Briton or the Dutchman rule in +South Africa? Here in this insignificant frontier town we +wait the sounding of the tocsin. The Orange Free State has +openly allied itself with the Transvaal Government. There +are said to be several commandos in laager on the Border. A +public meeting of citizens of this town has been held, at +which a vote of 'No confidence' in the Dutch Ministers has +been passed, and an appeal for help has been made to the +Government at Cape Town. It is not yet publicly known what +the response has been, if there is any. I think it ominous +that all of our Dutch pupils, save one, should have been +hurriedly sent for by their parents before the ending of the +term. Knowing my responsibility, I am sending all home, +except the few who happen to be resident in this town, and +the school will remain closed, at all events, until the +outlook assumes a less threatening aspect. It is a relief to +many that a Military Commandant has been appointed by the +authorities at Cape Town, and that he arrived here a week +ago. He is reported to be an officer of energy and decision, +and as he has already set the troops under his command to +work at putting the town into a condition of defence, and is +organising the civil male population into a regiment of +armed——"</i></p></div> + +<p>There was a light knock at the door. She responded with the permission to +enter, and a tall, slight girl, with red-brown hair, came in and closed +the door, dropping her little curtsy to the Mother-Superior. She wore the +plain black alpaca uniform of the Convent, with the ribbon of the Headship +of the Red Class, to be resigned when she should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> become a pupil-teacher +at the opening of the next term; and the rare and beautiful smile broke +over the face of the elder woman as the younger came to her side.</p> + +<p>"Are you busy, Reverend Mother? Do you want me to go away?"</p> + +<p>"I shall have finished in another five minutes, and then there will be no +more letters to write, my child. Sit where you choose; take a book, and be +quiet; I shall not keep you waiting long."</p> + +<p>The words were few; the Mother-Superior's manner a little curt in speaking +them. But where Lynette chose to sit was on the cheap drugget that covered +the beeswaxed boards, with her squirrel-coloured hair and soft cheek +pressed against the black serge habit.</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior wrote on, apparently absorbed, and with knitted brows +of attention, but her large, white, beautiful left hand dropped half +unconsciously to the silken hair and the velvet cheek, and stayed there.</p> + +<p>There is a type of woman the lightest touch of whose hand is subtler and +more sweet than the most honeyed kisses of others. And the Mother-Superior +was not liberal of caresses. When Lynette turned her lips to the hand, the +face that bent over the paper remained as stern and as absorbed as ever. +She went on writing, directed, closed, and stamped her letter, and set it +aside under a pebble of white quartz, lined and streaked with the faint +silvery green of gold.</p> + +<p>"Now, my child?"</p> + +<p>The girl said, flushing scarlet:</p> + +<p>"Reverend Mother, I have told the Red Class the truth about me!"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior started; dismay was in her face.</p> + +<p>"Why, child?"</p> + +<p>"I—I mean"—the scarlet flush gave place to paleness—"that I have no +name and no family, and no friends except you, dearest, and the Sisters. +That you found me, and took me in, and have kept me out of charity."</p> + +<p>"Was it necessary to have told—anything whatever?"</p> + +<p>"I think so, Mother, and I am glad now that I have done it. There will be +no need for deception any more."</p> + +<p>"My daughter, there has never been the slightest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> deception of any kind +whatsoever upon your part, or the part of anyone else who knew. No +interests suffered by your keeping your own secret. Who first solicited +your confidence in this matter?"</p> + +<p>"Greta Du Taine."</p> + +<p>"Greta Du Taine." Very cold was the tone of the Mother-Superior. "May I +ask how she received the information she had the bad taste to seek?"</p> + +<p>"Mother—she took it—not quite as I expected."</p> + +<p>"Yet she and you have always been friends, my child."</p> + +<p>Lynette rose up upon her knees. The long arm of the Mother-Superior went +round the slight figure that leaned against her, and in the sudden gesture +was a passion of protecting motherhood.</p> + +<p>"Mother, she does not wish to be my friend any longer. She was quite +horrified to remember that she had invited me to stay with her at the Du +Taine place near Johannesburg. But she said that if I liked she would not +tell the class."</p> + +<p>"I have no fear of the rest of the class. They have honour, and good +feeling, and warm hearts. What was your reply to Greta's obliging +proposition?"</p> + +<p>"I told her that the sooner everybody knew the better; and I went out of +the room, and came to you—as I always do—as I always have done, ever +since——"</p> + +<p>Her voice broke in the first sob.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ah!</i>" cried the voice of the mother-heart she crept to, as the long arms +in the loose black serge sleeves went out and folded her close, "<i>ah, if I +might be always here for you to run to! But God knows best!</i>"</p> + +<p>She said aloud, gently putting the girl away:</p> + +<p>"Well, the ordeal is over, and will not have to be gone through again. And +for the future, bear in mind that every human being has a right to regard +his own business—or hers—as private, and to exclude the curious from +affairs which do not concern them." She reached out quick tender hands, +and framed the wistful, sensitive face in them, and added, in a lower +tone: "For a little told may beget in them the desire to know more. And +always remember this: that the only just claim to your perfect confidence +in all that concerns your past life, and I say <i>all</i> with meaning"—the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +girl's white eyelids fell under her earnest gaze, and the delicate lips +began to quiver—"will rest in the man—the honourable and brave and +worthy gentleman—who I pray may one day be your husband."</p> + +<p>"No!" she cried out sharply as if in terror, and the slight figure was +shaken by a sudden spasm of trembling. "Oh, Mother, no! Never, never!"</p> + +<p>With a gesture of infinite pity and tenderness the Mother drew her close, +and hid the shame-dyed face upon her bosom, and whispered, with her lips +upon the red-brown hair:</p> + +<p>"My lamb, my dearest, my poor, poor child! It shall be never if you +choose, Lynette. But make no rash vows, no determinations that you think +irrevocable. Leave the future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put old +thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away from +you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. And +do not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has +acted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind that shine in +marshy places, a better Light will shine upon her path one day. I know +that you have real affection for her ... though I must own I have always +wondered in what lay the secret of her popularity in the school?"</p> + +<p>"She is so amusing—and so pretty, Mother."</p> + +<p>"She is exquisitely pretty. And beauty is one of the most excellent among +all the gifts of God. Our sense of what is beautiful and the delight we +have in the perception of it must linger with us from those days when +Angels walked visibly on earth, and talked with the children of men. A +lovely soul in a lovely body, nothing can be more excellent, but such a +body does not always cage what St. Columb called 'the bird of beauty.' And +we must not be swayed or led by outward and perishable things, that are +illusions, and deceits, and snares."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior reached out a long arm, and took a solid +leather-bound, red-edged volume from the table, and opened it at a page +marked by a flamingo's feather, whose delicate pink faded at the tip into +rosy-white.</p> + +<p>"I was reading this a little while before you came in. If you were not a +little dunce at Greek, you would be able to construe the classic author +for yourself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I am a dunce, dear, and so I leave you to read him to me," said +Lynette triumphantly.</p> + +<p>"Well, balance this heavy book, and listen."</p> + +<p>She read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"'When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with his +divine hands the human shape:</i></p> + +<p><i>"'An image first he made of red clay from Idâ, tempered +with pure water from the stream of Xanthos, and wine from +the golden kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was +godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of +the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and +warped in the drying. Then Zeus Patêr fashioned another +shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and +warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the +living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the +divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent +from his forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision +of the Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image +received that which was meant for the perfect one.</i></p> + +<p><i>"'And Zeus Patêr, being angered, said: "See what thy malice +has wrought. Behold, a beautiful soul has been set in a body +unbeauteous and through thine act, and god though I be, I +cannot take back the gift that I have given." Then into the +other image of Man the divine maker breathed a soul. But +Zeus being wearied with his labours, and angered by the +craft of Hephaistos, it was less pure than the first. And so +two men came into being.</i></p> + +<p><i>"'And he whose body had been fashioned perfectly and +without flaw by the hands of the divine craftsman, walked +the earth with gracious mien. Fair-eyed was he, with locks +like clustering vine-tendrils, and cheeks rosy as the apples +of Love; but the soul of this man was cunning, and he +rejoiced in evils and cruelties, and deceits and mockeries +were upon his lips.</i></p> + +<p><i>"'And he whose image had warped in the drying was +unbeautiful in body and swart to look upon, as though +blackened by the forge-fires of Hephaistos, but he dealt +uprightly and hated evil, and on his lips there was no +guile, but faithfulness and truth.</i></p> + +<p><i>"'And he who was imperfect in body was yet fairer in the +eyes of Zeus Patêr than his brother; because there dwelt +within him a beauteous soul.'"</i></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And yet, Mother, if your beautiful soul had not been given beautiful +windows to look out at, and a beautiful mouth to kiss me or scold me with, +and beautiful hands to hold, it would have been a beastly shame!"</p> + +<p>Is there a woman living who can resist such sweet daughterly flatteries? +This was very much a woman, and very much a mother, if very much a nun. +She kissed the mouth distilling such dear honey.</p> + +<p>"This, not for the compliment, but because it is seven years to-day since +I found you, lying like some poor little strayed lamb on the veld, under +the burning sun."</p> + +<p>"That was my real birthday, dearest, dearest...."</p> + +<p>The girl pressed closer to her with dumb, vehement affection, as though +she would have grown to the bosom that had been her shield since then.</p> + +<p>"On that day a little later, when I looked down and you looked up with big +eyes that begged for love, I knew that we had found each other. And we +have never lost each other since, I think?"</p> + +<p>She smiled radiantly into the loving eyes.</p> + +<p>"Never, my Mother. But if we did ... if we are ever to be estranged or +parted, it would be better ... oh! it would be better if you had passed by +in the waggon, and left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs had +done the rest."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, and speaking +sternly:</p> + +<p>"Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so. Holy Baptism has been +yours, and Confirmation, and you have shared with His Faithful in the Body +of Christ.... Never let me hear you say that again!"</p> + +<p>"Mother, I promise you, you never shall. But I had a dream last night that +was most vivid and strange and awful. It has haunted me ever since."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior started, for she also had had a strange dream. Of that +vision had been born the written letter that now lay under the quartz +paper-weight—the letter that was to be sent, with others, by the next +English mail that should go out from Gueldersdorp, which said mail, being +intercepted by the Boers, was not for many months to reach its +destination. Supposing it had, this story need<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> never have been written, +or else another would have been written in its place.</p> + +<p>"Dear heart, I do not think that it is good or useful to brood upon such +things, or to relate them. And the Church forbids us to take account of +mere dreams, or in any way be swayed by them."</p> + +<p>"That has always puzzled me. Because, you know ... supposing St. Joseph +had refused to credit a dream?..."</p> + +<p>"There are dreams and dreams, my dear. And the heavenly visions of the +Saints are not to be confounded with our trivial subconscious memories. +Besides, sweets and fruits and pastry consumed in the seniors' dormitory +at night are not only an infringement of school rules, but an insult to +the digestion."</p> + +<p>"Mother, how did you find out?" cried Lynette. There was something very +like a dimple in the bleached olive of the sweet worn cheek, lurking near +the edge of the close coif, and a twinkle of laughter in the deep grey +eyes that you thought were black until you had learned better.</p> + +<p>"Well, though you may not find it easy to believe, I was once a girl at a +boarding-school, and I possibly remember how we usually celebrated a +breaking-up. There is the washing-bell; the pupils' tea-bell will ring +directly; you must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of this +unpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon walk yesterday? +Sister Cleophée and Sister Francis-Clare have not given me a very definite +account."</p> + +<p>Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red.</p> + +<p>"Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation Ground."</p> + +<p>Upon the great brows of the Mother-Superior sat the majesty of coming +tempest. Her white hand clenched, her tone was awfully stern:</p> + +<p>"Who were 'they'?"</p> + +<p>"Some drunken Boers and store-boys—at least, I think they were drunk—and +some Dutch railway-men. They cried shame on the Dutch girls for learning +from vile English idolaters. Then more men came up and joined them. They +threw stones, and threatened to duck Sister Cleophée and the two other +Sisters in the river. And they might have tried to, though we senior girls +got round them—at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> least, some of us did—and said they should try that +on us first——"</p> + +<p>"That was courageous."</p> + +<p>"We"—Lynette laughed a little nervously—"we were awfully frightened, all +the same."</p> + +<p>"My dear, without fear there would have been no courage. Then I am told an +English officer interposed?"</p> + +<p>"He was coming from the direction of the Hospital—a tall thin man in +Service khâki, with a riding-sjambok under his arm. But it would have been +as good as a sword if he had used it on those men. When he lifted it in +speaking to them they huddled together like sheep."</p> + +<p>"You have no idea who he was, of course?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know his name, but I heard one of the Boers say, 'That slim +duyvel with the sjambok is the new Military Commandant.' Another officer +was with him, much younger, taller, and with fair hair. He——"</p> + +<p>"I hope I shall soon have an opportunity of thanking the Commandant +personally. As it is, I shall write. Now go, my dear."</p> + +<p>Lynette took her familiar kiss, and dropped her formal curtsy, and went +with the red sunset touching her squirrel-coloured hair to flame. The +tea-bell rang as she shut the door behind her, and directly afterwards the +gate-bell clanged, sending an iron shout echoing through the whitewashed, +tile-paved passages, as if heralding a visitor who would not be denied. An +Irish novice who was on duty with the Sister attendant on the gate came +shortly afterwards to the room of the Mother-Superior, bringing a card on +a little wooden tray.</p> + +<p>The Mother, the opening sentences of her note of thanks wet upon the sheet +before her, took the card, and knew that the letter need not be sent.</p> + +<p>"This gentleman desired to see me?"</p> + +<p>"He did so, Reverend Mother," whispered the timid Irish girl, who stood in +overwhelming awe of the majestic personality before her. "'Ask the +Mother-Superior will she consent to receive me?' says he. 'If she won't, +say that she must.' Says I: 'Sir, I'd not drame to presume give Herself a +message that bowld, but if you'll please to wait, I'll tell her what +you're after saying.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Quite right, Katie. Now go and tell Sister Tobias to show him into the +parlour. I will be there directly."</p> + +<p>Katie bobbed and vanished. When the Mother-Superior came into the parlour, +the visitor was standing near the fireplace, with his hands behind his +back. One wore a shabby dogskin riding-glove. The other, lean and brown +and knotty, held his riding-cane and the other glove, and a grey "smasher" +hat. He was looking up quietly and intently at a framed oil-painting that +hung above.</p> + +<p>It represented a Syrian desert landscape, pale and ghastly, under the +light of a great white moon, with one lonely Figure standing like a +sentinel against a towering fang of rock. Lurking forms of fierce beasts +of prey were dimly to be distinguished amongst the shadows, and by the +side of the patient, lonely watcher brooded with outspread bat-wings, a +Shadow infinitely more terrible than any of these. It was rather a poor +copy of a modern picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of the +original had made of the copyist an artist for the time. The pure dignity +and lofty faith and patience of the Christ-eyes, haggard with bodily +sleeplessness and spiritual battle, the indomitable resistance breathing +in the lines of the Christ figure, wan and gaunt with physical famine as +with the nobler hunger of the soul, were rendered with fidelity and power.</p> + +<p>The stranger's keen ear caught the Mother's long, swift step, and the +sweep of her woollen draperies over the shiny beeswaxed floor. He wheeled +sharply, brought his heels together, and bowed. She returned his +salutation with her inimitable dignity and grace. With his eyes on the +pure, still calmness of the face framed in the white close coif, the +Colonel commented mentally:</p> + +<p>"What a noble-looking woman!"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall, +spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with its +alert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouth +unconcealed by the short-clipped moustache:</p> + +<p>"This is a brave man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + + +<p>The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two +recognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, she +had thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timely +interference of the previous day.</p> + +<p>"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is official +in character," he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladies +in charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in those +parts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely even +there. It would be wise of you under existing circumstances, which I shall +explain as fully and as briefly as I may, to send your pupils without +delay to their homes."</p> + +<p>"All that have not already left," she assured him, "with the exception of +those whose parents reside in the town, or who have no living relatives, +and therefore do not leave us, go North and South by early trains +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Ma'am," he said, "I am heartily glad to hear it." He added, as she +invited him to be seated: "Thank you, but I have been in the saddle since +five this morning, and if you have no objection I should prefer to stand. +And for another reason, I explain things better on my legs. But you will +allow me to find you a seat, if—any of these may be moved?" His glance, +with some perturbation in it, reviewed the stiff ranks of chairs severely +marshalled in Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board.</p> + +<p>"They are not fixtures," she said, with quiet amusement at his evident +relief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the room +offered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, with +one hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of a +spurred riding-boot on the plain brick kerb.</p> + +<p>"I may as well say ..."—he ran a finger round the inside of the collar +that showed above the khâki jacket—"that, though I have often had the +pleasure, and I will add, the great advantage, of meeting ladies of—of +your religious profession before, this is the first time that I ever was +inside a Convent."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Or a boarding-school?" she asked, and her rare, sudden smile irradiated +her. His hand dropped from his collar. He looked at her with a sudden +warmth of admiration there was no mistaking. But her beauty went as +suddenly as it had come, and her arched, black brows frowned slightly as +she said, in tones that were very cold and very clear, and rather +ironical:</p> + +<p>"Sir, you are good enough to waste valuable time in trying to break, with +due consideration for the nerves of a large household of unprotected +women, the news we have expected daily for months. You have come here to +announce to us the bursting of the cloud of War. Is it not so?"</p> + +<p>He was taken aback, but hid it like a diplomat.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, it is so. The public notice was posted in the town this morning. +Forces of Boers are massed on the West Natal and East Baraland borders, +waiting until the British fire a shot. Their secret orders are to wait +that signal, but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipate +these.... And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself, +having been despatched by the British Government on special service to +report to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North—it is an +open secret now—I have been sent down here to put the town into a +condition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessary +and inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditions +is—that the women and children should be got out of it."</p> + +<p>The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did not +invade the pale olive of her cheeks.</p> + +<p>He added:</p> + +<p>"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I am +not naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather the +contrary. Quite the contrary."</p> + +<p>She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom she +had danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. That +boy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could not +keep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant. +But she went under directly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> and left nothing but a spark of laughter in +the beautiful grave eyes.</p> + +<p>"I understand," she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certain +welcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helpless +incubus."</p> + +<p>"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses a +capacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male, +without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, she +eats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keep +alive the combatant members of the community."</p> + +<p>"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most +rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break."</p> + +<p>His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache. +Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the +Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted +it.</p> + +<p>"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2 +platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Government +at the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wish +to follow the example of those who left to-day, and go down to Cape Town. +Those who prefer to go North are advised to leave for Malamye Siding or +Johnstown, places at a certain distance from the Transvaal Border, where +they will be almost certain to find safety. Those who insist upon +remaining in the town I cannot, of course, remove by force. I will make +all possible arrangements to laager them safely, but this will entail +heavy extra labour upon the forces at my command, and inevitable +discomfort—possibly severe suffering and privation—upon themselves. To +you, madam, I appeal to set a high example. Your Community numbers, unless +I am incorrectly informed, twelve religious. Consent to take the step I +urge upon you, retreat with your nuns to Cape Town while the opportunity +is yours."</p> + +<p>He folded his arms, having spoken this curtly and crisply. The +Mother-Superior rose up out of her chair. It seemed to him as though she +would never have done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> rising, but at last she stood before him, very +straight and awfully tall, with her great stern eyes an inch above the +level of his own, and her white hands folded in her black serge sleeves.</p> + +<p>"Sir," she said, "we are here under the episcopal jurisdiction of the +Catholic Bishop of the Diocese. We have received no order from His +Eminence to quit our post—and until we receive it, give me leave to tell +you, with all respect for your high official authority, that we shall +remain in Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>Their looks crossed like swords. He grew crimson over the white +unsunburned line upon his forehead, and his moustache straightened like a +bar of rusty-red iron across his thin, tanned face. But he respected moral +power and determination when he encountered them, and this salient woman +provoked his respect.</p> + +<p>"Let us keep cool——" he began.</p> + +<p>"I assure you that I have never been otherwise," she said, "since the +beginning of this interview."</p> + +<p>"Ma'am," he said, "you state the fact. Let me keep cool, and point out to +you a few of the—peculiarities in which the present situation +unfortunately abounds."</p> + +<p>He laid down, with a look that asked permission, his hat and cane and the +odd glove upon the round, shining walnut-table that stood, adorned with +mild little religious works, in the geometrical centre of the Convent +parlour, and checked the various points off upon the fingers of the gloved +hand with the lean, brown, bare one.</p> + +<p>"I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." He had quite +forgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking sex. "I have +begun immediately upon my arrival here to prepare for them. The nucleus of +a sand-bag fort-system has been formed already, mines are being laid down +far in the front, and every male of the population who has a pair of +capable hands has had a rifle put into them."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and approved the male type of energy and action. "If I +had been a man," she thought, "I should have wished to be one like this." +But she bent her head silently, and he went on.</p> + +<p>"We have an armoured train in the railway-yard,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> with a Maxim and a +Hotchkiss. We have a Nordenfeldt, a couple of Maxims more, four +seven-pounder guns of almost prehistoric date, slow of fire, uncertain as +regards the elevating-gear, and, I tell you plainly, as dangerous, some of +'em, to be behind as to be in front of! One or two more we've got that +were grey-headed in the seventies. By the Lord! I wish one or two +Whitehall heads I know were mopping 'em out this minute. Ahem! Ahem!"</p> + +<p>He coughed, and grew red under his sun-tan. Her eyes were elsewhere.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, you must try to recollect that the Boer forces are armed with the +newest Krupps and other guns, and that it is more than possible they may +attempt to shell the town. In that case artillery of tremendous range, and +a flight almost equal to that of sound itself—I won't be too technical, I +assure you!—will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for the +scrap-heap, or for gate ornaments. Understand, I tell you what is common +knowledge among our friends—common jest among our enemies. And another +thing I will tell you, ma'am. Those enemies shall never enter +Gueldersdorp!"</p> + +<p>She was radiant now, with that smile upon her lips, and that glow in the +great eyes that met his with such frank approval. Confound it, what +business had a nun to be anything like so beautiful? Would she pale, would +she tremble, when he told her the last truth of all?</p> + +<p>"Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, happens to be, if not +the biggest, at least the most conspicuously situated building in the +place, lying as it does at a distance of four hundred yards from the town, +on the north-east side. Like the Hospital, of course, it will be under the +protection of the Red-Cross Flag. But the Boer is not chivalrous. He does +not object to killing women or sick people, nor does he observe with any +standing scrupulousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows up +nicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away at, and the Red-Cross +Flag has often helped him to get a satisfactory range. If they bombard us, +as I have reason to believe they will, you'll have iron and lead in tons +poured through these walls."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> + +<p>She said:</p> + +<p>"When they fall about our ears, Colonel, it will be time to leave them!"</p> + +<p>He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this way."</p> + +<p>"It is the only way in which to take them," she said. "There should be no +panic in the hearts of those who wait on the Divine Will. Moreover, I +should wish you to understand in case of siege, and an extra demand upon +the staffs of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all—or nearly +all—certificated nurses, and would willingly place our services at your +disposal. Let me hope that you will call upon us without hesitation if the +necessity should arise."</p> + +<p>He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with diffidence if he +might be permitted to see the Convent chapel. She consented willingly, and +passed on before, tall and stately, and moving with long, light, even +steps, her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled passages. The +chapel was at the end of a long whitewashed corridor upon the airy floor +above. His keen glance took in every feature of the simple, spotless +little sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly to the +upper end of the aisle between the rows of rush-seated chairs, and knelt +for an instant in veneration of the Divine Presence hidden in the +Tabernacle.</p> + +<p>"Unfortunately situated!" he muttered, standing stiffly by the west door. +Then he glanced right and left, a thumb and finger in the breast-pocket of +his jacket, feeling for a worn little pigskin purse. As he passed out +before her at the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in the +holy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she closed the +chapel door, she saw that he held out to her a five-pound note.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but ..."</p> + +<p>"There is no box for alms," she said, pausing outside the shut door, while +the lay-Sister waited at the passage end, "as this is only a private +chapel."</p> + +<p>"I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a Protestant. But in the +behalf of a dear friend of mine, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> British officer, of your own faith, +who I have reason to believe died without benefit of his clergy, perhaps +with this you would arrange that a service should be held in memory of the +dead?"</p> + +<p>"I understand," said the Mother-Superior. "You suggest that Holy Mass +should be offered for the repose of your friend's soul? Well, I will +convey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it."</p> + +<p>"I do desire it—or, rather, poor Mildare would."</p> + +<p>An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, through +the foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her +eyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her +sinking forces. Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it for +support against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But his +eyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, +worst blow.</p> + +<p>"I said, ma'am, that my dead friend ... the name is Richard Mildare, +Captain, late of the Grey Hussars.... You are ill, ma'am. I have been +inconsiderate, and over-tired you." He had become aware that great dark +circles had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her lips were +colourless. She said, with a valiant effort:</p> + +<p>"I assure you, with thanks, that you have been most considerate, and that +I am perfectly well. Are you at liberty to tell me, sir, the date of +Captain Mildare's death? For I know one who was also his friend, and +would"—a spasm passed over her face—"take an interest in hearing the +particulars."</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, you shall know what I know myself. About twenty years ago Captain +Mildare, owing to certain unhappy circumstances, social, and not pecuniary +ones, sent in his papers, sold his Commission, and left England."</p> + +<p>She waited.</p> + +<p>"I heard of him in Paris. Then, later, I heard from him. He was with her +here in South Africa. She was a woman for whom he had given up everything. +They travelled continually, never resting long anywhere, he, and she, +and—their child. She died on the trek and he buried her."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p> + +<p>The voice was curiously toneless.</p> + +<p>"Where he buried her has only recently come to my knowledge. It was at a +kind of veld tavern in the Orange Free State, a shanty in the +grass-country between Driepoort and Kroonfontein, where travellers can get +a bad lodging, and bad liquor, and worse company. 'Trekkers Plaats' they +call the place now. But when my friend was there it was known as the 'Free +State Hotel.'"</p> + +<p>Her lips shut as if to keep out bitter, drowning waters; her face was +white as wax within the starched blue-white of the nun's coif; his slow +sentences fell one by one upon her naked heart, and ate their way in like +vitriol. Quite well, too well, she knew what was coming.</p> + +<p>"He dug her grave with his own hands. He meant to have a clergyman read +the Burial Service over it, but before that could be arranged for he also +died—of fever, I gather, though nothing is very clear, except that the +two graves are there. I have seen them, and have also ascertained that +whatever property he left was appropriated by the scoundrel who kept the +hotel, and afterwards sold it, and cleared out of South Africa; and that +the child is not to be found. God knows what has become of her! The man +who robbed her father may have murdered or sold her—or taken her to +England. A man bearing his name was mixed up in a notorious case tried at +the Central Criminal Court five years ago. And the case, which ruined a +well-known West End surgeon, involved the death of a young woman. I trust +the victim may not have been the unhappy girl herself. My solicitors in +London have been instructed to make inquiries towards the removal of that +doubt...."</p> + +<p>If those keen eyes of his had not been averted, he must have seen the +strong shuddering that convulsed the woman's frame, and the spasm of agony +that wrung the lips she pressed together, and the glistening damps of +anguish that broke out upon the broad white forehead. To save her life she +could not have said to him, "She whom you seek is here!" But a voice +wailed in her heart, more piercingly than Rachel's, and it cried: +"Richard's daughter! She is Richard's daughter! The homeless thing, the +blighted child I found upon the veld, and nursed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> back to life and +happiness and forgetfulness of a hideous past; whom I took into my empty +heart, and taught to call me Mother.... She is the fruit of my own +betrayal! the offspring of the friend who deceived and the man who +deserted me!"</p> + +<p>The visitor was going on, his grave gaze still turned aside. "Of course, +the age of the unhappy girl whose death brought about the trial I speak +of—everything depends upon that. Mildare's daughter was a child of three +years old when she lost father and mother. If alive to-day she would be +nineteen years of age. I wish it had been my great good fortune to trace +and find her. She should have had the opportunity of growing up to be a +noble woman. In this place, if it might have been, and with an example +like yours before her eyes ... ma'am, good-afternoon."</p> + +<p>He bowed to her, and went away with short, quick, even steps, following +the lay-Sister who was to take him to the gate.</p> + +<p>She tottered into the chapel, and sank down before the altar, and strove +to pray. Her mind was an eddying blackness shot with the livid glare of +electric fires. Her faith rocked like a palm in the tempest; her soul was +tossed across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone. +Being so great, she suffered greatly; being so strong, she had strong +passions to wrestle with and to subdue. Awhile, like that other Mary, who, +unlike her, was a fleshly sinner, she strove, rent as it seemed to her, by +seven devils. And then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-pierced +Feet, and found there at last the healing gift of tears.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + + +<p>Emigration Jane, the new under-housemaid on trial at the Convent, had a +gathering on the top joint of the first finger of the hand that burned to +wear Walt Slabberts' betrothal-ring, and the abscess being ripe for the +lancet, she had an extra afternoon in the week to get it attended to. She +found Walt waiting at the street-corner under the lamp-post, and her heart +bounded, for by their punctuality at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> the trysting-place you know whether +they are serious in their intentions towards you, or merely carrying on, +and her other young men had invariably kept her waiting. This new one was +class, and no mistake.</p> + +<p>"Watto, Walt!" she hailed joyously.</p> + +<p>Her Walt uttered a guttural greeting in the Taal, and displayed +uncared-for and moss-grown teeth in the smile that Emigration Jane found +strangely fascinating. To the eye that did not survey Walt through the +rose-coloured glasses of affection he appeared merely as a +high-shouldered, slab-sided young Boer, whose cheap store-clothes bagged +where they did not crease, and whose boots curled upwards at the toes with +mediæval effect. His cravat, of a lively green, patterned with yellow +rockets, warred with his tallowy complexion; his drab-coloured hair hung +in clumps; he was growing a beard that sprouted in reddish tufts from the +tough hide of his jaws, leaving bare patches between, like the karroo. The +Slabberts was an assistant-clerk at the Gueldersdorp Railway-Station +Parcels-Office, and his widowed mother, the Tante Slabberts, took in +washing from Uitlanders, who are mad enough to change their underwear with +frequency, and did the cleaning at the Gerevormed Kerk at Rustenberg, a +duty which involves the emptying of spittoons. Her boy was her joy and +pride.</p> + +<p>Young Walt, the true Boer's son that he was, did not entertain the idea of +marrying Emigration Jane. The child of the Amalekite might never be +brought home as bride to the Slabberts roof. But all the same, her style, +which was that of the Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, London, N.W., and +her manners, which were easy, and her taste in dress, which was dazzling, +attracted him. As regards their spoken intercourse, it had been hampered +by the Slabbertian habit of pretending only a limited acquaintance with +the barbarous dialect of England. But a young man who conversed chiefly by +grunts, nudges, and signs was infinitely more welcome than no young man at +all, and Emigration Jane knew that the language of love is universal. She +had sent him a lovely letter in the Taal making this appointment, causing +his pachydermatous hide to know the needle-prick of curiosity. For only +last Sabbath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> she had spoken nothing but the English, and a young woman +capable of mastering Boer Dutch in a week might be made useful in a +variety of ways—some of them tortuous, all of them secret, as the +Slabbertian ways were wont to be.</p> + +<p>He advanced to her, without the needless ceremony of touching his hat, +eagerly asking how she had acquired her new accomplishment?</p> + +<p>But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come from the Maison +Cluny, and cost a hundred francs, and had been smartened up with a bunch +of pink and yellow artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of a +cheerful blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal had written +for her. The bilingual young woman who was to be of such use to Walt had +only existed in his dreams. And yet—the disappointing creature was +exceeding fair.</p> + +<p>"Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy!" giggled Emigration Jane, +deliciously conscious that those rather muddy orbs were glued on her +admiringly.</p> + +<p>The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and rolled over the +horsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks, +usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers," frizzled wonderfully +about her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, with +three bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslin +stamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockings +pink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown grey +in the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson +"sunshyde," with green and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of the +stick.</p> + +<p>The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking a squeal from the +enchantress.</p> + +<p>"Mind me bad finger! Lumme! you did give us a squeeze an' a' arf."</p> + +<p>"If I shall to hurt you I been sorry, Miss!" apologized the Slabbert.</p> + +<p>"All righto, Dutchy!" smiled Emigration Jane. "Don't tear your features." +She bestowed a glance of almost vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl in +turkey-red cotton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> twill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woolly +hair. At another ebony female who advanced along the sidewalk pushing a +white baby in a perambulator she tossed her head. "Funny," she observed, +"when I was 'ome I used to swaller all the tales what parsons kep' +pitchin' about that black lot 'aving souls like me an' you. When I got out +'ere, an' took my fust place at Cape Town, an' 'eard the Missis and the +Master continual sayin', 'Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen's +work; leave it to the Caffy,' or 'Call the 'Ottintot gal,' I felt quite +'urt for 'em. Upon me natural, I did! But when I knoo these blackies a bit +better, I didn't make no more bones. Monkeys, they are, rigged up in brown +'olland an' red braid, wot 'ave immytated 'uman beings till they've come +to talk langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our meanings. 'Ow +do you like me dress, Walty dear? An' me 'at? That chap what passed with +the red mustash said to 'is friend as I looked a bit of fair all right, +and no mistake. But I'd rather 'ear you say so nor 'im if you 'ad enough +English to do it with. Wot do I care about the perisher along of you?"</p> + +<p>It was hard work to talk for two, and keep the ball of courtship rolling +after the approved fashion of Kentish Town, when the slouching young Boer +would only grunt in reply, or twinkle at her out of his piggish eyes. But +Emigration Jane had come out to South Africa, hearing that places at five +shillings a day were offered you by employers, literally upon their knees, +and that husbands were thick as orange-peel and programmes on the +pit-floor of the Britanniar Theayter, 'Oxton, or the Camden Varieties on +the morning after a Bank Holiday. She had left her first situation at Cape +Town, being a girl of spirit, because her mistress had neglected to +introduce her to eligible gentlemen acquaintances, as the pleasant-spoken +agent at the Emigrants' Information Office in Cheapside, the young +gentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, waxed moustache, and diamond +tie-pin had made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of his +client, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an early +opportunity of doing. The reality had not corresponded with the glowing +picture. The employer had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not +appeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with a +trooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American bar-tender. But not +one of these had breathed of indissoluble union, though each had wanted to +borrow her savings. And Emigration Jane had "bin 'ad" in that way before, +and gone with her bleeding heart and depleted Post Office Savings-book +before the fat, sallow magistrate at the Regent's Road County Court, and +winced and smarted under his brutal waggeries, only to learn that the +appropriator of her womanly affections and her fifteen sovereigns had +already three wives.</p> + +<p>The brute, the 'artless beast! Emigration Jane wondered at herself, she +did, as 'ad bin such a reg'ler soft as to be took in by one to whom she +never referred in speech except as "That There Green." That she softened +to him in her weaker moments, in spite of his remembered appetite for +savings and his regrettable multiplicity of wives, gave her the fair hump. +That something in the expression of this new one's muddy eyes recalled the +loving leer of "That There Green," she admitted to herself. Womanly +anxiety throbbed in the bosom, not too coyly hidden by the pneumonia +blouse, as the couple passed the gilded portals of a public bar, and the +Slabberts' elbow was thrust painfully into her side, as its owner said +heavily:</p> + +<p>"Have you thirst?"</p> + +<p>She coyly owned to aridity, and they entered the saloon, kept by a +Dutchman who spoke English. Two ginger-beers with a stick of Hollands were +supplied, and the stick of Slabberts was as the rod of Moses to the other +stick for strength and power. But as Emigration Jane daintily sipped the +cooling beverage, giggling at the soapy bubbles that snapped at her nose, +the restless worm of anxiety kept on gnawing under the flowery "blowse." +Too well did she know the ways of young men who hospitably ask you if +you're thirsty, and 'ave you in, whether or no, and order drinks as +liberal as lords, and then discover that they're short of the bob, and +borrow from you in a joking way.... Her heart bounded as the Slabberts put +his hand in his pocket, saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Wat kost het?"</p> + +<p>The Dutch bar-keeper, who seemed to know Slabberts, answered in English, +looking at Emigration Jane:</p> + +<p>"Half a dollar."</p> + +<p>Half a dollar is South African for eighteenpence. Slabberts rattled +something metallic in his trousers-pocket, and said something rapidly in +the Taal. The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and said to +Emigration Jane:</p> + +<p>"Your young man has not got the money."</p> + +<p>They were all, all alike. A tear rose to her eye. She bravely dried it +with a finger of a white cotton glove, and produced her purse, an +imitation crocodile-leather and sham-silver affair, bought in Kentish +Town, where you may walk through odorous groves of dried haddocks that are +really whiting, and Yarmouth bloaters that never were at Yarmouth, and +purchase whole Rambler roses, the latest Paris style, for threepence, and +try on feather-boas at two-and-eleven-three, plucked from the defunct +carcase of the domestic fowl. She paid for the drinks with a florin, and +it was quite like old times when Slabberts calmly pocketed the sixpence of +change. The bar-keeper leaned over to her again, and said, surrounding her +with a confidential atmosphere of tobacco and schnaps:</p> + +<p>"He is a good man, that young man of yours, and gets much money. He means +to give you a nice present by-and-by."</p> + +<p>Her grateful heart overflowed to this friendly patronage. She showed the +bar-keeper her gathered finger, and said it did 'urt a treat. She expected +it would 'urt worse before Dr. de Boursy-Williams—"'adn't 'e got a toff's +name?"—'ad done with it.</p> + +<p>"You go to that Engelsch doktor on Harris Street, eh?" said the +bar-keeper, spitting dexterously.</p> + +<p>"Sister Tobias—that's the nun wot 'ousekeeps at the Convent—give me a +order to see 'im, to 'ave me finger larnced," explained Emigration Jane. +"Ain't 'e all right?"</p> + +<p>"Right enough," said the bar-keeper, winking at the Slabberts, and adding +something in the Taal, that provoked chuckles among the bystanders and +called forth a fine display<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> of neglected teeth on the part of the +personage addressed. "There are plenty other Engelsch will be wishing to +be as right, oh, very soon! For De Boursy-Williams, he has sent his wife +and his two daughters away on the train for Cape Town yesterday morning, +and he has gone after them that same night, and he has left all his +patients to the Dop Doctor."</p> + +<p>"Some red-necked baboons are wiser than others," said the Slabberts in the +Taal, and there was a hoarse laugh, and the humorist turned his big heavy +body away, and became one of a crowd of other Dutchmen, who were, in +veiled hints and crooked allusions, discussing the situation across the +Border. Emigration Jane was not sensitive to the electricity in the +atmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and was perfect in the etiquette of the +outing, which, when the young woman has been supplied with the one +regulation drink, stands her up in the corner like an umbrella in dry +weather as long as her young man is a-talking to 'is pals.</p> + +<p>"So," the bar-keeper went on, "if you shall want that bad finger of yours +looked to, you will have to wait until the Dop Doctor wakes up. He is a +big man, who can drink as much as three Boers.... He came in this morning +to get drunk, and you shall not wake him now if you fire off a rifle at +his ear. But he will get up presently and shake himself, and then he will +be quite steady; you would not guess how drunk he had been unless you had +seen.... He is over there, sleeping on that table in the corner, and it +will be very bad for the man who shall wake him up. For, look you, that +Dop Doctor is a duyvel. I have seen him break a man like a stick between +his hands for nothing but cutting up a thieving monkey of a little Kaffir +with the sjambok. And he took the verdoemte thing home where he lives, +they say, and strapped up its black hide with plaster, and set its arm as +if it had been a child of Christians. But every Engelschman is mad. Groot +Brittanje breeds a nation of madmen."</p> + +<p>The saloon got fuller and fuller. The air solidified with the Taal and the +tobacco, and other things less pleasant. It was not the hour for a crowd +of customers, but nobody had seemed to be working much of late. They were +all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Transvaalers and Free Staters, tradesmen of the town, or Boers from +outlying farms, and not a man there but was waiting a certain signal to +clear out and leave Gueldersdorp to her fate, or remain in the place on a +salary paid by the Republics as a spy. The English customer who came in +knew at one whiff of the thick atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and if +the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went +out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his +conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, +and without the appearance of undue haste.</p> + +<p>Once the swing-doors of the saloon opened to admit a short, spare, +hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, whose insignificant Cockney +countenance was splashed with orange-coloured freckles of immense size. +Between his thin anæmic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. And +Emigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, recognized the +pert, sharp, sallow face seen over the sleeve of a large burgher's +outstretched arm. With some trouble she caught the eye of the short, pale +young man, and he instantly became a red one. To reach her was difficult, +but he dived and wriggled his way across the saloon, wedging his frail +person between the blockish bodies with a cool address that reminded her +of the first night of a "noo show" at the Camden "Theayter," and the queue +outside the gallery door.</p> + +<p>"'Ullo, 'ullo! Thought I reckonised you, Miss." He touched his cheap +imitation Panama with swaggering gallantry, and winked. "But seeing you +eight sizes more of a toff than what you were when I previously 'ad the +pleasure, I 'esitated to tip you the 'Ow Do."</p> + +<p>She tossed her imitation ostrich plumes in joyous coquetry.</p> + +<p>"As if I didn't know wot you're after. Garn! You only wants to know if I +acted on the stryte about ..."</p> + +<p>His projecting ears burned crimson.</p> + +<p>"Well, an' suppose I do. Did she——"</p> + +<p>"Did she wot?"</p> + +<p>"You pipe well enough. Did she 'ave it?"</p> + +<p>"Ain't you anxious?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Tyke it I am anxious. Did she? No cod?"</p> + +<p>"Did she git your letter wot you put in the box o' choc's? O' course she +did, Mister. Wot do you tyke me for? A silly looney or a sneakin' thief?"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what I tyke you for. A jolly little bit of English All +Right. Say! Do you think ..." The prominent Adam's apple jutting over the +edge of the guillotining double collar worked emotionally. "Think she'll +send an answer, eh?"</p> + +<p>"Reckon she will; you watch out an' see!"</p> + +<p>"You fust-clarss little brick!"</p> + +<p>"Garn!"</p> + +<p>"I mean it. Stryte. Next door to a angel—that's wot you are. She's the +angel. Tell 'er I said so—that's if you can, you twig? And say that when +I 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day +before yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'd +gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with the +idear—mind you rub that in!—of strikin' a blow for Beauty as well as for +Britanniar, twig?" The thin elbow in the tweed sleeve nudged her, +provoking a joyous giggle.</p> + +<p>"I'm fly, no fear. Are you to 'ave a uniform, an' all like that?"</p> + +<p>His face fell. "The kit don't run to much beyond a smasher 'at an' +puttees, but they're the regular Service kind, an' then there's the +bandolier—an' the gun. She ain't the newest rifle served out to Her +Majesty's Army, not by twenty years. Condemned Martini, a chap says, who's +in the know—an' kicks like a mule when I let 'er off—made me nose bleed +fust time I tried with blank. But when we gets a bit more used to each +other, it 'll be a case of bloomin' Doppers rollin' over in the dust, like +rock-rabbits. Don't forget to tell 'er as wot I said so."</p> + +<p>"Why ... ain't she a Dutchy 'erself? She wrote a letter for me in their +rummy lingo to my young man!"</p> + +<p>"Cripps!" He stared in dismay. "Blessed if I 'adn't forgot. But if an +Englishman marries a foreigner," he swelled heroic, "that puts 'er in the +stryte runnin'. And 'art an' 'and I'm 'ers, whenever she'll 'ave me! Tell +'er <span class="smcap">that</span>—with a double row of crosses from W. Keyse! And—can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> you +remember a bit o' poetry?" He recited with shamefaced rapidity:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It is my sentry-go to-night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when I watch the moon so bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shining o'er South Africa plain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'll think of thee, sweet Greta Du Taine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her eyes were full of awe and wonder. "Lor! you don't mean to say you made +up that by yourself?"</p> + +<p>The poet nodded. "Reckon about as much. Like it?"</p> + +<p>"It's perfect lovely! Better than they 'ave in the penny books."</p> + +<p>"Where Coralline and the Marquis are playin' the spooney game, and 'im +with a Lady Reginer up 'is dirty sleeve. An' there's another thing I want +you to let 'er know." His eyes were on hers, his breath fanned her hot +cheeks. "There isn't another woman on the earth but her for me. Dessay +there may be others; wot I say is—I don't see 'em!" He waved his hand, +dismissing the ardent creatures.</p> + +<p>A pang transpierced the conscience hiding under the cheap flowery blouse. +Emigration Jane hesitated, biting the dog's-eared finger-ends of a cotton +glove. Should she tell this ardent, chivalrous lover that the Convent roof +no longer sheltered the magnificent fair hair-plait and the mischievous +blue eyes of his adored? That Miss Greta Du Taine had left for +Johannesburg with the latest batch of departing pupils! If she told, W. +Keyse would vanish out of her life, it might be for ever; or, if by chance +encountered on the street, pass by with a casual greeting and a touch of +the cheap Panama. Emigration Jane was no heroine, only a daughter of Eve. +Arithmetic and what was termed the "tonic sofa" had been more sternly +inculcated than the moral virtues at the Board School in Kentish Town. And +she was not long in making up her mind that she would not tell him—not +just yet, anyway.</p> + +<p>What was he saying, in the Cockney that cut like a knife through the thick +gutturals of the Taal? "I shall walk past the Convent to-morrer in kit and +'cetras, on the charnce of 'Er seein' me. Two sharp. And, look 'ere, Miss, +you've done me a good turn. And—no larks!—if ever I can do you +another—trust me. Stryte—I mean it!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> You ask chaps 'oo know me if Billy +Keyse ever went back on a pal?"</p> + +<p>She swayed her hips, and disclaimed all obligation. But, garn! he was +gittin' at 'er, she knew!</p> + +<p>"I ain't; I mean it! You should 'ave 'arf me 'eredittary estates—if I 'ad +any. As I 'aven't, say wot you'll drink? Do, Miss, to oblige yours truly, +W. Keyse, Esquire."</p> + +<p>W. Keyse plunged a royal, reckless hand into the pocket of his tweed +riding-breeches, bought against the time when he should bestride something +nobler than a bicycle, and produced a half-sovereign. He owed it to his +landlady and the rest, the coin that he threw down so magnificently on the +shiny counter, but you do not treat your good angel every day.... +Emigration Jane bridled, and swayed her hips still more. His largeness was +intoxicating. One had dreamed of meeting such young men.</p> + +<p>"Port or sherry? Or a glass of cham, with a lump o' ice in for a cooler? +They keep the stuff on draught 'ere, and not bad by 'arf for South Africa. +'Ere, you, Mister! Two chams for self and the young lydy, an' look +slippy!"</p> + +<p>The brimming glasses of sparkling, creaming fluid, juice of vines that +never grew in the historic soil of France, were passed over the bar. A +miniature berg clinked in each, the coldness of its contact with the +glowing lip forcing slight rapturous shrieks from Emigration Jane.</p> + +<p>"We'll drink 'Er 'ealth!" W. Keyse raised his goblet. "And Friends at 'Ome +in our Isle across the Sea!"</p> + +<p>He drank, pleased with the sentiment, and set down the empty glass.</p> + +<p>The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and tapped him on the arm +with a thick, stubby forefinger.</p> + +<p>"Mister Engelschman, I think you shall best go out of here."</p> + +<p>"Me? Go out? 'Oo are you gettin' at, Myn'eer Van Dunck?" swaggered W. +Keyse. And he slipped one thin, freckled hand ostentatiously under his +coat of shoddy summer tweed. A very cheap revolver lurked in the +hip-pocket of which Billy was so proud. In his third-floor back +bed-sitting-room in Judd Street, London, W.C., he had promised himself a +moment when that hip-pocket should be referred to, just in that way. It +was a cheap bit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> of theatrical swagger, but the saloon was full, not of +harmless theatrical pretences, but bitter racial antagonisms, seething +animosities, fanged and venomed hatreds, only waiting the prearranged +signal to strike and slay.</p> + +<p>Emigration Jane tugged at the hero's sleeve, as he felt for an almost +invisible moustache, scanning the piled-up, serried faces with pert, pale, +hardy eyes.</p> + +<p>"'E ain't coddin'. See 'ow black they're lookin'."</p> + +<p>"I see 'em, plyne enough. Waxworks only fit for the Chamber of 'Orrors, +ain't 'em?"</p> + +<p>"It's a young woman wot arsks you to go, not a bloke! Please! For my syke, +if you won't for your own!"</p> + +<p>Billy Keyse, with a flourish, offered the thin, boyish arm in the tweed +sleeve.</p> + +<p>"Righto! Will you allow me, Miss?"</p> + +<p>She faltered:</p> + +<p>"I—I can't, deer. I—I'm wiv my young man."</p> + +<p>"Looks after you a proper lot, I don't think. Which is 'im? Where's 'e 'id +'isself? There's only one other English-lookin' feller 'ere, an' 'e's +drunk, lyin' over the table there in the corner. That ain't 'im, is it?"</p> + +<p>"Nah, that isn't 'im. That big Dutchy, lookin' this way, showin' 'is teeth +as 'e smiles. That's my young man."</p> + +<p>She indicated the Slabberts, heavily observant of the couple with the +muddy eyes under the tow-coloured thatch.</p> + +<p>"'Strewth!" W. Keyse whistled depreciatively between his teeth, and +elevated his scanty eyebrows. "That tow-'eaded, bung-nosed, 'ulking, big +Dopper. An' you a daughter of the Empire!"</p> + +<p>Oh! the thrice-retorted scorn in the sharp-edged Cockney voice! The +scorching contempt in the pale, ugly little eyes of W. Keyse! She wilted +to her tallest feather, and the tears came crowding, stinging the back of +her throat, compelling a miserable sniff. Yet Emigration Jane was not +destitute of spirit.</p> + +<p>"I ... I took 'im to please meself ... not you, nor the Hempire neither."</p> + +<p>"Reckon you was precious 'ard up for a chap. Good-afternoon, Miss."</p> + +<p>He touched the cheap Panama, and swung theatrically round on his heel. +Between him and the saloon-door there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> was a solid barricade of heavy +Dutch bodies, in moleskin, tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped by +lowering Dutch faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the reedy +crow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched in the baggy pockets of +old shooting-jackets. Others gripped leaded sjamboks, and others crept to +hip-pockets, where German army revolvers were. The bar-keeper and the +Slabberts exchanged a meaning wink.</p> + +<p>"Gents, I'll trouble you. By your leave?..."</p> + +<p>Nobody moved. And suddenly W. Keyse became conscious that these were +enemies, and that he was alone. A little hooliganism, a few street-fights, +one scuffle with the police, some rows in music-halls constituted all his +experience. In the midst of these men, burly, brutal, strong, used to shed +blood of beast and human, his cheap swagger failed him with his stock of +breath. He was no longer the hero in an East End melodrama; his heroic +mood had gone, and there was a feel of tragedy in the air. The Boers +waited sluggishly for the next move. It would come when there should be a +step forward on the part of the little Englishman. Then a clumsy foot in a +cow-leather boot or heavy wooden-pegged veldschoen would be thrust out, +and the boy would be tripped up and go down, and the crowd would +deliberately kick and trample the life out of him, and no one would be +able to say how or by whom the thing had been done. And, reading in the +hard eyes set in the stolid yellow and drab faces that he was "up against +it," and no mistake, W. Keyse felt singularly small and lonely.</p> + +<p>Then something happened.</p> + +<p>The drunken Englishman who had been lying in a hoggish stupor over the +little iron table in the corner of the saloon hiccoughed, and lifted a +crimson, puffy face, with bleary eyes in it that were startlingly blue. He +drew back the great arms that had been hanging over the edge of his +impromptu pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, and got +slowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, but not stumbling, he +moved across the little space of saw-dusted, hard-beaten earth that +divided him from W. Keyse, and drew up beside that insignificant minority. +The action was not purposeless or unimpressive. The alcoholic wastrel had +suddenly become protagonist in the common little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> drama that was veering +towards tragedy. Beside the man, Billy Keyse dwindled to a stunted boy, a +steam-pinnace bobbing under the quarter of an armoured battle-ship, its +huge mailed bulk pregnant with possibilities of destruction, its barbettes +full of unseen, watchful eyes, and hands powerful to manipulate the levers +of Titanic death-machines.</p> + +<p>Let it be understood that the intervener did not present the aspect of a +hero. He had been drunk, and would be again, unless some miraculous +quickening of the alcohol-drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivify +the dormant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of bushy black +eyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, blunt, hooked nose, and +grim-lipped yet tender mouth, from the corner of which an extinct and +forgotten cigar-butt absurdly jutted, bore, like his great gaunt frame, +the ravaging traces of the consuming drink-lust. His well-cut, +loosely-fitting grey morning-coat and trousers were soiled and slovenly; +his blue linen shirt was collarless and unbuttoned at the neck. His grey +felt smasher hat was crammed on awry. But there was a thick lanyard round +the muscular neck, ending in a leather revolver-pouch that was attached to +his stout belt of webbing. A boy with a fifteen-and-sixpenny toy revolver +you can laugh at and squelch; but, Alamachtig! a big man with a Webley and +Scott was another thing. And the frowy barrier of thick, coarsely-clad, +bulky bodies and scowling, yellow-tan faces, began to melt away.</p> + +<p>When a clear lane showed to the saloon door, the Dop Doctor took it, +walking with a lurch in his long stride, but with the square head held +upright on his great gaunt shoulders. W. Keyse, Esquire, moved in the +shadow of him, taking two steps to one of his. The swing doors opened, +thudded to behind them....</p> + +<p>"Outside.... Time, too!"</p> + +<p>The wide, thin-lipped Cockney mouth grinned a little consciously as W. +Keyse jerked his thumb towards the still vibrating doors of the saloon. +"Reg'ler 'ornets' nest o' Dutchies. And I was up agynst it, an' no +mistyke, when you rallied up. An', Mister, you're a Fair Old Brick, an' if +you've no objection to shykin' 'ands ...?"</p> + +<p>But the big man did not seem to see the little Cockney's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> offered hand. He +nodded, looking with the bloodshot and extremely blue eyes that were set +under his heavy straight black brows, not at W. Keyse, but over the boy's +head, and with a surly noise in his throat that stopped short of being +speech, swung heavily round and went down the dusty street, that was +grilling in the full blaze of the afternoon heat, lurching a little in his +walk.</p> + +<p>Then, suddenly, running figures of men came round the corner. Voices +shouted, and houses and shops and saloons emptied themselves of their +human contents. The news flew from kerb to kerb, and jumped from windows +to windows, out of which women, European and coloured, thrust eager, +questioning heads.</p> + +<p>The Cape Town train that had started at midday had returned to +Gueldersdorp, having been held up by a force of armed and mounted Boers +twenty miles down the line. And a London newspaper correspondent had +handed in a cable at the post-office, and the operator's instrument, after +a futile click or so, had failed to work any more.</p> + +<p>The telegraphic wire was cut. Hostilities had commenced in earnest, and +Gueldersdorp, severed from the South by this opening act of war, must find +her salvation thenceforwards in the cool brains and steady nerves of the +handful of defenders behind her sand-bags, when the hour of need should +come.</p> + +<p>History has it written in her imperishable record, that is not only +printed upon paper, and graven upon brass, and cut in marble, but stamped +into the minds and hearts of millions of men and women of the British +race, how, when that hour came, the hero-spirit in their countrymen rose +up to meet it. And for such undying memories as these, and not for the +mere word of suzerainty, it is worth while to have paid as Britain has +paid, in gold, and blood, and tears.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> + + +<p>"Dop," being the native name for the cheapest and most villainous of Cape +brandies, has come to signify alcoholic drinks in general to men of many +nations dwelling under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> subtropical South African sun. Thus, +apple-brandy, and peach liqueur, "Old Squareface," in the squat, +four-sided bottles beloved no less by Dutchman and Afrikander, American +and Briton, Paddy from Cork, and Heinrich from the German Fatherland, than +by John Chinkey—in default of arrack—and the swart and woolly-headed +descendant of Ham, may be signified under the all-embracing designation.</p> + +<p>It did not matter what the liquor was, the bar-tenders were aware who +served the Dop Doctor, as long as the stuff scorched the throat and +stupefied the brain, and you got enough of it for your money.</p> + +<p>His eyes were blood-red with brutal debauch now, as he neared the De +Boursy-Williams dwelling, a one-storied, soft brick-built, +corrugated-iron-roofed house on Harris Street, behind the Market Square. +It had been a store, but green and white paint and an iron garden-fence +had turned it into a gentlemanly residence for a medical practitioner. +Mrs. De Boursy-Williams, a lady of refinement, stamped with the +ineffaceable cachet of Bayswater, had hung cheap lace curtains in all the +windows, tying them up with silk sashes of Transvaal green. Between the +wooden pillars of the stoep dangled curtains yet other, of chopped, dyed, +and threaded bamboo, while whitewashed drain-pipes, packed with earth and +set on end, overflowed with Indian cress, flowering now in extravagant, +gorgeous hues of red and brown, sulphur and orange.</p> + +<p>The Dop Doctor, left to maintain the inviolate sanctity of this English +Colonial home, hiccoughed as he stumbled up the stately flight of three +cement steps that led between white-painted railings, enclosing on the +left hand a narrow strip of garden with some dusty mimosa shrubs growing +in it, to the green door that bore the brass plate, and had the red lamp +fitted in the hall-light above it. The plate bore this comprehensive +inscription:</p> + +<p> +G. DE BOURSY-WILLIAMS, M.D., F.R.C.S. Lond.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Consulting-Room Hours: 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.; 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.</span><br /> +<br /> +MODERN DENTISTRY IN ALL ITS BRANCHES.<br /> +</p> + +<p>And, scanning the inscription for perhaps the thousandth time, the grim, +tender mouth under the ragged black moustache took a satirical twist at +the corners, for nobody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> knew better than Owen Saxham, called of men in +Gueldersdorp the "Dop Doctor," what a brazen lie it proclaimed. He heard +the town-clock on the stad square strike five as he pulled out the +latchkey from his pocket and let himself in, shouting:</p> + +<p>"Koets!"</p> + +<p>A glazed door at the end of the passage, advertised in letters of black +paint upon the ground-glass as "Dispensary," opened, and a long, thin +Dutchman, dressed in respectable black, looked out. He had been hoping +that the drunken Englishman had been shot or stabbed in a saloon-brawl, or +had fallen down in apoplexy in a liquor-bout, and had been brought home +dead on a shutter at last. His long ginger-coloured face showed his cruel +disappointment. But he said, as though the question had been asked:</p> + +<p>"No, there is no telegram from Cape Town."</p> + +<p>Then he shut the glazed door, and returned to the very congenial +occupation in which he had been engaged, and Owen Saxham went heavily to +the bedroom placed at the disposal of the <i>locum tenens</i>. The single +window looked out upon a square garden with a tennis-ground, where the De +Boursy-Williams girls had been used to play. The apricot on the south wall +was laden with the as yet immature fruit, an abandoned household cat +slept, unconscious of impending starvation, upon a bench under a +pepper-tree.</p> + +<p>It was a small, sordid, shabby chamber, with a fly-spotted paper, a chest +of drawers lacking knobs, a greenish swing looking-glass, and a narrow +iron bedstead. His scanty belongings were scattered about. There were no +medical books or surgical instruments. The Dop Doctor had sold all the +tools of his trade years before. He turned to Williams's books, standard +works which had been bought at his recommendation, when he wished to +refresh his excellent memory; the instruments he used when to the +entreaties of a fatherly friend Williams added the alluring chink of gold +belonged also to that generous patron. There were some old clothes in the +ramshackle deal wardrobe; there was some linen and underclothing in the +knobless chest of drawers. With the exception of a Winchester +repeating-rifle in excellent condition, a bandolier and ammunition-pouch, +a hunting-knife and a Colt's revolver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> of large calibre, in addition to +the weapon he carried, there was not an article of property of any value +in the room. Old riding-boots with dusty spurs and a pair of veldschoens +stood by the wall; a pair of trodden-down carpet slippers lay beside a big +cheap zinc bath that stood there, full of cold water; some well-used pipes +were on the chest of drawers, with a tin of Virginia; and an old brown +camel's-hair dressing-gown hung over a castorless, shabby, +American-cloth-covered armchair. And an empty whisky-bottle stood upon the +washstand, melancholy witness to the drunkard's passion.</p> + +<p>Yet there were a few poor little toilet articles upon the dressing-table +that betokened the dainty personal habits of cleanliness and care that +from lifelong use become instinctive. The hands of the untidy, slovenly, +big man with the drink-swollen features were exquisitely kept; and when +the dark-red colour should go out of the square face, the skin would show +wonderfully unblemished and healthy for a drunkard, and the blue eyes +would be steady and clear. Excess had not injured a splendid constitution +as yet. But Saxham knew that by-and-by ...</p> + +<p>What did he care? He pulled off his soiled, untidy garments, and soused +his aching head in the cold, fresh water, and bathed and changed. Six +o'clock struck, and found Dr. Owen Saxham reclothed and in his right mind, +if a little haggard about the eyes and twitchy about the mouth, and +sitting calmly waiting for patients in the respectably-appointed +consulting-room of De Boursy-Williams, M.D., F.R.C.S. Lond.</p> + +<p>Usually he sat in the adjoining study, near enough to the +carefully-curtained door to hear the patient describe in the artless +vernacular of the ignorant, or the more cultivated phraseology of the +educated, the symptoms, his or hers.</p> + +<p>Because the cultured man of science, the real M.D. of Cambridge University +and owner of those other letters of attainment, was the drunken wastrel +who had sunk low enough to serve as the impostor's ghost. If G. de +Boursy-Williams, of all those lying capitals, were a member of the London +Pharmaceutical Society and properly-qualified dentist, which perhaps might +be the case, he certainly possessed no other claim upon the confidence of +his fellow-creatures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctor +brought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst to +Gueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey-haired, pink-faced, neatly-dressed +little humbug possessed an enviable practice.</p> + +<p>If you got well, he rubbed his hands and chuckled over you; if you died, +he bleated about the Will of Providence, and his daughters sent flowery, +home-made wreaths to place upon your grave, and it all went down, adding +to the python-length of the bill for medical attendance.</p> + +<p>This world is thick with De Boursy-Williamses, throwing in bromides with a +liberal hand, ungrudging of strychnine, happily at home with quinine and +cathartics, ready at a case of simple rubeola; hideously, secretly, +helplessly perplexed between the false diphtheria and the true; treating +internal cancer and fibrous tumours as digestive derangements for happy, +profitable years, until the specialist comes by, and dissipates with a +brief examination and with half a dozen trenchant words the victim's faith +in the quack.</p> + +<p>Three years before, when the Dop Doctor, coming up from Kimberley by +transport-waggon, had stumbled in upon Gueldersdorp, the verdict of a +specialist consulted by one of his patients, much lacking in the desirable +article of faith, had given De Boursy-Williams's self-confidence a +considerable shock.</p> + +<p>Does it matter how De Boursy, much reduced in bulk by a considerable +leakage of conceit, came across the Dop Doctor? In a drink-saloon, in a +music-hall, in a gaming-house or an opium-den, at any other of the places +of recreation where, after consulting and visiting hours, that exemplary +father and serious-minded Established Churchman, was to be found? It is +enough that the bargain was proposed and accepted. Four sovereigns a week +secured to De Boursy-Williams the stored and applied knowledge, the wide +experience, and the unerring diagnosis of the rising young London +practitioner, who had had a brilliant career before him when a Hand had +reached forth from the clouds to topple down the castle of his labours and +his hopes. For Owen Saxham the money would purchase forgetfulness. You can +buy a great deal of his kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> forgetfulness with four pounds, and drink +was all the Dop Doctor wanted.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Now, as the red South African sunset burned beyond the flattened western +ridge of the semicircle of irregular hills that fence in the unpretending +hamlet town that lies on the low central rise, Owen Saxham sat, as for his +miserable weekly wage he must sit, twice daily for two hours at a stretch, +enduring torments akin to those of the damned in Hell.</p> + +<p>For these were the hours when he remembered most all that he had lost.</p> + +<p>Remembrance, like the magic carpet of the Eastern story, carried him back +to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and many +roses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex +and Spanish chestnut, and rhododendron, upon the South Dorset cliffs, that +are vanishing so slowly yet so surely in the maw of the rapacious sea.</p> + +<p>Boom! In the heart of a still, foggy night, following a day of lashing +rain, and the boy Owen Saxham, whom the Dop Doctor remembered, would wake +upon his lavender-scented pillow in the low-pitched room with the heavy +ceiling-beams and the shallow diamond-paned casements, and call out to +David, dreaming in the other white bed, to plan an excursion with the +breaking of the day, to see how much more of their kingdom had toppled +over on those wave-smoothed rock-pavements far below, that were studded +with great and little fossils, as the schoolroom suet-pudding with the +frequent raisin.</p> + +<p>More faces came. The boys' father, fair and florid, bluff, handsome, and +kindly, an English country gentleman of simple affectionate nature and +upright life. He came in weather-stained velveteen and low-crowned felt, +with the red setter-bitch at his heels, and the old sporting Manton +carried in the crook of his elbow, where the mother used to sew a leather +patch, always cut out of the palm-piece of one of the right-hand gloves +that were never worn out, never being put on. A dark-eyed, black-haired +Welsh mother, hot-tempered, keen-witted, humorous, sarcastic, passionately +devoted to her husband and his boys, David and Owen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>David and Owen. David was the elder, fair like the father, destined for +Harrow, Sandhurst, and the Army. Owen had dreamed of the Merchant Service, +until, having succeeded in giving the Persian kitten, overfed to repletion +by an admiring cook, a dose of castor-oil, and being allowed to aid the +local veterinary in setting the fox-terrier's broken leg, the revelation +of the hidden gift was vouchsafed to this boy. How he begged off Harrow, +much to the disgust of the Squire, and went to Westward Ho, faithfully +plodded the course laid down by the Council of Medical Education, became a +graduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took his degree brilliantly; +registered as a student at St. Stephen's Hospital; won an Entrance +Scholarship in Science, and secured the William Brown Exhibition in his +second year. Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened with +scalpel and with bistoury by Owen Saxham.</p> + +<p>Oh, the good days! the delectable years of intellectual development, and +arduous study, and high hope, and patient, strenuous endeavour! The man +sitting with knitted hands and tense brain and staring eyes there in the +darkening room groaned aloud as he looked back. Nobody envied that +broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, bright-eyed young fellow his successes. +Companions shared his triumphs, lecturers and professors came down from +their high pedestals of dignity to help him on. When he obtained his +London University diploma with honours for a thesis of exceptional merit, +he had already held the post of principal anæsthetist at St. Stephen's +Hospital for a year. Now, a vacancy occurring upon the Junior staff of +surgeons to the Hospital's in-patient Department, Owen Saxham, M.D., was +chosen to fill it. This brought Mildred very near.</p> + +<p>For he was very much in love. The hot red blood in his veins had carried +him away sometimes upon a mad race for pleasure, but he was clean of soul +and free from the taint of vice, inherited or acquired, and the Briton's +love of home was strong in him. And wedded love had always seemed to him a +beautiful and gracious thing; and fatherhood a glorious privilege. Stern +as he seemed, grave and quiet and undemonstrative as he was, the youngest +and shyest children did not shrink from him. The pink rose-leaf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> tongue +peeped from between the budding rows of teeth, and the innocent +considering eyes questioned him only a moment before the smile came. To be +the father of Mildred's children seemed the lofty end of all desire that +was not mere worldly ambition.</p> + +<p>Mildred was the elder daughter of a county neighbour down in Dorsetshire. +She had known Owen Saxham from her school-days, but never until he took to +calling at the house in Pont Street, to which Mildred, with her +family—mere satellites revolving in the orbit of that shining star of +Love—migrated in the Season. She was tall, slight, and willowy, with a +sweet head that drooped a little, and round brown eyes that were extremely +pretty and wore a perpetual expression of surprise. She was rather anæmic, +preferred croquet to lawn-tennis—then the rage—and kept a journal, after +the style of an American model. But the space which Mary McMullins cribbed +from Mary McMullins to devote to a description of the bathroom in which +the ablutions of her family were performed, and a vivid word-picture of +their tooth-brushes ranged in a row, and their recently wrung-out garments +in the act of taking the air upon the back-garden clothes-line, was all +devoted to Mildred in Mildred's journal. In it Owen found a place. He was +described as a blend between "Rochester" in "Jane Eyre" and "Bazarov" in +Turgenev's "Fathers and Children." In one specially high-flown passage he +was referred to as a grim granite rock, to which the delicate +clematis-like nature of Mildred, clinging, was to envelop it with leaf and +blossom. She read him the passage one day. Their faces were very close +together as they sat upon the sofa in the pretty Pont Street drawing-room, +and his newly-bought engagement-ring gleamed on her long white hand.... +The remembrance of that day made the Dop Doctor laugh out harshly in the +midst of his anguish. So trivial and so weak a thing had been that love of +hers on which he had founded the castle of his hopes and desires.</p> + +<p>Now the aspiring young man bought a practice with some thousands advanced +by his father out of the younger son's portion that should be his one day. +It lay just where Hyde Park merges into Paddington. Here a medical man may +feel the pulse of Dives for gold, and look at the tongue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of Lazarus for +nothing, and supply medicine into the bargain, if he be of kindly soul, +and this hopeful, rising surgeon and physician had an open hand and an +unsuspecting nature.</p> + +<p>God! how much the worse for him. The sweat-drops ran down into the Dop +Doctor's eyes as he remembered that.</p> + +<p>He set up his bachelor tent in Chilworth Street, furnishing the rooms he +meant to inhabit with a certain sober luxury. By-and-by the house could be +made pretty, unless Mildred should insist upon his moving to Wigmore +Street, or to Harley Street, that Mecca of the ambitious young +practitioner. Probably Mildred's people would insist upon Harley Street. +They were wealthy; their daughter would be quite an heiress, "another +instance of Owen's luck," as David, long ago gazetted to a crack Cavalry +regiment, would say, and Owen would laugh, and admit that, though he would +have been glad enough to take his young fair love without dower and +plenishing, it was pleasant enough to know that his wife would have an +independent fortune of her own. It was one of David's best jokes that Owen +was marrying Mildred for her money. David's ideas of humour were crude and +elemental. On the other hand, his manners were admirable, and his physical +beauty perfect of its type, though men and women turned oftenest to look +at the younger brother, whom the women called "plain, but so interesting," +and the men "an uncommonly attractive sort of fellow, and as clever as +they make them." When the great crash came Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., +was about twenty-nine.</p> + +<p>Do you care for a description of the man at his prime?</p> + +<p>He was probably five feet ten in height, but his scholar's stoop robbed +him of an inch or more. The great breadth of the slightly-bowed shoulders, +the immense depth and thickness of the chest, gave his upper figure a +false air of clumsiness. His arms were long and powerful, terminating in +strong, supple, white hands, the hands of the skilled surgical operator; +his thick, smooth, opaque, white skin covered an admirable structure of +bone, knit with tough muscles, clothed with healthful flesh. One noticed, +seeing him walk, that his legs were bowed a little, because he had been +accustomed to the saddle from earliest childhood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> though he rode but +seldom now, and one saw also that his small muscular feet gripped the +ground vigorously, through the glove-thin boots he liked to wear. He +showed no tendency to dandyism. His loosely-cut suits of fine, silky black +cloth were invariably of the same fashion. In abhorring jewellery, in +preferring white cashmere shirts, and strictly limiting the amount of +starch in the thin linen cuffs and collars, perhaps he showed a tendency +to faddism. David told him that he dressed himself like a septuagenarian +Professor. Mildred would have preferred dear Owen to pay a little more +attention to style and cut, and all that, though one did not, of course, +expect a man of science to look like a man of fashion. One couldn't have +everything, at least, not in this world....</p> + +<p>She said that one day, standing beside the writing-table in the Chilworth +Street study, with David's portrait in her hand. It usually stood there, +in a silver frame—a coloured photograph of a young man of thirty, stupid, +and beautiful as the Praxitelean Hermes, resplendent in the gold and blue +and scarlet of a crack Dragoon Regiment. Owen stood upon the hearthrug, +for once in Mildred's company, and not thinking of Mildred. And with tears +rising in her round, pretty, foolish eyes the girl looked from the face +and figure enclosed within the silver frame, to the face and bust that had +for background the high mantel-mirror in its carved frame of Spanish oak.</p> + +<p>There was the square black head bending forwards—"poking," she termed +it—upon the massive, bowed shoulders; the white face, square too, with +its short, blunt, hooked nose and grim, determined mouth and jaws, showing +the bluish grain of the strong beard and moustache that Owen kept closely +shaven. The heavy forehead, the smutty brows overshadowing eyes of clear, +vivid, startling Alpine blue, the close small ears, the thick white +throat, were very, very unattractive in Mildred's eyes—at least, in +comparison with the three-volume-novel charms of the grey-eyed, +golden-moustached, classically-featured, swaggering young military dandy +in the coloured photograph. David had been with his regiment in India when +Owen had first seemed to be a good deal attracted to Pont Street. He had +wooed Mildred with dogged persistency, and won her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> without perceptible +triumph, and Mildred had been immensely flattered at first by the conquest +of this man, whom everybody said was going to be famous, great, +distinguished ... and now ... the wedding-day was coming awfully near. And +how on earth was it possible for a girl to tell a man with Owen's +dreadfully grim, sarcastic mouth, and those terrible blue eyes that +sometimes looked through and through you—that she preferred his brother?</p> + +<p>Poor, dear, beautiful, devoted David! so honourable, so shocked at the +discovery that his passion was reciprocated, so very romantically in love. +Only the day previously, calling in at Pont Street at an hour unusual for +him, Owen had found them together, Mildred and David, who, having been +unexpectedly relieved of duty by an accommodating brother-officer, had, as +he rather laboriously explained, run up from Spurhambury for the day. It +was an awfully near thing, the guilty ones agreed afterwards, but Owen had +suspected nothing. These swell scientific men were often a little bit slow +in the uptake....</p> + +<p>But to-day—to-day their dupe saw clearly. He recalled the Pont Street +incident, and the flushed faces of the couple. He saw once more the +silver-framed photograph in the girl's hand, he felt the mute +disparagement of her glance, and was conscious of the relief with which it +left him to settle on the portrait again. Ah, how unsuspicious he had been +whom they were duping! Doubtless Mildred would not have had the courage to +own the truth, doubtless she would have married him but for the scandal of +the Trial. He wrenched his knitted hands together until the joints +cracked. She would have married him, and forgotten David. He, the man of +will, and power, and patience would have possessed her, stamped himself +like a seal upon her heart and mind, given her other interests, other +hopes, other desires, children, and happiness. But for the Trial the +little germinating seed of treachery would never have grown up and borne +fruit.</p> + +<p>Had it been treachery, after all? Far, far too grand the word. Who would +expect a modern woman to practise the obsolete virtue of Fidelity? Fool, +do you expect your miniature French bulldog or your toy-terrier to dive in +and swim out to you, and hold your drowning carcase up, should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> you happen +to become cramped while bathing in the sea? The little, feeble, pretty, +feather-brained thing, what can it do but whimper on the shore while you +are sinking, perhaps be consoled upon a friendly stranger's lap while your +last bubbles are taking upward flight, and your knees are drawing inwards +in the final contraction? Happy for the little creature if the kindly +stranger carry it away!</p> + +<p>Poor, pretty, foolish Mildred, whose gentle predilections were as threads +of gossamer compared with the cable-ropes of stronger women's passions! +She had nestled into the strong protecting arm, and dried her tears for +the old master on the sleeve of the new one, whimpering a little, gently, +just like the toy-terrier bitch or the miniature bull.</p> + +<p>And yet he had once seen a creature tinier and feebler than either of +these, a mere handful of yellow floss-silk curls, defend its insensible +master with frenzy, as the sick man lay in the deadly stupor of cerebral +congestion, from those who sought to aid. Valet and nurse and doctor were +held at bay until that snapping, foaming, raging speck of love and +devotion and fidelity had been whelmed in a travelling-rug, and borne away +to a distant room, from whence its shrill, defiant, imploring barks and +yelps could be heard night and day until, its owner being at last +conscious and out of danger, the tiny creature was set free.</p> + +<p>Ergo, there are small things and small things. Beside that epic atom +Mildred dwindled inconceivably.</p> + +<p>And David ... David, who had shaken his handsome head sorrowfully over his +brother's ruined career, who had been horribly sick at the scandal, +shudderingly alive to the disgrace, sorrowfully, regretfully compelled to +admit that the evidence of guilt was overwhelming ... he did not trust +himself to think of David overmuch. That way of thought led to Cain's +portion in the very pit of Hell. For six months subsequently to the +finding of the Jury in the well-known criminal case, The Crown <i>v.</i> +Saxham, David had married Mildred. If she had been innocent of actual +treachery, here was the smooth, brotherly betrayer, unmasked and loathly +in the sight of the betrayed.</p> + +<p>How quietly the storm-clouds had piled up on his bright horizon at the +close of his second year of active, brilliant, successful work!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> + +<p>The first lightning-flash, the first faint mutter of thunder, had passed +almost unnoticed. Then the tempest broke, and the building wrought by a +strong man's labours, and toils, and hopes, and joys, and dolours had been +lifted, and torn, and rent, and scattered as a hill-bothy of poles and +straw-bundles, or a moorland shelter of heather and bushes is scattered by +the fury of a northern mountain-blast.</p> + +<p>His practice had become a large and, despite the many claims of Lazarus at +the gates, a lucrative one by the commencement of his third year of +residence in Chilworth Street. It was the end of April. He was to be +married to Mildred in July. That move to Harley Street had been decided +upon, the house taken and beautified. Though his love for her was not +demonstrative or romantic, it was deep, and tender, and strong, and +hopeful, and Life to this man had seemed very sweet—five years ago. He +was successful professionally and socially. He had been chosen to assist a +surgeon of great eminence in the performance of a critical operation upon +a semi-Royalty. He had written, and publishers had published, a remarkable +work. "The Diseases of Civilisation" had been greeted by the scientific +reviewers with a chorus of praise, passed through four or five +editions—had been translated into several European languages; and his +"Text-Book of Clinical Surgery" had been recommended to advanced students +by the leading professors of the Medical Schools when the horrible thing +befell.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> + + +<p>It was in '94, when even the electro-motor was not in general use, and the +petrol-driven machine was slowly convincing Paris and New York of its +magnificent possibilities. Saxham used a smart, well-horsed, hired +brougham for day-visits, and for night work a motor-tricycle. There were +no stables to the house in Chilworth Street. He left the motor-tricycle at +the place where he had bought it second-hand. The machine was cleaned and +kept in order, and brought to his door by one of the employés at a certain +hour, for a fixed weekly sum paid to the proprietor of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> establishment, +Bough by name, an Englishman born in the Transvaal, who had quite +recently, or so he gave out, emigrated from South Africa, and set up in +London as a cycle-seller and repairer, though there were not many cycles +at the shop. Heavy packing-cases and crates were always being delivered +there, and always being despatched from thence, via Cape Town and Port +Elizabeth and Delagoa Bay to the Transvaal, Bough being agent, or so he +said, for several South African firms engaged in the transport of +agricultural machines. Bough had a wife, a large-eyed, delicate-looking, +pretty little woman, who seemed afraid of the big, muscular, tanned fellow +of thirty-eight or so, with the odd light eyes, and the smooth manner, and +the ready smile, and the short, expert, hairy, cruel-looking hands. He had +seen life, had Bough, at the goldfields and at the diamond-mines, and as a +trooper through the Zulu and Matabele campaigns, and he was ready to talk +about what he had seen. Still there were reservations about Bough, and +mysteries. The Doctor suspected him of being brutal to his wife, and would +not have been surprised any morning upon receiving the news of the man's +arrest as one of a gang of forgers, or coiners, or burglars. But he lived +and let live, and whatever else the big Afrikander may have been, he was +an excellent workman at his trade.</p> + +<p>One evening Bough rode round on the motor-tricycle himself, and mentioned +casually that his wife was ailing. The Doctor, in the act of mounting the +machine, put a brief question or two, registered the replies in the +automatic sub-memory he kept for business, and told the man to send her +round at ten o'clock upon the following morning.</p> + +<p>She came, punctual to the hour, and was shown into Owen's +consulting-room—a little woman with beautiful, melancholy eyes and a +pretty figure. Illiterate, common, affected, and vain to a degree, +hideously misusing the English language in that low, dulcet voice of hers, +ludicrous in her application of the debatable aspirate to words in the +spelling of which it has no part.</p> + +<p>Rather an absurd little person, Mrs. Bough. Yet, a tragic little person, +in Saxham's eyes at least, by the time she had made her errand plain.</p> + +<p>He heard her tell the tale that was not new to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Cultured, highly-bred +women had made such appeals to him before, and without shame. How should +this little vulgar creature be expected to have more conscience than they?</p> + +<p>They beat about the bush longer, they put the thing more prettily. They +spoke of their frail physical health and their husbands' great anxiety, +and quoted the long-ago expressed opinion of ancient family physicians, +who possibly turned uneasily in their decent graves. But the gist of the +whole was, that they did not want children, and Dr. Saxham had such a +great and justly-earned reputation in skilful and delicate operations ... +and, in short, would he not be compliant and oblige? They would pay +anything. Money was positively no object.</p> + +<p>How many such tempting sirens sing in the ears of young, rising +professional men, who are hampered by honourable debts which threaten to +impede and drag them down; who are possessed of high ideals and moral +scruples, which, not being essentially, fundamentally embedded and +ingrained in the conscience of the man, may possibly be argued away; who +have not implanted in their souls and hearts the high reverence for +motherhood and the deep tenderness for helpless infancy that distinguished +Owen Saxham!</p> + +<p>He heard this woman out, as he had heard all the others. He began as he +had begun with every one of them—the delicate, titled aristocrats, the +ambitious Society beauties, the popular actresses, the women who envied +these and read about them in the illustrated interviews published in the +fashion-papers, and sighed to be interviewed also—to not one of these had +he weighed out one drachm less of the bitter salutary medicine that he now +administered to Mrs. Bough.</p> + +<p>He invariably began with the personal peril and the inevitable risk. +Strange how they ignored it, blinded themselves to it, thrust it, the +grinning, threatening Death's-head, on one side. Of course, he talked like +that! It was most candid of him, and most conscientious. But if they were +willing to take the risk—and antiseptic surgery had made such <i>huge</i> +strides in these days that the risk was a mere nothing.... Besides, there +was not really need for anything like an operation, was there? He could +prescribe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> the kind of dose that ought to be taken, and everything would +then be all right.</p> + +<p>He would open that grim mouth of his yet again, and speak even more to the +purpose. To these mothers who did not wish to be mothers, who threw the +gift of Heaven back in the face of Heaven, preferring artificial +barrenness to natural fecundity, and who made of their bodies, that should +have brought forth healthy, wholesome sons and daughters of their race, +tombs and sepulchres—to these he told the truth, in swift, sharp, +trenchant sentences, that, like the keen sterilised blade of the surgical +knife, cut to heal. When they argued with him, saying that the thing was +done, that everybody knew it was done, and that it always would be done, +by other men as brilliant as, and less scrupulous than, the homilist; he +admitted the force of their arguments. Let other men of his great calling +pile up and amass wealth, if they chose, by tampering with the unclean +thing. Owen Saxham would none of it. At this juncture the woman would have +hysterics of the weeping or the scolding kind, or would be convinced of +the righteousness of the forlorn cause he championed, or would pretend the +hysterics or the conviction. Generally she pretended to the latter, and +swam or stumbled out, pulling down her veil to mask the rage and hatred in +her haggard eyes, and went to that other man. Then, after a brief absence +accounted for as a "rest cure," she would shine forth again upon her +world, smiling, triumphant, prettier than ever, since she had begun to +make up a little more. Or, as a woman who had passed through the Valley of +the Shadow, with only her own rod and staff of vanity and pride to comfort +her, she would emerge from that seclusion a nervous wreck, and take to +pegging or chloral or spiritualism. Most rarely she would not emerge at +all, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin and +carriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their +boudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had attended her. For of +course he had bungled shockingly, or everything would have gone off as +right as rain for that poor dear thing!</p> + +<p>Little Mrs. Bough was of the type of woman that pretends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> to be convinced. +She had cried bitterly in the beginning, as she confessed to Saxham that +she was not really married to Bough, and that the said Bough, whom Saxham +had always suspected of being a scoundrel, would certainly go off with +"one of them other women and leave her if she went and 'ad a byby." She +cried even more bitterly afterwards, as she wondered how she ever could 'a +dreamed o' being that wicked! Bough might kill her—that he might!—or go +back to South Africa without her; she never would give in, not now. Never +now—the Doctor might depend upon that, she assured him, drying her +swollen eyes with a cheap lace-edged handkerchief loaded with patchouli. +She was shaken and nervous, and in need of a sedative, and Saxham, having +the drugs at hand, made her up a simple draught, unluckily omitting to +make a memorandum of the prescription in his pocket-book, and gave her the +first dose of it before she went away, profuse in thanks, and carrying the +bottle.</p> + +<p>And he saw his waiting patients, and stepped into his waiting brougham, +and, having for once no urgent call upon his professional attention, dined +with Mildred at Pont Street, and was coaxed into promising to take her to +the opening performance of a classic play which was to be revived three +nights later at a fashionable West End theatre. Mildred had set her heart +upon being seen in a box at this particular function, and Saxham had had +some trouble to gratify her wish.</p> + +<p>He remembered with startling clearness every remote detail of that night +at the theatre. Mildred had looked exquisitely fair and girlish in her +white dress, with a necklace of pearls he had given her rising and falling +on the lovely virginal bosom, where the lover's eyes dwelt and lingered in +the masterful hunger of his heart. Soon, soon, that hunger of his for +possession would be gratified! It was April, and at the end of July, when +work was growing slack, they would be married. They were going North for +the honeymoon. A wealthy and grateful patient of Saxham's had placed at +his disposal a grey, historic Scotch turret-mansion, standing upon mossy +lawns, with woods of larch and birch and ancient Spanish chestnuts all +about it, looking over the silver Tweed. In the heat and hurry of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> his +daily round of work, Saxham, who had spent an autumn holiday at this +place, would find himself dreaming about it. The smell of the heather +would spice the air that was no longer hot and sickly with the effluvia of +the city, and the hum of the drowsy black bees, and the cooing of the +wood-pigeons would replace the din of the London traffic, and Mildred's +eyes would be looking into his, and her cool, fragrant lips would be +freely yielded, and her arms would be about his neck, and all those secret +aspirations and yearnings and dreams of wedded joy would be realised at +last.</p> + +<p>He grinned to himself sitting there in the hot darkness of the South +African night, the great white stars and the vast purple dome they +throbbed in shut out of sight by the miserable little gaily-papered +ceiling with its cornice of gilt wood, remembering that everything had +ended there. Thenceforth no more hopes, no dreams, for the man whom Fate +and Destiny, hitherto propitious and obliging, had conspired to lash with +scourges, and drive with goads, and hound with despairs and horrors to the +sheer brink where Madness waits to hurl the desperate over upon the jagged +rocks below.</p> + +<p>He supped with them at Pont Street. Mildred came down to say good-night at +the door.</p> + +<p>"Have you been happy?" he had asked, framing the sweet young face in +tender hands, and looking in the pretty, gentle brown eyes.</p> + +<p>"You have been so very dear and kind to-night," she had answered, "how +could I have helped being happy? And He"—she meant the Semitic +actor-manager, whom she romantically adored; whose thick, flabby features +and pale gooseberry orbs, thickly outlined in blue pencil, eyebrowed with +brown grease-paint; whose long, shapeless body, eloquent, expressive +hands, and legs that were very good as legs go, taking them separately, +but did not match, had been that night, his admirers declared, moved and +possessed by the very spirit of Shakespearean Tragedy—"He was so great! +Don't you agree with me—marvellously great?"</p> + +<p>Saxham had laughed and kissed the enthusiast. It had appeared to him a +dreary performance enough, or it would have, had it not been for Mildred +and the dear glamour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> with which her presence had invested the great +gilded auditorium, with its rows of bored, familiar, notable faces in the +stalls, representing Society, Art, Literature, Music, and Finance; its pit +and gallery crowded with organised bodies of theatre-goers, one party +certain to boo where the other applauded, riot and disorder the inevitable +result, unless by a coincidence rare as snow at Midsummer the rival +associations might be won upon to display a unanimity of approval, upon +which the dramatic Press-critics would rapturously descant in the +newspapers next morning.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> + + +<p>Saxham said his lingering sweet good-night, and shut Mildred into the +warm, lighted hall, and ran down the steps, and hailed a passing hansom, +and was driven back to Chilworth Street. It had rained, and the heat, +excessive for April, had abated, and the wise, experienced stars looked +down between drifting veils of greyish vapour upon the little human lives +passing below.</p> + +<p>As he jumped down at his door and paid his cabman, his quick eye noticed a +bicycle leaning against the area-railings. One of his poorer patients was +waiting for the Doctor. Or a messenger had been sent to summon him. He let +himself into the lighted hall, whistling the pretty plaintive melody of +Ophelia's song.</p> + +<p>A woman sat on the oak bench under the electric globe, her little +huddled-up figure making rather a sordid blotch of drab against the +strong, rich background of the wall, coloured Pompeian red, and hung with +fine old prints in black frames. Her tawdry hat lay beside her, her +haggard eyes were set, staring at the opposite wall; her lower jaw hung +lax; the saliva dribbled from the corner of her underlip; her yellow, +rigid hands gripped the edge of the bench. It was the woman who passed as +the wife of the man Bough. And in instant, vivid, wrathful realisation of +the desperate reason of her being there, Saxham cried out so loudly that +the servant who had let her in and was waiting up for his master in the +basement heard the words:</p> + +<p>"Are you mad? What do you mean by coming here?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Haven't I told you that I +will have nothing to do with you and your affairs...."</p> + +<p>The voice that issued from her blue lips might have been a scream, judging +by the wrung anguish of the awful face she turned upon him; but it was no +more than a dry, clicking whisper that the now listening servant could +barely hear:</p> + +<p>"Don't be 'ard on a woman ... hin trouble, Doctor."</p> + +<p>"Hard on you.... On the contrary, I have been too considerate," he said, +steeling his heart against pity. "You must go home to your husband, Mrs. +Bough, or apply elsewhere for medical advice. I have none to give you."</p> + +<p>His square face was very stern as he took the cab-whistle from the +hall-salver, that was packed with cards and notes, and letters that had +come by the last post, and a telegram or two. She moaned as he laid his +hand on the knob of the hall-door.</p> + +<p>"It wasn't my doings, Doctor.... Hi told Bough what you said. Hi did, +faithful ... an' 'e swore if you wasn't the man to do what 'e wanted, 'e'd +be damned but 'e'd find a woman as would! And she come next night—a +little, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' an' shakin'. +Five pounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' shiverin'. An' he wasn't to send +no more to the haddress he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Always +move hout ... she says, after a fresh job! Oh, my Gawd! An' Bough, he +hordered me, an' Hi 'ad to give in. An' to-night Hi reckoned Hi was dyin' +an' 'e said Hi best harsk you, 'e was about fed up with women an' their +blooming sicknesses. So Hi biked 'ere because Hi couldn't walk. An' +now!..." She groaned: "Hi <i>ham</i> dyin', aren't Hi?"</p> + +<p>Even to an observation less skilled than that of the expert medical +practitioner the signs of swift and speedy dissolution were written on the +insignificant, once pretty, little face. Dying, the miserable little +creature had ridden to Chilworth Street, hastening her own inevitable end +by the stupendous act of folly, and ensuring Saxham's. That certainty had +pierced him, even as the first horrible convulsion seized her and wrenched +her sideways off the bench. He caught her, and shouted for his man, and +they carried her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> into the consulting-room, and laid her on a sofa, and he +did what might be done, knowing that his mercy on her involved swift and +pitiless retribution upon himself. Mrs. Bough died three hours later, as +the grey dawn straggled through the blinds, and the men with the district +ambulance waited at the door, and Dr. Owen Saxham went about his work that +day with a strange sensation of expecting some heavy blow that was about +to fall. It fell upon the day following the Coroner's Inquest. He was +sitting down to breakfast when a Superintendent of Police arrested him +upon a warrant from Scotland Yard.</p> + +<p>His servant, very pale, had announced that the Superintendent wished to +see the Doctor. The Superintendent was in the room, courteously saluting +Saxham, before the man had fairly got out the words.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning, sir. A pleasant day!"</p> + +<p>"Unlike the business that brings you here, I think, Mr. Superintendent?" +said Saxham, with his square jaw set. His man spilt the coffee and hot +milk over the cloth in trying to fill his master's cup. "You are nervous, +Tait. You had better go downstairs, I think, unless——" Saxham looked +interrogatively at the burly, officially-clad figure of the Law.</p> + +<p>"No, sir, thank you. We do not at present require your man, but it is my +duty to tell him that he had better not be out of the way, in case his +testimony is wanted."</p> + +<p>"You hear?" said Saxham; and as white-faced Tait fled, trembling, to the +lower regions: "Of course, you are here," he went on, pouring out the +coffee himself with a firm hand, and looking steadily at the +Superintendent, "with regard to the case of Mrs. Bough? I have expected +that a magistrate's inquiry would follow the Inquest. It seemed only +natural——"</p> + +<p>The Superintendent interrupted, holding up a large hand.</p> + +<p>"It is my duty to tell you, Dr. Saxham, that everything you say will be +taken down and used against you in evidence."</p> + +<p>"Naturally," said Saxham, putting sugar in his coffee. The sugar was used +against him. It amused him now to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> remember that. The Superintendent had +never seen a gentleman more cool, he told the magistrate.</p> + +<p>"You see, sir, this Case has been fully considered by the authorities, and +it has an ugly look; and it has therefore been decided to charge you with +causing the death of the woman Bough by an illegal act, performed here, in +your consulting-room, on the twentieth instant, when she visited you ..."</p> + +<p>"For the first time," put in Saxham quietly.</p> + +<p>"That may be or may not be," said the Superintendent. "You were often at +her husband's place of business, you know, and may have seen her or not +seen her."</p> + +<p>"As she used to be in Bough's shop, it is possible that a great many of +the man's customers besides myself did see her," Saxham went on, eating +his breakfast.</p> + +<p>"One of my men out there in the hall—I've noticed you looking towards the +door——" began the Superintendent.</p> + +<p>"Wondering what the shuffling and breathing at the keyhole meant?" said +Saxham quietly. "Thank you for explaining."</p> + +<p>"One of my men will fetch a cab when you have finished breakfast, and +then, sir," said the Superintendent, "I am afraid I must trouble you to +come with me to Paddington Police Station."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Saxham, frowning, "unless you object to using my +brougham, which will be at the door"—he looked at his silver table-clock, +a present from a grateful patient—"in ten minutes' time."</p> + +<p>"I don't at all mind that, sir," agreed the obliging Superintendent; "and +the men can follow in the cab. Any objection?"</p> + +<p>Saxham had winced and flushed scarlet to the hair.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake, don't make a procession of it! Let things be kept as +quiet as possible for the sake of my—family—and—my friends." He thought +with agony of Mildred. They were to be married in July, unless——</p> + +<p>The Superintendent coughed behind his glove. "The question of Bail will +rest with the magistrate, of course," he said. "But I should expect that +it would be admitted, upon responsible persons entering into the customary +recognisances."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> + +<p>Saxham rose. He had drunk the coffee, but he could not eat. "Like all the +rest of them, in spite of his show of coolness," thought the +Superintendent.</p> + +<p>"I will ask you for time to telephone to some friends who will, I have no +doubt, be willing to give the required undertaking, and arrange for a +colleague to visit my patients. You will take a glass of wine while I step +into the next room? The telephone is there, on the writing-table."</p> + +<p>"And a loaded revolver in the drawer underneath, and poisons of all kinds +handy on the shelves of a neat little cabinet," thought the +Superintendent. But he said: "With pleasure, sir, only I must trouble you +to put up with my company."</p> + +<p>A tingling thrill of revulsion ran through Saxham. He set his teeth, and +conquered the furious, momentary impulse to knock down this big, burly, +smooth-spoken blue-uniformed official.</p> + +<p>"Ah, very well. The usual procedure in cases of this kind. Please come +this way. But take a glass of wine first. There are glasses on the +sideboard there, and claret and port in those decanters."</p> + +<p>"To your very good health, Dr. Saxham, sir, and a speedy and favourable +ending to—the present—difficulty." The Superintendent emptied a bumper +neatly, and with discreet relish, and followed Saxham into the +consulting-room, and once more, at the sound of the measured footfall +padding behind him over the thick carpet, the suspect's blood surged madly +to his temples, and his hands clenched until the nails drove deep into the +palms. For from that moment began the long, slow torture of watching and +following, and dogging by the suspicious, vigilant, observant Man In Blue.</p> + +<p>A Treasury Prosecution succeeded the Police-Court Inquiry, and the accused +was formally arrested upon the criminal charge, and committed to Holloway +pending the Trial. The Trial took place before Mr. Justice Bodmin in the +following July, occupying five days of oppressive heat in the thrashing +out of that vexed question, the guilt or innocence of Owen Saxham, M.D., +F.R.C.S. who for airless, stifling years of weeks had eaten and drunk and +slept and waked in the Valley of the Shadow of Penal Servitude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> Who was +conveyed from the dock to the cell and from the cell to the dock by +warders and policemen, rumbling through back streets and unfrequented ways +in a shiny prison-van. Who came at last to look upon the Owen Saxham of +this hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crown +reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a +different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate +described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an +unheard-of combination of adverse circumstances.</p> + +<p>Things went badly. The case against the prisoner looked extremely black. +That monstrous figure of Owen Saxham, based upon an ingenious hypothesis +of guilt, and plastered over with a marvellous mixture of truths and +falsities, facts and conjectures, grew uglier and more sinister every day.</p> + +<p>The principal witness, the bereaved husband of the hapless victim, dressed +in deep mourning and neatly handled by Counsel, evoked a display of +handkerchiefs upon his every appearance in the witness-box, from the smart +Society women seated near the Bench. Many of them had been Saxham's +patients. Several had made love to him, nearly all of them had made much +of him, and quite an appreciable number of them had asked him to be +accommodating, and render them temporarily immune against the menace of +Maternity. These had received a curt refusal, accompanied with wholesome +advice, for which they revenged themselves now, in graceful womanly +fashion, by being quite sure the wretched man was guilty. More than +possible, was it not? they whispered behind their palm-leaf fans: it was +sultry weather, and the vendors of these made little fortunes, hawking +them outside. Was it not more than possible that he had been the dead +woman's lover? The Crown Counsel improved on this idea. Wretched little +Mrs. Bough, of infinitesimal account in Life, had become through Death a +person of importance. Much was made out of the fact that she had gone to +Chilworth Street some days previously to her deplorable ending, and +remained closeted with Dr. Saxham for some time. He had supplied her with +a bottle of medicine upon her leaving—medicine of which no memorandum was +to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> found in his notes for the day. She had taken the first dose then +and there. According to the testimony of the Accused, the bottle had +contained a harmless bromide sedative. Upon the oath of the Public +Analyst, the same bottle, handed by the husband of the deceased woman to +the Police upon the night of her death, and now produced in Court with two +or three doses of dark liquid remaining in it, contained a powerful +solution of ergotoxine—a much less innocent drug. Who should presume to +doubt its administration by the Prisoner, when the label bore directions +in his own characteristic handwriting? Who should dare to affirm his +innocence, seeing that to him his victim had hastened, almost in the act +of death, begging him, with her expiring breath, "not to be hard on a +woman," who had ignorantly trusted him, Gentlemen of the Jury! only to +find, too late, the deceptive nature of his specious promises? A whip, +cried the Bard of Avon, England's glorious, immortal Shakespeare, should +be placed in every honest hand to lash such scoundrels naked through the +world! Let that whip, in the honest hands of twelve good Britons, be—the +verdict of guilt! The Counsel for the Crown, red-hot and perspiring, sat +down mopping his streaming face, for it was tropical weather, with the +white handkerchief of a blameless life. Irrepressible applause followed, +round upon round thudding against the dingy yellow-white walls, beating +against the dirty barred skylight of the stifling, close-packed Court. +Then the Judge interposed, and the clapping of hands and thumping of stick +and sunshade ferrules upon the dirty floor died down, and the Counsel for +the Defence got up to plead for his man, who, by the way, he firmly +believed to be guilty.</p> + +<p>That remembrance made the Dop Doctor merry again, this scorching night in +Gueldersdorp, five years later. But it was ugly mirth, especially when he +recalled his agony of sympathy upon hearing, through her mother, that +Mildred was ill in bed. Ah! how he hated the simpering, whispering, +sneering, giggling women in Court when he pictured her, his innocent +darling, his sweet girl, suffering for love of him and sorrow for him. +David, detained by onerous duties at Regimental Headquarters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> throughout +the whole of the Case, wrote chilly but fraternally expressed letters on +blue official paper. Of his mother, of his father, Owen dared not think. +Innocent as he was, the shame of his position, the obloquy of the Trial, +must be a branding shame to them for ever.</p> + +<p>It had killed them, the Dop Doctor remembered, within a few years of each +other—the hale old Squire and Madam, his Welsh wife, feared by the South +Dorset village folks for her caustic tongue, beloved for her generous +heart, her liberal nature. It was Mildred who he had believed would die if +the Verdict went against him—Mildred, who had consoled herself so quickly +and so well—Mildred, whom he had held a spotless blossom of Paradise, a +young saint in purity and singleness of heart, in comparison with those +other women.</p> + +<p>Bah! what a besotted idiot he had been! She was as they were. The nodding +of their towering hats was before his eyes; the subdued titter that +accompanied their whispered comments was in his ears; the lavender, white +rose, and violet essences with which they perfumed their baths and +sprinkled their clothes were in his nostrils; suffocatingly, as his +Counsel went on pleading. The intention of his trenchant cross-questioning +of Bough, who had lied from the beginning, like a true son of the Devil, +his father, showed plainly now. Little by little the evidence accumulated.</p> + +<p>Here, free and unsuspect and doing his best to send another man to Penal +Servitude, was the man who had all to gain by fixing the guilt upon the +Accused. He had sent the woman, his mistress, to the prisoner; he had +resented the prisoner's refusal to commit or to abet a dangerous and +illegal operation. He had compelled his hapless victim to submit herself +to the hands of a wretch who lived by such deeds. Possibly he had sickened +of his poor toy—he had told her as much. Possibly he had determined, by a +bold and daring stroke, to free himself of a wearisome burden, and let +another man pay the penalty for his own crime. The substitution of the +lethal drug found in the bottle for the harmless bromide mixture given to +Mrs. Bough by Dr. Saxham would naturally suggest itself to such a wretch, +whose calculating cleverness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> had been crowned with success by the +culminating masterstroke, admirable in its simplicity, damnable in its +fiendish cunning, of sending the unhappy woman whose deliberate murder he +had really planned and carried out, to die upon the threshold of the +innocent victim of this diabolical plot. Let those who heard hesitate +before they played into the hands of a villain by condemning the blameless +to suffer! Let them look at the young man before them, whose hard work had +won him, early in life, his brilliant position as one of the recognised +pioneers of the new School of Surgery, as an admitted authority on +Clinical Medicine, whose wedding-bells—the handkerchiefs came out at +this—had rung to-morrow but for this harrowing and bitter stroke of +adverse Destiny. Which would they have? Let the Jury decide for Christ or +Barabbas! He spoke in all reverence, because the upright, innocent, +charitable, self-denying life of a diligent healer of men would support +the analogy of Christ-likeness beside that of the principal witness in +this Case, the evil liver, the slanderer, the ex-thief and burglar, the +English ticket-of-leave man who had emigrated to South Africa eighteen +years previously, had enlisted under a false name in the Cape Mounted +Police, had deserted, been traced to Kimberley, and there lost sight of, +and who, under the name of Bough, had recently returned to England, giving +himself out as an Afrikander, and setting up in business in London upon +the accumulated savings of a career most probably in keeping with his +abominable record.</p> + +<p>Warders from Wormwood Scrubbs and Portland Prisons were there to swear to +the identity of Abraham Brake, <i>alias</i> Lister, <i>alias</i> Bough, whose +photographs, thumb-prints, and measurements an official from the Criminal +Identification Department of Scotland Yard was prepared to place before +the Court, for whose re-arrest, as a ticket-of-leave man who had failed to +keep in proper touch with the Police, an officer with a warrant waited. +What, then, was to be the Verdict of the Jury? Was Dr. Owen Saxham +innocent or guilty? If innocent, then, in the name of God, let him go +forth from bondage, to the unutterable relief of those who waited in +anguish for the Verdict. His father, his mother, and the fair young +girl—the Court was drowned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> in tears at this last touching reference, +even his Lordship the Judge being observed to remove and wipe eyeglasses +that were gemmy with emotion, as Counsel dwelt upon the touching picture +of the sorrowing bride-elect, whose orange-blossoms had been blighted by +the breath of this hideous, this unbearable, this most unfounded +charge....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> + + +<p>The Judge summed up, with an evident bias in favour of the Accused. An old +advocate in criminal causes, his Lordship had formed his own opinion of +the principal witness for the Crown, though there was no evidence to prove +the guilt of the astute Mr. Abraham Brake, <i>alias</i> Lister, <i>alias</i> Bough.</p> + +<p>The Jury retired, to return immediately. The Verdict "Not Guilty" was +received with applause and cheers. Bough departed, to pay the prison +penalty of not keeping in touch with the Police.... More cheers, strongly +deprecated by the Judge. The Dop Doctor could hear that ironical clapping +and braying five years off. It was over, over! He was free! Oh, the +mockery of the word!</p> + +<p>His Counsel shook his hand warmly, and several old friends and colleagues +pressed round him with hearty congratulations. Then a telegram was handed +to him.</p> + +<p>"No bad news, I hope," said the advocate who had defended, seeing Saxham's +lips blanch. "You have had enough trouble to last for some time, I +imagine?"</p> + +<p>"It appears as if my measure was not quite full enough," said Saxham +quietly. "My father died suddenly last night, down at our place in South +Dorset. The wire says, 'An attack of cerebral hæmorrhage,' probably +brought on by worry and distress of mind over this damned affair of mine." +He ground his teeth together, and went on: "I must go to my mother without +delay. How soon can I get away from here?"</p> + +<p>It was oddly difficult to realise that all the doors were open, and that +the following shadow of the Man In Blue would no longer dog his footsteps. +It was strange to drive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> home in the brougham of a friend to Chilworth +Street, and let himself into the dusty, neglected, close-smelling, shut-up +house. All the servants were out; probably they had been making holiday +through all the weeks that had preceded the Trial. His man returned as the +master finished packing a portmanteau for that journey down to +Dorsetshire. Saxham left him to finish while he changed his clothes and +scrawled a letter to Mildred. Nothing else but this death could have kept +him from hurrying to the embrace of those dear arms. As it was, he half +expected her to rush in upon him, stammering, weeping, clinging to him in +her overwhelming relief and gladness.... At every rumble and stoppage of +wheels in the street, at every ring, he made sure that she was coming. But +she did not come, and he sent his man to Pont Street with his letter, and +went down into Dorsetshire by special train from Waterloo, and found the +dead man's dogcart waiting for him, with the old bay cob in harness, and +the old coachman who had taught him to ride his pony, waiting, with a band +of crape about his sleeve, and drove through the deep, ferny lanes to the +old home standing in its mantle of midsummer leafage and blossom in the +wide gardens whose myrtle and lavender hedges overhung the beach below. +There was a little, old, bent, white-haired woman in a shabby black gown +and white India shawl waiting for him on the threshold, and only by the +indomitable, unquailing spirit that looked out of her bright black eyes +did Owen Saxham recognise his mother. She called him her David's dearest +son, and her own boy, and took both his hands, and drew his head down, and +kissed him solemnly upon the forehead.</p> + +<p>"That is for your father, my dear," she said. "He never doubted you for +one moment, Owen. And this is for myself. We have both believed in you +implicitly throughout. We would not even write and tell you so. It would +have seemed, your father thought, like admitting, tacitly, that we doubted +our son. But other people believed you guilty, and oh! Owen, I think it +killed him!"</p> + +<p>"I know that it has killed him," Owen Saxham said simply. The early +morning light showed to the mother's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> eyes the ravages wrought in her +son's face by the mental anguish and the physical strain of those terrible +weeks that were over, and Mrs. Saxham, for the first time since the +Squire's death, burst into a passion of weeping. Owen's eyes were dry, +even when he stooped to kiss the high, broad forehead of the grand old +grey head that lay upon the snowy, lavender-scented pillow in the cool, +airy death-chamber, where the perfume of the climbing roses that flowered +about the open casements came in drifts across the sharp, clean odour of +disinfectant.</p> + +<p>Captain Saxham arrived late that night. His greeting of his brother was +stiff and constrained; his grey eyes avoided Owen's blue ones; he did not +refer to the events of the past ten weeks. He had always had a habit of +twisting and biting at one of the short, thick ends of his frizzy light +brown moustache. Now he wrenched and gnawed at it incessantly, and his +usually florid complexion had deteriorated to a muddy pallor. Black mufti +did not suit the handsome martial figure, and there is no dwelling so +wearisome as a house of mourning, when the servants move about on tiptoe, +wearing faces of funereal solemnity, and the afternoon tea-tray is carried +in in state, like the corpse of a domestic usage on its way to the +cemetery, with the silver spirit-kettle bubbling behind it as chief +mourner. But, as the elder son, there was plenty to occupy Captain Saxham. +There was business to be transacted with the Squire's solicitor, with his +bailiff, with one or two of the principal tenants. There were the +arrangements to be made for the Funeral, and for the extension of +hospitality to relatives and friends who came from a distance to attend +it. When it was over and the long string of County carriages had driven +home to their respective coach-houses, Owen Saxham returned to town.</p> + +<p>"Give my dear love to Mildred. Tell her, if she grudged the first sight of +you to me, she will forgive me when she has a son of her own," his mother +said.</p> + +<p>"You talk as though she were my wife!" he said, the bitter lines about his +set mouth softening in a smile.</p> + +<p>"She would be but for what is past," said Mrs. Saxham. "She must be soon, +for your sake. Your father would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> wished that there should be as +little delay as possible. Marry quietly at once, and take her abroad. If +she loves you, as I know she does, and must, she will not regret the +wedding-gown from Paquin's and the six bridesmaids in Directoire hats."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For that deferred wedding was to have been a gorgeous and impressive +function at St. George's, Hanover Square, with a Bishop in lawn sleeves to +pronounce the nuptial benediction, palms, Japanese lilies, smilax, and +white Rambler roses everywhere, while the celebrated "Non Angli sed +Angeli" choir of boy-choristers had been specially engaged to render the +anthem with proper fervour and give due effect to "The Voice that +Breathed."</p> + +<p>Owen promised and went back to London. There were cards and envelopes upon +the salver in the hall, but not one from Mildred. That stabbed him to the +heart.... Not a line, O God!—not a written line, in answer to that letter +in which he told her of the acquittal, and of his father's death, and of +his own anguish at having to answer the stern call of filial duty, and +leave dear Love uncomforted by even one kiss after all these weeks of +famine, and hurry away to lay that grand grey head in the vault that +covered so many Saxhams. Not a line. But here was the letter, which his +idiot of a servant, demoralised by the recent catastrophe, had forgotten +to send on lying waiting upon the writing-table in his study. He snatched +at it in desperate haste, and tore the envelope open.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Her letter bore the date of that day. She said she had written before and +torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true +to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent +epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that +nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever +marry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, +and presents, and letters, and would ever remain <i>his friend</i> (underlined) +Mildred. In a rather wobbly postscript, she begged him not to write or to +attempt to see her, because her decision was irrevocable. She spelt the +word with only one <i>r</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> + +<p>Saxham read the letter three times deliberately. The walls of the castle +he had built, and fondly believed to be a work of Cyclopean masonry, had +come tumbling about his ears, and lo! the huge blocks were only bits of +painted card, and the Lady of the Castle, his true love, was the false +Queen, after all. He folded up the letter and put it away in his +pocket-book, and went over to the mantel-glass and looked steadily at the +reflection of his own square face, haggard and drawn and ghastly, with +eyes of startling blue flaring out from under a scowling smudge of meeting +black eyebrows. He laughed harshly, and a mocking devil looked out of +those desperate eyes, and laughed back. He unlocked an oak-carved, +silver-mounted cellaret, and got out a decanter of brandy, and filled a +tumbler, and drank the liquor off. It numbed the unbearable mental agony, +though it had apparently no other effect. But probably he was drunk when +he rang the bell and said quietly to his man:</p> + +<p>"Tait, do you believe there is a God?"</p> + +<p>Tait's smooth, waxy countenance did not easily express surprise. He +answered, as though the question had been the most commonplace and +ordinary of queries:</p> + +<p>"Can't say I do, sir. I reckon the parsons are responsible for floating +'Im, and that they made a precious good thing out of bearin' stock in +Heaven until the purchasers began to ask for delivery, and after that...." +He chuckled dryly. "I've lived with one or two of 'em, and, if I may say +so, sir—I know the breed!"</p> + +<p>"He knows ... the breed ..." repeated Saxham heavily.</p> + +<p>He asked another question, in the same thick, hesitating way, as he moved +across the carpet to the oak-and-silver cellaret.</p> + +<p>"Tait, when things went damned badly with you, when that other man let you +in for the bill you backed for him, and that girl you were to have married +went off with someone else, what did you do to keep yourself from +brooding? Because you must have done something, man, as you're alive +to-day!"</p> + +<p>Tait looked at his master dubiously as he poured out more brandy, and went +over and stood upon the hearthrug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> with his back to the empty fireplace, +drinking it in gulps. "I did what you're doing now, sir: I took a sight of +drink to keep the trouble down. And——" He hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Saxham, nodding over the tumbler.</p> + +<p>"You're not like other gentlemen in your ways, sir," said smooth Tait, +"and that makes me 'esitate in saying it. But I took on a gay, agreeable +young woman of the free-and-easy sort, and went in for a bit o' pleasure, +and more drink along with it. One nail drives out another, you know, sir. +And if the young lady have thrown you hover——"</p> + +<p>"Why, you damned, white-gilled, prying brute! you must have been reading +my correspondence," said Saxham thickly, as he lifted the tumbler to his +mouth.</p> + +<p>Tait grinned. He could venture to tell his master, drunk, what he would +not have dared to tell him sober.</p> + +<p>"No need for that, sir. I've come and gone between this house and Pont +Street too often not to know what was in the wind. Why, Captain Saxham was +there with her often and often when you never suspected...."</p> + +<p>The tumbler fell from Saxham's hand, and struck the fender, and smashed +into a hundred glittering bits.</p> + +<p>"Go!" said Tait's master, perfectly, suddenly, dangerously sober, and +pointing to the door. The man delayed to finish his sentence.</p> + +<p>"While you were in Holloway, sir, and all through the Trial...."</p> + +<p>The door, contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. He +vanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-faced +black figure seemed to leap upon him....</p> + +<p>"I've 'ad an escape for my life!" he said, having reached in a series of +bounds the safer regions below stairs.</p> + +<p>"Of the Doctor?... Go on with your rubbishing nonsense!" said the cook.</p> + +<p>"What did you go and do to upset 'im, pore dear?" demanded the housemaid, +who was more imaginative, and cherished the buddings of a romantic passion +for one who should be for ever nameless:</p> + +<p>"Her at Pont Street has wrote to give 'im the go-by—that's what she've +done," said pale-faced Tait, wiping his dewy brow. "And seeing the Doctor +for the first time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> since I've been in his service a bit overtook with +liquor, and more free and easy like than customary—being a gentleman you +or me would 'esitate to take a liberty with in the ordinary way o' +things—I thought I'd let 'im know about the Goings On."</p> + +<p>"Of them two...." interpolated the cook—"Her and the Captain?"</p> + +<p>"Shameless, I call 'em!" exclaimed the incandescent housemaid as Tait +signified assent.</p> + +<p>"'Aven't they kep' it dark, though!" wondered the cook.</p> + +<p>"They're what I call," stated Tait, who had not quite got over the +desertion of the young woman he was to have married, and who had gone off +with somebody else, "a precious downy couple. And what I say is—it's a +Riddance!"</p> + +<p>"How did 'e take it, pore dear?" gulped the housemaid.</p> + +<p>"Like he's took everythink—that is, up to the present moment," admitted +Tait. "But this is about the last straw."</p> + +<p>The housemaid dissolved in tears.</p> + +<p>"He'll get another young lady," said the cook confidently. "And him so +'andsome an' so clever, an' with such heaps of carriage-swells for +patients."</p> + +<p>Tait shook his prim, respectable head.</p> + +<p>"The swells'll show their tongues to another man now, my gal, who 'asn't +the dirt of the Old Bailey on his coat-sleeve. Whistle for patients now, +that's what the doctor may. Why, every one of 'em has paid their bills, +and them that haven't have asked for their accounts to be sent in. And +it's 'Lady So-and-so presents her compliments,' instead of 'Dear Dr. +Saxham.' Done for, he is, at least as far as the West End's concerned.... +Mind, I don't set up to be infallible, but experience justifies a certain +amount of cocksureness, and what I say is—Done for! Best he can do +is—sell the practice, and lease, and plate, and pictures, furniture, and +so on, for whatever he can get—the movables would have provoked spirited +biddin' at auction if the verdict had been Guilty, but, under the +circumstances, they won't bring a twentieth part of their valoo—and go +Abroad." Tait's gesture was large and vague.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Foreign parts. Pore dear, it do seem cruel!" sighed the cook.</p> + +<p>"And 'is young lady false to 'im, and all. I wonder he don't do away with +hisself," sobbed the housemaid. "I do, reely!"</p> + +<p>"With all them wicked knives and deadly bottles handy," added the cook.</p> + +<p>"Not him!" said Tait. "I'm ready to lay any man the sporting odd against +him committing sooicide. He's not the sort. Lord! what was that?"</p> + +<p>That was only the oversetting of a chair upstairs.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> + + +<p>While the servants talked in the kitchen the master had been sitting +quietly in the darkening study. All without and within the man was +eddying, swirling blackness. Heat beat and glowed upon his forehead, like +the radiation from molten metal; there was a winnowing and fanning as of +giant wings or leaping of furnace-fires. The blood in his throbbing +temples sang a dull, tuneless song. But presently he became aware of +another kind of singing.</p> + +<p>It was a little hissing voice that came from the inside of the +oak-and-silver cellaret. And it sang a song that the man who sat near had +never heard before.</p> + +<p>"Why think of the sharp lancet or the keen razor, why long for the swift +dismissing pang of the fragrant acid, or the leap down upon the +railway-track under the crushing, pulping iron wheels?" sang the little +voice. "I can give you Forgetfulness. I can bring you Death. Not that +death of the body which, for all you know, may mean a keener, more perfect +capability to live and suffer on the part of the Soul, stripped from the +earthly husk that has burdened and deadened it. The Death that is Death in +Life.... Here am I, ready to be your minister. Drink deep, and die!"</p> + +<p>The man who heard lifted his white, wild, desperate face. The song came +more clearly.</p> + +<p>"Wronged, outraged, betrayed of the God you blindly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> believed in and the +man and the woman who had your passionate love, your absolute faith, have +your revenge upon the One—as upon those two others. Degrade, cast down, +deface, the image of your Maker in you. Hurl back every gift of His, +prostitute and debase every faculty. Cease to believe, denying His Being +with the Will He forged and freed. Your Body, is it not your own, to do +with as you choose? Your Soul, is it not your helpless prisoner, while you +keep it in its cage of clay? Revenge, revenge, through the body and the +soul, upon Him who has mocked you! Do you not hear Him laugh as you sit +there desolate in the darkness—poor, broken reed that thought itself an +oak of might—alone, while your brother kisses the sweet lips that were +yours. David and Mildred are laughing too, at you. Hasten to efface every +memory of the lying kisses she has given you upon the bosoms of the +Daughters of Pleasure! Love, revel, drink! Drink, I say, and you will be +able to laugh at the One and the two...."</p> + +<p>The little hissing voice drove Saxham mad. He leaped up, frenzied, +oversetting the chair. He tore open and threw wide the doors of the +oak-and-silver cellaret, and sought in it with shaking hands. He found a +bottle of champagne and the brandy-decanter, and a long tumbler, and +knocked off the wired neck of the bottle against the chimneypiece, and +crashed the foaming wine into the crystal, and filled up the glass with +brandy, and tossed off the stinging, bubbling, hissing mixture, and +laughed as he set the tumbler down.</p> + +<p>The thing inside the oak-and-silver cellaret laughed too.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>The hall-door shut heavily as Tait and the women in the kitchen sat and +listened. They had not spoken since the crash of the falling chair in the +room overhead. The area-door was open to the hot, sickly night air of +London in midsummer. Tait slid noiselessly out and listened as his master +hailed a passing hansom and jumped lightly in. The flaps banged together, +the driver pulled open the roof-trap and leaned down to catch the shouted +address. Tait's sharp ear caught it too, and the knowing grin that +decorated the features of the cabman was reflected upon his decent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> smug +countenance. His tongue was in his cheek as he returned to the kitchen. +For his master had given the direction of a house of ill-fame.</p> + +<p>Thenceforwards the door would have shut for ever upon the strenuous, +honourable, cleanly, useful life of Owen Saxham, were it not that the For +Ever of humanity means only a little space of years with God—sometimes +only a little space of hours. Saxham did not need the evidence of the +shower of cheques from people who hated paying, the request from the +Committee of his Club that he would resign membership, the averted faces +of his acquaintances, the elaborate cordiality of his friends, to tell him +what he knew already. As the astute Tait had said, as Society knew +already, he was a ruined man. He had made money, but the enormous expenses +of the Defence swallowed up thousands. By bringing an action against the +Treasury he might have recovered a portion of the costs—so he was told, +but he had had enough of Law. He resigned his post at the Hospital, in +spite of a thinly-worded remonstrance from the Senior Physician. He +dismissed his servants generously. He disposed of his lease and furniture +and other property through a firm of auctioneers who robbed him, and sold +what stocks he had not realised upon, and wrote a farewell letter to his +mother, and sailed for South Africa. Thenceforwards he was to build his +nest with the birds of night, and rise from the stertorous sleep that is +born of drunkenness only to drink himself drunk again.</p> + +<p>From assiduous letter-writing friends David heard reports of his brother +that grieved him deeply. He told these things to Mildred, and they shook +their heads over them and sighed together. Poor Owen! It was most +fortunate for his family that the Jury had taken so lenient a view of the +case ... otherwise ...! They were quite certain in their own minds that +poor Owen had been culpable, if not guilty. They were married six months +later. The Directoire hats were out of date, of course, but Louis Quinze, +with Watteau trimmings suited the six bridesmaids marvellously, and the +"Non Angli sed Angeli" choir rendered the Anthem and the "Voice that +Breathed" to perfection.</p> + +<p>And Mildred, who never omitted her nightly prayers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> made a special +petition for the reformation of poor misguided Owen upon her +wedding-night.</p> + +<p>"Because we are so happy," she told David, who had found her kneeling, +white and exquisitely virginal in her lace and cambric draperies by the +bedside. "And <i>he</i> must be so miserable. And you know, though I never +<i>really</i> cared for him, he was perfectly devoted to me."</p> + +<p>"Who could help it?" cooed enamoured David, and knelt and kissed his +bride's white feet. The white feet would show no ugly stains, although to +reach the bridal bed, towards which her husband now drew her, they must +tread upon his brother's bleeding heart.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> + + +<p>The Dop Doctor lifted his head as the bell of the front door rang loudly +at the back passage-end. Two mounted officers of the Military Staff at +Gueldersdorp had trotted up the street with an orderly behind them a +moment before. The elder of the two had pulled sharply up in front of the +green door whose brass-plate flamed in the last rays of sunset. He had +dismounted lightly and gone up the steps and rung, saying something to his +companion. The other officer had saluted and ridden on, as though to carry +out some order: the orderly had come up and got off his horse and taken +the bridle of the officer's, as the Dutch dispensary-attendant, Koets, had +plodded heavily along the passage and opened the door, and now slouched +heavily back, ushering in a presumable patient.</p> + +<p>"Light the lamp," said the Dop Doctor in Dutch to the factotum, as he rose +up heavily out of his chair. "It will be dark directly."</p> + +<p>"There is no need of more light, I am obliged to you," said the stranger, +cool, alert, brown of face as of dress: a thin man, distinct of speech, +quiet of manner, and with singularly vivid eyes of light hazel. "In the +actual dark I can see quite clearly. A matter of training and habit, +because I began life as a short-sighted lad. Do we need your assistant +further?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> + +<p>In indirect answer to the pointed question, the Dop Doctor turned to the +Dutch dispensary-assistant, and said curtly:</p> + +<p>"Ga uit!"</p> + +<p>Koets went, not without a scowl at the visitor.</p> + +<p>"A sulky man and a surly master," thought the stranger, scanning with +those observant eyes of his the gaunt figure in the shabby tweed suit. +"Has seen trouble and lived hard," he added, mentally noting the haggard +lines of the square face under the massive forehead, over which a plume of +badly-brushed hair, black with threads of grey in it, fell awkwardly.</p> + +<p>"English and a University man, I should say. Those clothes were cut by a +Bond Street tailor in the height of fashion about five years ago. And the +man is in the second stage of recovery from a bout of drunkenness—unless +he drugs?" But even while the visitor was taking these memoranda, he was +saying in the customary tone of polite inquiry:</p> + +<p>"I have, I think, the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Williams?"</p> + +<p>"Sir, you have not. Dr. De Boursy-Williams has left for Cape Town with his +family. You are speaking to his temporary substitute." The bloodshot blue +eyes met his own indifferently.</p> + +<p>"Indeed! Well, I do not grudge the family if, as I believe is the case, it +chiefly ranks upon the distaff side. But the Doctor will miss a good deal +of interesting practice. As to yourself, you will allow the inquiry.... +Are you a surgeon as well as a medical practitioner?"</p> + +<p>"If I were not, I should not be here."</p> + +<p>"I will put my question differently. I trust you will not consider its +repetition offensive. Have you an extensive experience in dealing with +gunshot wounds?"</p> + +<p>Saxham said roughly:</p> + +<p>"I have experience to a certain extent. I will go no further than to say +so. I am not undergoing examination as to my professional capabilities +that I am aware of, and if you doubt them you are perfectly at liberty to +seek medical advice elsewhere."</p> + +<p>"My good sir, I <i>have</i> been elsewhere, and the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> doctor, when he +learned the purport of my visit, relished it as little as your principal +is likely to do. With the imminent prospect of a siege before us, we are +making ..." The speaker, slipping one hand behind him, moved a step +backwards and nearer to the room-door. "As I said, sir, with the imminent +prospect of a siege before us, we are making a house-to-house +requisition.... Ah, I thought as much!"</p> + +<p>The door-knob had been quietly turned, the door suddenly pulled open, +bringing with it Koets, the Dutch dispensary-attendant, whose large red +ear had been glued to the outer keyhole.</p> + +<p>"Your Dutch factotum has been listening. Pick yourself off the mat, Jan, +and take yourself out of earshot." The stranger whistled the beginning of +a pleasant little tune, with a flavour of Savoy Opera about it.</p> + +<p>"Ik heb not the neem of Jan," snarled the detected Koets, retiring in +disorder.</p> + +<p>The whistler left off in the middle of a deftly-executed embellishment to +say: "Unfortunate; because I don't know the Dutch word for spy." The keen +hazel eyes and the haggard blue ones met, and there was the faint +semblance of a smile on the grim mouth of the Dop Doctor. Keeping the door +open, the visitor went on:</p> + +<p>"I have some notes here—entries copied from the Railway freight-books. +Three weeks ago twenty carboys of carbolic acid, with a considerable +consignment of other antiseptics, surgical necessaries, drugs, and so +forth were delivered to Dr. Williams' order at this address. Frankly, as +the officer commanding Her Majesty's troops on this border, I am here to +make a sequestration of the things I have mentioned, with all other +medical and surgical requisites stored upon the premises, that are likely +to be of use to us at the Hospital. In the name of the Imperial +Government."</p> + +<p>The smile died out on the grim mouth. A sombre anger burned in the blue +eyes of the haggard man in shabby tweeds.</p> + +<p>"Damn the Imperial Government!" said the Dop Doctor.</p> + +<p>The stranger nodded in serious assent. "Certainly, damn it! It is your +privilege and mine, shared in common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> with all other Britons, to damn our +Government, as long as we remain loyal to our Queen and country."</p> + +<p>The other man quivered with a sudden uncontrollable spasm of hate, rage, +and loathing. He clenched his hand and shook it in the air as he cried:</p> + +<p>"You employ the stock phrases of your profession. They have long ceased to +mean anything to me. I have been the victim and the sacrifice of British +laws. I have been formally pardoned by the State for a crime I never +committed. I have been robbed, plundered, ruined, betrayed, by the +monstrous thing that bears the name of British Justice. And as I loathe +and hate it, so do I cast off and repudiate the name of Englishman. You +speak of the imminent prospect of a siege. What other causes have operated +to bring it about but British greed, and the British lust for paramountcy +and suzerainty and possession? Liberal, or Conservative, or Radical, or +Unionist, the diplomats and lawyers and financiers who urge on your +political machinery by bombast and bribes and catchwords and lying +promises, are swayed by one motive—governed by one desire—lands and +diamonds and gold. Wealth that is the property of other men, soil that has +been fertilised by the sweat of a nation of agriculturists, whom Great +Britain despised until she learned that gold lay under their orchards and +cornfields." He broke into a jarring laugh. "And it is for these, the +robbers and desperadoes, that the British Army is to do its duty, and for +them that De Boursy-Williams is to help pay the piper. As for his +property, which you are about to commandeer in the name of the British +Imperial Government, I suppose I am legally responsible, being left here +in charge. Well, be it so!... I can only protest against what I am free to +regard as an act of brigandage, reflecting small credit upon your Service, +and leave you, sir, to discover the whereabouts of the carboys for +yourself!"</p> + +<p>He waved his hand contemptuously, and swung towards the door.</p> + +<p>"A moment," said the other man, "in which to assure you that the fullest +acknowledgments will be given in the case of the stores, and that their +owner will be paid for them liberally and ungrudgingly. And, granting +that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> much of what you have said is true, and that the leaven of +self-seeking is to be found in every man's nature, and that greed is the +predominating motive with those men who, more than others, work for the +building-up of an Empire and the profitable union of Britain with her +Colonies, don't you think that there may be something in the good old +footballer's motto, 'Play the game, that your side may win'?"</p> + +<p>The Dop Doctor made a slight sound that might have been of indifferent +assent or of contradiction. The other chose to take it as assent.</p> + +<p>"Take the present situation, purely as football. They have picked me as a +forward player. And I mean—to play the game!"</p> + +<p>The Dop Doctor might or might not have heard. His square, impassive face +looked as if carved in stone.</p> + +<p>"To play the game, Doctor. Perhaps I have my bone or two to pick +with—several of the Institutions of my country. Possibly, but I mean to +play the game. Fate has ridden me on a saddle-gall or two, and mixed too +much chopped straw in proportion to the beans, but—there's the game, and +I'm going to play it for all I'm worth. As an old University man, that way +of looking at things ought to appeal to you."</p> + +<p>Still no answer from the big, sullen, black-haired man in the shabby worn +clothes. But his breathing was a little quickened, and a faint, +smouldering glow of something not yet quenched in him showed in the +haggard blue eyes.</p> + +<p>"It's a confoundedly handicapped game, too, on the defending side. Doesn't +that fact rather appeal to the sportsman in you, Doctor?"</p> + +<p>The other said slowly:</p> + +<p>"I gather that the struggle will be unequal. It was stated in my hearing +yesterday afternoon that a considerable force of Boers were advancing on +Gueldersdorp from the direction of Geitfontein, and, later, that another +large body of them were on the march along the river-valley from the west. +I did not attempt to verify what I had heard from my own observation. I +was—otherwise engaged." The half-incredulous surprise that the other man +could not keep out of his eyes stung him into adding:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> "Frankly, I did not +care to trouble. It did not interest me."</p> + +<p>The Colonel said, with a dry chuckle:</p> + +<p>"No? But it will presently, though! And, seen through the glass even now, +it's an instructive spectacle. Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed and +thoroughly fed if insufficiently washed, gathering in all +quarters—marching to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, going +into laager. Ten thousand Boers, at a rough estimate, not counting the +blacks they have armed against us.... And, behind our railway-sleepers and +sand-bags, eight hundred fighting European units, twenty per cent, of them +raw civilians; and seven thousand neutral Barala and Kaffirs and Zulus in +the native Stad—an element of danger lying dormant, waiting the spark +that may hurry us all sky-high.... By God, Doctor, the game's worth +playing, except by cowards and curs!"</p> + +<p>The smouldering glow in the Dop Doctor's eyes had been fanned into a fire. +The visitor saw the flame leap, and went on:</p> + +<p>"There's a native proverb—I wonder whether you know it?—a kind of Zulu +version of the regimental motto, <i>Vestigia nulla retrorsum</i>. It runs like +this: '<i>If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die. Better go +forward and die.</i>'" He reached out a long, lean, brown right hand. "Come +forward with us, Doctor. We can do with a man like you!"</p> + +<p>The impassive face broke up. Saxham gripped the offered hand as a drowning +man might have done. He cried out hoarsely:</p> + +<p>"You don't know the sort of man I am, Colonel. But everybody else in this +cursed place knows, or should know. They call me the Dop Doctor. You +understand what that nickname implies?" He held out his shaking hands. +"Look at these! They would tell you the truth, even if I lied. What use +can a man like me be to you, or men like you? I am a drunkard, sir. I have +not gone to bed sober one night in the last five years!"</p> + +<p>There was a pause before the Colonel answered, filled up in the odd way +characteristic of the man by a softly-whistled repetition of the opening +bars of the pleasant little tune. Then he said quietly and dryly:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There is another proverb, not Latin nor Zulu, but English, which +impresses on us that it is never too late to mend!" He looked at a +tarnished Waterbury watch, worn on a horse's lip-strap. "I am due to +inspect the Hospital tomorrow at ten o'clock sharp. If you will meet me +there punctually at the half-hour, I shall have the pleasure of +introducing you to—your Colleagues of the Medical Staff. And now, if you +please, as I have just five minutes left to spare, we will have a look at +those carboys of carbolic."</p> + +<p>"They are in the old Chinese godown at the bottom of the garden," said +Saxham. He felt in one of the baggy pockets of the old tweed coat, pulled +out a key, and offered it silently to the conqueror, who motioned it back.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Keep it, if you'll be so good. We'll send a waggon and a careful man or +two round from the Army Service Stores Department within an hour; for that +stuff in your friend's carboys is more precious than rubies to us just +now—a man's life in every teaspoonful. And if, as you tell me, there is +some mercurial perchloride, Taggart and the Medical Staff will jump for +joy. What we owe to Lister, Koch, and those fellows! You'd say so if you'd +ever seen gangrene on War Hospital scale—in Afghanistan, in 1880, even as +recently as the Zululand Campaign of 1888. The Pathan and the Zulu are +slim, and the Boer is even slimmer, but the wiliest customer of 'em all is +the Microbe. No wonder Wellington's old campaigners used to slit the +throats of badly-wounded soldiers, or that the ambulance-men of Soult and +Bonaparte were merciful enough to knock on the head every poor beggar who +had been bayonetted in the body. They knew there was not the atom of a +chance. But to-day we know how to deal with the invisible enemy. Thanks to +Antiseptic Surgery, that younger daughter of Science and Genius, as some +smart fellow puts it in the <i>National Review</i>."</p> + +<p>And the pleasant little tune was whistled through to its final grace-note +as the two men went down the house-passage and crossed the garden. Verily, +to some other men that have lived since Peter of the Nets has it been +given to be fishers of their kind! This man said that night to an officer +of the Staff:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> + + +<p>"I landed twenty carboys of carbolic to-day, and a lot of other Hospital +stores, by talking football to a man who knows the game, chiefly from the +ball's point of view."</p> + +<p>"That counts to you, Colonel," called out Beauvayse, the Chief's fair, +boyish junior aide-de-camp, from the bottom of the table, "against the +awful failure you were grousing about this morning."</p> + +<p>"Ah! you mean when I tried to frighten some Sisters of Mercy into leaving +the town by painting them a luridly-coloured verbal picture of the perils +of the present situation," said the Colonel. His keen hazel eyes twinkled, +though his mouth was grave. "I ought to have remembered that you can't +scare a religious, be he or she Roman Catholic, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, +by pointing to the King of Terrors. He does to frighten lay-folk, but for +the others Death's grisly skeleton-hand holds out the Keys of Heaven."</p> + +<p>"What will it hold for some of us others, I wonder," said one of the +dinner-guests, a moody-looking civilian, of Semitic features, whose +evening clothes made a dull contrast with the mess-dress of the Staff +officers gathered about their Chief's table in his quarters at Nixey's +Hotel on the Market Square, "before this month is out?"</p> + +<p>The host leaned forward to reply:</p> + +<p>"My dear Mr. Levison ... special mention in Despatches Above, with honours +and promotion for those of us who have been approved worthy. For others, +who have tried and failed, a merciful overlooking of blunders, a generous +acceptance of the intention where the performance came short.... And for +the rest ... a grave on the yellow veld in the shadow of a rock or +thorn-bush, with the turquoise sky of day overhead, shimmering in the +white-hot sunshine; or an ocean of purple ether, ridden by what old Lucian +called 'the golden galley of the regnant Moon.' That in South Africa; and +at home in England, one's memory kept warm and living in, say, three +hearts that recognised the best in one, and loved it. A mother's heart, +the heart of a friend—and <i>hers</i>!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> + +<p>There was no insincerity of flattery in the hum of applauding comment that +ensued. All earnest original thought has beauty; and this man could not +only think, but clothe his thoughts in direct and simple language, and add +to it the charm of well-modulated and musical utterance.</p> + +<p>"I call that good enough," said the senior Staff Officer, a dark, +handsome, eagle-faced Guardsman, who bore a great historic name, "for you +or me or any other fellow here—we're not taking into account the living +dead ones."</p> + +<p>The Chief leaned forward in his characteristic attitude, and spoke, a +long, lean brown forefinger emphasising the sentences, his hawk-keen +glance driving them home. "I tell you, Leighbury, that some of those, the +rottenest corpses among 'em, will shed their grave-clothes, and rise up +and do the deeds of living men before, to quote Levison, this month is +out. Never take it for granted that a man is dead until the grass is +growing high over his bare bones, and don't make too sure even then! +Because to-day I saw such dry bones move—and it's an instructive if an +uncanny sight."</p> + +<p>"Whose were the bones, Colonel?" called out the handsome young aide at the +bottom of the table.</p> + +<p>The host, his thin, brown fingers busy at the clipped moustache, was +listening to the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, who sat upon his right. He +withdrew his attentive eyes from that stalwart sportsman's broad, ruddy +countenance, to glance smilingly at the fair, handsome face, and reply:</p> + +<p>"Whose? Well, up to the present they have belonged to the Dop Doctor."</p> + +<p>"That man!" The Mayor, in the act of taking another slice of the roast, +looked round as at the mention of a name familiar, shrugging his portly +shoulders. "Surely you know who the fellow is, Colonel? He drifted up here +from Cape Colony three years ago. A capable—confoundedly capable man, +handicapped by a severe muscular strain," the Mayor's twinkling eye +heralded the resurrection of an ancient jest—"contracted in lifting a +cask of whisky—a glass at a time!"</p> + +<p>White teeth flashed in alert tanned faces. The schoolboy laugh went round +the table; then the Babel of talk rose up again. Most of these men were +quite young ... their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> seniors barely middle-aged, not a man but was what +they themselves would have termed both "fit" and "keen." They had wrought +for many days in the erection of sand-bag defences, in the digging of +trenches, in the drilling of Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers and +the newly-enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time of lull +before the storm, and they were not to get many more good dinners or +peaceful nights in bed for a long siege to come. They did not show +outwardly the tension of strung nerves that waited, as the whole world +waited, for the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills to +the south. Nor did it occur to them that there was anything heroic or +dramatic in their quiet unaffected pose. Gathered together upon one little +spot of border earth destined to be the vital, tragic, throbbing centre of +great events and tremendous issues, actions glorious, and deeds scarce +paralleled upon the page of History, let us look upon them, well-groomed, +well-bred, easy-mannered, cheery, demolishing the good dishes furnished by +the <i>chef</i> of Nixey's Hotel, with the hungry zest of schoolboys, +exchanging fusillades of not very brilliant chaff.</p> + +<p>Scraps of scientific and technical conversation with reference to +telephonic and telegraphic installations between outlying forts and +headquarters, electric communication with mines, automatic +warning-apparatus, the most effective methods of constructing bomb-proof +shelters, the comparative merits of Maxim and Nordenfeldt, crossed in the +air like fragments of bursting projectiles, impelled by those admirable +engines of destruction. Mingled with reminiscences of cricket, golf, +tennis, polo, and motoring, then in its infancy; anecdotes new and old, +and conjectures as to what the fellows at home were doing? Hurlingham and +Ranelagh, Maidenhead and Henley, Eton and Oxford, Sandhurst and Aldershot, +Piccadilly in the season, Simla in the heats, the results for Kempton Park +and Newmarket Races—of all these they talked, with rhino and elephant +shooting and the big battues of pheasants now taking place in the Home +Midlands and up North. But though the watch-fires of their pickets burned +upon the veld, and though the Boer lay in laager over the Border, of him +they said not one word. That reticence upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> vital point was +characteristically English. The excitable Gaul would have wept, kneaded +his manly bosom, and alluded to his mother; the stolid Muscovite would +have wept also, referring to his Little Father, the Czar; the Teuton would +have poured forth oceans of turgid sentiment about the Fatherland; the +dignified Spaniard would have recognised himself as a warrior upon the +verge of a Homeric struggle, and said so candidly; the hysterical American +would have sung "Hail, Columbia!" and waved pocket-handkerchief-sized +replicas of the Star-Spangled Banner until too exhausted to agitate or +vocalise. But to these men indulgence in sentiment was "bad form," and +unrestrained patriotic utterance merely "gas," tainting the air with an +odour as of election-eggs or sulphuretted hydrogen. Therefore were many +words to be avoided.</p> + +<p>A pose, if you will, an affectation, this studied avoidance of all +appearance of enthusiasm or excitement; showing the weak spot in the +armour of these heroes, henceforth to be of epic fame. But Man is +essentially a weak being. It is only when the immortal spirit of him +nerves the frame of perishable bone and muscle that he rises to heights +that are sublime. Such souls of fire burned within these men, that when +the Wind of Death blew coldest and the lead-and-iron hail beat hardest, +they only glowed more fiercely radiant; and Want and Privation, instead of +weakening, only seemed to make them more strong;—strong to endure, strong +to foresee plots and avert perils and oppose wit to cunning, and strategy +to deceit; so strong that, by reason of their strength, that little +frontier town became a fortress of Titans. And their names, other than +those I have given them in this story, shall go ringing down the grooves +of Time, until Time itself shall be no more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> + + +<p>While they ate and drank, laughed, and chatted, the man who was to be +their comrade, sharer in all those perils and privations yet to come, was +tramping up and down the bare boards of the dingy bedchamber in Harris +Street, wrestling desperately with his tragic thirst.</p> + +<p>"Why did he come and look at me, and take me by the hand, and awaken my +deadened senses to the sting of anguish that has no name? Why could he not +have left me alone in this living death I had attained!" he cried. "When +first I took to the infernal, blessed liquor, it was for the sake of +respite from mental pain, torture unbearable. Then I was a man, only +unhappy. Now I am lower than the lowest of the sensible, cleanly, decent +brutes, because I desire the drink for its own sake, and find +gratification in physical degradation. O God, if Thou indeed art, and I +must perforce return to live the life of a man amongst men, help to burst +the chains that fetter me! Help me to be free!"</p> + +<p>He swallowed a great draught of water, and stumbled to the unused bed, and +threw himself across it, raging and panting, and defiant of the very Power +he invoked. And then, against hope, sleep came to him, drowning memory and +obliterating thought, and relieving physical suffering. The lines smoothed +out of the heavy forehead, and the grim mouth relaxed in the smile that +his dead mother had kissed, coming in with the shaded candle to look at +her sleeping boy.</p> + +<p>Just as the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, that stalwart Yorkshireman, mighty +hunter of elephant, rhino, giraffe, and lion in the reckless days of +bloodshed that were before the introduction of the Game Laws into South +Africa, was saying to the Colonel:</p> + +<p>"Irreclaimable, sir. Hopeless! A confirmed drunkard, who has soaked away +all self-respect, who has been cautioned and warned and fined a score of +times, by myself and other magistrates. Dr. de Boursy-Williams, our +leading practitioner here, has taken the fellow under his wing, in a +manner—bails him out when it is necessary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> and, I believe, when the man +is sober enough, gives him work in his dispensary and allows him to +administer the anæsthetic when it's a question of a surgical operation. +Wonder he trusts him, for my part! Yet De Boursy-Williams is a remarkably +successful operator, and hardly ever loses a case. It is unfortunate that +he should have been called away to Cape Town at this juncture."</p> + +<p>"He has left Dr. Saxham as <i>locum tenens</i>, I understand."</p> + +<p>The Mayor shrugged his portly shoulders</p> + +<p>"As to his qualifications, there's no doubt. Ranked high at one time as a +London West End specialist. I have seen his name myself in a British +Medical Directory of some years back as principal visiting-surgeon to St. +Stephen's and the Ludgate Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. Has written +books—scientific works that are quoted now. Must have been making money +hand-over-hand when the collapse came. The usual thing—one slip—and a +Police-court Inquiry follows, and down goes the unlucky wretch with the +Crown on top of him, and all the Press pack yelping for soft snaps. True, +the finding of the Jury was 'Not Guilty,' but the fact of there having +been a prosecution was enough to ruin Saxham professionally. Ah, I thought +you must have heard the name!"</p> + +<p>For the listener had moved suddenly. He did remember the name of the +distinguished London practitioner who had been discreditably mixed up in +the case of Mrs. Bough, the young, miserable, murdered creature, who might +possibly have been the daughter of Richard Mildare. Tough and cool as his +tried nerves were, he shuddered at the thought, and a sickly heat made the +points of perspiration stand out upon his forehead. But the Mayor, good +man, was prosing on:</p> + +<p>"I can't say the facts of the case are very clear in my recollection, but +I have a file of the <i>Daily Wire</i> at home, extending over six years back, +so the Criminal Court proceedings must be reported in it. The woman's +name, I do remember, was Bough. As regards her age, now you ask me"—for +the Colonel had put a quick question—"I fancy she must have been +twenty-two or three. Indeed, I am almost certain that was the age as +stated by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Medical Witness for the Prosecution.... However, I'll go +into the reports and let you know for certain."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, in case those <i>Daily Wire</i> files are +bomb-proof, possibly it would be better to take the family with you—and +stop until times improve."</p> + +<p>"Not bad, not half bad, Colonel! But to tell the truth, I wouldn't miss +what we used to call the shindy, and these boys of yours term the 'scrap' +for a pile of Kruger sovereigns. And—I can shoot better than most men, if +I am in the sere and yellow sixties." The Mayor was slightly ruffled; the +diplomatic touch smoothed him down.</p> + +<p>"My money is on you, Mr. Mayor, when it comes to stopping a Boer with a +rifle-bullet at four hundred yards. By the way, I have a little confidence +to repose in you. When you meet—as I am convinced you will meet—Dr. +Saxham at the Hospital or elsewhere, metaphorically clothed and in his +right mind, and in the active discharge of duties which no man, judging by +your own testimony, is better fitted to perform, let him down gently."</p> + +<p>The Mayor, conscious of civic dignity and magisterial warnings from the +Bench ignored, swelled obviously.</p> + +<p>"My dear sir, you can't let the Dop Doctor down anyhow. He is—just about +as low as a man can get—short of being underground."</p> + +<p>"Lend him a hand up—in the first instance—by forgetting that confounded +nickname which I was clumsy enough to blurt out just now. Be oblivious of +what he is, because of what he has been in the past, and will be in the +future. For there is tremendous stuff in the fellow even now—or I am a +bad judge of men."</p> + +<p>"Colonel, you're a thundering bad judge of drunkards, from the Bench's +point of view, but you'd be a damned good special pleader for a client in +need of all the excuses that could be trumped up for him."</p> + +<p>"We all have something we'd like to have an excuse for, Mr. Mayor." The +keen hawk-eyes held a twinkle in reserve. "There was a man I knew, a +mighty hunter before the Lord—and before the Game Laws." The thin brown +fingers of the muscular hard-palmed hand played with the stem of a +wineglass as the sentences came out, crisp and pointed. "Well, this is the +story of a mistake, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> an old <i>shikari</i> of your experience can find even +more excuses for it than I can ... but perhaps I bore you?"</p> + +<p>"On the contrary—on the contrary, sir."</p> + +<p>The fish had taken the bait, remained to play the quivering captive until +his last swirling struggle brought him within reach of the skilful dip and +lift of the angler's net.</p> + +<p>"It was about four years ago, in the Portuguese coast-lands, South of the +Zambesi, where elephants are to be had, and rhino, particularly the +Keitloa variety with the long posterior horn, and a bad habit of charging +the man behind the 600 bore...."</p> + +<p>Mr. Mayor's capacious white waistcoat was agitated by a subterranean +chuckle. His double chin shook merrily. "A side shot through the +head—solid bullet—is the best cure for that, Colonel. But you had to +wait in the high swamp-grass and keep the wind of him, and make sure of +your aim."</p> + +<p>"Quite so. This man, from the shelter of a rock, waited to make sure of +his aim. The rhino was feeding tsetse as he dozed in the high swamp-grass. +His biggest horn showed, and a bit of his shiny black skin. One forward +lunge of the brute's head—and the hunter could get that side-shot. For +that he waited, patience being, as we know, a virtue to be cultivated by +the successful stalker of big game——"</p> + +<p>The Mayor, boiled prawn-pink to the receding boundary-line of his upright +white hair, coughed awkwardly.</p> + +<p>"The man waited two hours. Then the unclad and obese native lady, carrying +a long pointed grass-basket on her back, who had squatted down in the high +grass to smoke a pipe and administer maternal refreshment to a shiny black +piccannin of three or four——!"</p> + +<p>The Mayor, purple now, burst out:</p> + +<p>"Got up and went on! And, if these boys of yours get wind of that story, I +shall be roasted within an inch of my life. Whoever told you? For the love +of Heaven, don't give me away!"</p> + +<p>The keen eyes, were dancing now—the big fish had fairly got the gaff.</p> + +<p>"I promise, Mr. Mayor, upon the understanding that you don't give away my +man.... It's a compact?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> Thanks tremendously! And here comes the Manager +to be congratulated upon the haunch. I never tasted better venison, Mr. +Nixey, though, as you say, this is rather far North for koodoo. And the +quail were beyond praise. Waiter, a glass for Mr. Nixey.... Port—and +we're going to ask you to join us in drinking a toast...."</p> + +<p>The beautiful, flushed boy rose solemnly, glass in hand. About the long +board, adorned with a fine epergne full of roses, Cape jessamine and +purple bougainvillea, spread with Nixey's best plate and linen, crystal, +and dishes of Staffordshire china piled with golden mandarins, and +loquats, the fruit of October; there was a great uprising of those +phlegmatic, self-contained Britons. Straight as the flames of unblown +torches, they burned about the table. And with a simultaneous movement all +those eyes of varied colours turned to the lean brown face of the Chief, +as the sweet young clarion rang out:</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen—the Queen!"</p> + +<p>The brimming glasses rose high,—one crystal wave with the crimson of +blood in it. The resonant English and the thinner Colonial voices answered +together with a crash. As of the wave breaking on white cliffs northwards, +and a great surge of love and loyalty went out from all those hearts to +England, throbbing to the steps of the Throne where She sat, bowed with +great griefs and great joys and great triumphs and glories, and +white-haired with the full burden of her venerable years.</p> + +<p>"The Queen!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> + + +<p>They lingered not long over wine and cigars. Lady Hannah Wrynche, +entertaining what she disdainfully termed a "hen party" in her private +rooms at Nixey's, vacated in her honour by the landlord's wife—expected +them to coffee. Much to the relief of the military authorities at Cape +Town, Milady, most erratic of Society meteors, had quitted that centre of +painstaking official misinformation, for the throbbing spot of debatable +land whence events might be gathered as they sprang. Shooting across the +orbit of the reddening, low-hanging War-planet, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> had descended upon +Gueldersdorp in a shower of baggage-trunks, fox-terriers, and +interrogations. For one thing, she explained to everybody, she had +undertaken to supply a London Daily with a series of articles, written +from the Seat of Hostilities, and for another, Bingo was on the Staff, and +it would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his wife near him in case +he happened to get ... was "chipped" the proper technical term, or +"potted"? The articles were intended to be the real thing—racy of the +soil, don't you know? and full of "go" and atmosphere. Let it be said here +that they achieved raciness. The London print in which they appeared came +to be christened by the scoffer and the incredulous the <i>Daily Whale</i>—it +swallowed and disgorged so many of the Jonahs rejected by other editors. +But the profits increased, and the proprietors could afford to smile at +envy.</p> + +<p>Just now the insatiable gold fountain-pen from whence our indefatigable +Lady Correspondent derived her literary pseudonym, was employed in +recording merest gossip, in the absence of the longed-for opportunity for +its wielder to prove herself the equal, if not the superior, of Dora Corr. +Dora was the woman Lady Hannah admired and envied above all others. +Colonial Editor to <i>The Thunderbolt</i>, War Correspondent, financial expert, +political leader-writer, and diplomatic go-between when Cabinet Ministers +and Empire-builders would arrive at understandings, the serfdom of sex, +the trammels of the petticoat, may have been said to weigh as lightly upon +this thrice-fortunate spinster as though it were no drawback to be a +daughter of Eve.</p> + +<p>Oh! prayed Lady Hannah, for the chance of proving that another woman can +equal this brilliant feminine Phœnix! Meanwhile her bright eyes and +quick sense of humour took note of the toilettes of some of her guests, +wives and daughters of notable citizens who had not hurried South at the +first mutterings of the storm. The purple satin worn by the Mayoress +tickled her no less than the unfeigned horror of its wearer when offered +from her hostess's châtelaine cigarette-case the choicest of Sobranies. +Lady Hannah's laugh was the rattling of a mischievous boy's stick across +his sister's piano-wires, and the metallic jangle preceded her assurance +that everybody did it—all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> women in Society, at least, and you were +thought odd if you didn't. After dinner, in the most exclusive houses, the +most rigid of hostesses invariably allowed their women guests to smoke. +They knew people worth having wouldn't come if they weren't allowed to.</p> + +<p>"Never beneath my roof!" gasped the shocked and scandalised wearer of the +purple splendours demanded of the wife of a Chief Magistrate. "Never at my +table!" Of course, the agitated Mayoress went on to say, one had heard of +the doings of the Smart Set. But one had hoped it wasn't true, or, at +least, had been very much exaggerated by "writing-people." The Mayoress, +though a mild woman, had her sting.</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah, immensely tickled to find the morals of Bayswater rampant, as +she afterwards expressed it, in the centre of South Africa, cackled as she +helped herself to a second liqueur-glass of Nixey's excellent +apricot-brandy. Small, thin, restless, she presented a parched appearance, +with bright, round, beady eyes continually roving in search of information +from beneath the straggling fringe of a crumpled Pompadour transformation, +for those horrors had recently become fashionable, and the whole world of +women were vying with one another in the simulation of the criminal type +of skull, with the Dolichocephalic Bulge.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, tobacco-ash is an excellent thing for killing moth in +carpets, and Time,—when one is compelled to bestow it upon dull people; +and a perfectly healthy, Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortable +lodger. But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, it's a +question how long both British institutions remain intact, with those big +guns getting into position round us...." She waved her small hand, its +once well-tended nails superbly ignored, its sun-cracks neglected, its +load of South African diamonds coruscating magnificently in the light of +Nixey's electric bulbs, and shrugged her thin, vivacious shoulders.</p> + +<p>The entrance of the gentlemen relieved the situation. Lady Hannah jumped +up and rushed at the Colonel. "As if she meant to eat the man," the +Mayoress said afterwards, in the shadow of that threatened roof. But, +impervious to the entreaty of the bright black eyes and the glittering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +hand that gesticulated with the urgent fan, he bowed, smiled, said a few +pleasant words to his hostess, and walked "straight across"—as the +Mayoress afterwards confided to the Mayor—to take a seat beside the +large, placid, matronly figure palpitating in purple satin on an imported +Maple sofa.</p> + +<p>Pleased and flattered, she made room for him, while Lady Hannah became the +gossip-centre of a knot of Mess uniforms....</p> + +<p>"Both babies well?" It would have been unlike him not to have remembered +that he had seen children at her house. "Hammy and Berta made great +friends with me the other day.... Tell them I haven't forgotten the +promise to rummage up some odd native toys I picked up in Rhodesia—made +of mud and feathers and bits of fur and queerly-shaped seed-pods—the most +enchanting collection of birds and beasts that ever came out of the Ark. +And the Makalaka have a legend about a big flood and a wise old man who +built a house of reeds and skins that floated.... The North American +Indians will tell you that it was a Big Medicine Canoe, and amongst the +tribes of the Nilghiri Hills you find exactly the same story that the +Chaldean scribes wrote on their tablets of clay. To-day in Eastern +Kurdistan they'll point you out the peak on which the Ark grounded. The +Armenians hold it was Ararat.... It's curious how the root-legend crops up +everywhere...."</p> + +<p>"But of course it must." Her good, calm eyes showed surprise, and her +broad, white, matronly bosom was a little fluttered. "Doesn't the Bible +teach us that the Deluge covered the whole earth? Even Hammy and Berta can +tell you the whole story about Noah, and the raven—and the dove."</p> + +<p>He smoothed his moustache with a palm that wiped the smile out.</p> + +<p>"I must get them to tell it me one of these days." The twinkle in his eye +was not to be repressed. "It would save such a deal of trouble to believe +there was only one Noah, and only one Ark, don't you know?"</p> + +<p>Her motherly bosom panted.</p> + +<p>"<i>My</i> children shall <i>never</i> believe anything else!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was grave and sympathetic, though a muscle in his thin cheek twitched.</p> + +<p>"I believe the toy Ark of our happy childish memories is built, if not of +gopher-wood, at least upon the lines laid down in Scripture. Has Hammy +ever tried to get his to float? Mine invariably used to sink—straight to +the bottom of the bath. Perhaps that continually-recurrent catastrophe had +something to do with the sapping of my infant faith, or the establishment +of a sinking-fund of doubt regarding the veracity of the Noachian +reporter?"</p> + +<p>She leaned towards him, her placid grey eyes dilating with pity for this +man.</p> + +<p>"You ought to come and sit under our minister Mr. Oddris, on Sundays. Pray +do. He would convince you if anybody could. Such an eloquent, able, +well-informed man, and so <i>truly pious</i> and <i>brave</i>!"</p> + +<p>The laugh perforce escaped him. The convincing Apostle Oddris had called +on him at official headquarters that day, to inquire whether, as the said +Oddris's wife and children were going to the Women's Laager, his place as +a husband and father was not by their side? Being informed that +able-bodied male beings were not included in the list of the defenceless, +he had become importunate in the matter of at least a bomb-proof shelter +to be erected in his back-yard.</p> + +<p>"I had rather sit under Hammy and hear about Noah, with Berta on the other +knee."</p> + +<p>Her heart went out wholly to him.... 'Out of the mouths of babes.' ... +Wasn't <i>that</i> one of the texts with promise?...</p> + +<p>"You love children?"</p> + +<p>"Bless the little beggars!" he said heartily, "they're the jolliest +company in the world."</p> + +<p>She leaned towards him, palpitating between her shyness of the Commander +of the Garrison and her womanly curiosity to know more about the man.</p> + +<p>"Hammond—the Mayor has told me—I hope it is not indiscreet to mention +it—that the first thing you did, on joining your regiment in India as a +young subaltern, was to gather all the European children in cantonments +together and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left Behind +Me' on the flute."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> + +<p>His brow grew black as thunder. The utterance came, terse and sharp.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, you have been gravely misinformed."</p> + +<p>She jumped in terror.</p> + +<p>"Oh!... Can it be?... Colonel, I do so beg you to forgive me! Let me +assure you that neither the Mayor nor myself will ever again repeat the +story."</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, if you do ..."</p> + +<p>"But I promise, never ..."</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, if you never do, at least remember that the flute was an ocarina."</p> + +<p>He left the good soul in an ecstasy of giggles, and crossed to Lady +Hannah. She welcomed him with a glitter of eyes and teeth and discovered +the reserve-chair that had been covered by her somewhat fatigued and +wilted draperies of maize Liberty-silk, veiled with black Maltese lace.</p> + +<p>"What it is to be a man of tact! You've made that purple creature +perfectly happy. Don't say you're going to be less kind to another woman!"</p> + +<p>She tapped with a reproachful fan the scarlet sleeve of his thin serge +mess-jacket, her appraising eye busy with the badges worn on the dark +green roll-collar and the miniature medals and star. If a clever woman +could be the confidante of a Cabinet Minister, the post of right-hand to +the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces in Gueldersdorp might be won. And then +the world would know what Hannah Wrynche was born for. What was he saying?</p> + +<p>"I never warn my victims beforehand."</p> + +<p>"Sphinx! and I hoped to find you in the relenting mood!"</p> + +<p>"If possible, ma'am, my granite bosom is more unyielding than on the last +occasion when ..."</p> + +<p>"Do go on!" said the fan.</p> + +<p>"When you tried to tap it."</p> + +<p>"You're all alike." She sighed. "That is, you give the keynote, and the +others take up the tune. Even Bingo—Bingo, whom I firmly believed +incapable of keeping a secret in which his dearest interests were +concerned longer than ten minutes—Bingo has sprung a surprise on me. I +shall end by falling in love with my own husband—such an indecent thing +to do after seven years of married life!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Fortunately, the scene of your lapse from the crooked path of custom is +distant from the West End of London nearly seven thousand miles. And you +can rely upon me for secrecy."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that!... If only you <i>did</i> leak a little information now and then." +Her eyebrows went up to the dry fringe of her Pompadour transformation. +"For the sake of the thirsting public at home, to say nothing of my +reputation as a Special Correspondent——"</p> + +<p>"Drive over and call on General Brounckers at Head Laager, Geitfontein, on +the Border, early to-morrow. Perhaps he would oblige you with matter for a +paragraph, and forward the cable by private wire?"</p> + +<p>Her birdlike eyes were bright on him.</p> + +<p>"I would go if I thought I could get anything by going. Special +information—with reference to a Plan of Attack. Oh! if you knew how I'm +dying to be really under fire. To hear bullets zip-zip—isn't that the +sound?—as they strike the ground or walls, and shells scream overhead!"</p> + +<p>She clasped her sunburnt little jewelled hands in affected ecstasy. His +eyes were stern, and the lines about his mouth deepened.</p> + +<p>"Pray to-night that you may never hear those sounds you speak of!"</p> + +<p>She struck an exaggerated attitude of horrified consternation.</p> + +<p>"But no! Why am I here?"</p> + +<p>"The Lord only knows. I've seen a hen peck at a lump of dynamite...."</p> + +<p>"Ah, you never will take me seriously. But own in your secret heart you're +as much afraid as I am that a Relieving Column will be sent down from—— +Do tell me again where Grumer is with the Brigade? Uli, in Upper +Rhodesia—thanks! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend of Bingo's, and an +old flame of mine. But—to burst our lovely peacock bubble of Siege and +let the whole situation down, <i>sans coup férir</i>, into muddy +commonplace—may Grumer never come!" She held up her coffee-cup, and drank +the toast.</p> + +<p>"Only for the women and children here," he said, and his thin nostrils +moved to the measure of his quickened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> breathing, and a hot spark glowed +in his keen eyes, "I'd have joined you in that. But under the present +circumstances—I'd give five years of life—and I love life!—if our +lookouts could pick up Grumer's Advance by the time grey dawn creeps up +the east again."</p> + +<p>She was incredulous.</p> + +<p>"You, who said when you got orders to sail for South Africa—I have it on +the authority of your Henley hostess—'I hope they'll give me a warm +corner'!"</p> + +<p>"I did say—just that. And I meant it."</p> + +<p>His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. She went on:</p> + +<p>"I've seen your preparations. The little old forts, put into such repair! +and the armoured train, with a Maxim and a Hotchkiss, standing in the +Railway siding, ready for business. And the earthworks! And the +trek-waggon barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed with +corrugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, the iron skull +that's to hold the working brain of the place ... with underground +telegraphic and telephonic communications with all the forts and outposts. +It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... I +thought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expectation that the +schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for the +curtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given it +to me—you and our friends out there!" She waved the dry little glittering +hand. "And you can talk in cold blood of marching out—and leaving the +hive—and all the honey you might have had out of it. Sweet danger, +perilous sport, the great Game of War—played as a man like you knows how +to play it in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers and +Dominions looking on. Preserve us! Oh, to be in your shoes this minute, if +only for one week! But as I can't, it's you I hope to see riding the +whirlwind and directing the storm. Not only for my own sake and the +wretched paper's—though, mind you, I don't pretend to be anything but a +mercenary, calculating worldly creature ..."</p> + +<p>His eyes were very kind.</p> + +<p>"Bingo knows better!"</p> + +<p>Her laugh did not jangle this time.</p> + +<p>"Lady Grasby, that vitriol-tongued water-nymph, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> somebody clever once +called her, said that if Bingo got killed by any chance, I should sit down +and write a gossipy descriptive article, dealing with his military career, +married life, and last moments, before I ordered my widow's-weepers. +Horrible things! They've come in again, too! Talking of gossip, which I +know you only pretend to despise, I found the son of a mutual acquaintance +dying in the Hospital here. You know the Bishop of H ...?"</p> + +<p>"His eldest son, Major Fraithorn, was my senior when I was Assistant +Military Secretary at Gibraltar in '90. And the Bishop is quite a dear +crony of my mother's."</p> + +<p>"The Bishop," she said, "was always a person of excellent good +taste—except when he cut off his second son, Julius, with two hundred a +year for turning Anglican, wearing a soft hat and Roman collars, and +joining the staff at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street West as +Junior Curate."</p> + +<p>"St. Margaret's. I know the church. Often go there when I'm at home."</p> + +<p>"It's the Halfway House to Rome, according to the Bishop, who won't be +content with running at every red rag of Ritualism that flutters in his +own diocese, but keeps up the character of belligerent Broad Churchman by +writing pamphlets and asking questions in the House of Lords with +reference to affairs which are the business of other people. According to +him, the red cassocks of the acolytes at St. Margaret's are cut out of the +very skirts of the Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and his +curates—they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice—are wolves in +wool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the liberties of the Church. +<i>Punch</i> published a cartoon of the Bishop shutting his eyes and charging +at a windmill in a cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string of +Protestant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, Scotland, and Wales +this season, with acetylene-lantern pictures from Foxe's 'Book of +Martyrs,' and a lecturer to point the morals and adorn the tales.... But +if he could see his Mary's boy to-day, he'd put up with any amount of +felt-basin hats and Roman collars, and incense and altar-genuflections +wouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh! it's been a sore with me this many a +year, but when I saw him to-day I said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> 'Thank God I never had a child!' +Because to have seen a boy or girl grow up and wither away as that +beautiful young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must shudder +to look back upon, even when she has found her lost one again in Heaven."</p> + +<p>There was genuine feeling in her voice, usually loud, harsh, and tuneless. +The bright black bird-eyes had a gleam as of tears. He turned to her with +sympathetic interest.</p> + +<p>"The Bishop will be obliged to you for finding this out. No hint of it had +reached me. I am due at the Hospital in the morning, and we'll see if +something can't be done for the boy."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"It's a case of tuberculous lung-disease. He developed it in the Clergy +House at St. Margaret's, and made light of it, supposing or pretending +that the cough and wasting and difficulty of breathing meant bronchial +trouble, the result of London fogs. These young people who don't value +Life—glorious gift that it is! When he broke down utterly, at the end of +a rampant campaign against Intemperance—he wouldn't be the Bishop's son +if he didn't gall the withers of some hobby-horse or other—the doctors +agreed there was nothing for him but South Africa."</p> + +<p>He frowned, knowing how many sufferers had died of that deadly +prescription. She went on:</p> + +<p>"So he came out—alone—upon the advice of the well-intentioned wiseacres, +knowing nothing of the country, to live on his two hundred a year until +the end. And the end is coming—in Gueldersdorp Hospital—with giant +strides." She blinked. "They've isolated him in a small detached ward. He +has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart-nurse is in love with him, +unless I'm mistaken in the symptoms of the complaint. And he looks like +St. Francis of Assisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty—and coughs—fit +to tear your heart. B'rrh!" she shuddered.</p> + +<p>He repeated: "I'll see what can be done to-morrow. These cases are +deceptive. There may be a gleam of hope."</p> + +<p>"There is one doubt about the case which might infer a hope. I don't know +what discoveries the London doctors made, but I wormed out of the +chart-nurse, who plainly adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorp +can't scare up a bacillus for the life of them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> + +<p>His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his tone was jesting.</p> + +<p>"You're thrown away on mere journalism. Criminal Investigation or Secret +Intelligence would offer wider fields for your abilities."</p> + +<p>"Wait!" she said, her beady eyes black diamonds. "I shall hope to prove +one day that an English woman-journalist can be as useful as a Boer spy in +the matter of useful information. Why, why am I not a man? You only don't +trust me because I am a woman."</p> + +<p>He had touched the rankling point in her ambition. He applied balm as he +knew how.</p> + +<p>"Your being a woman may have made all the difference—for Fraithorn. I +shall set Taggart of the R.A.M.C. at him to-morrow; the Major's a bit of a +crack at pulmonary cases. And he shall consult with Saxham, and——"</p> + +<p>"Saxham." Her eyebrows were knitted. "I thought I knew the names of your +Medical Staff men. But I can't recall a Saxham."</p> + +<p>"This Saxham is Civilian—and rather a big pot—M.D., F.R.C.S., and lots +more. We're lucky to have got him."</p> + +<p>She stiffened, scenting the paragraph.</p> + +<p>"Can it be that you mean the Dr. Saxham of the Old Bailey Case?"</p> + +<p>"The Jury acquitted, let me remind you."</p> + +<p>"I believe so," she said; "but—he vanished afterwards. I think an +innocent man would have stopped and faced the music, and not beaten a +retreat with the Wedding March almost sounding in his ears. But—who +knows? You have met his brother, Captain Saxham, of the —th Dragoons? It +was he who stepped into the matrimonial breach, and married the young +woman."</p> + +<p>"The young woman?"</p> + +<p>"His brother's fiancée—an heiress of the Dorsetshire Lee-Haileys, and +rather a pretty-faced, silly person, with a penchant for French novels and +sulphonal tabloids. I always shall believe that she liked the handsome +Dragoon best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being—under the cloud of +acquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the dear Irish call 'the +back of her hand.'"</p> + +<p>"The better luck for him!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It was mere instinct to let go when the man was dragging them both under +water," she asserted.</p> + +<p>"A Newfoundland bitch would have risen above it."</p> + +<p>"You hit back quick and hard."</p> + +<p>"I'm a tennis-player and a polo-player and a cricketer."</p> + +<p>"What game is there that you don't play?"</p> + +<p>"I could tell you of one or two.... But I must really go and speak to some +of these ladies. One of them is an old friend."</p> + +<p>"I know whom you mean. If I didn't, her glare of envy would have +enlightened me. Did I tell you that <i>I</i> encountered an old friend—or, at +least, a friend of old—at the Hospital yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"You mean poor Fraithorn?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all. I'm only a friend of his mother. I had only heard of the boy, +not met him, until I tumbled over him here. But this face—severely framed +in a starched white <i>guimpe</i> and floating black veil—belonged to my Past +in several ways."</p> + +<p>He showed interest.</p> + +<p>"Your friend is a nun? At the Convent here? How did you come across her?"</p> + +<p>"She called to see the Bishop's son—while I was with him. It seems that, +judging by the poor dear boy's religious manuals and medals, and other +High Church contraptions, the Matron had got him on the Hospital books as +a Roman Catholic. And, consequently, when my friend looked in to visit a +day-scholar who was to be operated on for adenoids—I've no idea what they +are, but a thing with a name like that would naturally have to be cut out +of one—she was told of this poor fellow, and has shed the light of her +countenance on him occasionally since. Yesterday was one of the occasions, +and Heavens! what a countenance it is even now! What a voice, what eyes, +what a manner! I believed I gushed a bit.... She met me as though we'd +only parted last week. Nuns are wonderful creatures: <i>she's</i> unique, even +as a nun."</p> + +<p>He said: "I believe I had the honour of meeting the lady of whom you speak +when I called at the Convent yesterday afternoon. A remarkable, noble, and +most interesting personality."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Hannah nodded. "All that. But you ought to have seen her at eighteen. +We were at the High-School, Kensington, together, I a brat of ten in the +Juniors' Division, she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carried +everything before her there, and emerged with a B.A. Degree Certificate in +the days when it was thought hardly proper for a woman to go about with +such a thing tacked to her skirts. And all the students idolised her, and +the male lecturers worshipped the ground she trod. And when she was +presented—what a sensation! They called her the 'Irish Rose,' and +'Deirdre,' for her skin of cream and her grey eyes and billowing clouds of +black hair. Society raved of her for three seasons, until the fools went +even madder about that little Hawting woman—a stiff starched martinet's +frisky half—who bolted with the man my glorious Biddy had given her +beautiful hand to. And the result! She—who might have married an +Ambassador and queened it in Petersburg with the best of 'em—she's in a +whitewashed Convent, superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikander +schoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathematics, +calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, and the twiddle of the +globes. He has something to answer for, that old crony of yours!"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah stopped for breath, giving the listener his opportunity.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, you have told me a great deal without enlightening me in +the least. Who is my 'crony,' and who was your friend?"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah opened her round beady eyes in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Haven't I told you? She is—or was—Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, sister of +that high-falutin' little donkey the present Earl of Castleclare, who came +into the title and married at eighteen. His wife has means, I understand. +The old Dowager Duchess of Strome, a bosom friend of my mother's, was +Biddy's aunt, and Cardinal Voisey, handsome being! is an uncle on the +distaff side. All the Catholic world and his wife were at her taking of +the veil of profession nineteen years ago. The Pope's Nuncio, the +Cardinal-Bishop of Mozella, officiated, and the Comtesse de Lutetia was +there with the Duc d'O.... They didn't cut off her beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> black hair, +though we outsiders were on tiptoe to see the thing done. I don't think I +ever cried so much in my life. Had hysterics—real—when I got home, and +mother scolded fearfully. The Duke of C—— came with his equerry, and +after the cloister-gates had shut—crash—on beautiful Biddy in her bridal +laces, and white satin, and ropes of pearls, and we were all waiting, +breathless, for her to come back in the habit, I heard the Duke say, not +that the dear old thing ever meant to be profane: 'By God! General, I'm +damned if Captain Mildare hasn't made Heaven an uncommonly handsome +present!' And the man he said that to was the husband of the very woman +Dicky had run away with not quite twelve months before. Mercy on us!"</p> + +<p>"Good Heavens!" the listener had cried and started to his feet, the dark +blood rushing to his forehead. The ivory-pale, mutely-suffering face +against the background of whitewashed wall flashed back upon his memory, +in a circle of dazzling light. He saw her again, leaning against the door +of the chapel as he told her the cruel news. He heard her saying:</p> + +<p>"Are you at liberty to tell me the date of Captain Mildare's death? For I +know—one who was also his friend—and would take an interest in the +particulars."</p> + +<p>The particulars! And he had bludgeoned the woman with them—stabbed her to +the heart, poor soul, unknowing....</p> + +<p>He was blameless, but he could not forgive himself.... He drove his teeth +down savagely into his lower lip, and muttered an excuse, and went away +abruptly, leaving Lady Hannah staring. He took leave soon after, and went +to his own quarters with the D.A.A.G., while her ladyship, with infinite +relief, getting rid of her feminine guests, repaired with Captain Bingham +Wrynche, familiarly known to a wide circle of friends as "Bingo," and +several chosen spirits to the billiard-room, for snooker-pool, and +whisky-and-soda.</p> + +<p>"The grey wolf is on the prowl to-night," said one of the chosen spirits, +as he chalked Lady Hannah's cue with fastidious care. He winked across the +table at Bingo, sunset-red with dinner, champagne, and stroke-play.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> + +<p>"S'st!" sibilated the Captain warningly, winking in the direction of his +wife. Lady Hannah, her little thumb cocked in the air, her round, birdlike +eyes scientifically calculating angles, paused before making a rapid +stroke, to say:</p> + +<p>"Don't be cheaply mysterious, my dear man. Of course, the Colonel visits +the defences and outposts and so forth regularly after dark. It's part of +the routine, surely?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. But you don't suppose he goes alone, do you, old lady?" +queried Captain Bingo.</p> + +<p>"I suppose he takes his A.D.C.?"</p> + +<p>"Not to mention a detachment of the B.S.A. Also a squad of the Town Guard +in red neckties, solar topees and bandoliers; with the Rifles' Band, and D +Squadron of the Baraland Irregular Horse. Isn't that the routine, +Beauvayse? You're more up in these things than me, and I fancy there was a +change in the order for the evenin'."</p> + +<p>"Rather!" assented Beauvayse, continuing, to the rapture of winking Bingo. +"On reaching the earthworks where our obsoletes are mounted, the townies +will now fire a salute of blank, without falling down; and the Band have +instructions to play 'There's Death in the Old Guns Yet.' Those were the +only material changes, except that sentries will for the future wear fly- +and fever-belts outside instead of in."</p> + +<p>"So that he can see at a glance," Lady Hannah said approvingly, "that all +precautions are being taken. Very sensible, I call it."</p> + +<p>"Ha, ha, haw!" Bingo's joyous explosion revealed to the outraged woman the +fact that she had been "had." "Haw, haw! What a beggar you are to rot, +Beauvayse! and that makes five to us."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah, vibrating with womanly indignation, had made her long-delayed +stroke, missed the pyramid ball, and sent Pink spinning into the pocket. +She threw aside her cue and rubbed her fingers angrily. She hated losing, +and they were playing for shilling lives and half-a-crown on the game.</p> + +<p>"You—schoolboys!" She threw them a glance of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> disdain, as Beauvayse, his +seraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged +over the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely to +swallow such a <i>feuille de chou</i> without even oil and vinegar? For pity's +sake, leave off winking, Bingo! It's a habit that dates back to the era +when women wore ringlets and white book-muslin, and men sported shaggy +white beaver hats and pegtop trousers, and all the world read the novels +of Lever and Dickens."</p> + +<p>"Have Lever and Boz gone out?" asked Beauvayse, pocketing his pyramid +ball. "I play at Blue." He hit Blue scientifically off the cushion and +went on. "Read 'em myself over and over again, and find 'em give points in +the way of amusement to the piffle Mudie sends out. Not that I pretend to +be a judge of literature. Only know when I'm not bored, you know. You to +play, Lord Henry."</p> + +<p>But the senior officer of the Staff, Lady Hannah's partner, had vanished. +Somebody passing the open window of the billiard-room had whistled a bar +or so of a particularly pleasant little tune. Another man took Lord +Henry's place, and the game went on, but never finished, for one by one, +after the same quiet, unobtrusive fashion, the male players melted +away.... Left alone, Lady Hannah, feeling uncommonly like the idle boy in +the nursery-story who asked the beasts and birds and insects to play with +him, betook herself to bed.</p> + +<p>The arrogance of men! she thought as she hung her transformation Pompadour +coiffure on the looking-glass. How cool, how unshaken in their conviction +of superiority, in spite of all deference, courtesy, pretence of +consideration for Queen Dolt.... But she would show them all one of these +days, what could be achieved by a unit of the despised majority....</p> + +<p>"I should like to see him at night-work," she said afterwards, when, very +late, her Bingo appeared in the shadow of the conjugal mosquito-curtains.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't," was her martial lord's reply.</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't what?" asked Lady Hannah, sitting up in tropical sleeping +attire.</p> + +<p>Bingo, applying her cold cream to a sun-cracked nose, replied to her +reflection in the looking-glass:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You wouldn't see him. Like the flea in the American story, when you've +got your finger on him is the time he isn't there."</p> + +<p>"But he is there for you?"</p> + +<p>Bingo shook his head, holding the candle near the glass and regarding his +leading feature with interest.</p> + +<p>"Not if he don't choose to be. By the living Tinker! if I go on brownin' +and chippin' at this rate, I shall do for the Etruscan Antiquity Room at +the British Museum. Piff, what a smell of burning! It's the hair-thing +hangin' on the lookin'-glass."</p> + +<p>Male Society began to practise the shedding of its final g's, you will +remember, about the time that Female Society took to wearing +transformation coiffures. Lady Hannah, her active little figure rustling +in the thinnest of silk drapery, jumped nimbly out of bed, and rushed to +save her property.</p> + +<p>"Idiot!" she shrieked.</p> + +<p>"Frightfully sorry! But you're lumps prettier without," said Bingo.</p> + +<p>"Don't pile insult on injury."</p> + +<p>"Couldn't flatter for nuts!"</p> + +<p>"I'll forgive you if you'll tell me how <i>he</i> manages—to attain +invisibility?"</p> + +<p>Bingo struck an attitude and began to declaim:</p> + +<p>"As the sable shades of Night were broodin' over the beleaguered town of +Gueldersdorp, the manly form of a mysterious bearded stranger in grey +reach-me-downs and a felt slouch might have been observed directin' its +steps from one to the other of the various outlyin' pickets posted on the +veld ..."</p> + +<p>"Once for all, I decline to believe such theatrical rubbish! A beard, +indeed! Why not a paper nose and a Pierrot's cap?"</p> + +<p>"Why not?" acquiesced placid Bingo, getting into bed. But the eye +concealed by the pillow winked; for he had told her the absolute truth; +and woman-like, that was just what she wouldn't swallow, as he said to +Beauvayse next morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> + + +<p>"The Town Guard," according to W. Keyse, Esquire, who kept a Betts' +Journal, one shilling net, including Rail and Ocean Accident Insurance, +was "a kind of amachoor copper, swore in to look after the dorp, stand +guard, and do sentry-go, and tumble to arms, just as the town dogs leave +off barkin', an' the old gal in the room next yours is startin' to snore +like a Kaffir sow."</p> + +<p>Later on, even more was asked of the townie, and he rose to the demand.</p> + +<p>The smasher hat was not unbecoming to the manly brow it shaded, when W. +Keyse put it on and anxiously consulted the small greenish swing +looking-glass that graced the chest of drawers, the most commanding +article of furniture in his room at Filliter's Boarding-House. It was Mrs. +Filliter who snored in the room on the other side of the thin partition. +Like the immortal Mrs. Todgers, she was harassed by the demands of her +resident gentlemen in connection with gravy; but, unlike Mrs. Todgers, she +never supplied even browned and heated water as an equivalent. And the +mutton was wonderfully lean, and the fowls, but for difference in size, +might have been ostriches, they were so wiry of muscle, especially as +regarded the legs. A time was to come when Mrs. Filliter was to cook +shrapnel-killed mule and exhausted cavalry charger for her gentlemen, and +when they were to bear up better than most sufferers from this tough and +lasting form of diet, because of not having previously been pampered, as +Mrs. Filliter expressed it, with delicacies and kickshaws.</p> + +<p>The bandolier was heavy upon the thin shoulders and hollow chest of a pale +young Cockney, who had drifted down from Southampton in the steerage, and +roared and rattled up from Cape Town by the three foot six inch gauge +railway, eight hundred and seventy miles, to Gueldersdorp, that he might +find his crown of manhood waiting there. The second-hand Sam Browne belt +was distinctly good; the yellow puttees, worn with his own brown lace-up +boots, took trouble to adjust. And it was barely possible, even by +standing the small swing looking-glass on the floor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> and tilting it +excessively, to see how one's legs looked. W. Keyse suffered from the +conviction that these limbs were over-thin. Behind the counter of a +fried-fish shop in High Street, Camden Town, serving slabs of browned +hake, and skate, and penn'orths of fried eels and chips to the hungry +customers who surge in tempestuously to be fed on their homeward way from +the Oxford or the Camden Hall of Varieties, or the theatre at the junction +of Gower Street and the Hampstead Road—one develops acuteness of +observation, one gains experience, there being always the bloke who cuts +and runs without paying, or eats and shows reversed trouser-pockets in +default of settlement, to deal with.... But one does not develop muscle, +the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to possess. When he went +into the printing-business and bent all day over the formes of type in the +composing-room, hand-setting up the columns of the North London +<i>Half-penny Herald</i>, to the tune of three-and-eightpence a day, the hollow +chest grew hollower, and he developed a "corf." The physician in charge of +the out-patients' department at University College Hospital said there was +lung-trouble, and a man at the printing-office who had never been there, +said South Africa was the cure for that. And W. Keyse had thirty pounds in +the Post-Office Savings Bank, earned by the sweat of a brow which was his +best feature, and the steamships were advertising ten-pound third-class +single fares to Cape Town. One of the Societies for the Aid of Emigrants +would have helped him, but while W. Keyse 'ad a bit of 'is own, no +Blooming Paupery, said he, for him! His sole living relative, an aunt who +inhabited one of a row of ginger-brick Virginia-creeper-clad almshouses +"over aginst 'Ighgyte Cimitery," sniffled a little when he called to say +good-bye, bringing in a parting present of a half-pound of Liphook's +Luscious Tea and a screw of snuff.</p> + +<p>"I shan't never see you no more, William."</p> + +<p>"Ow yes, you will, mother! Don't be such a silly!" William's step cousin +'Melia, in service as general in Adelaide Road, Chalk Farm end, had said; +and she had looked coldly upon William immediately afterwards, bestowing +an amorous ogle upon Lobster, who sat well forward upon a backless Windsor +chair, sucking the silver top of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> swagger cane,—Lobster, who was six +foot high and in the Grenadier Guards, and had supplanted William in +'Melia's affections, for they 'ad used to walk out regularly on Sundays +and holidays before Lobster came along.... How William loved Lobster now! +Why, but for him he might have been married to 'Melia to-day;—doomed to +tread in the ways of commonplace, ordinary married life, fated to live and +die without once having peeped into Paradise, without ever having looked +upon the 'only woman in the world!' Greta, of the glorious golden pigtail, +the entrancing figure and the bewitching, twinkling, teasing eyes of blue!</p> + +<p>Suppose—only suppose—the silent threatening Thing across the border, +jewelled with the glowing Argus-eyes of many camp-fires, conjecturable in +dark masses flecked with the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes giving +out the dull gleam of iron or the sparkle of steel, were to choose this, +W. Keyse's first night on guard, for an attack! Even to the inexperience +of W. K. the sand-bagged earthworks built about Gueldersdorp, the +barricades of trek-waggons and railway-trucks blocking up the roads +debouching on the veld, the extending lines of trenches, the watchdog +forts, the sentinelled pickets, the noiseless, continually moving patrols, +all the various parts of the marvellous machinery of defence, controlled +by one master-hand upon the levers, would count for nothing against that +overwhelming onrush of armed thousands, that flood of men dammed up above +the town, and waiting the signal to roll down and overwhelm her, and—— +Cripps! what a chance to make a glorious, heroic splash in Greta's sight! +Die, perhaps, in saving her from them Dutchies. To be sure, she, divine +creature, was a Dutchy too. But no matter—a time would come ...</p> + +<p>Confident in the coming of that time, W. Keyse took the brown rifle +tenderly from the corner, and replaced the meagre little looking-glass +upon the yellow chest of drawers. In the act of bestowing a final glance +of scrutiny upon his upper lip, whose manly crop had unaccountably +delayed, he caught sight of a cheap paper-covered book lying beside the +tin candlestick whose tallow dip had aided perusal of the volume o' +nights. The red surged up in his thin cheeks as he picked up the thing. +There were horrible woodcuts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> in it, coloured with liberal splashes of red +and blue and yellow, and the print contained matter more lurid still. Vice +mopped and mowed and slavered, obscene and hideous, within those gaudy +covers.</p> + +<p>He looked round the mean, poor, ugly room, the volume in his hand; a +photograph of the dubious sort leered from the wall beside the bed....</p> + +<p>"If they rushed us to-night, an' I got shot in the scrap, an' they brought +me back 'ere, dyin', and She came ... an' saw <i>that</i> ...!" His ears were +scarlet as he dashed at the leering photograph and tore it down. Oh, W. +Keyse, it is pitiful to think you had to blush, but good to know you had +not forgotten how to. There was a little rusty fireplace in the room. W. +Keyse burned something in it that left nothing but a feathery pile of +ashes, and a little shameful heap of mud in the corner of a boy's memory, +before he hurried to the Town Guardhouse, where other bandoliers were +mustering, and fell in. As though the Powers deigned to reward an act of +virtue on the very night of its performance, he was posted by his picket +in the shadow of the high corrugated iron fence of the tree-bordered +tennis-ground behind the Convent, as "Lights Out" sounded from the camp of +the Irregulars, beyond the Railway-sheds and storehouses.</p> + +<p>It was glorious to be there, taking care of Her, though it would have been +nicer if one had been allowed to smoke. The moon of William's +passion-inspired verse was not shining o'er South Africa's plain upon this +the very night for her. It was dark and close and stiflingly hot. A +dust-wind had blown that day, and the suspended particles thickened the +atmosphere, to the oppression of the lungs and the hiding of the stars. He +knew his picket posted a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the +Cemetery; his fellow-sentry was on the opposite flank of the Convent. He +was a stout, middle-aged tradesman, with a large wife and a corresponding +family, and it wrung the heart of W. Keyse to think that a tricky fate +might have placed that insensible man on the side where Her window was! +Through the boughs of the peach and orange trees, heavily burdened with +unripe fruit, you could get an occasional glimpse of whitewashed brick +walls, darkened by the outline of shuttered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> oblongs here and there. And +Imagination could blow her cloud of fragrant vapour, though tobacco were +denied you.</p> + +<p>"They're all Her windows while she's there behind them walls," was the +reflection in which W. Keyse found comfort.</p> + +<p>She was not there. She was at that moment being kissed on the stoep of the +Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg, by a young officer of Staats +Artillery, to whom she had agreed to be clandestinely engaged, though Papa +Du Taine had other views.</p> + +<p>W. Keyse was spared this tragic knowledge. But if the moon, shining +beautifully over the Du Taine gardens and orange-groves, had chosen to +tell tales!</p> + +<p>It was still—still and quiet; a blue radiance of electric light burned +here and there; at the Staff Office on the Market Square, and at other +centres of purposeful activity. Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloons +gave out a yellow glare of gas-jets; the red lamp of an apothecary showed +a wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp sprawled in the outline of a sleeping turtle +on her squat hillock of gravelly earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds, +closely matching the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding overhead, the +prairie spread about her, deepening to a basined valley in the middle +distances, sweeping to a rise beyond, so that the edges of the basin +looked down upon the town. High on the hill-ranges in the South more +chains of red sparks burned ... he knew them for the watch-fires of the +Boer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and West were set +thickly with similar twinkling jewels where the laagers were; while +smaller groups shone nearer, marking the situation of isolated vedettes. +The sickly taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clustered +humanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes! He hoped there was enough +of 'em, lying doggo up there, waiting the word to roll down and swallow +the blooming dorp! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon his +temples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the palms of his hands +were moist and clammy. Also, under the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was a +sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> its +wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of +the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body +jarring from the shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk.</p> + +<p>Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, he gritted his +teeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a blooming coward inside the other +who was not. He told the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what he +thought of him. He only wished—that is, one of him only wished—that a +gang of the Dutchies would come along now!</p> + +<p>He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and when the +young soldier had fired into the brown of them and seen the whites of +their eyes, and fallen, pierced by a hundred wounds, in the successful +defence of the Convent, he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobody +could recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, with her +white little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy nightgown, and her +unbraided pigtail swamping the white with gold, and knew that it was her +lover, and knelt by the hero's side. Soft music from the Orchestra, +please! as with his final breath W. Keyse implores a last, first kiss. +Even as William No. 1 thrilled to the rapture of that imagined osculation, +Billy No. 2 experienced a ghastly fright.</p> + +<p>For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, and looking +towards those firefly sparks shining on the heights, came the sound of +stealthy measured footsteps and muffled voices talking Dutch. The enemy +had made a sortie. The defences had been rushed, the town surrounded! Yet +there were only two of them—a big, slouching villain and a short thin +one, who wore a giant hat. The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fierce +martial ardour of William, and greatly reassured Billy. It was only a +townsman taking a night walk with his girl!</p> + +<p>Crushed and discouraged, W. Keyse relaxed his grip upon the trusty rifle, +and slunk back into the shadow, as the tall and the short figures halted +at the angle of the fence.</p> + +<p>"'Ain't it a 'eavenly night?" came from the short figure, who leaned +against the tall one affectionately. "An' me got to go in. A crooil shyme, +I call it. 'Ain't it, deer?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> Leggo me wyste, there's a love. You've no +notion 'ow I shall cop it for bein' lyte."</p> + +<p>He sportively declined to release her. There was the sound of a soft slap, +followed by the smack of a kiss. She was very angry.</p> + +<p>"Leggo, I tell you! Where's your manners, 'orlin' me abart! If that's the +way you be'ayve with your Dutch ones ...!"</p> + +<p>He spat and asseverated:</p> + +<p>"Neen! I no other girls but you heb got."</p> + +<p>It was the Slabberts with Emigration Jane.</p> + +<p>"Ho! So you <i>can</i> talk English a bit—give you a charnce?"</p> + +<p>"Ja, a little now and then when it is useful. But when we are to be +married, you shall only to me talk in my own moder Taal."</p> + +<p>"Shan't I myke a gay old 'ash of it!" Recklessly she crushed the large hat +against the unwieldy shoulder. "There, good-night agyne, deer! Sister +Tobias—that's what they call the one that 'ousekeeps and manages the +kitchen—Sister Tobias 'll be sittin' up for me, thinkin' I've got meself +lost or bin run away with." She gurgled enjoyingly.</p> + +<p>"Tell me again, before you shall go, about the Engelsch Commandant who +came to visit at the Convent to-day?"</p> + +<p>"Lor! 'Aven't I told you a'ready? 'E stopped 'arf an 'our or more ... an' +She—that's the Reverend Mother, as they call her—She took 'im over the +'ouse, an' after 'e'd gone through the 'ouse, an' Sister Tobias—ain't +that a rummy name for a nun?—Sister Tobias, she showed 'im to the gyte, +an' 'e says to 'er as wot 'e's goin' to 'ave the flagstaff rigged up in +the gardin fust thing to-morrow mornin', an' 'e'll undertake that the +workin'-party detached for the purpose will know 'ow to be'ayve +theirselves respectful. An' then 'e touches 'is 'at an' gets on 'is 'orse +an' ..."</p> + +<p>"Listen to me." The Slabbertian command of that barbaric language of the +Englanders evoked her surprise, but the painful squeeze he gave her arm +compelled attention. "Next time the English Commandant to the house shall +come, you to listen at the keyhole is."</p> + +<p>"Wot for?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + +<p>"For what have you before at keyholes listened, little fool?"</p> + +<p>"To find out when they was goin' to sack me, so's to git me own notice in +fust—see? Then you can say to the lydy at the Registry Office—and don't +they give theirselves hairs!—as wot you're leaving because the place +don't suit. Twiggy?"</p> + +<p>"You for yourself did listen, then. Goed. Now it is for me you listen +will, if you a true Boer's vrouw wish to become by-and-by."</p> + +<p>She rose to the immemorial allure that is never out of season in angling +for her simple kind.</p> + +<p>"That word you said means—wife, don't it, deer?" Her voice trembled; the +joyous, longed-for haven of marriage—was it possible that it might be in +sight?</p> + +<p>"It shall mean wife, if you obey me—ja!—otherwise it will be that I +shall marry the daughter of a good countryman of mine, who many sheep has, +and much land, and plenty of money to give his daughter when she a husband +gets!"</p> + +<p>Her underlip dropped pitifully, and the tears welled up. It was too dark +to see her crying, but he heard her sob, and grinned, himself unseen.</p> + +<p>"I'll do anything for you, deer! Only don't tyke an' 'ave the other One. +She may be a Dutchy, but she won't never care for you like wot I do. Don't +you know it, Walt?"</p> + +<p>"I shall it know when I hear what you have found out," proclaimed the +Slabberts grimly.</p> + +<p>There was a boiling W. Keyse in the deep shadow of the tall +corrugated-iron fence, who restrained with difficulty a snort of +indignation.</p> + +<p>"On'y tell me, deer. I'll find out anythink you want me to." Before her +spread a lovely vista of floors—her own floors—to scrub, and a kitchen +range—hers, too—which should cook dinners nice enough to make any +husband adore you.</p> + +<p>"You shall for me find out what that Commandant of the rooineks is up to +under his Flag of the Red Cross."</p> + +<p>"He didn't say nothink about no Red Cross, darlin'."</p> + +<p>"Stilte! They will the Red Cross Flag hoist, I tell you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> and it will +cover more than a parcel of nuns and schoolgirls. That Commandant is so +verdoemte slim! Tell me, do you cartridges well know when you shall see +them? Little brown rolls with at one end a copper cap—and at the other a +bullet. And gunpowder—you have that seen also?"</p> + +<p>She quavered.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but you don't want me to touch the narsty, dreadful stuff, do you, +Walty deer?"</p> + +<p>He scoffed.</p> + +<p>"Afraid of gunpowder, Meisje, that like a whey-blooded Engelschwoman is. A +true Boer's daughter would know how to load a gun, look you, and shoot a +man—many men—if for the help of the Republic it should be! But you will +learn. Watch out, I tell you, for stores that Commandant will be sending +into the Convent. Square boxes and long boxes, and cases—some of them +heavy as if lined with iron; painted black with white letters, and others +stone-colour with black letters, and yet others grey with red letters; the +letters remember—'A.O.S.'"</p> + +<p>"But wot'll be in the boxes, deer?"</p> + +<p>His English, conned from recently published Imperial Army Service manuals, +grew severely technical:</p> + +<p>"If you could their big screws unscrew, and their big locks unlock, you +would see, but you will not be able. What in them? Cakes! Black, square +cakes, with in them holes; and grey, square cakes, and red cakes, light +and crumbly, that dog-biscuits resemble; and long brown sticks, like +peppermint-candy, in bundles tied together with string and paper. Boxes of +stuff like the hair of horse, and packets of evil little electric +detonators in tubes of copper. Alamachtig! who knows what he has not +got—that Engelsch Commandant—both in the dorp and hidden in those +thrice-accursed mines that he has laid on the veld about her. Prismatic +powder and gun-cotton, dynamite and cordite enough to blow a dozen +commandos of honest Booren into dust—a small, fine dust of bones and +flesh that shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood. For I tell +you that man has the wickedness of the duyvel in him, and the cunning of +an old baboon!"</p> + +<p>She babbled:</p> + +<p>"'Ow pretty you talk English when you want to, Walty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> deer! 'Aven't you +bin gittin' at me all along, makin' out ..."</p> + +<p>He swore at her savagely, and she held her tongue, worshipping this new +development of masterful brutality in a man whom she had regarded as a +"big softy."</p> + +<p>He went on:</p> + +<p>"Now you shall know what to look for, and when the verdoemte explosives +come, you will know them by the boxes and the letters 'A.O.S.'—and you +will tell me—and the guns of our Staats Artillery will not shoot that +way, for the sake of the little woman who is going to be a true Boer's +vrouw by-and-by."</p> + +<p>She threw her arms about his rascally neck, and laid her head upon his +hulking shoulder, regardless of the hat she wrecked, and cried in ecstasy:</p> + +<p>"I'll do it, deer! I'll do it, Walty! But why should there be any +shootin', lovey? At 'Ome I never could abear to see them theayter plays +what 'ad guns an' firin' in 'em; it made me 'art beat so crooil bad."</p> + +<p>He grinned over the big hat into the darkness.</p> + +<p>"All right! I will tell the men with the guns that you do not like to hear +them, and they will not perhaps shoot at all. But you will look out for +the boxes with the dynamite, and send me the message when it comes?"</p> + +<p>"Course I will, deer! But 'ow am I to send the message?"</p> + +<p>The shadowy right arm of Slabberts swept out, taking in the black and void +and formless veld with a large free gesture.</p> + +<p>"Out to there. Stand in this place when it becomes dark, looking east. +Straight in front of us is east. The game is great fun, and very easy. +Strike a match, and count to ten before you blow it out, and you shall not +have done that three times before you shall see him answer."</p> + +<p>"But oo's 'im?"</p> + +<p>"He is my friend—out there upon the veld."</p> + +<p>"Lor! but where'll you be? Didn't you say as I'd be talkin' to you? I +don't 'arf fancy wot you calls the gyme, not if I 'ave to play it with a +strynge bloke!"</p> + +<p>The answer came, accompanied by a scraping, familiar sound.</p> + +<p>The Slabberts was striking a match of the fizzling, spluttering,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> +Swedish-made non-safety kind, known to W. Keyse and his circle by the +familiar abbreviation of "stinkers."</p> + +<p>"Voor den donder! Have I not told you I shall be there with him—after +to-night!"</p> + +<p>Her womanly tenderness quickened at the hint of coming separation. She +clung fondly to his arm, and the match went out, extinguished by a +maiden's sigh. He shook her roughly off, and struck another.</p> + +<p>"I shall go away—ja—and here is the only way for you to reach me!"</p> + +<p>As the fresh match glimmered blue, he held it at arm's length in front of +him, counting silently up to ten, then blew it out, and set his heavy boot +upon the faintly-glowing spark, and did the thing again.</p> + +<p>Endeavouring not to breathe so as to be heard, W. Keyse flattened himself +against the corrugated fence, and waited, looking ahead into the thick +velvet darkness, sensing the faint human taint upon the tell-tale breeze, +and counting with the Slabberts; and then, out in the blackness that +concealed so much that was sinister, sprang into sudden life an answering +bluish glimmer, and lasted for ten beats of the pulse, and went out as +suddenly as though a human breath had blown upon it.</p> + +<p>"Is that your pal?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"That is my pal now." He struck another match, and flared it, and screened +it with his big hand, and showed the light again, and repeated the +manœuvre three times. "That is my pal now—and I have said to him 'No +news to-night'; but to-morrow night and the night after, and so on for +many nights to come, I shall be out there where he is, and after you have +called me and I have answered, just as he has done, you will tell me what +there is to tell. Can you spell your language?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty middlin', Walty deer, though not as I could wish, owin' to me +'avin' to leave Board School in the Fif' Stannard when father sold up the +'ome in drink after mother went orf wiv the young man lodger. Some'ow, try +all I could, I never ..."</p> + +<p>"Hou jou smoel! With our Boer people, when men speak, the women listen; +but you English ones chatter and chatter! Remember that this match-talk +goes thus:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> For the letter A one flare, and hide the light as you saw me +do just now. For B, two flares, and hide the light; for C, three, and +hide; for D, four, and hide; and so on ... It is slow, of course, and +matches will blow out when you do not want them to, and a cycle-lamp or a +candle-lantern would be easier to deal with, but for the verdoemte +patrols. Do you understand? Say now what I say, after me. For the letter A +one flare and hide. For B ..."</p> + +<p>He put her through the alphabet from end to end; she laboured faithfully, +and pleased her taskmaster. He grunted approvingly.</p> + +<p>"Zeer goed! See that you do not forget. And remember, you are to listen +and watch, and tell me what you hear and see. If you are obedient, I will +marry you—by-and-by."</p> + +<p>He gave her a clumsy hug in earnest of endearments to come.</p> + +<p>"But if you do not please me"—the grip of his heavy hand bruised her +shoulder through the thin, flowery "blowse"—"I will punish you—yes, by +the Lord! I will marry a fine Boer maiden who is the daughter of a +landrost, and who has got much money and plenty of sheep. And you can give +yourself to any dirty verdoemte schelm of an Engelschman you please, for I +will have none of you! To-morrow you shall have a paper showing you how to +tell me very many things in match-talk, and earn much money to buy +presents for my nice little Boer vrouw. Alamachtig! what is this?"</p> + +<p>"This" was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a condemned Martini +poked violently out of the blackness into the Slabbertian thorax.</p> + +<p>"Not in such a 'urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper," spluttered the +ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the weapon. "Put up them dirty big +'ands o' yours, or, by Cripps! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin', +match-talkin' spy!"</p> + +<p>The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts wagged in +explanation.</p> + +<p>"This is assault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful burgher. You shall +answer to your officer for it, I tell you slap. Voor den donder! Is not a +young man to light his pipe as he talks to a young woman without being +called spy by a verdoemte sentry! Tell him, Jannje, that is all I did +do!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p> + +<p>W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncommonly heavy. The +Slabberts felt it tremble, and thought about taking his hands down and +reaching for that Colts six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But though +the finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, and Walt was not fond of risks.</p> + +<p>"Tell him, Jannje!" he spluttered once more.</p> + +<p>She had not needed a second bidding.</p> + +<p>As the domestic hen in defence of her chicken will give battle to the +wilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with ruffled plumage, blazing, defiant +eyes, and shrill objurgations, couched in the vernacular most familiar to +their object, hurled herself upon the enemy.</p> + +<p>"You narsty little brute, you! To up and try an' murder my young man. With +your jor about spies! Sauce! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Off +the fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun, +you silly little imitation sojer—d' you 'eer?"</p> + +<p>The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully. +Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He felt +damp and small, and desperately at a loss. And—as though in malice—the +moon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim vapour, as he said +with a lordly air:</p> + +<p>"You be off, young woman, and don't interfere!"</p> + +<p>Gawd! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her rage burst the +flood-gates. She screeched:</p> + +<p>"You!... It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to—an' this is 'ow I gits it +back?" She gasped. "Because you're arter one young woman wot wouldn't be +seen dead in the syme street wi' you ..."</p> + +<p>Pierced with the awful thought that the adored one might be listening, W. +Keyse lifted up his voice.</p> + +<p>"Sentry.... 'Ere!... Mister!" he cried despairingly, "You on the other +side, can't you hear?"</p> + +<p>In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. Keyse, comfortably +propped in an angle of the opposite fence, the bulk of the Convent and the +width of its garden and tennis-ground being between them, continued to +sleep and snore peacefully and undisturbed.</p> + +<p>Emigration Jane continued:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear o' you, you try +to git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke pinched! Yah, greedy! Boo! You +plate-faced, erring-backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with your +love-letters an' messages! Wait till I give 'er another o' your +screevin'—that's all!"</p> + +<p>"Patrol!" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper.</p> + +<p>She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself as she came, to +frenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it outside the big gaudy pubs in the +Tottenham Court Road, and the Britannia, Camden Town! Perhaps the +recollection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes of the +little perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal memory, and provoked +the act. Who can tell? We may only know that she plucked the weapon of +lower-class London from her hat, and jabbed at the pale face viciously, +and heard the victim say "Owch!" as he winced, and knew herself, as her +Slabberts gripped the rifle-barrel, and wrested it with iron strength from +the failing hands of W. Keyse, the equal of those dauntless Boer women who +killed men when it was necessary. But, oh! the 'orrible, 'ideous feeling +of 'aving stuck something into live flesh! Sick and giddy, the heroine +shut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous phantasmagoria of +coloured pyrotechny, rivalling the most marvellous triumphs of the +magician Brock....</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, +two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the +largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted +tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, +and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of striving +men:</p> + +<p>"Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your picket. Don't fire; blow +your whistle instead!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Pip-ip-ip-'r'r! Pip-ip-r'r!</i>"</p> + +<p>The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of the darkness on +the other side of the Cemetery, and considerably quickened the arrival of +the visiting patrol.</p> + +<p>"Communicating with persons outside the defences by flashlight signals. We +can't shoot him for it just yet, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> we <i>can</i> gaol him on suspicion," +said the Commander of the picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of +B.S.A. troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of the +guard-house.</p> + +<p>"Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer who +had ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picket +came up, you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of the +story. "A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark wideawake and short +pointed beard! H'm!"</p> + +<p>"Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from town," said the picket +Commander. "Must have known the countersign, or the sentries out there +would have stopped him. I—see!"</p> + +<p>He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The moonlight was +quite bright enough for the exchange of a wink. Then:</p> + +<p>"Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old Naval +Brigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?"</p> + +<p>W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. His +fingers were red when they came away.</p> + +<p>"The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she jabbed me with a 'at-pin, +to git me to let 'im go."</p> + +<p>"There's a blindin' vixen for you!" commented the Sergeant. "Two inch +higher, and she'd have doused your light out. Where did she come from, +d'ye know?"</p> + +<p>"Have you any idea who she was?" asked the Commander of the picket.</p> + +<p>W. Keyse shook his head.</p> + +<p>"'Aven't the least idear, sir. Never sor 'er before in my natural!" he +declared stoutly.</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her—or she will you," said the +patrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggering +into the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey, +Johnny, where's your gun?"</p> + +<p>It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank of the Convent.</p> + +<p>"And time you turned up, I don't think," commented W. Keyse. "Didn't you +'ear me sing out to you just now?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Come, now, what were you up to?" the Sergeant pressed. "Better up an' own +it if you've bin asleep on guard."</p> + +<p>The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest and comment, not at +all sympathetic or polite, was a stout, respectable tradesman, with a +large, round, ghastly face, who saluted his officer with a trembling hand.</p> + +<p>"I—I have been the victim of an outrage, sir!"</p> + +<p>"Sorry to hear it; what's your name?"</p> + +<p>"Brooker, sir," volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. "The other sentry we put +on with Keyse here."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Brooker, sir, General Stores, Market Square," babbled the citizen.</p> + +<p>"Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say?"</p> + +<p>"I have been drugged or hypnotised, sir, and robbed of my gun while in a +state of insensibility, sir—upon my honour as an Alderman and Magistrate +of this borough! Swear me, sir, if you have any doubt of my veracity!" He +flapped his hands like fins, and his bandolier heaved above a labouring +bosom.</p> + +<p>The Commander of the picket looked preternaturally grave.</p> + +<p>"Very sorry, Private Brooker, but unless the Sergeant has brought his +Testament along, you'll have to give your information in the ordinary way. +So they drugged you or hypnotised you—or both, was it?—and took away +your rifle. Of course you saw it done?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I did not see it done. When I woke up ..."</p> + +<p>"Ah, when you woke up! Please go on."</p> + +<p>The crowding faces of B.S.A. men and Town Guardsmen were grinning now. The +patrol-officer was rocking in his saddle.</p> + +<p>"When I revived, sir, from the swoon or trance ..."</p> + +<p>"Very good, Private Brooker; we'll hear the rest of that in the morning. +Sergeant, relieve these sentries, and bring Private Keyse and the hypnotic +subject before me in the morning. Make this man Brooker a prisoner at +large for the present, and fall in the picket."</p> + +<p>The Sergeant saluted. "Very good, sir."</p> + +<p>The bubbling Brooker boiled over frothily as the sentries were changing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p> + +<p>"A prisoner! Good God! do they take me for a traitor? A Magistrate ... an +Alderman, the President of the Gas Committee ..."</p> + +<p>"I should 'ave guessed you to be that if I 'adn't 'eard it, sonny," said +the Sergeant dryly, the implied sarcasm provoking a subdued guffaw. He +added, as the visiting patrol rode on and the picket marched back to the +Cemetery: "Can't relieve you of your rifle, because you 'aven't got 'er. +What in 'Eaven's name are they goin' to do to you? Well, you'll find out +to-morrow. Left face; quick march!"</p> + +<p>Counting left-right, and keeping elbow-touch with the next man, W. Keyse +got in a whisper:</p> + +<p>"I say, Sergeant, am I in for it as well as Ole Bulgy Weskit? You might as +well let me know and charnce it!"</p> + +<p>The Sergeant answered with unfeeling indifference:</p> + +<p>"Since you ask, I should say you was."</p> + +<p>"That's a bit 'ard! Wot'll I git?"</p> + +<p>"Ten to one, your skater."</p> + +<p>"Wot is my skater?"</p> + +<p>"Your Corporal's stripe, you suckin' innocent! Wot for? For takin' a Boer +spy pris'ner—that's wot for!"</p> + +<p>"Cripps!" said W. Keyse, enlightened, illuminated and glowing in the +darkness. He added a moment later, in rather a depressed tone: "But it was +'im, the civilian bloke with the beard, 'oo downed the Dutchy, an' sat on +'im till the guard come up."</p> + +<p>The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking to the officer in +charge. It was the Corporal who answered, across the man who marched upon +the left of W. Keyse:</p> + +<p>"O' course it was. But you 'ad the Dopper fust, and," he cackled quietly, +"the Colonel won't be jealous."</p> + +<p>The eyes and mouth of W. Keyse became circular.</p> + +<p>"The who?"</p> + +<p>"The Colonel, didn't you 'ear me say?"</p> + +<p>"That wasn't never ... <i>'im</i>"?</p> + +<p>"All right, since you know best. But him, for all that!"</p> + +<p>"Great Jiminy Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> + + +<p>You are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the interminable +plain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, and before threatened, now +isolated like some undaunted coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested with +screaming sea-birds, girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst of +waters haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent menace, she +squatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting the event.</p> + +<p>It was known that on the previous day the telegraph wires north of Beaton +had been cut, and this day was to sever the last link with Cape Town at +Maripo, some forty miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the Olopo +River might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy there overnight. +Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, that the armoured train that had been +sent up from the Cape with two light guns of superseded pattern—a +generous contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines now +bristling from the sand-bagged ramparts—had been seized by a commando, +with the officer and the men in charge. This was to be confirmed later by +the arrival of an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in the +omnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of this chapter he was +hiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud of his experiences, in default of +other pabulum, and did not get in before dark of the long blazing day.</p> + +<p>Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the northern end of the +town to see the Military Executive take over the Hospital. But that the +streets were barricaded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizen +carried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion of national +rejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the pepper-trees fringing the +thoroughfares and clumped in the Market Square rustled in the faint hot +breeze. By-and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked under +the iron hail that beat in blizzards upon them, and die in the noxious +lyddite fumes dispersed by bursting shells.</p> + +<p>The variegated crowd cheered as the Staff dismounted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> at the white-painted +iron gates of the railed-in Hospital grounds. It was not the acclamation +of admiration, it was the cheer expectant. They wanted to know what the +Officer in Command was going to do? Intolerable suspense racked them. +Wherever it was known that he would be, there they followed at this +juncture—solid masses of humanity, bored with innumerable ear-holes, and +enamelled with patient, glittering, expectant eyes. His own keen, kindly +glance swept over them as he touched his grey felt hat in acknowledgment +of their dubious greeting, that half-hearted but well-meant cheer. He read +the mute question written upon all the faces. Part of his answer to the +interrogation was standing in the Railway-yard, but they would have to +wait a little while longer yet—just a little longer. He whistled his +pleasant melodious little tune as the porter hurried to open the gates.</p> + +<p>One pair of pale, rather ugly eyes in the crowd were illumined with pure +hero-worship. "That's 'im," explained their owner, nudging a big man in +shabby white drill, who was shouldering a deliberate way through the +press.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"The Colonel—and ain't 'e a Regular Oner! Them along of 'im—with the red +shoulder-straps and brown leather leggin's, they're cav'l'ry Orficers o' +the Staff, they are. An' them others in khâki with puttees—syme as wot +I've got on—they're the Medical Swells. Military Saw-boneses—twig? You +can tell 'em, when you're near enough, by the bronze badges with a serpint +climbin' up a stick inside a wreath, wot they 'ave on the fronts o' their +caps an' on their jacket-collars, an' the instrument-cases wot they +carries in their bres' pockets. I'm a bit in the know about these things, +being a sort of Service man meself."</p> + +<p>Thus delicately did W. Keyse invite comment. Splendid additions had +certainly been made to the martial outfit of the previous day. The tweed +Norfolk had been replaced by a khâki jacket, evidently second-hand, and +obligingly taken in by the lady of the boarding-house. A Corporal's +stripe, purchased from a trooper of the B.S.A., who, as the consequence of +over-indulgence in liquor and language, had one to sell, had been sewn +upon the sleeve. The original owner had charged an extra tikkie for doing +it, and it burned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> the arm that bore it like a vaccination-pustule on the +fifth day.</p> + +<p>"Being a sort of Service man meself," repeated W. Keyse. He twitched the +stripe carelessly into sight. "C'manding orficer marked me down for this +to-day," he continued, with elaborate indifference, "along of a Favourable +Mention in the Cap'n's Guard Report. Nothin' much—little turn-up with a +'ulking big Dutch bloke, 'oo turned out to be a spy."</p> + +<p>In the act of feeling for the invisible moustache, he recognised the face +under the Panama hat worn by the big neighbour in white drill, and blushes +swamped his yellow freckles. The owner of that square, powerful face, no +longer bloated and crimson, but pale and drawn, was the man who had +stepped in to the rescue at the Dutchman's saloon-bar on the previous day, +where Fate had stage-managed effects so badly that the heroic leading +attitude of W. Keyse had perforce given place to the minor rôle of the +juvenile walking-gentleman. "Watto!" he began. "It's you, Mister! I bin +wantin' to say thank——" But a surge of the crowd flattened W. Keyse +against the green-painted iron railings surrounding a municipal gum-tree, +and the big man was lost to view. Perhaps it was as well that the +acquaintance made under conditions remote from respectability should not +be renewed. But W. Keyse would have preferred to thank the rescuer.</p> + +<p>The taking over of the Hospital was accomplished in a moment, to the +disappointment of the ceremony-loving Briton and the Colonial of British +race, to say nothing of the Kaffirs and the Barala, who anticipated a big +indaba. The little party of officers in khâki walked up the gravel-drive +between the carefully-tended grass plats to the stoep where the Mayor of +Gueldersdorp, with the matron, house-surgeon, secretary, and several +prominent members of the Committee—including Alderman Brooker, +puffy-cheeked and yellow-eyed for lack of a night's rest—waited. Military +Authority saluted Civic Dignity, shook hands, and the thing was done. +Inspection followed.</p> + +<p>"The warr'ds, said ye?" The Chief Medical Officer, a tall raw-boned +personage, very evidently hailed from North of the Tweed. "I'm obliged to +ye, ma'am," he addressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> the flustered matron, "but the warr'ds an' the +contents o' the beds in them are no' to say of the firr'st importance—at +least, whaur I'm concerr'ned. With your permeesion we'll tak' a look at +the Operating Theatre, and overhaul the sterileezing plant, and the +sanitary arrangements, and maybe, after a gliff at the kitchens, there +would be a moment to spend in ganging through the warr'ds. Unless the +Colonel would prefer to begin wi' them?" He turned a small, twinkling pair +of blue eyes set in dry wrinkles upon his Chief.</p> + +<p>"Not I, Major. This is your department. But I shall ask five minutes more +grace in the interests of the friend I spoke of, Dr. Saxham; with whom I +made an appointment at the half-hour."</p> + +<p>"You're no' by any chance meaning the Saxham that wrote 'The Diseases of +Civilisation,' are ye, Colonel? I mind a sentence in it that must have +been a douse of cauld watter—toch! vitriol would be the better worr'd—in +the faces o' some o' the dandy operators. '<i>Young men</i>,' he ca'ed them, as +if he was a greybeard himsel', 'young men who, led to take up Surgery by +the houp o' gains an' notoriety, have given themselves nae time to learn +its scienteefic principles—showy operators, who diagnose wi' the knife +an' endeavour to dictate to Nature and no' to assist her.' And yet Saxham +could daur! 'I shall prove that the gastric ulcer can be cured wi'out +exceesion,' he said, or they say he said in the <i>Lancet</i> report o' the +operation on the Grand Duke Waldimir—I cam' across a reprint o' it no' +lang ago—when Sir Henry McGavell sent for him, wi' the sweat o' mortal +terror soakin' his Gladstone collar. He cut a hole in the Duke's stomach, +ye will understand, in front o' the ulcer, clipped off the smaller +intesteene, spliced the twa together wi' a Collins button, and by a +successful deveece o' plumbing—naething less—earned the eterr'nal +gratitude o' the autocrat an' the everlastin' currses o' the Nihilists. +All that, seven years ago, an' the thing is dune the day wi'oot a +hair's-breadth difference. For why? Ye canna paint the lily, or improve +upon perfection. Toch!... Colonel, that man would be worth the waitin' +for, if he stood in your friend's shoes the day!"</p> + +<p>"Rejoice then, Major, and be exceeding glad, for I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> believe this is the +man who wrote the book and plugged—or was it plumbed—the potentate."</p> + +<p>The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. "I promise myself a crack or +twa wi' him, then.... But how is it a busy chiel like that can get awa' +from his private patients and his Hospital warr'ds in the London Winter +Season Ahem! ahem!"</p> + +<p>By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing the conversation, +it was plain that he had recalled the circumstances under which the "busy +chiel" had turned his back upon the private patients and the Hospital +wards. "Colonel," he went on, "I could be wishing this varry +creeditable-appearing institution—judging from the ootside o't—were +twice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe or so to the back of that."</p> + +<p>"My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and happy but once, and +that was when we had fifty men down with dysentery and fever in a +tin-roofed Railway goods-shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leaky +canvas, and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could get no +milk."</p> + +<p>"That goes to prove the eleementary difference between the male an' the +female character. A man will no' keep on dithering for what he kens he +canna' get. A woman, especially a young an' pretty——" He broke off to +say: "Toch! will ye hark to Beauvayse! The very name of the sex sets that +lad rampaging."</p> + +<p>"Beautiful! I tell you, sir," the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-camp +was emphatically assuring that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, "the +loveliest girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see—bar none! I saw +her first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang of Boer blackguards +insulted some nuns who were in charge of a ladies' school, and to-day she +passed with two other Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as the +Staff dismounted at the gate."</p> + +<p>"Another <i>rara avis</i>, Beau?" the Colonel called across the intervening +group of talkers. The group of khâki-clad figures separated, and turned +first to the Chief, then to the bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast. +White teeth flashed in tanned faces, chaff began:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> + +<p>"In love again, for the first and only time, Toby?"</p> + +<p>"Since he lost his heart to Miss What's-her-name, that pretty 'Jollity' +girl, with the double-barrelled repeating wink, and the postcard grin."</p> + +<p>"Don't forget the velvet-voiced beauty of the dark, moonless night on the +Cape Town Hotel verandah!"</p> + +<p>"<i>She</i> turned out to be a Hottentot lady, didn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Cavalry Problem No. 1. Put yourself in Lieutenant the Right Hon. the Lord +Viscount Beauvayse's place, and give in detail the precautions you would +have taken to insure the transport of your heart uninjured from the Staff +Headquarters to the Hospital Gate. Show on the map the disposition of the +enemy, whether desirous to enslave, or likely to be mashed...."</p> + +<p>"She was neither," the crimson boy declared. "She was simply a lady, quiet +and high-bred and simple enough to have been a Princess of the blood, or +to look a fellow in the face and pass him by without the slightest +idea—I'd swear to it—that she'd fairly taken his breath away."</p> + +<p>"My dear Lord!" The Mayor took a great deal of comfort out of a title. +"Attractive the young lady is, I certainly admit, and my wife is—I may +say the word—in her praise. But you go one, or half a dozen, better than +Mrs. Greening, who will be perfectly willing, I don't doubt, to introduce +you, unless the Colonel entertains objections ..."</p> + +<p>"To Staff flirtations? Regard 'em as inevitable, Mr. Mayor, like Indian +prickly-heat, or fever here. And probably the best cure for the complaint +in the present instance would be to meet the cause of it."</p> + +<p>"Judge for yourself, Colonel; you've first-class long-distance eyesight." +There was a ring of defiance in the boy's fresh voice. "You've seen her +before, and it isn't the kind of face one forgets. Here they are ... here +she is now, coming back, with the other ladies. The railing spoils one's +view, but the gates are open, and in another moment you'll see her pass +them."</p> + +<p>The Chief moved to the front of the stoep where the Staff had congregated. +Men quietly fell aside, making place for him, so that he stood with +Beauvayse, in a clear half-circle of figures attired like his own, in +Service browns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> and drabs and umbers, waiting until the three approaching +feminine shapes should pass across the open space. One or two Staff +monocles went up. The Chief Medical Officer removed and wiped his +steel-rimmed eyeglasses before replacing them on his bony aquiline nose.</p> + +<p>They came and passed—the white figure and the two black ones. Of these +one was very tall, one short and dumpy—veiled and mantled, their hands +hidden in their ample sleeves, they went by with their eyes upon the +ground. But the girl with them—a slight, willowy creature in a creamy +cambric dress, a wide hat of black transparent material, frilled and +bowed, upon her dead-leaf coloured hair, and tied by wide strings of +muslin under her delicate round chin—looked with innocent, candid +interest at the group of men outside the Hospital. The tanned faces, the +simple workman-like Service dress, setting off the well-knit, alert +figures, the quiet, soldierly bearing, even the distant sound of the +well-bred voices, pleased her, even as the whiff of cigars and Russian +leather that the breeze brought down from the stoep struck some latent +chord of subconscious memory, and brought a puzzled little frown between +the delicately-drawn dark eyebrows arching over black-lashed golden hazel +eyes. And cognisant of every fleeting change of expression in those lovely +eyes, the taller of her two companions thought, with a stab of pain:</p> + +<p>"<i>Your father was that man's friend, and the comrade of others like him.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Now, then!" challenged Beauvayse, as the three figures moved out of +sight.</p> + +<p>"The 'Girl With the Golden Eyes'?" said somebody.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't speak of her in the same breath with that brainless beast of +Balzac's, hang it all!" expostulated the champion. He turned eagerly to +the Colonel. "Now you've seen her, sir, would you?"</p> + +<p>"Not exactly. And I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possession +of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look +out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the +Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of +perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the +flowing veil of the nun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next +instant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly before +the gates, and rendered nervous by the pressure of the crowd, shied at the +towering <i>panache</i> of imitation grass-made ostrich feathers trailing from +the aged and crownless pot-hat worn by a headman of the Barala in holiday +attire, jerked the bridle from the hand of the trooper, and backed, +rearing, in the direction of the three women passing on the sidewalk. The +other horses shied, frustrating the efforts of the orderly to catch the +flying bridle, and the danger from the huge, towering brown body and +dangling iron-shod hoofs was very real, seemed inevitable, when a man in +white drill and wearing a Panama hat ran out of the crowd, sprang up and +deftly caught the loose bridoon-rein, mastered the frightened beast, and +dragged it back into the roadway, in time to avert harm.</p> + +<p>"Cleverly done, but a close thing," the Chief said, as he turned away. "<i>I +wish I had had that fellow's chance!</i>" was written in Beauvayse's face. To +have won a look of gratitude from those wonderful black-fringed eyes, +brought a flush of admiration into those white-rose cheeks, would have +been worth while. The slight, tall, girlish figure in its dainty creamy +draperies had passed out of sight now between its two black-robed +guardians. And had not Luck, that mutable-minded deity, given the golden +chance to a hulking stranger in white drill, his, Beauvayse's, might have +been the hand to intervene in the matter of the Colonel's restive charger, +and his the ears to receive Beauty's acknowledgments.</p> + +<p>If he had known that her eyes had been too full of his own resplendent, +virile, glowing young personality, to even see the man who had stepped in +between her and possible danger! The most innocent girl will have her +ideal of a lover and thrill at the imagined touch, and furnish the dumb +image with a dream-voice that woos her in impossible, elaborate, +impassioned sentences, very unlike the real utterances of Love when he +comes. The blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, golden-locked St. Michael portrayed +in celestial-martial splendour upon one of the panels of the triptych over +the altar in the Convent chapel, had, as he bent stern young brows over +the writhing demon with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> the vainly-enveloping snake-folds, something of +the young soldier's look, it seemed to Lynette. Ridiculous and profane, +Sister Cleophée or Sister Ruperta would have said, to liken a handsome, +stupid, young lieutenant of Hussars to the immortal Captain of the Armies +of Heaven.</p> + +<p>But she knew another who would understand. There was no flaw in the +perfect sympathy that maintained between Lynette and the Mother-Superior, +though, certainly, since the Colonel's visit of the previous day, the +Mother had seemed strangely preoccupied and sad.... Her good-night kiss, +invariably so warm and tender, had been the merest brush of lips against +the girl's soft cheek; her good-morning had been even more perfunctory; +her eyes, those great maternal radiances, turned their light elsewhere. +Unloved and neglected, the Convent's spoiled darling hugged her +abandonment, weaving a very pretty, ineffably silly romance, in which a +noble and beautiful young Hussar lover, suddenly appearing over the +corrugated-iron fence of the tennis-ground, the foliage of its fringe of +pepper-trees waving in the night-breeze, strode towards the slender white +figure leaning from her chamber-casement, whispering, with outstretched +hands, and eyes that gleamed through the darkness:</p> + +<p>"<i>Open the door! Do you hear, you Kid? Open the door!</i>"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Her heart beat once, heavily, and seemed to stop. A cold breath seemed to +blow upon the little silken hair-tendrils at the nape of her white neck, +spreading a creeping, stiffening horror through her body, deadening +sensation, paralysing every limb.</p> + +<p>The close approach of any man, even the thought of such contact, turned +her deadly faint, checked her pulses, stopped her breath. At picnics and +parties and dances to which the Mayor's wife or the mothers of some of the +pupils would invite or chaperon her, her vivid, delicate, fragile beauty +would draw, first men's eyes, and then their owners, not all unhandsome or +undesirable; while showier girls looked in vain for partners or +companions. The little triumph, the consciousness of being admired and +sought after, would quicken Lynette's pulses, and heighten the radiance of +her eyes, and lend animation to her girlish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> chatter and gaiety to her +laughter—at first. Then some over-bold advance, some hot look or +whispered word, would bring quick recollection leaping into the lovely +eyes, and drive the vivid colour from the virginal transparent face, and +stamp the smiling mouth into pale, breathless lines of Fear. That night in +the tavern on the veld had branded a child with premature knowledge of the +ferocious, ravening, devouring Beast that lies in Man concealed. Again she +felt the scorching breath of lust upon her; she quailed under the +intolerable touch; she shook like a reed in the brutal hands of the evil, +dominating power that would brook no resistance and knew no mercy. The +horrible obsession came upon her now, all the stronger for those moments +of forgetfulness:</p> + +<p>"<i>Clang—clang—clang!</i>"</p> + +<p>The little Irish novice had rung the chapel bell for Sext and None. She +could hear, from the nuns' end of the big rambling, two-storied house, the +rustling habits sweeping along the passage. She hurried to the door, and +tore it open, frantically as though that ravening breath had been hot upon +her neck, saw the dear black figure of the Mother sweeping towards her, +and rushed into the arms that were held out, hiding from that burning, +scorching, hideous memory in the bosom that dead Richard Mildare had +turned from in his blindness.</p> + +<p>Just as Beauvayse, stimulated by the recollection of the Mayor's promise +to introduce him to the loveliest girl he had ever seen in his life, or +ever should see, mentally registered a vow that he would keep the old +buffer up to that, by listening to his interminable hunting-stories, and +laughing at his venerable jokes, to tears if necessary. Love, like War, +sharpened a fellow's faculties....</p> + +<p>"It's rum to reflect," Beauvayse said, conscious of perpetrating an +epigram, "that from time immemorial the fellow who wants to make up to a +young woman has always had to begin by getting round an old man!"</p> + +<p>He looked round for the old man, whom the title would have estranged for +ever. He had buttonholed the Chief, and was gassing away—joy!—upon the +very subject.</p> + +<p>"I fancy the ladies of the Convent, who occasionally visit the Hospital, +were coming in at this gate. The short nun,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> I noticed, had a little +basket in her hand. Probably they went round to the side entrance, seeing +the—ha, ha!—the stoep garrisoned by Her Majesty's Imperial Forces. +Certainly.... Without doubt. We respect the Mother-Superior highly. A most +gifted, most estimable person in every way, if rather stern and +reserved.... Unapproachable, my wife calls her. But Miss Mildare, her +ward——"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> + + +<p>"Miss Mildare!"</p> + +<p>The Chief's keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The whole face had darkened +and narrowed, and the clipped brown moustache lost its smiling curve, and +straightened into a hard line.</p> + +<p>"Miss <i>Mildare</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, that is her name.... An orphan, I have heard, and with no +living relatives. But she seems happy enough at the Convent, judging by +what Mrs. Greening says."</p> + +<p>The hearer experienced a momentary feeling of relief and of anger—relief +to think that dead Dick Mildare's daughter should have found refuge in +such a woman's heart; anger that the woman should have concealed from him +the girl's identity, knowing her the object of his own anxious search.</p> + +<p>Then he understood. His anger died as suddenly as it had been kindled. He +recalled something that he had seen when the rearing horse had inclined +perilously towards the footway—that protecting maternal gesture, that +swift interposition of the tall, active, black-robed figure between the +white-clad, flower-faced, girlish creature and those threatening iron-shod +hoofs....</p> + +<p>"She loves the girl—Dick Mildare's daughter by the treacherous friend who +stole him from her. Is there a doubt? With poor little Lady Lucy Hawting's +willowy figure and the same nymph-like droop of the little head, with its +rich twists and coils of dead-leaf-coloured hair, shaded by the big black +hat. That woman has taken her to her heart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> however she came by her; the +parting would be agony, stern, proud, tender creature that she is! I +suppose she will be doing thundering penance for not having told me, a +fellow who simply walked into the place and assegaied her with my +death-news. Here's a marrowy bone of gossip Lady Hannah shall never crack. +And yet I wouldn't swear there's not an angel husked inside that dried-up +little chrysalis. For God made all women, though He only turned out a few +of 'em perfect, and some only just a little better than the ruck."</p> + +<p>He roused himself from the brown study that brought into relief many +lurking lines and furrows in the thin, keen face, as the Chief Medical +Officer, fixing him through suspicious eyeglasses, demanded:</p> + +<p>"Ye got your full allowance o' sleep last nicht?"</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>"Thanks to a Cockney babe in bandoliers, who was born not only with eyes +and ears, like other infants, but with the capacity for using 'em."</p> + +<p>"Ay. It's remarr'kable how many men will daudle complacently through life, +from the cradle to the grave, wi'out the remotest consciousness that +they're practically blind and no better than deaf, as far as regards real +seeing and hearing. But who's your prodeegy?"</p> + +<p>"One of Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. They put him on at the Convent with +another sentry, their first experience of a night on guard. By not being +in a hurry to challenge, and keeping his ears open while a conversation of +the confidentially-affectionate kind was going on between a Dutchman—a +fellow employed in the booking-office at the railway, on whom I've had my +eye for some little time past—and his sweetheart, my townie found out for +himself something that most of us knew before, and something else that we +wanted to know particularly badly...."</p> + +<p>"Namely?"</p> + +<p>"For one thing, that the town is a hotbed of spies, and that our friends +in laager outside are nightly communicated with by means of +flash-signals."</p> + +<p>"And that's an indeesputable fact. Toch!" No other combination of letters +may convey the guttural, "Have I no' seen the lamps at warr'k mysel', +after darr'k, at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> end o' the roads that debouch upon the veld! The +Dutchman would be able to plead precedent, I'm thinking."</p> + +<p>"He will have plenty of time to think where he is at present. When the +sentry interfered he was instructing the young woman in a simple but +effective code of match-flare signals, by means of which she was to +communicate with him when he had cleared out. And he had announced his +intention of doing that without delay."</p> + +<p>"An' skipping to his freends upo' the Borr'der.... Toch!" The network of +wrinkles tightened about the sharp little blue-grey eyes of the Chief +Medical Officer. "That would gie a thochtfu' man a kind o' notion that a +reese in the temperature may be expectit shortly. An' so you—slept +soundly on the strength o' many wakeful nichts to come? Ay, that would be +the kind o' information ye were badly wanting!"</p> + +<p>"You're wrong, Major. The bit of information was this—from the spy to his +friends outside: '<i>No—news—to-night.</i>'" The keen hazel eyes conveyed +something into the Northern blue ones that was not said in words: "'No +news to-night.' And the sender of that message was a railway man!"</p> + +<p>The wiry hairs of the Chief Medical Officer's red moustache bristled like +a cat's.</p> + +<p>"Toch! Colonel, you will have reason to be considering me dull in the +uptake, but I see through the mud wall now. And so the knowledge that ye +have no equal at hiding your deeds o' darkness even in the licht o' the +railway-yard was as good to ye as Daffy's Elixir. And when micht we reckon +on getting notification from what I may presume to ca' your double +surpreese-packet?"</p> + +<p>He looked at his watch—a well-used Waterbury, worn upon the silvered +steel lip-strap of a cavalry bridle, and said:</p> + +<p>"Ten o'clock. At a quarter past eleven I think we may count upon +something. The driver of Engine 123 has given me the word of an Irishman +from County Kildare; and the stoker, a Cardiff man, and the guard, who +hails from Shoreditch, are quite as keen as Kildare."</p> + +<p>"You're sending the stuff up North?"</p> + +<p>"In the direction of the stretch of railway-line they're busy wrecking, in +the hope that it may come in useful."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Weel, I will gie ye the guid wish that the affair may go off exactly as +ye are hoping."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, Major! You could hardly word the sentence more happily."</p> + +<p>They exchanged a laugh as the Mayor bustled up, rubicund, important, and +with a Member of the Committee to introduce.</p> + +<p>"Colonel, you'll permit me to present Alderman Brooker, one of our most +energetic and valued townsmen, President of the Gas Committee, and an +Assistant Borough Magistrate. One of Major Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. Was +on sentry-go last night not far from here, and had a most extraordinary +experience. Worth your hearing, if you can spare time to listen to my +friend's account of it."</p> + +<p>"With pleasure, Mr. Mayor."</p> + +<p>Brooker, a stout and flabby man, with pouches under biliously tinged eyes, +bowed and broke into a violent perspiration, not wholly due to the shiny +black frock-coat suit of broadcloth donned for the occasion.</p> + +<p>"Sir, I humbly venture to submit that I have been the victim of a +conspiracy!"</p> + +<p>"Indeed? Step this way, Mr. Brooker."</p> + +<p>Brooker, soothed by the courteous affability of the reception, his sense +of importance magnified by being led aside, apart from the others, into +the official privacy of the stoep-corner, began to be eloquent. He knew, +he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, +but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to +whom he now addressed himself, would understand—none better—how to +unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of +secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his +under-lip. He waved his hands, thick, short-fingered, clammy members....</p> + +<p>"My story is as follows, sir...."</p> + +<p>"I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on condition that +you will do me first the favour of listening to a story of mine?"</p> + +<p>Deferred Brooker protested willingness.</p> + +<p>"Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, I +was returning from a little tour of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> inspection"—the slight riding +sjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward—"out +there, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent, +where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had been +posted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce:</p> + +<p>"<i>Gr'rumph! Honk'k! Gr'rumph!</i>"</p> + +<p>Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes.</p> + +<p>The face upon which he glued his bulging eyes was grave to sternness. He +stuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance:</p> + +<p>"It—it sounds something like a snore."</p> + +<p>"It was a snore, Mr. Brooker, and it proceeded from one of the sentries +upon guard."</p> + +<p>"Sir ... I ... I can expl——"</p> + +<p>"Oblige me by not interrupting, Mr. Brooker. This sentry sat upon a short +post, his back fitted comfortably into an angle of the Convent fence, his +head thrown back, and his mouth wide open. From it, or from the organ +immediately above, the snore proceeded. He was having a capital night's +rest—in the Service of his Country. And as I halted in front of him, +fixing upon him a gaze which was coldly observant, he shivered and ceased +to snore, and said":—the wretched Brooker heard his own voice, rendered +with marvellous fidelity, speaking in the muffled tone of the +sleeper—"'<i>Annie, it's damned cold to-night; and you've got all the +blanket.</i>'"</p> + +<p>"Sir ... sir!" The stricken Brooker babbled hideously.... "Colonel ... for +mercy's sake!..."</p> + +<p>"I could not oblige the gentleman with a blanket, Mr. Brooker, but I +relieved him of his rifle and left him, to tell his picket a cock-and-bull +story of having been drugged and hypnotised by Boer spies. And—I will +overlook it upon the present occasion, but in War-time, Mr. Brooker, men +have been shot for less. I think I need not detain you further. Your rifle +has been sent to your headquarters—with my card and an explanation. One +word more, Mr. Brooker——"</p> + +<p>Brooker, grey, streaky, and desperately wretched, was blind to the +laughter brimming the keen hazel eyes.</p> + +<p>"I am entrusted by the Imperial Government with the preservation of Public +Morality in Gueldersdorp, as well as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> with the maintenance of the Public +Safety—and I should be glad of an assurance from you that Mrs. Brooker's +Christian name is really Annie?"</p> + +<p>"I—I swear it, Colonel!"</p> + +<p>Brooker fled, leaving the preserver of public morality to have his laugh +out before he rejoined the Staff, glancing at the Waterbury on the short +steel chain. Half-past ten. Would the Dop Doctor turn up to appointment, +or had the battle with habit and the deadly craving born of indulgence +ended in defeat? As his eyes moved from the dial, they lighted upon the +man:</p> + +<p>"<i>Clothed and in his right mind....</i>"</p> + +<p>His own words of the night before recurred to memory as he came forwards +with his long, light step, greeting the new-comer with the easy, cordial +grace of high-breeding.</p> + +<p>"Ah, Dr. Saxham, obliged to you for being punctual. Let me introduce you +to Major Lord Henry Leighbury, D.S.O., Grenadier Guards, our D.A.A.G. Dr. +Saxham, Colonel Ware, Baraland Rifles, and Sir George Wendysh, Wessex +Regiment, commanding the Irregular Horse; Captain Bingham Wrynche, Royal +Bay Dragoons, my senior aide-de-camp, and his junior, Lieutenant Lord +Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars. And Dr. Saxham, Major Taggart, R.A.M.C., +our Chief Medical Officer."</p> + +<p>He watched the man keenly as he made the introductions, saying to himself +that this was better than he had hoped. The ragged black moustache had +been shaved away; the frayed but spotless suit of white drill fitted the +heavy-shouldered, thin-flanked, muscular figure perfectly; the faded blue +flannel shirt, with the white double collar and narrow black tie; the +shabby black kamarband about his waist, the black-ribboned Panama, +maintaining respectability in extremest old age, as that expensive but +lasting headgear is wont to do, possessed, as worn by the Dop Doctor, a +certain <i>cachet</i> of style. His slight, curt, almost frowning salutations +displayed a well-graduated recognition of the official status of each +individual to whom he was made known, betokening the man accustomed to +move in circles where such knowledge and the application of it was +indispensable, and who knew, too, that slight from him would have given +chagrin. But another moment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> and the junior Medical Officer, a +black-avised little Irishman from County Meath, had gripped him by both +hands, and was exclaiming in his juicy brogue, real delight beaming in his +round, rosy face:</p> + +<p>"Saxham! Saxham of St. Stephens, and the grand ould days! Deny me now, to +my face. Say, 'Tom McFadyen, I don't know you,' if you dare."</p> + +<p>The blue eyes shone out vivid gentian-colour in the kindly smile that +illumined them, the stern lips parted in a laugh that showed the sound +white closely-set teeth.</p> + +<p>"Tom McFadyen, I do know you. But if you offer to pay me that cab-fare you +owe me, I shall say I'm wrong, and that it's another man."</p> + +<p>"Hould your tongue, jewel," drolled the little junior, who delighted in +exaggerating the brogue that tripped naturally off his Irish tongue. +"Don't be after giving me away to the Chief and the Senior that believe +me, by me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that was King of +Tara, and owned the cow-grazing from Trim to Athboy, and ate boiled +turnips off shields of gold before potatoes were invented, when the +bog-oaks were growing as acorns on the tree. And as to the cab-fare, sure +I hailed the hansom out of politeness to your honour's glory, the day that +saw me going off to the Army Medical School at Netley, wid all my worldly +belongin's in wan ould hat-box and the half of a carpet-bag. Wirra, wirra! +but it's some folks have luck, says I, as the train took me out av' +Waterloo in a third-class smoker, while you were left on the platform +sheddin' half-crowns out av every pore for the newspaper boys an' porters +to pick up, and smilin' like a baby dhramin' av the bottle. You'd passed +your exam in Anatomy wid wan hand held behind you an' a glove on the +other, you'd got your London University Scholarship in Physiology, and +you'd fallen head over ears in love with the prettiest and sweetest girl +that ever wore out shoe-leather. You wrote to me two years later to say +you'd been appointed an in-surgeon on the Junior Staff, an' that you were +engaged to be married. But divil the taste of weddin'-cake did I ever get +off you. What——"</p> + +<p>The little Irishman, thoughtlessly rattling on, pulled up in an instant, +seeing the ghastly unmistakable change upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the other's face. He +remembered the grim black reason for the change in Saxham, and for once, +his habitual tact deserted him. His rosy gills purpled, even as had the +Mayor's on the Dop Doctor's entrance. His eyes winced under the heavy +petrifying, unseeing stare of Saxham's blue ones....</p> + +<p>"Sorry to stem the flood of your reminiscences, McFadyen, but we're going +to overhaul the Hospital now."</p> + +<p>It was the voice of the visitor who had come to the Harris Street house on +the previous night, the tall, loosely-built, closely-knit figure in the +easily fitting Service-dress that now stepped across the gulf that had +suddenly opened between the two old friends, and laid a hand in pleasant, +familiar fashion upon Saxham's heavy, rather bowed shoulders. But for that +scholar's stoop they would have been of equal height. He went on: "You +will be able to give us points, Saxham, where they will be needed most. +Can't expect Colonial institutions, even at the best, to keep abreast of +London."</p> + +<p>The blue eyes met his almost defiantly.</p> + +<p>"As I think I remember telling you, sir, it is five years since I saw +London."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't blame you for taking a long holiday while it was +procurable. There are a few of us who would benefit by a gallop without +the halter, eh, Taggart?"</p> + +<p>Saxham would not stoop even to benefit indirectly by the shrewd, kindly +tact. He drew himself to his full height, and the words were spoken with +such ringing clearness that they arrested the attention of every man +present.</p> + +<p>"My holiday was compulsory. I underwent—innocently—a legal prosecution +for malpractice. The Crown Jury decided in my favour, but my West End +connection was ruined. I resigned my Hospital and other appointments, and +left England."</p> + +<p>"Ay!" It was the Chief Medical Officer's broad Scots tongue that droned +out the bagpipe note. "Weel, Doctor, it's an ill wind blaws naebody guid, +and ye canna expect Captain McFadyen or mysel' to sympatheese overmuch wi' +the West End for a loss that is our gain. And, Colonel, it's in my memory +that ye had set your mind on beginnin' wi' the Operating Theatre?..."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> + + +<p>The chart-nurse looked in to say that the Medical officers of the Garrison +Staff were making the rounds, and was stricken to the soul by the +discovery that the Reverend Julius Fraithorn had had no breakfast. +Occupying a small, single-cotted, electric-bell-less room in the outlying +ward—brick-lined and corrugated-iron-built like the greater building, and +reserved for infectious cases—the Reverend Julius might have been said to +be marooned, had not his dark-eyed, transparent, wasted young face created +such hot competition among the nurses for the privilege of attending on +him, that he had frequently received breakfast and dinner in duplicate, +and once three teas. Some of the probationers, reared in the outer +darkness of Dissent, knew no better than to term him "the minister." To +the matron, who was High Church, he existed as "Father Fraithorn." Julius +is hardly complete to the reader without an intimation that he very dearly +loved to be dubbed "Father." The matron had never failed in this.</p> + +<p>A letter from Father Tatham, Julius's senior at St. Margaret's, lay under +the bony hand—a mere bunch of fleshless fingers, in which the +skin-covered stick that had been a man's arm ended. Father Tatham wrote to +say that, after a bright, enjoyable summer holiday, spent with a chosen +band of West-Central London barrow-boys at a Rest Home at +Cookham-on-Thames, he has started his Friday evening Confirmation classes +for young costermongers in Little Schoolhouse Court, and obtained a record +attendance by the simple plan of rewarding punctual attendance and +ultimate mastery gained over the Catechism and Athanasian Creed with pairs +of trousers. Julius had shaken his head over the trousers, knowing that +the first walk taken by the garments in company with the winners would be +as far as the pop-shop. But lying there in the clean-smelling, airy +Hospital ward, he yearned with a mighty yearning for the stuffy +West-Central classroom, and the rowdy crew of London roughs hulking and +hustling on the benches, learning per medium of "the dodger," that one's +duty to one's neighbour was not to abuse him foully without cause,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> to +refrain one's hands from pocket-picking, shop-raiding, hustling, and +jellying heads with brass-buckled belts or iron knuckle-dusters, and not +to get drunk before Saturday night.</p> + +<p>He had come out to South Africa upon the advice of +physicians—honestly-meaning wiseacres—ignorant of the shifts, the +fatigues, the inevitable exertions and privations that the panting, +tottering invalid must inevitably undergo, in company with the hale +traveller and the sound emigrant; the rough, protracted journeys, the +neglect and discomfort of the inns and taverns and boarding-houses, where +Kaffirs are the servants, and dirt and discomfort reign. He bore them +because he must, and struggled on, learning by painful experience that +fever-patches are best avoided, and finding out what dust-winds mean to +the man who has got sick lungs, and sometimes thinking he was getting +better, and would be one day able to go back to the Clergy House, and take +up his mission in the West and West-Central districts, and begin work +again.</p> + +<p>Now, lying panting on his pillows, raised high by the light chair slipped +in behind them, hospital-fashion, he looked beyond the whitewashed walls +northwards, to grimy London. He dreamed, while the chart-nurse was still +apologising about the forgotten breakfast, of the High Ritual in the +sacred place, and the solemn joy of the vested celebrant of the +Eucharistic Sacrifice. The incense rose in clouds to the gilded, diapered +roof, the organ pealed ... then the ward seemed to fill with men in khâki +Service dress, keen-eyed and tan-faced beings, of quiet movements and +well-bred gestures, obviously stamped with the <i>cachet</i> of authority. +Upright, alert, well-knit, and strong, the visitors exhaled the compound +fragrance of healthy virility, clean linen, and excellent cigars; and the +poor sufferer yielded to a pang of envy as he looked at them, standing +about his bed, and thought of that resting-place even narrower, in which +his wasted body must soon lie. And then he mentally smote his breast and +repented. What was he, the unworthy servant of Heaven, that he should dare +to oppose the Holy Will?</p> + +<p>"Weel now, and how are we the day?" said the Chief Medical Officer, +presented by the Resident Surgeon to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> occupant of the bed. He read +approaching death in the sunken face against the pillows, and in the +feeble pulse as he touched the skeleton wrist, and the Resident Surgeon, +catching the Scotsman's eye, shook his head slightly, imparting +information that was not needed.</p> + +<p>"It is not in my power, I am afraid, sir, to return you the conventional +answer," said Julius Fraithorn. "To be plain and brief, I am suffering +from tuberculous lung-disease, and I am advised that I have not many days +to live."</p> + +<p>He smiled gratefully at the Resident Surgeon.</p> + +<p>"Everything that can be done for me here is done. I cannot be too +thankful. But I should have liked—I should have wished to have been +spared to return to England, if not to live a little longer among my +friends, at least to ..." He broke off panting, and his rattling breaths +seemed to shake him. He sounded like Indian corn shaken in a gunny-bag; he +wheezed like the mildewed harmonium in the Hospital chapel, on which he +had once tried to play. When he had spoken, his voice had had the flat, +deadly softness of the exhausted phthisical sufferer's. When he had moved +he had suffered torture: the shoulder-blades and hip-bones had pierced the +wasted muscular tissues and projected through the skin.</p> + +<p>"I can't!" he gasped out. "You see——"</p> + +<p>A dizziness of deadly weakness seized him. His soft, muffled voice trailed +away into a whisper, blue shadows gathered about his large, mobile, +sensitive mouth, much like that of Keats as shown in the Death Cast, and +his head fell back upon the pillows. Julius had fainted.</p> + +<p>"Poor beggar!" said a large, pink man, wearing the red shoulder-straps and +brown-leather leggings of the Staff, to another, a fair, handsome, young +giant who leaned against the opposite door-post, as the chart-nurse +hurried to take away the pillows, and lay the patient flat, and the +shorter of the two medical officers dropped brandy from a flask into a +glass with water in it, while the tall Scot, his finger on the pulse, +stooped over the pale figure on the bed;</p> + +<p>"No doubt about his next address being the Cemetery. Should grouse myself +if I was in his shoes—or bed-socks would be the proper word—what?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p> + +<p>Beauvayse agreed. "He looks like a chap I saw once get into a coffin at +the Cabaret de l'Enfer—that shady restaurant place in the Boulevard de +Clichy. When they turned on the lights ..." He shrugged. "The women of the +party thought it simply ripping. I wanted to be sick."</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo had also known the sensation of nausea during a similar +experience. "But women'll stand anything," he said, "particularly if +they've been told it's <i>chic</i>. My own part, I can stand any amount of dead +men—healthy dead men, don't you know? But—give you my word—a cadaverous +spectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, and +breathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like the +Prodigal Son, gives me the downright horrors!"</p> + +<p>Thus they conferred, supporting opposite door-posts with solid shoulders, +until the C.M.O., turning his head, addressed them brusquely, curtly:</p> + +<p>"Wrynche, if you'd transfer yourself with Lord Beauvayse to the passage, +myself and my colleagues here would be the better obliged to ye."</p> + +<p>"Pleasure!" They removed, with a simultaneous clink of scabbards and a +ring of spurred heels on the tiled pavement.</p> + +<p>The Colonel remained, making those about the bed a group of five. The +chart-nurse stayed, pending the nod of dismissal, a rigid statue of capped +and aproned discipline, upright in the corner.</p> + +<p>"Phew!" Captain Bingo blew a vast sigh of relief, and produced a +cigar-case. "Well out of that, my boy. All jumps this morning; wouldn't +take the odds you're not as bad?"</p> + +<p>"Rather!" Beauvayse nodded, and drew the elder man's attention, with a +look, to the strong young hand that held a choice Havana just accepted +from the offered case. "Shaky, isn't it? and yet I didn't punish the +champagne much last night. It's sheer excitement, just what one feels +before riding a steeplechase, or going into Action early on a raw morning. +Not that I've been in anything but a couple of Punitive Expeditions—from +Peshawar, under Wilks-Dayrell, splitting up some North-West Frontier +tribes that had lumped themselves together against British Authority—up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> +to now. But I'm looking out for the chance of something better worth +having, like you and all the rest of us. Trouble you for a light!"</p> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker, and that's the fourth! Where d'you think I'd give a +cool fifty to be this minute? Not cooling my heels in a brick-paved +passage while a pack of doctors are swoppin' dog-Latin over the body of a +moribund young parson, but on the roof of the Staff Quarters, lookin' +North, with my eyes glued to the binoculars and my ears pricked for—you +know what!"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse groaned. "Isn't that what I'm suffering for? And the Chief must +be ten times worse. How he keeps his countenance—demure as my +grandmother's cat lappin' cream.... I say, the Transvaal Dutch; they call +themselves the true Children of Israel, don't they? Well, which did Moses +and his little gang come across first in the Desert, the Pillar of Cloud, +or the Pillar of Fire, or a couple of railway-trucks containin' the raw +material for a sky-journey, only waitin' till Brer' Boer plugs a bullet in +among the dynamite? It makes me feel good all over, as the American women +say, when I think of it." He smiled like a mischievous young archangel, +masquerading in Service kit.</p> + +<p>Within the room the fainting man was coming back to consciousness, his +dry, rattling breaths bearing out Captain Bingo Wrynche's similitude +regarding husks and shavings, rings of blue fire swimming before his +darkened vision, and a dull roaring in his ears.... The Royal Army Medical +Corps wrought over him; the nurse lent a deft helping hand; the Resident +Surgeon talked eagerly to the Colonel; and he, lending ear, scarcely heard +the reiterated, stereotyped parrot-phrases, so taken up was his attention +with the man in shabby white drill clothes, who leaned over the foot of +the bed, his square face set into an expressionless mask, his +gentian-blue, oddly vivid eyes fixed upon the wasted, waxy-yellow face of +the sick man, his head bent, as he listened with profound, absorbed +attention to the husky, rattling, laboured breaths.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he straightened himself and spoke, addressing himself to the +Resident Surgeon.</p> + +<p>"The patient has told us, sir, that he is suffering from tuberculous +disease of the lungs. May I ask, was that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> conclusion arrived at by a +London consulting physician, and whether your own diagnosis has confirmed +the assertion?"</p> + +<p>The Resident Surgeon nodded with patronising indifference. He was not +going to waste civilities upon this rowdy, drunken remittance-man, whom he +had seen reeling through the streets of the stad as he went upon his own +respectable way.</p> + +<p>"<i>Phthisis pulmonalis.</i>" He addressed his reply to the Chief. "And the +process of lung-destruction is, as you will observe, sir, nearly +complete."</p> + +<p>He encountered from the Chief a look of cool displeasure that flushed him +to the top of his knobby forehead, and set him blinking nervously behind +his big round spectacles.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Saxham asked you, sir, unless I mistake, whether you had ascertained +by your own diagnosis, the ..." Lady Hannah's words came back to him. He +recalled the "bit of information wormed out of the nurse," and ended with +"the presence of the bacillus?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's blue eyes thrust their rapier-points at him, and then plunged +into the oyster-like orbs behind the spectacles of the Resident Surgeon, +who rapidly grew from scarlet to purple, and from purple to pale green. +Major Taggart and the Irishman exchanged a look of intelligence.</p> + +<p>"Koch's bacillus, sir, were this a case of tuberculosis proper, would be +present in the expectoration of the patient, and easy of demonstration +under the microscope." Saxham's voice was cold as ice and cutting as +tempered steel. "May we take it that you can personally testify to its +presence here?" He pointed to the bed.</p> + +<p>"And varra possibly," put in Taggart, "ye could submit a culture for +present inspection? It would be gratifeeying to me and Captain McFadyen +here, as weel as to our friend an' colleague Dr. Saxham, late of St. +Stephen's-in-the-West, London, to varrafy the correctness o' your +diagnosis."</p> + +<p>"And it would that!" the Irishman chimed in. "So trot out your bacillus, +by all manner of means!"</p> + +<p>The Resident Surgeon babbled something incoherent, and melted out of the +room.</p> + +<p>"Moppin' his head as he goes down the passage," said McFadyen, coming back +from the door.</p> + +<p>"He'll no be in sic a sweatin' hurry to come back,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> pronounced the canny +Scot, shedding a wink from a dry, red-fringed eyelid. He produced from the +roomy breast-pocket of his khâki Service jacket a rubber-tubed +stethoscope, and put it silently into the hand Saxham had mechanically +stretched out for it. Then he drew back, his eyes, like those of the other +two spectators of the strange scene that was beginning, fixed upon the +chief actor in it. One other, weak after his swoon as a new-born child, +lay passively, helplessly upon the bed.</p> + +<p>Saxham, his square face stony and set, moved with a noiseless, feline, +padding step towards the prone victim. A gleam of apprehension shot into +Julius Fraithorn's great dark eyes, reopening now to consciousness. They +fixed themselves, with an instinct born of that sudden thrill of fear, +upon the lightly-closed right hand. Instantly comprehending, Saxham lifted +the hand, showed that it held no instrument save the stethoscope, and +dropped it again by his side, drawing nearer. Then the massive, +close-cropped black head sank to the level of Julius Fraithorn's breast, +revealed in its ghastly, emaciated nakedness by the open nightshirt. The +massive shoulders bowed, the supple body curved, the keen ear joined +itself to the heaving surface. In a moment more the agonising, hacking, +rending cough came on. Julius battled for air. Raising him deftly and +tenderly, Saxham signed to the nurse, who hurried to him, answering his +low questions in whispers, giving aid where he indicated it required.</p> + +<p>Steadily, patiently, the binaural stethoscope travelled over the lung +area, gathering abnormal sounds, searching for silent spaces, sucking +evidence into the assimilative brain behind the eyes that saw nothing but +the man upon the bed, the locked human casket housing the secret that was +slowly, surely coming to light. In the fierce determination to gain it, he +threw the stethoscope away, and glued his avid ear to the man again.</p> + +<p>"Toch! but I wouldna' have missed this for a kittie o' Kruger sovereigns!" +the Chief Medical Officer whispered to his colleague from Meath. And +McFadyen whispered back:</p> + +<p>"Nor me, for your shoes. 'Ssh!"</p> + +<p>Saxham was lifting up the great stooping shoulders, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> beginning to +speak in a voice totally different from that of the man known in +Gueldersdorp as the Dop Doctor. Clear, ringing, concise, the sentences +left his lips:</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen, I invite your attention to a case of involuntary simulation of +the symptoms distinguishing pulmonary tuberculosis by a patient suffering +from a grave disease of totally different and possibly much less malignant +character. Oblige me by stepping nearer!"</p> + +<p>They crowded about the bed like eager students.</p> + +<p>"In order to show what false conclusions loose modes of reasoning and the +habitual reliance upon precedent may lead to, take the instance of the +consulting physician to whom some years ago this young man, now barely +thirty, and reduced, as you may see for yourselves, to the final extremity +of physical decline, resorted."</p> + +<p>"I would gie five shillin' if the man could hear his ain judgment!" +murmured the Chief Medical Officer; for he had gleaned from a whispered +answer of Julius's the omnipotent name of Sir Jedbury Fargoe. "Toch!" He +chuckled dryly. Saxham went on:</p> + +<p>"The consulting patient suffers from cough, painful and racking, from +impaired digestive power, from increasing debility, fever, and +night-sweats. He visits the specialist, convinced that he is consumptive, +he receives confirmation of his convictions, and you see him to-day +presenting the appearance, and reproducing all the symptoms of a patient +in consumption's final stage. Possibly the germs of tuberculosis may be +dormant in his organisation, waiting the opportunity to develop into +activity! Possibly—a very remote possibility—the disease may have +already attacked some organ of his body! But—and upon this point I can +take my stand with the confidence of absolute certainty—the lungs of this +so-called pulmonary sufferer are absolutely sound!"</p> + +<p>"My certie! Send I may live to foregather wi' Sir Jedbury Fargoe!" the +Chief Medical Officer prayed inaudibly. "He will gang to the next +International Consumption Congress wi' a smaller conceit of himsel', or my +name's no Duncan Taggart!"</p> + +<p>The lecturer, absorbed in his subject, lifted his hand to silence the +murmur, and pursued:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>"From what disease, then, is this man suffering? Logical and progressive +conclusions drawn from experience, and based upon the local enlargement +which the physicians previously consulted have apparently failed to +perceive, lead me to diagnose the presence of a tumour in the mediastinum, +extending its claws into the lungs, and seriously impeding their action +and the action of the heart. An operation, serious and necessarily +involving danger, is imperative. The growth may be benign or malignant; in +the latter case I doubt whether the life of the patient is to be saved. +But in the former case he has good hopes. Understand, I speak with +certainty. Upon the presence of the growth, simple or otherwise, I am +ready to stake my credit, my good name, my professional reputation——"</p> + +<p>Ah! It rushed upon Saxham with a sickening shock of recollection that he +was bankrupt in these things, and shame and anger strove for the mastery +in his face, and anguish wrung a sob from him, despite his iron composure.</p> + +<p>He wrenched at the collar about his swelling throat, as he turned away +blindly towards the window, seeing nothing, fighting desperately with the +horrible despair that had gripped him, and the mad, wild frenzy of +yearning for the old, glorious life of strenuous effort and conscious +power. Lost! lost! all that had been won.</p> + +<p>"I ... I had forgotten ...!" he muttered; and then a hard, vigorous hand +found his and gripped it.</p> + +<p>"Go on forgetting, Saxham!" said a voice in his ear—a voice he knew, +instantly steadying—such virtue is there in honest, heartfelt, +comprehending sympathy between man and his fellow-man—the spinning brain, +and quieting the leaping pulses, and giving him back, as nothing else +could have done, his lost self-control. "You have earned the right!"</p> + +<p>"Man, you're a wonder!" groaned the enraptured Chief Medical Officer. He +added, with a relapse into the national caution: "That is, ye will be if +your prognosis proves correc'. But the Taggarts are a' of the canny breed +of Doobtin' Tammas, an sae I'll just keep a calm sugh till I see what the +knife lays bare."</p> + +<p>"Use the knife now, sir. At once—without delay!"</p> + +<p>It was the weak, muffled voice of the patient on the bed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> Saxham wheeled +sharply about, and the stern blue eyes and the great lustrous pleading +brown ones, looked into each other.</p> + +<p>The pale Julius spoke again:</p> + +<p>"I entreat you, Doctor!"</p> + +<p>Saxham spoke in his curt way:</p> + +<p>"You are aware that there is risk?"</p> + +<p>Julius Fraithorn stretched out his transparent hands.</p> + +<p>"What risk can there be to a man in my state? Look at these; and did I not +hear you say ..."</p> + +<p>"Whatever I may have said, sir, and however urgent I may admit the +necessity for immediate operation, you must wait until to-morrow morning."</p> + +<p>"I am fasting, sir, and fed. I received Holy Communion this morning, and +have not yet breakfasted."</p> + +<p>The return of the chart-nurse followed by a probationer carrying a laden +tray provoked an exclamation from the little Irishman.</p> + +<p>"Signs on it, the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil a wonder he went off +like he did a bit back. And you can't deny him, Saxham?"</p> + +<p>"I wad gie him the chance, Saxham"—this from Surgeon-Major Taggart—"in +your place; and maybe I'm putting in six worrds for mysel' as well as half +a dozen for the patient. For I have an auld bone to pyke wi' Sir Jedbury +Fargoe, aboot a Regimental patient he slew for me, three years back, wi' +his jawbone of a Philistine ass."</p> + +<p>Saxham spoke to Fraithorn authoritatively, kindly.</p> + +<p>"You have no near relative to sign the Hospital Register?"</p> + +<p>"My family are all in England, sir. I have not thought it necessary to +distress them with the knowledge of my state."</p> + +<p>"I think Lady Hannah Wrynche, who is now in Gueldersdorp, happens to be an +acquaintance of theirs, if not a friend?"</p> + +<p>Julius turned eagerly to the Colonel.</p> + +<p>"It is true, she did come here yesterday. But I should hardly wish ... +Surely, being of mature age and in the full possession of all my +faculties"—there was a smile on the pale lips—"I may be allowed to sign +the book myself?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> + +<p>The doctors interchanged a look. The Colonel said to the patient:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Fraithorn, if the idea is not unwelcome to you, I myself will sign +the book, and"—he stooped over the bed and laid his hard, soldierly hand +kindly on the pale one—"in the event of a less fortunate termination than +that we hope for"—the faces of the three surgeons were a study in +inscrutability—"I will communicate, as soon as any communication is +rendered possible, with the Bishop and Mrs. Fraithorn."</p> + +<p>The cough shook Julius as a terrier shakes a rat before he could gasp out:</p> + +<p>"Thank you, sir. With all my heart I thank you!"</p> + +<p>"You shall thank me when you get well!" The Chief shook the pale hand, +crossed the bare boards to Saxham, who stood staring at them sullenly, and +took him by the arm. They went out of the ward together, talking in low +tones. The medical officers followed. Then the chart-nurse and the +probationer who had been banished with the tray, came bustling back with +towels, and razors, and a soapy solution in a basin, having a carbolic +smell.</p> + +<p>Dr. Saxham had gone to take a disinfecting bath, the nurse said, as she +went about her minute preparations; and the Commanding Officer had gone +with the Staff, and now her poor dear must let himself be got ready.</p> + +<p>They wrapped the gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe with a heavy +monkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded blanket-stockings over the +ligament-tied, skin-covered bones that served the wasted wretch for legs, +and wheeled in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushioned +stretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a very handful of humanity, +and wheeled him, hooded and head-first, through the tile-floored passage +and out into the golden African sunshine, that baked him gloriously +through the coverings, and so into the main building and down a +tile-floored passage there.</p> + +<p>He prayed silently as he was wheeled, with blinded, cowled eyes, through +double doors at the end....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2> + + +<p>The operation was over, and the two Celts, self-appointed to the temporary +posts of assistant-surgeon and anæsthetist, expressed their emotions in +characteristic manner....</p> + +<p>"Twelve minutes to a second between the first incision an' the last +stitch.... Och, Owen, the jewel you are! Give me the loan of your fist, +man, this minute."</p> + +<p>"What price Sir Jedbury Fargoe the noo? The auld-farrant, scraichin', +obstinate grey gander. A hand I will tak' at him ower the head o' this, or +I'm no Taggart of Taggartshowe. Speaking wi' seriousness, Saxham, it was a +pretty operation, an' performed wi' extraordinary quickness. And I'm sorry +there are no' a baker's dozen o' patients for ye to deal wi'. It's a gran' +treat to see a borrn genius use the knife."</p> + +<p>"You could have done it yourself, Major, in less time."</p> + +<p>"Maybe I could, and maybe I couldna! I doubt but we Army billies are +better at puttin' men thegither than at takin' them to pieces in the long +run.... Gently now, porter, wi' liftin' the patient.... Ay, McFadyen, +that's richt, gie the man a hand. See to him, Saxham, is he no' fine to +luik at? A wheen blue an' puffy, but the pulse is better than I would have +expeckit. Wheel him awa', nurse; he'll no come round for another hour...."</p> + +<p>They wheeled him away, back to the distant ward. The porter followed. The +three surgeons standing by that grim table in the rubber-floored central +space of the amphitheatre, fenced in by students' benches, vacant save for +half a dozen whispering dressers, looked at one another. Bloused and +aproned with sterilised material, masked, rubber-gloved, and slippered, +and splashed with the same ominous stains that were on the table and upon +the floor, Saxham's heavy-shouldered figure was as ominous and sinister as +ever played a part in mediæval torture-chamber, or figured in a +nightmare-tale of Poe's device. You can see the other surgeons, bibbed and +sleeved, the Irishman, small and dark and wiry, sousing a lethal array of +sharp and gleaming implements in a glass bath of carbolic; Taggart, +standing at a glass table, rubber-wheeled and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> movable, like everything +else for use, and laden with rolls of lint and bandaging, and blue-glass +bottles of peroxide of hydrogen and mercurial perchloride, daintily +returning reels of silk-worm-gut and bobbins of silver wire to their +velvet-lined case.</p> + +<p>"You're no' fatigued? You would no' like a steemulant?"</p> + +<p>Saxham started and withdrew his gaze. He had been staring with dull +intensity of desire at the brandy-decanter, forgotten by the matron, whose +usual charge it was. And the sharp blue-grey eye of Surgeon-Major Taggart +followed the glance to its end in the golden-gleaming crystal.</p> + +<p>"Fatigued? I hardly think so!"</p> + +<p>He laughed, and the others joined in the laugh, remembering the lengthy +line of patients operated on in a single mid-week morning at St. +Stephen's. And yet his steady hand shook a little, and a curious soft, +subtle dulness of sensation was stealing over him. He had gone to bed +sober, had risen after three hours of blessed, unexpected, helpful sleep, +to battle with his desperate craving until morning. When the old woman +left in charge of the housekeeping arrangements had come to his door with +hot water and his usual breakfast—a mug of strong coffee with milk and a +roll—he had gulped down the reviving, steadying draught thirstily, and +swallowed a mouthful or two of the bread; and when he was shaved and +tubbed and clothed in the shabby white drill suit, had gone down to the +dispensary and mixed himself a dose of chloric ether and strychnine, +strong enough to brace his jarred nerves for the coming ordeal.</p> + +<p>Not that Saxham habitually drugged: that craving was not yet known to him. +But the habitual intemperance had exacted even from his iron constitution +its forfeit of shakiness in the morning, and the rare sobriety left the +man suffering and unstrung.</p> + +<p>Looking about him as the dose began its work of stringing the lax nerves +and stimulating the action of the heart, he saw that many of the drawers +were open, a costly set of graduated scales missing, with their +plush-lined box....</p> + +<p>With a certain premonition of what would next be missing, he went into the +surgery. A case of silver-mounted surgical instruments had vanished from a +shelf, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> presentation loving-cup, given by admirers among De +Boursy-Williams's patients to that gifted practitioner. A roll-top desk +was partly broken open, but not rifled, the American boltlocks having +defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who +had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, +crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the +barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British +Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait +yet another day, and take many things more, but the coming of those +verdoemte soldiers of the Engelsch Commandant to fetch away the carboys of +carbolic acid and the other medical stores had roused him to prompt +action.</p> + +<p>Later, wearing the brass badge of a Surgeon on the sleeve of his greasy +black tail-coat, Koets ruled a Boer Field-Hospital, fearlessly slashing +his way into the confidence of the United Republics through the tough, +wincing brawn and muscle of Free Stater and Transvaaler. It speaks for the +enduring qualities of the Boer constitution to say that many of his +patients survived.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>But the brandy in the decanter....</p> + +<p>How it beckoned and allured and tempted. And the throat and palate of the +man were parched with the desire of it. And yet, a moment before, with the +toils about his feet, Saxham had wondered at the thought of these degraded +years of bondage. He shook his head sullenly as Taggart repeated his +question, and went away to wash and get dressed.</p> + +<p>Then he meant to shake off his companions and go where he could quench +that inward fire. He loathed them as they followed, chatting +pleasantly....</p> + +<p>But above the hissing of the hot water from the faucets over the basins +came presently another sound, most familiar to the ears of the gossiping +Celts....</p> + +<p>"Rifle-fire! Out on the veld over yonder." McFadyen's towel waved North. +"Do ye hear it?"</p> + +<p>"Ay, do I! First bluid has been drawn. And to which side?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Boom!...</i></p> + +<p>The Hospital quivered to its foundations at the tremendous detonation. +Shattered glass fell in showers of fragments from the roof of the +operating-theatre, as the force of the explosion passed beneath the +buildings in a surging of the ground on which they stood, a slow wave +rolling southwards, without a backward draw.</p> + +<p>The lavatory door had jammed, as doors will jam in earthquakes. Saxham +tore it open, and the three shirt-sleeved, ensanguined men ran through the +theatre, strewn with the débris from the roof, and through the double +glazed doors communicating with the passage, populous with patients who +should have been in bed, pursued by nurses as pale and shaken as their +stampeding charges. The rear of the Hospital faces North, and they ran +down a corridor full of dust, ending in more glazed doors, and tore out +upon the back stoep, wide and roomy, and full of deck chairs and wicker +lounges.</p> + +<p>"Do ye see it? Ten thousand salted South African deevils! Do ye no' see +it?" the Surgeon-Major yelled, pointing to a monstrous milk-white +soap-bubble-shaped cloud that slowly rose up in the hot blue sky to the +North and hung there, sullenly brooding.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Major?" shouted Saxham, for behind them the Hospital was full +of clamour. Nurses and dressers were running out into the grounds to +listen and question and conjecture, the barely reclaimed veld beyond the +palings was black with hurrying, shouting men, bandoliered, and carrying +guns of every kind and calibre, from the venerable gaspipe of the native +and the aged but still useful Martini-Henry of the citizen, to the +Lee-Metford repeating-carbine, and the German magazine rifle of latest +delivery to the troops of Imperial Majesty at Berlin. Men were clustered +like bees on the flat tin roofs of the sheds at the Railway Works; men had +climbed the signal-posts and were looking out from them over the sea of +veld; the Volunteers garrisoning the Cemetery had poured from their +temporary huts and dug-out shelters, and were massed on the top of their +sand-bag mounds. A fair, handsome Staff officer, the younger of the two +men who had accompanied the Colonel, went by at a tearing gallop, mounted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> +on a fine grey charger, and followed by an orderly, while the pot-hat and +truncheon of a scared native constable emerged timidly from the gaping +jaws of a rusty water-cistern, long dismissed from Hospital use, and +exiled to the open with other rubbish waiting transference to the +scrap-heap; and far out upon the railway-line that vanished in the +yellowing sea of veld an unseen engine screeched and screeched....</p> + +<p>The Chief, in his pet post of vantage upon the roof of Nixey's Hotel, +lowered his binoculars as the persistent whistle kept open. The lines +about his keen eyes and mouth curved into a cheerful smile. The sound was +coming nearer, and presently Engine 123 backed into view, a mile or so +from waiting, expectant Gueldersdorp, and snorting, raced at full speed +for her home in the railway-yard. Her driver was the young Irishman from +the County Kildare, and her guard hailed from Shoreditch. And both of them +had a tale to tell of what Taggart had called the Colonel's double +surprise-packet, to a tall man whom they found waiting on the metals by +the upper Signal Cabin.</p> + +<p>"Six mile from the start, sorra a yard more or less, sorr! I sees a +comp'ny o' thim divils mustered on the bog, I mane the veld, sorr—smokin' +their pipes an' passin' the bottle, an' givin' the overlook to a gang av +odthers, that was rippin' up the rails undher the directions av a +head-gaffer wid a hat brim like me granny's tay-thray, an' a beard like +the Prophet Moses."</p> + +<p>"I sor 'is whoppin' big 'at myself, though we was two mile off when we +picked the beggars out," the guard objected; "but 'ow could you twig 'is +beard or that the other blokes was smokin'?"</p> + +<p>"Did ye ever know a Dutch boss av any kind clane-shaved an' not +hairy-faced?" was Kildare's just retort, "or see a crowd av Doppers +gathered together that the blue smoke av the Blessed Creature was not +curlin' out av their mouths an' ears an' noses, an' Old Square Face or Van +der Hump makin' the rounds?"</p> + +<p>"You thought the blokes on the metals was a workin' gang of our chaps at +the fust go off," complained the guard, "an' you opened the whistle to +warn 'em!"</p> + +<p>"He did that for sure," put in the Cardiff stoker. "But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> he was tipping me +the wink while he did it, so he was; as much as to say he knew they were +Boers all the time."</p> + +<p>"Would they have stopped where they was, well widin range, av I had let on +I knew they was a parcel av unwashed Dutchmen?" demanded Kildare hotly. +"Would they have hung on as I pushed her towards thim—would they have +stopped to watch me uncouplin' the two thrucks, smilin' wid simple +interest in their haythen faces, av they had not taken me for a suckin' +lamb in oily overalls that took themselves for sheep av the same fold?"</p> + +<p>"They got a bit suspicious when we steamed orf," said the guard; "more +than a bit suspicious, they did."</p> + +<p>"They took the thrucks for the Armoured Thrain," recounted Kildare, with a +radiant smile illuminating a countenance of surpassing griminess, "an' +they rode to widin range, an' got off their hairies, an' dhropped in a +volley just to insinse them they took to be squattin' down inside them +insijious divizes, into what they would be gettin' if they put up the +heads av them." He mopped his brimming eyes with a handful of cotton +waste, not innocent of lubricating fluid. "Tower av Ivory! 'twas grand to +see the contimpt av thim when the cowards widin did not reply. 'Donder!' +says the gaffer in the tay-thray hat and the beard like the grandfather av +all the billygoats. 'Is this,' he says, 'the British pluck they talk +about? Show thim verdant English a Dutchman behind a geweer,' he says, an' +that's what they call a gun in their dirty lingo—'an' they lie down wid +all four legs in the air like a puppy that sees the whip. Plug thim again, +my sons,' says he, 'an' wid the blessin' av Heaven, we'll stiffen the +lot!'"</p> + +<p>"You could never hear him, so you could not, not at all that distance," +the Cardiff stoker objected.</p> + +<p>"Could I not see him, ye blind harper, swearin' in dumb show, an' urgin' +thim to shoot sthraight for the honour av the Republics an' give the rooi +batchers Jimmy O! Ga-<i>lant</i>-ly they respondid, battherin' the sides av the +mysterious locomotive containin' the bloody an' rapacious soldiery av +threacherous England wid nickel-plated Mauser bullets, ontil she hiccoughs +indacintly, an' wid a bellow to bate St. Fin Barr's bull, kicks herself to +pieces!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She did so, surely," affirmed the Cardiff stoker. "Surely she did so."</p> + +<p>"Tell the Colonel 'ow the engine jumped right off the metals," advised the +guard.</p> + +<p>"Clane she did," went on Kildare jubilantly, "an' rattled Davis an' me +inside the cab like pays in an iron pod. See the funny-bone I sthripped +agin' the side av her!" He exhibited a raw elbow for the inspection of the +Chief. "An' when Davis gets the betther av the rest av the black that's on +him wid soft soap an' hot wather, there's an oi he'll not wash off."</p> + +<p>"The brake-handle did that, it did so," said Davis, touching the optic +tenderly. But Kildare was answering a question of the Chiefs.</p> + +<p>"Killed! Wisha, yarra! av I'd left a dozen an twenty to the back av that +sthretched on the bog behind me, it's a glad man I'd be to have it to tell +ye, sorr. But barrin' they wor' blown to smithereens entirely, not a +livin' man or horse av thim did I see dead at all, at all. But the +Sergeant an' the Reconnoithrin' Party will asy know the place—asy—by the +thundherin' big hole that's knocked in the permanent way there, sizable +enough to bury...." He paused, for once at a loss.</p> + +<p>"Korah, Dathan, and Abiram," suggested Davis, who, as a Bible Baptist, had +a fund of Scripture knowledge upon which he occasionally drew, "with their +families and their pavilions and all their substance...."</p> + +<p>"Av Cora was there," said Kildare, "she was disguised as a Dutchman, for +sorrow an' oi I clapped on any human baste that was not a square-buttocked +Boer in tan-cord throusers. Thank you, sorr, your Honour, an' good luck to +yourself an' all av us! An' we'll dhrink your Honour's health wid it."</p> + +<p>"We will so!" agreed Davis, as the sovereign, dropped into his own +twice-greased palm, vanished in the recesses of his black and oleaginous +overalls.</p> + +<p>"Thankee, sir. You're a gentleman, sir!" the guard acknowledged, touching +his cap and concealing the gold coin slid into his own ready hand with +professional celerity.</p> + +<p>"Begob! an' you might have tould the Colonel somethin' that was news," +commented Kildare, as the tall,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> active figure stepped lightly over the +metals and passed up the ramp, and 123 trundled on, and backed into the +engine-shed amidst a salvo of cheers and hand-clapping.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Colonel whistled his pleasant little tune quite through as, the +Reconnoitring Party despatched to the scene of the explosion, he went +contentedly back to luncheon at Nixey's. True, Kildare had said, and as +the Sergeant in command regretfully testified later, said correctly, that +neither Boer nor beast had been put out of action by the flying débris. A +poor reprisal had been made, in the opinion of some malcontents, for the +act of War committed by the forces of the Republics in crossing the +Border, in cutting the telegraph lines, and destroying the railway-bridge. +But the moral result was anything but trifling, in its effect upon the +Boer mind. The "new square gun" became a proverb of dread, inspiring a +salutary fear of more traps of the same kind, "set by that slim duyvel, +the English Commandant," and threw over the innocent stretch of veld +outside those trivial sand-bagged defences the glamour of the Mysterious +and the Unknown. No solid Dutchman welcomed the idea of soaring skywards +in a multitude of infinitesimal fragments, in company with other Free +Staters or sons of the Transvaal Republic similarly reduced.</p> + +<p>No more boasts on the part of Brounckers, General in command of those +massed, menacing, united laagers on the Border, seven miles from +Gueldersdorp as the crow flew. No more imaginative promises with reference +to the taking of the small, defiant hamlet before breakfast, wiping out +the garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march refreshed +with coffee and biltong, and driving the towns-people before them as +prisoners of War. The desperate perils presented by the conjectural and +largely non-existent mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly in +the telegrams that went up to Pretoria.</p> + +<p>"There's a lot in bluff, you know," that "slim duyvel," the Commandant of +the rooineks, said long afterwards. "And we bluffed about the Mines, real +and dummy, for all we were worth!"</p> + +<p>So, possibly with premonition of the telegram that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> even then clicking +out its message at Pretoria, there was a note of satisfaction in his +whistle out of keeping with the execution actually done, as Nixey's Hotel +came in sight with the Union Jack floating over it, denoting that all was +well. That flagstaff, with its changing signals, was to dominate the +popular pulse ere long. But in these days it merely denoted Staff +Quarters, and War, with its grim accompanying horrors, seemed a long way +off.</p> + +<p>A white-gowned European nursemaid on the opposite street-corner waved and +shrieked to her deserting elder charges, and the Chief's quick eye noted +that the small, sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in cool +sailor-suits of blue-and-white linen twill, were scampering in his +direction. He knew his fascination for children, and instinctively +slackened his stride as they came up, abreast now, and shyly hand in hand:</p> + +<p>"Mister Colonel ...?" The speaker touched the expansive brim of a straw +sailor hat with a fine assumption of adult coolness.</p> + +<p>"Quite right, and who are you?"</p> + +<p>The small boy hesitated, plainly at a nonplus. The round-eyed girl tugged +at the boy's sailor jumper, whispering:</p> + +<p>"I <i>saided</i> he wouldn't know you!"</p> + +<p>"I fought he would. Because Mummy said he wemembered our names ve uvver +night at ve Hotel ... when he promised ... about ve animals from Wodesia +... all made of mud, an' feavers, and bits of fur ..."</p> + +<p>Memory gave up the missing names, helped by those boyish replicas of the +candid clear grey eyes of the Mayor's wife, shining under the drooping +plume of fair hair.</p> + +<p>"Mummy was quite right, Hammy, and Berta was wrong, because I remember +your names quite well, you see. And the birds and beasts and insects are +in a box at my quarters. Come and get them."</p> + +<p>"If Anne doesn't kick up a wow?" hesitated Hammy, his small brown hand +already in the larger one.</p> + +<p>"We'll arrange it with Anne." He waited for the arrival of the +white-canopied perambulator and its fluttering-ribboned guardian to say, +with a tone and smile that won her instant suffrages: "I'm going to borrow +these children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> for a minute or so. Will you come into the shade and rest? +I promise not to keep you long."</p> + +<p>Beauvayse and Lady Hannah's Captain Bingo, relieved from lookout duty, and +descending in quest of food from the Chief's particular eyrie on the roof +of Nixey's Hotel, heard shrieks of infant laughter coming from the +coffee-room. Knives, forks, and glasses had been ruthlessly swept from the +upper end of one of the tables laid for the Staff luncheon, and across the +fair expanse of linen, pounded into whiteness and occasional holes by the +vigorous thumpers of the Kaffir laundry-women, meandered a marvellous +procession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion and giraffe, +ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful hands of Matabele +toy-makers. Tarantula, with wicked bright eyes of shining berries, brought +up the rear, with the bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown, +white-striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its back, a +tsetse of appallingly gigantic size....</p> + +<p>"Oh, fank you, Mister Colonel," Hammy was saying, with shining eyes of +rapture fixed upon the glorious ones; "and is they weally my own, my vewy +own, for good?"</p> + +<p>"Yours and Berta's, really and for good."</p> + +<p>"And won't you"—Hammy's magnificent effort at disinterestedness brought +the tears into his eyes—"won't you want vem to play wif, <i>ever</i> +yourself?"</p> + +<p>The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula and tsetse, into +the wooden box, and lifted the children from their chairs, as Captain +Bingo and Beauvayse, following the D.A.A.G., came in, brimming with +various versions of what had happened out there on the veld....</p> + +<p>"I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run along with Berta +now. You'll find your nurse in the hall."</p> + +<p>Berta put up her face confidently to be kissed. Hammy, in manly fashion, +offered a hand—the left—the right arm being occupied with the box of +toys. As Berta's little legs scampered through the door, he delayed to +ask:</p> + +<p>"What are your playfings, Mister Colonel?"</p> + +<p>"Live men and big guns, just now, Hammy; and chances and issues, and +results and risks."</p> + +<p>The plume of fair hair fell back, clearing the candid grey eyes as Hammy +lifted up his face, confidently lisping:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't quite fink I know what wesults and wisks are, but I'd like to +play wif the live men an' the big guns too sometimes ... if you didn't +want vem always?"</p> + +<p>"We'll see about it, Hammy, when you're grown up."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, Mister Colonel. And I would lend you my beasts an' fings, +because I know you wouldn't bweak them?"</p> + +<p>"See that Berta has her share in them meanwhile. Off with you, now!"</p> + +<p>Later, in the seclusion of the connubial bedchamber, said Captain Bingo, +dressing for dinner, the last time for many months, as it was to prove:</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose was the Chief's next move, after the engine and +tender got in, and the crowd hoorayed him back from the Railway Works? No +use your guessin', though. Even a woman wouldn't have expected to find him +playin' Noah's Ark in the coffee-room with the Mayor's two kids!"</p> + +<p>"I like that!" said Lady Hannah meditatively, arranging the Pompadour +transformation, not apparently the worse for the candle-accident of the +previous night.</p> + +<p>"Because you're a woman and sentimental," said her spouse, wrestling with +a cuff-link.</p> + +<p>"No; because I am a woman whose instinct tells her that nothing will seem +too big for a man for whom nothing is too small. And—what an incident for +a paragraph!"</p> + +<p>He grinned: "With headin's in thunderin' big capitals.... 'The Soldier +Hero Sports With A Babbling Babe.... The Defender Of British Prestige At +Gueldersdorp Puts In Half an Hour At Cat's-Cradle Ere The Armoured Train +Toddles Out With The B.S.A.P. To Give Beans To The Blooming Boer!'"</p> + +<p>She darted at him, caught him by the lapels ... made him look at her.</p> + +<p>"It's true? You really mean it? The ball begins?"</p> + +<p>"Upon the honour of a henpecked husband—before daybreak to-morrow, you'll +hear the music."</p> + +<p>She sparkled with delight.</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor, unlucky, humdrum women at home in England, walking with the +shooters, or lolling in hammocks under trees, and trying to flirt with fat +City financiers or vapid young attachés of Legation! I shall take the +Irish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> mare, and borrow an orderly, and ride out to see a Real Action!"</p> + +<p>His round pink face grew long. "The devil you will!"</p> + +<p>"The devil I won't, you mean. Why, for what else under the sky did I come +out here but the glorious chance of War?" Her impatient foot tapped the +floor. He recognised the warning of domestic battle, glowered, and gave +in.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you get chipped, don't blame me. There's about as much cover on +a baccarat-table as you'll find on that small-bush veld."</p> + +<p>"All the better for seeing things, my dear!" She gave him a radiant glance +over her shoulder as she snapped her diamond necklace.</p> + +<p>"You'll see things you won't enjoy. Mind that. Unless the whole affair +ends in sheer fizzle."</p> + +<p>"I'll pray that it mayn't!"</p> + +<p>"I'd pray to have you much more like the ordinary woman who funks +raw-head-and-bloody-bones if I thought it would be any good!"</p> + +<p>"My poor old boy, it's thirty years too late. You ought to have begun +while I was crying in the cradle. And—I <i>was</i> under the impression that +you married me because you found me different from the ruck. And +besides—think of my paper!"</p> + +<p>"Damn the rag! I think of my wife!"</p> + +<p>She swept him a curtsy:</p> + +<p>"Cela va sans dire!"</p> + +<p>"And how a woman of your birth and breedin' can dream of nothin' else but +doin' somethin' that'll make you notorious—set the smart crowd gabblin' +and gapin' and crushin' to stare—is more than I can understand!"</p> + +<p>She flashed round upon him. "You have the wrong word! Notoriety—any +social <i>divorcée</i> or big-hatted music-hall high-kicker can have <i>that</i>—if +only they've kicked high enough! Popularity is what I'd have if I +could—and only the People can give it—as Brutus and Cromwell and +Napoleon knew!"</p> + +<p>He admitted that those old Roman johnnies who jawed in the Forum knew what +they were about, but added that the Puritan chap with the wart on his nose +was a thundering old humbug, ending triumphantly: "And we whacked old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +Bony at Waterloo! And—suppose you stop a Boer bullet and get knocked +out—where do I come in?"</p> + +<p>She jangled out her shrillest laugh. "Behind the coffin as Chief Mourner, +I suppose. And you'll tack on the orthodox black sleeve-band, and look out +for Number Two. And choose the ordinary kind, who funks raw-head and all +the rest of it, for the next venture. But I prophesy you'll be bored. It's +settled about Sheila and the orderly?"</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>"Righto! but there'll be two troopers, not one. And you'll be under the +Corporal's orders about range, and distance, and keepin' out of the hands +of—the other side. You don't absolutely yearn to be killed or taken +prisoner, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>Her heart beat high at the latter-named eventuality. She saw London +rushing to read of the thrilling seizure and the yet more thrilling escape +of the Lady War Correspondent attached to H.I.M. forces on the Frontier:</p> + +<p>Who got clean away, mind you, with complete information of the strategic +plans of the General in command of the enemy's laagers, sewn inside her +corsets or hidden in her shoes!</p> + +<p>Bingo little dreamed of the definite plan seething under his little wife's +transformation coiffure. It had matured since her meeting on the +railway-journey from Cape Town with an interesting personality. A big, +brown-bearded Johannesburger, with light queer eyes, who had been reticent +at first, but more interesting after his confidence had been gained.</p> + +<p>Van Busch he had named himself. Of the British South African War +Intelligence Bureau. That man knew how to value women. And he had proved +them at what he called the risky game.</p> + +<p>"With nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money for palm-oil ..." Van +Busch had said, and winked, signifying that there were no lengths to which +a woman of Lady Hannah Wrynche's capabilities might not go. And he had +slipped into her hand a card scrawled with an address where he might be +got at <i>in case</i> ...</p> + +<p>The pencilled oblong of soiled pasteboard was yet in a secret compartment +of her handbag. By letter addressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> care of W. Bough, Transport Agent and +Stock-dealer, Van Busch was to be communicated with at a farmstead some +thirty miles north.</p> + +<p>The spice of adventure her palate craved could be had by corresponding +with Van Busch through the man Bough. After that—— Well! She had her +plan ...</p> + +<p>She tied her husband's white tie, took him by the ears, kissed him warmly +on each side of his large pink face, glowing with blushes evoked by her +unwonted display of affection, and led him away to dinner, her mental +vision seeing prophetic broadsheets papering the kerbs of Piccadilly, the +ears of her imagination making celestial melody of those raucous yells:</p> + +<p>"Speshul Edition! Hextry Speshul Edition! 'Ere y'are, sir; on'y a +'a'penny. <span class="smcap">Speshul!</span>"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2> + + +<p>For nearly two months, from dawn until dark, Gueldersdorp had squatted on +her low-topped hill in a screaming blizzard of shrapnel and Mauser +bullets. Never a town of imposing size or stately architecture, see her +now a battered hamlet of gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and wrecked +chimneys; staring defiance through glassless windows like the blind +eyeholes in the mouldered House that once has held the living thought of +Man. From dawn until dark the ancient seven-pounders of her batteries had +banged and grumbled, her Maxims had rattled defiance from Kopje Fort, and +the Nordenfelt released its showers of effective, death-dealing little +projectiles. Scant news from outside trickled into the town. Grumer, with +his Brigade, was guarding the Drifts, and when the Relief might be +expected was now a moss-grown topic of general conversation in +Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>And within her girdle of trenches, stern, grimy, haggard men lived, cheek +to the heated rifle-breech, and ate, and snatched brief spells of sleep, +booted and bandoliered, and with the loaded weapon ready for gripping. +Since the attack on Maxim Kopje had choked the Hospital with wounded men +and dotted the Cemetery with little white crosses, nothing of much note +had occurred. The armoured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> train had done good service, and the Baraland +Rifle Volunteers had carried out their surprise against the enemy's +western camp one fine dark night, helped by a squadron of the Irregulars, +with eleven wounded, and the loss of six out of fifty fighting-men.</p> + +<p>The Convent of the Holy Way stood empty and deserted in its +shrapnel-littered garden-enclosure.</p> + +<p>From east, west, north, and south the deadly iron messengers had come, +making sore havoc of this poor house of Christ. "When the walls fall about +our ears, Colonel," the Mother-Superior had declared, "it will be time to +leave them." They were lacework now, with a confusion of bare rafters +overhead, over which streamed, as if in mockery, the Red-Cross Flag. Grim +figures, like geometrical problems gone mad, were made by water and gas +pipes torn from their bedding, and twisted as if by the hands of giants in +cruel play. The little iron bedsteads of the Sisters, and the holy symbols +over them, were the only articles missing from the cells, revealed in +section by the huge gaps in the masonry.</p> + +<p>The Tabernacle of the chapel altar, void of the Unspeakable Mystery it had +housed, fluttered its rearward curtains through the wreckage of the east +wall and the cheap little stained-glass window, where the Shepherds and +the Magi had bowed before the Virgin Mother and the Divine Child. Within +sight of their ruined home, the Sisterhood had found refuge. An +underground dwelling had been dug for them in the garden before an +abandoned soft-brick-and-corrugated-iron house, formerly inhabited by one +of the head officials of the railway, a personage of Dutch extraction and +Boer sympathies, at present sequestered beneath the yellow flag of the +town gaol for their too incautious manifestation; while his wife and young +family were inhabitants of the Women's Laager. And from their subterranean +burrow the Sisters carried on their work of mercy as cheerfully as though +their Order had been originally one of Troglodytes, nursing the sick and +wounded, cooking and washing for the convalescents, comforting the +bereaved, and tending the many orphans of the siege.</p> + +<p>South lay the laager of the Refugees. To the westward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> within the ring of +trenches and about a mile and a half from the town, was the Women's +Laager, visited not seldom by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of the +Red-Cross Flag. Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalked +among the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming their human toll. +Women languished and little children pined and withered, dying for lack of +exercise and fresh air, with the free veld spreading away on all sides to +the horizon, and the burning blue South African sky overhead. Famine had +not yet appeared among the Europeans, though grisly black spectres in +Kaffir blankets haunted the refuse-heaps, and fought with gaunt dogs for +picked bones and empty meat-tins, and were found dead not unseldom, after +full meals of strange and dreadful things. Fresh meat was still to be had, +though the cattle and sheep of the Barala had been thinned by raids on the +part of the enemy, and poor grazing. Shell and rifle-fire not infrequently +spared the butcher trouble, so that your joints were sometimes weirdly +shaped. But they were joints, and there was plenty of the preserved +article in Kriel's Warehouse and at the Army Service Stores. Tea and +coffee were becoming rare and precious, the sparkling draught of lager was +to be had only in remembrance; the aromatic beer was all drunk up, and the +stone-ginger was three shillings a bottle. Whisky was to be had at the +price of liquid gold, brandy was treasured above rubies, and served out +sparingly by the Hand of Authority, as medicine in urgent cases.</p> + +<p>You could get vegetables from the Chinaman, who continued to cultivate +onions, cabbages, potatoes, and melons in the market-gardens about the +town, imperturbable under shot and shell, his large straw hat affording an +admirable target from the Boer sniper's point of view, as metaphorically +he gathered his fat harvest of dollars from the soil. What you could not +get for any amount of dollars was peace and rest, clean air, and space to +stretch your cramped-up limbs in, until Sunday came, bringing the Truce of +God for Englishman and Transvaaler.</p> + +<p>The Hospital, like each of the smaller hospitals that had sprung from the +parent stalk, was crowded. The operating theatre had been turned into a +ward where the lane between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> the beds just gave room for a surgeon or a +nurse to pass, and hourly the cry went up: "Room, more room for the +wounded and the sick!" And among these Saxham worked, night and day, like +a man upheld by forces superhuman.</p> + +<p>"By-and-by," he would say impatiently, when they urged him to take rest, +and would bend his black brows, and hunch those great shoulders of his to +the work again.</p> + +<p>"Ye have a demon, man," said Taggart, Major of the R.A.M.C., himself a +haggard-eyed but tireless labourer in the red fields of pain. "At three o' +the smalls ye got to your bed, and at six ye made the rounds, at seven ye +were dealing with a select batch o' shell-fire an' rifle-shot +casualties—our friends outside being a gey sicht better marksmen when +refreshed by a guid nicht's sleep; at eight ye had had your bit o' +breakfast, and got doon your gun an' gane oot for an hour o' calm, +invigorating sniping on the veld before returning punctually at ten o' the +clock to attack the business o' the day, wi' a bag o' twa Boers to your +creedit."</p> + +<p>"I only got one, Major. The other chap hobbled down bandaged, upon +crutches, to-day, and had a pot-shot at me as I lay doggo behind my +particular stone. I put up my hat on a stick, and—see!" Saxham gravely +exhibited a felt Service smasher with a clean hole through it, an inch +above the lining-edge. "He's a snowy-locked, hoary-bearded, Father +Noah-hatted patriarch of seventy at least, and very proud of his shooting, +and I've let him think he got me this time, just to make him happy for one +night. To-morrow he is to make the painful discovery that I am still in +the flesh."</p> + +<p>"Aweel, aweel! But I would point out to ye that Fortune is a fickle, +tricksy jade, and the luck o' the game might fall to your patriarch in the +antediluvian headgear to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Then the luck of the game, thought the hearer, deep in that wounded heart +of his, would not only be with the patriarch. And the great puzzle, Life, +would be solved for good.</p> + +<p>Taggart had said he, Saxham, had a demon. He could have answered that only +by hard, unceasing, unremitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> work, or, when no more work was there to +do, by the fierce excitement of those grilling hours spent lying behind +the stone, was the demon to be kept out. Of all things he dreaded +inactivity, and though he would drop upon his cot in the tiny bedroom that +had been a Hospital ward-pantry, and sleep the heavy sleep of weariness +the moment his head touched the pillow, yet he would start awake after an +hour or two, parched with that savage, unquenched thirst, and drink great +draughts of the brackish well-water, boiled for precaution's sake, and +tramp the confined space until the grip of desire grew slack. But he had +never once yielded since the night when a man with the eye and voice of a +leader among men had come to the house in Harris Street and taken him by +the hand.</p> + +<p>Do you say impossible, that the man in whom the habit of vice had formed +should be able to cast off his degrading weakness, like a shameful +garment, by sheer force of will, and be sane and strong and masterful +again? I say, possible with this man. You see him plucked from the slough +by the strong hand of manly fellowship, and nerved and strengthened, if +only for a little while, to play the game for the sake of that other's +belief in him. Such influence have such men among their fellows for good +or for ill.</p> + +<p>You can see the Dop Doctor upon this brilliant November morning mounting a +charger lent him by his friend, a handsome Waler full of mettle and +spirit—oats not being yet required for the support of humans—and calling +au revoir to Taggart as he rides away from the Hospital gates followed by +an orderly of the R.A.M.C. in a spider, pulled by a wiry, shabby little +Boer mare.</p> + +<p>"The man rides like a fox-hunter," commented Taggart, noticing the ease of +the seat, the light handling of the rein, the way in which the fidgety, +spirited beast Saxham rode answered to the gentling hand and the guiding +pressure of the rider's knee, as a sharp storm of rifle-fire swept from +the enemy's northern trenches, and the Mauser bullets spurted sand between +the wheels of the spider and under the horses' bellies.</p> + +<p>Saxham spurred ahead, the spider following. The bullet-pierced, grey felt +smasher hat, a manly and not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> unpicturesque headgear, sat on the man's +close-cropped head with a soldierly air becoming to the square, +opaque-skinned face that had power and strength and virility in every line +of it. The blue eyes, under their black bar of meeting eyebrows, were +clear now, and the short aquiline nose, rough-hewn but not coarse, and the +grimly-tender mouth were no longer thickened and swollen and reddened by +intemperance. The figure, perfect in its manliness, if marred by the too +heavy muscular development of the throat and the slightly bowed shoulders, +looked well in the jacket of Service khâki, the Bedford cords and puttees +and spurred brown boots that had replaced the worn white drills, the blue +shirt and shabby black kamarband and canvas shoes. Looking at Saxham, even +with knowledge of his past, you could not have associated a personality so +striking and distinguished, an individuality so original and so strong, +with the idea of the tipsy wastrel, wallowing like a hog in self-chosen +degradation.</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior, coming up the ladder leading out of her underground +abode as the horseman and the attendant spider drew near, thought of +Bartolomeo Colleoni, as you see him, last of the great Condottieri, in the +bronze by great Verrochio at Venice to-day. In armour, complete in the +embossed morion, one with the great Flemish war-horse, he sat to the +sculptor, the bâton of Captain-General, given him by the Doge of Venice, +in the powerful hand that only a little while before aided his picked men +of the infantry to pack and harden snow about the granite boulders of the +mountains in the Val Seriana, and sent the giant snow-balls thundering +down, crushing bloody lanes through the ranks of the Venetian cavalry +massed in the narrow defile below, and striking chill terror to the hearts +of Doge and Prince and Senate.</p> + +<p>Only the bâton was a well-worn staghorn-handled crop, Squire Saxham's +gift, together with a hunter, to his boy Owen, at seventeen. It was one of +the few relics of home that had stayed by Saxham during his wanderings.</p> + +<p>He reined up now, saluting the Mother-Superior with marked respect.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning, ma'am. All well with you and yours?"</p> + +<p>She answered with unusual hesitation:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> + +<p>"All the Sisters are well, thank you. But—if you could spare me a minute, +Dr. Saxham, there is a question I should like to ask."</p> + +<p>"As many minutes as you wish, ma'am. It is not your day for the Hospital, +I think?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, no!" she said, with the velvety South of Ireland vowel-inflection. +"We keep Wednesday for the Women's Laager, always. Many of them are so +miserable, poor souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who are +in the trenches, or who have been killed, and then there are the children +to be cared for and washed. Not only the siege orphans, but so many who +have sick or neglectful mothers. It takes us the whole day once we get +there."</p> + +<p>Saxham dismounted as she stooped to seize the end of a blue cotton-covered +washing-basket impelled from below by an ascending Sister. The spider +pulled up under cover of the brick-and-corrugated-iron house vacated by +the railway-official, as another short storm of riflery cracked and +rattled among the eastern foothills, and a whistling hurry of the +sharp-nosed little messengers of death passed through Gueldersdorp. Some +of them hit and flattened on the gable of the railway-official's house, +one went through the leathern splashboard of the spider. Saxham moved +instinctively to place himself between the closely-standing group of nuns +and possible danger.</p> + +<p>"No, no!" they cried, as one woman, their placid, cheerful tones taking a +shade of anxiety. "You must not do that!"</p> + +<p>"I know you are all well-seasoned," he said, looking at them with the +smile that made his stern face changed and gentle.</p> + +<p>"I am not so sure. The bullets come in the usual way of things. We take +our chance of them," the Mother-Superior answered. But she pressed her +lips together and grew pale as a faint cry came up from the subterranean +dwelling, roofed with sheets of corrugated iron laid upon steel rails, and +made bombproof with bags of earth. And Saxham, looking at the fine face, +with its worn lines of fatigue and over-exertion, and noting the deep +shadowy caves that housed the great luminous grey eyes, said:</p> + +<p>"I think we must have you take some rest, or I shall be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> having my best +helper on my hands as a patient. And that won't do, you know."</p> + +<p>"No, it would not do," she said, looking fully and seriously at him. "And +therefore I think our Lord will not permit it. But if He should, be sure +another will rise up to fill my place."</p> + +<p>"Whoever your successor might be," said Saxham sincerely, "she would not +fulfil my ideal of an absolutely efficient nurse, as you do. So from the +personal, if not the altruistic point of view, let me beg you to be +careful."</p> + +<p>"I take all reasonable care," she told him. "It is true, the work has been +heavy this week; but to-morrow is Sunday, and we shall rest all day and +sleep at the Convent. Indeed, some of us have taken it in turn to be on +guard there every night, or nothing would be left us."</p> + +<p>"I understand."</p> + +<p>He knew how prowlers and night-thieves made harvest in the darkness among +the deserted dwellings since Police and Town Guardsmen had been +requisitioned to man the trenches. She went on:</p> + +<p>"The upper story of the house is sheer wreck, as you may see, but the +ground-floor is quite habitable. So much so that if the shells did not +strike the poor dear place so often, I should suggest your turning it into +a Convalescent Home."</p> + +<p>"We may have to try the plan yet," said Saxham. "The Railway Institute is +frightfully overcrowded."</p> + +<p>"And," she told him, "a shell struck there yesterday evening, and burst in +the larger ward."</p> + +<p>"I had not heard of it," he said. "Was anybody hurt?"</p> + +<p>"No one, thank God! But the fire was difficult to put out, until one of +the Sisters thought of sand."</p> + +<p>"It was an incendiary shell?" Disgust and contempt swelled his deep-cut +nostrils and flamed from his vivid blue eyes. "And yet these Kaiser's +gunners, in their blue-and-white Death or Glory uniforms, can hardly +pretend ignorance of the Geneva Convention. But—your question?"</p> + +<p>"It is—Children!" She beckoned to the two nuns, who stood at a little +distance apart holding the washing-basket between them. "I will ask you to +go on slowly before me with the basket. I will overtake you when I have +spoken to Dr. Saxham."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Surely, Reverend Mother." One tall, pale, and thin, the other round and +rosy, they were alike in the placid, cheerful serenity of their good eyes +and readily smiling lips. "And won't we be after taking the bundle?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! It is heavy, and I am as strong as both of you together."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Reverend Mother."</p> + +<p>They were obediently moving on.</p> + +<p>"A moment." Saxham stopped them. "If you two ladies have no objection to a +little crowding, the spider will hold both of you as well as the bundle +and the basket of washing. At least, it looks like a basket of washing."</p> + +<p>All three laughed as they accepted his offer, assuring him that his +suspicions were correct. For neither Kaffir laundrywoman or Hindu <i>dhobi</i> +would go down any more to the washing troughs by the river, for fear of +crossing that Stygian flood of blackness rivalling their own, supposing, +as Beauvayse once suggested, that there is a third-class ferry for niggers +and persons of colour? And from the waterworks on the Eastern side of the +town the supply had been cut off by the enemy, so that the taps of +Gueldersdorp had ceased to yield.</p> + +<p>Old wells and springs had been reopened, cleaned, and brought into use for +drinking purposes, so that of a water-famine there could be no fear. But +the element became expensive when retailed by the tin bucketful, a bath a +rare luxury when the contents of the said bucket might be spilled or +thrown away in the course of the gymnastics wherewith the sable or +coffee-brown bearer sought to evade the travelling unexploded shell or the +fan-shaped charge of shrapnel. Therefore, the Sisters had turned +laundry-women. You could hear the sound of Sister Tobias's smoothing-iron +coming up from below, thump-thumping on the blanketed board.</p> + +<p>"And where do you think we get the water, now?" the rosy Sister, in +process of being packed into the spider, leaned over the wheel to ask.</p> + +<p>"Not from the Convent?" Saxham thought of the strip of veld between there +and the Hospital, even more fraught with peril than the patch he had just +traversed, or the distance yet to be covered between the Sisters'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> +bombproof and the Women's Laager, where Death, with the red sickle in his +fleshless hand, stalked openly from dawn to nightfall.</p> + +<p>"From the Convent, carrying it across after dark. And no well there, +either, that you'd get the fill of a teaspoon out of"—a "tayspoon" it was +in the rosy Sister's Dublin brogue—"and yet there's water there."</p> + +<p>"But how——" Saxham began. The Mother-Superior shook her head, and the +rosy Sister was silent.</p> + +<p>"There is no mystery about the water at all. It is very simple." Standing +there with her head held high and the fine, free, graceful lines of her +tall figure outlined by the heavy folds of the now worn and darned black +habit, and her hands, still beautiful, though roughened by toil, calmly +folded upon her scapular, she was as remarkable and noble a figure, it +seemed to Saxham, as the golden sunlight could fall upon anywhere in the +world. And besides, she was his right hand at the Hospital. A capable, +watchful, untiring nurse—and beauty would have decked her in his +surgeon's eyes if she had been physically ugly or deformed.</p> + +<p>"There is no mystery whatever, only when the bombardment first began I +thought of the waterworks, and that one of my first cares, supposing I had +been General Brounckers"—she smiled slightly—"would have been to operate +there. So I set the Sisters to work at filling every empty barrel and +bucket and tub in the Convent with water from the taps. And as we happened +to have plenty of empty barrels and tubs, why, there is water to be had +there now, and will be for some time to come. Go now, my children."</p> + +<p>The smiling Sisters waved their hands. The orderly saluted with his whip +and drove on in obedience to Saxham's nod.</p> + +<p>"Of course, the Sisters are aware," he said, meeting the Mother's grave +glance, "that if it is quicker to drive, it is safer to walk?"</p> + +<p>She nodded with the gay, sweet smile that had belonged to Lady Biddy.</p> + +<p>"They know, of course. But danger is in the day's work. We do not seek it. +We are prepared for it, and it comes and passes. If one day it does not +pass without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> the cost of life, we are prepared for that, and God's Will +is done always."</p> + +<p>"You are very brave," he said. It was the first time in his life that he +had used the phrase to any woman, and the words came out almost +grudgingly.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, not brave," she told him; "only obedient." Her veil fluttered in +the hot November breeze that bore with it the heavy fetid taint from the +overcrowded trenches that ringed Gueldersdorp, and the acrid fumes of the +cordite; though the air up here on the veld was sweet compared with the +befouled atmosphere of the Women's Laager and the crowded wards at the +Hospital, in spite of all that disinfectants could do. She went on:</p> + +<p>"And we are very grateful to you for the lift. Sister Ruperta was on duty +last night, and Sister Hilda Antony—the rosy Sister—is not as well as +she would have us believe. Ah——"</p> + +<p>With her grave eyes screened by her lifted hand, she had been watching the +progress of the spider westward over the dun-yellow veld. Now the long +wailing notes of the headquarter bugle sounded, in slow time, the +Assembly, and in the same instant, from the Staff over the Colonel's +hotel, where the red lamp signalled danger by night and the Red Flag gave +its warning by day, the scarlet danger-signal fluttered in the breeze. +Once, twice, again, the deep bell of the Catholic Church tolled. A dozen +other bells echoed the warning, signifying danger by the number of their +iron-tongue strokes to the threatened quarter of the town.</p> + +<p>"'Ware big gun!" called the sentries. "West quarter, 'ware!"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior grew pale, for the Women's Laager, towards which the +little Boer mare was steadily trotting with the laden spider, lay in the +menaced quarter, with a bare stretch of veld between it and the Camp of +the Irregular Horse, whose white tents and dug-out shelters were +pleasantly shaded by ancient blue gums, picturesque and stately in spite +of broken boughs and foliage torn by shrapnel and seared by the chemical +fumes of bursting charges innumerable.</p> + +<p>"Will you not go down?" Saxham asked her.</p> + +<p>She shook her head in reply, and stood with a waiting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> face in prayerful +silence, not stirring save to make the Sign of the Cross. And as the long +white fingers fluttered over the bosom of the black habit, the faint cry +that Saxham's quick ear had heard before floated up from the populous +depths below.</p> + +<p>"What is that?"</p> + +<p>Before the question had left Saxham's lips, the monster gun spoke out in +deafening thunder from the enemy's position at East Point, nearly two +miles away. The heavy grey smoke-pillar of the driving-charge towered +against the sunbright distance, and simultaneously with the crack of the +discharge, sounding as though all the pent-up forces of Hell had burst the +brazen gates of Terror, and rushed forth to annihilate and destroy, the +ninety-four pound projectile passed overhead, sweeping half the +corrugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling with a +fiendish clatter and din, as it passed harmlessly over the Women's Laager, +and, wrecking a sentry's shelter on the western line of defences, burst +harmlessly upon the veld beyond, blotting out the low hills behind a +curtain of acrid green vapour.</p> + +<p>"Get under cover, quick!" Saxham had shouted to his companion, as deafened +by the tremendous concussion, and dazed and half-asphyxiated by the +poisonous fumes, he strove for mastery with his maddened horse. This +regained, he looked for the figure in the black habit and white coif, and +knew a shock of horror in seeing it prone upon the ground.</p> + +<p>"No, no, I am not hurt!" she cried, lightly rising as he hurried towards +her. The tremendous air-concussion had thrown her down, and beyond a +scratch upon her hand and some red dust on the black garments she was in +nothing the worse.</p> + +<p>"I don't know how I kept my own legs," Saxham said, laughing.</p> + +<p>"It went by like twenty avalanches," she agreed. "And blessed be our Lord, +excepting for the damage to the roof, no more seems to have been done. I +can see the spider stopping near the Women's Laager." She peered out +earnestly over the shimmering waste of dusty yellow-brown, and cried out +joyfully: "Ah, Sister Hilda Antony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> and Sister Ruperta are getting out. +All is well with them; all is well."</p> + +<p>"But not with the washing."</p> + +<p>Saxham had swung round his binoculars, and brought them to bear upon the +vehicle and its late occupants. A grim smile played about his mouth as he +handed her the glasses, and heard her cry of womanly distress as she +beheld the fruit of late labour scattered on the veld and the Sisters' +agonised activity displayed in the gathering up of sheets, pillow-slips, +handkerchiefs, babies' shirts and petticoats, with other garments of a +strictly feminine and private character. Her grave, discreet eyes avoided +his as she handed back the binoculars, but a dimple showed near the edge +of the white coif.</p> + +<p>"And now," Saxham said, glancing at his watch, "may I know in what I can +be of service?" It had seemed to him that the Mother-Superior hesitated to +broach the subject. Nor had he been mistaken. The dimple vanished. Her +calm eyes became troubled, and she asked, with a slight catching of the +breath:</p> + +<p>"Yes, there was something.... Doctor, is it possible for a person to die +of fear?"</p> + +<p>He answered promptly:</p> + +<p>"In circumstances like the present? Certainly. Undoubtedly possible. I +have seen twenty deaths from pure fright since the bombardment began, and +I expect to see more before the siege ends, or people get callous to the +possibilities of sudden extermination that are afforded them a hundred +times a day. Is the person to whom you refer a woman or a child?"</p> + +<p>"A young girl——" she was beginning, when a buxom little figure, black +veiled and habited like herself, rose up as if from the bowels of the +earth.</p> + +<p>"I vill look. But I can see nozing," she called to someone invisible +below. "It must be that you vait until my eyes shall become more strong." +She shaded them, newly brought from semi-darkness and blinking in the hot, +white sunlight. The Mother-Superior hurried to her, saying with a note of +anxiety in her usually calm voice:</p> + +<p>"Sister—Sister Cleophée; is anything the matter?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Mon Dieu!</i> It is ze Reverend Mozer!" ejaculated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the other, relief and +joy expressed in the rapid movements of pliant hands and expressive eyes. +"Nozing is ze matter, Reverend Mozer, if only you are safe."</p> + +<p>"Quite safe, and so are the Sisters. Only the linen was upset."</p> + +<p>"My 'eavens, but a miraculous escapement!" The supple hands and the +expressive eyes and shoulders of Sister Cleophée made great play. "Me and +Sister Tobias, 'ow we <i>pray</i> when we 'ear ze great gun, vith knowledge zat +you and ze Sisters were upon the vay to ze Women's Laager. My faith, it +vas terrible! Me, if I 'ad not make to ascend and learn how it go vid you, +Lynette vould 'ave come running up to make discovery for herself. She +behave like a little crazy, a little mad sing—I forget your vord for she +zat have lost 'er vits! Sister Tobias and me, we 'ave to 'old 'er." The +fine, expressive eyes went past the Mother-Superior, and lighted with +evident relief on Saxham. "Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, it is incredible vat +zat poor child she suffer. Madame 'ave told you——"</p> + +<p>"Madame was about to tell me, my Sister," Saxham said, in his smooth, +fluent French, "when you appeared upon the scene."</p> + +<p>Sister Cleophée launched, unwitting of the Mother-Superior's gesture of +vexation, into voluble explanations in that native language which M. le +Docteur spoke so well.</p> + +<p>Mademoiselle Mildare, the ward of Madame the Mother-Superior, was no +coward. But no! the child had courage in plenty—it was the suspense that +devoured her in the absence of the Mother, to whom Mademoiselle was most +tenderly attached, that reduced her to a state of the most pitiable. The +Sisters left at home each day would talk of the work and the fine +weather—anything to distract the mind, that presented itself to them—but +now, nothing was of any use. When the Reverend Mother came back at +nightfall, behold a transformation. Mademoiselle would laugh and sing and +chatter. Her eyes would shine like stars, she would be happy, said Sister +Cleophée, with dramatic emphasis and gesture, as a soul in Paradise. Next +day, taking her guardian from her side, would bring the terrors back, find +redoubled the nervous sufferings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> Mademoiselle, to-day reaching such a +height that Sister Cleophée felt convinced that something must be done.</p> + +<p>"Ah, my Sister, if I could do anything!" the Mother-Superior said, with +the velvet Southern Irish inflection in the breathing aspirate, and the +soft melodious cadence that made her pure, cultivated utterance so +exquisite. The voice broke and faltered, and a spasm of mother-anguish +wrung the firm mouth, and as a slow tear dimmed each of her underlids and +splashed on the white <i>guimpe</i> she put out her hand blindly, and the +sympathetic little Frenchwoman took it in both her own.</p> + +<p>"Reverend Mozer, you can do zis. You can bring Monsieur le Docteur to see +Lynette. You can 'ave his advice upon 'er case, and you can——"</p> + +<p>Another fusillade of rifle-fire, sweeping from the west over Gueldersdorp, +brought a repetition of the faint moaning cry from below. Saxham consulted +the Reverend Mother with a look. She bent her head in silent assent. He +hitched the horse's bridle to what had been the gatepost of the +railway-official's front-garden, as she signed to him to descend the +ladder leading to the Sisters' underground abode. And he went down to meet +his Fate there.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>The temporary Convent was a roomy trench dug out of the red gravelly sand, +lined with the inevitable sheets of corrugated iron, and roofed with the +same material, supported by a solid frame of steel rails. Wide chinks +between the metal sheets gave admission to light and air, and earthen +drain-pipes made ventilators in the walls. But the sunlight penetrated +like spears of burning flame, and the air was stifling hot. The paraffin +stove that heated irons for Sister Tobias smelled clamorously, and the +droning of myriads of flies, not the least of the seven plagues of +Gueldersdorp, kept up a persistent bass to the shrill singing of the +little tin kettle. Later, when the April rains began, and the tarpaulins +were pulled over the sand-bagged roof, tin lamps burning more paraffin did +battle with Cimmerian darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> + +<p>Saxham's professional approval was won by the marvellous cleanliness and +neatness of the place, divided into living-room and dormitory by a heavy +green baize curtain, that at the Convent had shut off the noise of the +great classroom from the rest of the house. The curtain was drawn, hiding +the little iron cots brought from the Sisters' cells, ascetic couches +whose narrow wire mattresses must afford scant room for repose to double +sleepers now, where all were crowded, and Conventual rules must be in +abeyance. The outer place held a deal table, the oil cooking-stove; some +household utensils shining with cleanliness were ranged upon a shelf, and +several pictures hung upon the walls. Upon a bracket the silver Crucifix +from the altar of the Convent chapel gleamed against the background of a +snowy, lace-bordered linen cloth. There were orderly piles of cleaned and +mended clothes, military and civilian, the garments of sick and wounded +male patients, who would leave the Hospital without a thought of the +unselfish women who had foregone sleep to patch jackets and sew on missing +buttons. There were haversacks of coarse canvas for the Volunteers, +finished and partly made, with ammunition-pouches and bandoliers. And +Sister Tobias stood ironing at the deal table, partly screened by a line +of drying linen, while Sister Mary-Joseph turned the mangle, and the +little brisk novice, her round cheeks no longer rosy, folded with active +hands. The Dop Doctor's keen quick glance took note of the patient +cheerful weariness written on the three faces, then rested on one other +face there.</p> + +<p>Its wild white-rose fairness had dulled into the pallor of old ivory. +There were deep, bluish shadows about the eyes and round the mouth, and +the hollow at the base of the throat, where the pulse throbbed and +fluttered visibly, had grown deep. Her red-brown hair had lost its +burnished beauty. It had become dull like her skin, and her garments hung +loosely upon the form whose soft roundnesses had fallen away. But her eyes +had changed most. Their golden-hazel irises had faded to pale bronze, the +full, fair eyelids had shrunk, the pupils were distended to twice their +natural size. She sat upon a stool in a corner, a slight girlish figure in +a holland skirt and white cambric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> blouse-bodice, her slender waist +girdled with a belt of brown leather, the colour of her little shoes. +Huddled up against the corrugated-iron wainscot of the rough earth wall, +the obsession of fear that dilated her eyes and parched her lips shook her +in recurrent gusts of trembling, whenever the guns of the Gueldersdorp +batteries spoke in thunder, whenever the Boer artillery bellowed Death +from the heights above. For since the great gun had spoken from East +Point, Death's red sickle had not ceased to ply its task.</p> + +<p>Some work, one of the coarse canvas haversacks made by the nuns for +Gueldersdorp's enrolled defenders, lay at the girl's feet. Her right hand, +horrible to see in its incessant, mechanical activity, made continually +the motion of sewing. Her eyes stared blankly, unwinkingly at the opposite +wall, and the gusts of trembling went over her without cessation. At a +more deafening crash than ordinary, an irrepressible scream would break +from her, and her hand would snatch at an invisible garment as though she +plucked back its imaginary wearer from peril by main force.</p> + +<p>"She sees nobody. She hear nozing when we speak—she vould feel nozing, if +you should pinch or shake her. Was I not right, Reverend Mozer, to say it +is time zat somesing should be done?"</p> + +<p>The shrill whisper came from Sister Cleophée. The Mother-Superior made a +sign in assent. Beyond words, her heart was crying—Oh, misery and joy in +one mingled draught to have won such love as this from Richard's child! +But her face was impassive and stern, and her eyes, looking over Saxham's +great shoulder as he stood silently watching at the bottom of the ladder +stairway, imposed silence on the busy, observant, tactful Sisters, who +continued their labours without a break, as the sewing hand went +diligently to and fro, and the recurrent convulsive shudders shook the +girl's slight frame, and the irrepressible cry of anguish was wrung from +her at each ear-splitting shellburst. And yet, with all her agony of love +intensifying her gaze, the Mother did not see as much as Saxham, who took +in every detail and symptom with skilled, consummate ease, realizing the +desperate effort that strove for self-command, noting the exhaustion of +suspense in the dropped lines of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> the half-open, colourless mouth, the +incipient mental breakdown in the vacant stare of the dilated eyes, the +mechanical action of the stitching needle-hand, the convulsive shudder +that rippled through the slight figure at each boom, or crash, or +fusillade of rifle-fire that drifted over the shrapnel-torn veld and +through the battered town. He threw a swift whisper over his shoulder +presently, that only reached the ear of the Mother-Superior, standing +behind him, her tall shape concealed from the sufferer's sight by his +great form.</p> + +<p>"How long has this been going on?"</p> + +<p>She whispered back: "I am told ever since the bombardment began. Every +day, and at night too, should duty detain me at one or another of the +Hospitals."</p> + +<p>He added in the same low tone:</p> + +<p>"She has a morbid terror of death under ordinary circumstances?"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior murmured, a hand upon the ache in her bosom:</p> + +<p>"Not of death for herself. For—another."</p> + +<p>His purely scientific attitude must have already abandoned him when he +knew gladness that Self was not the dominant note in this dumb threnody of +fear. But he wore the professional mask of the physician as he ordered:</p> + +<p>"Let one of the Sisters speak to her."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior glanced at the nun who was ironing, and then at the +figure on the stool. The Sister was about to obey when the Boer +Maxim-Nordenfelt on the southern position rattled. There was a hissing +rush overhead, and as a series of sharp, splitting cracks told that a +group of the shining little copper-banded shells had burst, and that their +splinters were busily hunting far and wide for somebody to kill, the +stitching hand dropped by the girl's side. A new wave of shuddering went +over the desolate young figure, pitiable and horrible to see. Dull drops +of sweat broke out upon her temples in the shadow of her red-brown hair.</p> + +<p>"How are you getting on with your work, dearie?"</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias had spoken to her gently. She moved her head and her fixed +eyes in a blind way, and the stitching hand resumed its mechanical task, +but she gave no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> answer, except with the shudderings that shook her, as a +lily is shaken in an autumn blast.</p> + +<p>Then Saxham stepped backwards noiselessly, climbed the steep ladder +stairway, and stood waiting for the Mother-Superior in the blazing yellow +sunshine, beside the post to which his horse was hitched. The Mother +followed instantly. He was making some pencil memoranda in a shabby +notebook, and kept his eyes upon his writing, and made a mere mask of his +square, pale face as he began:</p> + +<p>"It—the case presents a very interesting development. The subject has at +one time or other—probably the critical period of girlhood—sustained a +severe physical and mental shock?"</p> + +<p>The great grey eyes swam in sudden tears that were not to be repressed, as +the Mother-Superior remembered the finding of that lost lamb on the veld +seven years before. She bowed her head in silent assent.</p> + +<p>"You would wish candour," Saxham said, looking away from her emotion. "And +I should tell you that this is grave."</p> + +<p>"I know it," her desperate eyes said more plainly than her scarcely moving +lips. "But so many others are suffering in the same way, and there is +nothing that can be done for any of them."</p> + +<p>He answered with emphasis that struck her cold. "Some measures must be +taken in the case, and without delay. This state of things must not go +on." He saw that the Mother-Superior caught her breath and wrung her hands +together in the loose, concealing sleeves as she said, with a breath of +anguish:</p> + +<p>"If she only had more self-control."</p> + +<p>"She has self-control." He echoed the word impatiently. "She is using +every ounce she has for all she is worth. She has used it too long and too +persistently."</p> + +<p>"I will say then, if she only had more faith!"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing of faith," Saxham said curtly; "I deal in common-sense."</p> + +<p>She could have asked if it were commonly sensible for a creature made by +God, and existing but by His will, to live without Him? But she put the +temptation past her. No cordial flame of mutual esteem and liking ever +sprang up between these two, often brought together in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> their mutual work +of help and healing. She recognised Saxham's power, she admitted his +skill. But, as his practised eye had diagnosed in the beloved of her heart +the signs of physical and mental crisis, so her clear gaze deciphered in +his face the story written by those unbridled years of vice and +dissipation, and knew him diseased in soul. She may have been fully +acquainted with all Gueldersdorp had learned of him, going here, there, +and everywhere, as was her wont, in obedience to her Spouse's call. But if +so, she never betrayed Saxham. There was no resentment, only delicate +irony in the curve of her finely-modelled lips as she queried:</p> + +<p>"Am I so deficient in the quality of common-sense?"</p> + +<p>"Madam," he said, "you have manifested it in each of the many instances +where I have been brought in contact with you. But in your solicitude for +this young girl you have shown, for the first time in my experience of +you, some lack of good judgment, and have inflicted, and do inflict, +severe suffering on her."</p> + +<p>Her eyes flashed grey fire under her stern brows as she demanded:</p> + +<p>"How, pray?"</p> + +<p>"It is out of the question, I suppose," Saxham said coldly, "that you +should slacken in your ministrations among the sick and wounded, and keep +out of daily and hourly danger—for her sake?"</p> + +<p>"Impossible," her voice answered, and her heart added unheard: +"Impossible, unless I should be false to my Heavenly Bridegroom out of +love for the child He gave."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Saxham bluntly, "unless these recurrent nerve-storms are to +culminate in cerebral lesion and mental and physical collapse—a result +more easy to avert than to deal with—take the girl about with you."</p> + +<p>"But——" the Mother uttered in irrepressible dismay. "I—we go +everywhere!"</p> + +<p>It was most true. He had a vision, as she said it, of the black-robed, +white-coifed, cheerful Sisters passing in couples through the +shrapnel-littered streets, between houses of gaping walls, and shattered +roofs, and glassless windows, cheerful, serene, helpful, bringing comfort +to the dying, and assistance to the sick, oblivious of whistling bullets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> +and bursting shells. And the most arduous duties, the most repulsive +tasks, the most danger-fraught errands, were hers, always by right, and +claim, and choice. What a woman it was! A very Judith in Israel. He knew +that Judith did not like him, but unconcealed admiration was in his blue +eyes as he looked at her.</p> + +<p>"I know it. Let <i>her</i> go everywhere. It is the sole chance, and—you spoke +of faith just now.... If you have it for yourself and the religious women +of your Order, who go about doing good in confidence of the protection—I +do not speak in mockery—of an Almighty Hand, why can't you have it for +her?"</p> + +<p>She had never seemed so noble in his eyes as when she took that implied +rebuke of his, with meek bending of her proud head, and candid +self-condemnation in the eyes that were lowered and then raised to his, +and beautiful humility in her speech:</p> + +<p>"Sir, your reproach is just; it is I who have been lacking in faith. +And—it shall be as you advise."</p> + +<p>The distant bugle blared out its warning. The bell tolled twice, stopped, +and tolled four; the smaller bells echoed. The voices of the sentries came +to their ears, loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to the +merest spider-thread of sound:</p> + +<p>"'Ware big gun! South quarter, 'ware!"</p> + +<p>"I must go to her," the Mother-Superior said, and passed him swiftly and +went down the ladder. Saxham followed. The white figure on the stool had +not stirred, apparently. Its blank eyes still stared at the wall, and the +mechanical hand moved, sewing at nothing, as diligently as ever.</p> + +<p>"Lynette!"</p> + +<p>The fixed, blindly-staring eyes came to life. Colour throbbed back into +the wan ivory cheeks. The mouth lost its vacant droop. She rose up from +the stool with a joyful cry, and, stumbling in her haste, ran into the +outstretched arms. As they wrapped about her, clinging to her sole earthly +friend and guardian as though she could never let go, came the crash of +the driving-charge, the yelling Brocken-hunt of the passage of the huge +projectile, the ear-splitting din of the shellburst. She lifted up a +radiant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> face of laughing defiance, and then choked and quivered and burst +out crying, leaning her panting young bosom against the black habit, and +weeping as though her whole being must dissolve, Undine-like, in tears.</p> + +<p>Ah, the lovely feminine woman who weeps and clings! She will never lose +her dominion over the sons of men. The appealing glances of her beautiful +wet eyes melt the stoniest male hearts, the soft tendril-like wreathing of +her arms about the pillar of salt upon the Plain would have had power to +change it back into a breathing human being once more, if Lot had looked +back, instead of his helpmeet. Her sterner sisters may feel as keenly, +love as tenderly, sorrow even more bitterly than she. Who will believe it +among the sons of dead old Adam, who first felt the heaving bosom pant +against his own, and saw the first bright tear-showers fall—forerunners +of what oceans of world-sorrow to be shed hereafter, when the Angel of the +flaming sword drove the peccant pair from Paradise. Ah, the fair, weak +woman who weeps and clings!</p> + +<p>And Owen Saxham, watching Lynette from the ladder-foot, and the +Mother-Superior, clasping her and murmuring soft comfort into the +delicate, fragile ear under the heaped waves of red-brown hair, shared the +same thought.</p> + +<p>How this trembling, vibrating, emotional creature will love one day, when +the man arrives to whom imperious Nature shall bid her render up her all!</p> + +<p>In whom, prayed the unselfish mother-heart, willing to be bereft of even +the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she +find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, +all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon +a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what will happen then?</p> + +<p>Looking at the pair, Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. Lynette's tears had +been dried quickly, like all joy-drops that the eyes shed. She was talking +low and earnestly, pleading her cause with clinging hands and wistful +looks and coaxing tones that were broken sometimes by a sob and sometimes +by a little peal of girlish laughter.</p> + +<p>"Mother, I am not made of sugar to be melted in the sun, or Dresden china +to be broken. I am strong enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> to take my share of the work; I am brave +enough to bear anything—anything," she urged, "if only I may be with you. +But to sit cooped up here day after day, safe and sheltered, sewing +powder-bags or giving Katie French lessons, or helping Sister Tobias, and +listening to the guns"—the blood fled from her cheeks and the great +pupils of her eyes dilated until they looked all black in her face of +whiteness—"the dreadful guns, and wondering where you are when the shells +are bursting"—her voice rose in anguish—"I can't bear it! Mother, do you +hear?" She threw her beautiful head back entreatingly, and the pulses in +her white throat throbbed under Saxham's eyes, and her slight hands were +desperate in their clutch upon the arms that held her. "I want my share of +the risk, whatever it is. I will have it! It is my right. I have tried to +be good and patient, but I can't, I can't, I can't stand this any more!"</p> + +<p>Her voice broke upon a sob, and Saxham said from the doorway that was +filled by his great shoulders from post to post:</p> + +<p>"You will not have to stand it any more. The Reverend Mother has +reconsidered her decision. She will take you to the Hospital and elsewhere +from to-day."</p> + +<p>The man's curt manner and authoritative tone brought Lynette for the first +time to knowledge of his presence. Her glance went to him, and joy was +mingled with surprise in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior.</p> + +<p>"Really, Mother?"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior, though her own still face had flushed with quick, +irrepressible resentment at Saxham's tone, said cheerfully:</p> + +<p>"It is true, my child. Dr. Saxham thinks it will be best for you. Dr. +Saxham, this is my ward, Miss Mildare."</p> + +<p>Saxham made his little brusque bow. Lynette, bending her lovely head, gave +a grateful glance at the khâki-clad figure with the great hulking +shoulders, standing under the patch of hot blue sky that the top of the +ladder vanished in, and a strange shock and thrill went through the man's +whole frame. His odd, gentian-coloured eyes under the heavy thunder-cloud +of black eyebrows lightened so suddenly in reply that the girl felt +repelled and half frightened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> She was conscious of a curious oppression. +As for Saxham, a delicate, stinging fire ran newly in his veins. Something +stirred in the secret depths of him, and came to life with an awakening +thrill exquisitely poignant and sweet. For this slight, unsophisticated, +Convent-bred creature, slender as a lily, reared in innocence among the +blameless, was rich as her frail, lovely mother had been before her in the +mysterious allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the zenith of her +stately beauty had never possessed one-tenth of the seductive charm that +emanated from this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen +gleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made the +senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with your +passions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not lost the lilt +of the song that it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since the +Woman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis may invite, if +unconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter; the shy, close-folded nymph +among the sedges may awaken the primal desire of Pan among the reeds.... +Saxham, even in the years of his degradation, had scarcely sunk to the +level of the crook-shinned, hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. But he had built +his nest with the birds of night, and slaked his thirst at impure sources, +and only now did he realise how his mad dream of vengeance upon the Power +that had cast him down and wrecked his future was to recoil upon himself. +"I have done with Love," he had said, "and with Hope, and with Life as it +is known of the honourable and the upright and the cleanly among men for +ever!"</p> + +<p>And now ... his thoughts were tipped with fire as he drank in the +suddenly-awakened, vivid, delicate beauty of Lynette Mildare. Now he +realised the depths of his own mad folly. Oh, to have had the right to +hope again, to love again, to live again, and be grateful to David, who +had betrayed him, and Mildred, who had deserted him—to this end! Oh, +never to have lost the honourable claim to woo such loveliness as this and +win such purity, and wear both as a talisman upon his heart for ever! He +drew breath heavily as he looked at the girl, transformed and glowing +under the touch she loved, shining from within like some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> frail, +transparent alabaster lamp with the light that he had helped to rekindle. +And as his great chest expanded with deep draughts of the subtle, +intoxicating atmosphere of her, and the blood hummed through his veins to +that new measure, the last link of his old fetters fell clanking to the +ground. And then, with a sting of intolerable remorse, came the memory of +his shameful five years' Odyssey spent as a hog among other hogs of the +human kind. It had not been an overthrow. It had been a surrender of all +that was noble and strong in him to all in him that was despicable and +weak and vile. And his soul shuddered, and his heart contracted in the +sickening clutch of shame.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2> + + +<p>He awakened from that lost moment of enthralment to the pang and the shock +of self-discovery, and to the knowledge that somebody was hailing him by +name from the top of the ladder.</p> + +<p>"Saxham! Doctor! Are you below there?"</p> + +<p>It was the gay, fresh voice of Beauvayse, halted with a handful of +Irregulars, bandoliered, carrying their rifles and the day's provisions, +wearing their bayonets on their hips, and sitting their wiry little horses +with the ease of old troopers in the lee-side of the piled-up mound of +sandbags that roofed the underground convent. Five men and a Corporal of +the Town Guard, similarly burdened and accoutred—we know the pale Cockney +eyes and the thin face of the Corporal, whose freckles have long ago +vanished in a uniform gingerbread hue—had also taken momentary shelter +from one of the intermittent blizzards of Mauser bullets that drifted +through Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>One Irregular was sitting on an earth-filled packing-case, swearing +softly, nursing a disabled right arm, and looking at the corded network of +hairy, sunburned muscles that were delicately outlined in the bright red +stream that trickled from beneath the rolled-up shirt-sleeve of raspy +"greyback."</p> + +<p>"We saw your hairy tied up outside, Doctor, and 'sensed' your whereabouts, +as McFadyen says. Can the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> ladies spare you for a moment? Sorry to be a +nuisance, but one of my fellows has got winged on our way to relieve the +garrison at Maxim Outpost South, and though he swears he is as fit as a +fiddle, I don't believe he ought to come on."</p> + +<p>"I'm all right, Sir, 'pon me Sam I am!" protested the dismounted trooper. +"It's a bit stiff, but the bleedin' 'll take that off. I shan't shoot a +tikkie the worse for it. Lay anybody 'ere a caulker I don't!"</p> + +<p>Nobody took up the bet, fortunately for the sportsman, as surgical +examination proved that the bullet had gone sheer through the fleshy part +of the upper arm, breaking the bone, just missing the artery, and leaving +a clean hole.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to go to Hospital, my man," pronounced Saxham.</p> + +<p>The face of the wounded Irregular lengthened in disgust. "My crimson luck! +And I'd made up my mind to pick off a brace o' them blasted Dutch wart +'ogs over that there bad job of pore Bob Ellis."</p> + +<p>He blinked violently, and gulped down something that rose in his brown, +muscular throat as the voice of a comrade, middle-aged like himself, +coffee-baked as a Colonial, and also speaking with the accents of the +English barrack-room, took up the tale.</p> + +<p>"Bob Ellis was 'is pal, Sir, and mine, too. We was in the same battery of +'Orse Artillery at Ali Musjid, an' we went up along of Lord Kitchener to +Khartoum. An' they shot Bob yesterday. Through the 'ead, clean, an' 'e +never spoke another word."</p> + +<p>"Through the loop-'ole o' the parapet, it was," went on the wounded man. +"Bein' in the advance trench, we've got on neighbourly terms like, with +the Dutchies, and Tom Kelly, wot 'as just bin speakin', 'eard Bob Ellis +promisin' this bloke as 'ow if 'e'd on'y 'urry up an' git killed soon +enough, Bob would 'ave 'is farm and 'is frow when 'e come marchin' along +to Pretoria. 'Oppin' mad the Dopper was at that, an' the names 'e called +pore Bob was something disgraceful. An' when 'e got Bob through the +loop-'ole, me an' Kelly made our minds up to show a bit o' fancy shootin' +and lay 'im out in turn. That's 'ow it was, Sir. An' now"—the voice grew +shaky—"they've corked me. Corked me, by God I—an' there's not a bloke +among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> lot of us but me can play the concertina." With his undamaged +arm he swung round his haversack, bulging at the top with a cheap, +bone-keyed, rosewood-veneered, gaudy-paper-sided instrument of German +make, and hung his head over it in silence.</p> + +<p>"But what on earth has the concertina got to do with it?" Saxham was +frankly puzzled, and Beauvayse, with all his professional knowledge of +"Tommy," was for once nonplussed.</p> + +<p>"You'd better explain to the Doctor, Corporal Leash. I'm out of the +running when it comes to killing men with concertinas. And—you don't play +as badly as all that, do you?"</p> + +<p>"On the contrywise, Sir," explained the comrade Kelly, "plays uncommon +well, he does—all the tunes of the latest music-'all and patriotic +songs."</p> + +<p>"An' them blasted Doppers are uncommon fond o' music, d'ye see, Sir," +explained the wounded trooper. "They can't keep their ugly 'eads down +behind the sand-bags when they hears it. Up they pops 'em over the edge +and then—you take care they don't pop down no more."</p> + +<p>The gay young laughter of Beauvayse was infectious, while white teeth +showed, or teeth that were not white, in the tanned faces of Irregulars +and Town Guardsmen. Even the mourning comrades grinned, and Saxham smiled +grimly as Beauvayse cried:</p> + +<p>"By George, a more original method of reprisal I never came across! But +it's clear if you can't shoot with that drilled arm of yours you can't +play the concertina. Wish I could knock a tune out of the thing, Leash, +for your sake—enough to make a Boer put his head up. But I'm a duffer at +musical instruments—always was. What do you say, my man?"</p> + +<p>"Beg pardon, Sir." The Corporal with the Town Guardsmen saluted, making +the most of his five feet two inches. "I can pl'y the squiffer—I mean the +concertina, Sir—a fair treat for a hammatore. And if I might be let to +tyke this man's plyce at Maxim Outpost South, Sir, I could 'elp serve the +gun, too, Sir—we've bin' attendin' Artillery Drill in spare hours."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't think you had any spare hours to spare?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> Beauvayse looked at +the thin, tanned face with liking, and the keen pale eyes met his fairly.</p> + +<p>"We haven't, Sir, but we manage some'ow."</p> + +<p>"But what about your own duty?"</p> + +<p>"I'm tykin' these men over, Sir." He indicated a solid family grocer, a +clerk of the County Court, a pseudo-Swiss baker, and two Navy Reserve men +reduced to the ranks for aggressive intemperance of the methylated-spirit +kind, which, in the absence of other liquor, had prevailed among a certain +class, until the intoxicating medium was confiscated by Government.</p> + +<p>"Captain Thwaite 'as spared us from the Cemetery Works to relieve Corporal +Brice an' 'is little lot at Angle VII. South Trenches. A telephone-message +come from our Colonel to say Brice's men was bad with rheumatism and +dysentery—but Brice is all right an' fit, Sir—and"—the pale eyes +pleaded out of the brickdust-coloured face—"I'd like the charnce o' +gettin' nearer to the enemy, Sir—an' that's the truth."</p> + +<p>Beauvayse conceded. "Very well. I'll square things with your commanding +officer as we go along, and explain matters to the Colonel per telephone +from Maxim Outpost South. Come on there when you've handed over your men +to Brice."</p> + +<p>The pale eyes danced. "Thank you, Sir."</p> + +<p>"An' I'll owe you a dollar whisky-peg for the good turn," muttered the +perforated musician, as he handed over the cherished concertina to the +volunteer, "till next Sunday that I see you in the stad."</p> + +<p>"Righto!" said Corporal Keyse, accepting the sacred charge.</p> + +<p>"Look here, though," came from Beauvayse, "there's one thing you must +remember—what's your name?"</p> + +<p>"Keyse, sir—Corporal, A Company, Gueldersdorp Town Guard."</p> + +<p>"Well, Keyse, you've heard Meisje hiccoughing ninety-four-pound +projectiles all the morning, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"Couldn't possibly miss 'er, sir"—the pale eyes twinkled as the Corporal +finished—"not as long as she misses me."</p> + +<p>"She has a talent for missing, otherwise a good many of us fellows would +have heard the Long Call before now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> But most of her delicate little +attentions—with the exception of one shell she sent over the Women's +Laager, to show the people there that she doesn't mind killin' females and +children if she can't get men—most of 'em are meant for Maxim Outpost +South; and one of 'em may get home sometimes, when the German gunner isn't +thinking of his sweetheart. Then, if you find yourself soarin' heavenwards +in a kind of scattered anatomical puzzle-map of little bits, don't blame +me for obligin' you, that's all."</p> + +<p>There was a guffaw from the listeners. W. Keyse saluted, cheerfully +joining in.</p> + +<p>"I shan't s'y a word, sir."</p> + +<p>"By George, I believe you!" said Beauvayse. "What's up? Seen a ghost?"</p> + +<p>Saxham had swung his wallet round, producing carbolic, antiseptic gauze, +First Aid bandages, and other surgical indispensables from its recesses, +as by legerdemain, and a tall, stately black figure, followed by a tall, +slender white figure, had risen from the bowels of the earth. The +Mother-Superior, taking in the situation and the need of her at a glance, +called a brief order down the ladder stairway, and went swiftly over to +Saxham, whipping a blue apron out of a big pocket, tying it about her, and +pulling on a pair of sleeves of the same stuff as she went. Lynette turned +to take the basin of hot water that the arm of Sister Tobias extended from +below, and the jaws of W. Keyse snapped together. Until he twigged the +bronze-red coils of hair under the broad, rough straw hat, he had thought +... Cripps!</p> + +<p>We know how the dancing, provoking mischievous blue eyes and adorable +wrist-thick golden pigtail of Greta du Taine dwelt in his love-stricken +remembrance. Her worshipped image had got a little rubbed and dimmish of +late to be sure, but breathe on the colours, and you saw them come out +clear, and oh! bewilderingly lovely.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>Billy Keyse had never even beheld the enchantress since that +never-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of +the serpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market +Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one +thing. We know that in his case Love's clairvoyant instinct had got its +nightcap on. We saw Greta depart on the train bound North and branch off +East for the Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg. But if she were not +in Gueldersdorp, why did the left breast-pocket of the now soiled and +heavily-patched khâki tunic bulge so? There were six letters inside +there, tied up with a frayed bit of blue ribbon. Hers? 'Strewth, they +were! And each what you might call a Regular One-er of a love-letter. +Never mind the paper being thumb-marked as well as cheaply inferior, one +cannot expect all the refinements of civilisation in a beleaguered town. +It was the spelling that—although we know W. Keyse to be no cold +orthographist—occasionally gave him pause as he perused and re-perused +the greasy but passionate page. And why did she sign herself "Fare Air?" +The sense of ingratitude pierced him even as he wondered. Why shouldn't +she if she chose? What a proper beast he was to grumble! Him, that ought +to be proud of her demeaning herself to stoop to a young chap in a lower +station, so to call. And her a Regular Swell.</p> + +<p>He hugged the letters against him with the arm belonging to the hand that +held the concertina. Beloved missives, where was the worshipped writer +now? Sitting by a tapestry-frame, for he could not imagine her peeling +potatoes, down in the Convent bombproof, dreaming of him, weeping over his +last letter, or blushfully aware of his vicinity, panting at the bottom of +the ladder, listening for the beloved accents of the man who ... Hold +hard, though! she had never heard the voice of W. Keyse; or he hers for +that matter, but he would have recognised it among a thousand. He had told +her so, writing with ink pencil, of the kind that when sucked in moments +of forgetfulness tastes peculiarly horrible, and tinges the saliva with +violet, at spare moments in the trench. A phlegmatic Chinaman acted as +Love's postman, handing in the envelopes that were addressed to Mr. W. +Keyse, Esquer, in caligraphy that began in the top left-hand corner, and +trickled gradually down into the right-hand bottom one. Pumping the +Celestial was no use. John Tow sabee'd only that a fair foreign devil gave +the one missive, with a tikkie for delivery, and 'spose one time Tow makee +plenty good walkee back with anulla paper some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> pidgin bime-bye catchee +more tikkie. If walkee back no paper, too muchee John catchee hellee, +reaping only reproaches and no tikkie at all.</p> + +<p>Judge how the heart of W. Keyse bumped against the concertina when the +slender vision in the holland skirt and white blouse and broad straw hat +appeared from underground. It was not she, though, Queen of heroic +thoughts, inspirer of deeds of daring yet to be done, who followed the +Mother-Superior.</p> + +<p>It was the loveliest girl Beauvayse had ever seen, or ever would see. The +girl who had stood up in defence of three nuns against a threatening gang +of rowdy Transvaalers, one day in the Recreation Ground,—the girl who had +passed as the Staff dismounted at the Hospital gate on the day of +appropriation. The Mayor had had no chance of fulfilling his promise of an +introduction. The Mayor's wife, with her two children, was an inmate of +the Women's Laager. But at last the kind little genii that deal with +happenings and chances had brought Beauvayse and his divinity face to +face. Now she rose out of the Convent dug-out, in the waste that had been +the railway-official's front-garden, like a fair white Psyche-statue, +delivered in the course of some convulsion of Nature from the matrix of +the earth. And she was even more exquisite than his remembrance of her, +even more ...</p> + +<p>Beauvayse descended abruptly from an empyrean flight of poetic imagery to +remember his torn and soiled silk polo-shirt with its rolled-up sleeves, +his earth-stained cords, girt with a belt of vari-coloured webbing, his +muddy leather leggings and boots with their caked and dusty spurs, telling +of hard service and unresting activity.</p> + +<p>But he looked radiantly handsome as he leapt to the ground and came +forward, his tall athletic figure, trained by arduous toil and incessant +work until the last superfluous ounce of flesh had vanished, looking the +personification of manliness, his tanned face, still clean-shaven save for +the slight fair moustache, one to set any maiden dreaming of its straight +clean-cut features and lazy, long-shaped grey-green eyes. The wide felt +hat he touched in salute sat with a jaunty air on the close-cropped golden +head. Here was a gallant, heartsome vision to greet Lynette, stepping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> +after the Mother into that outer world, where fire belched warning from +iron mouths, and steel destruction sped through the skies, and bullets +sang like hornets past your head, or hit the ground near your feet, +sending up little bushy columns and spirts of dust.</p> + +<p>The wounded man, now carbolised, plugged, and bandaged by Saxham's +dexterous hands, took the hastily-scrawled admission-order, included his +officer, the ladies, and the Doctor in a left-handed salute, distributed a +parting wink among his comrades, counselled W. Keyse in a hoarse whisper +to go tender on the off-side G of the instrument he dandled, and trudged +sturdily away in the direction of the Hospital.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, ma'am. There's no stealing a march on you," Beauvayse said to +the Mother-Superior, touching his hat with his gay, swaggering grace, as +she emptied a bowl of red water on the ground, and whisked the blue apron +and sleeves back into the vast recesses of the mysterious pocket. "But +you're spoiling us. Hot water isn't on tap, as a rule, for +Field-dressings, and—and won't you——" He reddened to the fair untanned +skin upon his temples. "Mayn't I ask, ma'am, to be introduced to Miss +Mildare?"</p> + +<p>The Mother complied with his request, smiling indulgently. She had known +and loved this bright boy's mother in her early married days. The Dark +Rose of Ireland and the White Rose of Devon, a noted Society phrasemonger +had dubbed them, seeing them together on the lawn one Ascot Cup Day, their +light draperies and delicate ribbons whip-whipping in the pleasant June +breeze, ivory-skinned, jetty-locked Celtic beauty and blue-eyed, +flaxen-locked Saxon fairness in charming, confidential juxtaposition under +one lace sunshade, lined with what has been the last new fashionable +colour under twenty names, since then; only that year they called it <i>Rose +fané</i>. Richard Mildare had praised the sunshade, a Paris affair supplied +by Worth with his creation, Lady Biddy Bawne's beautiful gown. He asked +Lady Biddy to marry him at the back of the box on the Grand Stand when +Verneuil was winning the Cup. Who shall dare say that he was not then a +sincere lover? thought the Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way. +And then she recalled her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> wandering thoughts, and turned them to the One +Lover who never betrays His chosen. And her rapt eyes looking up, seemed +to pierce beyond the flaming sky-vault overhead. She forgot all else, +suddenly snatched from earthly consciousness to beatific realisation of +the Divine.</p> + +<p>There had been for some minutes now a lull in the bombardment from the +ridges. The enemy's guns were silent a space, and the hot batteries of +harassed Gueldersdorp snatched a brief respite while Boers gathered for +the nine o'clock coffee-drinking round their little snapping fires of +dried dung and tindery bush. Now and then a rifle cracked, and a bullet +sang past or whitted in the dust. But comparative peace brooded over the +shattered hamlet of wrecked homes and ploughed-up, littered roads, and raw +earthworks blistering in the pitiless sun.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare." Beauvayse was speaking in that pleasant, boyish voice of +his, standing close to Lynette, his tall head bending for a glimpse of the +eyes of golden hazel, that were shaded by the broad, rough straw hat; "if +you knew how I've waited for this. Nearly seven weeks since one day in +early October, when I saw you on the Recreation Ground, where some brutes +were annoying you, and a day or so later you went by the Hospital as I +rode up with the Chief. But, of course, you don't remember?" His eyes +begged her to say she did.</p> + +<p>"I remember quite well." It was the voice he had imagined for her—low, +and round, and clear, with just an undernote of plaintiveness matching the +wistful appeal of her eyes. At the first sound of it a shudder of +exquisite delight went through him, as though she had touched him with her +slender white, bare hand on the naked breast.</p> + +<p>"Thank you for not quite forgetting. You don't know what it means to me, +being kept in mind by you."</p> + +<p>"I do not know that I kept you in mind." There was a touch of girlish +dignity in her utterance. "I only said that I remembered quite well."</p> + +<p>He bent his head nearer, and lowered his pleasant voice to a coaxing, +confidential tone.</p> + +<p>"You'll think me a presumptuous kind of fellow for talking like this, +won't you, Miss Mildare? But the circumstances are exceptional, aren't +they? We're shut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> up away from the big world outside in a little world of +our own, and—such chances fall to every man and most of the women here: a +shrapnel bullet or a shell-splinter might stop me before another hour goes +by, from ever saying—what I've felt for weeks on end had got to be +said—what I'd risk a dozen lives, if I had 'em, to get the opportunity of +saying to you." His hot eagerness frightened her. Her downcast eyelids +quivered, and her flushed maiden-face shrank from him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't be angry! Don't move away!" Beauvayse entreated; for Lynette's +anxious glance had gone in search of the Mother-Superior, with whom Saxham +was now discussing the nuns' idea of utilising the Convent as a +Convalescent Hospital. In another instant she would have taken refuge by +her side. "If you knew how I have thought of you and dreamed of you since +I saw you! If you could only understand how I shall think of you now! If +you could only realise how awfully, utterly strange it is to feel as I am +feeling!" His voice was a tremulous, fervent whisper. His eyes gleamed +like emeralds in the shadow of the wide-brimmed felt hat. "And if I die +to-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and long for you, and +worship you wherever I am!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, why do you talk to me like this?"</p> + +<p>Lynette's whisper was as tremulous as Beauvayse's own. Her eyes lifted to +the glowing, ardent face for one shy instant, and found it good to look +upon. Men, young and not undesirable, had tried to make love to her +before, at dances and parties and picnics to which she had been chaperoned +by the Mayor's wife. But the first hot glance, the first word that carried +the vibration of a passionate meaning, had wakened the old terror in her, +and bidden her escape. The nymph had always taken flight at the first step +upon the bank, the first rustle of the sedges. She had never lingered to +feel the air stirred by another burning breath. She had never asked any +one of those other men why he talked like that. Beauvayse went on:</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I even seem a little mad to you—fellows have told me lately that +I went on as if I had a tile off. Perhaps I'm what the Scotch call 'fey.' +I've got Highland blood in me, anyhow. And you have set it on fire, I +think—started<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> it boiling and racing and leaping in my veins as no woman +ever did before. You slender white witch! you fay of mist and moonlight, +you've woven a spell, and tangled my soul in it, and nothing in Life or in +Death will ever loose me again." His tone changed, became infinitely +caressing. "How sweet and dear you are to be so patient with me, while I'm +sending the Conventionalities to the rightabout and terrifying the +Proprieties. Forgive me, Miss Mildare."</p> + +<p>The pleading in his face was exquisite. She felt as a bee might feel +drowning in honey, as she wreathed her white fingers together upon the +silver buckle of the brown leather belt she wore, and said confusedly:</p> + +<p>"I ... I believe I ought to be very angry with you."</p> + +<p>His whisper touched her ear like a kiss, and set her trembling.</p> + +<p>"But you're not?"</p> + +<p>"I——"</p> + +<p>She caught her breath as he came nearer. There was a fragrance from him—a +perfume of youth and health and vitality—that was powerful, heady, +intoxicating as the first warm, flower-scented wind of Spring, blowing +down a mountain-kloof from the high ranges. Her white-rose cheeks took +sudden warmth of hue, and her pale nostrils quivered. A faint, mysterious +smile dawned upon her lips. Something of the old terror was upon her +still, and yet—it was delicious to be afraid of him!</p> + +<p>"Say that you aren't angry with me for being so thunderingly presumptuous. +Please be kind to me and say it."</p> + +<p>Her lips began to utter disjointed phrases. "What can it matter really?... +Oh, very well, then ... if my saying so is of such ... importance...."</p> + +<p>"More important than anything in the world!" he declared.</p> + +<p>"Very well, then, I am not angry—not furiously so, at least." The bud of +a smile repressed pouted her lips.</p> + +<p>"And," he begged, "you'll let what I've said to you be our secret? +Promise."</p> + +<p>"Very well."</p> + +<p>"You sweetest, kindest, loveliest——"</p> + +<p>"Please don't," she entreated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And I may know your Christian name?" he persisted, "I've thought of +everything in the world, and nothing's good enough to fit you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how silly!" Her eyes gleamed with laughter. "It is Lynette."</p> + +<p>He caught at it with rapture. "Perfect! The last touch.... The scent of +the rose, or say the dewdrop on it. By George, I'm in earnest!"</p> + +<p>He had spoken incautiously loud. A grating voice addressing him pulled his +head round.</p> + +<p>"Lord Beauvayse ..."</p> + +<p>"Did you speak to me, Doctor? As I was saying, Miss Mildare," he went on, +continuing the blameless conversation, "dust-storms and flies are the twin +curses of South Africa."</p> + +<p>The harsh voice spoke to him again. He looked round, and met Saxham's +eyes, hard and cold as blue stones. The Doctor said grimly:</p> + +<p>"You may not be aware that your men are drawing fire."</p> + +<p>It was undeniable fact. The bullets had begun to hit the ground under the +horses' bellies, spirting little columns of dust and flattening against +the stones. Coffee-drinking was over in the enemy's trenches, and the +business of the day had begun again. Beauvayse bade the ladies +good-morning, and swung himself into the saddle.</p> + +<p>"Au revoir, Miss Mildare. Please get under cover at once." The +proprietorship in the tone stung Saxham to wincing. "Good-morning, ma'am," +he cried to the Mother-Superior, "we know you ignore bullets. So long, +Doctor. Hope I shan't count one in your day's casualty-bag. Ready, boys?"</p> + +<p>The chatting troopers sprang to alert attention. W. Keyse, pensively +boring the sandy earth with the pneumatic auger of imagination, in search +of the loved one believed to inhabit the Convent bomb-proof, was recalled +to the surface by the curtly-uttered command, and knew the thrill of +hero-worship as Beauvayse threw out his lightly-clenched hand, and the +troopers, answering the signal, broke into a trot. The hot dust scurried +at the horses' retreating heels. Corporal Keyse, trudging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> staunchly in +their wake with his five Town Guardsmen, became ghostlike, enveloped in an +African replica of the ginger-coloured type of London fog. And the +Mother-Superior looked at her well-worn watch.</p> + +<p>"My child, we must be moving if you are coming with me to the Women's +Laager. I am nearly an hour late as it is."</p> + +<p>"I am ready, Mother dear."</p> + +<p>Lynette's eyes came back from following that dust-cloud in the distance to +meet the hungry, jealous fires of Saxham's gaze.</p> + +<p>He had seen Beauvayse's ardent look, and her shy heart's first leaf +unfolded in the answering blush, and a spasm of intolerable anger gripped +him as he saw. He turned away silently, cursing his own folly, and +unhitched his horse's bridle from the broken gatepost. With the act a +crowd rose up before Lynette and a frightened horse reared, threatening to +fall upon three women who were hurrying along the sidewalk outside the +Hospital, and a heavy-shouldered, black-haired man in shabby white drills +stepped out of the throng and seized the flying bridoon-rein, and wrenched +the brute down. She recognised the horse and the man again, and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Why ... Mother, don't you remember the rearing horse outside the Hospital +that day in October? It was Dr. Saxham who caught him, and saved us from +getting hurt."</p> + +<p>"And we never even thanked you." The Mother-Superior turned to Saxham with +outstretched hand and the smile that made her grave face beautiful. "What +you must have thought!..."</p> + +<p>"I looked for the person who had been so prompt, but you had +vanished—where, nobody seemed to know," Lynette told him with her clear +eyes on the stern, square face. "And then a man in the crowd called out, +'It's the Dop Doctor!' And I thought what an odd nickname!..." She broke +off in dismay. Saxham had become livid. His grim jaws clamped themselves +together, and the blue eyes grew hard as stone. One instant he stood +immovable, the Waler's bridle on his left arm, his right hand clenched +upon the old hunting-crop. Then he said very coldly and distinctly:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p> + +<p>"As you observe, it is a queer nickname. But, at any rate, I had fairly +earned——"</p> + +<p>The bugle from the Staff headquarters sounded, drowning the rest of the +sentence. The Catholic Church bell tolled. The other bells took up the +warning, and the sentries called again from post to post:</p> + +<p>"'Ware gun, Number Two! Southern Quarter, 'ware!"</p> + +<p>The Krupp bellowed from the enemy's north position, and cleverly lobbed a +seven-pound shell not far behind that rapidly-moving, distant pillar of +dust, the nucleus of which was a little troop of cantering Irregulars, and +not far in front of the lower, slower-moving cloud, the heart of which was +a little knot of tramping Town Guardsmen. The shell burst with a splitting +crack, earth and flying stones mingled with the deadly green flame and the +poisonous chemical fumes of the lyddite. Figures scurried hither and +thither in the smoke and smother; one lay prone upon the ground....</p> + +<p>At the instant of the explosion Saxham had leaped forwards, setting his +body and the horse's as a bulwark between Death and the two women. Now, +though Lynette's rough straw hat had been whisked from her head by a force +invisible, he saw her safe, caught in the Mother-Superior's embrace, +sheltered by the tall, protecting figure as the sapling is sheltered by +the pine.</p> + +<p>"We are not hurt," the Mother protested, though her cheek had been cut by +a flying flake of flint, and was bleeding. "But look ... over there!" She +pointed over the veld to the prostrate brown figure, and a cry of alarm +broke from Lynette.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mother, who ...?"</p> + +<p>"It is a Town Guardsman," Saxham answered, his cold blue eyes meeting the +wild frightened gaze of the pale girl. "Lord Beauvayse and the Irregulars +got off scot-free. Reverend Mother, do not think of coming. Please go on +to the Women's Laager. I will see to the wounded man, and follow +by-and-by."</p> + +<p>He mounted, refusing all offers of aid, and rode off. Looking back an +instant, he saw the black figure of the woman and the white figure of the +girl setting out upon their perilous journey over the bare patch of ground +where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> Death made harvest every day. They kissed each other before they +started, and again Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. If Ruth had been only +one half as lovely as this Convent-grown lily, Boaz was decidedly a lucky +man. But he had been a respectable, sober, steady-going farmer, and not a +man of thirty-six without a ten-pound note in the world, with a blighted +career to regret, and five years of drunken wastrelhood to be ashamed of. +And yet ... the drunken wastrel had been a man of mark once, and earned +his thousands. And the success that had been achieved, and lost, could be +rewon, and the career that had been pursued and abandoned could be +his—Saxham's—again. And what were his publishers doing with those +accumulated royalties? For he knew from Taggart and McFadyen that his +books still sold.</p> + +<p>"The Past is done with," he said aloud. "Why should not the Future be +fair?"</p> + +<p>And yet he had nearly yielded to the impulse to own to those degraded +years, and claim the nickname they had earned him, and take her loathing +and contempt in exchange. What sudden madness had possessed him, akin to +that unaccountable, overmastering surge of emotion that he had known just +now when he saw her tears?</p> + +<p>We know the name of the divine madness, but we know not why it comes. +Suddenly, after long years, in a crowded place or in a solitude where two +are, it is upon you or upon me. The blood is changed to strange, ethereal +ichor, the pulse beats a tune that is as old as the Earth itself, but yet +eternally new. Every breath we draw is rapture, every step we take leads +us one way. One voice calls through all the voices, one hand beckons +whether it will or no, and we follow because we must. With the Atlantic +rolling between us I can feel your heart beat against mine, and your lips +breathe into me your soul. The light that was upon your face, the look +that was in your eyes as you gave the unforgettable, immemorial kiss, the +clasp of your hands, the rising and falling of your bosom, like a wave +beneath a sea-bird, like a sea-bird above a wave, shall be with me always, +even to the end of time and beyond it.</p> + +<p>For there are many loves, but one Love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2> + + +<p>A long-legged, thinnish officer, riding a khâki-coloured bicycle over a +dusty stretch of shrapnel-raked ground, carrying a riding-whip tucked +under his arm and wearing steel jack-spurs, might have been considered a +laughter-provoking object elsewhere, but the point was lost for +Gueldersdorp. He got off his metal steed amongst the zipping bullets, and +came over to the little group of Town Guards that were gathered round +Saxham, who had just ridden up, and their prostrate comrade, who writhed +and groaned lustily.</p> + +<p>"You have a casualty. Serious?"</p> + +<p>Saxham looked up, and his hard glance softened in recognition of the +Chief.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you in a moment, sir."</p> + +<p>The earth-stained khâki jacket was torn down the left side and drenched +with ominous red. A little pool of the same colour had gathered under the +sufferer.</p> + +<p>"He looks gassly, don't him?" muttered one of the Town Guardsmen, the +Swiss baker who was not Swiss.</p> + +<p>"Makes plenty of noise," said the County Court clerk hypercritically, "for +a dying man."</p> + +<p>"Oh Lord! oh Lord!"</p> + +<p>The subject had bellowed with sonority, testifying at least to the +possession of an uninjured diaphragm, as Saxham begun to cut away the +jacket.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come now!" said a brisk, pleasant, incisive voice that sent an +electric shock volting through the presumably shattered frame. "That's not +so bad!"</p> + +<p>"I told you so," muttered the County Court clerk to the Swiss baker.</p> + +<p>"You remember me, Colonel?"</p> + +<p>Haggard, despairing eyes rolled up at the Chief appealingly. He had met +the gaze of those oyster-orbs before. He recognised Alderman Brooker, +proprietor of the grocery stores in Market Square, victim of the outrage +perpetrated on a sentry near the Convent on a certain memorable night in +October last.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my man. Anything I can do?" He knelt down beside the prostrate +form.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You can tell my country, sir, that I died willingly," panted the +moribund.</p> + +<p>"With pleasure, when you're dead. But you're not yet, you know, Brooker." +His keen glance was following the run of the Doctor's surgical scissors +through the brown stuff and revelling in discovery. And Saxham's set, +square face and stern eyes were for once all alight with laughter. The +dying man went on:</p> + +<p>"It's a privilege, sir, an inestimable privilege, to have shed one's blood +in a great cause."</p> + +<p>"It is, Mr. Brooker, but this is different stuff." His keen face wrinkled +with amusement as he sniffed, and dipped a finger in the crimson puddle. +"Too sticky." He put the finger to his tongue—"and too sweet. Show him +the bottle, Saxham."</p> + +<p>The Doctor, imperturbably grave, held forth at the end of the scissors the +ripped-up ruins of a small-sized indiarubber hot-water bottle, a ductile +vessel that, buttoned inside the khâki tunic, had adapted itself not +uncomfortably to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. +A hyæna-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding heads. Brooker's +face assumed the hue of the scarlet flannel chest-protector exposed by the +ruthless steel.</p> + +<p>"What the—what the——?" he stuttered.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's the question. What the devil was inside it, Brooker, when the +shell-splinter hit you in the tummy and it saved your life? Stand him on +his legs, men; he's as right as rain. Now, Brooker?"</p> + +<p>Brooker, without volition, assumed the perpendicular, and began to babble:</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth, sir, it was loquat syrup. Very soothing to the chest, +and, upon my honour, perfectly wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularly +every year, and—we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, besides +what we keep for ourselves. And if I am to be exposed to mockery when +Providence has snatched me from the verge of the grave ..."</p> + +<p>"Not a watery grave, Brooker," came from the Chief, with an irrepressible +chuckle—"a syrupy one. And—have I your word of honour that this is a +non-alcoholic beverage?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Sir, to be candid with you, I won't deny but what it might contain a +certain proportion of brandy. And the nights in the trench being +particularly cold and myself constitutionally liable to chill ... I—I +find a drop now and then a comfort, sir."</p> + +<p>"Ah, and have you any more of this kind of comfort at your place of +business or elsewhere?"</p> + +<p>"Why—why ..." the Alderman faltered, "there might be a little keg, sir, +in the shop, under the desk in the counting-house."</p> + +<p>"Requisitioned, Mr. Brooker, as a Government store. You may feel more +chilly without it; you'll certainly sleep more lightly. As far as I can +see, it has been more useful outside of you than ever it was in. And—the +safety of this town depends on the cool heads of the defenders who man the +trenches. A fuddled man behind a gun is worse than no man to me."</p> + +<p>The voice rang hard and clear as a gong. "I'm no teetotaller. Abstinence +is the rule I enforce, by precept and example. While men are men they'll +drink strong liquor. But as long as they are not fool-men and brute-men, +they can be trusted not to lap when they're on duty. Those I find +untrustworthy I mark down, and they will be dealt with rigorously. You +understand me, Brooker? You look as if you did. You've had a narrow +squeak. Be thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs has +come of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your duty."</p> + +<p>W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the resuscitated Brooker +flying rags of sanguine stain. Then the stern face of the Chief broke up +in laughter. The crinkled-up eyes ran over with tears of mirth.</p> + +<p>"Lord, that fellow will be the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh—how +old Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that +round, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with the +sentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech...." He +wiped his brimming eyes. "Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him on +guard—you remember that lovely affair?—he's registered a vow to impress +me with his gallantry and devotion, or die in the attempt. He's the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> most +admirably unconscious humbug I've ever yet met. Sands his sugar and +brown-papers his teas philanthropically, for the good of the public, and +denounces men who put in Old Squareface and whisky-pegs, as he fuddles +himself with his loquat brandy after shop-hours in the sitting-room back +of the store. But let us be thankful that Providence has sent Brooker on a +special mission to play Pantaloon in this grimmish little interlude of +ours. For we'll want every scrap of Comic Relief we can get by-and-by, +Saxham, if the other one doesn't turn up—say by the middle of January."</p> + +<p>"I understand, sir." Saxham, to whom this man's face was as a book well +loved, read in it that the Commissariat was caving. "There has been +another Boer cattle-raid?"</p> + +<p>The face that was turned to his own in reply had suddenly grown +deeply-lined and haggard. "There has been a lot of cattle-shooting. +Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was always quite a favourite game with +Brounckers. But his gunners hit oftener than they used to. And the +Government forage won't hold out for ever." He patted the brown Waler, who +pricked his sagacious ears and threw up his handsome bluntish head in +acknowledgment of his master's caress. "Presently we shall be killing our +mounts to save their lives—and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep life +in men—and in children and women.... The devil of it is, Saxham, that +there are such a lot of women."</p> + +<p>"And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out of pure curiosity," +came grimly from Saxham.</p> + +<p>"To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! You +were going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say +as I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrong +with the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can't +get anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two +of the languages I haven't studied." The dry, humorous smile curved the +reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the +short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the +Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where +the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> waited +outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They were +fastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender white +figure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey across +the patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and ploughed by +shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day by +day.</p> + +<p>"There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without," commented his +companion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler.</p> + +<p>"It is the Mother-Superior," Saxham said, "with her ward, Miss Mildare."</p> + +<p>"Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse—you know my junior A.D.C., who +daily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare—is, that I have not +yet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered the +young lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she showed plenty +of pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on the +Recreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, +and some Dutch loafers mobbed them—threatened to lay hands on the +Sisters—and Miss Mildare stood up in defence—head up, eyes blazing, a +slim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with +me, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance."</p> + +<p>Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, and his tone was not +pleasant: "Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a few +minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"Did he? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome of realisation. Up +to the present"—the humorous, keen eyes were wrinkled at the +corners—"all the boy's swans have been geese, some of 'em the sable +kind."</p> + +<p>Saxham answered stiffly: "I should say that in this case the swan +decidedly predominates."</p> + +<p>The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune before he spoke +again. "It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, being shut up here, out of +the way of women."</p> + +<p>"Are there no women in Gueldersdorp?"</p> + +<p>"None of the kind Beauvayse's canoe is given to capsizing on." The line in +his senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. "None of the kind that +run after him, lie in wait<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> for him, buzz round him like wasps about a +honey-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory scrapes, +with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with the +professional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, most +inexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman in the world. Queer +world!"</p> + +<p>"A damned queer world!" agreed Saxham.</p> + +<p>"I'd prefer to call it a blessed queer one, because, with all its chaotic, +weltering incongruities—there's a Carlyleism for you—I love it! I +couldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more than +Beauvayse could get on <i>minus</i> an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that +amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it +thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess—quite a beauty still, +even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a +mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the +kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play +nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at +the Jollity in June—is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the +exact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of +The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would +meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be +Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a +Principal Boy, and a Chorus in long skirts."</p> + +<p>Saxham admitted with a cynical twitch of the mouth:</p> + +<p>"There's nothing so short as a long skirt—properly managed."</p> + +<p>"You're right. And Lessie Lavigne and the rest of the nimble sisterhood +devote their gifts—Thespian and Terpsichorean—to demonstrating the fact. +Oh, damned cowardly hounds!" The voice jarred and clanged with +irrepressible anger. "Saxham, can't you see? Brouncker's sharpshooters are +sniping at the women—the Sister of Mercy and the girl!"</p> + +<p>His glance, as well as Saxham's, had followed the tall black figure and +the slender white figure on their journey through Death's harvest-field. +But his trained eye had been first to see the little jets and puffs of +sickly hot, reddish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> dust rising about their perilous path. They walked +quickly, but without hurry, keeping a pace apart, and holding one another +by the hand. Saxham, watching them, said, with dry lips and a deadly +sickness at the heart:</p> + +<p>"And we can do nothing?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing! It's one of those things a man has got to look on at, and wonder +why the Almighty doesn't interfere? Oh, to have the fellows triced up for +three dozen of the best apiece—good old-fashioned measure. See, they're +getting near the laager now. They'll soon be under cover. But—I wonder +the Convent cares to risk its ewe lamb on that infernal patch of veld?"</p> + +<p>"It is my doing." Saxham's eyes were glued on the black figure and the +white figure nearing, nearing the embrasure in the earthwork redoubt, and +his face was of an ugly blue-white, and dabbled with sweat.</p> + +<p>"Your doing?"</p> + +<p>"Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking down from suspense, +and the overstrain of inaction. And—to avert even worse evils, I +prescribed the tonic of danger. There was no choice—— In at last!"</p> + +<p>The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind the dumpy earth-bag +walls. He thought the white figure had glanced back, and waved its hand, +and then a question from his companion startled him beyond his ordinary +stolid self-control.</p> + +<p>"By the way ... with reference to Miss Mildare, have you any idea whether +she proposes taking the veil?"</p> + +<p>"How should I have ideas upon the possibility?" The opaque, smooth skin of +the square, pale face was dyed with a sudden rush of dark blood. The +Colonel did not look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone near +his boot, and flattened into a shiny star of lead:</p> + +<p>"I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, Saxham. You're too +much in earnest, my dear fellow. Burnt Njal himself could hardly have been +more grim."</p> + +<p>Saxham answered:</p> + +<p>"That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, +when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my +castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed then, I +remember."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and again," said the +kindly voice, "at the man who took it for granted that everything was +over, and did not set to work by dawn of the next day building up the hall +greater than before. Those old Vikings did, 'and each time the high seat +was dight more splendidly, and the hangings of the closed beds woven more +fair.' They never knew when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, and +so it came about that they never were. By the way, I have something here +that concerns you."</p> + +<p>"Concerns me?"</p> + +<p>"I think I may say, nearly concerns you. A paragraph in this copy of the +<i>Cape Town Mercury</i>, which, by the way, is three weeks old."</p> + +<p>A rubbed and shabby newspaper, folded small, came out of the baggy +breast-pocket of the khâki jacket. Saxham received it with visible +annoyance.</p> + +<p>"Some belated notice of one of my books." The scowl with which he surveyed +the paper testified to a strong desire to pitch it to the winds.</p> + +<p>"Not a bit of it. It's an advertisement inserted by a London firm of +solicitors—Donkin, Donkin, and Judd, Lincoln's Inn. Possibly you are +acquainted with Donkin, if not with Judd?"</p> + +<p>"They are the solicitors for the trustees of my mother's property, sir. I +heard from them three years ago, when I was at Diamond Town. They returned +my last letter to her, and told me of her death."</p> + +<p>"They state in the usual formula that it will be to your advantage to +communicate with them. May I, as a friend, urge on you the necessity of +doing so?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's grim mouth shut close. His eyes brooded sullenly.</p> + +<p>"I will think it over, sir."</p> + +<p>"You haven't much time. A despatch-runner from Koodoosvaal got through the +enemy's lines last night with some letters and this paper. No, no word of +the Relief. His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at midnight +with some cipher messages. And, if you will let me have your reply to the +advertisement with the returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see that +it is sent."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> The rather peremptory tone softened—became persuasive; "You +must build up the great hall again, Saxham, and building can't be done +without money. And—it occurs to me that this may be some question of a +legacy."</p> + +<p>"My father was not a wealthy man," Saxham said. "He gave me a costly +education, and later advanced four thousand pounds for the purchase of a +West End practice, upon the understanding that I was to expect no more +from him, and that the bulk of his property, with the exception of a sum +left as provision for my mother, should be strictly entailed upon my +brother and his heirs, if he should marry. The arrangement was most just, +as I was then in receipt of a considerable income from my profession, and +my father died before my circumstances altered for the worse. +Independently of the provision he made for her, my mother possessed a +small jointure, a freehold estate in South Wales, bringing in, when the +house is let, about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. That was to have +been left to me as the younger son. But her trustees informed me, through +these solicitors, that she had changed her mind, as she had a perfect +right to do, and bequeathed everything she possessed to my brother's son, +a child who"—Saxham's voice was deadly cold—"may be about four years +old."</p> + +<p>"A later will may have been found. If I have any influence with you, +Saxham, I would use it in urging you to reply to the advertisement."</p> + +<p>Saxham agreed unwillingly: "Very well."</p> + +<p>The other knew the point gained, and adroitly changed the conversation. It +grew severely technical, bristling with scientific terms, dealing chiefly +with food-values. The black cloud cleared from Saxham's forehead as he +lectured on the energy-fuels, and settled the minimum of protein, fat, +starch, and sugar necessary to keep the furnace of Life burning in the +human body.</p> + +<p>Milk, that precious fluid, could henceforth only be given to invalids and +children. Margarine and jam were severely relegated to the list of +luxuries. Sardines, tinned salmon, and American canned goods had entirely +given out. And flour, the staff of life, was vanishing.</p> + +<p>The joy of battle lightened in their faces as they talked,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> forging +weapons that should make men enduring, and Saxham warmed. His icy armour +of habitual silence melted and broke up. He became eloquent, pouring out +his treasured projects, suggesting substitutes for this, and makeshifts +for that and the other. He was in his element—he knew the ground he trod. +He thrust out his grim under-jaw, and hulked with his heavy shoulders as +he talked to this man who understood; and every supple movement of his +surgeon's hand pointed out some fresh expedient, as the singing bullets +went by or whit-whitted about them in the dust, and now and then a shell +burst over patient Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>They parted at the Women's Laager, and as the khâki bicycle grew small in +the distance, Saxham realised with a shock that he was happy, that life +had suddenly become sweet, and opened out anew before him in a vista, not +of shining promise, but with one golden gleam of hope in it, to a man +freed by the force of Will from the bondage of the accursed liquor-thirst. +Freed! If freed in truth, why should the sight and smell even of Brooker's +sticky loquat-brandy have set the long-denied palate craving? Saxham put +that question from him with both hands.</p> + +<p>And then he frowned, thinking of that adaptable instrument that had +thrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to the +Society drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who liked +nice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, and +the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now must +serenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the +whitest of maiden lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed, +in a raging tempest of fire and steel and lead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2> + + +<p>Pray give a thought to the spy, Walt Slabberts, languishing in durance +vile under the yellow flag. Several times the first-class, up-to-date, +effective artillery of his countrymen, being brought to bear upon the +gaol, had caused the captive to bound like the proverbial parched pea, and +to curse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> with curses not only loud but fervent the indiscriminating zeal +of his brother patriots.</p> + +<p>He was, though lost to sight behind the walls of what Emigration Jane +designated the jug, still fondly dear to one whose pliant affections, +rudely disentangled by the hand of perfidy from the person of That There +Green, had twined vigorously about the slouching person of the young Boer. +Letters were received, but not forwarded to suspects enjoying the +hospitality of the Government, so communication with the object of her +dreams was painfully impossible. Stratagems were not successful. A +passionate missive concealed in a plum-pudding—before it was put on to +boil—had become incorporated with the individuality of a prison official, +who objected on principle to waste.</p> + +<p>On Sundays, when you could go out without your 'art in your mouth an +account of them 'orful shellses, a fair female form in a large and +flamboyant hat, whose imitation ostridge tips were now mere bundles of +quill shavings, and whose flowers were as wilted as the other blossoms of +her heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place of bondage, +waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen and recognised. Tactics +productive of nothing but blown kisses on the part of extra-susceptible +warders, and one or two troopers of the B.S.A., who ought to have known +better. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected with ringing +sniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements is the feminine heart +composed, found them strangely solacing.</p> + +<p>She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon the morning +following the night of the tragedy, another score to the account of the +traitor Keyse. Arriving unseemly late, and in an agitated state of +mind—and could you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and took +away?—she had mechanically accounted for her late return in the well-worn +formula of Kentish Town, explaining to the surprised Sisters that there +'ad bin a haccident on the Underground between the Edgeware Road and +'Ammersmiff, an' that her sister Hemmaline had bin took bad in +consequence, the second being looked for at the month's end; and to leave +that pore dear in that state—her 'usband being at his Social Club—was +more than Emigration Jane 'ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> 'ad the 'art to do. She received her +dismissal to bed, and the advice to examine her conscience carefully +before retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whooping +hysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated by the knowledge +that nobody had slept in the Convent that night, until she had run down. +The character supplied by Sister Tobias to her next employer specified +terminological inexactitude among her failings, combined with lack of +emotional self-control; but laid stress on an affectionate disposition, +and a tendency to intermittent attacks of hard work.</p> + +<p>She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging—you couldn't +call it nothink else, not to be truthful you couldn't—at the Women's +Laager, along of them there dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from too +candid criticism of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard all +the same not to call crock and muck by their right names!</p> + +<p>Languishing in seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of the +Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of +Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W. +Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the +jogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not one to 'ave +the world's 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and Chance +it! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and-elevenpenny peek-a-boo +"blowse" as she registered her vow. That there Keyse—the conduct of the +faithless Mr. Green appeared almost blonde in complexion beside the sable +villainy of the other—That There Keyse should Rue the Day!</p> + +<p>How to make him?—that was the question. Then came the dazzling flash of +inspiration—but not until they had met again.</p> + +<p>She was circulating hungry-hearted about the brick-built case that held +her jewel—the man who had held out that vista of a home, and called her +his good little Boer-wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed to +allure and dazzle—the Boer spy had caught many women with it before. Do +you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal +instinct, the sacred passion for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> the inviolate hearth? Not so much they +yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the +heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which +shelter little downy heads.</p> + +<p>She encountered the traitor, I say, and her eyes darted fire beneath a +bristling palisade of iron curling-pins. She had not the heart in these +days to free her imprisoned tresses. The villain had the perishing nerve +to accost her, jauntily touching the smasher hat.</p> + +<p>"'Day, Miss! 'Aven't seen you since when I can't think."</p> + +<p>She replied with a ringing sniff and a glance of infinite scorn that she +would trouble him not to think; and that she regarded low, interfering, +vulgar fellows as the dirt under her feet. So there!</p> + +<p>"Cripps!" He was took aback, but not to the extent of taking hisself off, +which he ought to. "You're fair mad with me, an' no mistyke." His pale +eyes were unmistakably good-natured; the loss of the yellow freckles, +swamped in a fine, uniform, brick-dust colour, was an improvement, she +could not help thinking. "But I only did my duty, Miss, same as another +chap would 'ave 'ad to. Look 'ere! Come and 'ave a split gingerade."</p> + +<p>The delicious beverage was three shillings the bottle. She frowned, but +hesitated. He persisted; she ended by giving in. Weeks and weeks since she +had walked with a young man! The Dutchman's saloon was closed and +barricaded; its owner had made tracks to his Transvaal friends at the +beginning of the siege. But the aromatic-beer cellar was one of the places +open. They went in there. Oh! the deliciousness of that first sip of the +stinging, fizzling beverage! He lifted his glass in the way that she +remembered, and drank a toast.</p> + +<p>"'Er 'ealth! If you knew how I bin wantin' to git word of 'er! She's well, +isn't she, Miss? Lumme! the Fair Old Knock-out I got when I see the +Convent standin' empty.... Gone into laager near the railway works now, +you 'ave, I know. Safe, if not stric'ly luxurious. But—I git the Regular +Hump when I think of—of a Angel like 'Er 'avin' to live an' eat an' sleep +in a—a—in a bloomin' rabbit-'ole." He sighed as he wiped the pungent +froth from his upper lip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Pity you can't tell 'er so!" The sarcasm would have its way, but it +failed of his great simplicity.</p> + +<p>"That's why I bin lookin' out for you." He blushed through the brick-dust +hue as he extracted a fatigued-looking letter from a baggy left +breast-pocket in which it had sojourned in company with a tobacco-pouch, a +pipe which must not be smoked in the trenches if a man would prefer to do +without a bullet through his brain, a handful of screws not innocent of +lubricating medium, a clasp-knife, a flat tin box of carbolised vaseline, +a First-Aid bandage, and a ration of bread and cheese wrapped in old +newspaper. The bread was getting deplorable, for even the dusty seconds +flour was fast dribbling out.</p> + +<p>"You'll give 'er this, won't you, Miss, and tell her I bin thinkin' of 'er +night and d'y? Fair live in the trenches now; and when I do git strollin' +round the stad, blimme if I ever see 'er. But she's there—an 'ere's a +ticker beatin' true to 'er." He rapped a little awkwardly upon the bulging +left breast-pocket, "To the bloomin' end, wotever it may be!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you—silly, you!"</p> + +<p>She found him ridiculous and tragic, and so touching all at once that the +gibe ended in a sob. It was not the stinging effervescence of the +gingerade that made her choke and brought the smarting tears to her eyes. +It was envy of that other girl. And then she noticed, under his left eye, +a tiny scar, and she knew how he came by it, and remembered what she owed +him, and saw that the chance had come for her revenge. She could pierce +the heart beating under the khâki breast-pocket to its very core with +three words as easily as she had jabbed his face with her hat pin on that +never-to-be-forgotten night. She would tell him that the lady of his love +had gone up to Johannesburg weeks and weeks ago. Oh, but it would be sweet +to see the duped lover's face! She would give him a bit of her mind, +too—perhaps tear up the letter.</p> + +<p>Then flashed across the murky-black night of her stormy mind the +forked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To take +his letter—write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top of +his bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +"And serve you glad—and no more than your deservings! Who put away my +Walt?"</p> + +<p>She accepted the letter, only permitting herself one scornful sniff, and +put the missive in her pocket. Next day John Tow, the Chinaman, serenely +fatalistic, smilingly perpendicular in felt-soled shoes, amidst zipping +bullets, brought to the trench a reply, signed "Fare Air."</p> + +<p>The writer Toke the Libberty of Hopeing W. Keyse was as it Left her at +preasent. She was Mutch obblig for his Dear Leter Witch it 'ad made her +Hapey to Know a Brave Man fiteing for her Saik.</p> + +<p>"Cr'r——!" ejaculated W. Keyse, below his breath. His face was radiant as +he read. Her spelling was a bit off, it was impossible to deny. +But—Cripps!—to be called a brave man by the owner of the maddening blue +eyes, and that great thick golden pigtail. The letter went on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dear mr. Keyse yu will be Plese to Kno Jane is Sutch a +Cumfut to me in Trubel. As it is Selldom Fathful Frends are +To be Fownd But Jane is trew as Stele & Cold be Trustid with +lbs & lbs. no More at Preasent from yr afexn Swetart.</p> + +<p>"X X X X</p> +<p class='right'>"<span class="smcap">Fare Air</span>."</p></div> + +<p>His senses reeled, as under pretence of masking a sneeze he pressed his +burning lips to those osculatory crosses. He wrote her a flaming answer, +begging a Sunday rendezvous. She appointed a place and an hour. He went +there on the wings of love, but nobody turned up except the Jane who could +be trusted with pounds and pounds.</p> + +<p>She hurried to him trembling and quite pale, her blue eyes—he had never +noticed that they were blue and really pretty—wide with fright under her +yellow fringe of curls newly released from steely fetters. Her lips were +apart, but he failed to observe that the teeth they revealed were +creditably white; her cotton-gloved hand repressed her fluttering heart, +but he did not see its tumultuous throbbing. He gulped as he said, with a +fallen jaw and a look of abject misery that pierced her to the quick:</p> + +<p>"She—couldn't come, then?"</p> + +<p>"No, pore deer!" gasped the comfort in trouble, casting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> about for +something to tell him. She had made up her mind as she came along; she +would have her revenge there and then, and chance it. Something kept her +from laying the candle-flame to the time-fuse. She did not know what it +was yet. But, oh! the sharp look of terror in the thin, eager face pierced +her through and through.</p> + +<p>"My Gawd! She's not bin killed?" he cried. "Don't tell me she's bin——"</p> + +<p>"Lor', gracious goodness, no! What will you think of next?" She lied, +rallying him, with jealousy eating at her own poor heart. "Can't git away, +that's all. Them Sisters are so precious sharp. An'—'Go an' tell 'im,' +she says, ''e'll 'ave to put up with you this once. An' you'll come back +an' tell me all about 'im!'"</p> + +<p>He swallowed the bait, and her spirits revived. Emigration Jane, if not +the rose, lived with it. Strictly speaking, they spent a pleasant Sunday, +though when he found himself forgetting the absent one, he pulled himself +sharply up. He saw her part of the way home; more she would not allow.</p> + +<p>"And—and"—she whispered at their parting, her eyes avoiding his—"if she +can't git out next Sunday—an' it's a chance whether she does, that Sister +Tobias being such a watchful old cat—would you like to 'ave me meet you +an' tell you all about 'er?"</p> + +<p>W. Keyse assented, even eagerly, and so it began. Behold the poor deceiver +drinking perilous joys, and learning to shudder at the thought of +discovery. Think of her cherishing his letters, those passionate epistles +addressed to the owner of the golden pigtail.</p> + +<p>Think of her pouring out her poor full heart in those wildly-spelt +missives that found their way to him, and be a little pitiful.</p> + +<p>She did not thirst for that revenge now. But, oh! the day would come when +he would find out and have his, in casting her off, with what contempt and +loathing of her treachery she wept at night to picture. This feeling, that +lifted you to Heaven one instant, and cast you down to Hell the next, was +Love. Passion for the man, not yearning for the hearth-place, and the +sheltering roof, and the security of marriage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<p>She left off walking round the gaol—indeed, rather avoided the vicinity +of the casket that for her had once held a treasure. What would the +Slabberts think of his little Boer-wife that was to have been? What would +he say and do when they let him out? She took to losing breath and colour +at the sound of a heavy step behind her, and would shrink close to the +martial figure of W. Keyse when any hulking form distantly resembling the +Boer's loomed up in the distance.</p> + +<p>Oh, shame on her, the doubly false! But—but—she had never been so orful +'appy. Oh, what a queer thing was Love! If only—— But never, never would +he. She was mistaken.</p> + +<p>There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the path of single-hearted +devotion to the unseen but ever-present wearer of the golden pigtail.</p> + +<p>As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet sensible of the +belly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its tense muscles and weary +brains by getting up an entertainment here and there, W. Keyse escorted +his beloved—by proxy, as usual—to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in a +cleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial Government to the +promoters of the entertainment.</p> + +<p>Oh, the first delicious sniff of an atmosphere tinged with paint and +acetylene from the stage-battens and footlights, and so flavoured with +crowded humanity as to be strongly reminiscent of the lower troop-deck in +stormy weather, when all the ports are shut and all the hatches are +battened down! The excess of brilliancy which must not stream from the +windows had been boarded in, and a tarpaulin was drawn over the skylight, +in case the gunners of Meisje should be tempted to rouse the monster from +her Sabbath quiet, and send in a ninety-four-pound shell to break up an +orgy of godless Englanders. But the stuffiness made it all the snugger. +You could fancy yourself in the pit of the Theayter of Varieties, 'Oxton, +or perched up close to the blue starred ceiling-dome of the Pavilion, Mile +End, on a Saturday night, when every gentleman sits in shirt-sleeves, with +his arm round the waist of a lady, and the faggots and sausage-rolls and +stone-gingers are going off like smoke, and the orange-peel rains from the +upper circle back-benches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> and the nut-cracking runs up and down the +packed rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches when the +fire is hottest....</p> + +<p>Ah! that brought one back to Gueldersdorp at once.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Meanwhile, a pale green canvas railway-truck cover, marked in black, +"Light Goods—Destructible," served as a drop-curtain. Another, upon which +the interior of an impossible palace had been delineated in a bewildering +perspective of red and blue and yellow paint-smudges, served as a general +back-scene for the performance.</p> + +<p>The orchestra piano had been wounded by shell-fire, and had a leg in +splints. Many members of the crowded audience were in strapping and +bandages. Drink did not flow plentifully, but there was something to wet +your whistle with, and the tobacco-cloud that hung above the +trestle-benches, packed with black and yellow faces, as well as brown and +white, could almost have been cut with a knife.</p> + +<p>It was a long, rambling programme, scrawled in huge, black-paint +characters on a white planed board, hung where everyone could read it. +There were comic songs and Christy Minstrel choruses by people who had +developed vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display of +conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had forgotten the art, +if ever he had mastered it. At every new mistake or blunder, and with each +fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying +the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to +wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really +undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's watch and +produce it intact from some unexpected place of concealment, the +spectators rocked and roared. Then there was a Pantomimic Interlude, with +a great deal of genuine knockabout, and, the crowning item of the +entertainment, a comic song and stump-speech, announced to be given by The +Anonymous Mammoth Comique—an incognito not dimly suspected to conceal the +identity of the Chief himself, being delayed by the Mammoth's character +top-hat—a fondly cherished property of the Stiggins brand—and the +cabbage umbrella that went with it, having been accidentally left behind +at the Mammoth's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> hotel, the Master of the Revels, still distinguished by +the jib-sail collar and shiny burnt-cork complexion of the corner-man, was +sent to the front to ask if any lady or gentleman in the audience would +kindly oblige with a ten-minute turn?</p> + +<p>"All right, Mister!"</p> + +<p>A soiled cotton glove waved, a flowery hat nodded to the appeal from +behind the acetylene footlights. The faces in the front rows of seats, +pale and brick-dust, gingerbread and cigar-browned European, African +countenances with rolling eyes and shining teeth; and here and there the +impassive, almond-eyed, yellow mask of the Asiatic, slewed round as +Emigration Jane rose up in the place beside W. Keyse, a little pale, and +with damp patches in the palms of the washed white cotton gloves, as she +said: If the gentleman pleased, she could sing—just a little!</p> + +<p>No, thank you! She wasn't afryde, not she; they was all friends there. And +do 'er best she would. She took off the big flowery hat quite calmly, +giving it to W. Keyse to keep. The panic came on later, when the +Christy-minstrel-collared, burnt-corked Master of the Revels was gallantly +helping her up the short side-ladder, and culminated when he retreated, +and left her there, standing on the platform in the bewildering glare of +the acetylene footlights, a little, rather slight and flat-chested figure +of a girl, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, in a washed-out flowery "blowse," +and a "voylet" delaine skirt that had lost its pristine beauty, and showed +faded and shabby in the yellow gas-flare.</p> + +<p>Oh! 'owever 'ad she dared? That dazzling sea of faces, with the eyes all +fixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump grew in her throat, and the +crowded benches tilted, and the flaming lights leaped to the roof as the +helpless, timid tears welled into her blue eyes.</p> + +<p>And then the miracle happened.</p> + +<p>W. Keyse sat on a back-bench, the thin Cockney face a little raised above +the others, because he had slipped a rolled-up overcoat under him, +pretending that it was to get it out of the way, you understand. Always +very sensitive about his shortness, W. Keyse. And she saw his face, as +plain as you please, and with a look in the pale, eager eyes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> that for +once was for Emigration Jane, her very own self, and not for That There +Other One. She knew in that moment of revelation that she had always been +jealous. Oh, wasn't it strynge? Her heart surged out to W. Keyse across +the gulf of crowded faces. And her eyes had in them, all at once, the look +that is born of Love.</p> + +<p>Ah! who can mistake it? It begets a solitude in a vast thronged assemblage +for you and for me. It sends its silent, wordless, eloquent message +thrilling to the heart of the Beloved, and wins its passionate answer +back. Ah! who can err about the look of Love?</p> + +<p>She drew a deep breath that was her longing sigh for him, infinitely dear, +and never to belong to her, and began her song. She sang it quite simply +and naturally, in an untutored but sweet and plaintive voice, and with the +Cockney accent that spoke of home to nearly all that heard. And her eyes +never moved from his face as she sang.</p> + +<p>The song was, I dare say, a foolish, trivial thing. But the air was +pretty, and the words were simple, and it had a haunting refrain. To this +effect, that the world is a big place and a hard place, with scant measure +of joy in it, for you or for me. Bitter herbs grow side by side with the +flowers in our Earth gardens. Salt tears mingle with our laughter; Night +comes down in blotting darkness—perhaps in drenching rain,—at the close +of every short, bright day of sunshine. But Life gone by, its hopes and +fears and sorrows laid with our once-beating hearts in the good grey dust +to rest, I shall meet with you again, in the Land where dreams come true.</p> + +<p>"The Land Where Dreams Come True." That was the title of the song and its +refrain, and somehow it caught the listeners by the heart strings, making +the women sob aloud, and wringing bright sudden drops from the bold eyes +of rough, strong, hardy men. You are to remember how the people stood: +that scarcely one was there that had not lost brother or sister, mother or +husband, child or friend or comrade since the beginning of the siege; and +thus the touch of Nature made itself felt, and the simple pathos went home +to the sore quick. They sang the refrain with her, fervently, and when the +song was done, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> sat in touched silence but one moment—and then the +applause came down. As it fell upon her like a wall, she screamed in +terror, and ran away behind the scene, and was found by W. Keyse a minute +later, sobbing hysterically, with her head jammed into an angle of the +wall of un-plastered brick-work.</p> + +<p>None saw. He put his arms manfully about the waistline of the flowery +blouse.</p> + +<p>"Oh, let me go! Oh, what a wicked, wicked girl I've bin! Oh, it's all come +over me on a sudden, like a flood! Don't touch me—I'm not good enough! +Oh! how can you, can you?"</p> + +<p>She sobbed the words out, and W. Keyse had kissed her. He did not get +another utterance of her that night. She parted from him in tingling +silence. His own uneasy sense of faithlessness to One immeasurably +beloved, to whom he had pledged inviolable and eternal fidelity, nearly +prompted him to ask her not to up and tell. But he manfully kept silence.</p> + +<p>The worst of one kiss of that kind is that it begets the desire for others +like it. She had turned her mouth to his in that whirling, breathless +moment, and it was small, and warm, and clung. He tried to shake off the +remembrance, but it haunted persistently.</p> + +<p>He knew he had behaved like a regular beast—a low cur, in fact. To kiss +one girl and mean it for another was, in the Keysian Code of morals, to be +guilty of a baseness. The worst of it was that he knew, given the chance, +he would do the same thing again.</p> + +<p>For he could not shake off the memory of the blushing face, wetted with +streaming tears from the wide bright eyes that pleaded so. They were blue, +too, and the fringe above them might, by a not too exhausting stretch of +the imagination, be termed golden. He heard her voice crying to him, "How +can you, can you?" And he trembled at the thought of the mouth that kissed +and clung.</p> + +<p>He had known bought kisses, of the kind that brand the lips and shame the +buyer as the seller. Never the kiss of Love, until now.</p> + +<p>And now—was any other worth the taking?</p> + +<p>"Cr'ripps!" said W. Keyse. "Not much!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2> + + +<p>It was Wednesday again, and Saxham came riding through the embrasure in +the oblong earthwork, and down the gravelly glacis that led into the +Women's Laager. An obsequious Hindu, in an unclean shirt and a filthy red +turban, rose up salaaming, almost under his horse's feet, and took the +bridle. He dismounted and went his rounds.</p> + +<p>It might have been the dry bed of a high-banked placer-river, with spare +lengths of steel railway-line borne across from bank to bank, covered with +beams and sheets of corrugated iron and tarpaulins, with wide chinks to +let in the much-needed air and light. A line of living-waggons, crowded +with women and children—English, American, Irish, Dutch, and +half-caste—ran down the centre of the giant trench. In each of its +sloping faces a row of dug-out habitations gave accommodation to twice the +number that the waggons held. At the eastern end a line of camp +cooking-places had been arranged in military fashion, but the Dutchwomen's +little coffee-pipkin-bearing fires of dung and chips burned everywhere, +and possibly they did something towards purifying the air. For, to be +frank, it vied with the native village in the compound and variegated +nature of its smells, without the African muskiness of odour that is +perceptible in the vicinity of our sable brother. The fat, slatternly, +frankly dirty vrouws had not the remotest idea of sanitation; the Germans +and Irish, blandly or doggedly impervious to savage smells, pursued their +unsavoury way in defiance of the clamorous necessity for hygienic +measures, until the majority of the pallid, untidy, scared Englishwomen, +the energetic Americans, and the sturdier Africanders, after making what +headway was possible against the ever-rising tide of filth, had yielded to +the lethargy bred of despair and lack of exercise, and ceased to strive. A +few, worthy of honour, still stoutly battled with the demon of +Uncleanliness.</p> + +<p>But the first April rainfall would turn the dry ditch into an open +sewer—a vast trough of muddy water—in which draggled women would paddle +for submerged household gods. Many would prefer to tramp back to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> town +at night and sleep in their own shrapnel-riddled homes. But the majority +stayed, of choice or of necessity, incubating sickness in that fetid place +where nothing would thrive but fierce social and political hatreds, and +petty grudges, and rankling jealousies, and shrieking quarrels that burst +out and raged a hundred times in a day.</p> + +<p>From one of the dug-out refuges Saxham now saw Lynette Mildare coming, +making her swift way between the knots of frowsy refugees, the negro +women-servants squatting over the little cooking-fires, the pallid +children swarming on the narrow pathways.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Saxham." Her simple brown holland skirt and thin linen blouse hung +loosely upon her. Her face, too, had grown thinner, and looked tired. But +the eyes were no longer unnaturally dilated, and the face had a more +healthful pallor. "Mrs. Greening begged me to look out for you. She is so +anxious about Berta. We have been doing everything we can, but I am afraid +the child is seriously ill. It is the third shelter from the end, south +side." She pointed out the place.</p> + +<p>He had lifted his hat with his short, brusque salute. His vivid eyes wore +a preoccupied look, his mobile nostrils angrily sniffed the villainous +air.</p> + +<p>"I'll come directly, Miss Mildare. But—who can expect children to keep +healthy under conditions as insanitary as these?"</p> + +<p>"It is—horrible!" Disgust was in her face. "But many of the women are as +ignorant as the Kaffirs and Cape boys, and they and the coolie sweepers +won't carry away refuse any more unless they're paid."</p> + +<p>"You are sure of this?" His tone was curt and official.</p> + +<p>"I am almost certain," she told him. "I have heard some of the women +complaining that the charges grew higher every day. And, when I asked one +of the boys why he did not do the work properly, he was—rude.... Oh, +don't punish him!"</p> + +<p>He had not said a word, but a white-hot spark had darted from his blue +eye, and his grim jaws had clamped ominously together.</p> + +<p>"It is my duty to put down insubordination, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> chastise inefficiency +where I encounter it. May I ask you to point out the fellow who behaved +insolently?"</p> + +<p>She said: "I—I think he is head of the carting-gang. A Kaffir boy they +call Jim Gubo."</p> + +<p>"That will do, thank you, Miss Mildare. You are not alone here?"</p> + +<p>Her glad smile assured him of that. "Oh no, I am with the Mother. I go +everywhere with her, and I think I am of use. I am not at all afraid of +sickness, you know, or—the other things."</p> + +<p>"But yet," Saxham said, "you must be careful of your health."</p> + +<p>"You have no idea how tremendously strong I am," she answered him, and he +broke into laughter in spite of himself. She looked so tender, so +delicately frail a creature to be there in that malodorous Gehenna, +ministering to the wants of slatternly vrouws and stalwart, down-at-heel +Irishwomen. His smile emboldened her to say: "I did not thank you the +other day, after all."</p> + +<p>"The Krupp shell came along and changed the subject of the conversation." +He added: "Were you alarmed? You had rather an escape."</p> + +<p>"I was with Mother."</p> + +<p>"You love her very dearly?" The words had escaped him unconsciously. They +were his spoken thought. She flushed, and said with a thrill of tenderness +in her clear girlish tones:</p> + +<p>"More dearly than it is possible to say. I don't believe God Himself will +be angry with me that I have always seen His Face and Our Blessed Lady's +shining through hers and beyond it; for He knows as no one else can ever +know what she has been since they brought me to the Convent years and +years ago."</p> + +<p>"They" were her people, presumably. It was odd—Saxham supposed it the +outcome of that Convent breeding—that she should speak of God as simply, +to quote Gladstone's criticism on the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, as +though He were her grandfather. Saxham had been reared in the Christian +faith by a pious Welsh mother, but there had always been a little +awkwardness about domestic references to the Deity. In times of sadness or +bereavement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> He was frequently referred to. But always in a deprecatory +tone.</p> + +<p>"Your family is not Colonial?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She shook her lovely red-brown head.</p> + +<p>"I—don't know."</p> + +<p>"Mildare is an unusual surname."</p> + +<p>"You think it pretty?"</p> + +<p>He thought her very pretty as she stood there, a slender willowy creature +with the golden shadow of her rough straw-hat intensifying the clear amber +of her thoughtful eyes.</p> + +<p>"Very."</p> + +<p>She looked him in the face and smiled.</p> + +<p>"So did I when the Mother gave it to me. I think it belonged to someone +she used to know, and her mother was Lynette. So they baptised me Lynette +Mildare. It seems rather strange not having a name of one's own, but +really I never had one."</p> + +<p>"Never had one?"</p> + +<p>Saxham echoed her half-consciously, revelling in the play of light and +shadow over the delicate face, and the gleaming as of golden dust upon the +outer edges of the waves of red-brown hair drawn carelessly back over the +little ears.</p> + +<p>"Not to my knowledge. Of course, I may have had one once." She added, as +he looked at her in suddenly roused surprise, "I must have had one once." +She was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white-hot sunshine that +slanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thick +atmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wondered +what it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchange +Lynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... that would be horrible. Don't you +think so?"</p> + +<p>Saxham smiled. "I think you are joking, and that a young lady who can do +so under the present circumstances deserves to be commended."</p> + +<p>She looked at him full.</p> + +<p>"I am not joking." Borne by a waft of the sickly air a downy winged seed +came floating towards her, a frail gossamer courier coming from the world +above with tidings that Dame Nature, in spite of all the destruction +wreaked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> by men, was carrying on her business. "And—I do not even know +that I am a young lady. See there"—she blew a little puff of breath at +the moving messenger, and it wafted away upon a new air-pilgrimage, and, +rising, caught a stronger current, and soared out of sight—"that is me. +It came from somewhere, and it is going somewhere. That is all I know +about myself; perhaps as much as I shall ever know. Why do you look so +glad?"</p> + +<p>His lips were sealed. The throb of selfish triumphant exultation came of +the belief that the gulf between them was less wide and deep than he had +thought it. A wastrel may woo and wed a waif, surely, without many +questions being asked. And then, at the clear, innocent questioning of her +eyes, rushed in upon him, scalding, the memories he had thrust away. He +saw the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, his short daily stint of labour done, +settling down to drink himself into hoggish oblivion in his accustomed +corner of the Dutchman's liquor-saloon. He beheld him, his purpose +accomplished, sleeping stertorously, spilled out like the very dregs of +manhood in the sawdust of that foul place; he shuddered as the bloated, +dishevelled thing roused and reeled homewards, trickling at the mouth, as +the clear primrose day peeped over the flat-topped eastern hills. And he +sickened at the thing he had been.</p> + +<p>"I felt glad," he lied, with looks that shunned Lynette's, "that in your +need you found so good a friend as the Mother-Superior. Yours must have +been a sorrowful, lonely childhood."</p> + +<p>Her own vision rose before her, blotting out his face. She saw the little +kopje with the grave at its foot. She saw a ragged child sitting there +watching for the earliest flush of dawn or the solemn folding of night's +wide wing over the lonely veld, and the coming of the great white +stars....</p> + +<p>"She is much, much more than a friend. She is the Mother." Her loyal heart +was in her face. "I have no secrets from her. I tell her everything."</p> + +<p>Was that deeper flush born of the remembrance of a secret unshared? And +how strange that every change of colour and expression in the delicate +face should mean so much, so soon. He said, with a hungry flash of the +gentian-blue eyes:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Your love and confidence repay her richly."</p> + +<p>"I can do so little." There was an anxious fold between the slender +eyebrows. "Only follow her and be near her; only look on as she spends +herself for others, never resting, never sparing, never discouraged or +cast down." Great tears brimmed the white, darkly-fringed underlids, and +ran over. "And she only laughs at me at night when I cry at the sight of +her dear, blistered feet."</p> + +<p>"You will be able to laugh with her when this is over," Saxham said rather +clumsily.</p> + +<p>"Shall I? Perhaps." Still that fold between the fine, delicate eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"You have seen War," Saxham went on, his own voice sounding strange to +him. "And that is a terrible experience for a woman, young or old, but you +will be the richer by it in the end, believe me, Miss Mildare. Richer in +courage and endurance and calmness in the presence of danger and death, +and in sympathy with the pain and suffering inevitable under such +circumstances."</p> + +<p>"Sympathy? They had all my sympathy before." Her fair throat swelled +against its encircling band of moss-green velvet, her voice rang, her eyes +flashed golden fire under the shadow of the wide straw hat. "Do you think +it needed War to teach me how hideously women suffer? How they have +suffered since the world began, and how they will suffer until its end, +unless they rise up in revolt once for all, against the wickedness of +men?"</p> + +<p>She was transformed under Saxham's eyes. The slender virginal body +increased in stature and proportions as he gazed, and what obscure +emotions seemed striving in her face!</p> + +<p>"Look at them," she said, indicating with a slight revealing gesture the +swarming, dowdy, listless occupants of the crowded trench. "How patient +they are, how resigned to the dreadful life they drag on here from day to +day, full of the horror and the pain and the suffering that you say is +inevitable. Why should it be inevitable? Did these women who are the chief +victims of it and the greatest losers by it, choose that there should be +War? See that poor soul with the rag of crape upon her hat, who sits at +her door peeling potatoes. Did she desire it? Yet her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> young husband was +shot in the trenches a week ago and her little baby died of fever this +morning.... And, did those other women whose homes have been wrecked and +ruined, whose sons and husbands and fathers may be shot, and whose +children may sicken with the same fever before night, demand of their +Governments, Imperial or Republican, that there should be War? You see +them patient and submissive because they neither realise their wrongs or +understand their rights. But a day will come when they will understand, +and then"—her eyes grew dreamy—"I do not know exactly what will happen. +But these international questions, with others, will be decided by a +general plebiscite, the women will vote as well as the men; and as women +are in the majority, and every woman will vote for Peace—how can there be +War?"</p> + +<p>"You are an advocate of Universal Suffrage, then? You believe that there +must be absolute sex-equality before the world can be—I think 'finally +regenerated' is the stock phrase of the militant apostle of Women's +Rights? I have heard this outcry from many feminine throats in London, but +Gueldersdorp," said Saxham drily, "is about the last place one would +expect to ring with it."</p> + +<p>"'Universal Suffrage, Sex-Equality, Women's Rights....'" The shibboleth +that Saxham quoted was evidently unfamiliar to the girl. "I know"—there +was a sombre shadow in her glance—"what Women's Wrongs are, but I am not +very well informed about the things you speak of. The Mother tells me that +there are many well-educated women in London and Paris, in Berlin and in +New York, who have devoted their lives to the study of such questions. Who +write and speak and labour to teach their fellow-women that they have only +to band themselves together to be powerful, only to be powerful to be +feared, only to will it to be free. When I am twenty-four I mean to go out +into the world and meet those leader-women. Some of them, I am told, have +suffered loss and ill-usage; some of them have even undergone imprisonment +for the sake of what they believe and teach. Well, I will hear what they +have to say, and then they will listen to me. For until my work is done, +theirs will never be accomplished, Something tells me that with a most +certain voice."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And until that time comes?" said Saxham.</p> + +<p>Her eyes grew bright again, a smile played about her exquisite lips.</p> + +<p>"Until that time comes I will study and gather more knowledge, and +capacity to fit myself for a struggle with the world."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> 'struggle with the world'!"</p> + +<p>Her girlish pride in her high purpose being sensitive, she mistook the +brusque tenderness in Saxham's face and voice for irony.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Perhaps you may not believe it, but I know a great many useful +things. Latin and French and German and Italian, well enough to teach and +translate. I am well grounded in History and Science and Mathematics. I +can take a temperature and make a poultice, or sweep a room and cook a +dinner." She nodded at Saxham with a little spark of laughter underlying +the sweet earnestness of her look. "Also, I have learned book-keeping and +typewriting, and shorthand. I earn enough now, by bookbinding, to pay for +my clothes. The Mother says that I am competent to earn my living +anywhere, and to teach others to earn theirs. But I am not to begin until +I am twenty-four. That is our agreement."</p> + +<p>Saxham understood the fine maternal tact that never set this ardent young +enthusiast chafing at the tightened rein. But he said roughly:</p> + +<p>"The Mother.... How can she approve your joining the ranks of the +Shrieking Sisterhood?"</p> + +<p>"She knows," Lynette explained, with adorable gravity, "that I should +never shriek."</p> + +<p>"How will you bear parting from her? And how will she endure parting from +you?"</p> + +<p>The girl's mobile lips began to tremble. The luminous amber eyes were +dimmed with moisture as she said:</p> + +<p>"It will not be losing me. Nor could I ever bear to leave her if I did not +know that I should come back. But I shall come back. And she will ask me +what I have done. And I shall tell her: 'This, and this, and all the rest, +my Mother, for the love of you, and for the sake of those others who once +sat in darkness and the Shadow of Death, and now have found the Way of +Peace.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And those others, Beatrice?"</p> + +<p>Saxham knew now the secret of the haunting familiarity of the beautiful +girlish face. The delicate oval outline, the pale wild-rose colouring, the +reddish-brown of the fine, glistening tresses, the amber-hazel of the +wistful, brilliant eyes, reproduced to a wonderful degree the modelling +and tinting of the wonderful Guido portrait, the white-draped head in the +Barberini Gallery, which, in defiance of Bertolotti and the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>, will always be associated with the name of the sorrowful-sweet +heroine of the most sombre of sex-tragedies.</p> + +<p>"Why do you call me Beatrice?" she asked, with that sudden darkening of +those luminous eyes. He told her:</p> + +<p>"Because you are like the Daughter of the Cenci. Shelley used to be my +favourite among the English poets, and when I first went to Rome, years +ago, the first thing I did was to hunt up the portrait in the Barberini +Palace Gallery; and it is marvellous. No reproduction has ever done +justice to it. One could not forget it if one tried."</p> + +<p>"I am glad I am like Beatrice," she said slowly. "I have always loved and +pitied her. I pray to her as my friend among the Blessed Souls in +Paradise, and she always hears. And by-and-by she will help me when I go +out into the world——"</p> + +<p>"To look for those others," Saxham interpolated. "Tell me who they are?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and for an instant the virginal veil fell from her, and +there was strange and terrible knowledge in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"They are women, and girls, and children," she answered him. "They are the +most unhappy of all the souls that suffer on earth. For they are the +slaves and the victims and the martyrs of the unrelenting, merciless, +dreadful pleasures of Man. And I want to go among them and lift them up, +and say to them, 'You are free!' And one day I will do it."</p> + +<p>There was a dull burning under Saxham's opaque skin, and a drumming in his +ears. His authority and knowledge fell from him as that virginal veil had +fallen from her; he stood before her humbled and ashamed, shunning her +eyes, that penetrated and scathed his soul as the eyes of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> avenging +Angel might, with their clear, simple, direct estimate of himself and his +fellow-men. And the distance between them, that had seemed to be lessening +as they talked, spread illimitably vast; a dark, sunless plain, bounded by +a livid horizon, reflected in the slimy pools of foul swamps and +pestilential marshes, where poisonous reptiles bred in slimy, writhing +knots, and the Eaters of Human Flesh lurked under the tangled shade of the +jungles. Less vile of life, even in his degradation, than many men, he +felt himself beside this girl a moral leper.</p> + +<p>"Unclean, unclean!"</p> + +<p>While that voice yet echoed in the desert places of his soul, he heard her +saying:</p> + +<p>"I don't know why I should talk to you of these plans and projects of +mine. I never have spoken of them yet to anyone except the Mother. +But—you spoke of sympathy with those who suffer. I think you have it, Dr. +Saxham, and that you have suffered yourself. It is in your face. And—you +are not to suppose that I believe all men to be——"</p> + +<p>He ended for her: "To be devouring beasts. No; but we are bad enough, the +best of us, if the truth must be told. And—I <i>have</i> suffered, Miss +Mildare, at the hands of men and women, and through the unwritten laws, as +through the accepted institutions of what is called Society, most +brutally. I would not soil and scorch your ears with the recital of my +experiences, for all that a miracle could give me back. I swear to you +that I would not!"</p> + +<p>She touched the little ears with a smile that had pathos in it.</p> + +<p>"They have heard much that is evil, these ears of mine."</p> + +<p>"And the evil has left them undefiled," said Saxham.</p> + +<p>"Thank you!"</p> + +<p>She begged him again not to forget the sick child at Mrs. Greening's +shelter, and hurried away, keeping her face from Saxham. He knew that +there was no hope for him, that there never would be any. And he loved +her—hungrily, hopelessly loved her. Dear innocent, wise enthusiast, with +her impossible scheme for cleansing the Augean stable of this world! +Chivalrous child-Quixote, tilting at the Black Windmills, whose sails are +whirled by burning blasts from Hell, and whose millstones grind the souls +of Eve's lost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> daughters into the dust that makes the devil's daily +bread—how should the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp dare to love her? But he +did not cease to, for all the height of his self-knowledge and all the +depth of his self-scorn.</p> + +<p>He seemed to Lynette a strange, harsh man, but there was something in him +that won her liking. He had a stern mouth, she thought, and sorrowful, +angry eyes, with that thunder-cloud of black, lowering eyebrow above them. +And he looked at her as though she reminded him of someone he knew. +Perhaps he had sisters, though they could hardly be very young. Or it was +not a sister. He must be quite old—the Mother had thought him certainly +thirty-five—but possibly he had a young wife in England—or somewhere +else? And she had spoken to him of her great project. She wondered now at +that impulse of confidence. Perhaps she had yielded to it to convince +herself that her enthusiasm was as strong, her purpose still as clear, as +ever, in the mirror of the Future; that no gay, youthful reflection had +ever risen up of late days between it and her wistful eyes when she peeped +in. The remembered image of the handsome face that had laughed, even as +Beauvayse had declared:</p> + +<p>"Even if I die to-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and long +for you, and worship you wherever I am."</p> + +<p>The thought of Beauvayse's dying was horrible, intolerable. His name came +after the Mother's in her prayers. He had asked her to keep the +secret—his and hers—and called her such exquisite, impossible things for +promising that the mere remembrance of his words and his eyes as he said +them in that low, passionate, eager voice, took her breath deliciously.</p> + +<p>"<i>Sweetest, kindest, loveliest....</i>" She whispered them to herself as she +hurried back to comfort worried Mrs. Greening with the news that the +doctor was coming.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Saxham went on his accustomed way between the long line of +waggons and the corrugated-iron lined huts on the other hand, in a +cross-fire of appeals, requests, complaints. Nothing escaped him. He would +pass by, with the most casual glance and nod, women who volubly protested +themselves dying, and single out the face that bore the dull, scorched +flush of fever or the yellow or livid stamp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> of rheumatism, or ague, or +liver-trouble, with a beckon of his hand, and the owner of such a face, +invariably declaring herself a well woman, would be summarily dealt with, +and dosed with tabloid or tincture out of the inexhaustible wallet he +carried, slung about his shoulders by its webbing band.</p> + +<p>"Dokter," screeched a portly Tante in a soiled cotton bedgown and flapping +kappje, appearing, copper stewpan in hand, from between the canvas +tilt-curtains of a living-waggon. "You are come at last; the Lord be +thanked for it! I have much, much trouble inside." She groaned, and laid +her fat, unoccupied hand upon the afflicted area, adding: "I feel I shall +not be quite wholesome here."</p> + +<p>"Wat scheelt er aan, Tante?" He spoke the Taal with ease.</p> + +<p>The large Tante snorted:</p> + +<p>"What is the matter? Do you ask me what is the matter? As if a dokter +oughtn't to tell me that! But the Engelsch are regular devils for asking +questions. Since you must know, I have a mighty wallowing under my +apron-band, and therewith a pain. How is it begun? It is begun since +middageten yesterday. And little Dierck here has the belly-ache, and is +giddy in the head."</p> + +<p>"Little Dierck will have something worse than the belly-ache, and you +also, if you eat of broth or vegetables cooked in a vessel as unclean as +that, mevrouw."</p> + +<p>"Hoe?" The large flabby face under the expansive kappje became red as the +South African sunset. She flourished the venerable copper stewpan, its rim +liberally garnished with verdigris, ancient deposit of fatty matters +accumulated at the bottom. "Do you call my good stewpan, that my mother +cooked beef and succotash and pottage-herbs in before me, an unclean +vessel—you? And were the pan otherwise than clean as my hand—as my +apron!"—a double comparison of the unfortuitous kind—"how should I alter +matters in a heathen place like this?" Her large bosom rocked +tumultuously. "Dwelling at the bottom of a mud-hole like a frog, O God of +my fathers! with bullets as big as pumpkins trundling overhead, ready to +whip your head off your body if you as much as stick your nose above +ground—the accursed things!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They are pumpkins sent by your own countrymen, Tante, so you ought to +speak of them more civilly. And—scour the pot with a double-handful of +clean sand; it will be for your health as well as the kind's. Come here, +jongen—give me a look at the little tongue." The boy went to him +confidently, and stuck it out, looking up with innocent wide eyes in the +square, powerful face, as Saxham swung round his wallet, continuing, +"Here, mevrouw, is a packet of Epsom salts. Take half of it, stirred in a +cup of warm water, to-morrow morning fasting——"</p> + +<p>"Alamachtig!" she protested. "Is that the Engelsch way of doctoring? To +put another belly-grief on the top of the one you have got, what sense is +in that?"</p> + +<p>"It is the new nail, Tante, that drives out the rusty old one. Give the +boy a teaspoonful in half a cup of water, and remember to scour the pans."</p> + +<p>Saxham passed on, stepping neatly with his small, tan-booted, spurred feet +between the dung and chip fires curling up in blue smoke-spirals, and the +sprawling children, seeming as though he did not notice them, yet catching +up one that had a rash, and satisfying himself that the eruption was +innocent ere he passed on, visiting every waggon-dwelling and cave-refuge, +rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging +from three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frown +that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnaw +the vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and there +sprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded +community with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to be +crowded to the doors, to remain crowded for many months to come; and the +cry, "Room for the sick! more room!" was to go up unceasingly.</p> + +<p>Coming out of a miserable habitation, where lay a woman in rheumatic +fever, whose three children had developed measles on the previous day, +and, seeing about the door of a neighbouring hovel a particularly noisome +aggregation of garbage and waste, he paused but to give a brief direction +to the mild-faced Sister who had assumed charge of the sick. Then his +voice rang out above all the feminine and childish Babel, strong, +resonant, masculine:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Where are the head-boys of the gangs that I told off to clean up and +carry ash-buckets to the dumping-place?"</p> + +<p>Whence, under cover of night, the garbage and waste were carted to the +destructor in connection with the Acetylene Gas Company's plant, soon to +be shattered by one of Meisje's shells. There was no answer. Saxham took +the worn hunting-crop from under his arm, and with an easy movement shook +out the twisted thong.</p> + +<p>"Where are those two boys? Jim Gubo! Rasu!"</p> + +<p>A pale young woman peeling potatoes at her door looked up knowingly. "They +won't carry away a cabbage-leaf unless they're bribed, and they open their +mouths wider every day. It's a tikkie a bucket now."</p> + +<p>The young woman went back to her potatoes. The offenders, visibly quaking, +crept from under a waggon, where they had been gambling with dry mealies +for ill-gotten tikkies. A big Kaffir boy in ragged tan-cords and the +crownless brim of an Oxford straw, with a red-turbaned, blue +dungaree-clad, supple Oriental of the coolie class. Jim Gubo, with liberal +display of ivory, assured the Baas, in defiance of the Baas's own eyes and +the organ in juxtaposition, that the work had been regularly done. Rasu +the Sweeper, with many oaths and protestations, assured the Presence that +such neglect as was apparent was owing to the incapacity of the hubshi and +his myrmidons, Rasu's own share of the labour and that of his +fellow-countryman being scrupulously performed.</p> + +<p>The Presence made short work of Kaffir and Hindu. Shrill feminine clamours +filled the air as the singing lash performed its work of castigation; and +while Saxham scored repentance upon the hide of his blacker brother, +holding him writhing, shouting, and bellowing at the full stretch of one +muscular arm, as he plied the other he kept a foot on Rasu the Sweeper, so +as to have him handy when his turn came. Meanwhile, the Oriental, with +tears and lamentable howlings, wound about the doctor's leg, a vocal worm, +deprecating tyranny.</p> + +<p>"Your Honour is my father and mother. Let the hand of justice refrain from +excoriating the person of the unfortunate, wreaking double vengeance upon +the hubshi, who is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> but fuel for Hell, like all his accursed race, and +full explanation shall be made."</p> + +<p>He was jerked upward by the scruff, as, smarting, blubbering Africa +retired to the shadow of the waggons.</p> + +<p>"Well, what have you got to say?"</p> + +<p>The bellow of the town batteries, with the clack—clack—clack! of the +Hotchkiss that had been removed from the armoured train and mounted on the +North Fort, reduced the tirade to pantomime.</p> + +<p>"This is a bad, a very bad, place for the son of my mother." The lean +brown right hand swept upwards to the thick canopy of white smoke that the +shifting breeze rolled back from the Cemetery Earthworks. "The food of +coarse grain is diet for camels, and the water stinks very greatly. +Moreover, it is better for thy slave to die amongst defilements than to +carry buckets and be chased by devils in iron pots thirsting for the blood +of men. Aie—aie!"</p> + +<p>One of the enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelts had loosed off a group of the +gaily-painted little shells. With the reduplicated rattle of the +detonation, they passed over the laager, bursting as they went, sending +their fan-shaped showers of splinters broadcast. Slatternly women and +scared children bolted for their burrows. Rasu the Sweeper dived +frantically between the fore and hind wheels of a waggon, praying to all +the gods of the low-caste to ward off those wicked little bits of rending +metal....</p> + +<p>"Anyone hurt?" called Saxham.</p> + +<p>"No one, I think," called back the strong sweet voice of the +Mother-Superior, who had come out of a hovel, where she was tending some +sick. There was a glint in her deep eyes as she regarded Saxham's thorough +handiwork that told her approval of castigation well deserved. Then:</p> + +<p>"Maharaj! Oh, Maharaj! Succour in calamity! Aid for the dying! Hai, hai, +behold how I bleed!"</p> + +<p>The red-turbaned martyr rolled in the unclean litter, elevating a +stick-like brown leg, in the lean, muscular calf of which one of the +smallest of the wicked little splinters had, as Rasu the Sweeper dived for +the waggon, found a home.</p> + +<p>"That has saved you a well-earned hiding, so thank your stars for it. Let +the Kaffir see to it that he insults no more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> English ladies, or he shall +pay for every word with an inch of skin. Now put up your leg." Saxham +whipped out the splinter with a little pair of tweezers, deftly cleansed +and dressed the wound, bandaged it, and, dismissing Rasu the Sweeper with +a caution, was coming across to the Reverend Mother when a chorus of cries +and piercing shrieks broke forth:</p> + +<p>"Mijn jongen! mijn jongen!"</p> + +<p>She was a bulky Dutch vrouw, with a dishevelled head of coarse black hair, +and a dirty cotton gown, and dirty bare feet in bulgy shoes that were +trodden down at heel. But with her livid, purple face and protruding, +bloodshot eyeballs uplifted to the drifting cloud of greenish lyddite +vapour that thinned away overhead, she was great and terrible, and the +very incarnation of Maternity Bereft.</p> + +<p>One huge arm gripped the little body to her broad, panting bosom. She had +called him, and he had not answered; she had sought and found him, just as +he had slidden off the box-seat, where he had been playing driver of the +ox-span, lying curled up against the dashboard, the little whip of stick +and string he had been at pains to make only yesterday fallen from the +lax, childish hand. The fair hair on the left temple was dabbled in blood, +that trickled from the tiny three-cornered bluish hole. His eyes were +open, as if in wonder at the sudden darkness that had fallen at bright +midday; the smile had frozen on the parted, innocent lips....</p> + +<p>Oh, look at this, Premier and President! Look at this, my Lords and +Commons and militant Burghers of Republican States! Grave Ministers who +decide in Cabinet Councils that the prestige of the Government you +represent is at stake, and that the bedraggled honour of the Country can +only be washed clean in one red river, flowing from the veins of Humanity, +look, look here! You who lust for Sovereignty, hiding rapacious Ambitions +and base lust for gold behind the splendid ermined folds of the Imperial +purple. You who resented Suzerainty, coveting to keep in your hands riches +that you could not use, resources that your ignorance could not develop, +greedy to have and hold what you wrested from the Sons of Ham, lest white +men should snatch it back from you again; and prating of Liberty and +Freedom while the necks of three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> races of men were bending under the yoke +of an oligarchy more imperious, more pitiless, more covetous, besotted, +brutal, and ignorant than any other that the spotted records of History +can show—look here, look here!</p> + +<p>Nations that rush to dreadful War, loosing the direful threefold plague of +Iron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and brand and desolate the once smiling +face of your Mother Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolating +cataclysms of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the bloodstained +she-devil you misname Glory, look here, in the Name of One who loved and +suffered little children, rating their innocent bodies and spotless souls +at such high value that Little Dierck and his countless +brother-and-sister-babes that have perished of Iron, Fire, and Disease, as +of Terror and Famine, Death's twin henchmen, shall weigh in the balance +against Crowned Heads and Lords and Commons and Presidents and +Representatives and Deputies, until they kick the beam!</p> + +<p>Should there be War? Of course there should be War! you say.</p> + +<p>Have you seen War? Perhaps, even as I have. And, having seen it, dare you +justify the shedding, by men who hold the Christian Faith, of these +spilled-out oceans of Christian blood?</p> + +<p>That question will be settled when the Trumpet of the Great Angel sounds, +and the Sea and the Earth shall give up their dead, and everyone shall +answer for his deeds before the Throne of God. And until then, look to it +that if you war in any cause, the cause be a just one.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"My Dierck! My little Dierck! O God! God!—--"</p> + +<p>Standing with that tragic purple mask turned upwards to the silent sky, +and the wild eyes blazing, and the great fist at the end of the uplifted +arm brandished in the Face of Heaven itself, the Boer mother demanded of +her Maker why this thing had been done?</p> + +<p>"He was so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the ox-reim end to +taste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie or a plum pilfered—he would take +them as bold as brass before your face if you didn't give. He said the +night-prayer regularly. For the morning, Lord, Thou knowest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> boys want to +be up and at mischief as soon as they have rubbed the sleep out of their +eyes—'tis only natural. And the father a God-fearing man, and me a woman +of piety. For when have I backslidden before Thee? If any of mine have +hung back when I told them to loop and do a thing, or sneaked off and hid +when we were inspanned for the kerk-going, did I fail to whack them as a +mother should? Nooit, nooit! And now—Death has fallen out of the sky upon +the Benjamin of my bosom. Oh, blasted be the eyesight and withered be the +hand of the man that sighted and laid and fired the gun!"</p> + +<p>She cursed the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every function +of his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying and +dead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her went +white. Some of the women were crying, others shook their heads:</p> + +<p>"Thim that puts the Bad Black Wish on odhers finds sorra knock harrd at +their dure," said an Irish voice oracularly. "An' who but herself did be +callin' down all manner av' misfortune on ivery wan that crassed her?"</p> + +<p>"It's a judgment—my opinion," agreed the thin young woman who had been +peeling potatoes, and who wore a wisp of draggled crape round a soiled +rush hat. "Never a shell busted but you'd a-heered her say she hoped that +one had sent another parcel of verdant rooineks to Hell. And me sitting +over against her with crape on for my husband and baby. 'Tis a judgment, +that's what I say."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush, Mrs. Lennan!" said the Mother-Superior. "Be pitiful and forget. +She did not think—she had not suffered. Be pitiful, now that her hour has +come!"</p> + +<p>The thick voice of the Boer woman broke out again:</p> + +<p>"Did ever I miss of the Nachtmaal? Alamachtig, no! Virtuous as Sarah have +I lain in the marriage-bed—never a sly look for another, and my husband +with dropsy-legs as thick as boomstammen, and sixty years upon his loins. +Thou knewest, and yet the joy of my life is taken from me. Where wert +Thou, O God of Israel, when they killed my little Dierck?"</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior leaned to her, and threw a strong, tender arm about +the fleshy shoulders. She said, speaking in the Taal:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Hush, hush! Remember that He gave the joy before He sent the sorrow. And +we must submit ourselves to the Holy Will."</p> + +<p>The Boer woman snorted:</p> + +<p>"As if I didn't know that better than a Papist. Look you, have I shed one +tear?" She blinked hard bright eyes defiantly. The Mother went on in that +velvet voice of hers, making the uncouth dialect sound like the cooing of +an Irish dove:</p> + +<p>"Better that you had tears, poor mother! Ah! best to weep. Did not our +Lord weep over His dearest city, and for His beloved friend? And when He +pitied the Widow of Nain, do you think His eyes were dry? Ah! best to +weep."</p> + +<p>She strove to wrench herself away, shouting:</p> + +<p>"He raised Lazarus from the dead for Mary his sister, and she had been a +shameless wench. And He gave the other back her boy. What has He done for +me?"</p> + +<p>The sisterly arm held her fast; the great grey eyes looked into hers, wet +with the tears that were denied to her.</p> + +<p>"He has given you an Angel to pray for you in Heaven."</p> + +<p>She snorted rebelliously:</p> + +<p>"His mother wants him down here.... And what is Heaven to little Dierck, +when he could be sailing his boat in the river-pools, and playing at +driving the span?"</p> + +<p>But she let the Mother-Superior take him from her, and dropped her great +arms doggedly at her sides, watching still dry-eyed as they laid him down, +and Saxham stooped above him, feeling at the pulseless heart. She saw the +doktor shake his head and lay down the little hand. She saw the +Mother-Superior coax down the eyelids with tender, skilful fingers, and +put a kiss on each, making the Sign of the Cross on the still, childish +breast, and murmuring a little prayer. She would have screamed to avert +the defiling, heathen thing from him, but the memory of the sister-embrace +and the sister-look held her dumb.</p> + +<p>It was only when they were stripping him for the last sad toilet, and the +cherished top and half a dozen highly-prized marbles rolled out of the +pocket in the stumpy little round jacket she had made out of a cast-off +garment of his father's that her bosom heaved, and the fountains of her +grief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> sprang from the stony soil. She wept copiously, and found +resignation. Soon she was sufficiently herself to scold a +prodigally-minded spinster relative who had proposed that Little Dierck +should be coffined in his new black Sabbath suit.</p> + +<p>"But you old maids have no sense, no more than so many cabbages. Little +angels in the hemel can fly about in clean nightgowns—look in the +grandfather's big picture-Bible if you don't believe me. But live boys +can't loop about without breeches. So I'll lay these by for the next one."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>Roasting hot Christmas has gone by, with its services and celebrations, +its sports and entertainments, its meagre feasting, and its hearty cheer, +a bloodless triumph followed by the regrettable defeat sustained in the +battle of Big Tree Fort. To-day the Union Jack hangs limp upon the +flagstaff that rears its slender height over Nixey's, and the new year is +some weeks old. The blue, blue sky of January is without a single puff of +cloud, and the taint from the trenches is less sickening, unmingled with +the poisonous fumes of the lyddite bursting-charges, and the acrid odour +of smokeless powder. It is Sunday, when Briton and Boer hold the Truce of +God, and the church-bells ring to call and not to warn the people, and +sweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shrapnel-scarred veld. The +aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carcasses of horses and cattle +lying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Line +of Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge and +wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry hot sand +between the boulder-stones.</p> + +<p>The Market Square is populous with a chatting, sauntering crowd of people, +who enjoy the luxury of using their limbs without being called on to +displays of acrobatic agility in dodging trundling shell. There are +Irregulars and B.S.A.P., Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There are the +Native Contingent from the stad, and a company of Zulus, and the Kaffirs +and the Cape Boys with their gaspipe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> rifles that do good service in +default of better, and bring down Oom Paul's Scripturally-flavoured +denunciations upon Englishmen, who arm black and coloured folk to do +battle for their own sable or brown or yellow rights. These have donned +odd garments and quaint bits of finery to mark the holiday, and every +white man has indulged in the luxury of a comprehensive wash, a shave with +hot water, and a change of clothing, if it is obtainable. Also, drooping +feminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from underground burrows +of Troglodytic type, arrayed in fluttering muslins, and crowned with +coquettish hats, which walk about in company with ragged khâki and +clay-stained duck and out-at-elbows tweed, and are proud to be seen in its +brave company.</p> + +<p>Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, lovers and +sweethearts, meet after the week whose separating days have seemed like +weeks, and visit the houses whose pierced walls and roofs, that let the +white-hot sunshine in through many jagged holes, may one day, so they +whisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in peace. Home +has become a sweet word, even to those who thought little of home before. +And many who were sinful have found conviction of sin and the saving grace +of repentance, and many more who denied their God have learned to know +Him, in this village town of battered dwellings, whose streets are +littered with all the grim débris of War.</p> + +<p>Nixey's has not come scathless through the ordeal. The stately brick +chimneys of the kitchen and coffee-room have been broken off like carrots, +and replaced by tin funnels. Patches of the universal medium, corrugated +iron, indicate where one of Meisje's ninety-four-pound projectiles +recently plumped in through the soft brick of the east wall end, and +departed by the west frontage, leaving two holes that might have +accommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a window with it. Mrs. +Nixey, the children, and the women of the staff inhabit a bombproof in the +back-yard. The waiters have developed a grasshopper-like nimbleness, +otherwise things go on as usual.</p> + +<p>It being Sunday, a large long man and another as long, but less bulky, are +extended in a couple of long bamboo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> chairs on Nixey's longish front +verandah. The blue, fragrant smoke of two long cigars curls upwards over +their supine heads, and two long drinks containing a very meagre modicum +of inferior whisky are contained in two long tumblers, resting in the +bamboo nests cunningly devised for their accommodation in the chair-arms.</p> + +<p>It is hot, but both the men look cool and lazy, and almost too fresh to +have spent the greater part of the night, the younger upon advanced +patrol-duty, and the elder at the Staff bombproof in the Southern Lines, +where messages come in and where messages go out, and where reports are +received and from whence orders are despatched from sunset to the peep of +day, and from peep of day to sunset.</p> + +<p>The wardrobes of both warriors are much impaired by active service, but +their originally white flannel trousers, if patched, discoloured, and +shrunken by amateur lavations, boast the cut of Bond Street; their shirts, +if a trifle ragged, are immaculately clean, and the cracks in their canvas +shoes are disguised by a lavish expenditure of pipeclay. Beauvayse has +rummaged out and mounted a snowy double collar in honour of the day, with +a knitted silk necktie of his Regimental colours, and a kamarband to match +is wound about his narrow, springy waist, and knotted to perfection. Both +men might be basking on an English river-bank after a stiff pull +up-stream, or resting after a bout at tennis on an English lawn, but for +the revolver-lanyards round their strong, bronzed throats, ending in the +butts of Smith and Wesson's revolvers of Service calibre, the bandoliers +and belts that lie handy on a table, and the Lee-Metford carbines that +lean in an angle made by the house-wall and the verandah end. Also, but +for the tension of long-sustained watchfulness on both faces, making it +plain that, though resting and reposeful, they are neither of them +unexpectant of a summons to be the opposite of these things. It is a look +that, at different degrees of intensity, is stamped on every face in +Gueldersdorp. And the same uncertainty possesses and pervades even +unsentient things. The Union Jack, hanging listlessly from the summit of +its lofty staff, bathed in the golden, glowing atmosphere of this January +day, may, in an instant's space, give place to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> red signal of danger; +the bugle, now silent, may at any moment blare out its loud and dismal +note of warning; the bells that call with peaceful insistence, "Come to +church! come to church!" in the twinkling of an eye may be clanging scared +townsfolk to their burrowed hiding-places. You never know. For General +Brounckers, though a God-fearing man, sometimes goes in for Sunday +gun-practice, quite unintentionally, as he afterwards explains. Hence, +even on the Sabbath, it is as well to be prepared.</p> + +<p>Beauvayse is the first to break the drowsy silence by knocking the +lengthened ash off his cigar, and expressing his opinion that the weed +might be a worse one.</p> + +<p>"Considerin' the price the box of fifty was knocked down to me for at +Kreils' auction yesterday," states Captain Bingo, "it's simply smokin' +gold. Nine pound fifteen-and-six runs me into, how much apiece?" He yawns +cavernously, and gives the calculation up. "Always was a duffer at +figures," he says, and relapses into silence until, in the act of throwing +the nearly smoked-out cigar-butt away, he pulls himself up, and, +economically impaling it on his penknife-blade, secures a few more whiffs.</p> + +<p>"Against the Lenten days to come, when there will be no balm left in +Gilead," says Beauvayse, cocking a grey-green eye at him in sleepy +derision, "and no tobacco in Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>"Kreils' are sellin' dashed bad cigarettes at a pound the box of a hundred +now," says Captain Bingo; "and I've a notion of layin' in a stock of 'em. +We smoked tea in the Sudan, and I had a shot at hemp, but it plays the +very devil with the nerves. All jumps and twitches, you know, after a pipe +or two. Nervous as a cat, or a woman. And, talking of women, I wonder +where my wife is?"</p> + +<p>He turns a large, pink, disconsolate face upon Beauvayse. Beauvayse +responds with the air of one who has suffered boredom from the too +frequent enumeration of this conjecture. "Not knowing, can't say." And +there is another silence.</p> + +<p>"How she got the maggot into her head," presently resumes Lady Hannah's +spouse, "I can't think. I did suppose her vaultin' ambition to rival Dora +Corr—woman who managed to burn her own and a lot of other people's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> +fingers by meddlin' in South African politics over the Raid business—had +been quenched for good that mornin' you took those fifty chaps of the +Irregulars out for what she <i>would</i> call their 'baptism of fire.'"</p> + +<p>"That's newspaperese," yawns Beauvayse, his supple brown hands knitted at +the back of his sleek golden head. "Goes with 'the tented field' and +<i>casus belli: cherchez la femme</i> and <i>cui bono</i>?"</p> + +<p>"She's got the lingo at her finger-ends and in her blood, or we wouldn't +be cherchaying now," says Bingo dolorously. "I asked her if she was +particularly keen on gettin' killed...."</p> + +<p>"Shouldn't have done that. Put her on her mettle not to show funk if she +felt it," mumbles Beauvayse.</p> + +<p>"A man can't always be diplomatic," grumbles Bingo. "Anyhow, she'd seen a +bit of a scrap at the outset of affairs, when the B.S.A. went out with the +Armoured Train, and was wild with me for wantin' to deprive her of another +'glorious experience.' ... And next morning she rides out with a Corporal +and two troopers, both chaps beastly sensible of their responsibility, and +wishin' her at Cape Town, she in toppin' spirits and as keen as mustard. +It was about six o'clock, morning, and she hadn't been gone five minutes +before we heard you fellows poundin' away and bein' pounded at like Jimmy +O! I was on the roof with the Chief, the sweat runnin' down into the +binoculars, until the veld seemed swarmin' with brown mares and grey linen +habits and drab smasher hats, with my wife's head under 'em, and hoverin' +troopers. But I did make out that your party had got into +difficulties——"</p> + +<p>"We opened on 'em at a thousand yards, and pushed to within five hundred, +and if the fellows in charge of the Hotchkiss could have got her into +play," Beauvayse interrupts rather huffily, "we'd have been as right as +rain."</p> + +<p>"Possibly. If I hadn't been on special duty that day, and as nervous as a +cat in a thunderstorm, I'd have volunteered to bring No. 2 Troop of A out +to the rescue, instead of Heseltine. As it was, I nearly fell off the roof +when I saw my wife coming, one trooper, as pale with fright as a piece of +soap, supportin' her on his saddle, another man leading the mare, dead +lame and the Corporal's hairy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> Plugged in the upper works, the Corporal, +poor beggar! but he'd managed to stick on somehow until they got to the +Hospital. Have you ever had to deal with a woman in hysterics?"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse nods sagely.</p> + +<p>"Once or twice."</p> + +<p>"Once is an experience that lasts a man all his lifetime. Phew!" Captain +Bingo mops his large pink face. "Never had such a dressing-down in my +life."</p> + +<p>"But what had you to do with the Corporal getting chipped?"</p> + +<p>"The Lord only knows!" says Bingo piously. "But, if you'd heard her, all +the rest of the day and half through the night!..."</p> + +<p>"I did," Beauvayse says with a faint grin. "Mine's the next bedroom to +yours, you know."</p> + +<p>"'Oh, the blood! Oh, the blood!' ..." Not unsuccessfully does the spouse +of Lady Hannah attempt to render the recurrent hiccough and the whooping +screech of hysteria. "'Damn it, my dear!' I said, tryin' to reason with +her, 'what else did you expect the fellow had got in him? Sawdust?' That +seemed to rouse her like nothing else.... Turned on me like a tigress, by +the living Tinker!—called me everything she could lay her tongue to, and +threatened that she'd apply for a separation if I continued to outrage +every feeling of decency that association with such a thundering brute +hadn't uprooted from her nature."</p> + +<p>"Whe—ew!"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse's comment is a shrill-toned whistle.</p> + +<p>"Of course, her nerves were knocked to smithereens, and a man can overlook +a lot, under the circumstances. She was a mere jelly when the bombardment +began——" goes on rueful Captain Bingo.</p> + +<p>"—Rather!" confirms Beauvayse.—"Lived in the hotel cellar for the first +fortnight, only emergin' from among the beer-barrels and wine-casks and +liqueur-cases after dark——"</p> + +<p>"—To blow me up and forgive me, turn and turn about, until daylight did +appear. Luckily," reflects Bingo, with a rather dreary chuckle, "I had +plenty of night-duty on just then, and so escaped a lot."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p> + +<p>"<i>That</i> gave her her chance to shoot the moon!" hints Beauvayse, in +accents muffled by his long tumbler.</p> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker!" asseverates Captain Bingo, jerked out of his +reclining attitude by vigorous utterance of the expletive, "you could have +bowled me over with a scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and found +her gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on the +dressing-table pincushion, in regular elopement style; and another for the +Chief, sayin'—he read it to me—that she'd gone to retrieve the Past, +with a capital 'P,' and hoped to convince him ere long that one of her +<i>despised sex</i>—underlined, 'despised sex'—can be useful to her country."</p> + +<p>"'Can be useful to her country,'" repeats Beauvayse "Question is, in what +way?"</p> + +<p>"Damme if I can imagine!" bursts explosively from the deserted husband. +"All I know up to date, and all <i>you</i> know, is that before it was quite +light she drove out of our lines in Nixey's spider, his mouse-coloured +trotter pullin', and her German maid sittin' behind, wavin' a white towel +tied to the end of a walkin'-stick of mine, and went straight over to the +enemy. We hear in the course of things from a Kaffir despatch-runner that +she's stayin' in a hotel of sorts at Tweipans, where Brounckers has had +his headquarters since he shifted Chief Laager from Geitfontein. And for +any further information we may knock our rotten heads against a brick wall +and twiddle our thumbs. Never you marry, Toby, my boy!"</p> + +<p>A V-shaped vein swells and darkens between the handsome grey-green eyes +and on the broad forehead, white as a girl's where the sun-tan leaves off. +Beauvayse takes his cigar again from his mouth, and knocks the ash off +deliberately before he responds:</p> + +<p>"Thanks for the advice."</p> + +<p>"Be warned," says Captain Bingo sententiously, "by me. Know when you're +well off, as I didn't. Take the advice of your seniors, as I was too +pig-headed a fool to do, and don't put it in the power of any woman to +make you as rottenly wretched as I am at this minute."</p> + +<p>"Why! women <i>can</i> make you rottenly wretched," admits Beauvayse, with a +confirmatory creak of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> bamboo chair. "But, on the other hand, they can +make you awfully happy—what?"</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo throws his long legs off their resting-place, and sits +sideways, staring rather owlishly at his young friend. He shakes his head +in a dismal way several times, and sucks hard at his cigar as he shakes +it.</p> + +<p>"For a bit, but does it last? When I came down to hunt you up last June at +the cottage at Cookham——"</p> + +<p>"Look here, old man!" The bamboo chair creaks angrily as Beauvayse in his +turn sits up and drops his own long legs on either side of it, and drives +the foot-rest back under the table seat with a vicious punch. "Don't +remind me of the cottage at Cookham, will you? It's one of the things I +want to forget just now."</p> + +<p>"You were as proud as Punch of it last June. Have you let it?" pursues +Bingo, ignoring his junior's request.</p> + +<p>Beauvayse yawns with ostentatious weariness of the subject.</p> + +<p>"No; I haven't let it."</p> + +<p>"Ought to go off like smoke, properly advertised. Somethin' like this: 'To +let, Roselawn Cottage, Cookham: a charmin' Thames-side bijou residence. +Small grounds and large cellar, a boathouse and a houseboat, stables, a +pigeon-cote, and a private post-box. Duodecimo oak dinin'-room, boudoir by +Rellis. Ideal nest for a honeymoon, real thing or imitation. Might have +become the real thing if owner hadn't been whisked off in time to South +Africa.' And a dashed good job for him. For you've had a decentish lot of +narrow escapes, Toby, my boy!" pursues the oracular Captain Bingo, +disregarding his junior's forbidding scowl, "and come out of a goodish few +tight places, and you've got out of 'em, if I may say so, more through +luck than wit; but that little entanglement I'm delicately alludin' to was +one of the closest things on record in the career of a Prodigal Son."</p> + +<p>"Thanks. You're uncommonly complimentary to-day." Beauvayse pitches away +his cigar, knocks a feather of ash from his clean silk shirt, and folds +his arms resignedly on his broad flat chest.</p> + +<p>"Upon my word, I didn't mean to be. Does it ever strike you," goes on +Captain Bingo doggedly, "that if that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> wire from the Chief asking for your +address hadn't found me at the Club, and if I hadn't run down and dug you +out at the—I won't repeat the name of the place, since you don't seem to +like it—you'd have been married and done for, old chap—any date you like +to name between then and the beginning of the war? And, to put things +mildly, there would have been the mischief to pay with your people."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Beauvayse agrees rather dreamily; "there would have been an awful +lot of bother with my people."</p> + +<p>"Not that I object to the stage myself," Captain Bingo says, waving a +large, tolerant hand; "and it seems getting to be rather the fashion to +recruit the female ranks of the Peerage from Musical Comedy, and a +prettier and cleverer little woman than Lessie ... What are you stoppin' +your ears for?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not," says a muffled, surly voice. "It's a—twinge of toothache."</p> + +<p>"All I've got to say is," declares Captain Bingo, "that marriage with +one's equal in point of breedin' is sometimes a blank draw, but marriage +with one's inferior is a howling error. And if you had done as I'd stake +my best hat you would have done, supposin' you'd been left to loll in the +lap of the lovely Lessie——"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse jumps up in a rage.</p> + +<p>"Wrynche, how much longer do you think I can go on listening to this? +You're simply maundering, man, and my nerves won't stand it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well! But you haven't the ghost of a right to lay claim to +nerves," Captain Bingo obstinately asseverates. "Now look at me."</p> + +<p>"I'm hanged if I want to!" declares Beauvayse. "You're not a cheering +object." He drops back into the bamboo chair again.</p> + +<p>"Flyblown, do I look?" inquires Bingo, with dispassionate interest.</p> + +<p>"Well, yes, decidedly," Beauvayse agrees, without removing his eyes from +the whitewashed verandah-pillar at which they blankly stare.</p> + +<p>"Streaky yellow in the whites of the eyes, and pouchy under 'em?" Captain +Bingo demands of his young friend with unmistakable relish. "'Yes' again? +And I grouse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> and maunder? Of course I do, my dear chap! How can I help +it? A married man who, for all he knows, may be a widower——"</p> + +<p>"I wish to God I knew I was one!"</p> + +<p>"My good fellow?"</p> + +<p>"You heard what I said," Beauvayse flings over his shoulder.</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo, his hands upon his straddling knees, regards his junior +with circular eyes staring out of a large, kind, rather foolish face of +utter consternation.</p> + +<p>"That you wished to God you were a widower?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I mean it."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>"Good Lord!"</p> + +<p>There is a gap of silence only broken when Captain Bingo says heavily:</p> + +<p>"Then you did marry the Lavigne after all? When was it——"</p> + +<p>"We'd pulled off the marriage at the local Registrar's a fortnight before +you came down with—<i>his</i> wire."</p> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker, then it <i>was</i> a genuine honeymoon after all!" A +faint grin appears on Captain Wrynche's large perturbed face.</p> + +<p>"Don't be epigrammatic, Wrynche." The dull weariness in the young voice +gives place to quick affront. "And keep the secret. Don't give me away."</p> + +<p>"Did I ever give you, or any other man who ever trusted me, away? Tell me +that."</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo gets up and covers the distance between the deck-chairs with +a single stride, and puts a big kind hand on the averted shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Of course you never did." The boy reaches up and takes the hand, and +squeezes it with the shyness of the Englishman who responds to some +display of solicitude or affection on the part of a comrade. "Don't mind +my rotting like this. There are times when one must let off steam or +explode."</p> + +<p>"I thought—and so did a few others, the Chief among 'em—that South +Africa had saved you by the skin of your teeth," says Captain Bingo, +smoking vigorously, and driving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> his hands very deep into his pockets. +"Confoundedly odd how taken in we were! I could have sworn, my part, that +you'd just stopped short at——"</p> + +<p>"At making a blithering idiot of myself," interpolates Beauvayse. "If +you'll go back and sit decently in your chair, instead of standing behind +me rattlin' keys and coins in your pocket, and dropping hot cigar-ash on +my head, I'll tell you how it happened. Nobody listening?"</p> + +<p>"Not a soul," says Captain Bingo, padding back after a noiseless prowl to +the coffee-room window.</p> + +<p>Beauvayse grips either arm of the chair he sits in so fiercely that they +crack again.</p> + +<p>"I—I was desperately hard hit over Lessie a year ago——"</p> + +<p>"So were a lot of other young idiots."</p> + +<p>"That's a pleasant reflection. They were."</p> + +<p>"Of course, I"—Bingo's large face becomes very red—"I inferred nothing +in any way against Miss Lavigne's chara—— Dash it, I beg your pardon! I +ought to call her Lady Beauvayse."</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble. I think I'd rather you didn't. It would rub things in +rather too much," says Beauvayse, paling as the other has reddened.</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't it be as well," hints Captain Bingo, "to get used to it?"</p> + +<p>"No," Beauvayse throws over his shoulder. "And don't assume a delicacy in +speaking of the—the lady, because it's unnecessary. As I've said, I was +very much in love. She had—kept house with a man I knew, before we came +together, and there may have been other affairs—for all I can tell, at +least—I should say most probably." Something in Captain Bingo's face +seems to say "uncommonly probably," though he utters no word. "But she was +awfully pretty, and I lost my head." He shuts his eyes and leans back, and +the lines of his young face are strained and wan. "I—I lost my head."</p> + +<p>"It's—it's natural enough," volunteers Captain Bingo.</p> + +<p>There is another short interval of silence in which the two men on Nixey's +verandah see the same vision—lime-lights of varying shades and colours +thrown from different angles across a darkened garden-scene where +impossible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> tropical flowers expand giant petals, and a spangled waterfall +tumbles over the edge of a blue precipice in sparkling foam. The nucleus +of a cobweb of quivering rays, crossing and intersecting, is a dazzling +human butterfly, circling, spinning, waving white arms like quivering +antennæ, flashing back the coloured lights from the diamonds that are in +her hair and on her bosom, are clasped about her rounded waist and wrists, +gleam like fireflies from the folds of her diaphanous skirts, and sparkle +on her fingers. A provoking, beguiling Impertinence with great stage eyes +encircled by blue rims, a small mouth painted ruby-red, a complexion of +theatrical lilies and roses, and tiny, twinkling feet that beat out a +measure to which Beauvayse's pulses have throbbed madly and now throb no +more.</p> + +<p>"It began in the usual way," he goes on, waking from that stage day-dream, +"with suppers and stacks of flowers, and a muff-chain of turquoise and +brilliants, and ended up with——"</p> + +<p>"With an electric motor-brougham and a flat in Mayfair. Oh Lord, what +thunderin' donkeys we fellows are!" groans Captain Bingo, rubbing his +head, which has hair of a gingery hue, close-cropped until the scalp +blushes pinkly through it, and rubbing nothing in the way of consolation +into the brain inside it.</p> + +<p>"I bought the cottage at Cookham as a surprise for her birthday," goes on +the boy. "She's a year or two older than me——"</p> + +<p>"And the rest," blurts out Captain Bingo. But he drowns the end of the +sentence in a giant sneeze. "Must have caught cold last night without +knowin' it. Dashed treacherous climate this," he murmurs behind the refuge +of a pocket-handkerchief. "And so you bought the cottage for Lessie? +Another nibble out of the golden cheese that the old man's nursing up for +you,—what? And in thingumbob retirement by the something-or-other stream +you hit on the notion of splicing the lovely Lessie Lavigne. Poetry, by +the Living Tinker!"</p> + +<p>"Do you want to hear how I came to cut my own throat?" snarls the boy, +with white, haggard anger alternating with red misery and shame in his +young, handsome face; "because if you do, leave off playing the funny +clown and listen."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Never felt less inclined to be funny in my life. 'Pon my word, I assure +you!" asseverates Bingo. "You're simply a bundle of irritable nerves, my +dear chap, and that's the truth."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't wonder if you knew ... Oh, damn it, Wrynche!"—the young +voice breaks in a miserable sob—"I'm so thundering miserable. And all +because there—there was a kid coming, and I did the straight thing by its +mother."</p> + +<p>"Whew!" Captain Bingham Wrynche gives vent to a long, piercing, dismal +whistle, which so upsets a gaunt mongrel prowling vainly for garbage in +the gutters of Market Square that he puts up his nose and howls in answer. +"Was that how you fell into the——" He is obviously going to say "trap," +but with exceeding clumsiness substitutes "state." And wonders at the +thing having been pulled off so quietly in these days, when confounded +newspapers won't let you call your soul your own.</p> + +<p>"That's because I signed my name 'John Basil Edward Tobart,'" explains +Beauvayse; "and because the Registrar—a benevolent old cock in a large +white waistcoat, like somebody's father in a farcical comedy—wasn't +sufficiently up in the Peerage to be impressed."</p> + +<p>"Weren't there witnesses of sorts?" hints Bingo.</p> + +<p>"Of sorts. The housekeeper at the cottage and my man Saunders—the +discreet Saunders who's with me here. And a fortnight later came the +appointment," goes on the boy. "And—I was gladder than I cared to know at +getting away. She—Lessie—meant to play her part in the 'Chiffon Girl' up +to the end of the Summer Season, and then rest until ..." He does not +finish the sentence.</p> + +<p>"I suppose she's fond of you—what?" hazards Captain Bingo.</p> + +<p>"She cares a good deal, poor girl, and was frightfully cut up at my going, +and I provided for her thoroughly well, of course, though she has heaps of +money of her own. And when I went to stay with my people for a night +before sailing, I'd have broken the—the truth to my mother then, only +something in her face corked me tight. From the moment I took the plunge, +the consciousness of what a rotten ass I'd been had been growin' like a +snowball.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> But on the voyage out"—a change comes into the weary, level +voice in which Beauvayse has told his story—"I forgot to grouse, and by +the time we'd lifted the Southern Cross I wasn't so much regretting what +I'd done as wondering whether I should ever shoot myself because I'd done +it? Up in Rhodesia I forgot. The wonderful champagne air, and the rousing +hard work, the keen excitement and the tingling expectation of things that +were going to happen by-and-by, that have been happening about as since +October, were like pleasant drugs that keep you from thinking. I only +remembered now and then, when I saw Lessie's photograph hanging on the +wall of my quarters, and the portrait she had set in the back of my +sovereign-case, that she and me were husband and wife." He gives a +mirthless laugh. "It makes so little impression on a fellow's mind +somehow, to mooch into a Registrar's office with a woman and answer a +question or two put by a fat, middle-aged duffer who's smiling himself +into creases, and give your name and say, 'No, there's no impediment,' and +put on the ring and pay a fee—I believe it was seven-and-six—and take a +blotchy certificate and walk out—married."</p> + +<p>"It never does take long, by Gad!" agrees Captain Bingo with fervour, "to +do any of the things that can't be undone again."</p> + +<p>"Undone ...!" Beauvayse sits up suddenly and turns his miserable, +beautiful, defiant eyes full on the large, perturbed face of his listener. +"Wrynche, Wrynche! I've felt I'd gladly give my soul to be able to undo +it, ever since I first set eyes on Lynette Mildare!"</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo gives vent to another of his loud, dismal whistles. Then he +gets out of his chair, large, clumsy, irate, and begins:</p> + +<p>"I might have known it, with a chap like you. Another woman's at the +bottom of all your bellowing. You're not a bit sick at having brought an +outsider—a rank outsider, by Gad!—into the family stud; you're not a rap +ashamed at havin' disappointed the old man's hopes of you, for you know as +well as I do that when you'd done sowin' your wild oats and had your +fling, you'd have come in when he rang the bell and married Lady Mary +Menzies. You're not a damned scrap sorry at having broken your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> mother's +heart, though you know in the bottom of your soul that she scented this +marriage in the wind, and had an interview with the Chief, and went down +on her knees to him—her knees, by the Living Tinker!—to give you the +chance of breakin' off an undesirable connection!"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse is out of his chair now. "Is that true—about my mother?" he +demands, blazing.</p> + +<p>"I'm not in the habit of lyin', Lord Beauvayse!" states Captain Bingo +huffily.</p> + +<p>"Don't fly off like a lunatic, Bingo, old man. How did you +find—that—out?"</p> + +<p>"Your cousin Townham told me."</p> + +<p>"Damn my cousin Townham for a dried-up, wiggy, pratin' little +scandalmonger!"</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo retorts irately:</p> + +<p>"Damn him if you please; he's no friend of mine. As yours, what I ask you +is, between man and man, how far have you gone in this fresh affair?"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse drives his hands deep into the pockets of his patched flannels, +and says, adjusting a footstool with his toe over a crack in the +board-flooring, as though the operation were a delicate one upon which +much depended:</p> + +<p>"I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that I care for her +as I never cared yet, and never shall care, for anyone else."</p> + +<p>The faint grin dawns again on Captain Wrynche's large, kindly, worried +face.</p> + +<p>"How many times have you met?"</p> + +<p>"Only four or five times in all," says Beauvayse. "I'd set eyes on her +twice before I was introduced. I couldn't rest for thinking about her. She +drew me and drew me.... And when we did meet, there was no strangeness +between us, even from the first minute. She just seemed waiting for what I +had to own up. And when I spoke, I—I seemed to be only saying what I was +meant to say.... From the beginning of the world! And you'd understand +better if you'd seen her near——"</p> + +<p>"I have seen her in the distance, walking with the Mother-Superior of the +Convent. A tall, slight girl. Looks like a lady," says Bingo, "and has +jolly hair."</p> + +<p>"It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn sunshine or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> a squirrel's back," +raves the boy, "and she's beautiful, Wrynche. My God! so beautiful that +your heart stops beating when you look into her face, and nearly jumps out +of your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. And I swear +there's no other woman for me in life or death!"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be in such a cast-iron hurry to swear if I were you," Captain +Bingo replies judicially. "And—I've heard you say the same about the +others——"</p> + +<p>"It was never true before. And she's a lady," pleads Beauvayse hotly. "A +lady in manners, and education, and everything. The sort of girl one +respects; the sort of girl one can talk to about one's mother and +sisters——"</p> + +<p>"You'd talk about your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman," Captain Bingo +blurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bred +schoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've +got a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins at home in +England."</p> + +<p>The footstool, impelled by a scientific lift of Beauvayse's toe, flies to +the other end of Nixey's verandah. "Is one mistake to ruin a man's life? +I'll get a divorce from my wife. I will, by Heaven!"</p> + +<p>"You told me not to maunder just now," says Bingo, with ponderous sarcasm. +"Who is the maunderer, I'd like to know? By the Living Tinker, I should +have thought that this siege life would have put iron into a man's blood +instead of—of Crème de Menthe. Are you takin' those dashed morphia +tabloids of Taggart's for bad-water collywobbles again? Yes? I thought as +much. Chuck 'em to the aasvogels; stick to your work—you can't complain +of its lackin' interest or variety—and let this girl alone. She's a lady, +and the adopted daughter of an old friend of my wife's, and don't you +forget it!" Bingo's gills are red, and he puffs and blows as large, +excited, fleshy men are wont to. "If you do you'll answer to me!"</p> + +<p>"I tell you," Beauvayse cries, white-hot with passion, and raising his +voice incautiously, "that I mean to marry her. I tell you again that I +will div——"</p> + +<p>"Do you want the man in the street and every soul in the hotel to know +your private affairs?" demands Bingo. "If so, go on shoutin'. As to your +bein' a widower, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> chances are on the other side.... Gueldersdorp ain't +exactly what you would call a healthy place just now. And as to divorcin' +your wife, how do you know she'll ever be accommodatin' enough to give you +reason? And if she did, do you think a girl brought up in a Catholic +Convent would marry you, even if you called to ask her with a copy of the +decree absolute pasted on your chest? Hang it, man, your mother's son you +ought to know better! And—oh come, I say!"</p> + +<p>For Beauvayse sits down astride an iron chair, and lays his shirt-sleeved +arms on the back-rail, and his golden, crisply-waved head upon them.</p> + +<p>"I—I love her so, Wrynche. And to stand by and see another man cut in and +win what I've lost by my own rotten folly hurts so—so damnably." His +mouth is twisted with pain.</p> + +<p>"Is there another chap who wants to cut in?" Bingo demands.</p> + +<p>"You know one gets a bit clairvoyant when one is mad about a woman," says +Beauvayse, lifting his shamed wet eyes and haggard young face from the +pillow of his folded arms. "Well, I'm dead certain that there is another +man who—who is as badly hit as me."</p> + +<p>"Who is the other man?"</p> + +<p>"Saxham!"</p> + +<p>"The Doctor! Shouldn't have supposed a fellow of that type would be +susceptible now," says Bingo. "Gives an uncompromisin' kind of impression, +with his chin like the bows of an Armoured Destroyer, and his eyebrows +like another chap's moustaches."</p> + +<p>"And eyes like a pair of his own lancets underneath 'em. But he's a +frightfully clever beast," says Beauvayse. "And what he wants in looks he +makes up in brains. And—and if he knew there was a scratch against me, he +might force the running and win hands down. So hang on to my secret by +your eyelids, old fellow, and don't give me reason to be sorry I told——"</p> + +<p>"You have my word, haven't you? And, talking about scratch entries," says +Bingo, inspired by a sudden rush of recollection, "I ain't so sure that +the Doctor—though, mind you, this is between ourselves—is the sort of +wooer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> a parent of strict notions would be likely to encourage. Do you +happen to have come across a goggle-eyed, potty little Alderman +Brooker?—a Town Guardsman who runs a general store in the Market +Place—that's his place of business with the boarding up, and the end +butted in by a Creusot shell that didn't burst, luckily for Brooker. Well, +this beast buttonholed me months ago, and began to spin a cuffer about +Saxham."</p> + +<p>"What had the dirty little bounder got to say?" asked Beauvayse, +stiffening in disgust, "about a man he isn't fit to black the boots of?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing special nice. Said Saxham had lost his London connection through +getting involved in a mess with a woman," says the big Dragoon.</p> + +<p>"Don't we all get into messes of that kind? What more?" demands Beauvayse.</p> + +<p>"Said the Doctor had kicked over the traces pretty badly here. Pitched me +a tale of his—Brooker's—having often acted as the Mayor's Deputy on the +Police Court Bench, Brooker being an Alderman, and swore that he'd had +Saxham up before him a dozen times at least in the last three years, along +with the Drunks and Disorderlies."</p> + +<p>"It sounds like a hanged lie!"</p> + +<p>"If I didn't say as much to Brooker," responds Captain Bingo, "I shut him +up like a box by referrin' politely to glass houses, knowin' Brooker had +been squiffy himself one night on guard, and by remindin' him that men who +talk scandal of their superior officers under circumstances like the +present are liable to be Court-Martialled and given beans. And as the +Chief, and Saxham with him, dropped on Brooker in the act of smuggling +lush into the trenches the other day, I fancy Brooker's teeth are fairly +drawn. Though he swore to me that there isn't a saloon-keeper or a +saloon-loafer in the town that doesn't know Saxham by the nickname of the +Dop Doctor."</p> + +<p>"The man don't exist who objects to hear of the disqualifications, mental +and physical, of a fellow who he's thought likely to enter the lists with +him in the—in the dispute for a woman's favour," says Beauvayse, with a +pleasant air of candour. "And though the story sounds like a lie, as I've +said, there's a possibility of its being the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> other thing. I'm sorry for +Saxham—that goes without sayin'—though I don't like his overbearin' +scientific side and his sledge-hammer manner. But that a man with a record +of that kind should set his heart upon a girl like Lynette Mildare is +horrible, intolerable, Wrynche; and while, for the man's own sake, I +should respect his beastly secret, for <i>her</i> sake and in <i>her</i> interests, +and if I consider that he's putting himself forward at the risk of my—my +prospects and my hopes, I shall make use of what I know."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean you'd split on the man!" splutters Bingo; "because, if you +do——"</p> + +<p>"All's fair in Love and War," says Beauvayse, with a ring of defiance in +his pleasant, boyish voice, and a gleam of triumph in his beautiful sleepy +eyes. "And this is Love in War. You've put a trump card in my hand against +Saxham, whether you meant to or not, and when the time comes, I shall play +it."</p> + +<p>He gets up and lounges away. And Captain Bingo, emitting another wailing +whistle as he slews round to stare after the tall, retreating figure with +the crisp, golden head, is sure of nothing so certainly as that Beauvayse +will play that trump card. He is repentant for having broached the +Doctor's secret as he climbs up by the narrow iron stair that leads out +upon the roof of Nixey's Hotel, to relieve his commanding officer at the +binoculars.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2> + + +<p>You are invited, the very Sunday upon which the previously-recorded +conversation took place, to make the acquaintance of the sprightly P. +Blinders, Acting-Secretary to Commandant Selig Brounckers, Head Laager, +Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State's United Forces, Tweipans.</p> + +<p>P. Blinders, a long-bodied, short-legged young Dutch apothecary of the +Free State, with short-sighted eyes behind hugely magnifying spectacles, +and many fiery pimples bursting through the earthy crust of him, possibly +testifying to the presence of volcanic fires beneath, had acted in the +clerkly capacity to the Volksraad at Groenfontein. When Government did not +sit at the Raad Zaal, Blinders,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> as calmly as any ordinary being might +have done, dispensed jalap, castor-oil, and pill-stick over the counter of +his store. These are the three heroic besoms employed by enlightened and +conscientious Boer housewives for sweeping out the interiors of their +families.</p> + +<p>Pill-stick is rhubarb-pill in the concrete. The thrifty mother buys a foot +or so, and pinches off a bolus of the required magnitude thrice in the +year. No dosing is allowed in between; the members of the family get it +when the proper time comes round. To everyone his or her share, not +forgetting the baby.</p> + +<p>When P. Blinders came away, he left his grandfather to keep store, +previously explaining to the aged man the difference between hydrocyanic +acid and almond-essence for cake-flavouring, powders of corrosive +sublimate and Gregory's. By a subtle transition the apothecary-clerk then +became the epistolary right-hand of General Brounckers, whose wife, son, +and grandson, with P. Blinders, made up his personal staff. And round the +Commandant's living-waggon, where they harboured, Chaos reigned and +Confusion prevailed, and disputes in many tongues—English severely +excepted—made Babel. And, side by side with the domestic, decent virtues +weltered all the vices rampant in the Cities of The Plain.</p> + +<p>It goes without saying that the fresh site of Head Laager had been +cunningly chosen. It occupied a shield-shaped plateau among low, +flat-topped hills. The single street of Tweipans bounded it upon the east, +and a rocky ridge upon the western side that might have been the vertebra +of some huge reptile of the Diluvian Period, protected camp and village +from British shell-practice.</p> + +<p>Signs of this were not lacking. Waggons with shattered timbers and +fantastically twisted irons, broken carts, and guns dismounted from their +carriages, were to be seen, near the dismembered or disembowelled bodies +of the beasts that had drawn them. Dead horse or mule or bullock, +decomposing in the sun, seemed to have nothing of offence for Republican +noses. The yellow smear of lyddite was everywhere, and, looking over the +rock-rampart upon the works below, you saw it like a blight, or yolk of +egg spilt upon a war-map.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> + +<p>Family parties bivouacked in those bottle-shaped trenches where each +fighting unit had his separate box of provisions sunk in the earth beside +him, and his cooking-fire of chips and dry dung, and ate and slept and +smoked and shot as he thought good. And in despite of such fires, the +unrestricted space and pure hill-air notwithstanding, the noisome ditches +wherein the cribbed, cabined, and confined defenders of Gueldersdorp +alternately grilled and soaked, were alleys of musk-roses, marvels of +sanitary purity compared with the works of the besiegers, and the +abominable camps, where, in the absence of a nocturnally active +Quartermaster-Sergeant, with his band of pioneers, stench took you by the +throat and nose, while filth absorbed you over the ankles.</p> + +<p>A whiff of peculiarly overpowering potency, reaching you, made you turn +away, and then the immense disorder of the camp seized and held your eyes.</p> + +<p>Arms, saddles, karosses, blankets, clothing, panniers of provisions and +boxes of ammunition, were piled about in mountainous heaps. Of military +organisation, discipline, authority, law, as these are understood by +civilised nations, there was nothing whatever. Men in well-worn velveteens +and felt billycocks, hobnobbed with men in the gaudiest uniforms ever +evolved by the theatrical costumier. Green velvet and gold lace, topped by +cocked hats that had despoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainly +ridiculous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments belongun' +to 'um at all at all! and had come over from the Distressful Country to +make a bould bid for glory, with the experience of warfare acquired while +lurking behind hedges with shot-guns, in waiting for persons in disfavour +with the Land League.</p> + +<p>Patriarchs of eighty years and callow schoolboys of sixteen fought side by +side with the fine flower and the lusty prime of Boer manhood, and many +had their wives and children with them under the Transvaal colours, and +not a few had brought their mothers. When an officer had any order to give +his men, he prefaced it with the Boer equivalent for "Hi!" When the men +had heard as much as they considered necessary, they would say, "Come on; +let's be going," and slouch away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p> + +<p>P. Blinders, being a Dutchman of the Free State, minded smells no more +than a Transvaal Boer. Yet it sometimes occurred to him as odd that the +duties of a Secretary should embrace the peeling of potatoes and the +performance of other duties of the domestic kind.</p> + +<p>He was squatting in the shadow of the Commandant's living-waggon, +polishing off the last of a panful, when Van Busch came along. English +being an unpopular language, the big Johannesburger and the little Free +Stater exchanged greetings in the Taal.</p> + +<p>"Ging oop, and leave your woman's work there, and walk a piece with me," +said Van Busch. "I have something to say to you about my sister that +married the German drummer, and is stopping at Kink's Hotel."</p> + +<p>You can see Van Busch taking off his broad-brimmed hat, and knocking the +sweat from the leather lining-band. He was dressed in a black broadcloth +tailed-coat, flannel shirt, and cord breeches, wore heavy veldschoens, and +carried a Mauser rifle, as did everybody else, and had a long +hunting-knife as well as a heavy six-shooter in the wide canvas +pouch-belt, and a bandolier heavy with cartridges. Thus panoplied, he +accurately resembled ten thousand other men.</p> + +<p>But his dark, overfed, full-blooded, whiskered face was not that of an +agriculturist, and the strange light eyes, rust-coloured like those of an +adder, and, like the ophidian's, set flush with the oddly-flattened edges +of their orbits, were at variance with the high, rounded, benevolent +temples crowned with a thinning brake of curly hair. The rapacious mouth, +with the thick scarlet lips, belonged to the eyes.</p> + +<p>He had put on his hat again, but he swept it off in a flourishing bow, as +Mevrouw Brounckers, in high-kilted wincey, a man's hat of coarse straw +perched on her weather-beaten, sandy-grey head, came stumping down the +waggon-ladder, calling for her potatoes. What was that lazy bedelaar of a +Secretary about, and it nearly eleven of the clock? Didn't he know that +her Commandant liked his meals on time?</p> + +<p>Mevrouw received the politeness less graciously than the potatoes. That +man with the eyes and the greedy red mouth was a woman-eater, she knew. +Not for sheep and bear would she, grandmother as she was, trust herself +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> house barn alone with a klant like that. But her Commandant had uses +for him, the twinkling-eyed, soft-mannered, big rogue. She watched him +walking off with P. Blinders, for whom she entertained a distaste grounded +on the knowledge that no good ever came of these double-tongued Free +Staters.</p> + +<p>And this one could <i>write</i> in the accursed shibboleth of England as well +as in the Taal. She shook her head as the potatoes rattled into the big +pot hanging over the fire. And he walked out on Sundays with the young +German woman who was maid to the refugee-widow staying at Kink's Hotel, +and who never showed her nose inside the Gerevormed Kerk, the godless +thing! or went out except by bat-light. Of that one the Mevrouw Brounckers +had her opinion also. And time would show who was right.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Van Busch and P. Blinders, who had left the dorp behind them, +and strolled up the almost dry bed of a sluit leading up amongst the +hills, conversed, in Sabbath security from English artillery, and +reassuring remoteness from Dutch eavesdroppers. And their theme was the +German drummer's refugee-widow who never went to kerk.</p> + +<p>Van Busch, who found it helpful in his business never to forget faces, had +met her on the rail, months back, travelling up first-class from Cape +Town. Early in October it was, while the road was still open. And men who +kept their eyes skinned went backwards and forwards and round and about, +getting the hang of things, and laying up accurate mental notes, because +the other kind were even more risky to carry than the nuggets and raw dust +that are hidden in the padded linings of the gold-smugglers' heavy +garments.</p> + +<p>The lady, small, dark, stylishly-tailored, and with bright black, +bird-like eyes, was not a German drummer's widow when Van Busch and she +first met. She had chatted in her native English with her square, bulky, +sleek-looking fellow-passenger, well-dressed in grey linen drill +frock-coat and trousers, with blazing diamonds studding the bosom of his +well-starched shirt and linking his cuffs.</p> + +<p>The wide felt hat he politely removed as he came into the carriage +revealed to Lady Hannah a tall, expansive, well-developed forehead. Below +the line of the hat-rim he was burned coffee-brown, like many another +British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> Colonial. The observant eye of "Gold Pen" took in the man's +vulgarly handsome features and curiously light eyes, and twinkled at the +flaring jewellery and the whiskers of obsolete Dundreary pattern that +stood out on either side the jewelled one's full, smooth chin. His large, +bold, over-red mouth, with the curling outward flange to it, gave her a +disagreeable impression. One would have been grateful for a beard that hid +that mouth.</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah found it curiously disquieting until her fellow-traveller +began to talk, in a thick, lisping voice, with curiously candid and simple +intonations. He presented himself, and she accepted him at his own +valuation, as a British Johannesburger, and influential member of the +Chamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the tall chimneys and +white dumping-heaps of the Rand.</p> + +<p>Van Busch called his efforts to be ingratiating "sucking up to" the lady. +He sucked up, thinking at first she might be the wife of the English field +officer who had been ordered down from the north to take over the +Gueldersdorp command. Then he found she was only the grey mare of an +officer of the Staff....</p> + +<p>She plied Van Busch in his triple character of politician, patriot, and +mine-owner with questions. Thought she was juicing a lot of information, +whereas Van Busch was the one who learned things. Kind of playing at being +newspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London newspaper articles +all the time. Had laid out to be a little tin imitation of Dora Corr, or, +say, nickel-plated, with cast chasings. Was burning for an opening in the +diplomatic go-betweening line; wanted to dabble in War Correspondence, and +so on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest egg in the little lady's +nest of ambitions was the desire to do a flutter on the Secret Service +lay.</p> + +<p>She wanted to be what he termed a "slew," and she would have called a spy. +He fiddled to her dancing, and wearied before she did.</p> + +<p>"What Woman has done Woman may do!" was the burden of her ceaseless song. +And when she left the train at Gueldersdorp, "<i>Au revoir</i>" said she with a +flash of her bright black eyes, nodding to the big Colonial, who was so +excessively civil about handing out her dressing-case and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> travelling-bag. +"Many thanks, and don't give me away if you should happen to meet me in a +different skin one of these fine days, Mr. Van Busch."</p> + +<p>"Sure, no; not I," said the burly Johannesburger, with an effusion of what +looked like genuine admiration. "By thunder! when it comes to playing the +risky game there's no daring to beat a woman's. Give me a petticoat, say +I, for a partner every time."</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" Her eyes snapped approvingly. She waved a little hand towards a +large pink officer of the British Imperial Staff, who was looking into all +the first-class compartments in search of a wife who had been vainly +entreated to remain at Cape Town. "There's my husband, who entertains the +precisely opposite opinion. But he hasn't your experience—only a theory +worn thin by generations of ancestors, all chivalrous Conservative +noodles, who kept their females in figurative cotton-wool. Do let me +introduce you. I'd simply love to have him hear you talk."</p> + +<p>Van Busch did not pant to make the acquaintance of the Military +Authorities. He thanked the impulsive Lady Hannah, but made haste to climb +back into the train. The big pink officer recognised the object of his +search, and strode down the platform bellowing a welcome. As Lady Hannah +waved in reply, the Johannesburger made a long arm from the window, and +thrust a pencil-scrawled card into the tiny gloved hand.</p> + +<p>"S's'h! Shove that away somewhere safe," said Van Busch, in a thrillingly +mysterious whisper; "and, remember, any time you want to learn the lay of +the land and follow up the spoor of movements on the quiet, that Van +Busch, of the British South African Secret War-Intelligence-Bureau, is the +man to put you on. A line to that address, care of W. Bough, will always +get me. And with nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money for +palm-oil...." His greedy mouth made a grinning red gash in the smug brown +face with the fine whiskers of blackish-brown. His cold eyes scintillated +and twinkled unspeakable things at the little lady as the train carried +him away.</p> + +<p>Assuredly Van Busch understood women no less thoroughly than his near +relative, Bough. He knew that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> you could bait for and catch the sex with +things that were not tangible. Men wanted to be made sure of money or +money's worth. And for the co-operation of P. Blinders in the adroit +little game by which the German drummer's refugee-widow who stayed at +Kink's Hotel, and only went out after dark, had been relieved of a +handsome sum, Van Busch had had to part with nearly one-third of the swag. +No wonder he felt and talked like a robbed man.</p> + +<p>"All very well to talk," said P. Blinders, scratching his newest pimple, +and looking with exaggerated moonish simplicity at nobody in particular +through his large round magnifying spectacles. "But what could you have +done without me, once the little Englishwoman smelled the porcupine in the +barrel? When she drove out to your friend Bough's plaats at Haarsgrond in +that spider, pretending she was your sister that had married a Duitscher +drummer in Gueldersdorp, and buried him, and was afraid to be shut up in +the stad with all those lustful rooineks, you thought it would be enough +to tell her Staats Police or Transvaal burghers were after her to make her +creep into a mousehole and pay you to keep her hid. And it did work +nicely—for a while. Then the Englishwoman got angry—oh, very angry!—and +told you things that were not nice. Either you should put her in the way +of getting the information she wanted, or good-bye to her dear brother, +Hendryk Van Busch, and his friend Bough."</p> + +<p>"For a pinch of mealies I'd have let the little shrew go, by thunder!" +said the affectionate relative. "But my good heart stopped me. The country +wasn't safe for a couple of women to go looping about," he added. "And one +of them with two hundred pounds in Bank of England notes stitched into the +front of her stays...."</p> + +<p>"<i>Five</i> hundred pounds," said the Secretary, with pleasantly twinkling +spectacles. Van Busch's stare was admirable in its incredulity.</p> + +<p>"Sure, no, brother; not so much as that?"</p> + +<p>"Trudi told me," smirked P. Blinders.</p> + +<p>"You and her seem to be great and thick together," said Van Busch, with a +flattering leer. The little ex-apothecary placed his hand upon his chest, +and said, with a gleam of tenderness lighting up his spectacles:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I have sighed, and she has smiled." He went on, "If your friend Bough had +been brave enough to try and take away that wad of banknotes from the +little Englishwoman, he would have met trouble. For in a pocket of her +gown she carries a revolver, and sleeps with it under her pillow by night; +that is another thing that Trudi has told me." He kissed his fingers, and +waved them in the direction of Kink's Hotel. "She is a lovely maiden!" He +blew his nose without the assistance of a pocket-handkerchief, and +continued:</p> + +<p>"Of course, Bough might have put some stuff in the Englishwoman's coffee +that would have made her sleep while he stole that money, or he might even +have killed her quietly, and buried her on the farm. But a man who does +that is not so clever and so wise as the man who makes a plan that gets +the money and keeps friends all round, and makes everybody happy—is he, +now? And that man is me, and that plan was mine. From P. Blinders you have +genuine information to sell the Englishwoman, and when she has bought it, +paying well for it, and written it all down in her despatches to the +Commandant at Gueldersdorp, she hands the letters back to you to be +smuggled through the lines, and pays through the nose for that also. And +who shall say she is cheated? For the letters do get through"—the pimply +countenance of P. Blinders was quite immobile, but the eyes behind the +great spectacles twirled and twinkled with infinite meaning—"a week or so +after date, perhaps, but what is that? Nothing—nothing at all."</p> + +<p>"Nothing," agreed Van Busch. The two men smiled pleasantly in each other's +faces for a minute more. Then said Van Busch, with a loud sigh:</p> + +<p>"But what I have to tell you now is something. The Englishwoman has got no +more money. Ask Trudi, if you think I lie. And, of course, the plan was a +good plan, and you were a smart fellow to hit on it; but now the two +hundred pounds is gone——"</p> + +<p>"Three hundred remain to get." P. Blinders briskly held up five stumpy red +fingers and tucked down the thumb and little finger, leaving a trio of +mute witnesses to the correctness of his arithmetic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No more remains to get. The cow has run dry."</p> + +<p>The brow of P. Blinders grew scarlet as a stormy sunrise.</p> + +<p>"Hoe? What is this I hear?" he demanded with indignation. "Nothing left, +and I have not had but a hundred and fifty out of the five hundred. There +has been dishonesty somewhere. There have been tricks, unbefitting the +dealings of scrupulous Christian men. Foei, foei!"</p> + +<p>Van Busch stuck his thumbs into his belt and smiled amiably down into the +indignant eyes behind the spectacles. Then he said, with his most candid +look and simplest lisp:</p> + +<p>"No tricks, brother; all fair and above-board. Ask the Commandant whether +Van Busch is square or not? He knows that the hundred and fifty was paid +you honestly on his account, and that I kept but fifty for myself. And +you're not the chap to bilk him of his due. Sure no, you'll never do that, +never! Go and see him now, and settle up. I had a talk with young Schenk +Eybel this morning, and he says the answer to the screeve you wrote to the +Officer in Command at Gueldersdorp—to patch up an exchange of the +Englishwoman for that slim kerel of a Boer's son they got their claws on +at the beginning of the siege—has come in under the white flag this +morning. Schenk Eybel has a little plan he can't put through without Walt +Slabberts, he says. Loop, brother. You'll find the old man on his grey +pony near the Field Hospital."</p> + +<p>The eyes behind the spectacles whirled in terror. The ex-apothecary +faltered:</p> + +<p>"What—what is this you say? The money paid me on the Commandant's +account—when it was to be a secret between us.... Foei, foei! This is +unfair. And suppose I have spent it, how shall I replace it? Do you wish +to ruin an honest man?"</p> + +<p>Van Busch grinned, and P. Blinders gave up hopelessly. At least, it seemed +so, for he turned sharp round, and trotted off with sorrowfully-drooping +black coat-tails, in search of the meek grey pony and the terrible old +man.</p> + +<p>But the front view of the Secretary displayed a countenance whose pimples +radiated satisfaction, and spectacles that were alight with joy. +Much—very much—would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> P. Blinders have liked to have kept that hundred +and fifty, but his fear had proved greater than his desire.</p> + +<p>He had paid every tikkie of the money faithfully to Brounckers, and his +hands were metaphorically clean, and his neck comfortably safe. He was the +poorer by a hundred and fifty pounds, but the richer in wisdom and +experience; and—he chuckled at the thought of this—in the joy of knowing +himself, in postscripts appended to those despatches of the +Englishwoman's, to have poked sly sarcasm at the British Lion. Whose spiny +tail P. Blinders imagined to be lashing, even then, at the prick of the +goad.</p> + +<p>For another thing, very pleasant to think of, he had successfully pitted +the cunning behind his giant spectacles against the superior villainy of +Mr. Van Busch of Johannesburg.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>The German drummer's refugee-widow, who lived behind two green-shuttered, +blinded windows at Kink's Hotel, and was a sister of that good Boer +Mijnheer Hendryk Van Busch—"<i>a sister indeed!</i>" snorted Mevrouw Kink; and +never went to the kerk-praying, or put her nose out of doors at all before +dark, and had a maid who did her hair, and wore her own in waves, the +impudent wench! and whose portmanteau, and bag, and boots, and shoes, and +skirt-bands, had fashionable London tradesmen's labels inside them, was +the only person in the village of Tweipans and for a mile round it—good +Nederlands measure—who did not know that she was an English +prisoner-of-war.</p> + +<p>Her foray in quest of Secret Information had had its hardships, as its +alarms and excursions, but she plumed herself on having accomplished +something of what she had set out to do. Van Busch, not counting a week of +days when she had found reason to suspect his entire good faith, had +behaved like a staunch Johannesburger of British blood and Imperial +sympathies. But his valuable services had been rendered for so much more +than nothing that Lady Hannah found herself in the condition her Bingo was +wont to describe as "stony." She had sent for Van Busch to tell him that +the position was untenable. She would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> evacuate it, when he could manage +to get hold of Nixey's mouse-coloured trotter and the spider, left in the +care of Van Busch's good friend Bough, at Haargrond Plaats.</p> + +<p>A dash for freedom then. In imagination she could hear the mouse-coloured +trotter's hoofs rattling over the stony ground, and the crack, crack of +the sentries' Mausers, followed by a hail of bullets from the trenches.... +She could see the headlines of the latest newspaper sensation, flaming on +the greenish gloom of the room with the closed shutters and drawn-down +blinds:</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Stirring Story from the Seat of Hostilities: Lady War-Correspondent runs +the Gauntlet of Boer Rifles.</span>"</p> + +<p>"Speshul. Hextry Speshul!"</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>Perhaps she would be mortally wounded by the time she got through the +lines, so as to hang in bleeding festoons over the splashboard, and sink +into the arms of the husband loved better than aught save Glory, gasping, +as her heroic spirit fled——</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>"Did the gracious lady say she would have her boots on?"</p> + +<p>Trudi got up from the flattest and most uncomfortable of the two +forbidding beds Kink's principal guest-chamber boasted, and ran her +unoccupied needles through her interminable knitting, a thick white cotton +sofa-cover or counterpane of irritating pattern—and stood over against +her employer in an attitude of sulky submission. She was a +square-shouldered, sturdily-built young woman of twenty-five, with round +eyes of pinky-blue garnished with white eyelashes, no eyebrows, and a +superb and aggressively-brilliantined head of fair hair elaborately +dressed, waved, and curled.</p> + +<p>The hair was all attached to Trudi's scalp. Lady Hannah had lain in bed +morning after morning, for weary weeks, and watched her "doing it," and +wondered that any young feminine creature with such arms, such skin, and +such hair should be so utterly unattractive. But she had lived all these +weeks in this one room with Trudi, had languished under her handmaid's +lack of intelligence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> had seen her eat, wielding her knife with +marvellous dexterity, and, wakeful, tossed the while she snored.</p> + +<p>And every morning, after Mevrouw Kink had brought in coffee, snorting +whenever Trudi's hair caught her virtuous eye, or whenever the German +drummer's widow struck her as being more foreign of manners and appearance +than usual, Lady Hannah would call for her boots, attire herself as for a +promenade outdoors, lift the corner of a blind, steal a glance at the +seething, stenching single street of Tweipans between the slats of the +green shutters, and—unpin her veil and take off her hat without a +word....</p> + +<p>By eleven o'clock at night the polyglot confusion of tongues would have +ceased, the gaudily-uniformed swaggerers, the velveteen-coated, +wide-awaked loafers, the filthy tatterdemalions of all nations and their +womenkind would have turned in. Then Lady Hannah, attended by the +unwilling Trudi, was accustomed to venture out for what she called, with +some exaggeration, "A whiff of fresh air."</p> + +<p>Except for the gnawing, prowling dogs, the pickets at either end of it, +and the sentries posted at longish intervals all down its length, the +street of new brick and tin, and old wooden houses that made Tweipans, +belonged to Lady Hannah then. Accompanied by Trudi, whose quality of being +what I have heard called "deaf-nosed" with regard to noisy smells, she +arrived at the pitch of envying, she would stumble up and down amongst the +rubbish, or wade through the slush if it had been wet, and stop at +favourable points to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blue +glow-worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether anybody +there was thinking of her under the white stars or the drifting scud?...</p> + +<p>But what was Trudi saying?</p> + +<p>"The gracious one cannot have her boots."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" asked Lady Hannah, with languid interest. Trudi struck the +blow.</p> + +<p>"Because she has none."</p> + +<p>"No boots? Well, then, the walking-shoes."</p> + +<p>Trudi smiled all over her large face. This placidity should not long +endure.</p> + +<p>"The gracious one has no shoes either. Boots and shoes—all have been +taken away. Nothing remains except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> the quilted bedroom slippers the +gracious one is wearing. And it is impossible to walk out in bedroom +slippers."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it is." Lady Hannah yawned. "Well, suppose you go and look for +the boots. They may have been carried away by mistake, like——" She +wondered afresh what could have become of that transformation coiffure?</p> + +<p>"There is no mistake." Trudi announced. "And—the gracious lady forgot her +little gun beneath her pillow this morning. That also is missing," +volunteered Trudi, who had had her instructions and scrupulously acted up +to them.</p> + +<p>"My revolver has been stolen?" Lady Hannah sprang from her chair, made +rapid search, and was convinced. The Browning revolver had been certainly +spirited away.</p> + +<p>Red patches burned in her thin little face, and her round black eyes +regained some of their lost brightness. Nothing like a spice of excitement +for bringing you up to the mark. Just now she had felt positively mouldy, +and here she was, herself again.</p> + +<p>"Nobody came into the room in the night. I sleep with the key round my +neck, and if they had opened the door with another, I should have awakened +on the instant. Nobody has been in the room to-day except the Frau +Kink"—you will remember that a German drummer's widow would naturally +converse in her defunct spouse's native language—"the Frau Kink, with the +coffee-tray. She did not come near the bed...." The suddenness and force +of the suspicion that shot up in Lady Hannah's mind lifted her up out of +her chair, and set her upon her feet. "It must have been you. Was it you?"</p> + +<p>She looked hard at Trudi, and Trudi sank upon her bed and dissolved in +noisy weeping.</p> + +<p>"Ach, the wickedness!" she moaned. "To suspect of such shamelessness a +poor young maiden brought up in honesty.... Ach, ach!"</p> + +<p>But Lady Hannah went on:</p> + +<p>"Yesterday morning, when you were so long in coming back with hot water, +and I opened the door and looked out into the passage, I saw you +whispering with a little stumpy, pimply man, in a long-tailed black coat +and large spectacles. Who is he, and of what were you talking?"</p> + +<p>Trudi did not at all regard the verbal sketch of P. Blinders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> as a correct +one, but though her love was blind to his pimples and ignored his +stumpiness, she could not deny the spectacles, which were to her as +peepholes affording visions of a blissful married future.</p> + +<p>"He is a Herr who brought me news from my Mutti at home in Germany. She is +sick, and my father also, and all my little brothers and sisters are sick +too," gulped Trudi, sobbing and wallowing and rasping her flushed features +against the knobbly counterpane of the most uncomfortable of the two beds, +"because they hear that I am in this place, and they so greatly fear that +I will be dead."</p> + +<p>"You aren't dead yet. And you told me when I engaged you that you were an +orphan brought up by an aunt."</p> + +<p>"Pay me my vage," demanded Trudi, lifting a defiant and perfectly dry +countenance, and launching the utterance in the forbidden English +language, "and I vill now go. I vish not to stop here longer."</p> + +<p>"Very well, but where are you going?"</p> + +<p>"That," remarked Trudi, tossing her elaborately-dressed head and relapsing +into her native language, "has nothing to do with the gracious lady."</p> + +<p>There was insolent triumph and unveiled spite in the large face attached +to the elaborate coiffure. The gracious lady, realising that Trudi formed +the one link between herself and the rough, strange, suspicious, +unfriendly male world outside, pocketed her pride to temporise. Let Trudi +remain as companion and attendant to the German refugee-widow yet another +week, and the month's due of wages, already trebled in virtue of a service +involving risk, should be substantially increased.... But Trudi only +snorted and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself confronting not +only a rat determined upon abandoning a sinking ship, but malignantly +inclined to hasten the vessel's foundering.</p> + +<p>What was to be done? It is quite possible to be brave, adventurous, and +daring without a revolver, its absence may even impart a faint sense of +relief to one, as being no longer under the necessity of shooting somebody +with it at a pinch, but without boots or shoes, and a Trudi to put them +on, Lady Hannah found herself at a nonplus. To conceal the fact from the +rejoicing Trudi, she moved to the window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> and drew the blind aside, and +was instantly confronted with a row of round, staring eyes, the nose +belonging to each pair being flattened eagerly against the glass.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Hannah, dropping the blind in consternation at this +manifestation of public interest. A snorting chuckle from the malignant +Trudi fanned the little lady's waning courage into flame. She crossed the +room and turned the door-handle.</p> + +<p>The door was locked from the outside, the key having been removed to +accommodate the eye of Mevrouw Kink, who reluctantly removed it to unlock +the door, and announce that Myjnheer Van Busch had asked to see his +sister, as she ushered the visitor in.</p> + +<p>Sisters are not sensitive as a rule to subtle alterations in the regard of +their brothers, but the German drummer's refugee-widow could not but read +in the face and demeanour of her relative a perceptible diminution of +interest in a woman who had no more money.... He kept on his broad-brimmed +hat and pulled at his bushy whiskers as he exchanged a palpable wink with +Trudi, who was accustomed, when the gracious lady's brother called, to +retire with her knitting behind the shiny American cloth-covered screen +that coyly shielded the washstand from a visitor's observation.</p> + +<p>Those flat, light eyes of the visitor's twinkled oddly as Lady Hannah's +indignant whisper told of the missing footgear and the vanished revolver, +and her conviction that the screened knitter was the active agent in their +spiriting away.</p> + +<p>"You believe the girl's slewed on you, eh, and that things are going to +pan out rough? Well, sure, that's a pity!" The big man lolled against the +deal table, covered with a cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours, +trying to the complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of Mevrouw +Kink, the red, white, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, with the green +staff-line carried all round as an ornamental border. "And I'd not wonder +but you were right." He stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with his +hatted head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth: "So, +now, and what did you think to do?"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah controlled an impulse to knock off the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> big man's +broad-brimmed felt, and even smiled back in the grinning face.... One very +little lady can hold a great deal of anger and resentment without spilling +any over, if she is thoroughly convinced that it would be imprudent as +well as useless to display either.</p> + +<p>"As you gather, I intend returning to Gueldersdorp to-morrow at latest. I +shall not take my maid, as she wishes for her own reasons to remain +behind. Please have the mare and spider here by mid-day coffee-time. We +can drive north towards Haargrond and double back when we're beyond the +lines, as the coursed hare would do."</p> + +<p>Van Busch's red mouth gleamed, curved back from his tobacco-stained teeth. +He said with meaning:</p> + +<p>"Boers shoot hares—not run them."</p> + +<p>"They may shoot or not shoot," proclaimed Lady Hannah. "I start +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Without boots or shoes?" asked the red-edged, yellow-fanged smile.</p> + +<p>"Barefoot if I must," she answered, with all the more spirit that she felt +like the hare struggling in a wire. "Please send for the mare and the +trap. I leave this place to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"The mare and the spider have been commandeered for the use of the United +Republics," said Van Busch. As the angry colour flamed up in Lady Hannah's +small, pale cheeks, he added, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his +hands: "Bough did his best to save them for you, no bounce! But could one +man do anything against so many? Sure no, nothing at all!"</p> + +<p>She lost patience, and stamped her little foot in its quilted satin +slipper.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose I haven't guessed by this time that Bough the Africander +and Van Busch the British-Johannesburger are one Boer when it suits them +both?"</p> + +<p>His hand, copper-brown as his face, and with the marks of old tattooing +obliterated by an acid burn, jerked as he raised it to stroke and feel his +whiskers. Something else upon the hand, in the sharpened state of all her +senses, struck out a spark of old association, and recalled a name once +known. She went on.</p> + +<p>"How many men are you, Mr. Van Busch or Bough?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> You provoke the question +when I see you wearing the Mildare crest and coat-of-arms."</p> + +<p>He had turned the deeply-engraved sard with his brown thumb and clenched +his fist upon it, but as swiftly changed his mind, and took off the ring +and handed it to her.</p> + +<p>"I had this ring off Bough, that's a real live man, and a thundering good +pal of mine, for all your funning. The chap it belonged to died at a farm +Bough owned once. Somewhere in Natal it might have been. And the bloke who +died there was a big bug in England, Bough always thought. But he came +tramping, and hauled up with hardly duds to his back or leather to his +feet. Sick, too, and coughing like a sheep with the rinderpest. Bough was +kind to him, but he got worse and worse. One night Bough was sitting up +with him reading the Bible, when he made signs. 'Take this ring off of my +finger and keep it,' says he. 'I've got nothing else to give you, but I +reckon the Almighty'll foot your bill, for you're a first-class Christian, +if ever there was one.' Then he went in, and Bough buried him in regular +fancy style——"</p> + +<p>"And sent the girl to the nuns at Gueldersdorp, or was she there already?"</p> + +<p>Van Busch was in the act of taking back the sardonyx signet-ring. His hand +jerked again, so sharply that the ring was jerked into the air, fell to +the floor, and rolled under the table. He stooped and reached for it, and +asked, with his face hidden by the patriotic tablecloth:</p> + +<p>"What girl do you mean?"</p> + +<p>His dark face was purple-brown with the exertion of stooping as he rose +up. Lady Hannah answered:</p> + +<p>"The Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp has an +orphan ward, a singularly lovely girl of nineteen or twenty, whose surname +is Mildare. And it struck me just now—I don't know why now, and never +before—that she might be——"</p> + +<p>"Bough never said nothing to me about any girl. What like is this one?" +Van Busch twisted the ring about his little finger, and spoke with a more +sluggish lisp and slurring of the consonants than even was usual with him. +"Is she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, and red +cheeks and thick ankles?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience of Van Busch, had +not yet mastered his method of eliciting information.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare is absolutely the opposite of your description," she +declared. "She is quite tall, and very slight and pale, with slender hands +and feet, and reddish-bronze hair, and eyes the colour of yellow topaz or +old honey, with wonderful black lashes.... I have never seen anything to +compare——" She stopped.</p> + +<p>What strange eyes the man had, full of lines radiating from the pin-point +pupils, scintillating like a snake's.... He said, in his thick, lisping +way:</p> + +<p>"A beauty, eh? And how long might the nuns have had her?"</p> + +<p>"The Mayor's wife told me she has been under the care of the Convent +ladies for some seven years."</p> + +<p>His brown full face looked solid, and his eyes veiled themselves behind a +glassy film. He was thinking, as he said:</p> + +<p>"And her name is Mildare, eh? And you know her?"</p> + +<p>"I have met her once. She was introduced to me as Miss Lynette Mildare. +But just now I find my own affairs unpleasantly absorbing. I am suspected +in this place, Mr. Van Busch, and if not actually a prisoner, am certainly +under restraint. For how much money down will you undertake to extricate +me from this position, and convey me back to Gueldersdorp?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head, and for once the scent of gain did not rouse his +predatory appetite. He was wondering how it should never have occurred to +him before that the scared little white-faced thing might have fallen into +kindly hands, and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of? He was +puzzled to account for her remembering the name that had belonged to the +man whose grave was at the foot of the Little Kopje. He was conscious of +an itching curiosity to find out for his friend Bough whether it really +was the Kid or no? What was the little fool of a woman saying in her +shrill voice?</p> + +<p>"It would be burning your boats, I am quite aware. But if it <i>pays</i> to +burn them——" she suggested, with her black eyes probing vainly in the +shallow ones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p> + +<p>He roused himself.</p> + +<p>"A thousand pounds, English. You've not the money here?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Or a cheque?"</p> + +<p>Her laugh jangled contemptuously.</p> + +<p>"Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books—upon Secret Service?"</p> + +<p>"I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have I +to tell you that? Do you suppose you are a prisoner here because I slewed +on you? Wrong, by God! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you would +cut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, that's what +any man would have done." His tone of injury was excellently feigned, and +his lisp was simplicity itself. "And to call me a dirty spy, when I got +you first-hand information, and ran your letters through to Gueldersdorp, +at the risk of my blooming neck.... Well, you'll be ashamed when you get +back there and see those letters, that's what you will, sure!"</p> + +<p>"The letters got through—yes. But did they get through in time to be of +use?"</p> + +<p>The little she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his whiskers and +scraped his foot upon the floor, and said in his blandest lisp:</p> + +<p>"They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book and swear it, if you +want me."</p> + +<p>How deal with a knave like this, who popped in and out of holes like a +rabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a snake? Lady Hannah knew an immense +yearning for the absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity, +man of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that primitive +weapon of punishment, the doubled human fist.</p> + +<p>"In useful time? Useful Gueldersdorp time or useful Tweipans time? That is +what I want to get at."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell! how do I know?" He had turned sulky and scowling, but her blood +was fairly up.</p> + +<p>"I know that you have successfully swindled me out of five hundred pounds. +I know that when I met you on the train four months back you shaped your +plans and baited a trap——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> + +<p>"To catch a silly woman." His scarlet lips rolled back from his +tobacco-stained teeth. His jeering eyes were intolerable. "Ay, maybe I +did. And what's to say now?"</p> + +<p>"I say you are a blackguard, Mr. Bough Van Busch!"</p> + +<p>The dark face with the light eyes underwent a murderous change. He glanced +over his shoulders right and left, and took a step towards her, carrying +out the movement suddenly, as a tarantula darts upon its prey. Before the +thick brown muscular fingers had choked the scream that rose in her +throat, the key crashed in the lock, and the door was violently kicked +open, admitting ...</p> + +<p>No portrait is required of that burly, bald-browed, sharp-eyed, +grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed and sun-cracked +countenance, implacable under the slouch-hat with the orange-leather band. +We know the old green overcoat, and coarse corduroy breeches, and roughly +tanned leather boots, with heavy, old-fashioned spurs, to have been the +husk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, twinned with a +quiet family-man of bucolic tastes and patriarchal habits.</p> + +<p>Van Busch, broader by inches and taller by half a head, dwindled, seen in +juxtaposition with this man of the iron will and the leader's temperament, +to a flabby, dwarfish, and petty being. The fierce grey eyes took him in, +and read him, and dropped him, and fastened on the little Englishwoman, as +the great boots tramped heavily across the floor, and the great voice +roared, speaking in the Taal:</p> + +<p>"Pull up that blind! Voor den donder! Shall we be mice, that sit and +squeak in the dark?"</p> + +<p>Down came the Mevrouw Kink's square of glazed yellow calico, roller, cord, +and all, at the impatient wrench of the big, heavy hand.... The window was +blocked with heavy bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces; the +street was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at the +little Englishwoman who was a prisoner, and the big man who ruled them by +Fear. His angry grey eyes blazed at the gapers, and the crowd surged back +a foot or two. Then the fierce eyes darted back at pale Lady Hannah, and +the roaring voice began again:</p> + +<p>"You who came here in disguise, with a false story and false hair——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Hannah jumped in her bedroom slippers, and crimsoned to her natural +coiffure, as the missing transformation, appallingly out of wave, was +plucked from the baggy pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandished +before her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual impulse to +shriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a conscience-stricken creature +in that great man's watchful eyes. His big voice shook her and shook the +room as he thundered:</p> + +<p>"Woman, you are no widow of a Duitscher drummer, but the vrouw of a +field-cornet of the Army of Groot Brittanje. He holds a graafschap in +Engeland"—a mistake on the part of the General's informant—"and is +hand-in-glove with the Colonel Commandant at Gueldersdorp." Not so far +from the truth! thought Lady Hannah. "Would he spy out the land, let him +come himself next time. Boers hide not behind their wives' petticoats when +there is such business to be done!"</p> + +<p>In defence of blameless Bingo the hysterical little woman found voice to +say:</p> + +<p>"He—didn't know I was coming."</p> + +<p>"What says she?"</p> + +<p>Before Van Busch could bestir himself to interpret, Lady Hannah had +repeated her words in faulty Dutch.</p> + +<p>"So! Engelsch mevrouws disobey their husbands, it seems?" Were the fierce, +bloodshot grey eyes really capable of a twinkle? "We Boers have a cure for +that. Green reim, well laid on, after the third caution, teaches our wives +to fib and deceive no more."</p> + +<p>"You're wrong, sir."</p> + +<p>"Wrong, do you say? Hoe?"</p> + +<p>"What the green reim does teach them," explained Lady Hannah, secretly +aghast at her own temerity, "is, not to be found out next time."</p> + +<p>He gave a wooden chuckle, but his regard was as menacing and his voice as +gruff as ever.</p> + +<p>"I make no mouth-play with words. I talk in men and guns, and there are +half a dozen among the Engelsch, niet mier, that know how to talk back. +There are one or two others that are duyvels, and not men. And the worst +duyvel of all"—he waved the big hand westward—"is he over there at +Gueldersdorp."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<p>She mentally registered the compliment.</p> + +<p>"You are a woman who writes for the Engelsch newspapers that are full of +shameless tales about the Boers." He spat copiously upon the floor, and +the big voice became a bellow. "Lies, lies! I have had them read to me, +and the people who make them should be shot. Hear you now. You shall write +to them and say: 'Selig Brounckers is a merciful man and a just. He is not +as zwart as he is painted. He caught me mousing round his hoofd laager at +Tweipans—and what does he do?'" The pause was impressive. Then the +roaring voice resumed:</p> + +<p>"'He sends me marching down to the gaol at Groenfontein, that is packed +with dirty white and dirty coloured schelms until there is not room for +one more——"</p> + +<p>He named the homely parasite hymned by Burns ...</p> + +<p>—"'Or he packs me up to Oom Paul at Pretoria, chained to the waggon-tail +like the others.' ..."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah wondered, while the stuffy room spun round her, who the others +were.</p> + +<p>"Geen, I will tell you what he does." He pitched the crumpled +transformation contemptuously into the corner. "He writes to the Engelsch +Commandant at Gueldersdorp and says: 'I have here a silly female thing +that is no use to me. Take her you, and give me in exchange a man of +mine.' ..."</p> + +<p>"And he ... what does ...?" She could get out nothing more.</p> + +<p>"He agrees. Mevrouw Vrynks"—"Dutch for Wrynche," thought Lady Hannah +dizzily—"you will now pay the Mevrouw Kink what is owing for her amiable +entertainment, and you will start for Gueldersdorp in ten minutes' time."</p> + +<p>The roaring voice of the stern, fierce-eyed man, sounded lovelier than the +swan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, with her joyful heart leaping at the +gates of utterance:</p> + +<p>"The—mare and spider. You will be so kind as to return them——?"</p> + +<p>His face became as a human countenance rudely carved in seasoned oak.</p> + +<p>"I know nothing of a mare and spider," blared the great voice.</p> + +<p>She looked him straight between the hot fierce eyes, and spoke out +pluckily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They are not my property. I hired the trap and the trotter from a +hotel-keeper at Gueldersdorp. And Mr. Van Busch tells me that they have +recently been commandeered for the service of the United Forces of the +Transvaal and Orange Free State."</p> + +<p>"So!... Well, that is what I would have done, if they were worth having. +Where is Van Busch?" The angry glance pounced on that patriot in the +remote corner to which he had modestly retired. Van Busch cringed +forwards, hat in hand, explaining:</p> + +<p>"The English Mevrouw mistakes, Myjnheer. Sure, now, I never told her +anything of that kind. How could I, when there was no mare and no spider? +Didn't I drive her and the other woman over from Haargrond, with Bough's +little beast pulling in a cart of my own? Call the other woman, and she +will tell you it was as I say."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah, supremely disdainful, turned her back upon the liar....</p> + +<p>"So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld waggon?" demanded the +bullying voice.</p> + +<p>"I'm willing to go back in anything that isn't a coffin," she declared.</p> + +<p>He gave the wooden chuckle, swung about and trampled to the door, calling +to Van Busch in the tone of a dog's master:</p> + +<p>"Here, you ...!"</p> + +<p>Van Busch followed, wriggling as obsequiously as the dog with a stolen +mutton-chop upon his conscience. The door slammed, the key turned roughly +in the lock. Lady Hannah, oblivious of the absence of outdoor footwear, +flew joyously to cram a few belongings into her travelling-bag and resume +her discarded hat.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted away upon his +appearance, General Selig Brounckers was saying to Van Busch:</p> + +<p>"It is a pity that the Engelschwoman's story was not true about that mare +and spider. For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhaps +have kept them for your trouble——"</p> + +<p>—"Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> said Van Busch in a +hurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has a +mouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider +stands under the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let Bough +know Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have them. He'll make no bones +about parting then. Sure, no! he'll never dare to."</p> + +<p>"I will send a couple of my burghers with you to take care he does not," +said the Commandant, in what was for the redoubtable Brounckers an easy +tone. "It is unlucky," he added less pleasantly, "that you were such a +verdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I had commandeered +both beast and vehicle for Republics' use. Because now I will do it, look +you! No Boer's son that lives, by the Lord! will I suffer to make Selig +Brounckers out a liar." He added, as Van Busch salaamed and squirmed with +more than Oriental submissiveness, "Least of all a sneaking Africander +schelm like you. And now, about the money?"</p> + +<p>"Excellentie——" lisped Van Busch, smiling his oily brown face into +ingratiating creases ...</p> + +<p>"I am no Excellentie.... Of how much money, properly belonging to the +Republics' war-chest, have you cheated this little fool of an +Engelschwoman?"</p> + +<p>"Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant," bleated Van Busch, "I had from her +one hundred and fifty pounds, which I swear as an honest man has been +handed over to Myjnheer Blinders——"</p> + +<p>"He has accounted to me."</p> + +<p>"Five weeks back——?" Van Busch hinted.</p> + +<p>"He has accounted for it five weeks back."</p> + +<p>There are men who possess all the will to be rogues, but have not the +requisite courage. Such a man was Blinders, who emerged plus a sweetheart, +the approval of his Commandant, and the <i>éclat</i> of having chaffed the +British Lion, out of the affair that was to prove so expensive to Mr. Van +Busch.</p> + +<p>"And"—the big voice trumpeted, as Van Busch, like a stout pinned +butterfly, quivered, transfixed by the glare of the savage eyes—"you will +now account to me for the rest."</p> + +<p>Van Busch faltered with a sickly smile:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Fifty more, Myjnheer, that I was bringing you myself——"</p> + +<p>"One hundred and fifty you have paid me, and fifty you were going to pay +me. Ik wil het—but where are the other hundreds you have paid Van Busch?" +bellowed the roaring voice. "Does not my old man-baboon at home pouch six +walnuts for every one that his wife gets to share with her youngster? When +I want to make the big thief spit them out, I squeeze him by the neck. So, +voor den donder! will I do to you. Only, geloof mij, I will not do it in +play. Pay Blinders the other five hundred pounds before kerk-time. If you +haven't got the cash about you, he and young Schenk Eybel shall ride with +you to Haargrond, where lives your friend Bough. They can bring back the +money and the mare and spider, too. Moreover, Eybel, who is a bright boy, +and has a head upon his shoulders, wants a slim rogue of a fellow that +talks Engelsch to worm himself in over yonder"—he jerked his gnarled +thumb in the direction of Gueldersdorp—"and bring back a plan of the +defences on the west, where the native stad lies. Perhaps I will let you +keep two hundred of that five hundred if you are the man to go.... But +whether you go or stay, by the Lord! you will find it best to be square +with Selig Brounckers."</p> + +<p>And the redoubtable Brounckers stumped off. Verily, in times of scarcity, +when the lion is a-hungered, the jackal must lose his bone.</p> + +<p>It would be well, thought the dispirited jackal ruefully, to remove the +unfavourable impression made, by a valuable service rendered to the United +Republics. It would be a good thing to stand well with Myjnheer Schenk +Eybel, who would, when Brounckers went south, be left in sole command. It +would be as well, also, to get a look at that girl that was living with +the nuns at Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>"Mildare ..." That was the puzzle—her having the name so pat. But these +little frightened, white-faced things were sly, and kids remembered more +than you thought for....</p> + +<p>Grown up a beauty, too, and with the manners of a lady. He swore again, +the thing seemed so incredible, and spat upon the dust. A pretty green +shining beetle crawled there. He set his heavy foot upon the insect, and +its beauty was no more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>As the Captain's heavy cavalry stride shakes Nixey's roof, the upright, +lightly-built soldierly figure in khâki turns and comes towards him, +giving the binoculars in charge to the Sergeant-Major of Irregulars, who +is his orderly of the day.</p> + +<p>"I want a word with you, Wrynche. Rawlings will take the glasses. Come in +here under cover."</p> + +<p>He leads the way. The cover is a canvas shelter, perhaps a protection from +the blazing sun, but none at all from shell and bullets. There are a +couple of wooden chairs under its flimsy spread and a little table. The +Chief sits down astride on one of the chairs, accepts a cigar from Captain +Bingo's enormous crocodile-leather case, and says, as the first ring of +blue smoke goes wavering upwards:</p> + +<p>"You'll be glad to know that Monboia's Barala runner has got through with +good news <i>for you</i>." The last two words are rather strongly emphasised. +"Just before dawn and after Beauvayse relieved you at Staff Bombproof +South."</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo swallows violently, runs a thick finger round inside his +collar, and his big face goes through several changes of complexion, +ranging from boiled suet-dumpling paleness to beetroot red. He looks away +and blinks before he says in a voice that wobbles:</p> + +<p>"Then my wife's—all right?"</p> + +<p>"Lady Hannah and her German attendant, as far back as the day before +yesterday, when Monboia's man saw them, were in the enjoyment of excellent +health."</p> + +<p>"Poof!" Captain Bingo blows a genuine sigh of relief, and the latent +lugubriousness departs from him. "Good hearing. I've had—call it +hippopotamus on the chest this two months, and you'll about hit the mark. +Uncertainty and suspense get on a man's nerves, in the long-run. Bound to. +And never a word—the deuce a line—all these—— Poof!" He blows again, +and beams. The Colonel, watching him out of the corner of one keen eye, +says, with a twitching muscle in the cheek that is turned away from him:</p> + +<p>"My good news being told, I have a slice of bad for you. But first let me +make an admission. Since Nixey's pony pulled Nixey's spider out of +Gueldersdorp with Lady Hannah<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> and her maid in it, I have had three +communications from your wife."</p> + +<p>"You're pullin' my leg, sir, ain't you?" queries Bingo doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"Not a bit of it."</p> + +<p>In confirmation of the statement he takes out a shabby pocket-book, fat +with official documents, and, unstrapping it, selects three, and hands +them to Bingo. They are flimsy sheets of tissue-paper covered with spidery +characters in violet ink, and Bingo, taking them, recognises the +handwriting, and is, as he states without hesitation, confoundedly +flabbergasted.</p> + +<p>"For they are in my wife's wild scrawl," he splutters at last. "How on +earth did they reach you, sir?"</p> + +<p>"The first was brought in by a native boy who said he belonged to the +kraals at Tweipans," says the Chief. "Boiled small and stuffed into a +quill stuck through his ear in the usual way. He trumped up a glib story +about his cow having been killed and his new wife beaten by Brounckers' +men, and his desire to be revenged, and oblige the English lady who'd been +kind to him——"</p> + +<p>"Umph! Native gratitude don't run to being skinned alive with +sjamboks—not much!" the other comments. "Chap must have been lyin', or a +kind of nigger Phœnix."</p> + +<p>"Exactly. So I couldn't find it in my heart to part with him. He's on the +coloured side of the gaol now, with two others, who subsequently landed in +with the documents you have in hand there."</p> + +<p>"Am I to read 'em?" Bingo queries.</p> + +<p>His commanding officer nods, with the muscle in his lean cheek twitching.</p> + +<p>"Certainly. Aloud, if you'll be so good."</p> + +<p>Bingo reads, with haltings on the way, for the tissue sheets stick to his +large fingers, which are damp with suppressed agitation:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class='right'> +"<span class="smcap">Haargrond Plaats</span>, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">Near Tweipans</span>, <br /> +"<i>October 30th</i>.</p> +<p class='center'> +"<i>To the Colonel Commanding Her Majesty's Forces in<br /> +Gueldersdorp.</i></p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I beg to report myself arrived at the above address, +twelve miles distant from the head laager of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> Boer +Commandant, General Brounckers. I have to inform you that an +attack will be made on Maxim Kopje South by a large force of +the enemy with guns in the beginning of November.</p> + +<p class='right'> +"I have the honour to be, <br /> +"On Secret Service, <br /> +"Yours most obediently, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">H. Wrynche</span>."<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>Bingo stares blankly at his Chief, the sheets of crumpled tissue wavering +between his thick, agitated fingers.</p> + +<p>"I got that letter exactly a week after the attack had been made and +successfully resisted," says the Colonel's dry, quiet voice. "Read the +four lines in a different hand and ink, that are underlined at the bottom, +and tell me what you think of 'em."</p> + +<p>Bingo obeyed, and read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Lady's information perfectly correct. We hope this +intelligence will reach you in time to be useful.</i></p> + +<p class='right'> +"<i>I have the honour to be, </i><br /> +"<span class="smcap">P. Blinders</span>, <br /> +"<i>Acting-Secretary to General</i> <br /> +"<i>Brounckers.</i>"<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker!" exploded Bingo.</p> + +<p>"Don't be prodigal of emotion," the Colonel's quiet voice warns the +excited husband. "There are two more letters following. Read 'em in the +proper sequence. That one with the inky design at the top, that might be +the pattern for a pair of fancy pyjamas—that's the next."</p> + +<p>Bingo reads as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class='right'> +"<span class="smcap">Kink's Hotel</span>, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">Tweipans</span>, <br /> +"<i>November 28th</i>.</p> +<p class='center'> +<i>"To the Colonel Commanding H. M. Forces in Gueldersdorp.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I beg to report myself arrived at Tweipans. I have +the honour to enclose herewith a sketch-plan of the village +and the disposition of General Brounckers' laager. Trusting +you may find it useful,</p> + +<p class='right'> +"I have the honour to be, <br /> +"On Secret Service, <br /> +"Yours most obediently, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">H. Wrynche</span>."<br /> +</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p> + +<p>The sarcastic P. Blinders had appended an italicised comment:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>His Honour considers the above sketch-plan remarkably +faithful. The building next the Gerevormed Kerk, indicated +by an X, is the gaol. Comfortable cells at your disposal, +which we are keeping vacant.</i></p> + +<p class='right'> +"<span class="smcap">P. Blinders.</span>"<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>"D-a-a——"</p> + +<p>The Chief does not happen to be looking Bingo's way as the infuriated +husband menaces with a large clenched fist an imaginary countenance +attached to the conjectural personality of the sportive P. Blinders.</p> + +<p>"Swear—it will bring the blood down from your head," advises the dry, +quiet voice. "But don't tear up the papers!—they're too amusing to lose."</p> + +<p>"Amusin'!" growls Bingo, with smarting eyes, and a lumpy throat, and a +tingling in his large muscles which P. Blinders, being out of reach, can +afford to provoke. "You wouldn't think it amusin', sir, if it were your +wife, making herself a—a figure of fun for those Dutch bounders to shy +at."</p> + +<p>This is the third letter:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class='right'> +"<i>December 23rd.</i></p> +<p class='center'> +"<i>To the Colonel Commanding, Gueldersdorp.</i></p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have to report that the sortie you have planned to +take place on the morning of the 26th, for the capture of +the enemy's big gun, is known to General Brounckers, and +that the menaced position will be strengthened and manned to +resist you.</p> + +<p class='right'> +"Obediently, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">H. Wrynche</span>."<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>Underneath is the sarcastic comment:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class='right'> +"<i>December 27th.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p>"<i>Nice if you had got this in time, eh? And we wanted those +boots and badges.</i></p> + +<p class='right'> +"<i>P. B.</i>"<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>"She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway," says Captain Bingo, blowing +his nose emphatically; "and—by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> the Living Tinker! if it <i>had</i> reached us +in time, we'd have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, and +twenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' into the +bargain."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow on the keen, sagacious +face, and both men are silent, remembering an assault the desperate, +reckless valour of which deserves to be bracketed in memory with the +Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, "If Defeat is ever shame, +perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the question to each of that +handful of brave men sleeping side by side over there"—he nods in the +direction of the Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest has +sprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses—"they would tell you it +can be more glorious than victory."</p> + +<p>"Of course, you're right, sir. I gather now what your bad news is," says +Bingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing his finger along the bristly edges +of his sandy moustache, for a minute past. "Judgin' by the marginal +annotations of this man Blinders—brute I'd kick to Cape Town with +pleasure—my wife's a prisoner in Brounckers' hands?"</p> + +<p>"An unconscious prisoner—yes. Give 'em their due, Wrynche. I shouldn't +have credited 'em with the sense of humour they have displayed in their +dealings with her."</p> + +<p>If it were possible for Bingo to grow redder in the face, one would say +that he has done so, as he bursts out, in a violent perspiration, striding +up and down over Nixey's sheet-leaded roof.</p> + +<p>"Confound their humour! It's the humour of tom-cats playin' with a—a +dashed little silly dicky-bird. It's the humour of aasvogels watchin' a +shot rock-rabbit kick. It's the humour of the battledore and the +shuttlecock. And I'm the dicky-bird's mate and the bunny's better-half, +and the other shuttlecock of the pair, and may I be blessed if I can take +it smilin'!" He mops his scarlet and dripping face, and puffs and blows +like a large military walrus on dry land.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you'll manage a smile when you've read this?"</p> + +<p>Bingo stops in his stride, wheels, and receives an official document on +blue paper. Under the date of the previous day, it runs as follows:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class='right'> +"<span class="smcap">Head Laager</span>, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">Tweipans</span>, <br /> +"<i>January —th</i>.</p> +<p class='center'> +"<i>To the Colonel Commanding the British Forces in<br /> +Gueldersdorp.</i></p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—In reply to your communication I am instructed by +General Brounckers to inform you that our prisoner, the +Englishwoman who came here in the character of a German +drummer's refugee-widow to act as your spy, will be +exchanged for a free Boer of the Transvaal Republic, by +name, Myjnheer W. Slabberts, who is at present confined +under the Yellow Flag in Gueldersdorp gaol. The exchange +will be effected by parties under the White Flag at a given +point North-East between the lines of investment and defence +one hour before Kerk-time to-morrow, being the Sabbath.</p> + +<p class='center'> +"I have the honour to be yours truly,</p> +<p class='right'> +"<span class="smcap">P. Blinders</span>, <br /> +"<i>Acting-Secretary to General</i> <br /> +"<i>Brounckers.</i>"<br /> +</p> + +<p>"P.S.—<i>The young lady of German extraction who accompanied +the Englishwoman has entered into an engagement to remain +here.</i></p> + +<p class='right'>"<i>P. B.</i>"</p> + +<p>"P.SS.—<i>The engagement is with yours truly, the young lady +having conformed to the faith of the Gerevormed Kerk. We are +to be married next Sunday. Would you like us to send you +some wedding-cake?</i></p> + +<p class='right'>"<i>P. B.</i>"</p></div> + +<p>Blinders has certainly had the last dig, but his principal victim fails +this time to wince or bellow under the point of his humour. With his big +face changing from red to white, and from white to crimson half a dozen +times in as many seconds, Captain Bingo says, refolding the paper and +returning it with a shaky hand:</p> + +<p>"Then she—she——"</p> + +<p>A lump in his throat slides down and sticks.</p> + +<p>"Gerevormed Kerk-time is eleven o'clock." The Colonel looks at his shabby +Waterbury, as the brisk clatter of cantering horse-hoofs breaks up the +Sabbath stillness of the Market Square, and an orderly, leading an +officer's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> charger, halts before Nixey's door. "The B.S.A. escort, with +their man, are due to leave the gaol in ten minutes' time. Here's your +orderly with your mount, and you've eight minutes to change in."</p> + +<p>"One minute, sir," Captain Bingo utters with an effort. "This man—this +Slabberts—is a well-known spy—a trump card in Brounckers' hand, or he +wouldn't be so anxious to get hold of him. And therefore—by this +exchange—and a woman's dashed ambitious folly—you may lose heavily in +the end...."</p> + +<p>"I don't deny it." The haggard shadow is again upon the Colonel's face, or +is it that Bingo's radiance dulls neighbouring surfaces by comparison? +"But don't let the thought of it spoil your good hour." The smile in the +eyes that have so many lines about them is kind, if the mouth under the +red-brown moustache is stern and sorrowful. "We don't have many of 'em. +Off with you and meet her!"</p> + +<p>Captain Bingo tries to say something more, but makes a hash of it; and +with eyes that fairly run over, can only grip the kindly hand again and +again, assuring its owner, with numerous references to the Living Tinker, +that he is the most thundering brick on earth. Then, overthrowing the +small table and one of the chairs, he plunges down the narrow iron +stairway to get into what he calls his kit. Six minutes later, correct to +a buckle and a puttee-fold, he salutes his commanding officer, nodding +pleasantly to him from Nixey's roof, and buckets down the street at a +tremendous gallop, the happiest man in Gueldersdorp, with this shout +following him:</p> + +<p>"My regards to Lady Hannah. And tell her that the Staff dine on gee-gee at +six o'clock sharp, and I shall be charmed if she'll join us."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII</h2> + + +<p>The little Olopo River, a mere branch of the bigger river that makes +fertile British Baraland, runs from east to west, along the southern side +of Gueldersdorp, swelled by innumerable thready water-courses, dry in the +blistering winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> foothills +that bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from the altitude of a +balloon or a war-kite, the course of the beer-coloured stream, flowing +lazily between its high banks sparsely wooded with oak and blue gum, and +lavishly clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall grasses, and +thorny creepers, would have looked like a verdant ribbon meandering over +the dun-and-ochre-coloured veld, where patches of bluish-green are +beginning to spread. The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, was +frequently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a place of +resort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, much more precipitous, +was clothed with a tangled luxuriance of vegetation, and threaded only by +native paths, so narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirous +of walking side by side. Where the outermost line of defences impinged +upon the river-bed, the trees had been cut down and the bush levelled. But +east of Maxim Outpost South, and the rifle-pits that flanked Fort +Ellerslie, all was as it had been for hundreds of years, in the +remembrance of the great granite boulder that stood on the south shore.</p> + +<p>The great boulder had known changes since the old Plutonic forces cast it +upwards, a mere bubble of melted red granite, solidifying as it went into +a stone acorn thirty feet high, which the glacier brought down in a slow +journey of countless ages, and set upright like a phallic symbol, amongst +other boulders of lesser size. The channel the glacier had chiselled was +now full of shining honey-coloured water, hurrying over the granite stones +and blocks of quartz and pretty vari-coloured pebbles, while the boulder +sat high and dry, with the tall-plumed grasses, and the graceful +tree-fern, and the yellow-tasselled mimosa crowding about its knees; and +remembered old times, long before the little Bushfellow had outlined the +koodoo and the buffalo, and the hunter-man with the spear, in black +pigments on its smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gathered +from the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the drawings. On the +western side the great boulder was dressed in crimson lake and +yellow-umber-hued lichens from base to summit, and in August, when the +aloes flowered in magnificent fiery clusters upon its crown and at its +base; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it in +exquisite trails, and white and rose and purple pelargoniums made a carpet +for its feet; and in July, when the yellow everlastings bloomed in every +cranny of the rocks, King Solomon in all his glory held less magnificence +of state.</p> + +<p>Insects and beasts and birds loved the boulder. The sun-beetle and the +orange-tip and peacock butterflies loved to bask on its hottest side, +while the old dog-faced baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to his +numerous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its crannies and +bred their young, too often as food for the giant tarantula and the +tree-snake; while the francolin and grouse dusted themselves in the hot +sand at the base of its throne of rocks, and the springbok and the +wart-hogs came down at night to drink; and the woolly cheetah and the red +lynx came after the springbok and the wart-hog.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The boulder had seen War—War between black-skinned men and brown-skinned +men, adventurers with great hooked noses and curled beards, with tassels +of silk and gold plaited into them and into the hair of their heads, +terrible warriors, mighty hunters, and great miners, who came for slaves +and ivory and gold, and hollowed strongholds out of the mountains, and +worshipped strange bird-beaked gods, and passed away. Yet again, when +these ceased to be, there had been War; and this time the black men of the +soil fought with white strangers, who wanted the same things—slaves, and +skins, and ivory, and the yellow metal of the river-sands and of the +rocks.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Now white men fought with white. The black men owned little of the +country: they hid in the kloofs and thickets in terror, while the European +conquerors shed each other's blood for gold, and land, and power. The +boulder was so very old. It could afford to wait patiently until these +men, like all that went before, had passed.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Every seventh day the guns ceased bellowing and throwing iron things that +burst and scattered Death broadcast,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> and the rifles stopped +crack-cracking and spitting steel and lead. Then the scared birds came +back: the waxbills, and love-birds, and finches, and sparrows darted in +and out among the bushes, and the partridge, and quail, and francolin +ventured down to drink. The old baboon had retired to the hills with his +family; the springbok and the wart-hog had moved up Bulawayo way; the +cheetah and the lynx had followed them....</p> + +<p>But as long as human lovers came and whispered to each other, standing +beside the big boulder, or sitting in its shadow, the boulder would be +content. They spoke the old language that it had learned when the world +was comparatively young. Black or yellow or white, African or Oriental or +European, this speech of theirs was always the same; their looks and +actions never varied. Either they met and kissed and were happy, or they +met and quarrelled and were miserable. When no more lovers should come, +the boulder knew that would be the end of the world.</p> + +<p>There was a gaudily dressed, white-faced young woman waiting now beside +the big stone upon this seventh day. Her blue eyes were large and wistful. +She had taken off her big flaunting hat and hung it on a bush, and her +face was not unpretty, topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow curls. She +leaned against the sun-warmed granite, and cried a little. That was the +way of women when the man was late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyes +and hummed a song, and, finally, taking a stump of pencil from her pocket, +she began to scribble on the smooth red stone—all part of the old play, +the boulder knew. The first woman whom he remembered had drawn a figure +meant for a portrait of her lover, with a sharpened flake of flint.</p> + +<p>The young woman, as she sucked her lead-pencil, was quite unconscious that +the boulder thought at all. She wrote in an unformed hand, and in letters +that began by being large and round, and tailed off into a slanting +niggle. "W. Keyse, Esquer." Then she bit the pencil awhile, and dreamed +dreams. Then she wrote again, "Jane Keyse" and "Mrs. W. Keyse," and +blushed furiously, and then grew pale again in anticipation of the Awful +Ordeal to come. For she had made up her mind to tell him all, and chance +it.</p> + +<p>Yesterday had been his birthday. She had sent him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> per John Tow, a costly +gift. The four-ounce packet of honeydew, cheap at five dollars in these +days of scarcity, had been opened, and the new pipe filled. A slip of +paper coquettishly intimated that the sender had rendered the recipient +this delicate little service. She meant to sign "Jane Harris," but her +courage failed her, and her trembling pen faltered for the last time, +"Fare Air."</p> + +<p>Oh! how she hated that Other One, whom, perhaps, he liked the best, though +he had never kissed her! She would be done with the creature, she thanked +her Gawd, after to-day! Oh, how many times she had made up her mind to +tell him the truth, and never done it! But if she took and died of it, +tell him she would this time.</p> + +<p>How would he take the revelation? Possibly swearing. Probably he would be +angry enough to hit her, <i>when he knew</i>. If he only would, and make it up +afterwards! Oh! how cruel she did suffer! She thought she would not tell +him just yet. It was too hard. And then it seemed quite easy, and then she +cried out in agony: "Is that 'im comin'? Oh, my Gawd, it is!"</p> + +<p>She clasped her hands over a brand-new blowse, with something under it +that jumped and fluttered orful. Mother used to 'ave such palpitytions +when her and father 'ad 'ad what you might call a jar. And he was coming, +coming....</p> + +<p>Surely W. Keyse looked stern and imposingly tall of stature, seen from her +lower level, as he appeared among the blue gum-trees on the top of the +bank, and began to descend into the ferny gorge where the great boulder +sat and sunned himself beside the beer-coloured river, whose barbel kept +on rising at the flies. Something W. Keyse dragged behind him, not by a +rope, but by a pigtail; an animated bundle of clean blue cotton, topped by +the impassive, almond-eyed countenance of John Tow, the letter-carrying +Chinaman, who in the unlawful pursuit of tikkies, finding the letter +written by the foreign lady-devil to the male one eagerly paid for on the +nail, had offered for half as much again to induce her for the future to +write two instead of one. Towing Tow, the smarting victim of feminine +duplicity came crashing down upon the guilty girl who had betrayed him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p> + +<p>"See 'ere! You know this 'ere young lady, and you remember what you've bin +and told me. Say it over again now," thundered W. Keyse, "so as she can +'ear you. Tell me before 'er as wot she wrote them—these letters"—he +rapped himself dramatically upon the breast-pocket—"and how you see her +doing of it, before I kick your backbone through your hat."</p> + +<p>All was lost. The Chinaman had up an' give Emigration Jane away. Certainly +he had saved her trouble, but what was he sayin' now, the 'orrible +slant-eyed 'eathen? She could hardly hear him for the roaring in her poor +bewildered head.</p> + +<p>"S'pose John tell, can catchee more tikkie? Plenty tikkie want to buy +chow, allee so baddee times."</p> + +<p>"Always on the make, ain't you?" commented W. Keyse. With a strong, +imperious shove, he dumped the blue bundle down among the cowslips in +which the feet of the guilty fair were hidden, saying sternly: "I give you +three minutes to git it off your chest, else kickie is wot you'll catch +instead o' tikkie." He furnished a moderate sample on account.</p> + +<p>"Oh, ki—ah. Oh, ki—ah!" moaned the tingling John.</p> + +<p>"Don't you be 'ard on him, William"—he hardly knew the voice, it was so +weak and small—"it's Gawspel truth. To pay you out—at first, for juggin' +Walt, I did write them letters—every bloomin' screeve."</p> + +<p>"An' sent the pipe and baccy for a birthday present, to make a blushin' +fool o' me?" yelled the infuriated Keyse. "All for the crimson sake of a +fat 'og of a Dutchman!"</p> + +<p>The patriot to whom he referred, mounted on an attenuated mule, and +escorted by a Sergeant and six men of the B.S.A., under the +superintendence of a large pink officer of the Staff, was at that moment +being conducted at a sharp trot out of the lines, to meet a smallish +waggon pulled by a span of four that was being brought down from Tweipans +by half a dozen Boers in weathered tan-cord and velveteen, battered +pot-hats and ragged shooting-jackets, carrying very carefully-tended +rifles, mounted on well-fed, wiry little horses, and accompanied by a +White Flag. If she had known, what would it have mattered to her? All her +thoughts were centred in this furious little man, whose pale, ugly eyes +fairly blazed at her, as he repeated:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p> + +<p>"To pay—me out. You brawsted little Treachery, you——"</p> + +<p>She crimsoned to her hair; you could see the red blood rushing and rushing +up from under the peekaboo embroidery in front of the tawdry blowse, in a +hurry to tell her tingling ears what cruel names he called her.</p> + +<p>"To pay you out at first it was. An' afterwards"—her throat hurt her, and +her eyes did smart and burn so—"afterwards I—I wanted ... O Gawd!..." +she shook all over—"you'll never walk out wi' me no more after this!"</p> + +<p>"You may take your dyin' oath I won't." He was bitterly sarcastic. +"Strite, an' no kid, didn't you know when you done—<i>that</i>—I'd never +forgive you as long as I lived?"</p> + +<p>He plucked the stout package of letters signed "Fare Air" from his +indignant bosom, and threw them at her feet, with the new pipe, her +hapless gift. His wrath was infinitely more terrible than she had +imagined. Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Everything kep' +a-spinnin' so, she couldn't 'ardly tell whether she was on 'er 'ead or 'er +'eels. She will remember that day to the last breath she draws....</p> + +<p>"Didn't you know it?" the voice of her judge demanded again.</p> + +<p>John Tow, finding himself no longer an object of attention, had discreetly +vanished.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I did, I did!" Her agony was frantic. "Oh, let me go away and hide +and die somewhere! Oh, crooil, to break a pore gal's 'art! Wot—wot loves +the bloomin' earth under your feet!"</p> + +<p>"Garn!"—the scorn of W. Keyse was something awful—"you an' your +love——"</p> + +<p>She wrenched the cotton lace away from her thin throat, and tore some of +her hair out in the strenuous hysteria of her class, and screamed at him:</p> + +<p>"Me an' my love!... Go on!... Frow it in me face, an' 'ave no pity! Me an' +my love!... Sneer at it, take an' spit on it—ain't it yours all the syme? +Oh, for Gawd's syke forgive me!"</p> + +<p>He struck an indomitable attitude and thundered:</p> + +<p>"So 'elp me Jiminy Cripps, I never will!"</p> + +<p>She knew that the oath was irrevocable, and with a faint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> moan, turned to +the great boulder that was behind her, and clung to its hard red bosom as +if it had been a mother's. She moaned to him as her thin figure flattened +itself against the stone, to let her go away and die somewhere. He stood a +moment looking at her, and exulting in his power, meaning her to suffer +yet a little longer ere he relented. Secretly, he knew relief that the +golden pigtail and the provoking blue eyes of Miss Greta Du Taine had +vanished out of Gueldersdorp before the first Act of War. He would have +felt them in the way now. Those shining, tearful eyes and the mouth that +kissed and clung to his had done their work on the night of the Grand +Variety entertainment in the empty Government store. He would pretend to +go away and leave her. He would come back, enjoy her astonishment, be +melted by renewed entreaties, stoop to relent, overwhelm her with his +magnanimity, and then proceed to love-making.</p> + +<p>But as a preliminary he swung round upon his heel and strode upwards +through the short bush and the tall grasses, the scandalised flowers +thrashing his boots. She saw him, although her back was turned. If he +could have known how tall he seemed to Emigration Jane as he strode away, +W. Keyse would have been tickled to the core. But he turned when he felt +sure he was well out of sight, and hurried back.</p> + +<p>She was not there.</p> + +<p>He was indifferent at first, then angry, then anxious, then disconsolate. +Repentance followed fast on the heels of all these moods. He picked up the +packet of letters and the rejected pipe, cursing his own cruelty, and +sought her up and down the banks, calling her in tones that were urgent, +affectionate, upbraiding, appealing; but not for all his luring would the +flown bird come back to fist. No more beside the river, or in other places +where they had been wont to meet, did W. Keyse encounter Emigration Jane +again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX</h2> + + +<p>But even without W. Keyse and the vanished author of "Fare Air's" letters +the ferny tree-fringed kloof at the bottom of which the beer-coloured +river ran over its granite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> boulders and quartz pebbles, was not empty and +void. On Sundays, when the birds returned from the hills, to which they +had been scared by the hideous tumult of War, thither after High Mass in +the battered little Roman Catholic church in the stad, the Mother-Superior +and the Sisters would come, bringing with them such poor food as they had, +and picnic soberly. All the week through they had laboured, nursed, and +tended the sick and wounded in the Hospitals, and washed and fed and +taught the numberless orphans of the siege, and upon this day the +Mother-Superior had ruled that they were to be together. And all the week +through the thought of it kept them going, as she had hoped. You are to +see her holding her little court beside the river upon a certain February +afternoon, receiving friends in her sweet, stately fashion, and dispensing +hospitality out of the largest and most battered Britannia-metal teapot +that ever brewed, what was later originally referred to in the weekly +"Social Jottings" column of the <i>Gueldersdorp Siege Gazette</i> as the +cheering infusion. The <i>Siege Gazette</i> was an intermittent daily, issued +from a subterranean printing-office, for the dissemination of general +orders and latest news, fluctuations in the weight and quality of the +meat-rations, and the rise and fall of the free-soup level, being also +recorded. To its back-files I must refer those who seek a fuller account +of the function described by the brilliant journalist who signed herself +"Gold Pen," as highly successful. She gives you to understand that the +company was distinguished, and the conversation vivid and unflagging. And +when you realise that everybody present was suffering more or less from +the active pinch of hunger, that social gathering of men and women of +British blood becomes heroic and historic and fine.</p> + +<p>"Dr Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, was observed," we read. "Gold Pen" +also notes "the presence of the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, son of the +Bishop of H——, and second curate—on leave—of St. Margaret's, Wendish +Street; now happily recovered, thanks to the skill of Dr. Saxham, from an +illness, held at no recent date to be incurable. Mr. Fraithorn has +undertaken the onerous duties of Chaplain to the Hospitals in charge of +the Military Staff. It was gratifying to observe," she continues, "that +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> Colonel commanding graced the occasion by his martial presence. He +was attended by his junior aide, Lieutenant Lord Beauvayse. We also saw +Lady Hannah Wrynche with her distinguished husband, Captain Bingham +Wrynche, Royal Bay Dragoons, Acting Senior Aide," etc., etc.</p> + +<p>"Late apricots from the garden of the ruined Convent, and peaches from its +west wall, gathered in the dead of night by Sister Cleophée and Sister +Tobias," "Gold Pen" goes on to say, "were greatly appreciated by the +guests, each of whom brought his or her own bread."</p> + +<p>A most villainous kind of bannock of unleavened mealie-meal and crushed +oats, calculated to try the strongest teeth and trouble the toughest +digestion, "Gold Pen" might have added. But the game was to make believe +you rather enjoyed it than otherwise. If you had no teeth and no +digestion, you were allowed a pint and a half of sowens porridge instead; +and thus helped your portion of exhausted cavalry mount or your bit of +tough mule-meat down. And so you went on like your neighbours, playing the +game, while your eyes grew larger and your girth less, and your cheekbones +more in evidence with every day that dawned.</p> + +<p>Cheekbones have a strange, unnatural effect when they appear in childish +faces. There was a child in a rusty double perambulator that had been a +stylish baby-carriage only a little while ago, whose wizened face and +shrunken hands were pitiable to see. He was wheeled by a sallow woman, +with hollow, grey-blue eyes—a woman whose black alpaca gown hung loosely +on her wasted figure, and whose shabby, crape-trimmed hat was pinned on +anyhow. Siege confinement and siege terrors, siege smells and siege diet, +had made strange havoc of the plump comeliness of a matronly lady who once +rustled in purple satin befitting a Mayor's wife. She had lost one of her +children through diphtheria, and she knew, unless a miracle happened, that +she would also lose the boy.</p> + +<p>Only look at him! She told you in that dull, toneless voice of hers how +sturdy he had been, how strong and masterful—how pretty, too, with his +plume of fair hair tumbling into his big, shining, grey eyes! The eyes +were bigger than ever now, but the light and the life had sunk out of +them, and his round face was pinched, and the colour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> of old wax. And the +arm that hung idly over the side of the little carriage was withered and +shrunken—the hand of an old man, and not of a child. The other, under the +light shawl that tucked him in, hugged something that bulged under the +coverlet.</p> + +<p>"His father can't bear to look at him," the Mayor's wife said, glancing at +the Mayor's carefully-averted back. "And I'm sure it's no wonder. He just +lies like this, day and night, and doesn't want to move, or answer when +you speak to him, and he won't eat. The food is dreadful, but still he +might try, just to comfort his mother——"</p> + +<p>"I does twy," piped Hammy weakly, "and ven my tummy shuts, and it isn't no +use twying any more."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior brought a gaily-coloured little china cup of that rare +luxury, new milk, and bent over him, saying cheerfully, as she held it to +the colourless mouth, "Not always, Hammy. Taste this."</p> + +<p>"No, fank you." He turned his head away, tightly shutting his eyes.</p> + +<p>"It's real milk, Hammy, not condensed," the soft voice pleaded. He shook +his head again, and knit his childish brows.</p> + +<p>"I saided it wasn't no use. My tummy just shuts."</p> + +<p>"I think I would not bother him any more just now," Saxham interposed, +noting the droop of the piteous, flaccid mouth, and feeling the flutter of +the uneven pulse. The Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. The +Mother-Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing and +sight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, and a crisp, +decided voice said:</p> + +<p>"Then Hammy's tummy is a mutinous soldier, and must be taught to obey the +Word of Command."</p> + +<p>"Mister Colonel ..." The dull, childish eyes grew a very little brighter, +and the claw-like hand went up in shaky salute to the limp plume of fair +hair, not glistening and silky now, but dull and unkempt, that fell over +the broad, darkly-veined waxen forehead.—"It is Mister Colonel.... And I +haven't seen you for ever an' ever so long. An' Berta's deaded, an', +an'——" The whisper was almost inaudible.... "Vere's something I did so +want to tell!" The hidden arm came from under the coverings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> "It's about +my Winocewus, vis beast what you gived me, ever so long ago." He displayed +the treasured toy.</p> + +<p>"You shall tell me about Berta and the rhinoceros when I have told you +something. A Certain Person can come out of this vehicle, I suppose, +Saxham? It will make no difference, in the long-run, to a Certain Person's +health?"</p> + +<p>"Why, nothing in Heaven or upon earth will make any difference at this +juncture," returned Saxham, speaking in the same tone, "unless a Certain +Person can be roused to the necessary pitch of desiring food. To +administer it forcibly would, in my opinion, be worse than useless."</p> + +<p>The Certain Person was lifted out of his cramped quarters by vigorous but +gentle hands. The Colonel Commanding sat down with him upon a camp-stool, +and as the wasted legs dangled irresponsibly from his supporting knees, +and the hot head rolled helplessly against the row of coloured bits of +medal-ribbon that were sewn on the left breast of the khâki jacket, he +began to talk, holding the limp little body with a kind, sustaining arm.</p> + +<p>"You've seen how my men obey me, Hammy? Well, your brain and your eyes, +your arms and legs, and hands and feet, as well as your tummy, are your +soldiers. And it's mutiny if they refuse to carry out the Officer's +orders. And you're the Officer, you know."</p> + +<p>"Am I ve Officer, weally?"</p> + +<p>Interest was quickening in the heavy eyes.</p> + +<p>"You're the Officer. And I'm the Colonel in Command. And when I say to +you, 'Lieutenant Hammy, drink this milk,' why, you'll pass along the order +to Sergeant Brain and Corporal Eyes and Privates Hands and Mouth and +Tummy, and see that they carry it out. Where is——? Ah! thank you, ma'am; +that was what I wanted."</p> + +<p>For the Mother-Superior had deftly put the gaily-coloured little china cup +into the lean, brown, outstretched hand, and, seeing what was coming, the +Lieutenant shed an unsoldierly tear and raised a feeble whimper.</p> + +<p>"Please, no, Mister Colonel! My tummy——"</p> + +<p>"Private Tummy is a shirker, who doesn't want to do his duty. But it's +your duty as his Commanding Officer to show him that it must be done. And +that's the game we're playing. You'll employ tact before you have recourse +to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> stringent measures. Not make the fellow dogged or furious by angry +words or threats. When it's necessary to shoot, shoot straight. But, +first, you give the order."</p> + +<p>"Oughtn't ve officer to have a wevolver?"</p> + +<p>"Wait a second, and you shall have mine."</p> + +<p>The deft fingers twirled out and pocketed the cartridge-packed chambers, +and put the harmless weapon into the childish hands.</p> + +<p>"It's veway heavy," Hammy said dolefully, as the shining Army Smith & +Wesson wobbled in his feeble clutches, then wavered and sank ingloriously +down upon his lap.</p> + +<p>"If you had drunk the milk you might have found it lighter. Suppose we try +now. Attention!"</p> + +<p>—"'Tention!" piped Hammy.</p> + +<p>"Hands, catch hold. Mouth, do your duty. And if Private Tummy disobeys, +he'll have to take the consequences."</p> + +<p>"Please, what are ve confequences?"</p> + +<p>"Drink down the milk, and then I'll tell you."</p> + +<p>The gay little china cup was slowly emptied. Hammy blinked eyes that were +already growing sleepy, and sucked the moustache of white from his +upper-lip with relish, remarking:</p> + +<p>"I dwinked it all, and my tummy never shut. Now tell me what are ve +confequences?"</p> + +<p>"A mother without a son, for one thing." The keen, hawk-eyes were gentle. +"But drink plenty of milk and eat plenty of bread and porridge and minced +meat, and you'll live to see the Relief marching into Gueldersdorp one +fine morning, boy."</p> + +<p>"Unless I get deaded like Berta. And that weminds me what I wanted to tell +so bad." The lips began to quiver, and the eyes brimmed. "Soldiers mustn't +cwy, must vey?"</p> + +<p>"Not while there's work to be done, Hammy. Would you like to wait now and +tell me another day?" For the little round head was nodding against the +row of medal-ribbons stitched on the khâki jacket, and the big round eyes +kept open with difficulty.</p> + +<p>"No, please. It's about the beasts—my beasts what you gived me. +Winocewus, an' Lion, an' Tawantula,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> an' Tsetse, an' Black Bee—just like +a weal Bee, only not so sharp at ve end.... Don't you wemember, Mister +Colonel?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I remember. The toy beasts I brought down from Rhodesia and +gave to a little boy."</p> + +<p>"I was the boy. And—you saided I was to let Berta have her share wof dem. +And I did let her play wif all ve ovvers. But Winocewus had to be tooked +such care wof for fear of bweaking his horn—an' Berta was such a little +fing, vat—vat——"</p> + +<p>"That you wouldn't let her play with Rhinoceros. And you think it wasn't +quite fair, or quite kind, and now you're sorry?"</p> + +<p>Hammy sniffed dolorously, and two large tears splashed down.</p> + +<p>"I'm sowwy. An' I fought if I was deaded too, like Berta, I could go an' +tell her I never meaned to be gweedy. An' I wouldn't eat my bweakfust, nor +my dinner, nor nothing—and at last my tummy shut, and I didn't want +nuffing more."</p> + +<p>The Mother-Superior and the Colonel Commanding exchanged a glance over the +little round head before the man's voice answered the child.</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't have made Bertha happy. She might have thought you a little +coward for running away and leaving your mother and all the other ladies +behind, shut up in Gueldersdorp. For an officer and a gentleman must go on +living and fighting while he has anything left to fight for, Hammy. +Remember that."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mister Colonel...." The drowsy eyes closed, the little head nodded +off into slumber against the kind, strong shoulder. The Mother-Superior +wheeled the perambulator near, and the Colonel, rising, laid the now +soundly-sleeping boy back upon his cushions.</p> + +<p>"What mysteries children are!" he said, as the Mother replaced the light +covering, screening the sleeping face with tender, careful hands from sun +and flies. "Imagine remorse for an act of selfishness leading a boy of six +to such a determination—and a normal, healthy boy, if ever I met one."</p> + +<p>"He has been living for some time under abnormal conditions,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> the Mother +said softly, looking at the quiet rise and fall of the light shawl +covering. "He will take a turn for the better now."</p> + +<p>"And forget his trouble and its cause." The Chief's observant glance had +lighted on Rhinoceros, lying upside down in a little clump of flowering +sword-grass, into which he had been whisked as the Mother shook out the +little shawl. "I think," he said, and pocketed the horned one, "that this +gentleman had better go into the fire."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. And yet it would be a continual reminder to conquer selfishness +in great as in little things." She smiled, meeting the keen hazel eyes +with her great pure grey ones.</p> + +<p>"If you think so, I will leave it."</p> + +<p>"I will not take the responsibility of advising you to. You have already +shown more tact than I can lay claim to in dealing with children. And that +has been the business of the greater part of my life, remember."</p> + +<p>He looked at her full, and said:</p> + +<p>"I may possess and employ tact when dealing with men and with children, +possibly. But not long ago I was guilty of—and have since bitterly +reproached myself for, I beg you to believe me! a gross and lamentable +blunder as regards a woman——"</p> + +<p>She put out her fine hand with a quick, protesting gesture, as if she +would have begged him to say no more. He went on:</p> + +<p>"She is a lady whom you intimately know, and whom I have, like everyone +else in this town, learned to esteem highly and to profoundly respect. For +the terrible shock and the deep pain I must have given that lady in +breaking to her ignorantly and hastily the news of the death of a friend +who was dear to me, and infinitely dearer to—another with whom she is +acquainted—I humbly entreat her pardon."</p> + +<p>He had not known her eyes were of so deep a purple-grey as to be nearly +black. Perhaps they seemed so by contrast with the absolute whiteness of +her face. The eyes winced, and the mouth contracted as she entreated, +voicelessly:</p> + +<p>"I beg you, say no more!"</p> + +<p>"I have but little more to say," he returned. "I will only add that if at +any time you wished in kindness to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> make me forget what I did that day, +you would apply to me in some difficulty, honour me with some confidence, +trust me in any unforeseen emergency in which I might be of use to you. Or +to—anyone who is dear to you, and in whom for the sake of old +associations and old ties I might even otherwise be deeply interested."</p> + +<p>He had spoken with intention, and now his deliberate glance dropped to the +level of the strip of sandy shore beside the river, where the giant +Convent kettle boiled upon a disproportionately little fire, and Sister +Hilda-Antony presided in the Reverend Mother's place at the +trestle-supported tray where the Britannia-metal teapot brooded, as doth +the large domestic hen, over an immense family of cups and saucers. Busy +as ants, the other Sisters hurried backwards and forwards, attending to +the wants of their guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or with +due precautions taken against puff-adders and tarantulas, lay upon the +grass of the high bank in the shade of the fern and bush. And as vivid by +contrast with their black-robed, white-wimpled figures, as a slender +dragon-fly among a bevy of homely gnats, the graceful, prettily-clad +figure of Lynette showed, as she shared the Sister's hospitable labours.</p> + +<p>She had her share of girlish vanity. She had put on a plain tailor-made +skirt of fine dark green cloth, short enough to show the dainty little +brown buckled shoes that she specially affected, and a thin white silk +shirt and knitted croquet-jacket of white wool. A scarlet leather belt +girt her slender waist, and a silver châtelaine jingled a gay tune at her +side, and about her white slim throat was a band of scarlet velvet, and +her wide-brimmed straw hat had a knot of purple and white clematis in it, +and a broad, vivid, emerald-green wing-quill thrust under the knot. And +the hair under the green-plumed hat gleamed bronze in the sunshine that +filtered through the thick foliage of the blue gum-trees that grew on +either bank of the river, and stretched their branches out to clasp across +the stream, like hands. She was too pale and too thin, and her eyes were +feverishly bright, but she looked happy, carrying her tray of steaming +teacups in spite of Beauvayse's anxious attempts to relieve her of the +burden, and the Chaplain's diffident entreaties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> that she should entrust +it to him. Their voices, mingled in gay argument, were borne by a warm +puff of spice-scented air to the ears of the elder people, standing in the +shade of the trees at the summit of the high, sloping bank, with the rusty +perambulator between them.</p> + +<p>"I thank you," the Mother said, in her full, round tones. The eyes of +both, travelling back from that delicate, slight young figure, had met +once more. "Believing that you speak in perfect sincerity, I thank you, +and shall not hesitate to call upon you, should the need arise."</p> + +<p>Her voice was very calm, and her discreet glance told nothing. He would +not have been a man of woman born if he had not been a little piqued. He +said, with an air of changing the subject:</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare strikes me as a very beautiful girl."</p> + +<p>"Is she not?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes grew tender, and her whole face was irradiated by the splendour +of her smile. She looked down the bushed and grass-covered slope to where +Lynette, all the guests supplied, had thrown herself down to rest on a +stone under a tree. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was flecked +with sunshine as she leaned her head back with a little air of lassitude +and weariness against the scarred bark. But in spite of weariness she was +smiling and content. The rest was delicious, the peaceful quiet +enchanting, the air sweet after the fetid odours of the town; and it was +sweet, too, whenever she glanced at the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, who was +lying at her feet, or Beauvayse, who fanned her alternately with a leafy +branch and the tea-tray, to behold her own beauty reflected in the +admiring eyes of two young and handsome men.</p> + +<p>The Mother had never seen her thus before. She had been absent from the +scenes of Lynette's little social triumphs. Now a great tenderness swelled +in her bosom, and a great pity gripped her throat, and wrung the bitter, +slow tears into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"She is happy," she whispered in her heart. "She has forgotten just for a +little while, and her kingdom of womanhood is hers, unspoiled, and the +present moment is sweet, and the future she has no thought of. My poor, +poor love! Let her go on forgetting, even if it is only for a day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p> + +<p>His voice beside her made her start. He was still speaking of Lynette.</p> + +<p>"Her type is unusual—amongst Colonials."</p> + +<p>She returned: "She was born in the Colony, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Ah! but of British parents, surely? I once knew an English lady," he went +steadily on, "whom she resembles strikingly."</p> + +<p>Her eyes were inscrutable, and her lips were folded close.</p> + +<p>"She was the wife of the Colonel commanding my old Regiment—Sir George +Hawting. A grand old warrior, and something of a martinet. He married a +third daughter of the Duke of Runcorn—Lady Lucy Briddwater."</p> + +<p>She said without the betraying flicker of an eyelash: "I have seen the +lady named...."</p> + +<p>He said, with a prick of self-reproach for having again turned the barb +that festered in her bosom:</p> + +<p>"Lady Lucy was a very lovely creature, and a very impulsive one. She lived +not happily, and she died tragically."</p> + +<p>There was the ring of steel and the coldness of ice in the Mother's words:</p> + +<p>"She met the fate she chose."</p> + +<p>He thought, looking at her:</p> + +<p>"What a woman this is! How silent, how resourceful, how calm, how +immeasurably deep! And why does she think of me as an opponent?" He went +on, stung by that quiet marshalling of all her forces against him:</p> + +<p>"Unhappily, the fate we choose for ourselves sometimes involves others. +The death of that unhappy woman and the father of her child left an +innocent creature at the mercy of sordid, evil hands."</p> + +<p>"In evil hands, indeed, judging by—what you have told me."</p> + +<p>"I would give much to be able to trace her." There was a heavy line +between his eyebrows, and his eyes were stern and sad. "It would be +something to know what had become of her, even if she were dead, or worse +than dead."</p> + +<p>A violent, sudden scarlet dyed her to the edge of the white starched coif. +Her mouth writhed as though words were bursting from her; but she nipped +her lips together, and controlled her eyes. And still her silence angered +and defied him. He went on:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If I seem to you to harp painfully upon this subject, pardon me. You have +my word that, without encouragement from you, I will not refer to it after +to-day." His close-clipped brown moustache was straightened by the tension +of the muscles of his mouth. He passed his palm over it, and continued +speaking without moving a muscle of his face or taking his searching eyes +from the Mother's.</p> + +<p>"The name of the young lady who is so fortunate as to be your ward, and +even more, the striking likeness I spoke of just now, have led me to hope +that my dead friend's daughter was led by a Hand, in whose Divine guidance +I humbly believe, to find the very shelter he would have chosen for her. +Pray answer, acquitting me in your own mind of persistence or +inquisitiveness. Am I right or wrong?"</p> + +<p>She might have been a statue of black marble, with wimple and face and +hands of alabaster, she stood so breathlessly still. Her heart did not +seem to beat; her blood was stagnant in her veins. She felt no faintness. +Her observation was unnaturally keen, her mind dazzlingly clear; her brain +seemed to work with twice its ordinary power. She thought. He glanced at +the shabby watch he wore upon the steel lip-strap, and waited. She was +aware of the action, though she never turned her head. She was weighing +the question, to tell or not to tell? Her soul hung poised like a seagull +in the momentary shelter of a giant wave-crest. Another moment, and the +battle with the raging gale and the driving halberds of the sleet would +begin again.</p> + +<p>She looked again towards Lynette, and in an instant her purpose +crystallised, her line of action was made clear. She saw a little bunch of +wax-belled white heath fall from the girl's scarlet belt in the act of +rising. She saw Beauvayse snatch it greedily from the grass and read the +glance that passed between the golden-hazel and the green-grey eyes, and +understood with a great pang of jealous mother-pain that she was no longer +first in her beloved's heart. Then came a throb of unselfish joy at the +knowledge that Richard's girl had come into her kingdom, that the divine +right and heritage and crown of Womanhood were hers at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p> + +<p>Were hers? Not yet, but might be hers, if every clue that led back to that +tavern upon the veld could be broken or tangled in such wise that the +keenest and most subtle seeker should be baffled and lost. It all lay +clear before her now, the manipulation of events, the deft rearrangement +of actual fact that might best be used to this end. As her clear brain +planned, her bleeding heart trailed wings in the dust, seeking to lead the +searcher away from the hidden nest, and now her motherhood and her pride +and all the diplomacy acquired in her long years of rule rose up in arms +to meet him.</p> + +<p>They were not of equal height. Her great, changeful eyes, purple-grey now, +dropped to encounter his. She regarded him quietly, and said:</p> + +<p>"No one of your wide experience needs to be reminded that resemblances +between persons who are not allied by blood exist, and are strangely +misleading. But since you have conveyed to me in unmistakable terms your +conviction that Miss Mildare is the daughter of—a mutual friend who bore +that surname—is actually identified in your idea with that most unhappy +child who was left orphaned some seventeen years ago—at—I think you said +a veld hotel in the Orange Free State?"</p> + +<p>He bowed assent, biting the short hairs of his moustache in vexation and +embarrassment.</p> + +<p>"Hardly an hotel—a wretched shanty of the usual corrugated-iron and +mud-wall type, in the cattle-grazing country between Driepoort and +Kroonfontein. And—it seems my fate to be continually bringing our +conversation back to a—most unhappy and painful theme."</p> + +<p>"I acquit you of the intention to pain or wound. When I have finished what +I have to say, we will revert to the subject no more. It will be buried +between us for ever, though the memory of the Dead live in our pardoning +and loving thoughts, and in our prayers."</p> + +<p>The vivid colour that had flamed in her cheeks had sunk and left them +marble. The humid mist of tears that veiled her eyes gave them a wonderful +beauty.</p> + +<p>He answered her:</p> + +<p>"Your thoughts could not be otherwise than noble and generous. Prayers as +pure as yours could not be unheard."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No prayers are unheard, though all are not granted."</p> + +<p>She made the slight gesture with her large, beautiful hand that put +unnecessary speech from her, and let the hand drop again by her side. Her +bosom rose and fell quietly with her even speaking. None could have +guessed the tumult within, and the doubts and convictions and +apprehensions that battled together, and the religious fears and scruples +that rent and tore her suffering soul. But for the sake of Richard's +daughter she rallied her grand forces, and nerved herself to carry out her +hated task.</p> + +<p>"I will tell you how I came to be interested in the young lady who is now +my adopted daughter, and whom you know as Lynette Mildare. At the end of +the winter of 18— the Reverend Mother of our Convent died, and I was sent +up from the Mother-House at Natal, by order of the Bishop, to take her +place as Superior. Two Sisters came with me. It was the usual slow journey +of many weeks. The wet season had begun. Perhaps that was why we did not +encounter many other waggons on the way. But one party of emigrants of the +labouring class—we never really learned where bound—trekked on before +us, and generally outspanned within sight. There were three rough +Englishmen—two middle-aged and one quite old—a couple of tawdry women, +and a young girl. They used to ill-treat the girl. We heard her crying +often, and one of the Kaffir voor-loopers of their two waggons told a Cape +boy who was in our service that the old Baas would kill the little white +thing one of these days. She was used as a drudge by them all—a servant, +unpaid, ill-fed, worse-clothed than the Kaffirs—but the old man, +according to our informant, bore her a special grudge, and lost no +opportunity of wreaking his malice on her."</p> + +<p>"I understand," he said. She went on:</p> + +<p>"We would have helped the child if we could have reached her; but it was +not possible. If she had run away and taken refuge with us, and the men +had followed her, I do not think we should have given her up for any +threats of theirs, or even for threats carried out in action."</p> + +<p>"I know you never would have."</p> + +<p>She made the slight gesture with her hand that put all inferred praise +aside.</p> + +<p>"The waggons of the emigrants were no longer in sight,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> one morning when +we inspanned. They had headed south as if for the Diamond Mines, and we +were trekking west...." There was a slight hesitation, and her lashes +flickered, then she took up her story. "Perhaps we were a hundred and +fifty miles from Gueldersdorp, perhaps more, when we came upon what we +believed at first to be the dead body of a young girl, almost a child, +lying among the karroo bush, face downwards, upon the sand. She had been +cruelly beaten with the sjambok—she bears the scars of that terrible +ill-usage to-day.... We judged that she had fainted and fallen from one of +the emigrants' trek-waggons. Months afterwards, when her wounds were +healed"—her steady lips quivered slightly—"and she had recovered from an +attack of brain-fever brought on by alarm and anxiety and the ill-usage, +she told me that she had run away from people who were cruel to her—from +a man who——"</p> + +<p>"This distresses you. I am grieved——"</p> + +<p>He noted the sickness of horror in her face, and the starting of +innumerable little shining points of moisture on her white, broad forehead +and about her lips. She drew out her handkerchief and wiped them away with +a hand that shook a little.</p> + +<p>"I have very little more to say. She was quite crushed and broken by +cruelty and ill-usage. No native child could have been more ignorant—she +could not even tell us her name when we asked it. She probably had never +had one. And Father Wix, who is our Convent Chaplain, and has charge of +the Catholic Mission here, baptised her at my instance, giving her two +names that were dear to me in that old life that I left behind so long +ago. She is Lynette Mildare.... Are you surprised that in seven years a +young creature so neglected should have become what you see? Those powers +were inherent in her which training can but develop. We found in her great +natural capacity, an intelligence keen and quick, a taste naturally +refined, a sweet and gentle disposition, a pure and loving heart——" Her +voice broke. Her eyes were blinded by a sudden rush of tears. She moved +her hand as though to say: "There is no more to tell."</p> + +<p>"You shut the door upon my hope," he said.</p> + +<p>It was to her veritably as though the gates of her own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> deed clashed +behind her with the closing of the sentence. For she had stated the +absolute truth, and yet left much untold. She saw disappointment and +reluctant conviction in his face, coupled with an immense faith in her +that stung her to an agony of shame and self-reproach. What had she +suppressed?</p> + +<p>Nothing, but that the waggons of the emigrants had turned south for +Diamond Town a fortnight before the finding of that lost lamb upon the +veld. And her scrupulous habit of truth, her crystal honour, her keen, +clear judgment no less than her rigorous habit of self-examination, told +her that the half-truth was no better than falsehood, and that she, +Christ's Bride and Mary's Daughter, had deliberately deceived this man.</p> + +<p>Yet for his own sake, was it not best that he should never know the truth! +And for the sake of Richard's daughter, was it not her sacred maternal +duty to shield that dearest one from shame? She steeled herself with that +as he bared his head before her.</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, you have more than honoured me with your confidence, and I need +not say that it is sacred in my eyes, and shall be kept inviolate. And for +the rest——"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XL" id="XL"></a>XL</h2> + + +<p>"Reverend Mother," sounded from below.</p> + +<p>"They are calling us," she said, as though awakened from a dream.</p> + +<p>"May I take you down?"</p> + +<p>He offered his arm with deference, and she touching it lightly, they went +down together. Lynette came to them laughing, a cup in either hand, her +aides-de-camp following with plates that held the siege apology for bread +and butter and familiar-looking cubes of something....</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Miss Mildare. What have you here, Beau? Cake, upon my word! Or +is it a delusion born of long and painful abstinence from any form of +pastry?"</p> + +<p>"Cake it is, sir, and thundering good cake," proclaimed Beauvayse. "Made +from Sister Tobias's special siege recipe, without candied peel or plums +or carraways, or any of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> other what-do-you-call-'ems that go into the +ordinary article. Go in and win, sir. I've had three whacks. Haven't I, +Miss Mildare?"</p> + +<p>He spoke with the infectious enjoyment of a schoolboy, and Lynette's +laugh, sweet and gay as a thrush's sudden trill of melody, answered:</p> + +<p>"I think you have had four."</p> + +<p>She flushed as she met the Colonel's eyes, reading in them masculine +appreciation of her delicate, vivid beauty, and put her freed hand into +the lean palm he held out, saying, with a shy, sweet smile that lifted one +corner of the sensitive mouth higher than the other:</p> + +<p>"I didn't come to say How do you do? before, because I saw you were busy +talking to Mother." Her quick glance read something amiss in another face. +"Mother, how tired you look! Please bring that little camp-stool, Mr. +Fraithorn. Oh, thank you, Dr. Saxham; that one with arms is more +comfortable. Colonel, we're all under your command. Won't you please order +the Mother to sit down and rest? She will be so tired to-morrow. Dearest, +you know you will."</p> + +<p>She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. The end of the thin +black veil, that was shabby now, and had darns in many places, was wafted +across her face by a vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and she +kissed it, bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked at +her, and then turned away. Saxham, in default of any excuse for lingering +near her, went back to Lady Hannah, who had been diligently mining in him +with the pick and shovel of Our Special Correspondent, and getting nothing +out, and sat himself doggedly upon a stone beside her.</p> + +<p>"That is a sweet girl." She nibbled bannock, sparsely margarined, and +sipped her sugarless, milkless tea, sitting on a little bushy knoll, +warranted free from puff-adders and tarantulas. Saxham answered stiffly:</p> + +<p>"Many people here seem to be under—the same impression."</p> + +<p>"Don't you share it? Don't you think her sweet?"</p> + +<p>"I have seen young ladies who were—less deserving of the adjective."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah jangled a triumphant laugh. She wore the tailored garb the +average Englishwoman looks best in,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> at home and abroad, an alpaca coat +and skirt of cool grey; what the American belle terms a "shirt-waist" with +pearl studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. Her +small face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were as round and as bright +as a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk was full of glitter and vivacity.</p> + +<p>"'Praise from Dr. Saxham.' ... If I were a man," she declared, "I should +<i>perdre la boule</i> over that girl. I don't wonder where she gets her lovely +manners from, with such a model of grace and good breeding as Biddy Bawne +before her eyes, but I do ask how she came by that type of beauty? And +Biddy——"</p> + +<p>"Biddy?" repeated Saxham, at a loss.</p> + +<p>Her laugh shrilled out.</p> + +<p>"I forgot. She is the Reverend Mother-Superior of the Convent to all of +you. But I was at school with her, and I can't forget she used to be +Biddy. She was one of the great girls, and I was a sprat of ten, but she +condescended to let me adore her, and I did, like everybody else. To be +adored is her <i>métier</i>. The Sisters swear by her, and that girl worships +the ground under her feet. If I had a daughter I should like her to look +at me in that way—heart in her eyes, don't you know, and what eyes! +Topaz-coloured, aren't they? She has no conversation, of course. <i>I</i> +hadn't at her age—nineteen or twenty, if I am any guesser. What she will +be at thirty, if she don't go off! That little Greek head, and all those +waves of rusty-coloured hair. Quite wonderful! And her hands and feet and +skin—marvellous! And that small-boned slenderness of build that is so +perfectly enchanting. Paquin would delight to dress her. And"—her +jangling laugh rang out, waking echoes from hollow places—"it looks—do +you know?—it looks as though he would get the chance."</p> + +<p>"Why does it?" demanded Saxham, turning his square face full upon Lady +Hannah, and lowering his heavy brows.</p> + +<p>"Mercy upon us, Doctor, do you want me to be definite and literal? Can't +you do as I do, and use your eyes?" Her own round, sparkling black ones +were full of provocation. "They look as if they could see rather farther +into a mud wall than most people's. Please get me one of those peaches. +No, I won't have a plate. I am beginning to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> find out that most of the +things Society regards as indispensable can be done without. I'm beginning +to revert to Primitive Simplicity. Isn't there a prehistoric <i>flair</i> about +most of us? If there isn't, there ought to be. For what are we from +week-end to week-end but grimy male and female Troglodytes, eating minced +horse and fried locusts in underground burrows by the light of paraffin +lamps! Another peach.... Thanks. Can't you see those dear things, the +Sisters, gathering them by lantern-light, and being shelled by Brounckers' +German gunners. Wretches! Beasts! Horrors!"</p> + +<p>"I hope," said Saxham, with rather heavy irony, "that you acquainted them +with your opinion of them while you had the opportunity?"</p> + +<p>She gaily flipped him with the loose tan gloves she had drawn off. Her +bangles clashed, and her eyes snapped sparks under the brim of her hat, +whose feathers nodded and swished, and her jangling laugh brought more +echoes from the high banks.</p> + +<p>"Ha, ha, ha! Do you know, Doctor, I call that thoroughly nasty—to remind +me, on such a fine day too, of the Frightful Fiasco. When my own husband +hasn't ventured to breathe a hint even.... Do you know, when he rode out +to meet me with the Escort, all he said was, 'Hullo, old lady; is that +you? The Chief wants to know if you'll peck with us at six, and I told him +I thought you'd be agreeable.' And when we met, <i>he</i>—— Why do +handkerchiefs invariably hide when people want to sneeze behind them?" She +found the ridiculous little square of filmy embroidered cambric, and blew +her thin little nose, and furtively whisked away a tear-drop. "He never +moved a muscle; Just shook hands in his kind, hearty way, and began to +tell the news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped to +rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been." She gulped. "I could have put +my head down on the tablecloth and cried gallons"—she blew her nose +again—"knowing 'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, that flabby +Slabberts creature counted for something in the game, or Brounckers +wouldn't have wanted him. And Captain—my Captain!..." She threw a +sparkling eye-dart tipped with remorseful brine at the spare, soldierly +figure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> and the lean, purposeful face. "If you were to say to me this +minute, 'Hannah Wrynche, jump off the end of that high rock-bluff there, +down on those uncommonly nasty-looking stones below,' I vow I'd do it!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's blue eyes were kind. Here was a fellow hero-worshipper.</p> + +<p>"I believe you would do it, and—that he believes it too."</p> + +<p>She tapped him on the sleeve with the long cherry-wood stick of her white +green-lined umbrella.</p> + +<p>"Thank you. But don't get to making a habit of saying charming things, +because the rôle of Bruin suits you. Your Society women-patients used to +enjoy being bullied, tremendously, I remember. We're made like that." Her +shrill laugh came again. "To <i>sauter à pieds joints</i> on people who are +used to being deferred to, or made much of, is the best way to command +their cordial gratitude and sincere esteem, isn't it? Don't all you +successful professional men know that?"</p> + +<p>"The days of my professional successes are past and gone," said Saxham, +"and my very name must be strange in the ears of the men and women who +were my patients. It is natural and reasonable that when a man falls out +of the race, he should be forgotten—at least, I hold it so."</p> + +<p>"You have a patient not very far away who lauds you to the skies." Lady +Hannah indicated the slender pepper-and-salt clad figure of Julius +Fraithorn with the cherry-wood umbrella-stick. "You know his father, the +Bishop of H——? Such a dear little trotty old man, with the kind of rosy, +withered-apple face that suggests a dear little trotty old woman, +disguised in an episcopal apron and gaiters, and with funny little bits of +white fur glued on here and there for whiskers and eyebrows. We met him +with Mrs. Fraithorn at the Hôtel Schwert at Appenbad one June. Do you know +Appenbad? Views divine: such miles of eye-flight over the Lake of +Constance and the Rhine Valley. To quote Bingo, who suffered hideously +from the whey-cure, every prospect pleases, and only man is bile—and +woman, too, if seeing black spots in showers like smuts in a London fog, +only sailing up instead of coming down, means a disturbed gastric system. +I'm not sure now that the Bishop did not mention your name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> Can he have +done so, or am I hashing things? Do set my mind at rest?"</p> + +<p>Saxham said with stiffness:</p> + +<p>"It would be possible that the Bishop would remember me. I operated on him +for the removal of the appendix in 18—"</p> + +<p>"If you had taken away his Ritualistic prejudices at the same time, you +would have made his wife a happy woman. Her soul yearns for incense and +vestments, candles, and acolytes, and most of all for her boy. Well, she +will thank you herself for him one day, Doctor." The little dry hand, +glittering with magnificent rings, touched Saxham's gently. "In the +meantime let a woman who hasn't got a son shake hands with you for her."</p> + +<p>"You make too much of that affair." Saxham took the offered hand. It +pressed his kindly, and the little lady went on:</p> + +<p>"You're still a prophet in your own country, you know, though it pleases +you to make yourself out a—a kind of medical Rip Van Winkle. In June last +year—when I did not guess that I should ever know you—I heard a woman +say: 'If Owen had been here, the child wouldn't have died.' And the woman +was your sister-in-law, Mrs. David Saxham."</p> + +<p>Saxham's blue eyes shot her a steely look. The wings of his mobile +nostrils quivered as he drew quickened breath. He waited, with his +obstinate under-lip thrust out, for the rest. If he did not fully grasp +the real and genuine kindliness that prompted the little woman, at least +he did her the justice of not shutting her up as an impudent chatterbox. +She went on, a little nervously:</p> + +<p>"I don't think I ever mentioned to you before that I had met your brother +and his wife? She is still a very attractive person, but—it is not the +type to wear well, and the boy's death cut them both up terribly."</p> + +<p>"There was a boy—who died?"</p> + +<p>"In the spring of last year. Of—meningitis, I think his mother said, and +she declared over and over that if you had been there, you would have +saved him."</p> + +<p>"At least, I should have done my best."</p> + +<p>She had turned her eyes away in telling him, or she would have seen the +relief in his face. He understood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> now why his mother's trustees had +prompted the solicitors' advertisement. He was his nephew's heir, under +the late Mrs. Saxham's will. Seven thousand in Consols and Home Rails, and +the little freehold property in North Wales, that brought in, when the +house was let, about one hundred and fifty pounds a year, counted as +wealth to a man who had possessed nothing. He lifted his square head and +threw back his heavy shoulders with the air of one from whom a heavy +burden has been taken. His vivid eyes lightened, his heavy brows smoothed +out their puckers, and the tense lines about his lips relaxed. His own +words came back to him:</p> + +<p>"The Past is done with. Why should not the Future be fair?"</p> + +<p>He knew, as he looked towards Lynette Mildare, who personified the Future +for him, and his mood changed. He had loved her without hope. Now a faint +grey began to show in the blackness of his mental horizon. It might be a +false dawn, but what a lightening of the heavy heart—what a leap of the +stagnant blood—answered to it! He was no longer penniless. He had never +loved money or thirsted for estate, but the thought of that sum of seven +thousand pounds solidly invested, and the house that stood in its walled +garden on the cliffs at Herion, looking out on the wild, tumbling +grey-white waters of Nantavon Bay, was dear to him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Plas Bendigaid had been a Convent once. Its grey, stone-tiled, +steep-pitched roof and solid walls of massive stone had sheltered his +mother's infancy and girlhood. Perhaps they might cover a lovelier head, +and echo to the voices of his wife and his children. He gave sweet fancies +the rein, as Lady Hannah chattered beside him. He dreamed of that Future +that might be fair, even as he filled up the little lady's pauses with +"Yes's" and "No's."</p> + +<p>Love at first sight. He had laughed the possibility to scorn, in other +days, holding the passion to be the sober child of propinquity, sympathy, +consonance of ideas, similar tastes, and pursuits, and fanned into flame, +after due time to kindle, by the appearance of a rival.</p> + +<p>A rival! He laughed silently, grimly, remembering the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> resentful, jealous +impulse that had prompted his interruption when the boyish, handsome face +of Beauvayse had leaned so near to hers, and the blush that dyed her +white-rose cheeks had answered, no doubt, to some hackneyed, stereotyped, +garrison compliment.</p> + +<p>He had seen them together since then: once crossing the veld from the +Women's Laager on foot, in the company of the Mother-Superior; once here +beside the river, under the chaperonage of all the Sisters; once in the +Market Square, and always the sight had roused in him the same intolerable +resentment and gnawing pain that rankled in him now as he watched them.</p> + +<p>What was Beauvayse whispering, so close to the delicate little ear that +nestled under the red-brown hair-waves? Something that set his grey-green +eyes gleaming dangerously, and lifted the wings of the fine nostrils, and +opened the boldly-curved mouth in audacious laughter, under the short +golden hairs of the clipped moustache. Somehow that laughter stung Saxham. +His muscular hand gripped the old hunting-crop that he carried by habit +even when he did not ride, and his black brows were thunderous as he +vainly tried to listen to the little woman who chattered beside him.</p> + +<p>"Look about you," she bade him, putting up her tortoiseshell-rimmed +eyeglasses as though she were in a picture-gallery or at a theatre. +"Wouldn't the ordinary unimaginative person suppose that Love would be the +last flower to blossom in the soil of this battered little bit of +debatable ground? But we know better. So does Miss Wiercke, the German +oculist's daughter, and so does that tallow-candle-locked young man who +plays the harmonium at the Catholic Church. And that other pretty girl—I +don't know her name—who used to keep the book-registers at the Public +Library. She is going to marry that young mining-engineer—a Cornishman, +judging by his blue eyes and black hair—do you happen to be Cornish, +too?—next Sunday. And the uncertainty about living till then or any time +after Monday morning will make quite a commonplace wedding into something +tremendously romantic. But you don't even pretend to look when you're +told. Aha!" she cried; "I've caught you. You were watching another pair of +lovers—the couple I kept for the last."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Not at all," said Saxham, inexpressibly wearied by the voluble little +woman's discourse. Ignoring the conventional disclaimer, Lady Hannah went +on:</p> + +<p>"They're in the early stage—the First Act of the dear old play. Pretty to +watch, isn't it? Though it makes one feel chilly and grown old, as +Browning or somebody says. Only the other day one was tipping that boy at +Eton, and he looking such a Fourth of June darling as you never saw, got +up in duck trousers and a braided blue jacket, and a straw hat with a +wreath of white and crimson Banksia roses round it for the Procession of +Boats. And now"—she sighed drolly—"he's a long-legged Lieutenant of +Hussars, with a lady-killing reputation. Though, in the present instance, +I'm ready to back my opinion that the biter is fairly bit. What regiments +of women will tear their hair—real or the other thing—when Beau becomes +a Benedick."</p> + +<p>Saxham saw red, but he gave no sign. She turned down her little thumb with +a twinkle of triumph.</p> + +<p>"<i>Habet!</i> And I'm not sorry he has got it badly. His <i>leitmotif</i> in the +music-play has been 'See the Conquering Hero' up to now; one isn't sorry +to see one's sex avenged. But one <i>is</i> sorry for Mary Fraithorn's boy." +She indicated the Chaplain with a twirl of her eyeglasses. "She used to +visit him with the Sisters when he was ill, and, of course, he has been +bowled over. But <i>il n'a pas un radis</i>, unless the Bishop comes round, and +don't you think that little Greek head of hers is aware that a great deal +of money goes with the Foltlebarre title, and that the family diamonds +would suit it to a marvel?"</p> + +<p>Saxham said gratingly, and with a hostile look:</p> + +<p>"Do you infer that Miss Mildare is vain and mercenary?"</p> + +<p>"Good mercy, my dear man!" she screamed; "don't pounce. I infer nothing, +except that Miss Mildare happens to be a live girl, with eyes and the gift +of charm, and that the young men are attracted to her as naturally as +drones to a honey-pot. Also, that, if she's wise, she will dispose of her +honey to the best advantage." Her beady bright eyes snapped suddenly at +Saxham, and her small face broke up into laughter. "Ha, ha, ha! Why, I do +believe ..." She screamed at him triumphantly. "You, too! You've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> +succumbed. She carries your scalp at her pretty waist with the rest of +'em. How perfectly delightful!"</p> + +<p>Possibly Saxham had always been a bear, as her little ladyship had stated, +but the last five years had certainly scraped off whatever social veneer +had adhered to his manners. The power of facial self-control, the common +tact that would have carried things off with a laugh and a jest, were his +no longer, if he had ever possessed them. He got upon his feet and stood +before the woman whose six ounces less of brain-matter had been +counterbalanced by so large an allowance of intuition, dumbly furious with +her, and so unspeakably savage with himself for not being able to hide his +anger and annoyance that, as he stood before her with his hulking +shoulders hunched and his square, black head sullenly lowered, and his +eyes blazing under their heavy brows, he suggested to Lady Hannah's nimble +wit and travelled experience the undeniable analogy between a chaffed and +irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudy +paper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequent +explosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally +said, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when it became none.</p> + +<p>"Do, please, forgive me!... What you must think of me!..." she began +contritely.</p> + +<p>Repentance gave place to resentment. Saxham, without even an abrupt +inclination of the head, had swung about and left her. She saw the +heavily-shouldered, muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a little +way down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small, +neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with a +decidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he was knee-deep in the +reeds of the north shore; now he was climbing the bank. A black-and-white +crow flew up heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of the +oaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of finches and linnets rose as the +covert of tree-fern and cactus and tall grass, knitted with thorny-stemmed +creeper, received him and swallowed him. She saw by the shaking of the +foliage that he turned up the stream, and then no more of him. +Feather-headed idiot that she had been! Inconsiderate wretch! How, in +Heaven's name, after reminding the man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> of the perfidy of that underbred +<i>passée</i> little person with the passion for French novels and sulphonal +tabloids, who had thrown the Doctor over, years before, in favour of his +brother the Dragoon—how could she have charged him with being a victim to +the charms of another young woman? If Mrs. David's desertion rankled +still, as no doubt it did, there being no accounting for masculine taste, +he would, of course, resent the accusation almost as an insult. Men were +such Conservatives in love. And, besides, she had just been telling him +about the child. She loathed herself for having perpetrated such a +blunder. Saxham had murdered politeness by quitting her abruptly; but +hadn't she deserved the snub? She deserved snubbing. She would go, for the +health of her soul, and talk to dearest Biddy, who always made you feel +even smaller than you had thought yourself before.</p> + +<p>She stood up, shaking the sand-grams and grass-burrs from her dress and +the folds of the white umbrella. It was nearing six o'clock. The heat was +lessening, and the pale turquoise sky overhead was flecked and dappled +with little puffs of rosy cloud, bulking in size and deepening in colour +to the westward, where their upper edges were pure gold. And the river +looked like a stream of liquid honey, upon which giant rose-leaves had +been scattered, and a breeze was stirring in the grasses and among the +leaves. The Sisters were busily repacking their baskets. Little Miss +Wiercke, and her lank-haired young organist, sat under a bush, gazing in +each other's eyes with the happy fatuity of lovers in the second stage, +while the young lady who had kept the registers at the Public Library was +teaching her Cornish mining-engineer to wash up cups and saucers in a tin +basin—a process which resulted in the entanglement of fingers of +different sexes, and made Sister Tobias pause over her task of wiping +crockery to shake her head and laugh.</p> + +<p>Little Miss Wiercke was to lose her lank-haired organist a few days later, +the prevalent complaint of shrapnelitis carrying him off. And the girl who +screamed coquettishly as the mining-engineer amorously squeezed her wet +fingers under the soapsuds was shortly to be represented in the +Cornishman's memory by another white cross in the Cemetery, a trunk full +of pathetic feminine fripperies, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> a wedding-ring that had been worn +barely two months. But they did not know this, and they were happy. We +should never love or laugh if we knew.</p> + +<p>Two other people had passed along the path that ran by the margin of the +sand and reed-patches, and were lost to sight. Lady Hannah glanced towards +the Mother-Superior, who was being gracious to Captain Bingo and the +Chaplain, and hoped Biddy would not miss the owner of the little Greek +head and the enchanting willowy figure quite yet.</p> + +<p>Nuns were frightfully scrupulous and gimlet-eyed where their charges were +concerned. And certainly, if young people never got away together without +<i>qu'il ne vous en déplaise!</i> there would be fewer engagements. And Biddy +must know that it was a Heaven-sent chance for the girl.</p> + +<p>The Foltlebarres had sat too long on thorns to grumble at Beau's marrying +a girl without a <i>dot</i>, who was not only lovely enough to set Society +screaming over her, but modest and a lady. Up to the present his tendency +had been to exalt Beauty above Breed, and personal attractiveness above +moral immaculateness.</p> + +<p>As in the most recent case of that taking but extremely terrible little +person with the toothy, photographic smile, Miss Lessie Lavigne of the +Jollity Theatre, the affair with whom might be counted, it was to be +hoped, as the last furrow of a heavy sowing of wild oats. As this would be +a match <i>d'égal à égal</i>—in point of blood and education, at any +rate—certainly the Foltlebarres would have reason to bless their stars.</p> + +<p>Somebody came over to her just then, saying:</p> + +<p>"Bingo seems in excellent spirits."</p> + +<p>She looked, a little apprehensively, across to where the Mother Superior +and the wistful-eyed, pepper-and-salt-clad Chaplain were patiently +listening to the recital of one of Bingo's stock anecdotes.</p> + +<p>"What is he telling the Reverend Mother?" Her tone was anxious. "I do hope +not that story about the unwashed Boer and the cake of soap!"</p> + +<p>"Don't be alarmed. It's a recent and completely harmless anecdote about +the despatch-runner from Diamond Town who got in this morning."</p> + +<p>Her eyes sparkled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Really ...? And with news worth having?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Casey might be disposed to think so."</p> + +<p>"Who is Mr. Casey?"</p> + +<p>"That's a question nobody can answer satisfactorily."</p> + +<p>"But is the intelligence absolutely useless to anybody who doesn't happen +to be Mr. Casey?" she insisted.</p> + +<p>"Not unless they happened to be deeply interested in Mrs. Casey."</p> + +<p>"There is a Mrs. Casey, then?"</p> + +<p>"So says the man who travelled two hundred miles to bring her letters and +the message that she is, as Mr. Micawber would put it, <i>in statu quo</i>."</p> + +<p>"I understand." The bright black eyes were compassionate. "She has written +to her husband—she doesn't know that he has been killed——"</p> + +<p>"Nor do we. As far as we can ascertain, the garrison has never included a +Casey."</p> + +<p>"Then you think——"</p> + +<p>"I think"—he glanced aside as a stentorian bellow of laughter reached +them—"that, judging by what I hear, Bingo has got to the soapy story."</p> + +<p>She frowned anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Bingo ought to remember that nuns aren't ordinary women. I shall have to +go and gag him." She took a dubious step.</p> + +<p>"Why? The Reverend Mother does not seem at all shocked, and Fraithorn is +evidently amused." He added, as Bingo's rapturous enjoyment of his own +anecdote reached the stamping and eye-mopping stage: "And undoubtedly +Bingo is happy."</p> + +<p>"He has got out of hand lately. One can't keep a husband in a proper state +of subjection who may be brought home to one a corpse at any hour of the +day." Her laugh jangled harshly, and broke in the middle. "The soil of +Gueldersdorp being so uncommonly favourable just now to the production of +weeds of the widow's description."</p> + +<p>"It grows other things." His eyes were very kind. "Brave, helpful, +unselfish women, for instance."</p> + +<p>"There is one!"</p> + +<p>She indicated the tall, black-robed figure of the Mother with a quick +gesture of her little jewelled hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And here is another." He touched her sleeve lightly with a finger-tip.</p> + +<p>"Brave.... Helpful." Her voice was choky. "Do you think I shall ever +forget the hindrance I have been to you? Didn't I lose you your Boer spy?"</p> + +<p>"Granted you did." His moustache curved cheerfully at the corners. "But +that's Ancient History, and look what you brought back!"</p> + +<p>"A unit of the despised majority who is thoroughly convinced of her own +superfluousness. Hannah Wrynche, with the conceit so completely taken out +of her that she feels, say, like a deflated balloon; Hannah Wrynche, who +believed herself born to be a War Correspondent, and has come down to +scribbling gossipy paragraphs for a little siege newspaper printed in a +damp cellar."</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>"Collectors will pay fancy prices for copies of that same little siege +newspaper, at auctions yet to be."</p> + +<p>"I've thought of that," she confessed. "But, oh! I could make it so much +more spicy if you'd only give me a freer hand."</p> + +<p>His hazel eyes had a smile in them. "I know you think me an editorial +martinet."</p> + +<p>"You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything that's interesting."</p> + +<p>"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control."</p> + +<p>"The Reading Public adore personalities and puerilities."</p> + +<p>"They can go to the <i>Daily Whale</i> for them, then."</p> + +<p>"Isn't that rather a personal remark?"</p> + +<p>"Let me say that if you are occasionally personal, you are never, under +any circumstances, anything but clever."</p> + +<p>"Thank you. But, oh! the difference between what I am and what I aspired +to be!"</p> + +<p>"And, ah! the difference between what I have done and what I meant to do!" +he said.</p> + +<p>Her black eyes flashed. "You have never really felt it. Achievement with +you has never hit below the mark. You, of all men living, are least fitted +to enter into the rueful regrets and dismal disillusions of a Hannah +Wrynche."</p> + +<p>"Hannah Wrynche, who is content to do a woman's work and fill a woman's +place; Hannah Wrynche, who has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> atoned for a moment of ambitious—shall I +say imprudence?—splendidly and nobly, has no reason to be rueful or +regretful. Don't shake your head. Do you think I don't know what you are +doing, day after day, to help and cheer those poor fellows at the +Convalescent Hospital?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes were full of tears. "You make too much of my poor efforts. You +underestimate the effect of praise from you."</p> + +<p>"I said very little in the last cipher despatch that got through to +Colonel Rickson at Malamye, but what I did say was very much to the +purpose, believe me."</p> + +<p>She gasped, staring at him with circular eyes of incredulity. "You've +mentioned—me—in your despatches. <span class="smcap">Me</span>?"</p> + +<p>"Just so!" he said, and left her groping for the ridiculous little +gossamer handkerchief to dry the tears of pride and gratitude that were +tumbling down her cheeks.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI"></a>XLI</h2> + + +<p>"Clang—clang—clang!"</p> + +<p>A man and a girl came back out of Paradise when the Catholic church-bell +rang the Angelus. The girl's sweet flushed face had paled at the first +three strokes. When the second triple clanged out, her colour came back. +She rose from her seat upon a lichened slab of granite in the cool shadow +of the great boulder, and bent her lovely head, Beauvayse watching her +lips as they moved, soundlessly repeating the Angelic Salutation:</p> + +<p>"<i>Ave María, grátia plena; Dóminus tecum! Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et +benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.</i>"</p> + +<p>The wonderful simplicity of the Chosen One's reply followed, and the +announcement of the Unspeakable Mystery. The little prayer followed, and +the rapid signing with the Cross, and she dropped her slight hand from her +bosom, and turned her eyes back upon his.</p> + +<p>"You remind me of my mother," he told her. "She is Catholic, you know."</p> + +<p>"And not you?"</p> + +<p>"We fellows, my brothers Levestre and Daltham and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> myself, were brought up +as pillars of the Established Church." His sleepy, grey-green eyes +twinkled, his white teeth showed in the laugh. "The girls are of my +mother's faith. It was a family agreement. Are you quite sure you have +come down to earth again? Because there's such an awful lot I want to say +to you that I don't know where to begin."</p> + +<p>Though his mouth laughed, his eyes had wistful shadows under them. He had +tossed aside his Service felt when she had taken off her hat, and the +sunshine, piercing the thick foliage overhead, dappled the scaly trunks of +the blue-gum trees, and dripped gold upon the red-brown head and the +crisp-waved golden one.</p> + +<p>"I am here. I am listening."</p> + +<p>She stood before him with meekly drooping eyelids, feeling his ardent gaze +like a palpable weight, under which her knees trembled and her whole body +swayed. The great boulder rose upon her left hand like a beneficent +presence. Delicate ferns and ice-plants sprang from its chinks and +crannies. The long fronds of the sparaxis bowed at her small, brown-shod +feet, some bearing seed-pods, others rows of pink bells, or yellow—a +fairy chime. In the damper hollows iris bloomed, and the gold and scarlet +sword-flowers stood in martial ranks, and gaily-plumaged finches were +sidling on overhanging boughs, or dipping and drinking in the shallows. +The wattled starlings whistled to each other, or fought as starlings will. +A grey partridge was bathing in the hot dry sand between the reed-beds and +the bank, and in the deeper pools the barbel were rising at the flies. +There was no sound but the running water. The spicy smell of aromatic +leaves and the honeyed perfume of a great climbing trumpet-flower made the +air languorous with sweetness.</p> + +<p>He answered her now.</p> + +<p>"You are here, and I am here. And for me that means everything. And I feel +that I want nothing more, and, still, such a tremendous lot besides."</p> + +<p>He breathed as though he had been running, and his sharply-cut nostrils +quivered. His white teeth gleamed under the clipped golden moustache.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it made his charm the more definite and irresistible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> that in +these days of storm, and stress, and hardship and peril, his handsome face +was never without its gay, confident smile. His tall, athletic figure, in +the neat workmanlike Service dress that suited him so well, leaned towards +her eagerly. He kept his clear eyes on her face, with the direct +simplicity of a child's gaze, but the look bred in her a delicious terror. +The perfume of youth and health, of vigour and virility, that exhaled from +him, came to her mingled with the scent of the crushed spice-leaves and +the perfume of the waxen-belled heaths and the breath of the giant +trumpet-flower. She was turning dizzy. She could scarcely stand.</p> + +<p>"I—I will sit down," she murmured, and he beat the grasses at the foot of +the great granite slab and prodded in chinks and crannies for snakes and +tarantulas; and when she sank down with a faint sigh of relief, threw +himself at her feet with a careless, powerful grace, and lay there looking +up at her, worshipping the golden lights that gleamed through the thick +dark eyelashes, and the sweet shadows under them, and her little pointed +chin.</p> + +<p>The lace-trimmed frills of a white cambric petticoat peeped under the hem +of her green cloth skirt; below there was a glimpse of slender, crossed +ankles in brown silk hose, and the little brown shoes laced with wide silk +ties. She drew off one of her thin, loose tan gloves, and smoothed back a +straying lock above her ear, and flushed, hearing him murmur in his +caressing voice:</p> + +<p>"Take off the other glove, too."</p> + +<p>She was well aware how beautiful her hands were—small, and slender, and +ivory-white, and exquisitely modelled, with little babyish nicks at the +wrists, and at the inner edges of the rosy palms, and gleaming pink nails, +of the true almond shape. She thought little of her face, though she knew +it to be charming; but she ingenuously admired her slender feet, that were +quite as pretty without the silk stockings and little brown shoes, and the +delicate hands she bared for him now. He looked at them with ardent +longing, and said:</p> + +<p>"How dear of you to do that, because I asked you! And do you realise that +we're here together alone, you and me, for the first time? Nobody saw us +steal away but Sister<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> Cleophée, and I've a notion she wouldn't tell, +blessed old soul!"</p> + +<p>Her eyes smiled.</p> + +<p>"You would not call the Mother that?"</p> + +<p>"No more than I would Queen Victoria or the Princess of Wales. And a +snubbing from the Religious would be rather worse, on the whole, than a +snubbing from the Royalty."</p> + +<p>"The Princess never snubbed you?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't she? Tremendously, once. Do you want to hear about it? She had +sent away her brougham while the giddy old Dean and Chapter were showing +her round St. Paul's. And—acting as Extra Equerry—I'd got instructions +to call her a hack conveyance, and—being young and downy, I'd picked +H.R.H. the glossiest growler on the rank. But you've been bred and born +here. You don't even know what a growler is. And in five years' time there +won't be one left in London."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I shall see London before the five years are over. And a growler +is a four-wheeled cab. You see, I'm not so ignorant...."</p> + +<p>"You sweetest!" he burst out passionately. "I wish I knew all that you +could teach me!"</p> + +<p>He might have frightened her if he had stretched out his arms to clasp her +then. But he mastered himself so far. Lying at full length in the grass, +leaning upon his elbow, he rested his head upon his hand, and drank her in +with thirsty eyes. And that something emanating from him enveloped her, +delicately and yet forcefully, constraining and urging and compelling her +to meet his gaze. And the perfume of the great honeyed flower came to her +in waves of sweetness, growing in strength, and the monotonous buzzing of +the black honey-bees mingled with the drumming of the crickets, and the +flowing of the river, and the beating of her heart, and the rushing of her +blood. She leaned her fair head back against the great boulder, and said +in a voice that shook a little:</p> + +<p>"Tell me about the snubbing."</p> + +<p>"It was High Art. Three words—and I knew I'd behaved like a bounder of +the worst—I had to go back and get the other cab, with a broken front +window and a cabby...." He chuckled. "I've met red noses enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> but you +could have seen that chap's glowing through the thickest fog that ever +blanketed Ludgate Hill and wrapped the Strand in greasy mystery. Don't +move, please!... There's a ray of sunshine touching your head that makes +your hair look the colour of a chestnut when the prickly green hull first +cracks to let it out. Or ... there's a rose grows on the pergola at home +at Foltlebarre Royal, with a coppery sheen on the young leaves.... I +wondered why I kept thinking of it as I looked at you. But I know now. And +your skin is creamy white like the flower. Oh, if I could only gather the +girl-rose and carry it home to the others!"</p> + +<p>She was pink as the loveliest La France now.</p> + +<p>"You ought not to talk to me in that way."</p> + +<p>"Don't I know it?" Beauvayse groaned out. He turned over upon his face in +the grass, and lay quite still. A shuddering sigh heaved the strong young +shoulders from time to time, and his hands clenched and tore at the +grasses, "Don't I know it? Lynette, Lynette!"</p> + +<p>She longed to touch the close-cropped golden head. Unseen by him, she +stretched out a hand timidly and drew it back again, unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>"Lynette, Lynette! I'm paying at this moment for every rotten act of +headlong folly I've ever committed in my life, and you're making me!" He +caught at a fold of her skirt and drew it to him and hid his face in it, +kissing it again and again. It was one of the caresses she had been used +herself to offer where she most loved. To find yourself being worshipped +instead of worshipping is an experience. She touched the golden head now, +as the Mother had often touched her own. He caught the hand.</p> + +<p>"No, no!" She grew deadly pale, and shivered. "Please let me go. I—I did +not——"</p> + +<p>She tried to release the hand. He raised himself, and she started at the +warm, quivering pressure of his beautiful mouth, scarcely shaded by the +young, wheat-golden moustache, upon her cool, sweet flesh. She snatched +her hand away with a faint cry, and sprang to her feet, and her cheeks +blazed anew as she turned to go.</p> + +<p>"You want to leave me? You would punish me like that—just for a kissed +hand?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p> + +<p>He barred her way, taller than herself, though he stood upon the sloping +lower level. She had learned always to be true in thought and speech.</p> + +<p>"I—don't—like to be touched." She said it without looking at him.</p> + +<p>"You put your hand upon my head. Why did you do it if you hate me so?"</p> + +<p>"I—don't hate you!"</p> + +<p>"I love you! My rose, my dove, my star, my joy! Queen of all the girls +that ever I saw or dreamed of, say that you could love me back again!"</p> + +<p>"I—must not."</p> + +<p>Her bosom heaved. He could see the delicate white throat vibrating with +the tumultuous beating of her heart.</p> + +<p>"Why not? Nobody has told you anything against me? Nobody has said to you +that I have no right to love you?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Look at me."</p> + +<p>The golden hazel, dark-lashed eyes she shyly turned to his were full of +exquisite, melting tenderness. Her lips parted to speak, and closed again. +He leaned towards her—hung over her, his own lips irresistibly attracted +to those sweetest ones....</p> + +<p>"Lord Beauvayse——" she began, and stopped.</p> + +<p>He begged:</p> + +<p>"Please, not the duffing title, but 'Beauvayse' only. Tell me you love me. +Tell me that you'll wait until I'm able to come to you and say: 'My +beloved, the way's clear. Be my wife to-morrow!'"</p> + +<p>His tone was masterful. His ardent eyes thrilled her. She murmured:</p> + +<p>"Beauvayse ...!"</p> + +<p>She swayed to him, as a young palm sways before a breeze, and he caught +her in his strenuous, young embrace, and held her firmly against him. Her +old terrors wakened, and dreadful, unforgettable things stirred in the +darkness, where they had lain hidden, and lifted hydra-heads. She cried +out wildly, and strove to thrust him from her, but he held her close. +There was a shaking among the tangled growths of bush and cactus high up +on the opposite bank,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> and Lynette realised that Beauvayse's arms no +longer held her. She leaned back against the boulder, panting and +trembling, and saw Beauvayse's revolver glitter in his steady hand, as +something came crashing down through the tangled jungle upon the edge of +the farther shore, and a heavily-built man in khâki pushed through the +shoulder-high growth of reeds, and leaped upon a rock that had a swirl of +water round it. It was Saxham.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare!" called the strong, vibrating voice.</p> + +<p>She faltered:</p> + +<p>"It—it is Dr. Saxham."</p> + +<p>"And what the devil does Dr. Saxham want?" was written in Beauvayse's +angry face. But he called out as he lowered his revolver-hand:</p> + +<p>"You've had rather an escape of getting shot, Saxham, do you know? You +might have been a Boer or a buffalo. Better be more careful next time, if +you're anxious to avert accidents."</p> + +<p>Saxham was a little like the buffalo as he lowered his head and surveyed +the alert, virile young figure and the insolent, high-bred face from under +ominously scowling brows. He made no answer; only laid one finger upon the +butt of his own revolver, and the slight action fanned Beauvayse's +annoyance and resentment to a white-heat, as perhaps Saxham had intended. +He sprang upon another boulder that was in the mid-swirl of the current, +and spoke again.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare, I was walking on one of the native paths that have been +made in the bush there"—he indicated the bank behind him—"when I heard +you cry out. I am here, at your service, to offer you any help or +protection that is in my power to give."</p> + +<p>Lynette looked at him vaguely. Beauvayse, crimson to the crisp waves upon +his forehead and the white collar-line above the edge of his jacket, +answered for her.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare does not require any help or protection other than what I am +privileged to place at her disposal. You had better go on with your walk, +Doctor. You know the old adage about two being company?"</p> + +<p>He laughed, but his voice had quivered with fury, and the hand that held +the revolver shook too. And his eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> seemed colourless as water against +the furious crimson of his face. Still ignoring him, Saxham said, his own +square, pale face turned full upon Lynette, and his vivid blue eyes +constraining her:</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildare, I am at your commands. Tell me to cross the river and take +you back to the ladies of the Convent, or order me to continue my walk. In +which case I shall understand that the familiarities of Lord Beauvayse are +not unwelcome to you."</p> + +<p>"By God ...! You——"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse choked, then suddenly remembered where and how to strike. But he +waited, and Saxham waited, and still she did not speak.</p> + +<p>"Am I to go or stay? Kindly answer, Miss Mildare!"</p> + +<p>Beauvayse's eyes were on her. He said to her below his breath:</p> + +<p>"Tell him to go!"</p> + +<p>She stammered:</p> + +<p>"Th—thank you. But—I—I—had rather you went on."</p> + +<p>Beauvayse saw his opportunity, and added, with an intolerable smile:</p> + +<p>"My 'familiarities,' as you are pleased to term them, being more +acceptable to a lady than the attentions of the Dop Doctor."</p> + +<p>Saxham started as though an adder had flashed its fangs through his boot. +A rush of savage blood darkened his face; his hand quivered near the butt +of his revolver, and his eyes blazed murder. But with a frightful effort +he controlled himself, lifted his hat slightly to Lynette, turned and +leaped back to the stone he had quitted, strode through the reed-beds, and +plunged back into the tangled boscage. That he did not continue his walk, +but turned back towards the town, was plain, for his retreat could be +traced by the shaking of the thick bush and the high grasses through which +he forced his way. It did him good to battle even with these vegetable +forces, and the hooked thorns that tore his clothes and rent his flesh +left nothing like the traces that those few words of dismissal, spoken by +a girl's voice, and the hateful taunt that had followed, had left upon his +heart.</p> + +<p>It was over. Over—over, the brief, sweet season of hope. Nothing was left +now but his loyalty to the friend who believed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> in him. If that man had +not stood between Saxham and his despair, Gueldersdorp would have got back +her Dop Doctor that night. For the Hospital stores included a cherished +case or two of Martell and Kinahan, and all these things were under +Saxham's hand.</p> + +<p>The heavy footsteps crashed out of hearing. The startled finches settled +down again, except at that point, higher up on the opposite bank, to which +Beauvayse's attention had first been directed. There the little birds yet +hovered like a cloud of butterflies, but, practised scout as Beauvayse +was, he paid no heed to their distress. She had declared for him. The +Doctor's discomfiture enhanced his triumph. Gad! how like an angry buffalo +the fellow was! The sort of beast who would put down his head and charge +at a stone wall as confidently as at a mud one. It was a confounded +nuisance that he had seen what he had seen. But a man who had eventually +cut so poor a figure, had been snubbed so thoroughly and completely, might +prefer to hold his tongue. And if he did not, here in Gueldersdorp, while +no letters got through, while no news filtered in from the big humming +world outside, it would be possible to carry things bravely off for a long +time. He had told Bingo, to be sure, about—about Lessie. But Bingo, +though he might bluster and barge about dishonourable conduct, would never +give away a man who had trusted him. To be sure, it was not quite fair, +not altogether square; it was not playing the game as it should be played, +to gain her promise as a free man. Should he make a clean breast of it, +and tell her the whole wretched story now?</p> + +<p>Perhaps he might if she had not been standing, a slender green-and-white, +nymph-like figure, against the background of sun-hot, shadow-flecked, +lichened stone, looking at him. The rosy light bathed her in its radiance. +And as she looked, it seemed to him that something was dawning in that +face of hers. He watched it, breathless with the realisation of his +dreams, his hopes, his desires. The prize was his. Every other baser +memory was drowning within him. It seemed to him that her purity, as he +bathed in it, washed him clean of stain. He forgot everything but the +secret that those sweet eyes told at last.</p> + +<p>"My beloved! I'm not good enough to tie your blessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> little shoes, and +yet no other man shall ever have you, hold you, call you his own.... +Lynette, Lynette! Dear one, isn't there a single kiss? And I might get +shot to-morrow."</p> + +<p>It was characteristic of him that his brave, gay mouth should laugh even +in the utterance of the appeal that melted her. She gave a little sob, and +raised her sweet face to his, flushing loveliest rosy red. She lifted her +slender arms and laid them about his strong young throat, and kissed him +very quietly and purely. He had meant to snatch her to his leaping heart +and cover her with eager, passionate caresses. But the strong impulse was +quelled. He said, almost with a sob:</p> + +<p>"Is this your promise? Does this mean that you belong to me?"</p> + +<p>Her breath caressed his cheek as she whispered:</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>He was thrilled and intoxicated and tortured at once to know himself her +chosen. Ah! why was he not free? Why had Chance and Luck and Fate forced +him to play a part like this?</p> + +<p>"I wish to Heaven we had met a year ago!" he broke out impulsively. +"Half-a-dozen years ago—only you'd have been a mere kid—too young to +understand what Love means.... Why, Lynette darling! what is the matter? +What have I said that hurt?"</p> + +<p>Her arms had fallen from about his neck. She shrank away from him. He drew +back, shocked into silence by the sudden, dreadful change in her. Her +eyes, curiously dulled and faded, looked at Beauvayse as though they saw +not him, but another man, through him and behind him. Her face was peaked +and pinched; her supple, youthful figure contracted and bent like that of +a woman withered by some wasting sickness, her dainty garments seemed to +lose their colouring and their freshness, and hang on her, by some strange +illusion wrought by the working of her mind upon his, like sordid rags. +Against the splendid riot of life and colour over and under and about her, +she looked like some slender sapling ringed and blighted, and ruined by +the inexorable worm. For she was remembering the tavern on the veld. She +was recalling what had been—realising what must henceforth be, in its +fullest meaning. She shuddered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> and her half-open mouth drew in the air +in gasps, and the blankness of her stare appalled him. He called in alarm:</p> + +<p>"Lynette dearest! what is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? +Lynette!"</p> + +<p>She did not answer. She shook like a leaf in the wind, and stared through +him and beyond him into the Past. That was all. There was a rustling of +leaves and branches higher on the bank, and the sound of thick woollen +draperies trailing through grass. The bush on the edge of the cleared +space that was about the great boulder was parted by a white, strong hand +and a black-sleeved arm, and the Mother-Superior moved out into the open, +and came down with those long, swift steps of hers to where they were. Her +eyes, sweeping past Beauvayse, fastened on the drooping, stricken figure +of the girl, read the altered face, and then she turned them on the boy, +and they were stern as those of some avenging Angel, and her white wimple, +laundried to snowy immaculateness by the capable hands of Sister Tobias, +framed a face as white.</p> + +<p>"What is the reason of—this? What has passed between you to account for +it? Has your mother's son no sense of honour, sir?"</p> + +<p>The icy tone of contempt stung him to risk the leap. He drew himself to +his splendid height, and answered, his brave young eyes boldly meeting the +stern eyes that questioned him:</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, I am sorry that you should think me capable of dishonourable +conduct. The fact is, that I have just asked Miss Mildare to be my wife. +And she consents."</p> + +<p>A spasm passed over the pale face. So easily they leave us whom we have +reared and tended, when the strange hand beckons and the new voice calls. +But the Mother-Superior was not a woman to betray emotion. She drew her +black nun's robe over the pierced mother-heart, and said calmly, holding +out her hand to him:</p> + +<p>"You will forgive me if I was unjust, knowing that she is dear to me. And +now I shall ask you to leave us. Please tell the Sisters"—from habit she +glanced at her worn gold watch—"we shall join them in ten minutes' time."</p> + +<p>He bowed, and lifted his smasher hat from the grass, and took up the +Lee-Metford carbine he had been carrying and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> had laid aside, and went to +Lynette and took her passive hand, and bent over it and kissed it. It +dropped by her side lifelessly when he released it. Her face was a mask +void of life. He looked towards the Mother in distress. Her white hand +imperiously motioned him away. He expostulated:</p> + +<p>"Is it safe for two ladies, ma'am, so far from the town, without +protection? Natives or white loafers may be hanging about."</p> + +<p>"If you desire it, you can remain within hearing of a call. But go now."</p> + +<p>He went, lightly striding down the sandy path between the reed-beds on the +foreshore. She watched the tall, athletic figure until it swung round a +bend and was lost to sight.</p> + +<p>Then she went to the girl and touched her. And at the touch Lynette +dropped as though she had been shot, and lay among the trodden grasses and +the flaunting cowslips face downwards. A low, incessant moaning came from +the muffled mouth. Her hands were knotted in her hair. She writhed like a +crushed snake, and all of her slender neck and face that could be seen and +the little ears that her clutching, twining fingers sometimes bared and +sometimes covered were one burning, shameful red.</p> + +<p>"Lynette! My dear one!" The Mother, wrung and torn with a very agony of +tenderness and pity, knelt beside her, and began with gentle strength to +untwine those clutching hands from the girl's hair. She prisoned both in +one of hers, and passed the other arm beneath the slender rigid body, and +lifted it up and held it in her strong embrace, silently until a moan, +more articulate than the rest, voiced:</p> + +<p>"Mother!"</p> + +<p>"It is Mother. She holds you; she will not let you go."</p> + +<p>The head lay helplessly upon her bosom. She felt the rigor lessen. The +moaning ceased, and the tortured heart began to leap and strain against +her own, as though some invisible hand lashed it with an unseen thong.</p> + +<p>There were no tears. Only those moans and the leaping of the heart that +shook her whole body. And it seemed to the Mother that her own heart wept +tears of blood. The hour had come at last, as always she had known it +would. The love of a man had wakened the woman in Lynette.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> She knew now +the full value of the lost heritage, and realised the glory of the jewel +that had been snatched by the brutal hand of a thief. Ah, Lord! the pity +of it!</p> + +<p>The pity of it! She, the stainless one, could have stripped off her own +white robe of virgin purity, had it been possible, to clothe the despoiled +young shoulders of Richard's daughter, cowering prostrate under her burden +of guiltless shame, crushed by the terrible knowledge that ruined +innocence must always pay the penalty, whether the destroyer is punished +or goes free.</p> + +<p>The penalty! Suppose at the price of a lie from lips that had never lied +yet it could be evaded? The Mother's face contracted with a spasm of +mental pain. A dull flush mounted to her temples, and died out in olive +paleness; her lips folded closely, and her black brows frowned over the +sombre grey fires burning in their hollow caves. She rebuked a sinner at +that moment, and the culprit was herself.</p> + +<p>She, the just mistress and wise ruler of so many Sisters in the religious +profession; she, so slow to judge and condemn others, was unsparing in +austerity towards herself. She had always recognised her greatest weakness +in her love for this adopted daughter that might have been her own if +Richard Mildare had not played traitor. She had never once yielded to the +clinging of those slight hands about her heart, but she had exacted +forfeit from herself, and rigorously. So much for excess of partiality, so +much for over-consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, so +much more of late for the keen mother-jealousy that had quickened in her +to anguish at the thought that another would one day usurp her undivided +throne, and claim and take the lion's share of the love that had been all +hers. Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. She was +all the more exacting towards herself. What right had a nun to be so bound +by an earthly tie? It was defrauding her Saviour and her Spouse to love +with such excess of maternal passion the child He had given. Yet she loved +on.</p> + +<p>She reviewed all her shortcomings, even while the girl's head lay +helplessly against her, and the scalding tears that had at last begun to +gush from those shut, quivering eyelids wetted her breast. She had +esteemed and valued perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> candour above all things. And yet of what +concealments had she not been guilty in the shielding of this dearest +head?</p> + +<p>She had deceived, for Richard's child, Richard's friend, in the deft +interweaving of fragmentary truths into a whole plausible fabric. She knew +that, if necessary, she would deceive again, trailing her wings, +fluttering on before, as the golden plover lures the footsteps of the +stranger from her nest.</p> + +<p>Perhaps you call her scruples fantastic, her sense of guilt morbid. Even +the lay Catholic can with difficulty comprehend and enter fully into the +mental constitution of the Religious. This was a nun, to whom a blur upon +the crystal of the soul kept pure, like the virginal body, for the daily +reception of the Consecrated Host, meant defilement, outrage, insult, to +her Master and her Lord.</p> + +<p>And she had always known, it seemed to her, that this terrible hour would +come. When the two young figures had moved away together into the green +gloom of the trees, she had felt a premonitory chill that streamed over +her whole body like icy water, paralysing and numbing her strength. She +had read their secret in their faces, unconscious of her scrutiny, and +watched them out of sight, praying, as only such a mother can, that it +might not be as she feared. This was her beloved's great hour; she would +not have stretched out a finger to delay its coming,—she who had known +Love, and could not forget! It might be that in this splendid boy, who was +as beautiful as the Greek Alcibiades, and as brave as the young Bayard, +lay the answer to all her prayers for her darling. The bridal white would +not be a blasphemy, like the young nun's snowy robe and veil. And yet—and +yet, in Lynette's place she knew that she could never have looked into the +face of a rosy, smiling, wedded Future without seeing under the myrtle and +orange-blossom garland the leering satyr-face of the Past.</p> + +<p>Was it wise that another should be made to share that vision? She put that +question to herself, looking with great agonised, unseeing eyes over the +head that lay upon her bosom, out across the slowly moving water, stained +with amber from ironstone beds through which it had wound its way, tinged +with ruddy crimson from the sunset. For the sky, from the western horizon +to the zenith, and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> thence to the serried peaks and frowning bastions +of purple-black cloud that lowered in the north, was all orange-crimson +now, and the moon, then at the ending of her second quarter, swung like a +pale lamp of electrum at the eastward corner of the flaming tent.</p> + +<p>"Was it wise?" She seemed to hear her own voice echoing back out of the +past. And it said:</p> + +<p>"The only just claim to your entire confidence in all that concerns your +past life will rest in the hands of the man who may one day be your +husband."</p> + +<p>The perfume of the great white trumpet-flower came to her in gusts of +intensified, sickening, loathsome sweetness. She glanced round and saw it +on her right, clasping in its luxuriant embrace a slender young bush that +it was killing. The thick, juicy green stems and succulent green leaves, +the greedily embracing tendrils and great fleshy-white, hanging flowers +revolted her. The creeper seemed the symbolisation of Lust battening upon +Innocence.</p> + +<p>Other like images crowded thick and fast upon her. From a mossy cranny in +a stone a hairy tarantula leaped upon a little lizard that sunned itself, +not thinking Death so near. A lightning-quick pounce of the bloated thing +with the fierce, bright eyes and the relentless, greedy claws, and the +little reptile vanished. She shuddered, thinking of its fate.</p> + +<p>The blue gums and oaks that fringed the river gorge and the bushes that +grew about were ragged and torn with shell and shrapnel-ball. Chips and +flinders had been knocked by the same forces from the boulders and the +rocks. Amongst the flowers near her shone something bright. It was an +unexploded Maxim-shell, a pretty little messenger of Death, girt with +bright copper bands and gaily painted. And a ninety-four-pound projectile, +exploded, had scattered the shore with its fragments, and doubtless the +river-bed was strewn thick with others. You had only to look to see them. +Once Lynette's lover knew everything there was to know, the trees and +rocks and flowers of the Eden in which every daughter of Eve owns the +right to walk, if only once in a whole lifetime, would be marred and +broken, scorched and spoiled, like these.</p> + +<p>Purblind that she had been. What claim had any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> man, seeing what the lives +of men are, to this pitiful sacrifice of reticence, this rending of the +veil of merciful, wise secrecy from an innocent young head? None. Not the +shadow of a claim. She tossed away her former scruples. They sailed from +her on the faint hot breeze lightly as thistledown. And now the +tear-blurred face was lifted from her bosom, and the voice, hoarse and +weak and trembling, appealed:</p> + +<p>"Mother, you are not angry? I never meant to be underhand, or to +hide—anything from you."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, hiding the pang it gave her to realise how much had been +concealed between the lines that she had read so often. "You did not mean +to." The trembling voice went on:</p> + +<p>"He never spoke to me as though we were strangers. Never, from the first. +And to-day, he——" Her heart's throbbing shook her. The Mother said:</p> + +<p>"He has told me what has passed. He said that he had asked you to marry +him, and you had—agreed." The bitterness of her wounded love was in her +tone.</p> + +<p>"I—had forgotten," she panted, "<i>that</i>—until one little careless thing +he said brought it all back to me in such a flood. It was like drowning. +Then you came, and—and——" The quavering, pitiful voice rose to a cry: +"Mother, must I tell him everything?" She cowered down in the enfolding +arms. "Mother, Mother, must I tell him?"</p> + +<p>A great wave of pity surged out from the deep mother-heart that throbbed +against her own. The deep, melodious voice answered with one word:</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>Amazement sat on the uplifted, woebegone face of the girl. The sorrowful +eyes questioned the Mother's incredulously.</p> + +<p>"You mean that you——"</p> + +<p>She folded the slight figure to her. Her sorrowful eyes, under their great +jetty arches, looked out like stars through a night of storm. Her greyish +pallor seemed a thin veil of ashes covering incandescent furnace-fires. +She rose up, lifting the slender figure. She said, looking calmly in the +face:</p> + +<p>"I mean that you are not to tell him. Upon your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> obedience to me I charge +you not to tell him. Upon your love for me I command you—never to tell +him! Kiss me, and dry these dear eyes. Put up your hair; a coil is +loosened. He is waiting for us! Come!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII"></a>XLII</h2> + + +<p>The tall, soldierly young figure was standing motionless and stiff, as +though on guard, on the river-shore beyond the bend. Whatever +apprehensions, whatever regrets, whatever fears may have warred within +Beauvayse, whatever consciousness may have been his of having taken an +irrevocable step, bound to bring disgrace and reproach, sorrow, and +repentance upon the innocent as upon the guilty, he showed no sign as he +came to meet them, and lifted the Service felt from his golden head, and +held out an eager hand for Lynette's. She gave it shyly, and with the +thrill of contact Beauvayse's last scruple fled. He turned his beautiful, +flushed face and shining eyes upon the Mother, and asked with grave +simplicity:</p> + +<p>"Ma'am, is not this mine?"</p> + +<p>"First tell me, do you know that there is nothing in it?"</p> + +<p>Her stern eyes searched his. He laughed and said, as he kissed the slender +hand:</p> + +<p>"It holds everything for me!"</p> + +<p>"Another question. Are you aware that my ward is a Catholic?"</p> + +<p>"My wife will be of my mother's faith. I would not have her of any other."</p> + +<p>The Mother gave Beauvayse her own hand then, that was marred by many deeds +of charity, but still beautiful.</p> + +<p>Those two, linked together for a moment in their mutual love of her, made +for Lynette a picture never to be forgotten. Then Beauvayse said, in the +boyish tone that made the man irresistible:</p> + +<p>"You have made me awfully happy!"</p> + +<p>"Make her happy," the Mother answered him, with a tremble in her rich, +melancholy tones, "and I ask no more."</p> + +<p>Her own heart was bleeding, but she drew her black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> draperies over the +wound with a resolute hand. Was not here a Heaven-sent answer to all her +prayers for her beloved? she asked herself, as she looked at the girl. +Eyes that beamed so, cheeks that burned with as divine a rose, had looked +back at Lady Biddy Bawne out of her toilet-glass, upon the night of that +Ascot Cup-Day, when Richard had asked her to be his wife. But Richard's +eyes had never worn the look of Beauvayse's. Richard's hand had never so +trembled, Richard's face had never glowed like this. Surely here was Love, +she told herself, as they went back to the place of trodden grass where +the tea-making had been.</p> + +<p>The Sisters, basket and trestle-laden, were already in the act of +departure. The black circle of the dead fire marked where the giant kettle +had sung its hospitable song. Little Miss Wiercke and her long-locked +organist, the young lady from the Free Library and her mining-engineer, +had strolled away townwards, whispering, and arm-in-arm; the Mayor's wife +was laying the dust with tears of joy as she trudged back to the Women's +Laager beside a husband who pushed a perambulator containing a small boy, +who had waked up hungry and wanted supper; the Colonel and Captain Bingo +Wrynche had been summoned back to Staff Headquarters, and a pensive little +black-eyed lady in tailor-made alpaca and a big grey hat, who was sitting +on a tree-stump knocking red ants out of her white umbrella, as those +three figures moved out of the shadows of the trees, jumped up and hurried +to meet them, prattling:</p> + +<p>"I couldn't go without saying a word.... You have been so beset with +people all the afternoon that I never got a chance to put my oar in. Dear +Reverend Mother, everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will ever +preach again about Providence spreading a table in the wilderness without +my coming back in memory to to-day. May we walk back together? I am a mass +of ants, and mosquito-bitten to a degree, but I don't think I ever enjoyed +myself so much. No, Lord Beauvayse, the path is narrow, and I have a +perfect dread of puff-adders. Please go on before us with Miss Mildare. +No!... Oh, what ...? You haven't ...?"</p> + +<p>It was then that Lady Hannah dropped the white umbrella<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> and clapped her +hands for joy. Something of mastery and triumph in the young man's face, +something in the pale radiance of the girl's, something of the mingled joy +and anguish of the pierced maternal heart shining in the Mother's great +grey eyes, had conveyed to the exultant little woman that the plant that +had thriven upon the arid soil of Gueldersdorp had borne a perfect blossom +with a heart of ruby red.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you dears! you two beautiful dears! how happy you look!" she crowed. +"I must kiss you both!" She did it. "Say that this isn't to be kept +secret!" She clasped her tiny hands with exaggerated entreaty. "For the +sake of the <i>Gueldersdorp Siege Gazette</i>, and its seven hundred +subscribers all perishing for news, tell me I may let the cat out of the +bag in my next Weekly Column. Only say that people may know!"</p> + +<p>As her black eyes snapped at Beauvayse, and her tiny hands dramatically +entreated, he had an instant of hesitation, palpable to one who stood by. +In an instant he pulled himself together.</p> + +<p>"The whole world may know, as far as I am concerned."</p> + +<p>"It is best," said the Mother's soft, melodious voice, "that our world, at +least, should know."</p> + +<p>"And when—oh, when Is It To Be?" begged Lady Hannah.</p> + +<p>Confound the woman! Why could she not let well alone? A sullen anger +burned in Beauvayse as he said, and not in the tone of the ardent lover:</p> + +<p>"As soon as we can possibly manage it."</p> + +<p>The Mother's voice said, coldly and clearly:</p> + +<p>"I do not approve of long engagements. If the marriage takes place, it +must be soon."</p> + +<p>With the consciousness of one who is impelled to take a desperate leap, +Beauvayse found himself saying:</p> + +<p>"It cannot be too soon."</p> + +<p>"Then ... before the Relief?" cried Lady Hannah, and Beauvayse heard +himself answering:</p> + +<p>"If Lynette agrees?"</p> + +<p>The rapture of submission in her look was intoxicating. He reached out his +hand and laid it lightly on her shoulder. Then, without another word, they +went on together, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> the tall, soldierly figure in brown, and the +slender shape in the green skirt and little white coat, with the dainty +plumed hat crowning the squirrel-coloured hair, were seen in darkening +relief against the flaming orange of the sky.</p> + +<p>"A Wedding under Fire. Bridal Ceremony in a Beleaguered City," murmured +the enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her +châtelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined +herself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to +describe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. She +babbled as her quick, bird-like gait carried her along beside the tall, +stately-moving figure in the black habit:</p> + +<p>"Dear Bridget ... I may call you that for the sake of old days?"</p> + +<p>"If you like."</p> + +<p>"This must make you very happy. Society mothers of marriageable daughters +will tear their transformations from their heads, and dance upon them in +despair, when they hear that Beau <i>s'est rangé</i>. But that I don't hold +forth to worldly ears I would enlarge upon the immense social advantages +of such a union for that dear child."</p> + +<p>"Of course, I am aware that it is an excellent match."</p> + +<p>Were her ears so unworldly? The phrase rankled in her conscience like a +thorn. And in what respect were those Society mothers less managing than +the nun? she asked herself. Could any of them have been more astute, more +eager, more bent on hooking the desirable <i>parti</i> for their girls than she +had shown herself just now? And was this, again, an unworldly voice +whispering to her that the publicity ensured by a paragraph penned by this +gossip-loving little lady would fix him even more securely, bind him more +strongly, make it even less possible for him to retreat, should he desire +it—by burning his boats behind him, so that he had no alternative but to +go on? She sickened with loathing of herself. But for her there was no +retreat either. Here Lady Hannah helped her unawares. With a side-glance +at the noble face beside her, pale olive-hued, worn and faded beyond the +age of the woman by her great labours and her greater griefs, the arched +black eyebrows sprinkled of late with grey, the eyelids thin over the +mobile eyeballs, purpled with lack of sleep and secret,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> bitter weeping, +the close-folded, deeply cut, eloquent mouth withered like a +japonica-bloom that lingers on in frost, the strong, salient chin framed +in the snowy, starched <i>guimpe</i>, she faltered:</p> + +<p>"You don't shy at the notion of the par—the announcement in the <i>Siege +Gazette</i>, I mean?..."</p> + +<p>"Upon the contrary, I approve of it," said the Mother, and walked on very +fast, for the bells of the Catholic Church were ringing for Benediction.</p> + +<p>"Is it good-night, or may I come in?" Beauvayse whispered to Lynette in +the porch.</p> + +<p>She dipped her slender fingers in the little holy-water font beside the +door, and held them out to him.</p> + +<p>"Come in," she answered, and held white, wet fingers out to him. He +touched them with a puzzled smile.</p> + +<p>"Am I to——? Ah, I remember!"</p> + +<p>Their eyes met, and the golden radiance in hers passed into his blood. He +bared his high, fair head as she made the sign of the Cross, and followed +her in and up the nave as Father Wix, in purple Lenten stole over the +snowy cotta starched and ironed by Sister Tobias's capable hands, began to +intone the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. The Sisters were already in +their places—a double row of black-draped figures, the Mother at the end +of the first row, Lady Hannah in the chair beside her, where Lynette had +always sat until now. It was not without a pang that the one saw her place +usurped by a stranger; it was piercing pain to the other to feel the +strange presence at her side. But something had already come between these +two, dividing them. Something invisible, impalpable as air, but +nevertheless thrusting them apart with a force that might not be resisted.</p> + +<p>Only the elder of the two as yet knew clearly what it meant. The younger +was too dizzy with her first heady draught from the cup of joy, held to +her lips by the strong, beautifully-shaped brown hand that rested on +Beauvayse's knee as he sat, or propped up Beauvayse's chin as he knelt, +stiff as a young crusader on a monument, beside her. But the Mother knew. +Would not the God Who had been justly offended in her, His vowed servant, +that day, exact to the last tittle the penalty? She knew He would.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p> + +<p>Rosary ended, the thin, kind-eyed little elderly priest preached, taking +for the text of his discourse the Introit from the Office of +Quinquagesima.</p> + +<p>"<i>Esto mihi in Deum protectorum, et in locum refugii, ut salvum me +facias.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Be Thou unto me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge, to save me: +for Thou art my strength...."</p> + +<p>Then the <i>O Salutaris</i> was sung, and followed by the Litany of the Holy +Name.</p> + +<p>The church was crowded. A Catholic congregation is always devout, but +these people, well-dressed or ill-dressed, prosperous or poor, pale-faced +and hollow-eyed every one, joined in the office with passion. The +responses came like the beating of one wave of human anguish upon the Rock +of Ages.</p> + +<p>"<i>Have mercy on us!</i>"</p> + +<p>Hungry, they cried to One Who had hungered. Sinking with weariness, they +appealed to One Who had known labours, faintings, agonies, and +desolations.</p> + +<p>"<i>Have mercy on us!</i>"</p> + +<p>He had drunk of Death for them, had been buried and had risen again.</p> + +<p>Death was all about them. They could hear the beating of his wings, could +see the red sweep of his blood-wet, dripping scythe. And they prayed as +they had never prayed before these things befell:</p> + +<p>"<i>Have mercy on us!</i>"</p> + +<p>They sang the <i>Tantum Ergo</i>, and the cloud of incense rose from the censer +in the priest's hand. Then, at the thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and the +first white gleam of the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of the +Altar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden wind sweeps over a field +of ripened corn. Only one or two remained unmoved, one of these a man's +head, young and crisply-waved, and golden....</p> + +<p>And then came the orderly crowding to the door, and they were outside +under the great violet sky, throbbing with splendid stars, breathing the +tainted air that came from the laagers and the trenches. But oh, was there +ever a sweeter night, following upon a sweeter day?</p> + +<p>Beauvayse's hand found and pressed Lynette's. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> looked up and saw his +eyes shining in the starlight. He looked down and saw the Convent lily +transformed into a very rose of womanhood.</p> + +<p>"I am on duty at Staff Bombproof South to-night. What I would give to be +free to walk home with you!"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah's jangling laugh came in.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you had the whole day? Greedy, unconscionable young man! Say +good-night to her, and be off and get some food into you. Don't say you +haven't any appetite. I am hungry enough to be interested even in minced +mule and spatch-cocked locusts, after all this. Good-night! I must kiss +you again, child! I hope you don't mind?"</p> + +<p>Lynette gave her cheek, asking:</p> + +<p>"Where is the Mother?"</p> + +<p>The voice of Sister Tobias answered out of the purplish darkness:</p> + +<p>"She has gone on with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister Cleophée, dearie. She +is going to sleep at the Convent with them, and I was to give you her +love, and say good-night."</p> + +<p>Say good-night! On this of all nights was Lynette to be dismissed without +even the Mother's kiss? She gave back Beauvayse's parting hand-pressure +almost mechanically. Then she heard his voice, close at her ear, say +pantingly:</p> + +<p>"No one will see.... Please, dearest!"</p> + +<p>She turned her head, and their lips met under cover of the pansy-coloured +darkness.... Then he was gone with Lady Hannah, and Lynette was walking +home to the Convent bombproof, explaining to the astonished Sisters that +the Mother knew; that the Mother approved of her engagement to Lord +Beauvayse; and that they would probably be married very soon. Before the +Relief ...</p> + +<p>"'Before the Relief.' Well, no one but Our Lord knows when that's to +be.... And so you're very happy, are you, dearie?"</p> + +<p>Even as she gave her shy assent in answer to Sister Tobias's question, its +commonplace homeliness, like the feeling of the thick dust and the +scattered débris underfoot, brought back Lynette for a moment out of the +golden, diamond-dusted, pearl-gemmed dream-world in which she had been +straying, to wonder, Was she really very happy?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p> + +<p>She asked herself the question sitting with the Sisters at their little +scanty supper. She asked herself as she knelt with them in prayer, as she +lay in bed, the Mother's place vacant beside her—Was she happy after all?</p> + +<p>She had drunk sweetness, but there had been a tang of something in the cup +that cloyed the palate and sickened the soul. She had learned the love of +man, and in a measure it had cast out fear, that had been her earlier +lesson.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>To be held and taken and made his completely, what must it be like? She +glowed in the darkness at the thought. And then the recollection of a +ruthless strength that had rent away the veil of innocence from a +woman-child surged back upon her.</p> + +<p>Just think. Suppose you laid your hand in the warm, strong clasp that +thrilled delight to every nerve, and set your heart beating, beating, and, +drawn by the shining grey-green jewel-eyes and the mysterious, wooing +smile upon the beautiful lips, and the coaxing, caressing tones of the +voice that so allured, you gave up all else that had been so dear, and +went away with him? What then? Suppose——</p> + +<p>Suppose the smiling face of Love should turn out to be nothing but a mask +hiding the gross and brutal leer of Lust, what then? She saw that other +man's dreadful face, painted in hot and living colours upon the darkness. +She writhed as if to tear her lips from the savage, furious mouth. She +shuddered and grew cold there in the sultry heat. The clasp of the +protecting mother-arms might have driven away her terror, but she was +alone. It would have been sweet to be alone that night if she had been +happy.</p> + +<p>Why had the Mother shunned her? She knew that she had. Why had she felt, +even with the glamour of <i>his</i> presence about her, and the music of his +voice in her ears, that all was not well?</p> + +<p>Why, even with the lifting of her burden, in the unutterable relief of +hearing, from the lips that had been her law, that her dreadful secret +need never be revealed, had she felt consternation and alarm? The words +were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> written in fiery letters, on the murky dark of the bombproof, where +the tiny lamp that had hung before the Tabernacle on the altar of the +Convent chapel now burned, a twinkling red star, before the silver +Crucifix that hung upon the east wall.</p> + +<p>"He is not to be told. I command you never to tell him!"</p> + +<p>The doubt germinated and presently pushed through a little spear. Had +those lips given right counsel or wrong? Ought he to be told? Was it +dishonest, was it traitorous, to hide the truth? And yet, what are the +lives of even the upright, and clean, and continent among men, compared +with the life of a girl bred as she had been? The sin had not been hers. +She, the victim, was blameless. And yet, and yet ...</p> + +<p>To this girl, who had learned to see the Face of Christ and of His Mother +reflected in one human face that had smiled down upon her, waking in the +little white bed in the Convent infirmary from the long, recuperating +sleep that turns the tide of brain-fever, the thought that a shadow of +deceit could mar its earnest, candid purity was torture. Months back they +had said to her—the lips that had given her the first kiss she had +received since a dying woman's cold mouth touched the sleeping face of a +yellow-haired baby held to her in a strong man's shaking hands, as the +trek-waggon rolled and rumbled over the veld:</p> + +<p>"The man who may one day be your husband will have the right to know."</p> + +<p>It was a different voice to the one that had commanded, "You are never to +tell him!" Lynette lay listening to those two voices until the alarm-clock +belled and the Sisters rose at midnight for matins. Then she lay listening +to the soft murmur of voices in the dark, as the red lamp glimmered before +the silver Christ upon the wall. The nuns needed no light, knowing the +office by heart:</p> + +<p>"<i>Delicta quis intelligit? ab occultis meis munda me, et ab alienis parce +servo tuo</i>"—"Who can comprehend what sin is? Cleanse me from my hidden +sins, and from those of others save Thy servant."</p> + +<p>The antiphon followed the <i>Gloria</i>, and then the soft womanly voices +chanted the twenty-third Psalm:</p> + +<p>"<i>Quis ascendit in montem Domini?</i>"—"Who shall ascend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> to the Mount of +the Lord, and who shall dwell in His holy Sanctuary? Those who do no ill +and are pure.... Who do not give their heart to vain desires, or deceive +their neighbour with false oaths."</p> + +<p>Or deceive ... with false oaths. To marry a man, letting him think you ... +something you were not ... did not that amount to deceiving by a false +oath?</p> + +<p>Lynette lay very still. The last "Hail, Mary!" over, the Sisters returned +silently to bed. Wire mattresses creaked under superimposed weight. Long +breaths of wakefulness changed into the even breathing of slumber. The +only one who snored was Sister Tobias, a confirmed nasal soloist, whose +customary cornet-solo was strangely missing. Was Sister Tobias lying awake +and remembering too?</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias was the only other person in the Convent besides the Mother, +who knew. She had helped her faithfully and tenderly to nurse Lynette +through the long illness that had followed the finding of that lost lamb +upon the veld. She was a homely creature of saintly virtues, the Mother's +staff and right hand. And it was she who had asked Lynette if she was +happy?</p> + +<p>Somebody was moving. The grey light of dawn was filtering down the +drain-pipe ventilators and through the chinks in the tarpaulins overhead. +A formless pale figure came swiftly to Lynette's bedside. She guessed who +it must be. She sat up wide awake, and with her heart beating wildly in +her throat.</p> + +<p>"Dearie!" The whisper was Sister Tobias's. She could make out the glimmer +of the white, plain nightcap framing the narrow face with the long, +sagacious nose and wise, kindly, patient eyes. "Are you awake, dearie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Lynette whispered back, shuddering. The dry, warm, hard hand felt +about for her cold one, and found and took it. Lips came close to her ear, +and breathed:</p> + +<p>"Dearie, this grand young gentleman you're engaged to be married to ..."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Has he been told? Does he know?</i>"</p> + +<p>The long, plain face was close to Lynette's. In the greying light she +could see it clearly. Her heart beat in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> heavy, sickening thuds. Her teeth +chattered, and whole body shook as if with ague, as she faltered:</p> + +<p>"The Mother says—he is not to be told."</p> + +<p>There was a dead silence. It was as if an iron shutter had suddenly been +pulled down and clamped home between them. Then Sister Tobias said in a +tone devoid of all expression:</p> + +<p>"The Mother knows best, dearie, of course. Lie down and go to sleep."</p> + +<p>Then silence settled back upon the Convent bombproof, but sleep did not +come to everybody there.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII"></a>XLIII</h2> + + +<p>The Mother was kneeling, as she had knelt the whole night through, before +the dismantled altar in the battered little chapel of the Convent, with +the big white stars looking down upon her through the gaps in the +shell-torn roof. When it was the matin-hour she rose and rang the bell. +Matins over, she still knelt on. When it was broad day she broke her fast +with the Sisters, and went about the business of the day calmly, +collectedly, capably as ever. Only her face was white and drawn, and great +violet circles were about her great tragical grey eyes.</p> + +<p>"The blessed Saint she is!" whispered the nuns one to the other.</p> + +<p>If she had heard them, it would have added yet another iron point to the +merciless scourge of her self-scorn.</p> + +<p>A Saint, in that stained garment! What tears of bitterness had fallen that +night upon the shameful blots that marred its whiteness! But for Richard's +child, even though she herself should become a castaway, she must go on to +the end. All the chivalry in her rose in arms to defend the young, +shame-burdened, blameless head.</p> + +<p>Ah! if she had known?...</p> + +<p>Cold, light, cruel eyes had watched from across the river that day as her +tall, imposing figure, side by side with the slender, more lightly-clad +one, moved between the mimosa-bushes and round the river-bend. When the +two were fairly out of sight, the jungle of tree-fern and cactus had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> +rustled and cracked. Then the burly, thickset, powerful figure of a +bearded man pushed through, traversed the reed-beds, and, leaping from +boulder to boulder, crossed the river. Before long the man was standing on +the patch of trodden grass and flowers in the lee of the great boulder, +shutting up a little single-barrelled, brass-mounted field-glass that had +served him excellently well.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He was Bough, <i>alias</i> Van Busch, otherwise the man who had come in through +the enemy's lines as a runner from Diamond Town, bringing the letter from +a hypothetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. His light +eyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like an adder's, looked +about and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake of +black-brown beard that cleverly filled in the interval between Mr. Van +Busch's luxuriant whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a little +tan-leather glove, lying in a tuft of pink flowers. The daintiness of the +little glove brought home to Bough more forcibly than anything else, that +the Kid had become a lady.</p> + +<p>For it was the girl, sure. No error about that little white face of hers, +with the pointed chin, and the topaz-coloured eyes, and the reddish hair. +The glass had brought her near enough to make that quite certain. He had +been too far off to hear a word, but he had made out what had been going +on very well. First, she had been giddying with the tall young English +swell, drawing him on while he seemed courting her, as all women knew how +to, and then the tall Sister of Mercy had come and rowed her; and she had +cried, thrown down there among the grass and flowers, exactly as if +somebody had beaten her with a sjambok to cure her of the G. D.'d +obstinacy that had to be thrashed out of women, if you would have them get +to heel when you chose it, or come at your call when you chose again.</p> + +<p>Suppose he chose again. When a man with brains in his holy head once set +them to work, there were few things he could not do. He could scare others +off his property, for certain. He could exercise upon the girl herself the +unlimited power of Fear. He must lie doggo because of the Doctor. It was a +thundering queer chance the Doctor turning up in this place. And as one of +the bosses, helping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> to run the show, and powerful enough to pay off old +scores, if he should chance to recognise in the densely bearded face of +the man from Diamond Town the features of the Principal Witness in the +once-famous Old Bailey Criminal Case: "The Crown <i>v.</i> Saxham."</p> + +<p>Bough would lie low, and watch, and wait, and then spring, as the +tarantula springs. He had cleverly blurred all trails leading back to the +tavern on the veld, and he knew enough of girls and women to believe that +this girl had kept secret what had happened there. He would pick up with +her, anyway, and offer to marry her and make an honest girl of her. If she +had a snivelling fancy for the dandy swell who had made love to her and +kissed her, he would threaten to tell the fellow the truth unless she gave +him up. Or he would blow on her to the nuns she lived with, and they would +have nothing more to do with her.</p> + +<p>Voor den donder! suppose they knew already? The plan wanted careful +working out. A false step, and Gueldersdorp might become unhealthy for the +man who had brought the letter from Diamond Town to oblige Mrs. Casey.</p> + +<p>Suppose the spoor that led back to the tavern on the veld and the grave by +the Little Kopje, not as well hidden as Bough had thought, those jewels +and securities and the one thousand seven hundred pounds cash might get an +honest man into trouble yet, even after the lapse of seventeen years. He +breathed heavily, and the pupils of his strange light eyes dilated, and +the sweat rolled off his forehead and cheeks until the skin shone like +copper. He had been a reckless, easy-going young chap of twenty-six +seventeen years ago. Forty-three years of life had taught him that when +you are least expecting them to, buried secrets are sure to resurrect. No, +Gueldersdorp was not a healthy place for Bough or for Van Busch! That +chattering little paroquet of a woman with the sharp black eyes might use +them one day, to the detriment of the philanthropist who had brought in +the letter from Diamond Town for Mrs. Casey.</p> + +<p>Then the girl!... He grinned in his bushy beard, thinking how thundering +scared she would look if she encountered him by chance, and recognised +him. The beard would not hide him from her eyes. No, no! And he smelled at +the little tan glove, that had a slight, clean,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> delicate perfume about +it, and thrust it into his breeches-pocket, and crossed the river again, +making his way back to the native town by devious native paths that snaked +and twined and twisted through the tangled bush, as he himself made his +tortuous progress through the world.</p> + +<p>He was in an evil mood, made blacker by the prospect of spending a lonely +night without the solace of liquor or woman. For Vice was at a low ebb in +Gueldersdorp just now, and the commonest dop was barely obtainable at the +price of good champagne, and it would not do for the man from Diamond Town +to seem flush of dollars.</p> + +<p>Sure, no, that would never do! He must make out with the tobacco he still +had left, and the big lump of opium he carried in a tin box in a pocket of +the heavy money-belt he wore under his miner's flannel shirt. He groped +for the tin box, and got it, and bit off a corner of the sticky brown +lump, and ate it as he went along, and his laboured breathing calmed, and +the chilly sweat dried upon his copper-burned skin, that had the +purplish-black tinge in it that comes of saturation with iodide of +potassium. And the pupils of his colourless eyes dwindled to pin-points, +and his thick hands ceased to shake. He was not the man he had been; and +he had learned the opium-habit from a woman who had managed a joint at +Johannesburg, and it grew upon him—the need of the soothing, supporting +deadener. He went along now, under the influence of it, scarcely feeling +the ground under his heavy leather veldschoens.</p> + +<p>He trod on something presently, lying on the path. It moved and whimpered. +He struck a match with a steady hand, and held the glimmering blue +phosphorus-flame downwards, and saw a Kaffir girl, a servant of the +Barala, who had crept out with a bow strung with twisted crocodile-gut and +a sheaf of reed arrows, to try and shoot birds. The Barala, though they +were sorely pinched, like their European fellow-men, did not starve. They +earned pay and rations. They helped to keep the enemy out on the south and +west sides of the town, and dug most of the trenches—often under +fire—and ran the despatches, and sometimes brought in fresh meat. But +their slaves, and the native hangers-on at the kraals, suffered horribly. +They ate the dogs that had been shot, and the other kind of dog, and +fought with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> the live ones for bones, and picked up empty meat-tins and +licked them. They stalked about the town and the native stad like living +skeletons. They dropped and died on the dust-heaps they had been rummaging +for offal. Soup-kitchens were started later on, when it was found how +things were going with them, and hides and bones and heads of horses and +mules were boiled down into soup, and they were fed. But a time was to +come when even that soup was wanted to keep the life in white people. You +saw the famine-stricken black spectres crawling from refuse-pile to +refuse-pile, and dying in that pitiless, beautiful sunshine, under the +blue, blue February sky, because white people had got to keep on living.</p> + +<p>The native girl had been too weak to kill anything. Death had come upon +her in the midst of the teeming life of the jungle, and she had fallen +down there in her ragged red blanket among the tree-roots that arched and +knotted over the path. Her eyes were already rolled up and set. They +stared blindly, horribly, out of the ashen-black face. When she heard the +steps of a shod person the last spark of life glimmered feebly up in her. +Her wild, keen, savage power of scent yet remained. She smelled a white +man, and her cracked and swollen lips moved, and a voice like the sound +made by the rubbing of dry canes together uttered the word that is the +same in Dutch and English:</p> + +<p>"Water!"</p> + +<p>Bough's pale, flat, scintillating eyes were quite expressionless, but his +thick lips parted, and his strong yellow teeth showed in his thick brake +of beard. With the caution of one who knows that a single glowing +match-end dropped among dry vegetation may cause a devastating +conflagration, he blew out the lingering flame, and rolled the little +charred stick between his tough-skinned fingers before he threw it down. +Then he raised himself up, and stepped over the dying creature, and went +upon his way, humming a dance-tune he liked. He was not changed. It was +still a joy to him to have feebler beings in his power, and taunt and +torture and use them at his will.</p> + +<p>He had assumed the skin of the man from Diamond Town in the well-paid +service of that bright boy of Brounckers', who had, it may be remembered, +a plan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p> + +<p>The plan involved a feint from the eastward, and an attack upon that +weakest spot in the girdle of Gueldersdorp's defences, the native stad. +The Barala might be incorruptible; the weak spot was the native village, +nevertheless. And the business of the man from Diamond Town was to lounge +about its neighbourhood, using those sharp light eyes of his to excellent +purpose, and storing his retentive memory—for it would not do for a +stranger to be caught putting pencil to paper in a town under Martial Law, +and bristling with suspicion—with the information indispensable for the +putting in effect of young Schenk Eybel's ingenious plan.</p> + +<p>The jackal had had to yield his bone to the hungry lion. Still, it was +wise to be in good odour with the Republics; that was why Van Busch had +taken on the job. He had not been impelled to risk his skin, and get shut +up in this stinking, starving hole by anything the sharp-eyed little +Englishwoman, so unpleasantly awake at last regarding the genuine aims and +real character of the chivalrous Mr. Van Busch of Johannesburg, had +dropped. Hell, no! That unripe nectarine had been plucked and eaten years +ago. And yet how the ripe fruit allured him to-day, seen against its +background of dull green leaves, its smooth cheeks glowing under the +kisses of the sun.</p> + +<p>The swell English officer had kissed them too. As she meant, the sly +little devil, slipping away for her bit of fun. Grown a beauty, too, as +anybody but a thundering, juicy, damned fool might have known she would! +He swore bitterly, thinking what a gold-mine a face and figure like that +might have proved to an honest speculator up Johannesburg way.</p> + +<p>His case, he thought, was somewhat similar to that of old Baas Jacobs, the +Boer who found the first great South African diamond on his farm near +Hopetown, and threw it down beside the door, with other pretty shining +pebbles, for his child to play with. The child's mother tossed it to Van +Niekirk as a worthless gift. Van Niekirk passed it on to J. O'Reilly. When +the English Government mineralogist pronounced the stone a diamond, and +the Colonial Secretary and the French Consul sent it to the Paris +Exhibition, and the Governor of the Colony bought the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> jewel, old Baas +Jacobs must have felt mighty sick. All the world hungering, and admiring, +and coveting the beautiful thing he had thrown down on the ground.... +Small wonder that to the end of his days he had talked as a robbed man.</p> + +<p>The jewel Bough had left on the veld had belonged to him once. Well, it +should be his again. He swore that with a blasphemous oath. Thenceforward +he proceeded warily, feeling his way, formulating his plan, a human +tarantula, evil-eyed and hairy-clawed, calculating the sudden leap upon +its prey; an adder coiled, waiting the moment to strike....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV"></a>XLIV</h2> + + +<p>Saxham was shooting on the veld, north of the Clayfields, in a ginger-hued +dust-wind and a grilling sun. Upon his right showed the raw red ridge of +the earthworks, where two ancient seven-pounders were entrenched in charge +of a handful of Cape Police. The pits of the sniping riflemen scarred +across the river-bed some fifty yards in advance. Upon his left, some two +hundred yards farther north, the recently resurrected ship's gun, twelve +feet of honeycombed metal, stamped on the flank "No. 6 Port," and casting +solid shot of eighteenth-century pattern, projected a long black nose from +Fort Ellerslie, and every time the venerable weapon went off without +bursting, the Town Guards occupying the Fort and manning the eastern +entrenchments raised a cheer.</p> + +<p>Saxham, emptying and filling the magazine with cool, methodical +regularity, kept changing his position with a restlessness and +recklessness puzzling alike to friends and foes. Now he aimed and fired, +lying "doggo" behind his favourite stone, while bullets from the enemy's +trenches flattened themselves upon it, or buried themselves harmlessly in +the dry hot soil. Now he moved from cover, and shot squatting on his +heels, or sprawled lizard-like in the open, courting the King of Terrors +with a calm indifference that was commented upon by those who witnessed it +according to their lights.</p> + +<p>"Begob!" said Kildare, ex-driver of Engine 123, who, with the Cardiff man, +his stoker of old, was doing duty at Fort Ellerslie <i>vice</i> two Town +Guardsmen permanently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> resting, "'tis a great perfawrumance the Doc is +afther givin' as this day!" He coolly borrowed the gunner's +sighting-glasses, and, with his keen eyes glued to them and his ragged +elbows propped on the Fort parapet, he scanned the distant solitary +figure, dropping the words out slowly one by one. "Twice have I seen the +fur fly off av' wan av' thim hairy baboons av' Boers since he starrtud, +an' supposin' the air a taste thicker, 'tis punched wid bullet-holes we'd +be seem' ut all round 'um, the same as a young lady in the sky-in-terrific +dhressmakin' line would be afther jabbin' out the pattern av' a shoot av' +clothes."</p> + +<p>"And look you now, if the man is not lighting a pipe," objected the +Cardiff stoker, whose religious tendencies were greatly fostered by the +surroundings and conditions of siege life. "Sitting on a stone, with the +rifle between his knees and the match between his two hands, as if the +teffel was got tired of waiting, and had curled up and gone to sleep." The +speaker sucked in his breath and solemnly shook his head, adding: "It is a +temptation of the Tivine Providence, so it is!"</p> + +<p>"Sorra a timpt," rejoined Kildare, reluctantly surrendering the glasses to +the gunner, a grey ex-sergeant of R.F.A., "sorra a timpt, knowin', as the +Docthur knows, that do what he will and thry as he may, no bullut will do +more than graze the hide av him, or sing in his ear."</p> + +<p>"And how will he know that, maybe you would be telling?" demanded the +Cardiff stoker incredulously.</p> + +<p>"I seen his face," said Kildare, jerking a blackened thumb towards the +gunner's sighting-glasses, "minnits back through thim little jiggers, an' +to man or mortal that's as sick wid the hate av Life, an' as sharp-set +with the hunger for Death as the Docthur is this day, no harrum will come. +'Tis quare, but thrue."</p> + +<p>"I've 'ad a try at several kinds of 'ungers," said the R.E. Reserve man, +who acted as gunner's mate. "There's the 'unger for glory, combined with a +smart uniform wot'll make the gals stare, as drives a man to 'list. +There's the 'unger for kisses an' canoodlin' wot makes yer want to please +the gals. There's the 'unger for revenge, wot drives yer to bash in a +bloke's face, and loses you yer stripes if 'e 'appens to be your Corp'ril. +Then there's the 'unger for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> gettin' under cover when you're bein' sniped, +an' the 'unger for blood, when you've got the Hafridis, or the Fuzzies, or +the Dutchies, at close quarters, and the bay'nits are flickerin' in an' +out of the dirty caliker shirts or the dirty greatcoats like Jimmy O! +There's the 'unger for freedom and fresh hair when you're shut up in a +filthy mud cattle-pound like this 'ere Fort, or a stinkin' trench, with a +'andful of straw to set on by day an' a ragged blanket to kip in by +nights. But the 'unger to die is a 'unger <i>I</i> ain't acquainted with. I'm +for livin' myself."</p> + +<p>"I was hungry when you began to jaw," snarled the man who had been clerk +to the County Court. His lips were black and cracking with fever, and his +teeth chattered despite the fierce sunshine that baked the red clay +parapet against which he leaned his thin back. "I'm hungrier now, and +thirsty as well. Give the bucket over here." He drank of the thick, +yellowish, boiled water eagerly and yet with disgust, spilling the liquid +on his tattered clothing through the shaking of his wasted hands. Then he +turned to the wall, and lay down sullenly, scowling at the lantern-jawed +sympathiser who tried to thrust a rolled-up coat under his aching head.</p> + +<p>"They'll be bringin' us our foddher at twelve av the clock," said Kildare, +with a twinkle of inextinguishable humour in his hollow eyes. +"Shuperannuated cavalry mount stuped in warrum kettle-gravy, wid a block +av baked sawdust for aich man that can get ut down. 'Tis an insult to the +mimory av the boiled bacon an' greens I would be aiting this day at +Carricknavore, to say nothin' av' the porther an' whisky that would be +washing ut down. Lashin's and lavin's there 'ud be for ivery wan, an' what +was over, me fadher—God be good to the ould boy alive or dead!—would be +disthributin' amongst the poor forninst the dure——"</p> + +<p>"Beg pardon, sir." Another of the famine-bitten, ragged little garrison +addressed the question to the officer in charge of the Fort battery, as he +stepped down from the lookout with his field-glass in his hand. "Can you +tell us the difference of time between South Africa and England?"</p> + +<p>"Two hours at Capetown. I'm not quite sure about the difference at +Gueldersdorp." The Lieutenant went over to the ancient smooth-bore, and +conferred with the gunners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> standing at her breech. The winches groaned, +the heavy mass of metal tilted on the improvised mounting, as the man to +whom the Lieutenant had replied said, with a quaver of longing in his +voice:</p> + +<p>"'Two hours! My God, suppose it only took that time to get home!"</p> + +<p>"It 'ud be a sight easier to 'ang on 'ere," said the R.E. Reserve man who +acted as gunner's mate, "if there was such a thing as a plug o' baccy to +be 'ad. Wot gives me the reg'lar sick is to see them well-fed Dutchies +chawin' an' blowin', blowin' an' chawin', from mornin' till night——" He +spat disgustedly.</p> + +<p>"When honust men," groaned Kildare, "would swop a year av life for a twist +av naygurhead. Wirra-wirra!"</p> + +<p>There was a dry and mirthless laugh, showing teeth, white or discoloured, +in haggard and bristly faces. Then a short young Corporal, who had been +leaning back in an angle of the earthwork, hugging his sharp knees and +staring at nothing in particular with pale-coloured, ugly, honest eyes, +grew painfully crimson through his crust of sun-tan and grime, and said +something that made the lean bodies in ragged, filthy tan-cord and +dilapidated khâki, or torn and muddy tweed, slew round upon the unclean +straw on which they squatted. All eyes, were they hunger-dull or +fever-bright, sought the Corporal's face.</p> + +<p>"Dessay you'll think me a greedy 'ound," said the Corporal, with a painful +effort that set the prominent Adam's apple in his lean throat jerking, +"when you tyke in wot I've got to s'y. It makes me want to git into me own +pocket and 'ide, to 'ave to tell it. For me an' you, we've shared an' +shared alike, wotever we 'ad, while we 'ad anythink—except in one +partic'lar." The Adam's apple jumped up and down as he gulped. He was +burning crimson now to the roots of his ragged, light-brown hair, and the +tips of his flat-rimmed, jutting ears, and the patch of thin bare chest +that showed where his coarse grey back shirt was unbuttoned at the neck.</p> + +<p>All those eyes, feverishly bright or sickly dull, watched him as he put +his hand into the bulging breast-pocket, and slowly fished out a shining +brown briar-root with a stem unchewed as yet by any smoker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Twig this 'ere noo pipe. It was sent me by a—by a friend, along of a +packet of 'Oneydew, for a—for a kind o' birthday present." His voice +wobbled strangely; there was scalding water dammed up behind his ugly +honest eyes. "She—she bin an' opened the packet and filled the pipe, an' +I shared out the 'Oneydew in the trenches as far as it went, but I bin an' +kep' the pipe, sayin' to myself I'd smoke it when she lighted it wiv 'er +own 'ands, an' not—not before. Next day we"—the Adam's apple went up and +down again—"we 'ad words, an' parted. I—I never set eyes on 'er dial +since."</p> + +<p>The voice of W. Keyse ended in an odd kind of squeak. Nobody looked at him +as he bit his thin lips furiously, and blinked the unmanly tears away. +Then he went on: "It's—it's near on two months I bin lookin' for 'er. +She—she—sometimes I think she's made a way out of the lines after +another bloke—a kind o' Dutchy spy 'oo was a pal of 'ers, or—or else +she's dead. There's times I've dreamed I seen 'er dead!" His voice bounded +up in that queer squeak again. The word "dead" was wrung out of him like a +long-fanged double molar. His lips were drawn awry in a grimace of +anguish, and the pipe he held shook in his gaunt and grimy hand, so +perilously that half a dozen other hands, as gaunt and even grimier, shot +out as by a single impulse to save it from falling. "Tyke it an' smoke it +between you," said W. Keyse, and the Adam's apple jerked again as he +gulped. "But read the writin' on the bit o' pyper first, and mind +you—mind you give it back." He resigned the treasure, and turned his face +away.</p> + +<p>"Blessed Mary!" came in the accent of Kildare, breaking the silence, "let +me hould ut in me han's!"</p> + +<p>"Spell out the screeve," ordered the R.E. Reserve man imperiously.</p> + +<p>The Town Guard who had questioned the officer about the difference of +time, deciphered the blotty writing on the slip of paper pinned round the +stem of the new briar-root. It ran thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"i ope yu wil Engoy this Pip Deer; i Fild it A Purpus with +Love and Menney Apey Riturnse. from</p> + +<p class='right'>"<span class="smcap">Fare Air</span>."</p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p> + +<p>"'Is gal?" interrogated the Reserve man.</p> + +<p>"His girl," assented the man who had read.</p> + +<p>"And he never saw her no more, so he did not!" commented the Cardiff +stoker as the pipe travelled from hand to hand to be smelt at, dandled, +worshipped by every man in turn. Only the Sergeant-gunner, the grey-headed +ex-Royal Field Artilleryman, maintained self-command by dint of looking +very hard the other way. Then said Kildare impetuously:</p> + +<p>"Take ut back, Corp'ril Keyse. 'Tis little wan poipe av tobacca wud count +for betune six starvin' savigees."</p> + +<p>"Wot I wants," growled the Reserve man, "is to over-'aul a bacca factory +afire, and clap my mouth to 'er chimbley-shaft. So take it back, Corporal. +It's no manner o' good to me!"</p> + +<p>All the other voices joined in the chorus, and the be-papered pipe was +thrust back upon its owner. W. Keyse thanked them soberly, and put the +gift of his lost love away.</p> + +<p>His pale, unbeautiful eyes had the anguish of despair in them, and the +tooth of that sharp death-hunger of which Kildare had spoken was gnawing +what he would have termed with simplicity "his inside." For if Emigration +Jane were dead, what had Life left for him?</p> + +<p>After his first superb assumption of cold indifference had broken down he +had sought her, feverishly at first, then doggedly, then with a dizzy +sickness of terror and apprehension that made the letters of the +type-written casualty-lists posted outside the Staff Headquarters in the +Market Square turn apparent somersaults as he strove to read them. This +was his punishment, that he should hunger as she had hungered, and still +be disappointed, and learn by fellowship in keenest suffering what her +pain had been.</p> + +<p>The "Fare Air" letters were some comfort. In the trench at night, when +fever and rheumatism kept him from the dog-sleep that other men were +snatching, he would hear her crying over and over: "Oh, cruel, to break a +poor girl's heart!" And when sleep came he would track her through strange +places, calling her to come back—to come back and be forgiven. And when +he awakened from such dreams there would be tears upon his face. And each +day he consulted the lists of killed and wounded, and once had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> staggered +white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and found +her—oh, with what unutterable relief!—to be a coloured lady who had +married a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his quest +for the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewed +belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle of +one awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridly +illuminated by the conviction that she had joined Slabberts. Now strange +voices whispered always in his ears, saying that she was dead, and urging +him to follow by the same dark road over which her trembling feet had +stumbled.</p> + +<p>He heard those voices as he wrought and sweated with the gun-team at the +levers, and the ponderous muzzle-loader rolled back upon the grooves of +her improvised mounting. He heard it as they sponged the antique monster +out, and fed it with a three-pound bolus of cordite, and a ten-pound ball +of ancient pattern with the date of 1770. He heard it now again as he +kneeled at a loophole in the parapet, watching Saxham. Those pale, ugly +eyes of Billy Keyse were extraordinarily keen. He saw a grimy hand +carefully balance an old meat-tin on the top of the parapet of the enemy's +western entrenchment. He saw Saxham kneeling, aim and fire, and with the +sharp rap of the exploding cartridge came a howl from the owner of the +hand, who had not withdrawn it with sufficient quickness.</p> + +<p>Half a dozen rifle-muzzles came nosing through the loopholes at that yell. +There was quite a little fusillade, and the sharp cracks and flashes in +Saxham's vicinity told of the employment of explosive bullets. But not one +hit the man. An unkempt Boer head bobbed up, looking for his corpse. The +Winchester cracked, and the unkempt head fell forwards, its chin over the +edge of the parapet, and stayed there staring until the comrades of its +late owner pulled the dead man down by the heels.</p> + +<p>There was a cheer from the rifle-pits in the river-bed, and another from +Fort Ellerslie, where eager, excited spectators jostled at the loopholes. +A minute later the Fort's ancient bow-chaser barked loudly, and pitched a +solid shot. The metal spheroid hit the ploughed-up ground some ninety feet +in front of the parapet where the bloody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> head had hung, and over which +those explosive bullets had been fired, rose in a cloud of dust, and +literally jumped the trench. There was a roar of distant laughter as the +ball began to roll, and shaggy heads of curious Boers, inured only to the +latest inventions in lethal engineering, bobbed up to watch. More laughter +accompanied the progress of the ball. But presently it encountered a mound +of earth, behind which certain patriots were taking coffee, and rolled +through, and the laughter ceased abruptly. There was a baggage-waggon +beyond through which it also rolled, and behind the waggon a plump, +contented pony was wallowing in the sand. When the ancient cannon-ball +rolled through the pony, the owner spoke of witchcraft. But the patriots +who had been sitting behind the mound made no comment then or +thenceforward.</p> + +<p>At this juncture, and with almost a sensation of pleasure, Saxham saw his +old acquaintance Father Noah climb out of his particular trench, briskly +for one well stricken in years, and toddle out, laden with rifle, biltong +bag, and coffee-can, to his favourite sniping-post, where a bush rose +beside a rock, which was shaded by a small group of blue-gums. Soon the +smoke of the veteran's pipe rose above his lurking-place, and as Saxham, +with a grunt of satisfaction, stretched himself upon his stomach on the +hot, sandy earth and pulled the lever, a return bullet sheared a piece off +his boot-heel, and painfully jarred his ankle-bone.</p> + +<p>No one else was shooting at the big rooinek now. It was understood that +Father Noah had a prior claim. And the old man peered hopefully up to see +the result of his shot, and rubbed his eyes. For the hulking dief was +standing, voor den donder! standing as he emptied his magazine, and the +bullets sang about Father Noah as viciously as hornets roused to anger by +the stripping of a decayed thatch. The magazine of the repeating-rifle +emptied, Saxham calmly refilled it, causing the puzzled patriarch to waste +many cartridges in wild shooting at that erect, indifferent mark, and +finally to abandon the level-headed caution to which he owed his venerable +years, and climb a tree to obtain a better view of the tactics of the +enemy.</p> + +<p>Saxham laughed as the invisible hornets sang in the air about him. The +battered solar helmet he wore was pierced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> through the hinder brim, and he +was bleeding from a bullet-graze upon the knuckle of the second finger of +his left hand. Since that Sunday afternoon beside the river, when he +learned the madness of his hope and the hopelessness of his madness, he +had taken risks like this daily, not in the deliberate desire of death, +but as a man consulting Fate negatively.</p> + +<p>Father Noah would decide, one way or the other: the issue of their +protracted duel should determine things for Saxham. If he sent the old man +in, then there was Hope, if the superannuated, short-stocked Martini, with +that steady old finger on the trigger, and that sharp old eye at the +backsight, ended by accounting for Saxham, then there would be an end to +this burning torment for ever. Strangely, he did not believe that he could +be killed by any other hand than Father Noah's. Doubtless the long +overstrain was telling upon him mentally, though physically the man seemed +of wrought steel.</p> + +<p>"To-day will settle it, one way or the other. To-day——"</p> + +<p>As the thought passed through his mind, and he brought the sights into +line with the mark, a scrap of white, fluttering some twenty inches lower +down, caught his eye. He dropped the tip of the Winchester's foresight to +the bottom of the backsight's V, and knew, almost before the shot rang +out, and an ownerless Martini tumbled out of the tree-crotch, that Fate +had decided for Saxham.</p> + +<p>Then he went back to the Hospital, grim-jawed and inscrutable as ever. A +dirty white rag was being hoisted on a pole by one of the relatives of the +deceased. Father Noah, with the long ends of his dirty grey beard raggedly +bannering in the dust-wind, was still waiting for the bearers of the +hastily improvised stretcher of sticks and green reims, as Saxham, having +obtained a strip of black cloth with a needle and thread from the Matron, +pulled off his jacket and sat down upon the end of the cot-bed in his +little room, and neatly tacked a mourning-band upon the upper part of the +left sleeve.</p> + +<p>It was his nature to absorb himself in whatever work he undertook. As he +stitched, the crowded Hospital buzzed about him like a hive, the moans of +sick men and the rattling breaths of the dying beat in waves of sound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> +upon his brain, for the long rows of beds stood upon either side of the +corridors now, with barely a foot of room between them. In the necessarily +open space before the Doctor's door a woman's hurrying footsteps paused, +there came a rustling, and a sheet of printed paper folded in half was +thrust underneath.</p> + +<p>"The <i>Siege Gazette</i>, Doctor," called the Matron's pleasant womanly voice, +as, simultaneously with the utterance of Saxham's brief word of thanks, +she passed on. In the famine for news that possessed him, as every other +human being in the town, the sight of the little badly-printed sheet was +welcome, although it could hardly contain anything to satisfy his need. He +set the last stitches, fastened and cut the thread, reached down a long +arm from the foot of the bed, and took up the paper.</p> + +<p>The Latest Information had whiskers. The General Orders announced an issue +of paper currency in small amounts, owing to the deplorable shortage of +silver, congratulated those N.C.O.'s and men of the Baraland Irregulars +who, under Lieutenant Byass, occupying the advanced Nordenfeldt position, +had brought so effective a fire to bear upon the enemy's big gun that +Meisje had been compelled to abandon her commanding position, and take up +her quarters in a spot less advantageous, from the enemy's point of view. +A reduction in the Forage ration was hinted at, and a string of Social +Jottings followed, rows of asterisks exploding like squibs under every +paragraphic utterance of the Gold Pen.</p> + +<p>Not for nothing had Captain Bingo dolefully boasted that his wife exuded +Journalese from her very finger-ends. Saxham recognised in the style, the +very table-Moselle of Fashionable Journalism. So like the genuine article +in the shape of the bottle, the topping of gilt-foil, the arrangement of +wire and string, that as the stinging foam overflowed the goblet, snapping +in iridescent bubbles at the cautious sipper's nose, and evaporated, +leaving nothing in particular at the bottom, it was barely possible to +believe the vintage other than the genuine article from Fleet Street. +Stay.... The French quotations were not enclosed in inverted commas. That +let Lady Hannah out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Society in Gueldersdorp," she wrote, "bubbles with interested expectation +of the public announcement of a matrimonial engagement with which the +intimate friends of the happy lovers profess <i>être aux anges</i>.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>"Not for worlds would we draw the veil of delightful mystery completely +aside from the secret of two young, charming and popular people. Yet it +may be hinted that the elder son of a representative English House and +heir of a sixteenth-century Marquisate, who is one of the most gallant and +dashing among the many heroic defenders of our beleaguered town, proposes +at no very distant date to lead to the altar one of the loveliest among +the many lovely girls who grace Gueldersdorp's social functions.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>"Both bride-elect and bridegroom-to-be attended High Mass at the Catholic +Church on Sunday, when the Rev. Father Wix, in apprising parishioners of +the near approach of Lent, caused an irresistible smile to ripple over the +faces of his hearers. <i>Toujours perdrix</i> may sate in the long-run, but +perpetually to <i>faire maigre</i> is attended with even greater discomfort.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>"We have pleasure in announcing the approaching marriage of Lieutenant the +Right Hon. Viscount Beauvayse, Grey Hussars, Junior Aide to the Colonel +Commanding H.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, to Miss Lynette Bridget-Mary +Mildare, ward of the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Holy Way, North Veld +Road."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV"></a>XLV</h2> + + +<p>Saxham has not been staring at the printed words because they have struck +him to the heart with their intelligence, but—or so it seems to +him—because they convey nothing. There is an aching pain at the back of +his neck, and his mind is curiously dull and sluggish. But after a little +he becomes aware that somebody is knocking at his door.</p> + +<p>"Who is it——"</p> + +<p>The Doctor thinks he utters these words, but in reality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> he has only made +a harsh croaking sound that might mean anything. The door opens and shows +the Chaplain standing smiling on the threshold.</p> + +<p>The Reverend Julius Fraithorn, no longer a worn and wasted pilgrim +stumbling amongst the thorns and sharp stones of the Valley of the Shadow, +appears in these days as a perfectly sound and healthy, if rather too +narrow-shouldered, young Anglican clergyman, not unbecomingly arrayed, in +virtue of his official position under martial authority, in a suit of +Service khâki such as Saxham wears, with the black Maltese Cross on the +collar and the band of the wide-peaked cap. Yellow puttees conceal the +unduly spare proportions of his active legs, and the brown boots upon his +long slender feet are dusty, as, indeed, is the rest of him, not with the +reddish dust of the veld that powders Saxham to the very eyelashes, and +lies in light drifts in every wrinkle of his garments, but with the +yellowish dust of the town.</p> + +<p>"I rather thought," the Chaplain says, hesitating, as Saxham, without +lifting his eyes, turns his square, white face upon the visitor, "that you +said 'Come in'?"</p> + +<p>"Come in, and shut the door, and sit down," says Saxham heavily and +thickly. And Julius does so, and, occupying the single cane-seated chair +the bedroom boasts, glows upon Saxham with a sincerity of affection and a +simplicity of admiration pleasant to see, and asks in his thin, sweet +voice how things are going.</p> + +<p>"Things <i>are</i> going," Saxham returns, seeming to wake from a heavy brown +study. "You could not put it better or more clearly. Will you smoke?" He +pitches a rubber tobacco-pouch to the Chaplain, who catches it, and the +treasured box of matches that comes after, and as one man sparingly fills +a well-browned meerschaum, and the other a blackened briar-root, with the +weed that grows more rare and precious with every hour of these days of +dearth: "That's one of the things that are going quickest after +perchloride of mercury, carbolic, and extract of beef. As a fact, we are +using formaldehyde as an anæsthetic in minor operations; and violet powder +and starch, upon the external use of which I laid an embargo weeks ago, to +the great indignation of the younger nurses, are being employed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> instead +of arrowroot. And the more the medical stores diminish, the more the +patients come rolling in."</p> + +<p>"And each new want that arises, and each new difficulty that crops up, +finds in you the man to meet it and overcome it," says the Chaplain +fervently. He is disposed to make a hero of this brilliant surgeon who has +saved his life, and his enthusiasm is only marred by Saxham's +painfully-apparent lack of belief in certain vital spiritual truths that +are the daily bread of fervent Christian souls. Now that he has become +aware of the black band upon the sleeve of the jacket that lies across +Saxham's knees, where he sits upon the end of the cot-bed that, with a +tiny chest of drawers and a hanging bookshelf laden with volumes and +instrument-cases, completes the furnishing of the narrow room, he says, +with sympathy in his gentle voice and in the brown eyes that have the soft +lustre of a deer's or of a beautiful woman's:</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to see this, Saxham. You have lost a friend?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Lost a friend?</i>"</p> + +<p>Saxham, echoing the last three words, stares at the Chaplain in a strange, +dull way, and then forgets him for a minute or more. Baths are not to be +had in Gueldersdorp in these days, and though it is not Sunday, when +bathing in the river becomes a possibility, the Chaplain observes that the +Doctor's thick, close-cropped black hair is wet, and that broad streaks of +shining moisture are upon his pale, square face, and that he breathes as +though he had been running. But perhaps he has been sluicing his head in +the washstand basin, thinks the Chaplain. No; the basin has not recently +been used. And then it occurs to Julius, but not until he has noticed the +starting veins and corded muscles on the backs of the hands that are +clenched upon the jacket, that Saxham is suffering.</p> + +<p>"I always said he felt a great deal more than he permitted himself to +show," reflects the man of Religion looking at the man of Medicine. "And +the absence of belief in Divine Redemption and a Future State must +terribly intensify the pain of a bereavement. If I only knew how to +comfort him!" And all he can do is to ask, still in that tone of sympathy, +when the Funeral is to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Perhaps about the midday coffee-drinking," says Saxham heavily, "they +would scrape a hole and dump him in. But they're not over fond of risks, +and they would probably leave him where he is till nightfall."</p> + +<p>Julius Fraithorn longs, more than ever, that eloquence and inspiration +were his to employ in the healing of the man who has raised himself almost +from the dead. But he can only falter something about the inscrutable +designs of Providence, and not a sparrow falling to the ground unnoticed. +And he expresses, somewhat tritely, the hope that Saxham's friend was +prepared to meet his end.</p> + +<p>"I don't exactly suppose he expected it. He had a right to count upon +pulling off the match," says Saxham, with a dreary shadow of a grin, +"because a better man behind a gun than Father Noah you wouldn't easily +meet. And Boers are fine shots, as a rule."</p> + +<p>"Boers.... A Boer.... I thought you told me you had lost a friend?" Mild +astonishment is written on the Chaplain's face. And Saxham looks up, and +the other sees that his eyeballs are heavily injected with blood, and that +the vivid blue of their irises has strangely faded.</p> + +<p>"I gave him every opportunity to be my friend," says the dull voice +heavily, "by moving out from cover, even by standing up. But no good. He +suspected a ruse, and it worried him. Then he climbed a tree, emptied his +bandolier at me from a perch of vantage among the branches, and had +started to refill it from a fresh package, when I got the chance, and +brought him down spreadeagled. And so ends Father Noah."</p> + +<p>The Chaplain comprehends fully now, turns pale, and shudders. A blue line +marks itself about his mouth; he is conscious of a qualm of positive +nausea as he says:</p> + +<p>"You—you don't mean you have been talking of a man you have shot?"</p> + +<p>"Just so," assents Saxham, and the sentence that follows is not uttered +aloud. "And I wish with all my soul that the man had shot me!"</p> + +<p>"And this is War," says Julius Fraithorn. He pulls out his handkerchief +and wipes his damp forehead and the beady blue lines about his mouth, and +the crack and rattle of rifle-fire sweeping over the veld and through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> +town, and the ping, ping, ping! of Mauser bullets flattening on the iron +gutter-pipe and the corrugated iron of the roof above them seem to answer +"Certainly, War."</p> + +<p>"Why, you look sick, man," says Saxham the surgeon, whose keen +professional eye has not missed the Chaplain's pallor, though the other +Saxham is still dazed and blind, and stupefied by the blow that has been +dealt him by Lady Hannah's gold fountain-pen. He leans forward, and +lightly touches one of the Chaplain's thin wrists, suspecting him of a +touch of fever, or town-water dysentery. But Julius jerks the wrist away.</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly well. It was—the way in which you spoke just now that +rather—rather——"</p> + +<p>"Revolted you, eh?" says Saxham, again with the dim shadow of a smile. +"Revealed me as a brute and a savage. Well, and why not, if I choose to be +one or the other, or both? You Churchmen believe in the power of choice, +don't you? Prove to a man that there is something worth having in the +bowels of the earth, he burrows like a mole and gets it. Let him once see +utility in flying, give him time and opportunity, and he will fly. So if +it is to his interests to be clean-lived, high-minded, exemplary, he will +be all these things to admiration. Or, if he should happen to have lost +the <i>goût</i> for virtue, if he determines that Evil shall be his good, he +will make it so." He smiled dourly. "Deprive him of a solid reason for +living, he can die. Hold up before his dying eyes the prospect of +continued existence under hopeful conditions, he takes up his bed and +walks, like the moribund paralytic in the Gospel you preach. You're a +living proof of the human power of working miracles.... Granted I cut away +a tumour from under your breast-bone more skilfully than a certain +percentage of surgeons could have done it. But what brought you safely +through the operation, healed your wound by the first intention, and set +you on your legs again? I'll trouble you to tell me?"</p> + +<p>"The mercy and the grace of God," says the Chaplain, "manifested in His +unworthy servant through your science and your skill."</p> + +<p>"You employ the technical terminology of your profession," Saxham answers, +with a shrug.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p> + +<p>The blank stare and the congested redness have gone out of his eyes, and +his voice is less dull and toneless. He is coming back to his outward self +again, even while the inner man lies mangled and bleeding, crushed by that +tremendous broadsword stroke of Fate that has been dealt him by the gold +pen of Lady Hannah, and he is ready enough to argue with the Chaplain. He +gets off the bed and slips on his jacket, takes a turn or two across the +narrow floor-space, then leans against the distempered wall beside the +window, puffing at his jetty briar-root, his muscular arms folded on his +great chest, his powerful shoulders bowed, his square, black head thrust +forward, and his blue eyes coolly studying Julius as he talks.</p> + +<p>"Let me—without rubbing your cloth the wrong way—put the case in mine. +Your belief in a Power that my reason tells me is non-existent stimulated +your nervous centres, roused and sustained in you the determination +without which my science and my skill—and I do not value them lightly, I +assure you—would have availed you nothing. You said to yourself, 'If God +will it, I shall get over this,' and because <i>you</i> willed it, it was so. +Were I a drunkard, an outcast, the very refuse of humanity, tainted with +vice to the very centre of my being, I have but to will to be sober and +live decently, and while I continue to will it, I shall be what I desire +to be."</p> + +<p>Saxham's eyes hold Julius's, and challenge them. But no shadow of a Dop +Doctor who once reeled the streets of Gueldersdorp rises from those clear +brown depths as the speaker ends, "Don't underestimate the power of the +Human Will, Fraithorn, for it can remove mountains, and raise the living +dead."</p> + +<p>"Nor do you venture to deny the Power of the Almighty Hand, Saxham," +answers the thin, sweet voice of the Churchman; "because It strewed the +myriad worlds in the Dust of the The Infinite, and set the jewelled +feathers in the butterfly's wing, and forged the very intellect whose +power you misuse in uttering the boast that denies It. Think again. Can +you assure me with truth that you have never, in the stress of some great +mental or physical crisis, cried to Heaven for help when the struggle was +at its worst? Think again, Saxham."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span></p> + +<p>But Saxham obstinately shakes his head, still smiling. As he stands there +transfigured by the dark, fierce spirit that has come upon him and +possessed him, there is something about the hulking man with the square, +black head and the powerful frame, that breathes of that superb and +terrible Prince of the Heavenly Hierarchy who fell through a kindred sin, +and the priest in Julius shudders, recognising the tremendous power of +such a nature as this, whether turned towards Evil or bent to achieve +Good. The while, in letters of delicate, keen flame, the denier sees +written on the tables of his inward consciousness the utterance that once +broke from him, as, racked and tortured in body and in soul, he wrestled +with his devil on that unforgettable night.</p> + +<p>"O God! if indeed Thou Art, and I must perforce return to live the life of +a man amongst men, help me to burst the chains that fetter me. Help +me—oh, help me to be free!"</p> + +<p>And in his heart he knows that the desperate prayer has been granted. But +in this new-born, curious mood of his he will not yield, but combats his +own innermost conviction, being, in a strange, perverted way, even prouder +of this Owen Saxham who has gone down of his own choice to the muddiest +depths of moral and physical decadence, and come up of the strength of his +own will from among the hideous things that hang suspended and drifting in +the primeval sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His is a +combative nature, and the great blow he has sustained this day in the +wreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left him quivering to the centre of +his being with resentment that strikes back.</p> + +<p>"Think again yourself. Ask yourself whether the Deity who creates, +preserves, blesses, punishes, slays, and raises up, is the natural outcome +of man's need of such a Being, or His own desire of Himself? And which +conception is the greater—that the God in whom you Churchmen and the +millions of lay-folk who recognise you as Divinely-appointed teachers +believe, should have commanded, 'Let the universe exist,' and have been +obeyed, or that the stupendous pigmy Man should have dared to say, 'Let +there be God,' and so created Him?"</p> + +<p>He laughs jarringly as he knocks the ashes out of the blackened pipe upon +the corner of the window-ledge.</p> + +<p>"Give credit to the human imagination and the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> will for inventing a +personage so useful to the Christian Churches as the Devil. For as in the +beginning it was necessary for Man to build up Heaven and set his God +therein, so, to throw His unimaginable purity and inconceivable perfection +into yet more glorious relief, it was required that Hell should be delved +out and the objective personality of Satan conceived and kennelled there, +and given just sufficient power to pay the marplot where the Divine plans +are concerned, and just enough malevolence to find amusement in the +occupation. What should we do, where should we be, without our Satanic +<i>souffre-douleur</i>—our horned scapegoat, our black puppet, without whose +suggestions we should never have erred, whose wooden head we bang when +things go wrong with us," says Saxham bitterly. He reaches out a hand for +the tobacco-pouch and his glance falls upon the day's issue of the <i>Siege +Gazette</i> lying on the parquet linoleum, where it has fallen from his hand +a little while ago. He stoops and picks it up, and offers it to Julius.</p> + +<p>"There's the announcement of an engagement here——" He smooths the +crumpled sheet, holds it under the Chaplain's eye, and points to the two +last paragraphs of the "Social Jottings" column. "Take it as an +instance.... Did Heaven play the matchmaker here, or has Hell had a finger +in the matrimonial pie? Or has the blind and crazy chance that governs +this desolate world for me, tipped the balance in favour of one young +rake, who may be saved and purified and renewed by such a marriage, while +his elder in iniquity is doomed to be wrecked upon it, ruined by it, +destroyed through it, damned socially and morally because of it ..."</p> + +<p>The fierce words break from Saxham against his will. He resents the +betrayal of his own confidence savagely, even as he utters them. But they +are spoken, beyond recall. And the effect of the paragraph upon the +Chaplain is remarkable. His meek, luminous brown eyes blaze with +indignation. He is aflame, from the edge of his collar—a patent clerical +guillotine of washable xylonite, purchased at a famous travellers' +emporium in the Strand—to the thin, silky rings of dark hair that are +wearing from his high, pale temples. He says, and stutters angrily in +saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p> + +<p>"This is a lie—a monstrous misstatement which shall be withdrawn +to-morrow!"</p> + +<p>"How do you know that?"</p> + +<p>The Chaplain crushes the <i>Siege Gazette</i> into a ball, pitches it into a +corner of the room, grabs his Field-Service cap and the cane he carries in +lieu of the carbine or rifle without which the male laity of Gueldersdorp +and a good many of the women do not stir abroad, and makes a stride for +the door. He meets there Saxham, whose square face and powerful figure bar +his flaming exit.</p> + +<p>"It is enough that I do know it. Kindly allow me to pass."</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do?"</p> + +<p>The Chaplain is plainly uncertain, as he wrestles with the clerical +guillotine of washable xylonite, and stammers something about +unwarrantable liberty and a lady's reputation! And Saxham recognises that +Saxham is not the only sufferer from the festering smart of jealousy, and +that the vivid red-and-white carnation-tinted beauty of the delicate face +in its setting of red-brown hair has grievously disturbed, if it has not +altogether dissipated, the pale young Anglican's views of the celibate +life.</p> + +<p>Agnostic and Churchman, denier and believer, have split on the same +amatory rock. The knowledge breathes no sympathy in the Dop Doctor.</p> + +<p>He observes the Chaplain's face, dispassionately and yet intently, as in +the old Hospital days he might have studied the expression of a monkey or +a guinea-pig, or other organism upon which he was experimenting with some +new drug. And the Reverend Julius demands, with resentful acerbity:</p> + +<p>"What are you staring at? Do you imagine that the colour of my cloth +debars me from—from taking the part of a lady whose name has been dragged +before the public? I shall call at the office where this rag is published, +and insist upon a contradiction of this—this <i>canard</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you know who edits the rag?" asks Saxham raspingly. "Do you suppose +that any unauthorised announcement, or statement that has not been +officially corroborated would be allowed to pass? The paragraph comes from +an authoritative source, you may be sure!"</p> + +<p>"I am in a position to disprove it, from whatever source it comes!" cried +the Chaplain hotly. "He shall contradict it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> himself, if there is +necessity. He may be a prodigal and a rake—he bears that reputation—but +at least he is not a liar and a scoundrel."</p> + +<p>"Who?" Saxham's heart is drubbing furiously. A cool, vivifying liquid like +ether seems to have passed into his blood. His quiet, set, determined face +and masterful, observant eyes oppose the Chaplain's heat and indignation, +as if these were waves of boiling lava beating on a cliff of granite. "Who +is not a liar and a scoundrel?"</p> + +<p>"I speak of Lord Beauvayse," says the Reverend Julius Fraithorn in the +high-pitched voice that shakes with rage. "He is a married man, Saxham; I +have incontrovertible testimony to prove it. He gave his name to the woman +who was his mistress a week before he sailed for Cape Town. He——"</p> + +<p>There is a strange rattling noise in the throat of the man who listens. +Julius looks at him, and his own resentment appears, even to himself, as +impotent and ridiculous as the anger of a child. If just before it has +seemed to him that he has heard the voice of mankind's arch-enemy speaking +with Saxham's mouth, he discerns at this moment, reflected in Saxham's, +the face of the primal murderer. And being, as well as a sincere and +simple-hearted clergyman, something of a weakling, he is shocked to +silence.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI"></a>XLVI</h2> + + +<p>An instant, and Saxham's own face looks calmly at the dazed Chaplain, and +the curt, brusque voice demands:</p> + +<p>"What is this incontrovertible testimony?"</p> + +<p>"A letter," says Julius breathlessly, "from a person who saw the entry of +the marriage at the Registrar's office where it took place."</p> + +<p>"Is anyone else in possession of this information?"</p> + +<p>"With the exception of the Registrar and the witnesses of the marriage, up +to the middle of last September, when the letter was written, nothing had +leaked out. I received the communication by the last mail from England +that was delivered at the Hospital before I underwent the operation."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That was the last mail that got through. Who was your correspondent?"</p> + +<p>"One of the senior officiating priests of St. Margaret's, Wendish Street, +the London church where I did duty as junior curate."</p> + +<p>"Have you kept the letter?"</p> + +<p>"It is in my desk at my hotel, with some other correspondence of Father +Tatham's. You may see it if you wish."</p> + +<p>"I will see it. In the meanwhile, let me have the pith of it. This +clergyman—happening to visit a Registrar's office—— Where was the +office?"</p> + +<p>"At Cookham-on-Thames, where Father Tatham has established a Holiday Rest +Home for the benefit of our London working lads"—the Chaplain begins. He +is sitting on the end of the bed, weak and worn and exhausted with the +emotions that have torn him in the last half-hour. Beads of perspiration +thickly stud the high temples, out of which the flushing colour has sunk; +his cheeks are pallid and hollow. His eyes have lost their fire; his +muscles are flaccidly relaxed; his sloping shoulders stoop; his long, limp +hands hang nervelessly at his sides.</p> + +<p>"One moment." Saxham glances at the gold chronometer that was a +presentation from the students of St. Stephen's years ago. It is rather +typical of the man that, even when under stress of his heroic thirst he +has pawned the watch for money wherewith to buy whisky, he should have +only borrowed upon it such small sums as are easily repaid. He has yet +another five minutes to bestow in listening to the Chaplain's story, yet +even as he returns the chronometer to its pocket, his quick ear catches +the frou-frou of feminine petticoats outside the door. He opens it, +frowning. A nurse is standing there with a summons in her face. She +delivers her low-toned message, receives a brusque reply, and rustles down +the corridor between the long lines of pallets as Saxham draws back his +head and shuts the door, and, setting his great shoulders against it, and +facing Julius, orders:</p> + +<p>"Go on!"</p> + +<p>Julius goes on:</p> + +<p>"At Roselawn Cottage—a pretty place of the toy-residence description, +standing in charming gardens not far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> from the Holiday Rest Home, lived a +lady—an actress very popular in Musical Comedy—who was known to be the +mistress of Lord Beauvayse. I need hardly tell you the Father touched on +the unpleasant features of the story as delicately as possible——"</p> + +<p>"Without doubt. But—get on a little quicker," says Saxham grimly, jerking +his head towards the door. "For I am wanted. And don't speak loud, for +there are people on the other side there. With regard to this +woman—actress, or whatever she may be——?"</p> + +<p>"With all her moral laxities," goes on Julius, "Miss Lessie Lavigne——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I know the name," says Saxham sharply. "On with you to the end. 'With +all her moral laxities——'"</p> + +<p>"Miss Lessie Lavigne is a generous, kindly, charitable young woman," goes +on Julius. "And the Holiday Home has benefited largely by her purse. She +is known to the Matron; and Father Tatham—having occasion to visit the +Registrar's office at Cookham on the 29th of last June, for the purpose of +looking up the books, with the Registrar's consent, and satisfying himself +of the existence of the entry regarding a marriage between one of our +young fellows then at the Home and a girl he very foolishly married when +on a hopping excursion in the autumn of the previous year—Father Tatham +encountered Miss Lavigne—or Lady Beauvayse, to give her her proper +title——"</p> + +<p>"In the Registrar's office?"</p> + +<p>"In the act of quitting the Registrar's outer office," says the burnt-out +Julius in a weary voice, "in the company of Lord Beauvayse, and followed +by his valet and a woman who probably were witnesses; for when the Father +entered the inner office the register was lying open on the table, the +entry of the marriage still wet upon the page."</p> + +<p>"And your religious correspondent pried first," says Saxham, with savage +irony, "and afterwards tattled?"</p> + +<p>"And afterwards, seeing in the <i>Times</i> that Lord Beauvayse was under +orders for South Africa, mentioned his accidental discovery when writing +to me," says Julius Fraithorn wearily.</p> + +<p>"That will do. When can I see the letter at your hotel? The sooner the +better," says Saxham, with a curious smile,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> "for all purposes. Can you +walk there with me now? Very well"—as Julius assents—"that is arranged, +then."</p> + +<p>"What is to be done, Saxham?" Julius stumbles up. The fires that burned in +him a few moments ago are quenched; his slack hand trembles irresolutely +at his beautiful weak mouth, and his deer-like eyes waver.</p> + +<p>"I advise you," says Saxham, "to leave the doing of what is to be done to +me." His own blue eyes have so strange a flare in them, and his heavy form +seems so alive and instinct with threatening and dangerous possibilities, +that Julius falters:</p> + +<p>"You believe Lord Beauvayse has been a party to—has wilfully compromised +Miss Mildare? You—you mean to remonstrate with him? Do you—do you think +that he will listen to a remonstrance?"</p> + +<p>"He will find it best in this instance," says Saxham dourly.</p> + +<p>"Do not—do not be tempted to use any violence, Saxham," urges the +Chaplain nervously, looking at the tense muscles of the grim, square face +and the purposeful right hand that hovers near the butt of the Doctor's +revolver. "For your own sake as much as for his!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's laugh is ugly to hear.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that Lord Beauvayse would wind up as top-dog if it came to a +struggle between us?"</p> + +<p>"It must not come to a struggle, Saxham," says the Chaplain, very pale. +"We—we are under Martial Law. He is your superior officer." (Saxham, +Attached Medical Staff, holds the honorary rank of Lieutenant in Her +Majesty's Army.) "Remember, if Carslow—the man who killed Vickers, of the +<i>Pittsburg Trumpeter</i>"—he refers to a grim tragedy of the beginning of +the siege—"had not been medically certified insane, they would have taken +him out and shot him."</p> + +<p>Saxham shrugs his massive shoulders, and with the utter unmelodiousness +that distinguishes the performance of a man devoid of a musical ear, +whistles a fragment of a little tune. It is often on the lips of another +man, and the Doctor has picked it up unconsciously, with one or two other +characteristic habits and phrases, and has fallen into the habit of +whistling it as he goes doggedly, unwearyingly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> upon his ever-widening +round of daily duties. It helps him, perhaps, though it gets upon the +nerves of other people, making the younger nurses, not unmindful of his +arbitrary action in the matter of the violet powder, want to shriek.</p> + +<p>"The Military Executive would be perfectly welcome to take me out and +shoot me, if first I might be permitted to look in at Staff Bomb proof +South, and render Society the distinguished service of ridding it of Lord +Beauvayse. Who's there?"</p> + +<p>Saxham reopens the door, at which the nurse, now returned, has knocked. +The tired but cheerful-faced young woman, in an unstarched cap and apron, +and rumpled gown of Galatea cotton-twill, informs the Doctor that they +have telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that the +password for the day is "Honour."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"You are going to him now?" asks the Chaplain anxiously and +apprehensively.</p> + +<p>"Oddly enough, I have been sent for to attend to a shell casualty," says +Saxham, picking up and putting on his Service felt, and moving to take +down the canvas wallet that is his inseparable companion, from the hook on +which it hangs. "Or, rather, Taggart was; and as he has thirty diphtheria +cases for tracheotomy at the Children's Hospital, and McFadyen's hands are +full at the Refugees' Infirmary, the Major asks if I will take the duty. +It's an order, I suppose, couched in a civil way."</p> + +<p>He swings the heavy wallet over his shoulders, and picks up his worn +hunting-crop.</p> + +<p>"And so, let's be moving," he says, his hand upon the door-knob. "Your +hotel is on my way. I may need that letter, or I may not. And in any case +I prefer to have seen it before I meet the man."</p> + +<p>"One moment." The Chaplain speaks with a strained look of anxiety, +squeezing a damp white handkerchief into a ball between his palms. "You +have taken upon yourself the duty of bringing Lord Beauvayse to book over +this—very painful matter.... I should like ... I should wish you to leave +the task of enlightening Miss Mildare to me."</p> + +<p>"To you. And why?"</p> + +<p>Saxham waits for the answer, a heavy figure filling up the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> doorway, with +scowling brows, and sullen eyes that carefully avoid the Chaplain's face.</p> + +<p>"Because I—because in inflicting upon her what must necessarily be a—a +painful humiliation"—the Rev. Julius clears his throat, and laboriously +rolls the damp handkerchief-ball into a sausage—"I wish to convince Miss +Mildare that my respect and my—esteem for her have—not diminished."</p> + +<p>"And how do you propose to drive this conviction home?"</p> + +<p>The Reverend Julius flushes to the ear-tips. The coldness of the +questioning voice gives him a nervous shudder. He says with an effort, +looking at the thick white, black-fringed lids that bide the Doctor's +queer blue eyes:</p> + +<p>"By offering Miss Mildare the honourable protection of my name. My views, +as regarding the celibacy incumbent upon an anointed servant of the altar, +have, since I knew her, undergone a—a change.... And it occurs to me, +when she has got over the first shock of hearing that she has been +deceived and played with by a person of Lord Beauvayse's lack of +principle——"</p> + +<p>"That she may be induced to look with favour on the parson's proposal?" +comments Saxham with an indifference to the feelings of the person he +addresses that is positively savage. The raucous tones flay Julius's +sensitive ears, the terrible blue eyes blaze upon him, scorch him. He +falters:</p> + +<p>"I—I trust my purpose is pure from vulgar self-seeking? I hope my +attitude towards Miss Mildare is not unchivalrous—or ungenerous?"</p> + +<p>"In manipulating her disadvantage to serve your own interests," says +Saxham's terrible voice, "you would undoubtedly be playing a very low-down +game."</p> + +<p>Julius laughs, shortly and huffily.</p> + +<p>"A low-down game!... Ha, ha, ha! You don't mince your words, Doctor!"</p> + +<p>"I can phrase my opinion even more plainly, if you desire it," returns +Saxham brutally. "To bespatter a rival for the gaining of an advantage by +contrast is a Yahoo's trick to which no decent gentleman would stoop."</p> + +<p>"At a pinch," retorts the Chaplain, stung to the point of being sarcastic, +"your 'decent gentleman' would be likely to remember the old adage, 'All's +fair in Love and——'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Exactly. All <i>is</i> fair," returns Saxham, squaring his dogged jaws at the +other, and folding his great arms upon his deep wide chest. "And all shall +be, please to understand it. It is, unfortunately, necessary that Miss +Mildare should be undeceived as regards Lord Beauvayse. But the painful +duty of opening her eyes will be undertaken by that"—the break before the +designation is scathingly contemptuous—"by that—distinguished nobleman +himself, and by no other."</p> + +<p>"How can you compel the man to give himself away?" demands the Reverend +Julius incredulously. Saxham answers, mechanically opening and closing his +small, muscular surgeon's hand, and watching the flexions and extensions +of the supple fingers with an ugly kind of interest:</p> + +<p>"I shall compel him to. How doesn't concern you at the moment. What +matters is—your parole of honour that you will never by word, or deed, or +sign disclose to Miss Mildare that Lord Beauvayse was not, when he engaged +himself to marry her, in a position to fulfil his matrimonial proposals. +Short of betraying your rival, you are at liberty to further your own +views as may seem good to you. The plan of campaign that I, in your place, +should choose might not find favour in your eyes...."</p> + +<p>His look bears upon the younger man with intolerable weight, his +heavily-shouldered figure seems to swell and fill the room. Julius is +clearly conscious of hating his saviour, and the consciousness is acid on +his palate as he asks, with a wry smile:</p> + +<p>"What would your plan be if you were in my place?"</p> + +<p>"To praise where a rival was worthy of praise; to be silent where it would +be easy to depreciate; to win her from him, not because of my own greater +worth, but in spite of the worst she could know of me. That would, in my +opinion, be a conquest worthy of a man."</p> + +<p>The pupils of the speaker's flaming blue eyes have dwindled to mere +pin-points, a rush of blood has darkened the square pale face, to sink +away again and leave it opaquely colourless, as Saxham says with cool +distinctness:</p> + +<p>"And now, before we leave this room, I must trouble you for that +promise—oath, if you feel it would be more in your line of business. I +don't possess a copy of the Scriptures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> but I think that is a Crucifix +you wear upon your watch-chain?"</p> + +<p>It is. And when the Reverend Julius has kissed the sacred symbol with +shaking lips, and taken the oath as Saxham dictates, his heart tattooing +furiously under the baggy khâki jacket, and an angry pulse beating in his +thin cheek, Saxham adds, with the flickering shadow of a smile, as he +opens the door, and signs to the Chaplain to pass out before him:</p> + +<p>"You observe, I have turned the weapons of your profession against you. +Exactly as—replying to your question of a moment back with regard to +compelling—exactly as I intend to do in the case of Lord Beauvayse!"</p> + +<p>He motions to the other to pass out before him, and locks the door upon +his stuffy little sanctum whose shelves are piled with a heterogeneous +confusion of tubes and bottles, books and instruments, specimens of +foodstuffs under the process of analysis for values, and carefully-sealed +watch-glasses containing choice cultures of deadly microbes in bouillon, +before he leads his way down the long corridor, where narrow pallets, upon +which sick men and boys are stretched, range along the walls upon either +hand, and the air is heavy with the taint of suppurating wounds, and the +hot, sickly breath of fever and malaria.</p> + +<p>He walks quickly, his keen blue eyes glancing right and left with the +effect of carelessness, yet missing nothing. He stops, and loosens the +bandage, and relieves the swollen limb. He delays to kneel a moment beside +one low pillow, and turn gently to the light a face that is ghastly, with +its bristly beard and glassy, staring eyes, and its pallor that is of the +hue of old wax, and lay it gently back again as he beckons to the nurse to +bring the screens, and hide the Dead from the sight of the living.</p> + +<p>He is in his element; salient and masterful and strong. But the haggard +eyes that turn upon him do not shine with gratitude. He has not reached +these hearts. They accuse him, quite unjustly, of a liking for cutting and +carving. They suspect him, quite correctly, of being in no hurry for the +ending of the siege. How should he be, when, these strenuous days once +over, he sees nothing before him but the murky blackness of the night out +of which he came, from which he has emerged for one brief draught of +renewed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> joy in living before the dark shall close over him again, and +wrap him round for ever?</p> + +<p>He has suffered horribly of late. But at the worst his work has never +failed to bring relief and distraction. Pure loyalty to a man in whom he +believes, has been the main-spring of his unflagging strength. He is not +liked or popular in any way, though Surgeon-Major Taggart upholds him +manfully, and McFadyen is loyal to the old bond. His harshness repels +regard, his coldness blights confidence, and so, though he is admired for +his dazzling skill in surgery, for his dogged perseverance and unremitting +power of application, for his fine horsemanship and iron nerve; he is not +regarded with affection.</p> + +<p>He is not in the least aware of it, to do him justice, when his rough +ironies and his brusque repartees give offence. In the heyday of his +London success he has not truckled to Rank, or Influence, or Affluence. +The owner of a gouty or a varicose leg has never had the more civil tongue +from Saxham that the uneasy limb or its fellow was privileged upon State +occasions to wear the Garter. He trod upon corns then, as he treads upon +them now, without being aware of it, as he goes upon his way.</p> + +<p>Julius goes with him, rent by apprehensions, stealing nervous side-glances +at the impassive, opaque-skinned face as Saxham swings along with his +powerful, rather lurching gait over the ploughed and littered waste that +divides the Hospital from the town beyond it. He speaks once or twice, but +Saxham seems not to hear.</p> + +<p>The Doctor is listening to a dialogue that is as yet unspoken. He is +crushing a resistance that has not yet been made. In imagination his +small, strong, muscular hands are gripped about the throat of the man who +has lied to her and deceived her; and he is listening with joy to the +gurgling, choking efforts to phrase a prayer for mercy, or utter a final +defiance; and he sees with grim pleasure how the fine skin blackens under +his deadly hold, and how the lazy, beautiful, grey-green eyes, no longer +sleepy or defiant, but staring and horribly bloodshot, are already rolling +upwards in the death-agony. The primitive savage that is in every man +lusts at a juncture such as this, to kill with the bare hands rather than +to slay with any weapon known to civilisation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Let him look to it how he deals with her! Let him look to it!"</p> + +<p>How long it seems since Saxham muttered those words, turning sullenly away +to recross the stepping-stones, leaping from boulder to boulder as the +river wimpled and laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protection +and her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect and +triumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to recommence his wooing +until the intruder should be gone, divining, as Saxham had instinctively +known, the hidden passion that rent and tortured him, glowing with the +consciousness of secret mastery....</p> + +<p>If this meek, thin-blooded young clergyman who walks beside him might have +won her, it seems to Saxham that he could have borne it. But that +Beauvayse of all others should venture to approach her, presume to rear an +image of himself in the shrine of her pure breast; win her from her high +aims and lofty ideals with a bold look and a few whispered words, and, +having thrown his honourable name into the lap of a light woman as +indifferently as a jewelled trinket, should dare to offer Lynette Mildare +dishonour, is monstrous, hideous, unbearable....</p> + +<p>How comes it that she of all women should be so easily allured, so lightly +drawn aside? Was there no baser conquest within reach that this white, +virginal, slender saint should become <i>his</i> prey? Shall she be made even +as those others of whom she spoke, when the veil of a girlish innocence +was drawn aside, and strange and terrible knowledge looked out of those +clear eyes, and she said, in answer to his question:</p> + +<p>"They are the most unhappy of all the souls that suffer upon earth. For +they are the slaves, and the victims, and the martyrs of the unrelenting, +merciless, dreadful pleasures of men...."</p> + +<p>Of men like Beauvayse.</p> + +<p>Not only swart and shaggy, or pale and bloated beast-men, or white-haired, +toothless, blear-eyed satyrs grown venerable in vice. But beautiful, +youthful profligates, limbed like the gods and fauns of the old Greek +sculptors; soft of skin, golden of hair, with sleepy eyes like green +jewels, soft persuasive voices with which to pour poisoned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> words into +innocent and guileless ears, and the bold, brave blood of old-time heroes +running in their veins, prompting them to the doing of dashing, reckless, +gallant deeds, no less than sins of lust and luxury.</p> + +<p>Let him look to it, this splendid young soldier with the ancient name, +hope of his House, pride of his Regiment. Let him look to it how he has +dealt with her, who had no thought or dream but to save others from the +fate he destines for her, until his cursed, beautiful face smiled down +into her own. For every lying oath he has sworn to her, for every false +promise made to the wrecking of her maiden peace, for every kiss those +innocent lips have been despoiled of, for every touch of his that has +soiled her, for every breath of his that has scorched the white petals of +the Convent-reared lily, he shall pay the price.</p> + +<p>Silently Saxham registers this oath upon that beloved red-brown head, +since he denies its Maker His honour, and the whirling blackness that is +within him is rent and cloven, for one blinding instant, by the +levin-fires of Hell. He knows thenceforward what he will do, as he walks +with the pale Chaplain between the shell-torn houses, and along the +littered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard and +listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pass and +repass as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling from +the low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire +were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental to a sham +fight.</p> + +<p>They reach the Chaplain's hotel, and go to his room. Saxham waits silently +while Julius searches for and finds Father Tatham's letter, takes it and +reads it attentively, puts it carefully away in a worn notecase, restores +the notecase to the inner pocket of his jacket, and, without a nod or word +of farewell, is gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVII" id="XLVII"></a>XLVII</h2> + + +<p>To the remarkably complete system of underground wires installed by the +Garrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah Wrynche, on duty at the Convalescent +Hospital that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday that +saw the publication of the string of paragraphs previously quoted from the +<i>Siege Gazette</i>, indebted for what she afterwards described with +ruefulness as a "heckled morning."</p> + +<p>Once a week the "Social Jottings," bubbling from the effervescent Gold +Pen, descended like rain upon the parched soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. To +make gossip where there is none is as difficult as making bricks without +clay, or trimming a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds' +Protection Society, and plumage is Fashion's latest cry. Under the +circumstances a genuine item of general and public interest was a pearl of +price. And yet something had told the little lady that the ruthless Blue +Pencil of Supreme Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy of +casting it before the readers of the <i>Siege Gazette</i>. She seemed to hear +him saying, in the pleasant voice she knew so well:</p> + +<p>"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control."</p> + +<p>He had said that on Sunday, when she had pleaded for a freer hand. Well, +he could hardly call the announcement of an engagement a personality, and, +supposing he did, how easy to convince him that it was nothing of the +kind!</p> + +<p>She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, and added the +paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks, +and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole person +the offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil.</p> + +<p>Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing-press driven by the +little oil-engine that had sustained a shell-casualty at the beginning of +the siege, adored Lady Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated partition +that separated the office from the printing-room, and presently came back +in inky shirt-sleeves with a smear of lubricating-oil upon his forehead, +and laid the wet slips upon the Editorial table. Then he went back, and +fell to tinkering at his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. When +she had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten minutes Supreme +Authority would descend the ladder, wield the Blue Pencil, and depart. +Would he have mercy and not sacrifice? The suspense was torturing.</p> + +<p>Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority might +be—she dared not use the word "circumvented."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> "Got round" was even +worse; "evaded" sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own +feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force than +Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, and +daintily cut off the three paragraphs from the bottom of the slip.</p> + +<p>The thing was done, and the snipped-off paragraphs concealed, as a pair of +brown boots, with steel jack-spurs attached, came neatly down the ladder. +The Chief gave her his cheery "Good-morning," and congratulated her on +looking well. Her cheeks burned and her heart rat-tatted against the +hidden paper, as he ran his keen eye down slip after slip, and initialled +them for the press. She almost shrieked as he took up the "Social +Jottings." The underground office whirled about her as the blue pencil +steadily travelled down. Then—he was gone—and the initialled proof lay +before her. She had nothing to do but neatly and delicately paste on the +bit she had snipped off. This done, she gathered up her various small +belongings, swept them into her bag, and went, leaving the passed proof of +the "Social Jottings" column waiting for Young Evans with the rest.</p> + +<p>In the middle of the night she realised what she had done. But even in a +beleaguered town under the sway of Martial Law you cannot hang a lady, or +order her out and shoot her for Mutiny and Treason combined. There would +be a reprimand; what Bingo pleasantly termed "an official wigging," unless +the Blue Pencil could, by any feminine art, be persuaded that it had +passed those pars.</p> + +<p>But, of course, she would never stoop to such a deception. The ruse she +had employed was culpable. The other thing would be infamous. And—he +would be sure to see that the end of the proof-slip had been pasted on.</p> + +<p>She slept jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the Convalescent +Hospital in that stage of penitence that immediately precedes hysterical +breakdown. She experienced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who, +regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to be going on just +then, was walking along reading the <i>Siege Gazette</i>. Shirt-sleeved Young +Evans had worked until daylight getting the Thursday's issue out. And +there was a tremendous run upon copies. Every other person Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> Hannah +encountered upon the street seemed to have got one, and to find it +unusually interesting. The women especially. None of them were dull, or +languid, or dim-eyed this morning. The siege crawl was no longer in +evidence. They walked upon springs. Upon the stoep of the Hospital, where +the long rows of convalescents were airing, every patient appeared plunged +in perusal. Those who had not the paper were waiting, with watering +mouths, until those who had would part. A reviving breath seemed to have +passed over them, and spots of colour showed in their yellow, haggard +faces. They talked and laughed....</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah passed in, conscious of an agreeable tingling all down her +spine. The hall-porter, a brawny, one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lost +what he was wont to term his "flapper" at the outset of hostilities, was +too deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the "Social Jottings" +column to salute her. Inside you heard little beyond the crackling of the +flimsy sheet, mingled with the comments, exclamations, anticipations, +expectations that went off on all sides, met each other, and rebounded, +exploding in coruscations of sparks. Something had happened, something was +going to happen, after months and months of eventless monotony. It warmed +the thin blood in their veins like comet champagne, and quickened their +faded appetites like some salt breath from the far-distant sea.</p> + +<p>The flavour of success upon the palate may, like Imperial Tokay, be sensed +but once in a lifetime, but you can never forget that once. Out of her +gold fountain-pen Lady Hannah had spurted a little ink upon the famished +Gueldersdorpians, and their dry bones moved and lived. She knew a fine +must be paid for this dizzying draught of popularity, even as she tied on +a bibbed apron, and superintended the serving and distribution of the +patients' one-o'clock dinner.</p> + +<p>Horse-soup, with a few potato-sprouts, and one or two slivered carrots to +the gallon, formed the menu to-day. There was no more white bread, and a +villainous bannock of crushed oats had to be soaked in your porringer if +you had no strength to chew it. Sweetened bran-jelly followed, and upon +this the now apologetic but smiling porter, with the intelligence that her +ladyship was wanted at the wall-jigger in the Matron's room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span></p> + +<p>The ring-up came from Hotchkiss Outpost North, where Captain Bingo was +this day on duty, <i>vià</i> the Staff Headquarter office in Market Square, and +the voice that filtered to the ear of Lady Hannah was unmistakably that of +her spouse, and tinged with a gruffness as unusual as ominous.</p> + +<p>"Hullo. Is that you?"</p> + +<p>"Qu'il ne vous en déplaise!"</p> + +<p>Bingo growled in a perfectly audible aside:</p> + +<p>"And devil a doubt. What other woman would jabber French through a +telephone?"</p> + +<p>"A Frenchwoman would, possibly."</p> + +<p>"Don't catch what you're saying. Look here, what made you shove such a +whacking bouncer into the <i>Siege Gazette</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Please put that into English." She underwent a quaking at the heart.</p> + +<p>"I say, that announcement about Toby and the Mildare filly is all my eye."</p> + +<p>"It isn't all your eye. It's first-hand, fully-authorised fact."</p> + +<p>"Rot!"</p> + +<p>"Paix et peu! Say rot, if it pleases you!"</p> + +<p>"You'll have to withdraw and apologise."</p> + +<p>"I can't make out what you're saying."</p> + +<p>"It will end in your eating humble-pie. Can you hear that?"</p> + +<p>"I can hear that you are in a bearish temper."</p> + +<p>"I've reason to be. If a man had written what you have I should punch his +head."</p> + +<p>"Say that again!"</p> + +<p>"I say, if a stranger of the kickable sex had told such a pack of +infernal——"</p> + +<p><i>Click!</i></p> + +<p>Lady Hannah hung up the receiver, blew a contemptuous kiss into the gape +of the celluloid mouthpiece, and turned to go. There was another ring-up +as she reached the door.</p> + +<p>"Hallo. Are you the Convalescent Hospital?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Who are you?"</p> + +<p>"Staff Bombproof South. I want to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche."</p> + +<p>"I'm here, Lord Beauvayse."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I say, I'm going to rag you frightfully. Why on earth have you given us +away in that beastly paper?"</p> + +<p>"Whom do you mean by 'us'?"</p> + +<p>"Well, me and Miss Mildare."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you tell me on Sunday that you were engaged?" she demanded +indignantly.</p> + +<p>"I did." The answer came back haltingly.</p> + +<p>"And that you didn't care who knew it?"</p> + +<p>"Fact."</p> + +<p>"And that you two were going to be married as soon as you could pull off +the event?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." The voice was palpably embarrassed. "But——"</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"But—things you don't mind people knowing look beastly in cold print."</p> + +<p>"If I were in your shoes I should think they looked beautiful."</p> + +<p>Nothing but a faint buzz came back. Lady Hannah went on:</p> + +<p>"If I were in your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and paragon as +Lynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I should want the whole world +to envy me my colossal good luck. I should go about in sandwich-boards +advertising it. I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim it through that. I +should——"</p> + +<p>There was no response beyond the buzzing of the wire. Beauvayse had +evidently hung up the receiver.</p> + +<p>"Is there any creature upon earth more cowardly than a man engaged?" Lady +Hannah demanded of space. There was a futile struggle inside the +telephone-box. Somebody else was trying to ring up. She put the receiver +back upon the crutches, and—</p> + +<p>"<i>Ting—ting—ting!</i>" said the bell in a high, thin voice.</p> + +<p>"Who is it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>The answer came back with official clearness:</p> + +<p>"Officer of the day, Staff Headquarters. If you're the Convalescent +Hospital, the Colonel would like to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche."</p> + +<p>Her knees became as jelly, and her heart seemed to turn a somersault. She +answered in a would-be jaunty voice that wobbled horribly:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Here—here—is Lady Hannah."</p> + +<p>"Hold on a minute, please!"</p> + +<p>She held on. She had not shuddered at the end of the wire for more than a +minute when the well-known, infinitely-dreaded voice said in her ear, so +clearly that she jumped:</p> + +<p>"Lady Hannah there? How d'you do?"</p> + +<p>She gulped, and quavered:</p> + +<p>"It—it depends on what you're going to say."</p> + +<p>"I see." There was the vibration of a stifled laugh, and her heart jumped +to meet it. "So you anticipated a hauling over the coals?"</p> + +<p>Revived, she shrugged her little shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Have I deserved one?"</p> + +<p>The voice said, with unmistakable displeasure in it:</p> + +<p>"Thoroughly. Why were not the last three paragraphs of the weekly 'Social +Jottings' column submitted to me yesterday with the rest?"</p> + +<p>She heard herself titter imbecilely. Then a voice, which she could hardly +believe her own, said, with a pitiable effort to be gay and natural:</p> + +<p>"Weren't they? Perhaps you overlooked them?"</p> + +<p>"You know I did not overlook them."</p> + +<p>This was the cold, incisive, cutting, rasping voice which Bingo was wont +to describe as razors and files. Her ears burned like fire, and her +bright, birdlike eyes were round and scared. She gasped:</p> + +<p>"Oh ... do you really——"</p> + +<p>"I want the truth, please, without quibbling." The voice was harsh and +cold, and inexorably compelling. "Why were those paragraphs not shown to +me?"</p> + +<p>She winked away her tears.</p> + +<p>"Because I was sure you'd blue-pencil them out of existence. And a genuine +bit of news is such a roc's egg in these times of scarcity."</p> + +<p>"Genuine!"</p> + +<p>There was incredulity in the tone.</p> + +<p>"Upon my honour as the wife of a British Dragoon."</p> + +<p>He said crisply:</p> + +<p>"Precipitate publication, even of authentic information, is likely to be +resented by the persons concerned."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span></p> + +<p>She remembered, with a sinking at the heart, that one person concerned had +already objected.</p> + +<p>"Both of them authorised the insertion."</p> + +<p>"And the official consent to it was obtained by a trick."</p> + +<p>She whispered, her heart in the heels of her Louis Quinze shoes:</p> + +<p>"Please—please don't call it that!"</p> + +<p>"How can I call it anything else? Besides, has it occurred to you that, +should any copies of to-day's issue get through these lines, the +Foltlebarres will be thrown into a state of volcanic eruption?"</p> + +<p>"If the Foltlebarres aren't absolute beetles they'll jump for joy. How +could their boy possibly do better?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how myself."</p> + +<p>"Ah, if you're going to back up Toby, the day is as good as won."</p> + +<p>"You're very kind to say so."</p> + +<p>The red was dying out of Lady Hannah's ear-tips. That "You're very kind" +had a gratified sound. The most rigorous and implacable of men can be +buttered, she thought, if the emollient be dexterously applied. And a +bright spark of naughty triumph snapped in each of her birdlike black +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Thanks." He was speaking again. "Apologies for keeping you. You're up to +your eyes in Hospital work, I don't doubt."</p> + +<p>"There is enough to keep one going."</p> + +<p>"Without the additional tax of literary labour." She was conscious of a +premonitory, apprehensive chill that travelled from the roots of her hair +down her spine, and apparently made its exit at the heels of her Louis +Quinze shoes. "So the 'Social Jottings' column will not appear in the +<i>Siege Gazette</i> after to-day. Good-morning."</p> + +<p>"Is that my punishment for insubordination?"</p> + +<p>Not a sound in reply. "He must have hung up the receiver and gone away. +Oh, horrid, horrid male superiority!" thought Lady Hannah. "To have been +put under arrest, even to have been ordered out and shot, would be +preferable to being figuratively spanked and put in the corner." She +winked away some more tears, and sniffed a little dejectedly. "And only +the other day he seemed quite pleased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> with me," she added pensively. Then +she shrugged her shoulders, and rang up the Head Hospital, North Veld +Road.</p> + +<p>"Who you-e?"</p> + +<p>It was the sing-song voice of the Barala hall-boy.</p> + +<p>"I'm Lady Hannah Wrynche. Is the Reverend Mother on duty in the wards +to-day?"</p> + +<p>"I go see. You hang-e on."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah hung on until her small remaining stock of patience deserted +her. As she stamped her small feet, longing to accelerate the languid +movements of the hall-boy with a humanely-wielded hatpin, a whisper in the +velvet voice she knew stole across the distance.</p> + +<p>"Hannah. Is it you?"</p> + +<p>"It's me, Biddy dear."</p> + +<p>There was a soft laugh that ended in a sigh. "It is so long since anybody +called me that."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't dare to with you looking at me."</p> + +<p>"Am I so formidable of aspect? But go on."</p> + +<p>"It's not so easy. But I've had an awful morning. Everybody I like best +down on me like bricks and m——" The speaker gulped a sob.</p> + +<p>"You are crying, dear!"</p> + +<p>"Not a drop. But if you join in the heckling I shall dribble away and +dissolve in salt water. It's all about those wretched paragraphs of mine +in the <i>Siege Gazette</i>. But perhaps you haven't seen it?"</p> + +<p>"I have seen it."</p> + +<p>"You were quite willing that the <i>fiançailles</i> should be made public.... +Indeed, you gave me to understand you desired it."</p> + +<p>"I was quite willing. I did wish it."</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Thank you, dear; that was what I wanted to hear from you. I +understand now what the one clapping pair of hands must mean to the actor +who is booed by all the rest of the audience. Good-bye, dear."</p> + +<p>"Stay.... Who are the persons who disapprove of the announcement?"</p> + +<p>"My Bingo, for one. Not that anything the dear old stupid says matters in +the slightest. And—and Toby."</p> + +<p>"'Toby'?"</p> + +<p>"I mean Lord Beauvayse."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this matter it was for +me to decide."</p> + +<p>"Certainly, dear."</p> + +<p>"Whose is the other objecting voice?"</p> + +<p>"The Chief thinks I ... we ... it ... I rather fancy that he used the word +'precipitate' in expressing his opinion."</p> + +<p>"Refer him to me if he expresses it again."</p> + +<p>"Of course, dear, since you ..."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, dear. If Biddy Bawne hadn't been a nun," reflected Lady Hannah, +as she went out of the Matron's office and back to her patients, who had +long ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress. +'<i>Refer him to me</i>,' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say I'm rung up +again."</p> + +<p>But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, and her little +ladyship went back. This last communication proved a puzzling one.</p> + +<p>"You there?"</p> + +<p>"I am Lady Hannah Wrynche. Where are you?"</p> + +<p>There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice said:</p> + +<p>"I don't know as that matters."</p> + +<p>"Who are you?"</p> + +<p>There was another hesitation. Then the stranger parried with a question:</p> + +<p>"You write them weekly screeds in the <i>Siege Gazette</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. Kindly say who is +speaking?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody that matters much. Can you tell me where Miss Mildare lives?"</p> + +<p>"Not without knowing who you are."</p> + +<p>"You may call me an old friend of hers," aid the thickish, lisping voice, +with a sluggish chuckle in it that the little woman at the other end of +the wire had heard ... where?...</p> + +<p>"If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, how is it you +don't know her address?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Keep her address all you want to. Only next time you come alongside her +give her a message for me. Ask her if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> she remembers the Free State Hotel +on the veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her +friend?"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah repeated:</p> + +<p>"'And Bough, who was her friend.' You are Bough——?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Click!</i>" Somebody had hung up the receiver.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Lady Hannah spent another bad night, not wholly due to the indigestible +nature of a dinner of mule colloped, and locusts fried in batter by +Nixey's chef. Staggering in the course of disturbed and changeful dreams, +under the impact of sufficient bricks and mortar to rebuild toppledown +Gueldersdorp, being hauled over mountains of coals, and getting into whole +Gulf Streams of hot water, she was slumberously conscious that these +nightmares were less harassing than one nasty, perplexing little vision +that kept cropping up among the others. It had no beginning and no end. In +it the Matron's room at the Convalescent Hospital and Kink's Family Hotel +at Tweipans were somehow mixed up, and the ingenuous Mr. Van Busch, that +Afrikander gentleman of British sympathies, whose chivalrous and patriotic +sentiments had prompted and urged him to the imperilling of his own skin +and the risking of his own liberty in the interests of an English lady +masquerading for political reasons as the refugee-widow of a German +drummer, was oddly confused in identity with an uncomfortably mysterious +individual who possessed neither features nor name.</p> + +<p>"Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel on the veld, three days' +trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her friend?" the voice would say..</p> + +<p>"You are Bough?" she would find herself asking.</p> + +<p>There would be a little guttural, horrible laugh, and nothing would answer +but the buzzing of the wire.</p> + +<p>And then she was wide awake and sitting up in bed, with a thumping heart. +She was no longer in any doubt as to the identity of the owner of the +voice. Van Busch was in Gueldersdorp ... and however he came, and whatever +disguise of person or of purpose sheltered him, his presence boded no +good. The merely logical masculine mind doffs hat respectfully before the +superiority of feminine intuition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVIII" id="XLVIII"></a>XLVIII</h2> + + +<p>Saxham, shouldering out of Julius's hotel upon his way to Staff Bombproof +South, is made aware that the hundred-foot-high dust-storm that has raged +and swirled throughout the morning is in process of being beaten down into +a porridge of red mud by a downpour of February rain.</p> + +<p>Straight as Matabele spears it comes down, sending pedestrians who have +grown indifferent to shell-fire to huddle under cover, adding to the +wretchedness of life in trench or bombproof as nothing else can. And the +Doctor, biting hard upon the worn stem of the old briar-root, as he goes +swinging along through the hissing deluge with his chin upon his breast +and his fierce eyes sullenly fixed upon the goal ahead, recalls, even more +vividly than upon Sunday, the angry buffalo of Lady Hannah's apt analogy.</p> + +<p>He is drenched to the skin, it goes without saying, in a minute or two. So +is the Railway Volunteer, who challenges him at the bridge that carries +the single-gauge railway southward over the Olopo, in spite of his ragged +waterproof and an additional piece of tarpaulin. So is a mounted officer +of the Staff, in whom Saxham mechanically recognises Captain Bingo +Wrynche, as he goes by at a furious gallop, spurring, and jagging savagely +at the mouth of the handsome if attenuated brown charger, who sends stones +and mud and water flying from his furious iron-shod hoofs. So is the +Barala on guard by the wattled palisade of the native village—a +muddy-legged and goose-fleshy warrior, in a plumed, brimless bowler and +leopard-skin kaross, whose teeth can be heard chattering as he stands to +attention and brings his gaspipe rifle to the slope. The Chinamen working +in the patches of market-garden, where the scant supply of vegetables that +command such famine-prices are raised, are certainly sheltered from the +wet by their colossal umbrella-hats, but the splashed-up red gruel has +imbrued them to the eyes. Yet they continue to labour cheerfully, hoeing +scattered shell-fragments out of their potato-drills and removing +incrusted masses of bullets that incommode the young kidney-beans, and +arranging this ironmongery and metal-ware in tidy piles, possibly with a +view to future<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> commerce. And so, with another challenge from a picket, +posted between the Barala village and the south trenches, where many of +the loyal natives are doing duty, Saxham finds himself on the perilous +tongue of land that lies behind Maxim Kopje South, and where the Staff +Bombproof is situated.</p> + +<p>As the long, low mound comes into view, a dazzling white flash leaps from +a fold of the misty grey hills beyond, and one of Meisje's great shells +goes screaming and winnowing westwards. Then a sentry of the Irregulars, a +battered, shaggy, berry-brown trooper, standing knee-deep in a hole, +burrowed in the lee of a segment of stone-dyke that is his shelter, +challenges for the last time.</p> + +<p>"'Alt! I know you well enough, Doctor." It is a man whose wounded arm was +dressed, one blazing day last January, outside the Convent bombproof. "But +you'll 'ave to give the countersign. Pass Honour and all's well. But"—the +sentry's nostrils twitch as the savour of Saxham's pipe reaches them, and +his whisper of appeal is as piercing as a yell—"if you left a pipeful +be'ind you, it wouldn't do no 'arm. Don't pull your pouch out, sir; the +lookout officer 'as 'is eye on you. Open it by the feel, an' drop a pinch +by the stone near your toe. I'll get it when they relieve me."</p> + +<p>Saxham complies, leaving the sentry to gloat distantly over the little +brown lump of loose tangled fibres rapidly reducing to sponginess under +the downpour from the skies. The long mound of raw red earth, crusted with +greenish-yellow streaks of lyddite from the bursting-charges, rises now +immediately before him. At its eastern end is a flagstaff displaying the +Union Jack. Under the roof of the little penthouse from which the +flagstaff rises are sheltered the vari-coloured acetylene lamps that are +used for signalling at night.</p> + +<p>Midway of the raw mound rises the rear elevation of an officer in dripping +waterproofs, who is looking steadily through a telescope out between the +long driving lances of the rain, beyond Maxim Kopje South to those +mysterious hills, swathed in grey-black folds of storm-cloud, that look so +desolate, and whose folds are yet as full of swarming, active, malignant +life as the blanket of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> unwashed Kaffir. An N.C.O. is posted a little +below the officer, whose narrow shoulders and dark hair, showing above the +edge of the turned-up collar and below the brim of the Field-Service cap, +prove him to be not Beauvayse. And the usual blizzard of rifle-fire, +varied by brisk bursts of cannonading, goes on, and the Red Scythe of the +Destroyer sweeps over these two figures and about them in the customary +way. But even women and children have grown indifferent to these things, +and the men have long ceased to be aware of them.</p> + +<p>A bullet sings past Saxham's ear, as the acrid exhalations of a stable +rise gratefully to his nostrils, recently saluted by the fierce and +clamorous smells of the native village. The ground slopes under his feet. +He goes down the inclined way that ends in the horses' quarters, and the +orderly, who is sitting on an empty ammunition-box outside the tarpaulin +that screens off the interior of the officer's shelter, stiffens to the +salute, receives a brief message, and disappears within.</p> + +<p>Before Saxham rise the bony brown and bay and chestnut hindquarters of +half a dozen lean horses, that are drowsing or fidgeting before their +emptied mangers. Against the division of a loose-box that holds a fine +brown charger, still saddled and steaming, and heavily splashed with mud, +there leans a stretcher, which, by the ominous red stains and splashes +upon it, has been recently in use.</p> + +<p>Upon Saxham's left hand is the shelter for the rank and file. Here several +gaunt, hollow-eyed, and hairy troopers are sitting on rough benches at a +trestle-table, playing dominoes and draughts, or poring over tattered +books by the light of the flickering oil-lamps, with tin reflectors, that +hang against the earth walls. None of them are smoking, though several are +sucking vigorously at empty pipes; and the rapacious light that glares in +every eye as Saxham mechanically knocks out the ashes from his smoked-out +briar-root against the side-post of the entrance is sufficient witness to +the pangs that they endure.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is characteristic of the Doctor that, with a hell of revengeful +fury seething in his heart, and a legion of devils unloosed and shrieking, +prompting him to murder, he should have paused to relieve the +tobacco-famine of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> sentry, and be moved to a further sacrifice of his +sole luxury by the sight of those empty pipes. The old rubber pouch, +pitched by a cricketer's hand, flies in among the domino-players, and +rebounds from a pondering head, as the orderly comes back, and lifts one +corner of the tarpaulin for the Doctor to pass in. A pack of ravening +wolves tussling over an unusually small baby might distantly reproduce the +scene Saxham leaves behind him. The trestle-table and benches are upset, +and men and benches, draughts and dominoes, welter in horrible confusion +over the earthen floor, when the scandalised orderly-corporal rushes in to +quell the riot, and thenceforward joins the rioters.</p> + +<p>They fight like wolves, but the man who rises up from among the rest, +clutching the prize, and grinning a three-cornered grin because his upper +lip is split, divides the tobacco fairly to the last thread. They even +share out the indiarubber pouch, and chew the pieces as long as the +flavour lasts. When the thick, fragrant smoke curls up from the lighted +pipes, it steals round the edges of the tarpaulin that has dropped behind +Saxham, passing in to the wreaking of vengeance upon the thief whose +profane and covetous hand has plucked the white lily of the Convent +garden.</p> + +<p>Now, with that deadly hate surging in his veins, with the lust to kill +tingling in every nerve and muscle, he will soon stand in the presence of +his enemy, and hers. As he thinks of this, suddenly a bell rings. The +sound comes from the north, so it cannot be the bell of the Catholic +Church, or that of the Protestant Church, or the bell of the Wesleyan +meeting-house, or of the Dutch Kerk.</p> + +<p>"<i>Clang-clang! clang-clang! Clang——</i>"</p> + +<p>The last clang is broken off suddenly, as though the rope has been jerked +from the ringer's hands, but Saxham is not diverted by it from his +occupation. With that curious fatuity to which the most logical of us are +prone, he has been conning over the brief, scorching sentences with which +he means to strip the other man's deception bare to the light, and make +known his own self-appointed mission to avenge her.</p> + +<p>"They telephoned for me, and I have come, but not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> in the interests of +your sick or wounded man. Because it was imperative that I should say this +to you: Your engagement to Miss Mildare and your approaching marriage to +her were announced in to-day's <i>Siege Gazette</i>. You have received many +congratulations. Now take mine—liar, and coward, and cheat!"</p> + +<p>And with each epithet, delivered with all the force of Saxham's muscular +arm, shall fall a stinging blow of the heavy old hunting-crop. There will +be a shout, an angry oath from Beauvayse, staggering back under the +unexpected, savage chastisement, red bars marring the insolent, high-bred +beauty of the face that has bewitched her. Saxham will continue:</p> + +<p>"You approached this innocent, inexperienced girl as a lover. You +represented yourself to her and to her mother-guardian as a single man. +All this when you had already a wife at home in England—a gaudy stage +butterfly sleek with carrion-juices, whose wings are jewelled by the vices +of men; and who is worthy of you, as you are of her. I speak as I can +prove. Here is the written testimony of a reliable witness to your +marriage with Miss Lavigne. And now you will go to her and show yourself +to her in your true colours. You will undeceive her, or——"</p> + +<p>There is a foggy uncertainty about what is to follow after that "or." But +the livid flames of the burning hell that is in Saxham throw upon the +greyness a leaping reflection that is red like blood. A fight to the +death, either with weapons, or, best of all, with the bare hands, is what +Saxham secretly lusts for, and savours in anticipation as he goes.</p> + +<p>Let the humanitarian say what he pleases. Man is a manslayer by instinct +and by will.</p> + +<p>And within the little area of this beleaguered town do not men kill, and +are not men killed, every day? The conditions are mediæval, fast relapsing +into the primeval. The modern sanctity and inviolability attending and +surrounding human life are at a discount. Even for children, the grim King +of Terrors had become a bugaboo to laugh at; red wounds and ghastly sights +are things of everyday experience; there is a slump in mortality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span></p> + +<p>In those old, far-distant Chilworth Street days, two men who engaged in a +battle to the death about a woman desired might have seemed merely savages +to Saxham. Here things are different. The elemental bed-rock of human +nature has been laid bare, and the grim, naked scars upon it, testifying +to the combat of Ice and Fire for the round world's supremacy, will never +be quite hidden under Civilisation's green mantle of vegetation, or her +toadstool-growths of bricks and mortar, any more.</p> + +<p>And the men are well matched. Saxham knows himself the more muscular, but +Beauvayse has the advantage of him in years, and is lithe, and strong, and +supple as the Greek wrestler who served the sculptor Polycleitos as a +model for the Athlete with the Diadem.</p> + +<p>It will be a fight worth having. No quarter. And Saxham's breath comes +heavily, and his blue eyes have in them a steely glitter, and, as the +tarpaulin falls behind him, he shifts to a better grip on the strong old +hunting-crop.</p> + +<p>Overhead the rain drums deafeningly on the tarpaulins. The long bombproof +is heterogeneously furnished with full and empty ammunition-boxes marked +A.O.S., a leathern sofa-divan, tattered by spurs and marked by muddy +boots, several cane or canvas deck-chairs, and others of the Windsor +pattern common to the barrack-room. Arms and accoutrements are in rude +racks against the corrugated-iron-panelled walls; a trestle-table covered +with oilcloth runs down the middle. It is lighted by a couple of acetylene +lamps hanging by their chains from iron bars that cross the trench above, +and there is another lamp, green-shaded, upon a bare deal table that +stands, strewn with papers, against the farther wall.</p> + +<p>A man in shirt-sleeves sits there writing. Another man is busy at a +telephone that is fixed against the wall beyond the writing-table. There +is something fateful and ominous about the heavy silence in which they do +their work. It is broken only by a strange sound that comes almost +continuously from—where Saxham does not trouble to ask. It is the +groaning, undoubtedly, of the wounded man to whose aid he has been +summoned, with the added injunction, "Bring morphia," showing that little +further can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> done for him, whoever he may be, than to smooth his +passage into the Beyond by the aid of the Pain Slayer.</p> + +<p>Let him wait, however sore his need, until Saxham has dealt with his +enemy. He is resentfully impatient in the knowledge that neither of the +men present is Beauvayse.</p> + +<p>Then, as he stands sullen and lowering, the man who has been writing gets +up and comes to him. Saxham recognises the keen-featured face with the +rusty-brown moustache, and the grip of the lean, hard hand that hauled a +Dop Doctor out of the Slough of Despair is familiar. The pleasant voice he +likes says something about somebody being very wet. It is Saxham, from +whose soaked garments the water is running in streams, and whose boots +squelch as he crosses the carpet that has been spread above the +floor-tarpaulin. The friendly hand pours out and offers him a sparing +measure of that rare stimulant, whisky.</p> + +<p>"As preventive medicine. We can't have our Medical Staff men on the +sick-list."</p> + +<p>Some such commonplace words accompany the proffered hospitality.</p> + +<p>"I shall not suffer, thanks. You have a shell-casualty, you have 'phoned +us, but before I see your man it is imperative that I should speak to Lord +Beauvayse. Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"He is here."</p> + +<p>"My business with him is urgent, sir."</p> + +<p>The man at the telephone makes a sound indicative that a message is coming +through. The Chief is beside him instantly, with the receiver at his ear. +He looks round for an instant at Saxham as he waits for the intelligence, +and the muscles of his face twitch as if under the influence of some +strong, repressed emotion, and the Doctor's practised glance notes the +unsteadiness of the uplifted hand. Then he is saying to the officer in +charge at Maxim Kopje South:</p> + +<p>"The ammunition comes up to-night. Tell Gaylord that we are short-handed +here, and shall want him to help on night duty.... Practically as soon as +he can join us. No, no better. All for the present ... thanks! Saxham, +please come this way."</p> + +<p>There is a sleeping-place at the end of the long, narrow, lamp-lit +perspective, curtained off from the rude bareness of the outer place. +Light shows between the curtains,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> and they are of plush, in hue a rich, +deep red. As that strong colour sinks into his brain, through his intent +and glittering eyes, Saxham the man has a sudden furious impulse to tear +the deep folds back, with a clash of brazen rings on iron rods, and call +to the betrayer who lurks behind them to come out and be dealt with. But +that hollow, feeble moaning sounds continuously from the other side, and +Saxham the surgeon stays his hand and follows the Colonel in. There are +two camp-beds in the small sleeping-place, and a washstand and a +folding-chair. A lamp hangs above, and its light falls full upon the face +of the man whom he is seeking.</p> + +<p>Ah! where are they? His furious anger and his deadly hate, where are they +now? Like snow upon the desert they vanish away. How can one rage against +this shattered thing, stretched on the pallet of the low cot-bed from +which the blankets have been stripped away? First Aid bandages have been +not ineffectually applied. Fragments of packing-case have been employed as +splints for the broken arm and shattered hand, but, in spite of all that +has been done, the beautiful young life is sinking, waning, flowing out +with that ruddy tide that will not be stayed.</p> + +<p>The greenish pallor and the sweat of mortal agony are upon the face of +Beauvayse, thrown back upon the pillow, and looking upwards to where the +deluging rain makes thunder on the tarpaulined roof. The atmosphere is +heavy with the sour-sickly smell of blood, and lamp-fumes; he draws each +breath laboriously, and exhales it with a whistling sound. Through his +clenched teeth, revealed by the lips that are dragged back in the +semi-grin of desperate agony, that dumb, ceaseless moaning makes its way +despite the gallant effort to restrain it. The one uninjured arm hangs +downwards, its restless fingers picking at the bloodstained matting that +covers the loose boards of the floor. A sheet has been lightly laid over +him. It is dabbled with the prevailing hue, and sinks in an ominous hollow +below the breast. And beyond the bottom of it splashed leggings and muddy +boots with spurs on them stick out with helpless stiffness.</p> + +<p>A flask of brandy—a precious restorative treasured for use in such +desperate need as this—stands with a tumbler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> and a jug of water on the +camp washstand that is between the two cot-beds. Upon the second bed sits +a big and stoutish man, whose large face, not pink just now, is hidden in +his thick, quivering hands. It is Captain Bingo Wrynche, heavy Dragoon, +and honest, single-hearted gentleman, to whom belongs the blown and muddy +charger drooping in the loose-box outside. The telephone has summoned him +in haste from Hotchkiss Outpost North, to see the last of a friend.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIX" id="XLIX"></a>XLIX</h2> + + +<p>"It was just before the rainstorm that it happened. He was on the lookout. +They have been moving the big gun and the 16-pounder Krupps again, and +some of the laagers seem to be shifting, so we have kept an extra eye open +of late, by night as well as by day. He was very keen always...."</p> + +<p>Already he is spoken of by those who have known and loved him as one who +was and has been.</p> + +<p>"He had relieved me at 10 a.m. He might have been up over an hour when it +happened. The orderly-sergeant had got his mouth at the speaking-tube, in +the act of sending down a message; he did not see him hit. It was a shell +from their Maxim-Nordenfelt. And when we got to him, the first glance told +us there was little hope."</p> + +<p>"There is none at all," says Saxham curtly, as is his wont. "A splinter +has shattered the lower portion of the spine. The agony can be deadened +with an opiate, and the ruptured arteries ligatured. Beyond that there is +nothing else to do, though he may live till morning."</p> + +<p>"He managed to ask for Wrynche before he swooned, so we 'phoned him at +Hotchkiss Outpost North. He got here ten minutes ago, badly cut up, but +there has been no recognition of him. Do what you can, Saxham, in the +case. Every moment may bring Wrynche's recall. There is another person I +should have expected the poor boy to ask for.... That young girl, Saxham, +whose heart has to be broken with the news, sooner or later. Perhaps about +nightfall, when it will be safe for her to venture. I ought to send an +escort for Miss Mildare?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span></p> + +<p>The slow, dusky colour rises in Saxham's set, pale face, and as slowly +sinks out again. He has been standing in low-toned colloquy with the Chief +outside the heavy plush curtains. He turns silently upon his heel and +vanishes behind them.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"<i>Ting—ting—ting!</i>"</p> + +<p>The telephone-bell heralds an urgent recall from Hotchkiss Outpost North. +And a beckoning hand summons Captain Bingo from the bedside of his dying +friend ere ever the word of parting has been spoken.</p> + +<p>"It is for you, Wrynche, as I expected."</p> + +<p>"I am ready, sir. Orderly, get my damned brute out!"</p> + +<p>The sorrow and love that swell the big man's heart to bursting find rather +absurd expression in his savage objurgation of the innocent brown charger. +But Captain Bingo, when he stoops over the camp-bed where lies Beauvayse, +kisses him solemnly and clumsily upon the forehead, and then goes heavily +striding out of the death-chamber with his bulldog jowl well down upon his +chest; and a moment later when he is seen bucketing the lean brown charger +through the thrashing hailstorm that is jagged across by the white-green +fires of bursting shell, is rather a tragic figure, or so it seems to me.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, what of the man who lies upon the bed? Since Bingo's face came +between and receded into, those thick grey mists that gather about the +dying, he has lost consciousness of present things. Fever is rising in +those wellnigh empty veins of his, his skin is drawing and creeping; it +seems as though innumerable ants were running over him. The hand that is +not powerless tries to brush them away. Sometimes he thinks he is in +Hospital, and that the man in the next bed is groaning, and then he is +aware that the groans are his own. He is conscious that a needle-prick in +the sound wrist has been followed by sensible relief. The unspeakable +grinding agonies subside; he is able to murmur, "Thanks, Nurse," as he +gulps some liquid from the glass a strange hand holds to his lips....</p> + +<p>The groans are sighs now, and the clogged brain, spurred by morphia, +shakes off its lethargy. The fever goes on rising, and he begins, +silently, for his powers fail of speech,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> to wander over all the past. +Could Saxham, sitting motionless and vigilant on the folding-chair, his +keen eyes quick to note each change, his deft hand prompt to do all that +can be done—could Saxham hear, he would behold, anatomised before his +mental vision, the soul of this his fellow-man.</p> + +<p>"Coming straight for me—five round black spots punched in the grey. If +they go by, luck's on my side, and I marry her. If not ... hit—and done +for!"</p> + +<p>Exactly thus has Saxham made of the unconscious Father Noah, of the Boer +sharp shooters behind their breastwork, the arbiters of Fate.</p> + +<p>"Send for Bingo!" flashes across the dying brain "Something to say to +Bingo. Don't bring <i>her</i>. Who'd want a woman who loved him to remember him +like this? What was it the Mahometan <i>syce</i> the <i>musth</i> elephant killed at +Bhurtpore said about his wife? '<i>Let her cool my grave with tears.</i>' Until +she finds out ... until someone tells her. Ah—'h!" There is a groan, and +a convulsive shudder, and the beautiful dim eyes roll up in agony, and the +blue, swollen lips are wrung as the feeble voice whispers: "Nurse, this +hurts like—hell! Some more—that stuff!"</p> + +<p>Saxham gives another subcutaneous injection of morphia. The curtains part, +and the Colonel, in waterproof and a dreadnought cap, comes noiselessly +in. "No change," Saxham answers to the mute inquiry. "I anticipate none +before midnight. Of course, the weakness is progressive."</p> + +<p>"Of course." The Chief touches the cold, flaccid wrist. There are hollows +in his lean cheeks, and deep crow's-feet at the corners of the kindly +hazel eyes, and the brown moustache is ominously straight and curveless. +"Tell him, if he recovers consciousness, that I thought it best to send +for her. Chagrave has gone with a couple of the men. It's a desperate +night for a woman to be out in, but they took an Ambulance sling-chair +with them. They'll wrap her in tarpaulins, and carry her in that."</p> + +<p>He nods and goes up on the lookout with a night-glass, and the wearied +officer he relieves comes down. As he has said, it is a desperate night of +driving sleet and swirling blackness, illuminated only with the malignant +coruscations of lyddite bursting-charges. But the tempest without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> is +nothing to the tempest that rages in the soul of the quiet man in sodden +khâki who watches by the dying.</p> + +<p>She has been sent for.... She is coming.... To kneel by the low cot and +weep over him who lies there; kiss the tortured lips and the beautiful dim +eyes, and hold the unwounded head upon her breast.... How shall Saxham +bear it without crying out to tell her? He clenches his hands, and sets +his strong jaw, and the sweat breaks out upon his broad, pale forehead. +The man upon the bed, mentally clear, though incapable of coherent speech, +is now listening to comments that shall ere long be made by living men +upon one who very soon shall be numbered with the dead.</p> + +<p>"Well, well, don't be hard on the poor beggar!" he hears them saying. +"Give the devil his due: not a bad chap—take him all round. Got carried +away and lost his head. She's as lovely as they make 'em, and he ... +always a fool where a pretty woman was concerned—poor old Toby!"</p> + +<p>He pleads unconsciously, with his most merciless judge, in his utter +incapacity to plead at all....</p> + +<p>And so the time goes by. There has been coming and going in the place +outside. The guard has relieved the double sentries, the official lamp +burns redly under the little penthouse. A reconnoitring-patrol ride out, +the horses' hoofs sounding hollow on the earth-covered boards of the +sloping way. The business of War goes on in its accustomed grooves, and +the business of Life will soon be over for Beauvayse. Yet she has not +come. And Saxham looks at his watch.</p> + +<p>Nine o'clock. He has not eaten since early morning. He is wet to the skin +and stiff with long sitting. But when the savoury odours of hot horse-soup +and hot bean-coffee, accompanied by the clinking of crockery and tin +pannikins, announce a meal in readiness, and would-be hosts come to the +curtains and anxiously beg him to take food, he merely shakes his square +black head and falls again to watching the unconscious face of Beauvayse. +The conscious brain behind its blankly-staring eyes is thinking:</p> + +<p>"Those paragraphs.... In black and white the thing looked damnable. And +think of the gossip and tongue-wagging. Whatever they say about me ... +she'll be the one to suffer. They're never so hard on ... the man!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p> + +<p>He has uttered these last words audibly; they pierce to the heart's core +of the mute, impassive watcher. Strong antipathy is as clairvoyant as +strong sympathy, and with a leap of understanding, and a fresh surge of +fierce resentment, Saxham acknowledges the deadly truth contained in those +few halting words. She will be the one to suffer. Beside the martyrdom +inevitably to be endured by the white saint, the agony of the sinner's +death-bed pales and dwindles. There is a savage struggle once again +between Saxham the man and Saxham the surgeon beside the bed of death.</p> + +<p>His sudden irrepressible movement has knocked the tumbler from the little +iron washstand at his elbow. It falls and shivers into fragments at his +feet. And then—the upturned face slants a little, and the eyes that have +been blankly staring at the roof-tarpaulins come down to the level of his +own. He and her fallen enemy regard each other silently for a moment. Then +Beauvayse says weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice that +wooed and won her:</p> + +<p>"Thought it was Wrynche. Where is——"</p> + +<p>The question ends in a groan.</p> + +<p>Saxham the man shrinks from him with unutterable loathing. But Saxham the +surgeon stoops over him, saying, in distinct, even tones:</p> + +<p>"Captain Wrynche was here. He has been recalled to Hotchkiss Outpost +North. Drink this." This is a little measure of brandy-and-water, in which +some tabloids of morphia have been dissolved. And Beauvayse obeys, +panting:</p> + +<p>"All right. But ... more a job for the Chaplain than the Doctor, isn't +it?"</p> + +<p>"Do you wish the Chaplain sent for?"</p> + +<p>There is a glimmer of the old lazy, defiant humour in the beautiful dim +eyes.</p> + +<p>"What could he do?"</p> + +<p>Saxham answers—how strangely for him, the Denier:</p> + +<p>"He would probably pray beside you, and talk to you of God."</p> + +<p>There is a pause. The faint, almost breathless whisper asks:</p> + +<p>"It's night, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It is dark and stormy night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span></p> + +<p>Beauvayse says, in the whispering voice interrupted by long, gasping sighs +that are beginning to have a jarring rattle in them:</p> + +<p>"Before to-morrow.... I shall know more of God ... than the whole Bench of +Bishops."</p> + +<p>There is silence. And she does not come. The man on the bed makes a +painful effort, gathering his nearly-spent forces for something he wants +to say:</p> + +<p>"Doctor!"</p> + +<p>"Let me wipe your forehead. Yes?"</p> + +<p>"I ... insulted you frightfully the other day."</p> + +<p>"You need not recall that. I have forgotten it."</p> + +<p>"I ... beg your pardon! Will you ... shake hands?... My left, if you don't +mind. The other one's ... no good."</p> + +<p>He tries to lift the heavy arm that lies beside him. There is only a faint +movement of the finger-tips, and he gives up the effort with a fluttering +sob. And the square white face with the burning eyes under the lowering +brows opposes itself to his. Words are crowding to Saxham's lips:</p> + +<p>"<i>I would gladly shake the hand of the man who insulted me and who has +apologised. And I honour the brave officer who meets Death upon the field. +But with the would-be betrayer of an innocent girl, the dancing-woman's +husband who proposed himself as mate for Lynette Mildare, I have nothing +but contempt and abhorrence. He is to me a leper. Worse, for the leper I +would touch to cure!</i>"</p> + +<p>He does not utter the words, nor does his rugged, unconquerable sincerity +admit of his taking the hand. He fights with his hatred in silence. And +she has not come. What is <i>he</i> saying in that weak voice with the rattling +breaths between?</p> + +<p>"Listen, Saxham.... There's ... something I want you ... say to Miss +Mildare."</p> + +<p>The grey mists that gather about him shut out a clear view of Saxham's +terrible face. The feeble whisper struggles on, broken by those rattling +gasps.</p> + +<p>"Tell her forget me. Say when I ... asked her ... to marry me...."</p> + +<p>Silence. He is falling, falling into an abyss of vast uncertainties. The +blue lips dabbled with foam can frame no more coherent words. Only the +brain behind the dying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> eyes is alive to understand when Saxham approaches +his own livid face and blazing eyes to the face upon the pillow, and says:</p> + +<p>"Do not try to speak. Close your eyes when you mean 'Yes.' I know what you +wish me to tell Miss Mildare. It is that when you asked her to marry you, +you were already the husband of another woman. Am I correct?"</p> + +<p>The affirmative signal comes.</p> + +<p>"You were married to Miss Lavigne at the Registrar's office, +Cookham-on-Thames, last June, before you sailed. The witnesses were your +valet and a female servant at Roselawn Cottage. And knowing that you were +not free, you deceived and cheated her. That is what I am to tell Miss +Mildare? Signal if I am right."</p> + +<p>The dying eyes are brimming with tears. When the lids shut, signifying +"Yes," slow, heavy drops are forced between them.</p> + +<p>"Very well. Now hear. I will not tell her!"</p> + +<p>The eyes open wide with surprise.</p> + +<p>"I will never tell her," says Saxham again. "I will not blacken any man's +reputation to further my own interests." The vital strength and the +white-hot passion of him, contrasted with the spent and utter laxity of +the dissolving thing of clay upon the bed, seem superhuman. "Do you hear +me?" he demands again. "Listen once more. Knowing the truth of you, I came +here to force you to undeceive her. Had you refused, I would certainly +have killed you. But I would never have betrayed you!"</p> + +<p>That "never" of Saxham's carries conviction. The pale ghost of a laugh is +in the dying eyes. The wraith of Beauvayse's old voice comes back again to +say:</p> + +<p>"Doctor, you're a ... damned good sort!" And then there is a long, long +silence, broken only by those painful rattling breaths, never by her +coming.</p> + +<p>The end comes, and she is not there. A pale blink in the wild sky eastward +hints to the night lookouts of hot drink, food, and welcome rest. The +Chief stands beside the comfortless camp-bed, where the hope of a high old +House is flickering out. The Doctor holds the wet and icy wrist, where the +pulse has ceased to be perceptible. The sheet above the labouring breast +rises and falls with those panting,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span> rattling gasps; the beautiful eyes +are rolled up and inwards. The light is very nearly out, when, with a last +effort, the flame leaps up. He thinks that what is the barely perceptible +whisper of a tongue already clay is a loud and ringing cheer. He thinks +that he is shouting, his strong young voice topping a hundred other +voices. It seems to him who, for the bribe of all the beauty he has +coveted, and all the love that is yet unwon, could not speak one audible +word or move a finger, that he waves his hat again and again. Oh! glorious +moment when the white moonbeams blink on the grey dust-wall rolling down +from the North, and the horsemen of the Advance ride out of it, and +clustering enemies that have rallied again to the attack waver, and +disperse, and scatter....</p> + +<p>"Hurrah! They're running—running for their lives! Give it 'em with +shrapnel! Oh, pepper 'em like hell! The Relief! The Relief! Hurrah!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It is all over with the opening of the day-eye in the east. When they +leave him, beautiful, and stern, and calm in that deep slumber from which +only the Angel with the Trumpet may awaken him, and pass out between the +curtains, the dark, short officer who was on the lookout when the Doctor +came, stands very pale and muddy, and steaming with damp, waiting to +report. And two troopers of the Irregulars, wet and muddy and steaming +too, are waiting also, just inside the tarpaulins of the outer doorway. +And she is not there.</p> + +<p>A few rapid words, an exclamation from the Chief, shaken for once out of +his steely composure, and quivering from head to foot with mingled rage +and grief:</p> + +<p>"My God, how unutterably horrible!"</p> + +<p>Saxham shoulders his way into the ring of white faces that have gathered +about the dark little muddy officer.</p> + +<p>"What has happened to Miss Mildare——?"</p> + +<p>The little officer answers, panting:</p> + +<p>"The Sisters could not make her understand. She——"</p> + +<p>The Chief speaks for him:</p> + +<p>"She had been previously stunned by the shock of—a terrible calamity."</p> + +<p>"What calamity?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The Mother-Superior has been killed. Two of the Sisters and Miss Mildare +found her in the Convent chapel. They got there before evening. She must +have been dead some hours. She had been shot through the lungs."</p> + +<p>"By a stray bullet?"</p> + +<p>"By a bullet from a revolver, fired close enough to scorch the clothes. +Foul murder, and by God who saw it done——"</p> + +<p>The lean clenched hand, thrown upwards in a savage gesture, the blazing +eyes, the livid, furrowed face, the writhen mouth, the furious, jarring +voice, leave little doubt of the vengeance that will be wreaked when he +shall track down the murderer. He wheels abruptly, and goes to the +telephone. The swift, imperative orders volt from fort to fort; the +circuit of vigilance is made complete, the human bloodhounds unleashed +upon the trail, in a few instants, thanks to the buzzing wire that brings +the mouth of a man to the ear of another across a void of miles.</p> + +<p>But Bough, primed with knowledge as to which are dummy rifle-pits and +which are real, aided by acquaintance with the ground, and covered by that +wuthering night of storm, has already pierced the lines. Subsequently that +excellent Afrikander, Mr. Van Busch, rejoins Brounckers' bright boy at +Tweipans, with information that decides the date of Schenk Eybel's Feint +from the East.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="L" id="L"></a>L</h2> + + +<p>She had gone about her Master's business all Monday, calm and composed, +and inexorably gentle. She did not meet Richard's daughter before +nightfall. "She will not suffer now," she thought, even as she sent the +message that was to allay Lynette's anxiety, and give notice of her +whereabouts in case of need. Her mission led her to a half-wrecked shanty +at the south end of the town, where some Lithuanian emigrants herded +together in indescribable filth and misery. A woman who had been recently +confined lay there raving in puerperal fever. Until nightfall, when she +was removed to the Isolation Hospital on the veld, near the Women's +Laager, the Mother-Superior remained with the patient.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span></p> + +<p>A burly, bushy-bearded man, with a peculiarly dark skin and strange steely +eyes, passing the broken window, caught sight of the noble profile and the +stately shoulders stooping above the miserable bed. Going home at dark, +the Mother heard a stealthy footstep following behind her.</p> + +<p>Since the Town Guard had been withdrawn to man the trenches, many people, +revisiting their deserted dwellings, had found them plundered of movable +possessions, and, losing the fear of Eternity in wrath at the wholesale +evaporation of their worldly goods, had thenceforth remained to protect +them. Instances there had been of robbery from the person by thieves not +all tracked down by Martial Justice and made examples of.</p> + +<p>The hovering human night-bird and the prowling human jackal, whose sole +end is money and money's worth, have no terrors for Holy Poverty. But +there are other creatures of prey more terrible than these. And the +padding footsteps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slackening +when she went more slowly, and stopping dead when she paused and looked +round, conveyed to her a haunting sense of something sinister, and at the +same time greedy and guileful, that bided its time to spring.</p> + +<p>She moved in long, swift, undulating rushes, her black robes sweeping +noiselessly as a great moth's wings over the well-known ground, her course +kept unfalteringly; but her heart shook her, and she gasped as the Convent +bomb proof neared in sight. She had wrought much and suffered more of +late, and she knew herself less strong than she had been. When the blue +light that hung from a post by the ladder-hole blinked "Home" through the +mirk of a night of thin rain and mist-shrouded stars, she knew infinite +relief. Her great eyes were as wild and strained as a hunted deer's, and +her bosom heaved with her panting breaths. She paused a moment to regain +her composure before she went down.</p> + +<p>The nuns who were not on night-duty were gathered together about the +trestle-table sewing, while the lay-Sisters prepared the scanty evening +meal. Lynette was there, sitting pale and quiet on her corner-stool. +Richard's daughter had been watching and waiting for her Mother. Ah! to +see the relief and gladness leap into the dear face, and shine in the +beautiful wistful eyes that had shed such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span> tears, dear God!—such tears of +anguish upon Sunday—and then had dried at the utterance of her decree—</p> + +<p>"You are never to tell him!"</p> + +<p>—And changed into radiant stars of joy, by whose light the darkness of +her own wickedness and misery seemed almost bearable.</p> + +<p>"It is the Mother. Mother——"</p> + +<p>Lynette sprang up, and would have hurried to her, but the Mother lifted a +warning hand, and calling Sister Tobias to her, passed aside into a +curtained-off and precautionary cave that had been hollowed out behind the +ladder. This was the custom when the ladies of the Holy Way returned from +doubtful or infectious cases. Lynette sighed, and went back to her stool +to wait. The busy needles had not ceased stitching.</p> + +<p>That humble saint, Sister Tobias, hurried to her diligent ministry of +purification. When she came in with hot water and carbolic spray, she +brought a letter with her. It was directed to the Mother in a coarse +round-hand.</p> + +<p>"Somebody dropped this down the ladder-hole as I came by with my kettle," +said Sister Tobias. "It's the first letter-box I ever knew that was as +wide as the door. Maybe 'twill bring in a new fashion, for all we know." +She made her homely joke with a sore heart for the sorrow she read in the +Mother's beloved face, and trotted away to fetch clean towels, saying—a +favourite saying with Sister Tobias—that her head would never save her +heels.</p> + +<p>The Mother opened the letter. It was anonymous, and utterly vile. Had the +pen been dipped in liquid ordure, the thing written could not have been +more defiling to the touch than its meaning was to this pure woman's +chaste eyes. Had a puff-adder writhed out of the envelope, and struck its +fangs into her beautiful hand, it would have poisoned her less certainly. +And every beat of the obscene words upon her brain, strangely enough, +awakened an echo of those long padding footsteps that had followed in the +dark. And the writer knew of all that had happened at the tavern on the +veld, when a human brute had triumphed in his bestiality, and a girl-child +had been helpless, and the great white stars had looked down unmoved and +changeless upon Innocence destroyed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Mother read the letter from the loathly beginning to the infamous end. +She had been sorely wrought upon of late. She tried to pray, but she knew +the Ear Above must be averted from one who had lied and was in deadly +sin.... When Sister Tobias came back she found her lying in a swoon.</p> + +<p>The little old crooked, nimble Sister, with the long, pale sheep-face, +dropped on her knees beside that prone column of stately womanhood, +removed the Mother's hooded mantle, loosened the <i>guimpe</i> and habit, and +worked strenuously to revive her, dropping tears.</p> + +<p>"My beautiful, my poor lamb!" she crooned. "What's come to her? What +wicked shadow's black on all of us? What's brooding near us—Mary be our +guardian!—that's struck at <i>her</i> to-night!"</p> + +<p>The letter lay upon the floor, where it had dropped from the unconscious +hand. It lay there for Sister Tobias, and might lie. If the Mother willed +to tell its contents, she would tell. If not, the little old nun, her +faithful daughter, would never ask or seek to know.</p> + +<p>She opened her great eyes at last, and smiled up at the tender, wrinkled +ugliness of the long, sheep-like face in the close white linen wimple.</p> + +<p>"Say nothing to anybody. I was overdone," she said, and rose. Sister +Tobias picked up the letter, and gave it to her. There was a Boer +mutton-fat candle flaring draughtily in an iron sconce upon the wall. The +Mother moved across the little room, and burned the letter to the last +blank corner, and trod the fallen ashes into impalpable powder. Then she +helped Sister Tobias to remove every trace left, and obviate every danger +that might result from her late toil, and rejoined her quiet family of +daughters as though nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>They recalled afterwards how cheerful and how placid she had seemed that +night. Her smile had a heart-breaking sweetness, and her voice made +wonderful melody even in their accustomed ears.</p> + +<p>They supped on the little that they had, and chatted, said the +night-prayers, and went, aching, all of them, with unsatisfied hunger, to +bed. You may conjecture the orderly, modest method of retiring, each +Sister vanishing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span> turn behind a curtained screen to disrobe, lave, and +vest herself for sleep, emerging in due time in the loose, full conventual +night-garment of thick white twilled linen, high-throated, +monkish-sleeved, and girdled with a thin cotton cord, her face, plain or +pretty, young or elderly, framed in the close little white drawn cap of +many tucks.</p> + +<p>Then, the ladder having been removed, and the tarpaulin pulled over its +hole, the lights were extinguished, and only the subdued crimson glow of +the tiny lamp that burned before the silver Crucifix that had stood above +the Tabernacle on the altar of the Convent chapel burned ruby in the +thick, hot dark, where, upon the little iron beds, each divided by a +narrow, white-cotton-covered board into two constricted berths, the row of +quiet figures lay outstretched, her Breviary upon every Sister's pillow, +and her beads about her wrist.</p> + +<p>The Mother lay very still, seeing the hideous sentences of the anonymous +letter written in hellish characters of mocking flame on the background of +the dark. She prayed as the wrecked may when the ship beneath their feet +is going down. Beside her Lynette, not daring to disturb the silence, +suddenly grown rigid and awful, lay aching with the loneliness of living +on the other side of the wide gulf of division that had suddenly yawned +between.</p> + +<p>She had spent the day at the Hospital with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister +Cleophée. She had not seen Beauvayse. But a note had come from him, that +had warmed the heart she hid it near. His dearest, he called her—his own +beautiful beloved. He could not snatch a minute from duty even to kiss his +darling's sweetest eyes, but on Sunday they would be together all day. And +would she not meet him at the Convent on Thursday, at twilight, when the +shelling stopped, and it would be safe for his beloved to venture there? +She must not come alone. Dear old Sister Tobias would bring her, and play +Mrs. Grundy's part. And, with a thousand kisses, he was hers in life and +death.</p> + +<p>Lynette's first love-letter, and it seemed to her so beautiful. It laid a +hand upon her heart that thrilled, and was warm and strong. The hand said +"Mine!"</p> + +<p>His. She would be his one day—soon; and there would be no more mysteries +between the man and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span> woman welded by God's ordinance into husband and +wife. She shivered a little at the thought of that intimate, peculiar, +utter oneness. And then, with a sickening, horrible sinking of the heart, +she realised that, however well such a secret as that she guarded might be +hidden before the priest and the clergyman made they twain One, it must be +known of both afterwards, or else be for ever threatening to start through +the burying earth, crying, "I am here. How came you to forget?"</p> + +<p>She had been cold in the sultry heat of that long noon, and deaf when +voices spoke to her. She was thinking.... How if she might be mistaken in +Beauvayse, even now? He was beautiful and brave and alluring to her +woman's sense in what she knew of him and what was yet to know. He called +her and drew her. Nothing noble awakened in her at the smile on the gay, +bold lips and in the grey-green, jewel-bright eyes. When he had held her +to his heart, she had not felt her soul merge with another, its fellow, +and yet stronger and greater, in that embrace. He and she were not +bodiless spirits floating in pure ether, but an earth-made girl and boy, +very much athirst for the common cup of human rapture, hungry for the +banquet of mortal bliss.</p> + +<p>It was sweet, but how if he were another, and not the one? How if her +hasty gift of herself robbed both in the long end? How if his headlong +passion and tempestuous love should be torn from him like rags in the +first instant of that discovery that must almost inevitably be made? She +heard his boyish voice crying, "Hateful!... You have deceived me!" and was +stabbed with quick anguish, knowing him in the right.</p> + +<p>Men did not enter into marriage pure. By some unwritten code of that +strange lawgiver, the World, they were absolved of the necessity of +spotlessness. They might slake their thirst at muddy sources unrebuked. +And the more each wallowed, the more he demanded of the woman he wedded +that she should be immaculate in thought and deed—if in knowledge, that +was all the better.</p> + +<p>What a cloud of doubts assailed her, swarming like bees, settling in every +blossomed branch of her mind, and blotting out the sweetness with angry +buzzing, furry bodies, armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge. +She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the red earth +at its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She felt at this juncture +very like the tree. A little more, only a slight increase of the burden, +and the slender trunk would have snapped. When the native bee-master came +and shook the double swarm into a couple of hives, the little tree stayed +crooked. It did not regain its beautiful, healthful uprightness for a long +time.</p> + +<p>The Mother had commanded her never to tell Beauvayse. She realised that in +this one sorrowful instance she was wiser than her teacher. If unutterable +misery was not to result from their union, he must be told the truth +before ...</p> + +<p>Once he knew it, would he love her any longer? Would he desire to make her +his wife? She knitted her brows and her fingers in anguish, and set her +little teeth. Possibly not. Probably not.</p> + +<p>And supposing all went well and they were married. She had not realised +clearly, even when she talked of travelling abroad into the unknown, +conjectured world, what it would mean to go out from this, the first home +she had ever known, and leave the Mother. She caught her breath, and her +heart stopped at the thought of waking up one morning in a new, strange +country, and knowing that dear face thousands of miles away.</p> + +<p>The loneliness drove her to daring. She reached out a timid hand, and laid +it upon the breast of the still, rigid, immovable figure beside her. Ah, +what a leaping, striving, throbbing prisoner was caged there! A faint sob +of surprise broke from her. Ah! what was it? what could it mean?</p> + +<p>The faint sound she uttered plucked at the strings of that tortured heart. +The Mother turned, rose upon her elbow, leaned over the low dividing +barrier, took the slight body in her arms, and gathered it closely to her, +shielding it from the fangs of that coiled, formless Terror that +threatened in the dark. She felt how thin and light it was, and how frail +the arms were that clung about her, and how wasted was the face that +pressed against the coarse, conventual linen, covering the broad, deep +bosom whose chaste and hidden beauties Famine had not spared.</p> + +<p>She would be a real mother once—just once. God would not grudge her that. +She bared her breast to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span> cheek with a sudden half-savage, wholly +maternal gesture, and drew it close and pillowed it and rocked it. Had +Heaven wrought a miracle and unsealed those white fountains of her +spotless womanhood, she would have found it sweet to give of herself to +Richard's starving child. But she had nothing but her great, indignant +pity and her boundless agony of love. Long hours after the face lay hushed +in sleep above her heart, and while the long, soft breaths of slumber went +and came, she lay staring out into the sinister blackness over the +beloved, menaced head.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Rain leaked through the tarpaulin over the ladder-hole, falling in heavy, +sullen gouts and splashes on the beaten earth below as blood drips from a +desperate wound. That image rose, and the blackness seemed all red—red +with those lines of fiery writing on it, smoking and crawling, flickering +and blazing, climbing, and licking with thin, greenish tongues of +hell-begotten flame.</p> + +<p>Then the midnight hour struck, and it was time to rise for Matins. Long +after the Sisters had gone back to bed the Mother knelt on, a motionless +figure wrestling in silent prayer before the silver Crucifix upon the +wall. Dawn found her still kneeling. No ray of heavenly light had found +her soul, that weltered in darkness, crying to One Who seemed not to hear.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LI" id="LI"></a>LI</h2> + + +<p>She did not venture to take Lynette with her to the Hospital next day, but +secretly charged Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony to carry her +whithersoever they went, and not once to let her out of sight. This done, +she knew herself impotently helpless to do more. This strong and salient +woman, lapped in unseen, impalpable serpent-coils that tightened every +hour, was waxing weak. By her own deed she had barred out help and put +counsel far from her. She had known the punishment would not be long in +coming, when, for the sake of Richard's daughter, she had lied to +Richard's friend.</p> + +<p>Now she knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would have been wiser +to have saved her spotless garment from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span> smirch by telling him the +truth. Then she could have fought this invisible tarantula Thing, with the +conjectural hairy claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the padding +feet that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid her. God +was in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and trust, but the comfort of a +human counsellor would have been unspeakable.</p> + +<p>In a purely spiritual difficulty she would have gone to Father Wix. The +kindly, fussy, feeble little old priest could hardly help her in this +extremity. She had never told <i>him</i> what had happened at the tavern on the +veld. Deep in her pitying woman's heart the child's cruel secret had been +buried, once learned. Sister Tobias was the only one who shared it.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile she was followed that night and the next night; and on the +morning of the Thursday, when she rose from her sleepless bed, another +letter weighted with a stone had been dropped down the ladder-hole. She +was to give the anonymous writer a meeting and receive a message, unless +she wished them that chose to be nameless to lay in wait for the girl. +Most likely that would be the better way. She could choose.</p> + +<p>She burned the second letter before she went to the Hospital. She found +there the single sheet of the <i>Siege Gazette</i> fluttering in every hand. +Even her dignified reserve could not ward off the well-meant +congratulations, the eager questions, the interested comments on the news +contained in the three last paragraphs of the column that was signed "Gold +Pen." Then came the telephone message from Lady Hannah. We know what words +of hers the wire carried back. All the more firm, all the more courageous, +all the more determined that her knees shook, and her heart was as water +within her. For the Thing that coiled in the dark would surely strike now.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was some premonition of approaching death that made her, always +gracious, always infinitely kind, untiring in helpful deeds, move about +among the sick that day, with such a sorrowful-sweet tenderness for them +in her noble face and in her gentle touch, and in that wood-dove's voice +of hers, that they spoke of it long afterwards with bated breath. A +perfume as of rare incense was wafted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> from the folds of her veil, they +said, and a pale aureole of light shone about her white-banded forehead, +and her eyes—— Ah! who that met their look could ever forget those eyes?</p> + +<p>It was before twilight when she left the Hospital and went to the Convent, +a tall, upright, mantled and hooded figure, stepping through the heavy +rain that had fallen since noon, under a quaint monster of a cotton +umbrella with ribs of ancient whale,—Tragedy carrying Farce.</p> + +<p>It was not the custom to linger in the neighbourhood of the Convent, even +among those who were most indifferent to shot and shell. No one was +visible in its vicinity, except one burly, bushy-bearded, dark-skinned man +in tan-cords and a moleskin jacket. He lounged against a bent and twisted +lamp-post, near the broken entrance-gates, cutting up a lump of something +that might have been cake-tobacco upon his broad, thick palm with a +penknife.</p> + +<p>She passed him as she went in. His slouched hat made shadow for his eyes. +But so curiously shallow and flat and rusty pale were they against the +purplish-brown of the full-blooded, bearded face, that their sharp, sly, +sudden look as she went by was as though the adder-fangs had slashed at +her. She knew it was the man who had written those two letters. And +something else she knew, but did not dare to admit her knowledge even to +herself as yet.</p> + +<p>She mustered all her forces to meet what was coming as she went up the +broken stairs. The wind and the long, driving lances of the rain came at +her through the gaps in the walls. The sky was a driving hurry of muddy +vapours. The grey hills were blotted out by mist and fog. Long flashes of +white fire leaped from them, and the heavy boom of cannon followed. Then +all would be still again. She passed down the whitewashed, matted, sodden +corridor, and drew out the heavy key of the chapel door from a deep pocket +under her black habit, and went in.</p> + +<p>Rain beat in here through jagged holes in the soft brickwork and poured +through the broken roof, whose rubbish littered the floor. Whiter squares +on the whitewashed walls, sodden now with damp, and peeling, showed where +the pictures of the Stations of the Cross had hung; with them all +draperies had been stripped away and hidden.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span> The crimson-velvet-covered +ropes that had done duty instead of altar-rails had been removed, their +brass supports unscrewed from the floor. The naked altar-stone was covered +with fragments of cheap stained-glass from the little east window of which +the Sisters had been so proud. The Tabernacle gaped empty; sandy, +reddish-grey dust filled the tiny piscina, and lay thick upon the +altar-stone and the shallow wooden altar-steps, and wherever else the rain +had not reached it to turn it into yellow mud.</p> + +<p>Why had she come here? Because she felt as though the Presence that had +housed under the veil of the Consecrated Element were still guarding Its +desecrated home. And near the door of the tiny sacristy dangled the rope +communicating with the bell that hung, as yet uninjured, in the little +wooden cupola upon the roof. The bell could be rung, should need arise. +She did not formulate in thought what need. But the recollection of those +poisonous adder-eyes stirred even in that proud, dauntless woman's bosom a +cold and creeping fear. And when she heard the padding, stealthy footsteps +whose sound seemed burned in upon her brain, traversing the soaked matting +of the corridor, she caught her breath, and an icy dew of anguish +moistened her shuddering flesh.</p> + +<p>Then slowly, cautiously, the door opened. He came in, shutting it +noiselessly after him. It was the man she had seen loafing by the +lamp-post. And, standing tall and forbidding on the bare altar's +carpetless steps, she threw out her white hand in a quick, imperious +gesture, forbidding his nearer approach.</p> + +<p>For an instant the dignity and authority of the tall, black-robed figure +gave pause even to Bough. Then he touched his wide-brimmed felt hat to her +with a civility that was the very essence of insolence, and took it off +and shook the wet from it, and dropped it back upon his head again. He +leaned against the wall by the door where there was a little holy-water +font, and stuck his gross thumbs in his belt, and waited for her to begin. +Always he followed that plan when the woman was angry. Nothing remained +for any bloke to teach Bough about the sex. You let her row a bit, and +when she had done herself out, you put in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span> what you had got to say. That +was Bough's way with them always.</p> + +<p>"You have written letters to me and followed me."</p> + +<p>His grinning red mouth and tobacco-stained teeth showed in the beard. He +looked at her and waited.</p> + +<p>"Why have you done this? And, now that you have brought yourself into my +sight, quitting the safe shelter of darkness and anonymity, what is to +hinder me from handing you over to those who administer and enforce +Martial Law in this town, and will deal with you as you deserve?"</p> + +<p>His light eyes glittered. His teeth showed again in the brown bush. He +spat upon the floor of the sacred place, and answered:</p> + +<p>"That's all blow. How do I know what you mean about writing letters and +following? Who has seen me doing it? Not one of the mob. I'm just a man +that has come in off the road out of the rain. Maybe I have no business in +this crib? That's for you to say.... Maybe I have a message for somebody +you know. So you don't choose to give it, then that's for her to hear."</p> + +<p>He swung about in pretended haste, and laid his hand upon the door.</p> + +<p>"Stop," she said, with white lips. "You will not molest the person to whom +you refer. You will give your message—if it be one—to me, and to me +alone."</p> + +<p>"High and mighty," the ugly, wordless smile that faced round on her again +seemed to say. "But in a little I'll bring you down off that...." He spat +again upon the Chapel floor, and scratched his head under his hat, and +began, like a simple, good-natured fellow, a rough miner with a heart of +gold:</p> + +<p>"No offence is meant, lady, and why should it be taken?"</p> + +<p>She seemed to grow in height as she folded her arms in their flowing black +sleeves, and looked down upon him silently. The boiling whirlpool in her +breast mounted as it spun, stifling her. But she was outwardly calm. He +went smoothly on, with an occasional display of red mouth and grinning +teeth in the big beard, and always that baleful glitter in his strange +light eyes:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I'm a man that, in the goodness of his heart, is always doing jobs for +other people, and never getting thanked for it. I started to push my way +up here, two hundred miles from Diamond Town, three weeks back, with a +letter from a woman to her husband. She couldn't pay me nothing, poor old +girl. Said she'd pray for me to her dying day. There was a pal of mine put +up the grubstake. His name"—his evil eyes were glued upon her face—"was +Bough. You've heard that name before!"</p> + +<p>It was an assertion, not a question. The fierce rush of crimson to her +brow, and the flame that leaped into her eyes, had already spoken to her +knowledge. She was deadly quiet, gathering all her superb forces for a +sudden lioness-spring. He went on:</p> + +<p>"He's a widower now, Bough, and well-to-do. Getting on for rich. Got +religion too, highly respected. Says Bough to me, 'There's a young woman +at the Convent at Gueldersdorp that's not the sort for holy, praying +ladies to have under their roof, for all the glib slack-jaw she may have +given them.'"</p> + +<p>Her great eyes burned on him.</p> + +<p>"Say what you have to say, and be brief. Go on."</p> + +<p>He shifted from one foot to the other, and licked his fleshy lips.</p> + +<p>"I've got to tell the story my own way, lady. Don't you quarrel with it. +Says Bough: 'They picked her up on the veld seven years ago, a runaway in +rags. As pretty a girl she was,' says he, 'as you'd see in a month's trek, +and from what I hear they've made a lady of her.'"</p> + +<p>Still silent and watchful, and her eyes upon him, searching him. He went +on:</p> + +<p>"'However the years have changed her,' says Bough, 'you'll spot her by her +little feet and hands, and her slender shape, and her big eyes, like +yellow diamonds, and her hair, the colour of dried tobacco-leaf in the +sun....'"</p> + +<p>She quivered in every limb, and longed to shut her eyes and bar out the +intolerable sight of him, leering and lying there. Had she not +interrupted, she must have cried out. She said:</p> + +<p>"You tell me this man Bough is at Diamond Town?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I said he was there when I left. The young woman he talked of was brought +up at his place in Orange Free State, a nice respectable boarding-house +and hotel for travelling families on the veld between Driepoort and +Kroonfontein. Bough was good to the girl, and so was his wife, that's dead +since. Uncommon! Not that they had much of the dibs to spend in those +days. But, being an honest Christian man, Bough treated the girl like his +own. And right down bad she served him."</p> + +<p>He licked his thick lips again, and the flattish, light-hued adder-eyes +glittered.</p> + +<p>"There was a bloke that used to hang around the place—kind of coloured +loafer, with Dutch blood, overgiven to Squareface and whisky. He got going +gay with the girl——"</p> + +<p>She stood like a statue of ebony and ivory. Only by the deep breaths that +heaved her broad bosom could you tell she lived—by that, and by the +unswerving watchfulness of those burning eyes.</p> + +<p>"And Bough, when he caught them together, got mad, being a respectable +man, and let her taste the sjambok. Then she ran away."</p> + +<p>He coughed, and shifted again from one foot to the other. He would have +preferred a woman who had loaded him with invectives, and told him that he +lied like hell.</p> + +<p>"The man that had left her to Bough's guardianship was a sort of +broken-down English officer by the name of Mildare——"</p> + +<p>Her bosom heaved more stormily, but her intense and scorching regard of +him never wavered.</p> + +<p>"—Mildare. He left a hundred pounds with Bough, to be kept for her till +she was twenty. There was a waggon and team Bough was to have had to sell, +and use the money for the girl's keep, but a thief of a Dutch driver +waltzed with them—took 'em up Johannesburg way, and melted 'em into +dollars. Bough got nothing for all his kindness—not a tikkie. But he's +ready to hand over the hundred, her being so nigh come to age. There's a +locket with a picture in it, and brilliants round, that may be worth +seventy pounds more. All Bough wants is to do the square thing. This is +the message he sends her now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span> The money and the jewels will be handed +over, as in duty bound; and, since she's turned respectable and got +education, I was to say there's an honest man—widower now, and well +off—that's ready to hang up his hat for her, and wipe all old scores off +the slate in the regular proper way...."</p> + +<p>She said in tones that were of ice:</p> + +<p>"Bough is the honest man?..."</p> + +<p>"Just Bough.... 'Maybe, in my decent anger at her goings on,' he says, 'I +went a bit too far. Well! I'm ready to make amends by making her my +wife.'"</p> + +<p>The lioness crouched and leapt.</p> + +<p>"You are Bough! You are the evil man, the servant of Satan, who wrought +abomination upon a helpless child!"</p> + +<p>The onslaught came so suddenly that he was staggered. Then he swore.</p> + +<p>"Not me, by G——!"</p> + +<p>She pointed her long arm at him, and some strange force seemed to be +wielded by that unweaponed woman-hand that struck him and pierced him +through flesh, and bone and marrow....</p> + +<p>"You are the man!" She stretched her arms to the wild, hurrying clouds +that looked in upon her through the yawning rifts in the roof, and called +upon her Maker for vengeance. "How long wilt Thou delay, O Lord, righteous +in judgment? Fulfil Thy promise! Bind Thou Thy millstone about the neck of +this wretch, hated and accursed of Thee, and let it drag him down to the +uttermost depths of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow and +howl throughout Eternity!—--"</p> + +<p>She was infinitely more terrible than the lioness who has licked her +murdered cubs. No Pythoness at the dizziest height of the sacred frenzy, +no Demeter wrought to delirium by maternal bereavement, was ever imagined +by poet or painter as half so grand, and terrible, and awe-inspiring, as +this furious cursing nun.</p> + +<p>"—Delay not Thou, O Lord!" she prayed....</p> + +<p>Rain fell in a curtain of gleaming crystal rods between them. Seen through +it, she appeared supernaturally tall, her garments streaming like black +flames, her face a white-hot furnace, her eyes intolerable, merciless, +grey lightnings, her voice a fiery sword that cleft the guilty to the +soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span></p> + +<p>The voice of Conscience was dumb in him. He knew no remorse, and made a +jest of God. But his callous heart had been filled from the veins of +generations of Irish Catholic peasants, and, in spite of himself, the +blood in his veins ran cold with superstitious fear.</p> + +<p>Yet, when no palpable answer came from that Heaven to which she cried, he +rallied, remembering that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with him +in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her +eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though +about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the +prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her +eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held him. He snarled:</p> + +<p>"You'll not take the girl my message, then?"</p> + +<p>She reared up her tall form, and laughed awfully.</p> + +<p>"Did you dream I would defile her ears with it? Now that I know you, you +will be wise to leave this place; for it is a spot where your sins may +find you out!"</p> + +<p>He jeered:</p> + +<p>"That flash bounce doesn't go down with me. The trouble'll be at your end +of the house, unless you listen to reason and stop giving off hot air. +What's to hinder me making a clean breast to that swell toff she's +wheedled into asking her to marry him? What's to hinder me from standing +up before the whole mob, saying as I've repented what I done years back, +and I've come to make an honest girl of her at last?"</p> + +<p>The whirling waters of bitterness in her breast were rising, drowning +her.... He realised her momentary weakness, and moved a step or two +nearer, keeping well between the woman and the door.</p> + +<p>"What's to hinder me, I say?"</p> + +<p>Her rapier of keen womanly intuition flashed out at him again, and drew +the blood.</p> + +<p>"Your fear will hinder you. You are here in an assumed character, and +under a false name." The long arm shot out, the white hand pointed at him +again. "You never came here from Diamond Town. That letter was a forgery. +You have papers on you now that would prove you to be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span> spy, if you were +taken. Ah, I can see it written in your coward's face!"</p> + +<p>The devil was at the woman's ear, prompting her. Or was it——? Bough's +dark, full-blooded face bleached to muddy-pale as her terrible voice rang +through the desolate place, and echoed among the broken rafters.</p> + +<p>"You boast yourself ready to admit your infamy. You shall be compelled! +Everything shall be made known! I will go to Lord Beauvayse now, and tell +him all—all! And if he loves her, he will marry her. And you who have +secrets upon your soul even more perilous, if less vile and +hideous"—again the terrible hand pointed, and that sense of a +supernatural force that it wielded knocked his knees together and dried up +his mouth—"I see the millstone round your neck!..."</p> + +<p>The clarion voice mounted on a great note of triumph. With her inspired +face, and with her floating veil, she looked like a Prophetess of old. +"The Lord is not mocked! He will avenge His little one as He has promised! +Move aside, you lost, and branded, and miserable wretch! Do you dare to +dream you can hinder Me from doing what I have said?"</p> + +<p>He was at the bottom of the altar-steps as the tall, imperious figure came +sweeping down. The curtain of rain no longer fell between them, but behind +him. He must silence that railing voice that cried in the house-top—put +out the light of those intolerable eyes....</p> + +<p>He drew out his revolver with a blasphemous oath. At the gleam of steel in +the thickening twilight she dropped her upraised arms, and made a swift +rush to the rope of the bell, and set it clanging. Two double strokes rang +out; the third was broken in the middle.... For as she swung round, +panting and tugging at the rope, he shot her in the back above the line of +the white wimple from which the veil streamed aside, and ran to the door +as she cried out and swayed forward, still clinging to the vibrating rope, +and turned there and fired a second shot, that struck her in the body.</p> + +<p>Then he was gone, and the walls were crowding in on her to crush her, and +then receding to immeasurable distances, and the blood and air from her +pierced lungs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span> bubbled through the bullet-holes in the serge stuff and the +scorched linen.</p> + +<p>She stumbled a few steps blindly, then fell and lay choking, with that +strange gurgling and whispering in her ears, the rushing blood mingling +with the water of the puddles that the rain had made upon the littered +floor. She faltered out the name of her Master and Spouse, and commended +her pure soul to Him in utter humility. Death would have been a welcome +loosing of her bonds but for the Beloved left behind, at the mercy of the +merciless.</p> + +<p>The stab of that remembrance lent her strength to struggle up upon her +knees. Ah, cruel! cruel!... But she must submit. Was it not the Holy Will? +She signed the Cross upon her bosom, with fingers already growing stiff, +and made a piteous little act of charity, forgiving the sin of the man +against herself, but not his crime against dead Richard's child. And she +stretched out long black-sleeved arms gropingly in the thick, numbing +darkness that hemmed her in, and moaned to the Mother of the motherless to +have pity!... pity!...</p> + +<p>She swayed forwards then, like a stately falling column, and lay with +outspread arms upon the altar-step.</p> + +<p>"Jesu.... Mary.... <i>The child!...</i>"</p> + +<p>The sacred names were stifled in her blood. The last two words were nearly +her last sigh. Thenceforward there was no sound at all in the Convent +chapel, save the dull splash of rain, falling through the holes in the +broken roof upon the sodden floor, where the dead woman lay, face +downwards.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LII" id="LII"></a>LII</h2> + + +<p>No one had heeded the revolver-shot. The detonation of a cartridge or so +when a bombardment is going on, what does it count for? And yet, when the +burly figure of the runner from Diamond Town slipped out of the Convent +doorway and stole across the shrapnel-littered garden, and crossed the +veld towards the native town, it had been barely twilight—a twilight of +heavy, drenching rain, to be sure. Still, in it he had encountered those +who might have suspected afterwards....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span></p> + +<p>Perhaps it would have been better had he stopped in Gueldersdorp and +mugged it out. But that sharp, prompt, swift, unsparing thing called +Martial Law is not a power to play with with impunity, and of the man who +wielded it in Gueldersdorp, Bough had conceived a wholesome dread. Best +that he had fled, although his going tagged him with suspicion. That +cursed stupid game of his with the telephone at the Headquarters of the +Baraland Rides might cost him more than the bit of twist with which he had +bribed the orderly, left for a moment in sole charge, and demoralised by +the sight of tobacco.</p> + +<p>Opium played you tricks like that, when, for the gratification of a +sinister whim, a grotesque fancy, born and bred of the stuff, you would +risk everything. In excess it played hell with the nerves. That was why +those eyes of hers.... Damn them! Why couldn't a man put them out of mind +and out of sight?</p> + +<p>It was not to be done. The obsession held him. A black shadow on the floor +would be the long body, lying face downwards on the altar-steps, with +outspread, crucified arms. He heard her stifled crying upon the Name, and +the gurgling outrush of mingled air and blood that followed each deep sob +for breath....</p> + +<p>And then he would be running through the lashing, bucketing wet, +circumventing the sentry-posts, wriggling over the veld on his belly like +a snake. He would be pushing through the dripping covert of the north bank +of the river—for that, he had decided, was the safest way out or +in—leaving fragments of his garments on the thorny cacti that grabbed at +him with their green hands. And then he would find himself lying doggo +between two great stones, waiting for it to be quite dark before he +essayed to pass the rifle-pits that angled across either shore. Two hours +he had lain so, and it had hailed, and sheet lightning had smitten +greenish-blue glares from the hissing, clattering whiteness, and he had +remembered with a shudder those eyes....</p> + +<p>Then it had been dark enough to risk passing between the angles of the +rifle-pits, where lay men who kept their eyes skinned and their weapons +handy by day and night. And again Bough had wriggled like a snake, but +through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span> shallow water instead of grass and red mud. He had swam the deep +pools, and once got entangled in barbed-wire, and went under, gurgling and +drowning, three times before he wrenched himself loose. It had seemed as +though a dead woman's hands had seized him, and were dragging him down. +But he tore free and passed safely. There was not a single shot—the Devil +was so obliging! And then, lest Brounckers' pickets should mistake a +friend in the darkness, he waited for light in a little thorny kloof +beyond their advanced outposts; and the dawn came, with an awful gush of +crimson dyeing all the eastern sky, so that the pools about his feet—even +the drops of wet upon the stones and bushes—caught the ruddy reflection, +and all the world seemed dripping with new-shed blood.</p> + +<p>Then up had rushed the sun, and smitten a glorious rainbow out of fog and +vapour, and one end of it seemed to be in Gueldersdorp, resting in a +golden mist upon the Convent's shattered roof, while the other vanished in +mid-heaven. It had seemed to the murderer like a ladder by which the dead +woman's soul went climbing, up and up, to tell his crime to God....</p> + +<p>He had killed her, that woman in black, to stop her from blowing on him. +Who would have dreamed a meek, sober nun could be transformed like that? A +lioness whose cub has been shot, straightway becomes a beast-devil. She, +standing on the naked steps of the bare altar, with upraised, +black-sleeved arms and black funereal robes, demanding Heaven's vengeance +for that deed of old, calling down the judgment of God upon its doer, had +been infinitely more terrible than the lioness. Lightning had flashed from +her great eyes, and subtle electric forces had darted from her outspread +finger-tips. While she looked at him and spoke she enmeshed him, helpless, +in a net of terror. It was only when she had turned her back that Bough +had had the nerve to shoot. And he was no novice in bloodshed—not he. +There were things safely hidden and put away and buried, that might some +day put a rope round some man's neck. But the man would never be Bough. +There had always been a scapegoat to suffer until now.</p> + +<p>He ate more opium now than ever, because he could not forget that woman's +awful eyes. He would see them looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span> at him in the dark, when he could +not sleep. Her voice haunted him, terrible in its clarion-note of wrath, +its organ-roll of denunciation. The hand that had pointed to the millstone +about his neck had conjured it there. He felt it dragging him down.</p> + +<p>Maar—that was the gold! You can carry a goodly amount of the precious +metal upon your single person, if you are clever enough to stow it and +muscular enough to walk lightly under the weight. And a great deal of the +yellow stuff, gathered and stored by the mining companies, leaked about +this time out of the hiding-places skilfully contrived for it into the +pockets of Van Busch and his pals. It is weighty, as well as precious, +stuff, and when you inter it, there must be bearers as well as a +gravedigger, and when you carry away a great deal of it at a time, +confederates must aid you.</p> + +<p>Oom Paul, when, like some elderly black humble-bee, with crooked thighs +deep laden with the metallic yellow pollen, he buzzed heavily off for +Lorenço Marques, deplored the deceitfulness of riches less bitterly than +their non-portableness.</p> + +<p>Van Busch, by a series of clever expedients, overcame that difficulty. The +cartridges that weighed down his bandolier were of cast gold, cleverly +painted; the gun he carried was a hollow sham packed with raw gold; also, +his garments were lined and padded with the same material. At Cape Town he +would disburden himself, and one of the women who were his confederates +would take the stuff to England, and sell it in London, and bank the money +in the name of Van Busch. He so managed that there was always a woman +coming and a woman going. Women had been his tools, and his slaves, and +his victims, ever since he had been born. When the old were worn out and +useless, he shook them off, and fresh instruments rose up to take their +places.</p> + +<p>He never trusted men in money matters. He knew too much of the power of +that yellow pollen that breeds madness in the male. But there is one thing +that most women desire more than the possession of much money, and that is +absolute possession of one man.</p> + +<p>Bough understood women of a certain class. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span> moulded them to his +will, and bent them to his whim, all his life long. He was a man of +manifold experience as regards the sex.</p> + +<p>Lately he had added to his stock. He had stood face to face with a woman, +unarmed and in a lonely place, and had tasted Fear. He had seen—from afar +off—a woman whose slight, vivid beauty had roused in him a desire that +was torture.</p> + +<p>It was as though the Minotaur were in love with Ariadne; it was Caliban +thirsting for the beauty of Miranda. Prospero had not come in time; the +satyr had surfeited upon the unripe grapes, and now was ahungered for the +purple cluster, tied up out of reach of those gross, greedy, wicked hands.</p> + +<p>The locket with a picture in it and brilliants round, "that might be worth +seventy," the dainty, pearly miniature on ivory by Daudin, of the dead +woman who lay buried under the Little Kopje, and which Bough had taken +from the body of the English traveller, together with the signet-ring and +everything else of value that Richard Mildare had owned, possessed a +strange fascination for the thief. It was extraordinarily like.... He hung +it by its slender gold chain about his thick neck, and gloated over and +grudged the beauty that it recalled.</p> + +<p>It is horrible to speak of love in connection with the man Bough, but if +ever he had known it, it was now. His victim of old time had become his +tyrant. Replete with vile pleasures, he longed for her the more.</p> + +<p>He even became sentimental at times, telling himself that all he had +sought was to repair the wrong, and make an honest woman of the Kid. She +should have been lapped in luxury, worn jewels equalling any Duchess's. He +was a man of money now. A little delay, to become yet more rich, and +arrange for the safe burying of Bough—then Van Busch, of Johannesburg, +capitalist and financier, would descend upon London in a shower of gold, +furnish a house in Hyde Park or Mayfair in topping style; own +four-in-hands, and motor-cars, and opera-boxes, and see all Society +fluttering to his feet to pick up scattered crumbs of the golden pudding.</p> + +<p>It really seemed as though the dream would be realised.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span> The gross, +squarely-built man with the bushy whiskers and the light strange eyes, +found success attend his every enterprise from that hour in which he had +spilt life upon the pavement of the Convent chapel. The tarantula-pounce +never missed a prey. Every knavish venture brought in money or money's +worth, every base plot was carried through triumphantly. Bough, <i>alias</i> +Van Busch, was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but his run of luck +made him almost afraid at times.</p> + +<p>He scented the Relief before the besiegers, undertook to scout for Young +Eybel in the direction of Diamond Town, and ingeniously warned Colonel +Cullings of a Boer plan for cutting off the Flying Column on the scorching +western plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads of +burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers—a most satisfying haul. +He placed before the leader of the British Force intercepted telegrams +which threw invaluable light on Dutch moves. No more single-minded, +ingenuous, and patriotic British South African ever drew breath than Mr. +Van Busch, of Johannesburg. And verily he reaped his reward, in an +officially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot to +render some further services to British arms, and a great many more to Van +Busch, of Johannesburg.</p> + +<p>He had his knavish headquarters still at the Border homestead known as +Haargrond Plaats. Something drew him back to the place, and kept on +drawing him. From thence he could observe and conduct his operations, and +gather news of the besieged in Gueldersdorp. He was there at the time when +the Division—Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, with a half battalion +of Town Guards, converted into mounted infantry by the simple process of +putting beasts underneath men who could ride them—marched out of +Gueldersdorp <i>en route</i> for Frostenberg.</p> + +<p>The slatternly Dutchwoman and the coloured man who had charge of the +Plaats were too surely his creatures to betray Bough Van Busch. "Let the +dogs smell around the place," he thought, when by the sounds that reached +him in his hiding-place he knew the Advance had halted. "They'll tire of +the game before they smell out me!"</p> + +<p>His hiding-place was a safe retreat and storehouse for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span> stuff that it was +necessary to conceal. No one knew of it save Bough Van Busch and the +draggle-tailed woman. It was in the great stone-built chimney of the +disused, half-ruined farmhouse kitchen, a solid cube of masonry reared by +the stout hands of the old voortrekkers of 1836, its walls, three feet in +thickness, embracing the wide hearth about which the family life of the +homestead had concentrated itself in the past.</p> + +<p>There may have been a mill on the farm in the old days. Or possibly, +meaning to build one, those robust pioneers of the Second Exodus had +dragged the two huge stones into the wilderness, and then abandoned their +plan. The lower millstone paved the hearth, the upper, the diameter of its +shaft-hole increased by chipping to the size of a musk-melon, had been set +by some freak of the farmer-architect's heavy fancy as a coping on the top +of the big stone shaft. From thence, as Lady Hannah Wrynche had said in +one of her descriptive letters, dated from "My Headquarters at the Seat of +War," it dominated the landscape as a Brobdingnagian stone mushroom might +have done.</p> + +<p>The wide black throat of the chimney half-way up was choked by a platform +of beams and masonry, reaching not quite across, so that even a bulky man +who had climbed up—divers rusty iron stanchions driven in between the +stones, and certain chinks affording secure foothold—might wriggle +between the platform and the chimney-wall, and so lie hid securely. +Through the hole in the round stone above came air and light. Crevices +cunningly enlarged afforded opportunities for viewing the surrounding +country, as for seeing without being seen, and hearing also all that took +place in the low-walled courtyard that was used as a cattle-kraal. You had +also a bird's-eye view of the lower end of the farm kitchen, where the +wall had cracked, and bulged, and spit out some of its stones.</p> + +<p>To this eyrie Bough Van Busch retreated when the wall of dust to the +south-west gave up the dim shapes of the Advance, and the beat of many +iron-shod hoofs, and the roll of many iron-shod wheels made distant +thunder, coming nearer, always nearer....</p> + +<p>Maar! How the trot of the squadron-columns, the roll of the oncoming +batteries, shook the crazy building. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span> Advance rode into the yard, +dismounted, and began to ask questions of the coloured man and the +slipshod woman. Neither knew anything. The woman cursed the Englishmen +freely, at which they laughed, and lighted fresh cigarettes. The man was +dumb as stone.</p> + +<p>The Division snaked out of the dust presently, a huge brown centipede that +had been chopped in bits, and moved with intervals between its travelling +sections. There was no halt; it rolled on, a vision of innumerable moving +legs and tanned, wearied faces, over the greening veld to the north-east. +The dust grew hotter and thicker, and more stifling, as it rolled.</p> + +<p>It drifted in through every chink and cranny in the great chimney, with +the smell of hot human flesh and sweating horsehide, and Bough Van Busch +longed to, but dared not sneeze. Bits of mortar fell about him, and +dislodged tarantulas galloped over his boots. He shook the loathsome, +hairy, bright-eyed insects off, shuddering at them with a horror somewhat +misplaced, considering the affinity between his own methods and theirs.</p> + +<p>Roll, roll, roll! The English voices of the chatting men crouched upon +their beasts' withers or sprawling on the limbers, the trampling and +snorting of the horses, the sharp signal-whistles of the leaders, the curt +utterances of command, mingled with the stream of thought that raced +through the busy brain of Bough Van Busch. It had struck him when the +Colonel and his Staff rode up and halted by the gateway of the littered +courtyard, that here would be a chance for a nervy man, with a set +purpose, to venture back, cleverly disguised, to Gueldersdorp. He knew he +would be risking his neck, but the sting of desire galled him to +hardihood. She was there. Red mist gathered in his brain, red sparks +snapped before his eyes, the thick red blood surged fiercely through his +veins—drummed deafeningly in his gross ears at the thought of seeing her +again....</p> + +<p>And the tail of the Division was going by. A Field Telegraph Company, a +searchlight company, the Ambulances, and a train of transport-waggons, +with the mounted infantry, brought up the rear. The Advance had galloped +forwards in haste, the group at the gate lingered. A voice rang out +clearly, giving some order. It said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And if abandoned, carry out instructions, previously warning the inmates +of the farm to retire out of——"</p> + +<p>The lean, eagle-eyed, keen-faced Colonel bent lower in the saddle to reach +the ear of the dismounted officer of Royal Engineers, who stood with one +dogskin gloved hand resting on the sweating withers of the brown Waler. He +answered, saluted, and drew away. Then the Staff rode on, into the ginger +yellow dust-cloud, leaving the officer of Engineers standing in the beaten +tracks of many iron-shod hoofs and many iron-shod wheels.</p> + +<p>He was not left alone. A little cluster of mounted Cape Police had +detached itself from the rear of the Division. They were deeply-burned, +hard-bitten men, emaciated to a curious uniformity, mounted on horses as +gaunt as their riders. A sergeant was in command of the party, and a +drab-painted wooden cart drawn by a high-rumped, goose-necked chestnut +mare, pitifully lame on the near fore, had an Engineer for driver. His +mate sat on the rear locker, and a mounted comrade rode by the mare's lame +side. The rider's stirrup-leather was lashed about the cart-shaft, and +thus the mare was helped along.</p> + +<p>Obeying some order unheard of the man who was hiding in the old stone +chimney, the party of Cape Police divided into two. One half patrolled the +outward precincts of the homestead. The rest, dismounting in the +courtyard, thoroughly searched the place. The Engineer officer took no +part in the search. He stood by the stone-coloured cart, busy at the +locker, the sapper who had sat upon it being his aid. Very soon he +returned to the yard, and stood in the middle of the litter motionless as +a little figure of pale, dusty bronze, holding a cigar-box carefully in +both his dogskin-gloved hands. In spite of his patched khâki and ragged +puttees there was something dandified about him. His red moustache, waxed +to a fine point, jutted like the whiskers of a watchful cat, the whites of +his eyes gleamed like silver as he turned them this way and that, +following the movements of the men who went in and out of the +farm-buildings as directed by their sergeant. The sergeant was an expert +in his business, and yet, after a hasty glance up the black yawning gullet +of the chimney where Bough Van Busch lay perdu, he had gone out of the +dismantled kitchen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span> whistling a tune. Two of his men remained lounging +near the threshold. Like the sergeant they had stooped, hands on spread +knees, necks twisted awry in the effort to pierce the thick mirk beneath +the ragged arch of masonry that spanned the wide hearth where the ashes of +long-dead fires lay in powdery grey drifts, and, like the sergeant, they +had seen nothing. When you covered the man-hole between the platform-edge +and the chimney-wall with the sooty board and the old sack, it was +impossible for anyone below to see anything. The inside of the old chimney +was as black as hell.</p> + +<p>The inquisition ended. The khâki-clad figures came hurrying out of the +house, pursued by the Dutchwoman's shrill recriminations. The +non-commissioned officer made a report to the officer of Engineers. The +men who had been deputed to search mounted at an order, and fell in with +the patrol, and sat upon their saddles outside the courtyard wall +exchanging furtive winks as the mevrouw devoted their souls and bodies to +everlasting perdition.</p> + +<p>A quiet utterance from the little red-haired officer checked the torrent +of the woman's anger. She screeched in dismay, raising thick hands to +heaven. The coloured man's stolid silence was suddenly swept away in a +spate of oaths and protestations. Suddenly, looking in the officer's +unmoved face, they realised the uselessness of words, turned and ran +between the gateless posts, out upon, away over, the dusty, hoof-tracked, +wheel-scored veld. And their ungainly hurry and awkward gestures of terror +somehow reminded the peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seen +by chance in a Dopper Bible, in which Lot and his two daughters, fearfully +foreshortened by the artist, scuttled in as grotesque an insect hurry from +the doomed vicinity of Sodom, Queen City of the Plain.</p> + +<p>The officer of Engineers hardly glanced after the retreating couple. He +stepped across the threshold of the disused farm-kitchen, holding the +little wooden box carefully in both his dogskin-gloved hands. He crossed +to the hearth, stubbing his toe against a jutting floor-brick, and as he +did so he caught his breath. Then he stepped down under the yawning gape +of the chimney, and seemed to grope and fumble at the back of the hearth. +He raised himself then, stepped back, and called out sharply in the Taal:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Wie is daar?"</p> + +<p>The man's voice dropped back dead out of the choked-up chimney-throat. A +little sooty dust fell. There was no other answer. The voice was lifted +again, speaking this time in English:</p> + +<p>"Is anyone hiding here?"</p> + +<p>No one replied, and the little officer seemed to give up. He lingered a +moment longer, struck a match as though to light a cigarette, then went +quickly out of the kitchen. An orderly waited with his horse outside the +gateway. Bough Van Busch, listening with strained ears, heard the clink of +spur against stirrup, the creak of the saddle receiving a rider's weight. +There was a short sharp whistle, followed by the sound of cantering hoofs, +and the rattle of hurrying wheels dying out over the veld to the +north-east. The unwelcome intruders had gone. Bough Van Busch, after a +cautious interval, deemed it safe to descend.</p> + +<p>He was red-smeared with veld dust and white-smeared with mortar, and black +with old soot. His bulky body oscillated as he let himself down from beam +to stanchion, finding sure foothold in the crevices, and hand-grip in the +stout iron hooks from which plump mutton-hams and beef sausages had hung +ripening in the pungent smoke of burning wood and dried dung. There was a +smell in his nostrils like charring wool and saltpetre. He hung over the +wide hearth now. A short drop of not more than a foot or two would bring +him safely to the ground.</p> + +<p>Van Busch did not drop. He dangled by the hands and sweated. He blasphemed +in an agony of terror, though it seemed to him that he prayed.</p> + +<p>For the dandy little Engineer officer had left the cigar-box lying empty +among the powdery ashes in the wide, old-world hearthplace. An +innocent-looking parcel it had contained, wrapped in a bit of old canvas, +and, further secured with copper wire and string, was wedged in a chink +between the blackened stones at the back of the hearth. From it a fuse +hung down; a short length nearly consumed by the crepitating fiery spark +at its loose end. It burned with a little purring sound, as though it +liked the business it was engaged upon. Bough Van Busch knew that in +another moment the detonation would take place....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span></p> + +<p>He heard nothing of it when it came.... Nor did he know it when the walls +of Cyclopean masonry bulged and opened about him like the petals of a +flowering lily. He was beyond all that. His gross body, headless, rent and +torn as though the devils it had housed had wreaked their fury on their +dwelling, lay sandwiched between the wreckage of the great chimney and the +millstone that had paved its hearth, now a yawning cavity, some six feet +deep. Leaning on its side in a trench its own weight had dug in the stony +earth of the dirty courtyard was the huge stone that had topped the shaft. +Something ugly was wedged in the central hole that had been made bigger to +let out the smoke. And the murderer's soul, light as a dried leaf +fluttering through the illimitable spaces of Eternity, went wandering on +its way to the Balances of God.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>The party of Cape Police who had searched Haargrond Plaats, with the +drab-painted cart, the three Engineers, and the dandified little officer, +had only ridden to a safe distance. They halted, and, concealed from +observation by a fold of the grassy veld, waited for the explosion of the +dynamite cartridge. When it came, the Engineer officer shut his +binoculars, and gave the signal to return.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LIII" id="LIII"></a>LIII</h2> + + +<p>There were two funerals in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, upon a night that +no one will forget who stood in the packed throng of shadowy mourners +about each of those open graves. The wind blew soft from the west, and the +vault of heaven might have been hollowed out of the darkling depths of an +amethyst of inconceivable splendour and planetary size. Myriads of stars, +dazzlingly white, swung under this, the Mother's fitting canopy, shared +with another, not like her holy, not noble or unselfish or devoted, but +like her in that he was brave and much beloved.</p> + +<p>Beloved undoubtedly. You could not look at the crowding faces about the +narrow open trench where the Reverend Julius Fraithorn read the Burial +Service by lantern-light without being sure of that. Men's eyes were wet, +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span> women sobbed unrestrainedly. He had been so beautiful and so merry +and cheerful always, said the wet-eyed women; the men praised him for +having been such a swordsman, horseman, shot. Everyone spoke of him as the +life and soul of the garrison, the idol of his brother-officers, and +worshipped by the men under his command. Everyone had something to tell of +dead Beauvayse that was pleasant to hear.</p> + +<p>But the great bulk of the crowd was massed behind the black-robed, +white-coiffed figures of the Sisters, kneeling rigid and immovable about +the second open grave, where the Mother-Superior lay in her snow-white +coffin, fully habited and mantled, her Rosary in the marble hand on which +the plain gold ring of her Divine espousals shone, the parchment formula +of the vows she took when admitted to her Order nineteen years before, +lying under those meekly-folded hands upon her breast. So she had lain, +feet to the altar, in the Convent chapel that her daughters in Religion +had draped and decked for her, keeping their loving vigils about her from +twilight to dawn, from dawn to twilight, until this hour when they must +yield all that was mortal of her to Earth's guardianship and the +unsleeping watchfulness of God.</p> + +<p>Suffocatingly dense the throng about this grave, and strangely quiet. The +women's faces white and haggard and tearless, the men's drawn and deeply +lined. Not even muffled groans or sighs of pity broke the profound silence +as the solemn rite drew to its singularly simple and impressive close. As +the fragrant incense rose from the censer and the holy water sprinkled the +snow-white pall that bore the Red Cross, one dreadful word lurked sinister +in every thought:</p> + +<p>Murdered!...</p> + +<p>Their friend, helper, nurse, consoler, the woman whose hands had staunched +the bleeding wounds of many present, whose arm had lifted and pillowed the +dying heads of others dear to them; who had stood through long nights of +fever and delirium beside their Hospital pallets, ministering as a very +Angel from Heaven to tortured bodies and suffering souls—murdered!</p> + +<p>The tender Mother, the wise virgin, who watched continually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span> with her lamp +prepared, that at the first summons of the Heavenly Bridegroom she might +enter with Him into the marriage chamber, could it be that His signal had +come to her by the bloodstained hand of an assassin? It was so. And—ah! +the horror of it!</p> + +<p>The aged priest sobbed as, followed by the server, he moved round the +grave within the enclosing wall of kneeling Sisters. But no answering sob +came from the vast assemblage. They were as dumb—stricken to stone. They +could not yet contemplate the felicity of the pure soul of the martyred +saint, carried by God's Angels into the Land of the ever-living, admitted +to the unspeakable reward of the Beatific Vision. They could only realise +that somebody had killed her.</p> + +<p>But when the solemn strophes of the Litany for the Dead broke in upon a +profound silence, the responses of the multitude surged upwards like giant +billows shattering their forces in hollow thunder upon Arctic heights. And +when, in due pursuance of the symbolic rite of Rome, the vested priest and +her whole Sisterhood suddenly withdrew from the grave, and left her +earthly body, how wonderful in its marble, hushed, close-folded, +mysterious beauty none who had looked upon it ever could forget, waiting +for the second coming of her Master and her Lord, a great sob mounted, and +broke from every breast, and every face was drenched with sudden tears. +Perhaps God let her see how much they loved her in that parting hour. And +then the bugle sounded "Last Post" over both the open graves, softly for +fear of Brounckers' German gunners, and the great crowd melted away, and +all was done and over.</p> + +<p>I have said that all the people wept. There was a girl in white, for she +would not let the Sisters put black garments on her, kneeling between +Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony. This girl did not weep at all. +Chief mourner at both these funerals, she was not conscious of the fact. +She knew that Beauvayse was on duty at Maxim Outpost South, and could not +get away, and that the Reverend Mother was vexed with her, and was hiding +at the Convent, pretending that she had gone somewhere, and would never +come back.</p> + +<p>She was especially clear of mind when she thought all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span> this. At other +times she was not Lynette, and knew no one, and had never known anybody of +the name. She was the ragged Kid, crouching on the Little Kopje in the +gathering twilight or on the long mound that its eastward shadow covered. +Or she was lying under the tattered horse-blanket on the foul straw pallet +in the outhouse, waiting for the Lady to come with the great, kind, +covering dark.</p> + +<p>Or she was sitting in the bar-parlour on an upturned cube-sugar box beside +the green rep sofa where Bough lolled on wet days or stormy nights, her +great eyes wild with apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained with +terror of the master in his condescending moods, when he would make +pretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks and hangers on the +greasy slate that usually hung below the glass-and-bottle shelf. Or—and +at these times the Sisters found her difficult to manage—she was +crouching upon one side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feeling +its way into the keyhole on the other side, and the man who manipulated it +laughed as the agile pliers nipped the end of the key and turned it in the +wards of the lock....</p> + +<p>And then she would be running through the night, anywhere, nowhere, and +Bough would be riding after. She could hear the short wheezing gallop of +the tired pony when she laid her ear to the ground. And then the sjambok, +wielded by a strong and brutal hand, would bite into the quivering flesh +of the child, and she would shriek for mercy, and presently fall upon the +ground and lie there like one dead—acting that old tragedy over and over +again.</p> + +<p>God was very kind to you, Reverend Mother, if He hid that sight from one +to whom she was so dear. But if His Blessed in Heaven have cognisance of +what takes place in this dull, distant speck of Earth, I think some salt +tears must needs have fallen from the starry eyes of one of Christ's +saintly maiden-spouses, glorious under the dual crown of Virginity and +Martyrdom, and yet a mother as truly as His Own.</p> + +<p>That swift unerring judgment of Saxham's had pointed, months ago, to some +such mental and physical collapse, as the result of shock, crowning +long-continued nervous overstrain. He had said to the Mother that such a +result would be easier to avert than to deal with.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span></p> + +<p>There was not an ounce of energy the man possessed that he did not employ +in dealing with it now.</p> + +<p>Let Sister Tobias tell us, as she told Saxham then, the story of the +Finding. She was always a plain woman of few words.</p> + +<p>"The last charge the Mother laid on us—Sister Hilda-Antony and me—was to +keep our eyes upon the child. The very day <i>it</i> was done she told us, and +I saw that something had made her anxious by the look that was in her +eyes." She dried her own with a coarse blue cotton handkerchief before she +took up her tale. "She went alone to the Head Hospital that day. None of +us were to be surprised, she said, if she came home extra late. Sister +Hilda-Antony and me were on duty at the Railway Institute. We took Lynette +with us.—There!... Didn't she look up, just for the one second, as if she +remembered her name?"</p> + +<p>She had not done so at all. She was sitting on her stool in her old corner +of the Convent bombproof, but she did not heed the shattering crashes of +the bombardment any more. She had only moved to push out of her eyes the +dulled and faded hair that the Sisters could not keep pinned up, and bent +over her little slate again. Before that, and a pencil had been given her +she had been restless and uneasy. Now she would be occupied for long +hours, making rude attempts at drawing houses and figures such as a child +represents, with round "O's" of different sizes for heads and bodies, and +pitchforks for legs and arms....</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias went on: "The <i>Siege Gazette</i> had come out that day, with +the news of"—she dropped her voice to a whisper—"of her being likely to +be married before long to him that's gone. May Our Lord give him rest!" +Sister Tobias's well-accustomed fingers pattered over the bib of her +blue-checked apron, making the Sign. "And Sister Hilda-Antony and me had +the world's work with all the people who stopped us in the street and came +round us at the Institute to say how glad they were. Talk of a stone +plopped in a duckpond! You'd have thought by the crazy way folks carried +on that two pretty young people had never went and got engaged before." +Sister Tobias was never coldly grammatical in speech. "But the child was +happy, poor dear, in hearing even strangers praise him; and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span> the +firing stopped and we were on our way home, she begged us to turn out of +it and call in at the Convent, where he'd begged her to meet him, if only +for a minute, not having seen her since the Sunday when——"</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes!"</p> + +<p>Saxham, who writhed inwardly, remembering that Sunday, nodded, bending his +heavy brows. His ears were given to Sister Tobias, his eyes to the slight +figure that somehow, in the skirt some impatient movement had wrenched +from the gathers and the shirt-bodice that was buttoned awry, had the air +of a ragged, neglected child. And she held up her scrawled slate to ward +off his look, and peeped at him round the side of it.</p> + +<p>Big strong men like that could be cruel when they were angry. The Kid knew +that so well.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"We went to the Convent with the child," Sister Tobias continued: "We +hadn't the heart to deny her, though we thought the Mother might be vexed +that we hadn't come straight home. A queer thing happened as we crossed +the road and went up along the fence towards the gates with the child +between us.... A big, heavy man, dressed as the miners dress, with a great +black beard and his hat pulled down over his eyes, came along in such a +hurry that he knocked Sister Hilda-Antony off the kerb into the road, and +brushed close up against <i>her</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Against Miss Mildare? Did it occur to you that the man had come out of +the Convent enclosure?" Saxham asked quickly.</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No; but I did think he meant stopping and speaking to the child, and then +changed his mind and hurried on. 'Did he hurt you, dearie?' I asked her, +seeing her shaking and quite flustered-like. And she answers, 'I don't +know....' And 'Was it anyone you knew?' I puts to her again, and 'I can't +tell,' says she, like as if she was answering in her sleep. Do you thinks +she understands we're talking about her, poor lamb?"</p> + +<p>They both looked at her, and she, having been taught by painful experience +that to be the object of simultaneous observation on the part of the man +and woman meant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span> punishment involving stripes, began to tremble, and hung +her head. From under her tangled hair she peeped from side to side, +wondering what it was she had left undone? Ah!—the broom, standing in the +corner. She had forgotten to sweep out the house-place and the bar. When +the dreaded eyes turned from her, she got up and went softly to the corner +where Sister Tobias's besom stood, and took it and began to sweep, casting +terrified glances through her hair at her two Fates.</p> + +<p>Something gripped Saxham by the heart and wrung it. The scalding tears +were bitter in his throat. Do what he would to keep them free, his eyes +were dimmed and blinded, and Sister Tobias wiped her own openly with the +blue cotton handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"We thought the young gentleman would be waiting near the Convent," said +Sister Tobias, "or in one of the ground-floor rooms, but he wasn't there. +Me and Sister Hilda-Antony looked at one another. 'Early days for a young +girl's sweetheart to be late at the meeting-place!' says Sister +Hilda-Antony's eyes to me, and mine said back, 'The Lord grant no harm's +come to him!' We waited five minutes by the school clock, that's never +been let run down, and then another five, and still he didn't come. He had +got his death-wound, though we didn't know it, hours before."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"The Angel of Death had spread his wings over the Convent. Both me and +Sister Hilda-Antony felt there was a strange and awful stillness and +solemnness about the place. At last me and her told the child that go we +must. We'd wait no longer. But <i>she</i>, knowing we'd never leave without +her, ran upstairs. We heard her light feet going over the wet matting and +down the long passage to the chapel door. Then——"</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias sobbed for another moment in the blue handkerchief. The +child, who had been diligently sweeping, looked at the woman and at the +big man who had made her cry, with great dilated eyes of fear. She put the +broom back noiselessly in its corner, and stole back to her stool. Who +knew what might happen next?</p> + +<p>"Then," said Sister Tobias, "we heard the dreadfullest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span> scream. 'Mother!' +just once, and after it dead silence. Then—I don't know how we got there, +it was so like a cruel dream—but we were in the chapel, trying to raise +them up. That dear Saint—may the Peace of God and the Bliss of His Vision +be upon her for ever!—lay dead on the altar-steps where the wicked, +murdering hand had shot her down.... And the child lay across her, just +where she had dropped in trying to lift her. And the strength of me and +the Sister, and the strength of them that came after, wasn't equal to +unloose those slender little hands you're watching."</p> + +<p>The slender little hands were busy with the slate and pencil as Saxham +looked at them.</p> + +<p>"Those that came and helped us had been sent on from the Convent +bombproof, where they'd been to look for <i>her</i>"—Sister Tobias glanced +sorrowfully at the owner of those little busy hands—"with an Ambulance +chair and a story of more trouble. But Our Lady had had pity on the child. +She was past understanding why they'd come to fetch her.... The brain can +soak up trouble till it won't hold a drop more. But she was quiet and +happy kneeling by that blessed Saint, waiting till the Lady should wake +up, she said.... And, 'deed and 'deed, but it looked like the blessedest +sleep——"</p> + +<p>Sister Tobias broke down and cried outright. The child eyed her half +suspiciously, half wonderingly. Her great terrified eyes had not seen the +man strike, but he must have hurt the woman. Therefore, she looked sharply +at the man between the tangled masses of the hair that could not be kept +pinned up, and saw two great slow tears ooze over his thick underlids, and +glitter as they hung there, and then fall. Others followed them, tumbling +down the square white face, and the stern mouth was wrenched with a +strange spasm, and the grim chin trembled curiously....</p> + +<p>Somebody had hurt the man.... It is not possible to follow up the workings +of the disordered intelligence, and spell out the blurred letters of the +confused mind. It is enough that her terror of him abated. She slipped +from her stool to the floor, under the pretence of picking up her +slate-pencil, threw back the hair that prevented her seeing clearly, and +peered up in that working face of Saxham's with curiosity, crouching near. +She did not recoil violently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span> when the strange, sorrowful face bent +towards her; she only shrank back as Saxham asked:</p> + +<p>"You remember me? You know my name?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, eyeing him warily. If his hand had moved, she would have +sprung backwards. But it did not stir.</p> + +<p>"Tell me who I am, then?"</p> + +<p>"Man."</p> + +<p>Her lips shaped the word. Her voice was barely audible. His heart beat +thickly as he went on:</p> + +<p>"Quite right, but something else besides a man. A man with a name. Tell me +the name, or shall I tell it you?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, and her eyes were great and timorous, but there was no terror +of him in them now.</p> + +<p>"My name is Saxham—Owen Saxham. Say the name after me."</p> + +<p>For a wonder she obeyed. Sister Tobias caught a breath of surprise, but +her subdued exclamation was silenced in mid-utterance by Saxham's look.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Owen Saxham—Doctor because I try to cure sick people. You have seen +me trying at the hospitals. You have helped me many times——"</p> + +<p>She puckered her delicate, bewildered brows, and held her head on one +side. To be made to think, and recall, and remember, hurt.</p> + +<p>"—Many times, and the sick people were grateful. They often ask me now, +How is Miss Mildare?"</p> + +<p>Her attention had wandered to the bronzed buttons on the Doctor's khâki +coat. She was trying to count them, it seemed, by the movement of her +lips. Saxham went on with inexorable patience:</p> + +<p>"Never mind the buttons. Look at me. Think of the patients at the Hospital +who are asking when Lynette Mildare is coming back again. Tell me what I +am to say to them, Lynette?"</p> + +<p>His voice shook over the beloved name. In spite of his grim effort to +fight down the overmastering emotion, his eyes brimmed over, and a drop +splashed, hot and heavy, upon the wandering hand that crept out to finger +the buttons that would not let themselves be counted right. She looked up +at the eyes that wept for her, and their mingled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span> love and anguish touched +even her dulled mind to pity. She held her slender hand up against the +light, and looked at the splash of wet upon it.</p> + +<p>"You—cry?"</p> + +<p>There was a glimmer of something in the eyes that redeemed their +vagueness. A rushlight seen shining through a night of mist upon a +desolate mountain-side might have meant as little or as much to eyes that +saw it. Saxham saw it, and it meant much to him. His great chest lifted on +a wave of hope as he answered her:</p> + +<p>"I cry for somebody who cannot cry for herself. Shall I tell you her name? +It is Lynette Mildare. When tears come to her, then it will be for those +who love her to cry again for joy, for she will be given back to them...."</p> + +<p>"Lord grant it!" breathed Sister Tobias behind them. But Saxham had +forgotten her. The fountains of his deep were broken up and words came +rushing from him.</p> + +<p>"I think that day will come, Lynette. I believe that day will come," he +said, holding the beautiful vague gaze with his. "If every drop in these +veins of mine, poured out, could bring it more quickly, it should be +hastened so; if every faculty of my body, every cell in my brain, bent to +the achievement of one end, expended to the last unit of energy, in the +restoration of what is infinitely dearer to me than life—than a hundred +lives, if I had them to devote!—could insure its dawning, and bring the +light of Reason and Memory and Hope into these beloved eyes again——"</p> + +<p>A sob tore its way through the Doctor's great frame. He rose up abruptly +and hurried away.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LIV" id="LIV"></a>LIV</h2> + + +<p>A deadly lassitude, both physical and mental, had settled down upon the +men and women of the garrison. They knew that Brounckers had gone south, +leaving General Huysmans in command of the investing forces. They knew +that the rainy season brought them fever, for they shivered and burned +with it, and they knew that the scanty rations of coarse and unpalatable +food were getting smaller every day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span></p> + +<p>But they were conscious of these things in a dull way, and as though they +affected people who were a long distance off. One day, when for the +thousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was in +sight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a +poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a brief +flicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out in force, guns were limbered +up and galloped out north and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention, +and give Grumer, conjectured to be waiting for it, the opportunity for an +eagle-like swoop down upon the harassed tortoise sprawling on her +sand-hills. But the rainy dark came down upon the clatter of artillery, +and the shining dawn crept up and brought the cruel news that the allies +had really been beaten back; and if there was any doubt of that, it was +dissipated at the day's end when one of the Red Cross waggons came +rumbling back out of the sloppy twilight, bringing Three Messengers to +confirm the tale.</p> + +<p>They were eloquent enough, even in their speechlessness, those three dead +troopers, whose boots and coats were missing, and whose pockets had been +turned inside out. Not a man of them was known to any member of the +beleaguered garrison. Yet every man and woman there was the poorer by +three friends and one more hope.</p> + +<p>We know what was happening while Gueldersdorp ate her patient heart out. +It has been written in the History of Successful Strategy how Lord +Williams of Afghanistan, landing at Cape Town in January, found Muller on +his way from Port Christmas, Whittaker at Bergstorm, Parris at Kooisberg, +Ruthven on the Brodder, and everybody and everything at a deadlock. And +being too old and wise to disdain the wisdom of others, the keen old brain +under the frosty thatch recalled to mind the story of Stonewall Jackson, +collected what forces he could muster, slipped in between two of the +columns held immovable, and having established his lines of communication +to the south, launched himself on Groenfontein, and created the necessary +diversion. A mighty wave rolled back to protect the menaced Free State +capital, the paralysed columns moved again, Diamond Town was relieved by +Sir George Parris, and Commandant Selig Brounckers was captured at +Pijlberg.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span></p> + +<p>Doubtless he was a bully and a tyrant, that roaring-voiced, truculent man. +But those angry, red-veined grey eyes of his could look Death squarely in +the face, and the brain behind them could conceive and plan stratagems and +tactics that were masterly, and devise works that were marvels of +Defensive Art. And the heavy hand that patted Mevrouw Brounckers' head, as +that devoted woman sat disconsolate in the river-bed, surrounded by her +children, and pots, and bundles, and the roaring voice that softened to +speak words of consolation, even as the trap so ingeniously set to catch a +Tartar closed in—North, South, East, West—belonged to a man who knew not +only how to fight and win and how to fight and lose, but how to love and +pity.</p> + +<p>There came the faint dawn of a day in May when the plan of that bright +young man Schenk Eybel was tried, and tried successfully.... The line +between two forts that lay far apart on the south and south-west was +pierced, while the incessant roll of rifles made a mile-long fringe of +jagged yellowish flame along the enemy's eastern trenches. Even before the +feint sputtered out the rush had been made, the stratagem had developed, +and at the bidding of twenty incendiary torches, the daub-and-wattle huts +of the Barala town leaped skyward in one roaring conflagration.</p> + +<p>We know the glorious, unlooked-for ending of that day of fire and blood. +It is marked with a white stone in the History of the Siege of +Gueldersdorp, and the chapter is headed "The Turning of the Tables." It +gives a spirited description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans, +the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and winds up with a +pen-and-ink sketch of Brounckers' bright boy breaking the chaff-bread of +captivity in the quarters of that slim duyvel, the Engelsch Commandant.</p> + +<p>But while the Boer was yet top-dog in the scuffle, and held the Barala +stad, and the fort that had lately done duty as headquarters for the +Irregulars, holding captive their commanding officer, several of his +juniors, and some fifteen troopers, with a handful of Town Guards; and all +the fighting men who could be spared from the trenches were being posted +between the menacing danger and the town, and a couple of field-guns were +being hurried into position, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span> it had not yet occurred to Commandant +Schenk Eybel that the cautious Huysmans might leave him in the lurch, +things looked very bad indeed for the doughty defenders of little +Gueldersdorp—certainly up to afternoon-tea time, when a couple of Scotch +girls crossed the two hundred yards of veld that lay between the Fort and +the town, carrying cans of steaming tea for the parching Britons penned up +there.</p> + +<p>You are to see those calm, unconscious heroines start, fixing their +hairpinned braids with quick, deft touches, pinning up their skirts as for +the crossing of a wimpling burn rather than for the fording of Death's +black river. They measured the distance with cool, keen eyes, took up a +can in each hand, exchanged a word, and started. The remaining can they +left behind, saying they would come back for it. And they meant to, and +would have, but for a pale young woman in curling-pins, crowned by the +deplorable wreck of a large and flowery hat, and wearing a pink cotton +gown of deplorable limpness, through the washed-out material of which her +sharpened collar-bones and thin shoulders threatened to pierce. For 'ow +are you to take to call a proper pride in yourself when you 'aven't got no +'art for anythink any more?</p> + +<p>You are to understand that Emigration Jane 'ad bin 'in 'Orspital along of +what the doctors called the Triphoid Fever, months an' months; and 'ad bin +orful bad, an' sent back again after being discharged, on accounts of an +Elapse, and kep' a dreadful time at the Women's Combalescent, through her +blood being nothink but water—and now you may guess the reason of that +fruitless search on the part of W. Keyse.</p> + +<p>She tried to run at first, but the can was full and heavy, and her knees +shook under her at the screaming of the bullets over that cross-swept +field. Her pore 'art beat somethink crooil, and there was a horrible kind +of swishing in her years, but to give up, and chuck away the can, and +scuttle back to cover, with Them Two stepping along in front as cool—and +more than halfway over, was what Emigration Jane could not demean herself +to do. And at last they passed her coming back, and the Fort loomed up +before her, as suddenly as though it had sprouted up mushroom-fashion +under her dazzled eyes. And grimy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span> men were leaning over the +sandbag-parapet applauding her, and blackened hands attached to hairy arms +reached down and grabbed the can, and it was taken up into the air and +vanished, she never knew how. And then she was staring up into the lean, +brickdust-coloured face of a Corporal of the Town Guard, whose head was +swathed in a bloody bandage, and in all the world there was only Her and +Him.</p> + +<p>"You fust-class little Nailer. You A1 bit o' frock——" W. Keyse began. +Then his pale eyes bolted and his jaw fell, and his overwhelming joy and +relief took on the aspect of horrified consternation.</p> + +<p>"Watto!" he was beginning weakly, but she tore her gaze from his, and with +a rending sob, covered her face with her hands, and ran blindly. He +remained petrified and staring. And then a bullet struck him full in the +face, and he screamed like a shot rock-rabbit, and threw up his arms and +fell back, smothering in his own blood, behind the breastwork. And she +never knew the cruel trick that Fate had played her, as she ran....</p> + +<p>She learned it later, when Young Eybel and his party were marched +prisoners into town, and cheer upon cheer went up from British throats, +and bells were ringing joyfully, and "God Save the Queen!" bellowed in +every imaginable key, was heard from every possible quarter.</p> + +<p>It was while the Barala were wailing over their suffocated women and +piccaninns, and the acrid fumes of burning yet hung heavy in the +powder-tainted air, and the R.A.M.C. men and their volunteer helpers were +bringing in the wounded and the dead, that Emigration Jane saw a face upon +a stretcher that was being carried through the rejoicing crowd, and +screamed at the sight, and fell tooth and nail upon the human barrier that +interposed between herself and it, and got through—how, she never could +'a' told you.</p> + +<p>Rather a dreadful face it was, with wide-open, staring eyes protruding +through a stiffening mask of gore. The teeth grinned, revealed by the +livid, drawn-back lips, and how she knew him again in such a orful styte +she couldn't tell you—not if you offered her pounds and pounds to say——</p> + +<p>She was only Emigration Jane, but when the bearers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span> halted with the +stretcher, it was in obedience to the gesture and the look of a young +woman who had risen above herself into the keen and piercing atmosphere of +High Tragedy.</p> + +<p>"Put that down, you two blokes. Wot for?" Her thin throat swelled visibly +before the scream came: "'Cos 'e belongs to me! 'Ain't that enough? +Then—I belongs to 'im! Dead or livin'—oh, my darlin'! my darlin'!"</p> + +<p>The bearers interchanged a look as they laid their burden down. It was not +heavy, for Corporal W. Keyse, even when not living under conditions of +semi-starvation, was a short man and a spare. <i>Had been</i>, one was tempted +to say, in regard to his condition: "For," said one of the R.A.M.C. men to +a sympathetic bystander, "the chap has had a tremendous wipe over the head +with a revolver-butt or a gun-stock, and he has been shot in the face +besides. There's the hole plain where the bullet went in under his near +nostril, and came out at the left-hand corner of his off eye. And unless a +kind o' miracle happens, I should say, myself, that it would be a saving +of time to carry him straight to the Cemetery."</p> + +<p>"Don't let the poor girl hear you!" said the sympathetic bystander. But +Emigration Jane was past hearing or seeing anything but the damaged head +upon the canvas pad, as she beat her breast and cried out to it wildly, +dropping on her knees beside it:</p> + +<p>"O my own, own, try an' know me! Come back for long enough to s'y one +word! O Gawd, if You let 'im, I'll pray to You all my days. O pore, pore +darlin' 'ead that wicked men 'ave 'urt so crooil——"</p> + +<p>It was a lover's bosom that she drew it to, panting under the limp and +shabby cotton print gown. And the voice that called W. Keyse to come back +from the very threshold of the Otherwhere was the voice of true, true +love.</p> + +<p>It worked the kind o' miracle, for one of the Corporal's stiffened eyelids +quivered and came down halfway, and the martial spirit of its owner +flickered up long enough for W. Keyse to sputter out:</p> + +<p>"Cripps, it's 'Er! Am I dead an' got to 'Eaven—on somebody else's pass?"</p> + +<p>"Born to be hung, I should say," commented the R.A.M.C. man aside to his +mate. "Chuck some water over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span> the young woman, one of you," he added, as +the stretcher was lifted. "And tell her, when she comes to, that we've +taken her sweetheart to Hospital instead of to the other place."</p> + +<p>"Rum critters, women," commented another bystander, not untender in his +manner of sprinkling the dubious liquid known in Gueldersdorp as water out +of a cracked tin dipper over the face of the young woman who sat upon the +ground in the centre of a circular palisade of interested human legs. +"Look at this one, for instance. Lively as a vink as long as she believes +her chap a corpse, and does a solid flop as soon as she finds out he has a +kick in him. Help her up, you on the other side. Do you think you could +walk now, miss, if you tried to?"</p> + +<p>She made a faltering attempt, but her knees shook under her. Her clasped +hands shook, too, as she held them out, beseeching those about her to be +pitiful, and tell her where "they" had taken him. Then, when she was told, +and because she was too weak and dazed to walk, she ran all the way to the +Hospital, and volunteered to nurse him.</p> + +<p>Saxham stitched up the split scalp of W. Keyse, and grimly congratulated +him upon the thickness of the skull beneath it. The bullet had, as has +already been indicated, gone in under the left nostril, and emerged below +the inner corner of the right eye, gaining the recipient of the wound +notoriety as well as a strong temporary snuffle and a slight permanent +cast....</p> + +<p>"You shall git well, deer," Emigration Jane would tell her patient twenty +times a day. "You carn't 'elp it, becos I means to myke you."</p> + +<p>"A' right," her hero would snuffle. One day he added, with a weakly swoop +of one lean arm in the direction of her waist: "Mend me an' marry me. +That's wot I call a Fair Division o' Labour. Twig?"</p> + +<p>She crimsoned, gasping:</p> + +<p>"You don't never mean it?"</p> + +<p>"Stryte I mean it," declared W. Keyse. "Wot d'you tyke me for?"</p> + +<p>His bed was in a corner, and a screen baffled prying eyes. She hung over +him, trembling, ardent, doubting, joyful, faltering:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span></p> + +<p>"S'y it agyne, darlin'! Upon yer solemn natural——"</p> + +<p>He said it with the lean arm round her.</p> + +<p>"An' it's me—me wot you wants—an' not that Other One?——"</p> + +<p>He swore it.</p> + +<p>"You and not that Other One. So help me Jiminy Cripps!"</p> + +<p>"An' you've forgiven me—abart them letters?" Her face was coming +close....</p> + +<p>"Every time I blooming well kissed 'em, arter I bin an' picked 'em up," he +declared.</p> + +<p>"You did—that?" she quavered, marvelling at the greatness of his nature.</p> + +<p>"Look in me jacket pocket if you think I'm spinnin' you fairy ones." His +close arm slackened a little. "Now there's somethin' I got to up an' tell, +if you never tips me the 'Ow Do no more."</p> + +<p>"Wot is it, deer?" Her heart beat painfully. Was this something the reason +why he had not yet kissed her?</p> + +<p>"It's got to do with the Dutchy wot landed me this slip over the +cokernut"—he indicated some plaster strappings that decorated the seat of +intelligence—"with a revolver-butt, when they rushed the Fort. After 'e'd +plugged at me wiv' 'is last cartridge an' missed." The Adam's apple in his +thin throat worked up above the collar of the grey flannel Hospital +jacket. "I—I outed 'im!" said W. Keyse.</p> + +<p>"O' course you did, deer." Her heart thrilled with pride in her hero. "An' +serve 'im glad—the narsty, blood-thirsty, murderin'——"</p> + +<p>He interrupted:</p> + +<p>"'Old 'ard! Wait till you knows 'oo it was." He gulped, and the Adam's +apple jerked in the old way. "That 'ulkin' big Dopper you was walkin' out +along of, when I——"</p> + +<p>"Walt! It was—Walt?"</p> + +<p>She shuddered and grew pale.</p> + +<p>"That's the bloke I means. I 'ad to 'ave 'im," explained W. Keyse, "or +'e'd 'ave 'ad me. So I sent 'im in. With my one, two, an' the Haymaker's +Lift. Right in the middle of 'is dirty weskit. F'ff!" He blew a sigh. "Now +it's out, an' I suppose you 'ates me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span></p> + +<p>She panted.</p> + +<p>"It's 'orrible, deer, but—but—you 'ad to. An'—an'—if I 'ave to s'y it, +I'd a bloomin' sight rather it was 'Im than You!"</p> + +<p>"I'll 'ave my kiss now," said the lordly W. Keyse. And took it from her +willing lips.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LV" id="LV"></a>LV</h2> + + +<p>There was no perceptible change in Lynette, either at the time of young +Eybel's frustrated coup, or for long after. She was to live as much as +possible in the open air, Saxham had insisted, and so you would find the +girl, with a Sister in charge of her, sitting in the Cemetery, where the +crop of little white crosses thickened every day. The little blue and +white irises had bloomed upon those two graves where her adopted mother +and her brave young lover lay, before the dawning of that day the nuns +prayed and Saxham hoped for.</p> + +<p>It was his bitter-sweet joy to be with her constantly, striving with all +his splendid powers of brain and body to brace the shattered nerves, and +restore the exhausted strength, and lead the darkened mind back gently and +by degrees towards the light.</p> + +<p>She did not shrink from him now, but would answer his questions +submissively, and give him her hand mechanically at meeting and parting. +Saxham had not the magnetic influence over shy and backward children that +another man possessed. She would smile and brighten when she saw the +Colonel coming, upright and alert as ever, though bearing heavy traces now +in the haggard lines and deep hollows of his face, to the greying hairs +above his temples and to the close-clipped brown moustache, as in the +Quixote-like gauntness of the figure that had never carried much flesh, of +the long struggle of close on seven months' duration.</p> + +<p>The pleasant little whistle would die upon his lips when he saw her +sitting by the Mother's grave, plaiting grasses while the Sister sewed, or +making clumsy babyish attempts at drawing on her little slate. From this +she disliked to be parted, so her gentle nurses fastened it to one end of +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span> long ribbon, and its pencil to the other, and tied the ribbon about her +waist.</p> + +<p>One day, as the Colonel stooped to speak to her, his keen glance noted +that the wavering outline of a house stood upon the little slate. The +living descendant of the primitive savage who had outlined the forms of +men and beasts upon the flank of the great boulder when this old world was +young, would have scorned the drawing, and with good reason. It was so +feeble and wavering an attempt to convey, in outline, the idea of a white +man's dwelling.</p> + +<p>The roof sagged wonderfully, and the chimneys were at frenzied angles with +the sides of the irregular cube, with its four windows of impossibly +varying size, and the oblong patch that meant a door between them. Above +the door was another oblong, set transversely, and rather suggesting a +tavern-sign.</p> + +<p>There were some clumsily indicated buildings, possibly sheds and stables +of daub and wattle, eking out the ramshackle house. Behind it and to the +left of it were scrawls that might have been meant for trees. An enclosure +of spiky lines might have indicated an orchard-hedge. And there were +things in the middle distance, also to the left, that you might accept as +beehives or as native kraals. The man who looked at them knew they were +native kraals. He drew in his breath sharply, and the fold between his +eyebrows deepened, as he scanned the clumsy drawing on the slate. Without +those rude lines in the foreground to the right of the house, enclosing a +little kopje of boulders and a low, irregular grave-mound, the drawing +would have meant nothing at all, even to the eye of a practised scout, +except a tavern on the lonely veld. The grave at the foot of the little +kopje located the spot.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"A veld hotel in the Orange Free State—a wretched shanty of the usual +corrugated-iron and mud-wall type, in the grass country between Driepoort +and Kroonfontein."</p> + +<p>He heard the wraith of his own voice speaking to the dead woman who lay +under the blossoming irises at his feet. He saw her with the mental vision +quite clearly. Her great purple-grey eyes were bent on his from their +superior level,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span> and they were inscrutable in their strange, secret +defiance, and indomitable in the determination of their regard.</p> + +<p>Why had she been so bent upon hiding the trail? Why had she distrusted +him?</p> + +<p>He bent upon one knee in the grass beside the slender, shrinking figure, +woman's and yet child's, and held out the little slate to her, and said, +with the smile that even backward children could not resist:</p> + +<p>"Did you draw this?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, with great wistful eyes, looking shyly up at him from under +their sweeping black lashes. He went on, pointing with a slender +grass-blade to each object as he named it:</p> + +<p>"It is a house, and these are sheds and stables, and this is an orchard, +and here the Kaffirs live. But who lives in the house?"</p> + +<p>She whispered, with a look of secret fear:</p> + +<p>"The man lives there. And the woman."</p> + +<p>"Tell me the man's name."</p> + +<p>She breathed, after a hesitation that was full of troubled apprehension:</p> + +<p>"Bough."</p> + +<p>A red flush mounted in his thin cheek, and he drew his breath in sharply. +He asked:</p> + +<p>"Does anyone else live in the house?"</p> + +<p>She reflected with a knitted brow. He helped her.</p> + +<p>"I do not mean the travellers—the men and women who come driving up in +Cape-carts and transport-waggons, and drive away again, but someone who +lives with Bough and the woman. She has been at the tavern a long, long +time, though she is so young and so little. Try to remember her name."</p> + +<p>The knitted brow relaxed, and the beautiful dim eyes had almost a smile in +them.</p> + +<p>"It is 'the Kid.'"</p> + +<p>"Try and think. Has she no other name?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. He gave up that trail as lost, and moved the +grass-blade to another part of the drawing on the slate.</p> + +<p>"Tell me what this is?"</p> + +<p>She answered at once:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It is the Little Kopje. The English traveller made it when he put the +dead woman in the ground."</p> + +<p>His heart beat heavily, and the hand that pointed with the grass-blade +shook a little.</p> + +<p>"Where is the man who buried the dead woman and built the Little Kopje?"</p> + +<p>She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a grave.</p> + +<p>"There." The slender finger climbed the heap of boulders. "And there is +where the Kid sits when she is a bad girl and runs away." She peeped up in +his face almost slyly. "Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirty +little slut, take the broom and sweep out the bar! Idle little devil, +fetch water for the kitchen!'" Her smile was peaked and elfish. She laid a +cunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. "But though they scold and call +bad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beat +her when she comes in, and serve her right, the impudent little scum! But +never come near the Little Kopje, because of the spook the Barala boy saw +there one night when the moon was big and shining."</p> + +<p>He said, with infinite pity in his tone, and a compassionate mist rising +in those keen bright eyes of his:</p> + +<p>"They are cruel to the Kid, both Bough and the woman?"</p> + +<p>She began to shake. The guardian Sister, who sat sewing a little way +behind her, looked up anxiously at her charge. He pacified her with a +glance, and, taking one of the slender trembling hands in a firm, kind +clasp, repeated his question:</p> + +<p>"Always cruel, cruel! But Bough——"</p> + +<p>A spasm contracted her face. At the base of the slender throat something +throbbed and throbbed. She whispered brokenly:</p> + +<p>"When the woman went away——"</p> + +<p>Her slender fingers closed desperately upon his. Her heart shook her, and +Fear was in her eyes. Her voice vibrated and shuddered at her white lips +as a caught moth vibrates and shudders in a spider-web. She began again:</p> + +<p>"When the woman went away, Bough——"</p> + +<p>Her eyes quailed and flickered; her pale and quivering face was convulsed +by a sudden spasm of awful fear. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span> muscles of her whole body stiffened +in the immovable rigor of terror. Only her head jerked from side to side, +like that of some timid creature of the wilds held captive in crushing +folds or crunching fangs. And he comprehended all; and understood all, in +one lightning leap of intuition, as he saw.</p> + +<p>"Hush!" He stopped her with his authoritative eyes and the firm, +reassuring pressure of his hand. "Forget that—speak of it no more. Try +and tell me who lies here, under these grasses and flowers that you water +every day?"</p> + +<p>He moved the hand he held to touch the grave, and the spasm that +contracted her features relaxed, and the terror died out of her eyes, as +though some soothing, healing virtue were conveyed to her by the mere +contact with that sacred earth. He went on:</p> + +<p>"She was very noble, very pure, and very beautiful. Everyone loved her, +and her life was spent in doing good. You were dear to her—inexpressibly +dear to her. She used to call you her beloved daughter. Tell me who she +was?"</p> + +<p>Her face quivered, and in the depths of her dim, vague eyes a beam of the +golden light of old was rekindled.</p> + +<p>"She was the Lady. When will she come again?"</p> + +<p>He raised his hand and pointed to the sky.</p> + +<p>"When that is rolled away, and the Sign of the Cross shines from the east +to the west, and from the north to the south, and the King of Glory comes +with His Angels and His Saints, we shall see her again, Lynette——"</p> + +<p>His voice broke. He laid the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon her +knee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked long +after the girlish figure as it was led away.</p> + +<p>He understood everything now. He knew why the mother-plover had trailed +her wing in the dust, striving to lead the footsteps of the stranger aside +from the hidden nest. He stooped and gathered a blade or two of grass, and +a few crumbs of red, sandy earth, from the grave at his feet, and kissed +them, and folded them reverently in an envelope, and hid the little packet +in his breast before he went.</p> + +<p>That evening there were pillars and banks of dust on the north-west +horizon, and the flashes of lyddite and the booming of artillery told +patient Gueldersdorp that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span> hour of deliverance was near. A few hours +later the Relief had lamp-signalled brief details of the battle with +Huysmans, ending with "Good-night" and the promise to fight a way in next +morning. Later still, eight troopers in khâki, jaunty ostrich-tips in +their smasher hats, rode into the little battered village town that +huddled on the low, sandy mound, and all the waiting world was gladdened +with the news. And London called on a quiet elderly lady, to tell her what +the man, her boy, had done.</p> + +<p>The name of that little hamlet town has, cruelly enough, passed into a +byword—a synonym for everything that is rowdy, vulgar, apish in the +English character, with the dregs stirred up. But yet it will ring down +the silver grooves of Time as long as Time shall be.</p> + +<p>Do I wander from the thread of my story—I who have dressed my puppets in +the brave deeds of those who strove and endured and suffered, to what a +glorious end?</p> + +<p>Great writers lay down plans, formulate elaborate synopses. Not so I, who, +out of all the wreaths that Fame holds yet in her lap to give away, shall +never call one laurel mine....</p> + +<p>A wandering wind came sighing past my ears one night upon the Links at +Herion, burdened with this story it had to tell. Before then it had only +blown in fitful gusts. Then again it blew steadily. I had caught some +whispers from it years before. On the deck of the great, populous, +electric-lighted ocean-hotel that was hurrying me across the Atlantic, +racing the porpoise-schools to get to New York City; and later at +Washington, when the red sunset-fires burned low behind the Capitol, it +spoke to me in the wonderful, beloved voice I shall never hear on earth +any more. Yet once more the wind came faintly sighing, in the giant blue +shadow of Table Mountain; it blew at Johannesburg, six thousand feet above +sea-level, in a raging cyclone of red gritty dust. Again it came, stirring +the celadon-green carpet of veld that is spread at the feet of the +Magaliesberg Ranges, that were turquoise-blue as the scillas growing in +the South Welsh garden that lies before the window where I write, this +variable spring day. But it blew with a most insistent note on the dumpy +mound where they have rebuilt the ridiculous, glorious village that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span> gave +birth to deeds worthy of the Age Heroic, about whose sand-bagged defences +nightly patrolled a Sentinel who never slept.</p> + +<p>Gueldersdorp tumbled out of bed at three-thirty, to see the troops march +in by the cold white morning moonlight that painted long indigo-blue +shadows of marching horsemen and rolling guns, drawn by many horses, and +huge-teamed baggage-waggons, eastward over the bleached dust.</p> + +<p>I dare not attempt to describe the indescribable. Zulu and Barala, +Celestial and Hindu, welcomed the Relief each after his own manner, and +were glad and rejoiced. But of these haggard men and emaciated women of +British race I can but say that in them human joy attained the climax of a +sacred frenzy—that human gratitude and enthusiasm, loyalty and +patriotism, reached the pitch at which the mercury in the thermometer of +human emotion ceases to record altitudes.</p> + +<p>At its height, when the last fort had fallen to England and the flag of +the United Republics had fluttered down from the tree whence it had waved +so long, and the Union Jack went up to frantic cheering, and the +retreating cloud of dust on the horizon told of the exit of the enemy from +the Theatre of War, Saxham played his one trump card in the game that +meant life and death to him, and life, and everything that made life worth +living, to one other.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>You are to see the hulking Doctor with the square-cut face, his grim +under-jaw more squarely set than ever, his blue eyes smouldering anxiety +under their glooming brows, trying to coax a pale, bewildered girl to take +a walk with him. She would at length, provided Sister Tobias walked on the +other side and held her hand. So this party of three plunged into the +boiling whirlpool of joyous Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>People were singing "God Save the Queen," and "The Red, White, and Blue," +"Auld Lang Syne" and "Rule, Britannia," all at once and all together, and +playing the tunes of them on mouth-organs and concertinas. They were +shaking hands with one another and everybody else, and shedding tears of +joy, and borrowing the pocket-handkerchiefs of sympathetic strangers to +dry them, or leaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span> them undried. They were crowding the Government +kitchens, drinking the healths of the officers and men of Great Britain's +Union Brigade in hot soup and hot coffee. They were clustered like bees +upon the most climbable house-tops, watching those retiring dust-clouds in +the distance, and the nearer movements of their friends and allies; they +were hearing the experiences of dust-stained and travel-worn Imperialists, +and telling their own; and one and all, they were thanking God Who had led +them, through bodily fear, and mental anguish, and bitter privations, to +hail the dawn of this most blessed day.</p> + +<p>The electrical atmosphere, the surge of the multitude, the roar of +thousands of voices, the gaze of thousands of eyes, had its effect upon +the girl. She trembled and flushed and paled. Her breath came quick and +short. She threw back her head and gasped for air. But she did not wish to +be taken back to the Convent bombproof. She shook her head when Sister +Tobias suggested that they should return.</p> + +<p>And then some of the women whom she had helped to nurse in hospital saw +her, and recognised her, and came about her with pitiful words and +compassionate looks—not only for her own sake, but for that dead woman's +whose adopted daughter they knew her to have been.</p> + +<p>"You poor, blessed, innocent lamb!" They crowded about her, kissing her +hands and her dress, and Sister Tobias's shabby black habit. "Lord help +you!" they mourned over her. "Christ pity you, and bring you to yourself +again!"</p> + +<p>"Why are you so sorry?" Lynette asked them, knitting her delicate brows, +and peering curiously in their tearful smiling faces. "No!" she corrected +herself; "I mean why are you so glad?"</p> + +<p>"Glad is ut, honey!" screamed a huge Irishwoman, throwing a brawny red arm +about the shrinking figure and hugging it. "Begob, wid the Holy Souls +dancin' jigs in Purgatory, an' the Blessed Saints clappin' their han's in +Heaven, we have rayson to be glad! Whirroosh! Ould Erin for ever—an' God +save the Cornel!"</p> + +<p>She yelled with all the power of her Celtic lungs, plucked off her +downtrodden shoes, slapped their soles together smartly, and, with a +gesture of royal prodigality, tossed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span> them right and left into the air, +performed a caper of surprising agility on elephantine, +blue-yarn-stocking-covered feet, and was carried away by a roaring surge +of the joyous crowd, vociferating.</p> + +<p>Saxham felt the slender hand of his charge tighten upon his arm, and his +heart leaped as he noted the working of the sensitive face and the heaving +of the small, nymph-like bosom under the thin material of her dress. He +hoped, he believed that a change was taking place in her. He said to +himself that the delicate mechanism of her brain, clogged and paralysed by +a great mental shock, was revitalising, storing energy, gaining power; +that the lesion was healing; that she would recover—must recover.</p> + +<p>Then his quick eye saw fatigue in her. They took her back out of the dust +and the clamour and the crowd, back to the quiet of the Cemetery.</p> + +<p>It happened there. For as she stood again beside the long, low mound +beneath which the heart that had cherished her lay mouldering, they saw +that the tears were running down her face, and that her whole body was +shaken with sobbing. And then, as a wild tornado of cheering, mingled with +drifts of martial music, swept northwards from Market Square, she fell +upon her knees beside the grave, and cried as if to living ears:</p> + +<p>"Mother;—oh! Mother, the Relief! They're here! Oh, my own darling—to be +glad without you!..."</p> + +<p>She lay there prone, and wept as though all the tears pent up in her since +that numbing double stroke of the Death Angel's sword were flowing from +her now. And Sister Tobias, glancing doubtfully up at Saxham's face, saw +it transfigured and irradiated with a great and speechless joy. For he +knew that the light had come back to the beautiful eyes he loved, and that +the Future might yield its harvest of joy yet, even yet, for the Dop +Doctor, he believed in his own blindness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LVI" id="LVI"></a>LVI</h2> + + +<p>They were standing together in the same place two months later when he +told her all, and asked her to be his wife in his own brusque +characteristic way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You have been so good, so kind," she said, in rather formal phrase, but +with her sweet eyes shining through tears and her sensitive lips +trembling. "You have shown yourself to be so noble in your unselfish care +for others, in your unsparing efforts for the good and benefit of +everyone——"</p> + +<p>"Put that by," said Saxham rather roughly, "and please to look at me, Miss +Mildare."</p> + +<p>He had never called her Lynette since her recovery, or touched the pretty +hand he coveted unless in formal greeting.</p> + +<p>"Put all that by. You see me to-day as you have seen me for months past, +conscientious and cleanly, sober and sane, in body as in mind, discharging +my duty at the Hospital and elsewhere as well as any other man possessing +the special qualifications it demands. Pray understand that I am not a +philanthropist, and have never posed as one. For the sake, first of a man +who believed in me, and secondly of a woman whom I love—and you are +she—I have done what I have."</p> + +<p>He squared his great shoulders and stood up before her, and, though his +face had never had any charm for her, its power went home to her and its +passion thrilled.</p> + +<p>"I play no part. The man I seem to be I am. But up to seven months ago, +before the siege began, I was known in this town, and with reason, as the +Dop Doctor."</p> + +<p>He saw recollection waken in her eyes, and nerved himself to the sharp +ordeal of changing it to repulsion and disgust.</p> + +<p>"You have heard that name applied to me. It conveyed nothing loathsome to +your innocent mind. You once repeated it to me, and were about to ask its +meaning. I had it in my mind then to enlighten you, and for the mean and +cowardly baseness that shrank from the exposure I have to pay now in +the"—a muscle in his pale face twitched—"the exquisite pain it is to me +to tell you to-day."</p> + +<p>"Then do not tell me." She said it almost in a whisper. "Dr. Saxham, I beg +you most earnestly to spare yourself." She dropped her eyes under the +fierce earnestness of his, and knitted her cold little hands in one +another. "Please<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span> leave the rest unsaid," she begged, without looking at +him.</p> + +<p>"It cannot be," said Saxham. "Miss Mildare, the Dop Doctor was only +another nickname for the Town Drunkard. And now you know what you should +have known before if I had not been a coward and a knave."</p> + +<p>She turned her eyes softly upon him, and they could not rest, it seemed to +her, upon a man of braver and more lofty bearing.</p> + +<p>"I <i>was</i> the Town Drunkard," Saxham went on, in the cold, clear voice that +cut like a knife to the intelligence. "Known in every liquor-saloon, and +familiar to every constable, and a standing butt for the clumsy jests that +the most utter dolt of a Police Magistrate might splutter from the Bench." +His jarring laugh hurt her. "The Man in the Street, and the Woman of the +Street, for that matter—pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truth +must be told—were my godfather and my godmother, and they gave me that +name between them. You are trembling, Miss Mildare. Sit down upon that +balk, and I will finish."</p> + +<p>There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been used in the +construction of a gun-mounting. She moved to it and sat down, and the +Doctor went on:</p> + +<p>"I am not going to weary you with the story of how I came to be—what I +have told you. But that I had lived a clean and honourable and temperate +life up to thirty years of age—when my world caved in with me—I swear is +the very truth!"</p> + +<p>She said gently: "I can believe it, Dr. Saxham."</p> + +<p>"Even if you could not it would not alter the fact. And then, at the +height of my success, and on the brink of a marriage that I dreamed would +bring me the fulfilment of every hope a man may cherish, one impulse of +pity and charity towards a wretched little woman brought me ruin, ruin, +ruin!"</p> + +<p>Pity for a wretched woman had brought it all about. She was glad to see +the Saxham of her knowledge in that Saxham whom she had not known. He +folded his great arms upon his broad breast and went on:</p> + +<p>"Nothing was left to me. Everything was gone. Rehabilitation in the eyes +of the Law—for I gained that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span> much—did not clear me in the eyes of +Society—that hugs the guilt-stained criminal to its heart in the full +consciousness of what his deeds are, and shudders at the innocent man upon +whom has once fallen the shadow of that grim and bloody Idol that +civilisation misnames Justice. I was cast out. Even by the brother I had +trusted and the woman I had loved. I had in a vague way believed in God +until then; I know I used to pray to Him to bless those I loved, and help +me to achieve great things for their sakes. But nothing at all was left of +that except a dull aching desire to throw back in the face of the Deity +the little He had left to me. My health, and my intellectual powers, and +my self-respect...."</p> + +<p>Her voice came to his ears in the half-whispered words:</p> + +<p>"Had He left you so little, after all?"</p> + +<p>"Little enough," said Saxham doggedly, "compared with what I had lost. And +as it is the privilege of the Christian to blame either the Almighty or +the devil for whatever ills are brought on him by his own blind, reckless +challenging of the Inevitable—termed Fate and Destiny by classical +Paganism,—so I found myself at odds with One I had been taught to call my +Maker."</p> + +<p>In His own acre, close to her beloved dead, with all those little white +crosses marking where other dust that had once praised Him with the human +voice lay waiting for the summons of the Resurrection, it was incredibly +awful to her to hear Him thus denied. She grew pale and shuddered, and +Saxham saw.</p> + +<p>"You see that I wish to be honest with you, and open and above-board. I +would not ever have you say to yourself, 'This man deceived—this man +misled me, wishing me to think him better than he was.' There is not much +more to tell you—save that I took what money remained to me at the bank +and from the sale of my last possessions—about a thousand pounds—and +shook the dust off from my shoes, and came out here, drunk, to carry out +my purpose of self-degradation to the uttermost. And I became a foul beast +among beasts that were even fouler, but less vile and less shameful +because their mental and moral standard was infinitely lower than my own. +And they gave me the name you know of." His voice had the ring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span> of steel +smitten on steel. He drew himself up with a movement of almost savage +pride, and the knotted veins swelled on his broad white forehead, and his +blue eyes blazed under his thunderous smudge of black eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"The name you know. It used to be called after me when I reeled the +streets—they whispered it afterwards as I rode by. To-day it is +forgotten." His nostrils quivered, and he threw out his hands as if with +that action he tossed something worthless to the winds. "Miss Mildare, I +have not touched Drink—the stuff that was my nourishment and my +sustenance, my comfort and my bane, my deadliest enemy and my only +friend—since that hour when with the last effort of my will I rallied all +my mental and bodily forces to resist its base allurement."</p> + +<p>"I know it, Dr. Saxham. I am sure of it." She rose and held out her hands +to him, but he folded his arms more closely over his starving, famished +heart, and would not see them yet.</p> + +<p>"You can be sure of it. Alcohol is no longer my master and my god. I stand +before you a free man, because I willed to be free." There was a little +blob of foam at one corner of his mouth, but the square pale face was +composed, even impassive. "Once, not so long ago, I filled a place of +standing in the professions of Surgery and Medicine; I knew what it was to +be esteemed and respected by the world. For your dear sake I promise to +regain what I have lost; be even more than I used to be, achieve greater +things than are done by other men of equal powers with mine. I am not a +man to pledge my word lightly, Miss Mildare...." His voice shook now and +his blue eyes glistened. "If you would be so—so unutterably kind as to +become my wife, I promise you a worthy husband. I swear to you upon what I +hold dearest and most sacred—your own life, your own honour, your own +happiness, never to give you cause to regret marrying me! For I may die, +indeed, but living I will never fail you!"</p> + +<p>There was a lump in her throat choking her. Her eyes had gone to that +other grave some fifty paces distant from the Catholic portion of the +Cemetery. There were freshly-gathered flowers upon it, as upon the grave +that lay so near, and two gorgeous butterflies were hovering about the +blooms, in mingled dalliance and greediness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You loved him," said Saxham, following the journey of her wistful eyes. +"Love him still; remember him for every trait and quality of his that was +worthy of love from you. But give me the hope of one day gaining from you +some shadow of—of return for what I feel for you. Is it Passion? I hardly +know. Whether it is Love, in the sense in which that word is employed by +many of the women and nearly all the men I have met, I do not know either. +But that it is the life of my life to me and the breath of my being—you +cannot look at me and doubt!"</p> + +<p>She was not looking at him. Her eyes were on the little white cross above +the Mother's grave; there was an anxious fold between the slender dark +eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"You—you wish to marry a Catholic—you, who tell me that you were once a +Christian and are now Agnostic?"</p> + +<p>"If I have not what is called Faith," said Saxham, "I may at least lay +claim to the quality of reverence. And I honour the religion that has made +you what you are. Cleave to your Church, child—hold to your pure beliefs, +and keep a little love back, Lynette, from your Holy Family and your +Saints in Heaven, to give to a poor devil who needs it desperately!"</p> + +<p>The sweet colour flushed her, and her face was more than beautiful in its +compassion. She said:</p> + +<p>"I pray for you now, and I will always. And one day our Lord will give you +back the faith that you have lost."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, dear!" said Saxham humbly. She was opening her lips to speak +again when he lifted his hand and stopped her.</p> + +<p>"There is one other thing I should like to make clear. I—am not rich. But +neither am I absolutely poor. Letters that I have received from a firm of +solicitors acting for the trustees and executors of—a near relative +deceased, will prove to you that I am possessed of some small property, +bringing in an annual income of something like two hundred pounds, and +funds sufficient to settle a few thousands upon my wife by way of +marriage-jointure. Believe me," he added, in answer to her look, "I know +you to be incapable of a mercenary thought. But what I should have +explained to"—he pointed to the grave that lay so near—"to <i>her</i>, I must +make clear to you. It could not be otherwise."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span></p> + +<p>She went over to the grave and knelt beside it, and laid her pure cheek +upon it, and spoke to the Dead in a low, murmuring tone. Saxham knew as he +watched her, breathing heavily, that the consent of the Mother would never +have been given to the marriage he proposed. That other obstacle in the +road of his desire, the lover who had deceived, had been swept away, with +the stern and tender guardian, in one cataclysm of Fate. He went back in +thought to the ending of his long shooting-match <i>à outrance</i> with Father +Noah, and remembered how he had promised himself that all should go well +with Saxham provided Saxham's bullet got home first.</p> + +<p>Were not things going better than he had hoped? She had not even recoiled +from him when he had told her of those degraded days of wastrelhood. +Surely things were going well for Saxham, he said, as he waited with his +hungering eyes upon his heart's desire. What it cost him not to step over +to her, snatch her from the ground, and crush her upon his heart with hot +and passionate kisses and wild words of worship, he knew quite well. But +in that he was able to exercise such a mastery over himself and keep that +other Saxham down, Saxham gave praise to that strange god he had set up, +and worshipped, and bowed down before, calling it The Omnipotent Human +Will.</p> + +<p>She rose by-and-by, and stood with clasped hands, thinking. It was very +still, and the air was sweet and balmy, and beyond the lines of the +defence-works miles upon miles of sunlit veld rolled away to the hills +that were mantled in clear hyacinth-colour and hooded with pale rose.</p> + +<p>"If I married you, you would take me away from this country and these +people who have killed her?"</p> + +<p>She had the thought of another in her heart and the name of another upon +her lips. But only her eyes spoke, travelling to that more distant grave +where the butterflies were hovering above the flowers, as Saxham answered:</p> + +<p>"I would take you away, if you wished it."</p> + +<p>"To England?"</p> + +<p>"Back to England."</p> + +<p>"I should see London, and the house where Mother lived...." She seemed to +have forgotten Saxham, and to be uttering her thoughts aloud. "I might +even see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span> green mountains of Connemara in Ireland—her own mountains +she used to call them. I might one day meet people who are of her blood +and name——"</p> + +<p>"And of <i>his</i>," thought Saxham, following her eyes' wistful journey to +that other grave.</p> + +<p>"But," she went on, "it would all depend"—she breathed with agitation and +knitted her slim white fingers together, and looked round at him with that +anxious wrinkle between her fine eyebrows—"upon how much you asked of me! +Suppose I——" His intent and burning eyes confused her, and she dropped +her own beneath them. "If I were to marry you, would you leave me +absolutely free?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely," said Saxham. "With the most complete freedom a wife could +possibly desire."</p> + +<p>"I meant—a different kind of freedom from a wife's." She knitted and +unknitted her hands. "It is difficult to explain. Would you be willing to +ask nothing of me that a friend or a sister might not give? Would you be +content——"</p> + +<p>Her transparent skin glowed crimson with the rush of blood. Her bosom +laboured with the hurry of her breathing. Her white lids veiled her eyes, +or the sudden terrible change in Saxham's face might have wrung from her a +cry of terror and alarm. But he mastered the raging jealousy that tore +him, and said, with a jarring note of savage irony in the voice that had +always spoken to her gently until then:</p> + +<p>"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriage +that should be practically no marriage at all—a formal contract that is +not wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and alter into the +close union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and women +who love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him full and bent her head. And the man's heart, that had +throbbed so wildly, stopped beating with a sudden jerk, and the divine +fire that burned and tingled in his blood died out, and the cold sickness +of baffled hope weighed on him like a mantle of lead. And the voice that +had whispered to him so alluringly, telling him that it was not too late, +that he might even yet win this virginal pure, sweetly-budding maiden, and +know the bliss of being loved at last, sank into silence. His face was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span> +set like granite, and as grey. His eyes burned darkly under his heavy +brows. He waited, sombrely and hopelessly, for her to speak again.</p> + +<p>"There are such marriages——?"</p> + +<p>The question was diffidently and timidly put. He answered:</p> + +<p>"Assuredly there are. But not between those who are—physically and +mentally, sane and healthy men and women,—at least, in my experience. One +case, of three I am at liberty to quote, was that of an aged and wealthy +woman of position and a young and rising public man."</p> + +<p>"Were—weren't they happy?"</p> + +<p>The face of the inward, unseen Saxham was twisted in a miserable grin, but +the outward man preserved immobility.</p> + +<p>"He enjoyed life. She sat by, and saw, every day joining nearer, her +death, that was to leave him free."</p> + +<p>"And the others?"</p> + +<p>She asked it with an indrawn breath of anxiety.</p> + +<p>"The second case was that of a man, middle-aged and helplessly paralysed +by an accident in the hunting-field, and of a beautiful and high-spirited +young woman—almost a girl. She took a romantic interest in him—talked of +his ruined career and blighted life, and all that sort of thing. And—they +married, and she found her bondage intolerable.... It ended in his +divorcing her. The <i>decree nisi</i> was made absolute a few days before I +left London. The third case bears more analogy to yours and mine."</p> + +<p>"Please go on."</p> + +<p>"There was no great disparity of age between these two people. They were +sympathetic, cultured, independent both. Their views upon many +subjects—including the sex question—were identical," said Saxham slowly. +"And they entered into a bond of union that had for its ultimate aim the +culture of the intellect and the development of what they called the Soul. +The Flesh had nothing in it; the Body," said Saxham, with a grating +sarcasm, "was utterly ignored. I forget whether they were Agnostics, +Buddhists, or Christians. They certainly suffered for their creed. +But"—his voice softened and deepened—"at any rate, the woman suffered +most!"</p> + +<p>Her lips parted, her eyes were intent upon him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You have lived with Sisters of Mercy in a Convent," went on Saxham. "You +know of their lives even more than I—greatly to my advantage—have +learned. Energetic, useful, stirring, active, never complaining, always +ready to make the best of the world as they find it, and help others to do +the same; always regarding it as the preparatory school or +training-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and more +glorious than anything the merely mundane imagination can conceive—you +can realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast between +them and the laywomen of Society, peevish, hysterical, neurotic, sensual, +and bored. But before these chastened, temperate bodies, these serene and +well-balanced minds attained the state of self-control and crossed the +Rubicon of resignation, what struggles their owners must have +undergone!—what ordeals of anguish they must have endured! Did that never +strike you?"</p> + +<p>Her lips were pale, and there were shadows under her eyes. She bent her +head.</p> + +<p>"The woman, who was not a nun, did for the sake of a man what the nun +feels supernaturally called upon to do for her God," said Saxham. "She +thrust her hand deep into her woman's bosom, and dragged out her woman's +heart, and wrung from it every natural human yearning, and purged it—or +thought she purged it—of every earthly desire, before she laid the +pulseless, emptied thing down before his feet for him to tread upon. And +that is what he did!"</p> + +<p>He heard her pant softly, and saw her hand move upward to her beating +heart. His deadly earnestness appalled her. Was he not fighting for what +was more than life to him? He folded his arms over his great chest, and +said:</p> + +<p>"For ten years he and she lived together in a union called ideal by +ignorant enthusiasts and high-minded cranks. Then she drooped and +died—victim of the revolt of outraged Nature. A little before the end +they sent for me. I said to the man: 'A child would have saved her!' And +he—I can hear him now, answering: 'Ah! but that would have nullified all +the use and purpose of our example for humanity.' The idiot—the abortive, +impossible, dreary idiot! And if ever there was a woman intended by +wholesome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span> Nature to bear and nurture babes, it was that woman, who died +to prove the possibility of carrying on the business of living according +to his damned theories."</p> + +<p>His broad chest heaved; a mist came before his eyes; his deep vibrating +voice had in it a passionate appeal to her.</p> + +<p>"The nun would tell you that in the lofty, mystical sense marriage and +motherhood are hers, 'Christ being her Spouse.' I echo this in no spirit +of mockery. But this woman of whom I have told you knew no vocation and +took no vow. She merely tried to ignore the fundamental truth that every +normal woman of healthy instincts was meant to be a mother."</p> + +<p>He added:</p> + +<p>"And every husband who loves his wife sees his manhood proved and +perfected in her. She was dear and beloved before; she is holy, +sacred—worshipped in his eyes, when they look upon his child in her arms, +at her breast."</p> + +<p>Something like a sob broke from him. His heart cried:</p> + +<p>"Lynette! have pity upon yourself and upon me!"</p> + +<p>He stood and waited for her reply. She was so exquisite and so full of +womanly allure, and yet so crystal-cold and passionless, that he knew his +arguments thrown away, his entreaties mere dust upon the wind.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," he said at length, "do I inspire you with antipathy? Am I +physically repulsive to you, or disagreeable? Answer me frankly, for in +that case I would—cease to urge my suit with you, and go upon my way, +wherever it might lead me."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and there was no shrinking in her regard—only a gentle +friendliness, as far removed from the feeling he would have roused in her +as the North is from the South.</p> + +<p>"I will tell you exactly how I feel towards you." He writhed under the +knowledge that it was possible to her to analyse and to explain. "I like +you, Dr. Saxham. I am deeply grateful to you——"</p> + +<p>"Gratitude!" He shrugged his shoulders. "You owe me none; and even if you +did, what use is gratitude to a man who asks for love?"</p> + +<p>"I trust you; I rely upon you," she said. "It is—pleasant to me to know +that you are near." A line of perplexity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span> came between the dark fine +eyebrows; the sweet colour in her face wavered and sank. "But—if you were +to touch me—to take me in your arms—I——" She shivered.</p> + +<p>"You need not say more!" If she was pale, Saxham's stern, square face was +ashen. His eyes glowered and fell under hers, and a purple vein swelled in +the middle of his broad white forehead. "I understand!"</p> + +<p>"You do not understand quite yet." She moved away from the Mother's grave, +saying to him with a slight beckoning gesture of the hand, "Please +come!..."</p> + +<p>Saxham followed her, hearing the harsh, jeering laughter of that other +Saxham above the faint rustle of her dress. His covetous, despairing eyes +dwelt on her and clung about her. Ah! the exquisite poise of the little +head, with its red-brown waves and coils; the upright, slender elegance of +shape, like a young palm-tree; the long, smooth, undulating step with +which she moved between the graves, picking her way with sedulous, +delicate care among the little crowding white-painted crosses; the +atmosphere of girlish charm and womanly allurement that breathed from her +and environed her!...</p> + +<p>His torpid pulses throbbed again. The voice began again its whispering at +his ear.</p> + +<p>"You cannot live without her. Accept her conditions. Better to be unhappy +in the sight and sound and touch of her, unpossessed, than to be +desperate, lacking her. Accept her conditions with a mental reservation. +Trust to Time, the healer, to bring change and forgetfulness. Or, break +your promise to that dead man, and tell her—as he would have had you tell +her, remember!—as he would have had you tell her!—that when he asked her +hand in marriage, he was the wedded husband of the dancer, Lessie +Lavigne!"</p> + +<p>He knew where she was leading him—to Beauvayse's grave. The voice kept +whispering, urging as they went. He saw and heard as a man sees and hears +in a dream the pair of butterflies that hovered yet about the fresh +flowers her hands had gathered and placed there. One jewel-winged, +diamond-eyed insect rose languidly and wavered away as Lynette's light +footsteps drew near. The other remained, poised upon the lip of a honeyed, +waxen blossom, with closed, vertically-held wings and quivering antennæ,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span> +sucking its sweet juices as greedily as the dead man had drunk of the joy +of life.</p> + +<p>Now she was speaking:</p> + +<p>"Dr. Saxham, I have brought you here because I have something to tell you +that <i>he</i>"—her face quivered—"should have been told. When you spoke a +little while ago of openness and candour—when you said that you would +never mislead or deceive me for your own advantage, that I should know the +worst of you together with the best—you held up before me, quite +unknowingly, an example that showed me—that proved to me"—her voice +wavered and broke—"how much I am your inferior in honesty and truth!"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> my inferior!" Saxham almost laughed. "<i>I</i> an example of light and +leading, elevated for your guidance! If you were capable of irony——"</p> + +<p>He broke off, for she went on as though he had not spoken:</p> + +<p>"When first we met—I mean yourself and me—I remember telling you, upon a +sudden impulse of confidence and trust in you, what I had determined my +life-work was to be——"</p> + +<p>"Dear, innocent-wise enthusiast," thought Saxham, "dreaming over your +impossible plan for regenerating the world! Beloved child-Quixote, tilting +at the Black Windmills, how dare I, who was once the Dop Doctor of +Gueldersdorp, love you and seek you for my own? Madness—madness on the +face of it!" But, madness or sanity, he could not choose but love her.</p> + +<p>"Your life-work!... It was to be carried out among <i>those others</i> whose +voices you heard calling you. See," he said, with the shadow of a smile, +"how I remember everything you say, or have ever said, in my hearing!"</p> + +<p>"You think too well of me," she broke out, with sudden energy.</p> + +<p>"It is not possible to think too well of you!"</p> + +<p>"You think so now, perhaps, but when you know——"</p> + +<p>Her eyes brimmed and the tears welled over her white under-lids. She put +up both her little hands, and rubbed the salt drops away with her +knuckles, like a child.</p> + +<p>"When I have told you, you will alter—you cannot help but alter your +opinion!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No!" denied Saxham; and the monosyllable seemed to drop from his grim +lips like a stone. Her bosom heaved with short, quick sobs.</p> + +<p>"I meant to go out into the world, and meet those women who think and work +for women, and hear all they have to say, and learn all they have to +teach. Then——"</p> + +<p>She was Beatrice again, as she turned her face full on Saxham, and once +more the virginal veil fell, and he was conscious of strange abysses of +knowledge opening in those eyes.</p> + +<p>"—Then I meant to seek out those women and girls and children of whom I +spoke to you, those who lie fettered with chains that wicked men have +riveted, in the dark dungeons that their tyrants and torturers have +quarried out of the living rock, out of the reach of fresh air and +sunshine, beyond the reach of those who would pity and help ... I meant to +go down to them, and comfort them, and raise them up. I meant to have +said: 'Trust me, believe me, listen to me, follow me! For my sorrow is +your sorrow, and my wrong your wrong, and my shame yours—O! my poor, poor +unhappy sisters!...'"</p> + +<p>There was a great drumming and surging of the blood in Saxham's ears. His +heart beat in heavy laboured, measured strokes, like the tolling of a +death-bell. He saw her cover her face with her hands, and drop upon her +knees amongst the grasses that greenly clothed the red soil. He saw the +butterfly, startled from its feast, rise and waver away. And he saw, too, +his veiled nymph, his virginal white goddess, his chaste, veiled maiden +Artemis, toppled from her pedestal and lying in the gutter.</p> + +<p>Her sorrow the sorrow of those spotted ones! her wrong theirs, and theirs +her shame!... So this was the sordid secret that haunted the depths of +those eyes—the eyes of Beatrice! He turned his head away, so as not to +look upon her, and his face grew dark with the rush of blood. But still he +heard her speaking, as a man hears in a dream.</p> + +<p>"At school all the older girls thought and talked of nothing but Love, and +most of the younger ones did the same.... And I, who knew the dreadful, +cruel, hideous side of the thing that each of them set up and +worshipped—I who shuddered when a man's breath, and a man's voice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span> and a +man's face came near—I said in my heart that Love should never find a +dupe and a slave and a tool in me. I meant to live for the Mother, and be +to those poor sisters of mine what she was—oh, my darling! my +darling!—to me! And all the while Love was coming nearer and nearer, and +at last——"</p> + +<p>She swept the tears from her face with the palms of her slight open hands, +and drew a deep, shuddering breath, and went on brokenly, with sobs +between the gasped-out sentences:</p> + +<p>"—At last it came. I never tried to struggle against it; it wrapped me in +a net of exquisite sweet softness, that held me like a cage of steel. I +gave myself up to the blissfulness and the joy of it. I was unfaithful to +those others—I forgot them for Beauvayse! Oh, why should Love make it so +easy to do unlovely things? to be unworthy, to break promises, and to be +false to vows? You are in earnest when you make them ... you are proud to +be so sure that nothing shall change or turn you.... Then eyes that are +like strange jewels look deep into yours. A voice that is like no other +voice whispers at your ear. It says strange, sweet, secret things—things +that come back and burn you—and his breath upon your cheek drowns out +your scruples in wave upon wave of magical, thrilling, wonderful +sensation!..." She shuddered. "And everything else is blotted out, and no +one else matters! You are not even sorry that you have left off caring.... +Love has made you indifferent as well as unkind!"</p> + +<p>She looked up at Saxham from where she crouched down at his feet among the +grasses, and her distress melted some of the ice that was closing round +his heart.</p> + +<p>"Love cannot be good. It brings no peace, no happiness—nothing but +restless misery and burning pain. It makes you even willing to deceive +<i>him</i>." Her lids fluttered and she caught her breath. "When another to +whom I was dear, and who knew, said, 'Never tell him! I command you never +to tell him!' I pretended to myself that the words had not been spoken out +of pity, because my darling loved me too well to see me suffer; and I told +myself that it was right to obey."</p> + +<p>Saxham, following the yearning look that went back to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span> that other's grave, +heard the unforgettable voice uttering the command.</p> + +<p>"<i>He</i> never dreamed of my miserable secret. He was so free, so frank, so +open himself. He had nothing to hide—he was incapable of deceit! It never +occurred to him—oh, Beau! Beau!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's face was set like a mask carved in granite, but that other +Saxham, within the man she saw through her tears, was wrung and twisted +and wrenched in spasms and gusts of insane, uncontrollable, helpless +laughter.</p> + +<p>"<i>Nothing to hide—incapable of deceit!</i>" It seemed to him that the dead +man, all that way down under the red earth and the grass and the flowers, +must be laughing, too, at the Dop Doctor who was fool enough not to speak +out and end the farce for ever.</p> + +<p>Should he? Why not? But for what reason now, and to what end, since his +virginal-pure, dew-pearled, Convent lily lay trodden in the mire? And yet, +to look in those eyes....</p> + +<p>They did not falter or droop under his again, as she told him in few and +simple words the story of what had happened in the tavern on the veld.</p> + +<p>"Now you know all!" she said; "now you understand!... Sister Tobias knows, +too, and there is one other.... I do not speak of ..."—she shuddered and +grew pale—"but of a man whom all of us here have learned to look up to, +and believe in, and trust. No confidence has ever passed between us. I +cannot give you any reason for this belief of mine in his knowledge of my +story. I only feel that it is no secret to the Colonel, whenever he looks +at me with those wise, kind, pitying eyes."</p> + +<p>There was a look in Saxham's eyes that was not pity. The sunbeam that +shone through the loose plait of her coarse straw hat, and gilded the +edges of the red-brown hair-waves, aureoled again for him the head of +Beatrice.</p> + +<p>"I have no faith left, but I am capable of reverence," he had said to her.</p> + +<p>Now, as he knelt down in the grass before the little brown shoes, and +lifted the hem of her linen gown and kissed it, the hulking-shouldered +Doctor proved his possession of the quality. Devouring desire, riotous +passion, were, if not killed in him, at least quelled and overthrown and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span> +bound. Pure pity and tenderness awakened in him. And Chivalry, all +<i>cap-à-pie</i> in silver mail, rose up to do battle for her against the world +and against that other Saxham.</p> + +<p>"I accept the trust you are willing should be mine. Take my name—take all +I have to give! I make no reservations. I stipulate no conditions. I ask +for nothing in return, except the right to be your brother and guardian +and defender. Trust me! The life-work you have chosen shall be yours; as +far as lies in my power, I will help you in it. Your pure ends and noble +aims shall never be thwarted or hindered. And have no fear of me, my sweet +saint, my little sister. For I may die," said Saxham once again, "but, +living, I will never fail you!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LVII" id="LVII"></a>LVII</h2> + + +<p>Saxham, of St. Stephen's, had long ago faded from the recollection of +London Society, but Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., Late Attached Medical Staff, +Gueldersdorp, and frequently mentioned in Despatches from that bit of +debatable soil, while it was in process of debating, was distinctly a +person to cultivate. Not that it was in the least easy—the man was almost +quite a bear, but his brevity of speech and brusqueness of manner gave him +a cachet that Society found distinguished. He was married, too—so +romantic! married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp all +through the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't you know? and +with manners that really suggested the Faubourg St. Germain. Where she got +her style—brought up among Boers and blacks—was to be wondered at, but +these problems made people all the more interesting. And one met her with +her husband at all the best houses since the Castleclares had taken them +up. Indeed, Mrs. Saxham was a relative—was it a cousin? No—now it all +came back! Adopted daughter, that was it, of an aunt—no, a step-sister of +Lord Castleclare, that ineffable little prig of twenty-two, who as a Peer +and Privy Councillor of Ireland, and a Lord-in-Waiting to boot, was +nevertheless a personage to be deferred to.</p> + +<p>One had heard, hadn't one, ages ago, of the famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span> beauty, Lady +Bridget-Mary Bawne? Well, that was the very person, who had been Abbess, +or Prioress, or something-else-ess of a Roman Catholic Sisterhood at +Gueldersdorp, and died of pneumonia during the Siege, or did she get shot? +That was it, poor dear thing, and how quite too horrid for her!</p> + +<p>We may know that that belated letter of the Mother's—written to her +kinswoman when the first mutterings of the storm were yet dulled by +distance, and the threatening clouds were beginning to build their +blue-black bastions and frowning ramparts on the horizon—had got through +at last. The Bawnes, true to their hereditary quality of generous loyalty, +threw open their doors and their hearts to dead Bridget-Mary's darling; +and Saxham was undisguisedly grateful when he saw how she warmed to them. +But he gave no encouragement, verbal, written, or tacit to their desire to +fulfil the dead woman's wishes in the settlement of a sum of money upon +Lynette. He had made such provision for her himself as his means +permitted. His books had been selling steadily for the past six years, his +publishers had paid him a handsome sum in royalties, and a thousand +guineas for the copyright of a new work. Plas Bendigaid was secured to his +wife; and Saxham's life was heavily insured, and the bulk of the sum +remaining from the purchase of the furniture and fixtures of the house in +Harley Street, with the practice of the physician who was giving up +tenancy, had been invested in her name with the other funds. Why should +strangers interfere with his sole privilege of working for her?</p> + +<p>"I should prefer that the decision should be left entirely to my wife," he +said, when the Head of the House of Bawne, with the pompous solemnity +distinctive of a young man who takes himself and his position seriously, +formally broached the subject.</p> + +<p>"Lady Castleclare has—arah!—already approached Mrs. Saxham on the +question," said Lord Castleclare, tapping the shiny surface of the +leather-covered writing-table near which he sat with the long, thin, +ivory-hued fingers, ending in long, narrow, bluish-tinted nails, that had +descended to him—with the peculiar sniffing drawl that prolonged and +punctuated his verbal utterance—from his late<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span> father. "And I regret to +hear from Lady Castleclare that Mrs. Saxham gave no encouragement to the +suggestion. I confess myself disappointed equally with my wife and my +elder step-sister, the Duchess of Broads, to whom the letter was +written—the letter that you will understand conveys to the family I +represent, the last wishes of one whose memory we hold in the most sacred +love and reverence——"</p> + +<p>The Right Honourable Privy Councillor had here to stop and dry his eyes, +that were frankly overflowing. Though short, and not at all distinguished +of appearance, having derived from his mother, the Dowager Countess, née +Miss Nancy McIleevy, of McIleevystown, County Down, certain personal +disadvantages to counterbalance the immense fortune amassed by her uncle, +the brewer, this little gentleman of great affairs possessed the kindly +heart, and the quick and sensitive nature of the paternal stock. Now he +continued:</p> + +<p>"—Under the circumstances you will permit me to renew the proposal with a +slight modification. The sum we proposed to invest in Government +securities for Mrs. Saxham's benefit, carrying out a charge that we regard +it as a privilege to—to have received—is not large, merely five thousand +pounds." He coughed. "Well, now it has occurred to me that Mrs. Saxham's +objection to receive what she seems to regard as a gift from people upon +whom she has no claim—that is how she expressed herself to Lady +Castleclare—might be got over—if I may employ the expression, by our +settling the money upon your children?"</p> + +<p>"Upon our children——"</p> + +<p>They were sitting in Lord Castleclare's library at Bawne House, Grosvenor +Square. Great books in gilded bindings gleamed from their covered and +latticed shelves, and the perfume of Russia leather and cedar mingled with +the aroma of rare tobacco in the air. A thin fog hung over the West End, +deadening the sound of traffic, and dimming the polish of the tall +plate-glass windows. The fire burned red behind bars of silvered steel, +the ashes fell with a little clicking whisper. It seemed to Saxham that he +could hear his pierced heart bleeding, drip, drip, drip! But he sat like a +man of stone, his white, firm, supple hand clenched upon the carved knob +of the chair-arm. Then he said, looking the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span> Right Honourable Privy +Councillor full in the face with those gentian-blue eyes of his, now sunk +in caves that grew deeper day by day:</p> + +<p>"Let it be so, my lord. I am willing, if my wife consents, that the money +should be settled upon—her children."</p> + +<p>He prescribed, at Lord Castleclare's request, for a political dyspepsia, +and took leave in his brusque, characteristic way, and sent away his +waiting motor-brougham, and walked home, thinking, by that new light that +had flashed upon him.</p> + +<p>It was January, the London January of whirling dust clouds below, and +racing, murky vapours above. They had been settled in the Harley Street +house four months. It seemed to Saxham as though they had lived there for +years. The routine of professional life was closing in upon him once +again. Patients thronged to his door; Hospitals, and Societies, and +Institutions were open to him as of old; Society courted and flattered +him, and gushed about the beauty of Mrs. Saxham. It was as though that +celebrated Criminal Case, The Crown <i>v.</i> Saxham, had never developed into +ugly, sinister shape under the dirty skylight of the Old Bailey.</p> + +<p>He crossed Grosvenor Square, and turned down Brook Street, thinking as he +went. Pretty women in furs, their make-up subdued by silk-gauze veils, +nodded to him from motor-broughams and victorias.</p> + +<p>Though the horse-drawn hansom yet plied for hire, petrol was driving +brute-power off the streets. The hooting and clanking of the motor-omnibus +made Oxford Street hideous. And that St. Vitus's Dance of the Tube Railway +swept under the pavement beneath Saxham's tread as he had passed up New +Bond Street. Certainly London was not more beautiful or pleasanter to live +in for the six years that had gone by.</p> + +<p>The Tube Works were responsible for much. The Companies were linking up +the North with the West, and strings of trolleys, coupled together like +railway-trucks, and laden with yellow clay or great balks of timber, or +giant scales of bored armour-plating, or moleskin-clad, brawny navvies, +progressed incessantly and at all hours through the thoroughfares of the +metropolis behind huge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span> giraffe-necked, splay-wheeled, smoke-vomiting +traction-engines. Houses and other buildings were being pulled down to +make stations; great hoardings were up, enclosing spaces where work went +on all day, amidst clankings and groanings of machinery, and clouds of +oily-smelling steam, and where work went on all night, with more groanings +and more clankings, deplorable shrieks of steam-sirens and hellish flares +that might have been reflections from a burning Tophet, cast upon yet +bigger and denser clouds of the oily-smelling steam.</p> + +<p>Yes! the big black opulent city was greatly changed. But the change in the +people, affecting all ranks and every class, was even greater. There were +compensations, if you could balance against the decay of good manners the +improvements in sanitation, or set against the crop of evil sown by the +dissemination of the vilest literature in the cheapest printed forms, the +attainability, by the poorest, of the noblest productions of literary +genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of +Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could +condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of +Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang +phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions +culled from the vocabulary of the East End costermonger.</p> + +<p>Privacy and reticence had become unfashionable, impossible in this, the +era of the guinea-hunting Press-Interviewer. The barriers of social +exclusiveness had given way before the push of the plutocrat. The Rubicon +between good Society and bad Society had become invisible. Racial suicide +and sexual licence most hideously prevailed, spreading like some vile +disease from rank to rank, and class to class. Woman had become less +womanly, man more effeminate. Home was a word that had no longer any +meaning. Religion had decayed; the fear of God had been forgotten. But +Socialism was springing up, a rank and lusty weed, in crude neglected soil +that might have been tilled to good purpose; and a cheap and rowdy form of +patriotism was in a very healthy state, although the Union Jack had not +yet replaced the Bible in the Board Schools.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span></p> + +<p>Yes, things had changed, and not for the better! There was a tang upon the +moral atmosphere that made the material petrol-fumes of the motor-omnibus +almost acceptable by comparison. The air of Gueldersdorp had been cleaner, +even with that taint from the crowded trenches heavy on it. Things had +changed; and in the midst of all these changes, the last sands of the +Great Victorian Age were running out of the glass.</p> + +<p>That wonderful life was drawing to its simple, peaceful, noble, profoundly +touching close, this January of 1901. And its ending had been hastened by +the War.</p> + +<p>Truly of her it has been said, and shall be; even when scholars of another +race and another civilisation, springing from the ashes of this, wrest +from the relics of a history of to-day the secrets of an ancient Past:</p> + +<p>"She was not only the Sovereign, but the Mother of her people."</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>Saxham turned into Cavendish Square, and was in Harley Street. The +white-enamelled door of a prosperous-looking corner-house bore a solid +brass plate with his name. He thought, as he opened the door with his Yale +key, how strange it was that this, the very house he had planned to live +in with Mildred, and had leased, and beautified, and decorated for her, +should have been offered for his inspection by the first West End +house-agent he applied to upon returning to London, whose dust he had +shaken off the soles of his feet forever, barely six years before.</p> + +<p>The practitioner who occupied the house—not the same man who had taken +over the lease and fittings from Saxham—was ready to give it up, with all +its costly appurtenances and up-to-date appointments, together with the +practice, for quite a moderate slice of that legacy of thousands that had +come to Saxham from Mildred's dead boy. Saxham, diagnosing the man's fever +to realise and depart, wondered what secret, desperate motive lay at the +back of his hurry? The reason was soon evident. Like thousands of other +men, professional and private, the physician had been a dabbler on the +Stock Exchange, and had gone in heavily for South African mining-stock, +and had been ruined by the War.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was a year of ruin. Society, led by Messrs. Washington P. Jukes and +Themistocles K. Mombasa, six-foot, full-blooded buck niggers, elegantly +scented, white-gloved, and arrayed in evening garments of Bond Street cut, +danced the newly-imported Cake Walk through its ball-rooms and +reception-saloons, with laughter on its reddened lips, and paste +imitations of its family jewels in its waved coiffure and on its powdered +bosom, and Ruin in its heart.</p> + +<p>Great manufacturing enterprises, paralysed by lack of funds and lack of +hands, were ruined. Managers producing plays to empty houses were ruined. +Publishers publishing books that nobody cared any longer to buy, were +ruined. Painters expending time, and money, and toil, upon pictures that +no longer found purchasers were ruined. Millions of smaller folks were +ruined by the ruin of their betters. Only the great Mourning Warehouses +prospered exceedingly, like the Liquor Trade and the Drug Trade. And the +Remount and Forage Trades, and the Army-Contractors, flourished as the +green bay-tree.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Saxham's motor-brougham had gone on in advance, twisting knowingly in and +out of various corkscrew thoroughfares. It was waiting outside the house +in Lower Harley Street as the Doctor reached the door. The chauffeur, a +spare, short young man, punctiliously buttoned up in a long dark green, +white-faced livery overcoat, a cap with a white-glazed peak shading a +lean, brickdust-coloured face, with ugly, honest eyes that are familiar to +the reader, cocked one of the eyes inquiringly at his employer, and +receiving a sign implying that his services would not be required for some +space of time to come, pulled up the lever, moved on, and turned down the +side-street where were the entrance-gates of the stable-yard that had been +turned into a garage. He had been in Saxham's employment nearly two +months.</p> + +<p>W. Keyse, late Corporal, Gueldersdorp Town Guards, had learned to clean, +manage, and drive a motor-car belonging to an officer of the Garrison in +spare hours during the Siege. This accomplishment, with some other +learning gained in those strenuous and bracing times, had justified him in +answering a <i>Times</i> advertisement for a sober, active,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span> and intelligent +young man, possessing the requisite knowledge of London—"Cripps!" said W. +Keyse, "as if I couldn't pick my way about the Bally Old Dustbin +blindfolded!"—to act in the capacity of chauffeur to a West End medical +practitioner.</p> + +<p>An acquaintance who was a waiter at a Pall Mall Club gave him the tip, and +the chance came in the nick of time, for Mr. and Mrs. W. Keyse were up +against it, and no gay old error. "If you was to offer to blooming-well +work for people for nothing," said Mrs. Keyse, "my belief is, they +wouldn't 'ave you at the price!"</p> + +<p>The Old Shop, as W. Keyse affectionately called his native island, had +drawn the exiles home. Good-bye to the bronzed, ungirdled vastness of veld +and karroo, and the clear, dark, distant blue of level-topped mountains +bathed in the pure stimulating atmosphere that braces like champagne. Old +England called with a voice there was no resisting, great draggle-tailed, +grimy London beckoned to her boy and girl, as the big grey liner, with the +scarlet smoke-stacks, engulfed her mails and passengers, dipped the Red +Ensign in farewell to Table Mountain, and sped homewards on even keel over +the heaving sapphire plain.</p> + +<p>Southampton Dock was a pure delight to Mr. and Mrs. W. Keyse. The Waterloo +Arrival platform sent thrills through their boot-soles to the roots of +their hair. They sat in the Pit at the Oxford that night, and there was a +South African sketch on with two of the chronic-est jossers you ever see, +gassing away in khâki behind earthworks of sacks stuffed with straw, and +standing up to chuck sentimental and patriotic ballads off their chests, +while the Enemy, who had kept up an intermittent rifle-practice at the +wing, left off—presumably to listen. "After being used to the Reel +Thing," W. Keyse said, "it was enough to make you up and blub!"</p> + +<p>That was the first disillusion. Others followed. The aunt who had +inhabited one of the ginger-brick almshouses over aginst 'Ighgyte Cemetery +was dead when they took her a whole pound of tea and three-quarters of +best cooked ham, and the delicacies had to be given to the old woman next +door, with whom the deceased had always had words. You couldn't 'ave +expected the old gal to last much longer, but still it was a blow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lobster had long ago given 'Melia the go-by, they learned, in return for +the ham and the tea; and they got her address and hunted her up in a +back-street behind the Queen's Crescent, and W. Keyse failed to recognise +his charmer of old in a red-nosed, frowsy slattern, married to a sweated +German in the baking-trade and mother of two of the dirtiest kids you +ever——! And Mrs. Keyse, to whom her William had expatiated upon the +subject of his family, maintained a portentous dumbness, punctuated with +ringing sniffs, during the visit, and was sarcastic on the bus, and +tearfully penitent when they got back to the Waterloo Road lodging that +was cheap at the weekly rent, she said, if you were paying for dirt and +live-stock.</p> + +<p>You couldn't spend your time enjoying yourself for ever, she added a +little later on, as their small joint purse of savings dwindled and that +pale ghost that men call Want began to hover about their hired bolster. W. +Keyse had thought of soliciting a re-engagement at the fried-fish shop in +the High Street, Camden Town, but it had been swept away in favour of an +establishment where they mended your boots while you waited. So he sought +elsewhere. The War had drained away so many men, one would have thought +employment could be had by any chap who took the trouble to walk about and +look for it. But the soles of W. Keyse's boots were worn to their last +thickness of brown paper, and all his clothes and Emigration Jane's, with +the exception of the things him and her had on, had been pawned before it +occurred to the man that that kind of walking ended in the Workhouse. The +woman had known it from the very beginning. The valorous deeds of W. Keyse +stood him in no good stead. London was stiff with liars who boasted of +having been through the Siege, and their lies were more ornamental and +sparkling than his truths.</p> + +<p>Mrs. W. Keyse would have took a situation as General, and glad, but there +were family reasons against that. She had broke down and cried somethink +dreadful on her William's shabby tweed shoulder the morning he went out to +answer the West End Doctor's advertisement. He kissed her and told her to +keep her hair on, but she was so hysterical that he was fair afryde to +leave 'er. So he took her along, and his good Angel must have suggested +that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span></p> + +<p>Cripps!—when the manservant in plain clothes said, "Step this way, +upstairs please"—W. Keyse and wife having applied at the area-door—"and +Dr. Saxham will see you," the name, not having been mentioned in the +advertisement, which gave only the address and an initial, imparted to +both an electrical shock of surprise. They had looked a very small and +very shabby and very lost and lonely little couple under those +high-moulded ceilings and upon the Turkey carpets that covered the +polished parquet of the handsomely-furnished and well-appointed +consulting-room that the practitioner who had caved in through South +African Gold-Mines had considered an adequate setting for his bald-browed +and portly presence. Now both curved backbones assumed the perpendicular, +and their wide Cockney mouths were wreathed in joyful smiles.</p> + +<p>The man sitting in the Sheraton armchair at the writing-table that matched +it, the man with the black head and square pale face and heavy muscular +shoulders, who looked up from among his papers and notebooks with the +receiver of a telephone at his ear, rose to his feet, and came to them +with a kind, outstretched hand. Saxham never wasted a word or forgot a +face. And here were two faces from Gueldersdorp. He shook the hands that +belonged to them, and said in his curt way:</p> + +<p>"How are you, Mrs. Keyse? And you, Keyse? You may guess when I heard that +somebody had called to answer my advertisement I hardly imagined that two +old patients had dropped down on me from the skies!"</p> + +<p>The young woman stared at Saxham with her mouth agape and the tears +trickling down her hollow cheeks. The young man swallowed something with a +violent effort, and blurted out:</p> + +<p>"Lumme, Doctor! it's more by 'arf like bein' shot up out of the Other +Shop—an' landin' in the middle of New Jerusalem! Weeks along"—he picked +up the shabby bowler that had dropped upon the Turkey carpet—"for weeks +along I've been tryin' to find out what was the matter wi' me! Now I +knows! I've bin 'omesick—fair old 'omesick for a sniffer of the very +plyce I was 'oppin' with 'appiness to git away out of four months back. +Good old Gueldersdorp!" He winked the wet out of his eyes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span> pointed to +Mrs. Keyse with his elbow. "An' look at 'er! Doin' a blub on the strength +of it! That's wot it is to be a woman! Ain't it, sir?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's keen glance took in the altered shape of the thin girl in the +mended jacket and the large and feathered hat that topped the colossal +structure of fair, frizzled hair, even as she dried her eyes with a +twopenny handkerchief edged with cotton lace, and tried to laugh. He took +the lean chin of W. Keyse between his white, strong, supple fingers, and +turned the triangular, hollow-cheeked face to the light, and said, +touching the little round blue scar left by the enemy's bullet at the +angle of the wide left nostril and the other mark of its egress below the +inner corner of the right eye:</p> + +<p>"You found out what a woman can be, my man, when she helped to nurse you +at the Hospital."</p> + +<p>"Gawd knows I did!" affirmed W. Keyse. "An' since she's bin' my wife——" +The prominent Adam's apple in his thin throat jerked. He gulped a sob down +as he looked at her. And the red flew up in her pale cheeks, and in her +eyes, as she returned the look of him, her master and her mate, there +shone the answering light of love. And Saxham's face darkened with angry +blood, and his strong, supple surgeon's hand clenched with the savage +impulse to dash itself in the face of this ragged, seedy, out-at-elbows +Millionaire who flaunted riches in the face of his own beggary.</p> + +<p>Never, never would a woman's eyes kindle with that sweet fire in answer to +the challenge of his own! Empty, empty the heart whose chambers were swept +and decked and garlanded for a guest who never came! Lonely, lonely, +desolate this life lived within sound of her, sight of her, touch of +her—dearer inexpressibly than ever woman was yet to man!</p> + +<p>He had said to her: "But come to me, and I shall be content—even happy. +Live under my roof, take the shelter of my name—I ask no more!"</p> + +<p>He asked more in the lonely nights that would never be companioned, in the +silence that would never be broken by Love's whisper or Love's kiss. He +was not content; his craving for her fretted the flesh from his bones and +gnawed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span> his heart like some voracious, sharp-fanged, predatory animal. +Happy—was he? Happy as one who sits beside a stream of living water and +yet must perish of drought. He could only imagine one greater misery, one +more excruciating torture, one more exquisite unhappiness than this +happiness she had conferred upon him—and that was to be without her.</p> + +<p>He drew a deep breath, and drove back his fierce, snarling misery, and +kicked it into its kennel, and befriended the absurd little couple. W. +Keyse was tested, proved capable of manipulating the steering-wheel, duly +certificated, and engaged. There were a couple of living-rooms over the +coach-house that was now a garage. Saxham sent in some plain furniture, +and behold an Eden! Pots of ferns purchased from a street hawker showed +greenly behind the tidiest muslin blinds you ever sor! and Mrs. William +Keyse, expectant mother of a potential Briton, sat behind them, and as she +patched the shirts that had been taken out of pawn—and whether they're +let out on hire to parties wanting such things or whether the mice eat +'oles in 'em, who can say? but the styte in which they come back from Them +Plyces is something chronic!—she sang, sometimes "Come, Buy My Coloured +'Erring," which they learned you along of the Tonic Sofa at the Board +School in Kentish Town; and sometimes "The Land Where Dreams Come True!"</p> + +<p>This was a fulfilled dream, this little, cheap home of two rooms—one of +them opening upon nothing by a loft-door—over a garage that had been a +coach-house, at the end of the paved yard looking towards the rear of the +tall, drab-stuccoed house whose high double plate-glass windows were +shielded from plebeian eyes by softly-quilled screens of silk muslin +running on polished brass rods. But when the electric lights were switched +on, before the inner blinds were drawn down, you could see quite plain +into the consulting-room, a little below your level, where the Doctor sat +at his big writing-table that was heaped with notebooks and papers and had +a telephone on it, and all sorts of mysterious instruments in shining +brass and silver, as brightly polished as the gleaming thing with a lid, +shaped like a violin-case and with a spirit-lamp underneath it, in which +all sorts of wicked-looking knives and forceps were boiled when they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span> were +taken out of the black bag; or into Mrs. Saxham's bedroom, that was on the +floor above, and was done up in the loveliest style you ever! "Not that +Missis W. Keyse would exchange 'er present quarters for Buckin'am Palace," +she declared, pouring out her William's tea, "if invited to do so by 'er +Majesty the Queen 'erself."</p> + +<p>William stopped blowing at his smoking saucer.</p> + +<p>"They s'y She's dyin'!" His face lengthened. He put the saucer down. "They +'ave it in the evenin' pypers!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Keyse had a flash of inspiration.</p> + +<p>"I reckon it don't seem dyin' to 'Er!"</p> + +<p>"Wot are you gettin' at?" asked the man in bewilderment.</p> + +<p>"I'm gettin' at it like this," said the lighter brain. "All 'er long life +she's 'ad to be a queen first, an' a wife after. Now she lays there she's +no more than a wife—a wife wots goin' to meet 'er 'usband agin after +yeers an' yeers o' waitin'. For 'er Crown she leaves be'ind 'er for 'er +son, but 'er weddin' ring goes wiv' 'er in 'er coffin! See?"</p> + +<p>"I pipe. Wonder wot 'Er an' 'Im 'll s'y to one another fust thing they +meet?"</p> + +<p>"They won't s'y nothink," said the visionary, soberly taking tea. "But I +shouldn't be surprised but wot they'd stand an' look in one another's +fyces wivout s'yin' a word, for a week or so by the Time Above, an' the +tears a-runnin' down an' never stoppin'!"</p> + +<p>"Garn! There ain't no cryin' in 'Eaven," said W. Keyse, beginning on the +bread-and-butter. "The Bible tells you so!"</p> + +<p>"That's right enough. But I lay Gawd lets folks do a bit o' blub—just +once," said Emigration Jane, "before 'E wipes their eyes, becos you don't +begin to know wot 'appiness means until you've cried for joy!"</p> + +<p>"I pretty near did when the Doctor give me this chauffeuring job, and so I +tell you stryte," affirmed her lord. "D'you know I 'ad a shy at thankin' +'im agyne, an' got my 'ead bit orf. 'Shut your damned mouth!'—that's wot +the Doctor s'ys to me. Well, I 'ave shut it!" He closed his jaws upon an +inch-thick slice. "But wot I s'y to myself is," he continued, masticating, +"that makes the Third Time, an' the Third Time's the Charm!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Wot do you mean by the third time, deer?" asked Mrs. Keyse, putting more +hot water in the teapot.</p> + +<p>"The First," said W. Keyse, with an air of mystery, "was in a saloon-bar +full o' Transvaal an' Free State Dutchies at Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>"Lor'! You don't ever mean——" began his wife, and stopped short. The +scene of her first meeting with W. Keyse flashed back upon her mental +vision. She saw the big man waking up out of his drunken stupor and +lurching to the rescue of the little one. "Was it 'im?" she panted, as the +teapot ran over on the clean coarse cloth. "Was it Dr. Saxham?"</p> + +<p>"You may tyke it from me it was." W. Keyse rescued the kettle, restored it +to the hob, returned to his place, and shook his finger at her warningly. +"And if you go to remind me as wot 'e were drunk when 'e done wot 'e +did——" He looked portentous warnings.</p> + +<p>"I never would. Oh, William!"</p> + +<p>"Mind as you never do, that's all!... I tried to thank 'im then," went on +W. Keyse, "an' 'e wouldn't 'ave it. I tried to thank 'im agyne at the +Hospital—an' e' wouldn't 'ave it. I tried to thank 'im yesterday on 'is +own doorstep, an' 'e wouldn't 'ave it. So wot I'm a-going to do is—Wait! +When I was a little nipper at Board School there was a fairy tyle in the +Third Standard Class Reader, all about a Lion wot 'ad syved the life of a +Louse, an' 'ow the Louse laid out to do somethin' to pay the Lion +back...."</p> + +<p>"I remember the tyle, deer," confirmed Mrs. Keyse, "But it was a +mouse"—she repressed a shudder—"an' not the—thing you said."</p> + +<p>"Mouse or Louse, it means the syme," declared W. Keyse with burning eyes. +"And the Doctor's goin' to find it does." He held up his lean right hand +and swore it. "So 'elp me, Jimmy Cripps!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LVIII" id="LVIII"></a>LVIII</h2> + + +<p>Lynette Saxham came into the consulting-room that was on the ground-floor +of the house in Harley Street, behind the room where patients waited their +turn. Her quick, light step and the silken rustling of the lining of her +gown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span> broke the spell that had bound the man who sat motionless in the +armchair before the Sheraton writing-table, staring with fixed eyes and +gripping the arms of his chair with unconscious force ...</p> + +<p>A faint, pleasant odour of Russia leather and camphor-wood came from the +dwarf bookcases that dadoed the walls. The room was quite dark; the two +high windows, screened by clear muslin blinds running on gilded rods, +showed pale parallelograms of cold twilight. The coachhouse and stable +building at the end of the paved yard showed as a cube of blackness. One +window in the centre of the wall was lighted up, and on its white cotton +blind the shadows of a man and woman acted a Domestic Play.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Saxham had been watching this? The shadow-man seemed to sit at a +table reading a newspaper by the light of the lamp behind him, the shadow +woman sat nearer the window, employed upon some homely kind of needlework. +Her outline when she rose, showed that the woman's great, mysterious +ordeal, the sacrament of keenest anguish by which her dearest and most +sacred joy is won, was very close upon her. She passed behind the man as +if to fetch something, stopped behind his chair, and drew her arm about +his neck, leaning her cheek down to his so that their two shadows became +one.</p> + +<p>The starving waif outside the window of the cook-shop knows no more +excruciating aggravation of his pangs than to look at food, and yet keeps +on looking. It may have been like this with Saxham, empty of all love, and +gnawed by the tooth of a sharper hunger than that which is merely +physical. He started out of his lethargy when his wife's voice reached +him.</p> + +<p>"Owen!... Why, you are sitting in the dark!"</p> + +<p>Lynette heard someone moving among the shadows. The electric reading-lamp +upon the writing-table diffused a mellow radiance under its green silk +shade. Two other globes sprang into shining life, and showed her, smiling, +and shrinking a little from the sudden incursion of light, as Saxham, with +the quiet, unhurried, scrupulous courtesy he always showed towards his +wife, received the heavy driving-mantle of sables that she dropped from +her shoulders, and laid it over a chair. A frosty breath from the outer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span> +atmosphere clung to it, but the silken lining was penetratingly warm, and +instinct with the sweetness of the woman, so much so that it was agony to +the man....</p> + +<p>She wore a white cloth gown of elegantly-simple cut, that revealed with +unostentatious art the lovely lines of the slender shape. A knot of white +and golden freesias, exhaling a clean, delicate perfume, was fastened at +her breast; her wonderful red-brown hair was shaded by a broad-brimmed +brown felt hat of Vandyke shape, with creamy drooping plumes. The rare +promise of her beauty had fulfilled itself in the last six months. She was +bewilderingly lovely.</p> + +<p>She drew out the jewelled pins that fastened her hat, and threw it down, +and took a favourite seat of hers beside the fire, and looked across at +the man who was her husband, smiling faintly as she held her little foot, +delicately shod, high-arched and slim, to the blaze of the wood-fire.</p> + +<p>"Do I interfere with your work? Are any patients waiting?"</p> + +<p>"It is past my hour for seeing patients," said Saxham, with a smile. "And +if anyone were waiting, you are an older client, and have the prior +claim."</p> + +<p>"We will have tea in here, then," she said, and touched the bell, adding: +"I am fond of this room."</p> + +<p>It was just now a place that was dear to Saxham. He came across to the +hearth and stirred the fire to a ruddier blaze, and stood at the opposite +side of it, leaning an arm upon the mantelshelf. The shining mirror above +it reflected a square black head that was getting grizzled, and the +profile of a face that was haggard and worn.</p> + +<p>The servant came with tea, and drew down the upper blinds, shutting out +that mocking shadow-play at which Saxham had been staring. As Lynette +busied herself with the shining silver and delicate Japanese porcelain, +there was a chance of studying, unobserved, the beloved book of her +face—a locked book to Saxham since that day in the Cemetery at +Gueldersdorp.</p> + +<p>Ah, what a face it was! It fascinated and held him. Such long, thick, +shadowy eyelashes, sweeping the white cheeks! Such a low, wide, perfectly +modelled forehead above them, with fine arched eyebrows, much darker than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span> +the richly rippling, parted hair that was coiled and twisted and roped +into a mass behind the small, delicate ears, as though its owner were +impatient of its luxuriance. Such a close-folded, mysterious mouth, with +deep-cut curves, hiding the pure white, rather overlapping teeth. An +irregular nose, rather square-ended, with eager nostrils; a rounded chin, +with a little cleft in it, went to the making of the face that Saxham and +many others thought so beautiful.</p> + +<p>Only something was wanting to it. "Animation," the physiognomist would +have said. "Vitality, mobility." "Health," might have thought the ordinary +observer, mistaking the bluish shadows under the drooped eyelids and about +the mouth and nostrils for the usual signals of debility.</p> + +<p>But Saxham, when he looked into the golden-hazel eyes, so often hidden by +the thick white eyelids, with their deep fringe of black-brown lashes, +said to himself with bitterness: "She is quite well. Nothing on earth is +wrong with her, except that she is not happy! I can give her everything +else on earth, it seems, but what she needs most of all!"</p> + +<p>Let Joy, that radiant torch of the soul, illuminate those dim windows, let +Happiness sink like sweet rain into the dry heart, and the whole woman +would awaken into vivid glowing beauty, like the parched South African +veld after the spring rains. Red tulips would bloom between the boulders; +exquisite glowing pelargoniums and snow-white or pale-blue iris would +clothe the baked earth. The ice-plant would no longer be the only green +thing growing in the crannies of the rock. Delicate ferns and dew-gemmed +pitcher-plants would quiver there, and the spikes of the many-coloured +gladioli would thrust from the earth like spears; and the sweet-scented +clematis and the passion-vine would trail and blossom in rose and white +and purple on the edges of the kloofs and gorges, every stem and leaf and +bud and blossom growing and rejoicing in the balmy breeze and the glorious +June sunshine; the cruel, lashing rains, the devastating floods, and the +burning droughts forgotten as though they had never been.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the heavy fringe of dark lashes drooped wearily on Lynette's +white cheeks, and the long-limbed, slight, supple body leaned back in the +favourite chair by the fireside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span> with a little air of languor that only +added to her allure. And Saxham, looking at her, said again in his heart:</p> + +<p>"Her children—let them settle the money upon her children!"</p> + +<p>She had learned to love, and thrilled at the touch of passion. Well, +Beauvayse was dead, but Love would come again. He would read its +resurrection in the radiance of those eyes. Then, exit Saxham! Such a +marriage as theirs could be easily dissolved, but he would not take the +easy road. He had decided. His should be the strait and narrow way of +death. His death was a debt he owed her. You are to learn why!</p> + +<p>While he reviewed, for the thousandth time, this determination of his, and +told himself again how the thing should be done, his tea had grown quite +cold. She leaned forwards and touched his sleeve in drawing his attention +to the neglected cup, and flushed because he started and looked at her so +strangely.</p> + +<p>He never, if it could be avoided, touched her. Her old shrinking from him +had worn away. His companionship, though he did not guess it, was to her +desirable—even dear. The light, firm tread of his small muscular feet, +the curt, decided utterance, made welcome music in her ears. She would +watch him without his knowledge when they went abroad together. The esteem +in which his peers and seniors held him, the deference with which his +opinions were solicited and listened to gave her strange delightful throbs +of pride.</p> + +<p>She had felt the first stirring of that pride in him when the man who had +been the thinking brain and the beating heart of beleaguered Gueldersdorp +had said, wringing her husband's hand:</p> + +<p>"'<i>If</i>' you have been of any use to me.... 'If'.... You have been my right +hand and my mainstay from first to last, Saxham, and while I live I shall +remember it!"</p> + +<p>Brave words—heartsome words for the hearing of a woman who had loved him. +Lynette was almost sorry that she did not.</p> + +<p>He did not believe that he had won any hearts in Gueldersdorp. His +curtness, his roughness, his harshness had been unfavourably commented +upon many and many a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span> time. Yet when he left them, how the people cheered! +What volumes of roaring sound from lusty throats had bidden him good-bye +and God-speed!</p> + +<p>"Hurrah for the Doctor! Three cheers for Saxham! Don't forget us, Doc! +Come back again! God bless you, Saxham! Bravo, Saxham! Saxham! Saxham! +Hurrah!"</p> + +<p>A woman who had loved him would have wept for joy. A pity his wife did +not!</p> + +<p>How strangely Owen had looked at her just now, when she had brushed his +sleeve lightly with her finger-tip! How curious it was that he never +touched her if he could help it! She had quite forgotten having told him +that, while she liked to know him near, she could not endure the thought +of being taken by him, caressed by him, held in his embrace.... That had +been the frank, truthful expression of her feelings at the time. She did +not recoil so from his contact now. She had not realised how deeply her +words had wounded the man's great, suffering, patient heart. Spoken, they +had passed from her memory. It is so natural for a fair, sweet woman to +forget! It is so impossible for a man who has been stabbed to help +remembering, with the deep, bleeding wound unclosed!</p> + +<p>There was another thing that Saxham did not know. Although, as time went +on, the beloved image of the Mother, cherished in the innermost shrine of +her adopted daughter's heart, suffered no change in the clear, firm beauty +of its outlines or deterioration in the richness of its tender and austere +and gracious colouring; and each new day supplied some fresher garland of +old imperishable memories to grace it with;—that Shape with the +grey-green jewel-eyes and the gay mouth that laughed had faded—faded! She +would not own it even to herself, but the keen edge of her grief for +Beauvayse was blunted. The anniversary of his death, occurring in the +coming month of February, was to be a solemn retreat of sacred prayer for +her. But it was the Mother's death-day also, when to the palm of martyrdom +had been added the Saint's crown. She was going to spend three days at the +Kensington Convent, where the dead nun had taken the vows. She told Saxham +now of the arrangement she had made through Lady Castleclare, who was +intimate with the Superior.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It will be a little like old times," she said to Saxham, "living in a +Convent again. And there are many Sisters there who knew Mother, and loved +her——"</p> + +<p>Her eyes swam in sudden tears. And Saxham, as he looked at her, felt his +heart contract in a spasm of bitter jealousy. All that love for the dead, +and not a crumb for the living! He saw Beauvayse, his rival still, +stretching a hand from the grave to keep her from him. And he could have +cried aloud:</p> + +<p>"Those tears are for a trickster who cheated you into loving him. Listen, +now, and I, who have never lied, even to win you, will show him to you as +he really was!..."</p> + +<p>But he did not yield to the temptation to enlighten her. A vision rose up +before him of a dying man on a camp-bed, and he heard his own voice +saying:</p> + +<p>"I will never tell her! I will not blacken any man's reputation to further +my own interests!"</p> + +<p>She was speaking, telling him something. He came back out of the fierce +mental struggle to listen to the voice that was so sweet and clear, and +yet so cold, so cold....</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Imagine it! I met an old friend to-day at my dressmaker's in Conduit +Street. Not a man. A girl who was a pupil at the Convent at +Gueldersdorp—or, rather, I should say a woman, for she is married."</p> + +<p>Saxham asked:</p> + +<p>"Is she an Englishwoman or a Colonial?"</p> + +<p>"She is of mingled French and Dutch blood. She was a Miss Du Taine. Her +father was a member of the Volksraad at Pretoria. He controls large +interests on the Rand, and has an estate near Johannesburg. She is married +to an English gentleman. He is very rich, and has a title. She told it me, +but I have forgotten it. She asked me to drive home and lunch with +her...." She hesitated. "I did not want to go," she said.</p> + +<p>"Well, and what happened then?" Saxham asked.</p> + +<p>"I made some kind of excuse, and hailed a hansom, and drove to Lady +Castleclare's. I lunched with her. She is always very kind. She thought +the pearls were beautiful. But—but surely they cost you a great deal of +money?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span></p> + +<p>She touched a string of the gleaming, milky things that encircled her +white throat above the lace cravat. Saxham said, smiling:</p> + +<p>"They did not cost more than I could afford to pay. I am glad you liked +them. I told Marie to put them on your dressing-table, where you would be +likely to see them in the morning."</p> + +<p>"You are too good to me!" she said, with quivering lips, looking at him. +Her white hand wavered in the air, as though she meant to stretch it out +to him.</p> + +<p>"It is not possible to be too good—to you!" said Saxham curtly. He would +not see the outstretched hand. She drew it back, and faltered:</p> + +<p>"You give me everything——"</p> + +<p>"You have given <i>me</i> what I most wanted in the world!" he lied bravely.</p> + +<p>"But"—she rose and stood beside him on the hearthrug, tall, and fair, and +slender, and oh! most seductively, maddeningly sweet to his adoring +thought—"but you take nothing for yourself. That bedroom of yours at the +top of the house is wretchedly bare and comfortless; and then, those +absurd pictures!"</p> + +<p>She laughed ruefully, recalling the row of pictorially-illustrated nursery +rhymes that adorned the brown-paper dado of Saxham's third-floor bedroom, +the previous tenant having been a family man.</p> + +<p>"—Little Miss Muffet and Georgy Porgy; the Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, +and the Cow that jumped over the Moon. How can you endure them?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and was startled by the set grimness of his face and +the thunderous lowering of the black smudge of eyebrow. He said:</p> + +<p>"You went to my room to-day. Why?"</p> + +<p>She crimsoned, and stammered:</p> + +<p>"It was this morning, after you had gone out. I—it struck me that your +linen ought to be overlooked and put to rights from time to time. How did +you know?"</p> + +<p>He did not explain that the perfume of her hair, of her breath, of her +dress, had lingered when she had gone, to tempt and taunt and torture him. +He said nothing of the little knot of violets that had dropped from her +breast upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span> the floor, and he had found there. His heart beat against it +even then. He answered:</p> + +<p>"You told me yourself. And, as for the linen, let it be. The housekeeper +knows that she is expected to attend to it."</p> + +<p>"She isn't your wife!"</p> + +<p>Her golden eyes flashed at him rebelliously. He was provoking her, in his +innocence of all intention, as a subtle wooer might have planned to do.</p> + +<p>"I am extremely glad that she is not." His mouth relaxed in a smile, and +his thunderous brows smoothed themselves. "And now, don't you think you +ought to go and dress? You are dining with Lady Hannah and Major Wrynche +at The Carlton at seven, and going on to a theatre." He held his watch +out. "Six-thirty now," he said, and restored the chronometer to his +waistcoat pocket.</p> + +<p>"Very well." She moved a step or two in the direction of the door, and +turned her head as gracefully as a young deer, and looked back at him. +"But you are coming, too?" she said, and her eyes were very soft.</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"It is impossible. I have several urgent cases to visit, and there is an +article for the <i>Scientific Review</i>." He moved his hand slightly in the +direction of some sheets of manuscript that lay upon the blotting-paper. +"I have a heavy night's work before me with that alone. My excuses have +already been telephoned to Lady Hannah."</p> + +<p>"Owen!"——</p> + +<p>She spoke his name in a whisper.</p> + +<p>—"Owen!"</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"Couldn't I?—would you care to have me?—may I stay and dine at home with +you?"</p> + +<p>"And disappoint your friends!... Most certainly not. Unless, indeed"—his +tone warmed to interest—"unless you are not feeling well?"</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly well, thanks!" she said coldly.</p> + +<p>"Then go to your dinner and your play, child," said Saxham, with the smile +that changed and softened his harsh features almost into beauty. "I will +drive with you to The Carlton, and fetch you from the play. Which of the +theatres have you decided to patronise?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Lady Hannah and the Major left the choice to me," she said, with a little +touch of girlish importance, "so I telephoned to Nickalls in Bond Street +for a box at The Leicester. He had not got one; he sent me three stalls +for 'The Chiffon Girl' at The Variety instead. It is a revival. I don't +quite know what that means," she added, rather puzzled by Saxham's silence +and the grimness of his face. "You do not mind at all? You do not think it +is the kind of play the Mother would not have liked me to see?"</p> + +<p>"No!" said Saxham curtly, and with averted eyes.</p> + +<p>She bent her head to him as he opened the door, and went away to her own +rooms on the floor above, the drawing-room that was upholstered and hung +with delicate, green-and-white, rose-garlanded Pompadour brocade, and +graceful water-colours from famous hands, and furnished with every luxury +and elegance that the heart of woman could desire; the charming boudoir, +pink as a sea-shell, and full of new books and old china; the bedroom, +with the blue-and-white decorations, where an ivory Crucifix that had +always stood upon the Mother's writing-table hung above the dainty bed....</p> + +<p>"I think he is a little hard on me at times," she said, as she passed +through the warm, firelit, perfumed rooms that were fragrant with the +narcissi and violets and lilies that were sent in by his orders, and +strewn with the costly, pretty trifles that she, who had been used to the +barrack-like bareness of the Convent, delighted in like a child, and the +gleaming mirrors gave her back her loveliness. "He treats me as if I were +a stranger. And, after all, I am his wife...."</p> + +<p>Saxham's patients found him even curter and more brusque in manner than +usual that evening, and the article for the <i>Scientific Review</i> made +little way. He threw down his pen at last, and leaned his head upon his +hands and wondered, staring at the unfinished page of manuscript with eyes +that saw no meaning in the sentences, whether any man born of woman had +ever been so great a fool as the man who had written them?</p> + +<p>To have made that promise of secrecy to the dead traitor was an act of +sheer, quixotic folly. To have kept it was madness, nothing less. And yet +Saxham knew that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span> would keep it always. That if she ever learned the +truth, it would be hinted by the chance remark of some stranger, gathered +from a paragraph in some newspaper. There was a small-print line at the +bottom of the quarter-column devoted by the compilers of Whittinger's +"Peerage" to the Marquisate of Foltlebarre, which might have enlightened +her. He turned to it now, and read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Viscountess Beauvayse, Esther, dau: of Samuel Levah, Esq., +of Finsbury, E.C., mar: June, 1899, the late John Basil +Edward Tobart, Lieut. Grey Hussars, 11th Viscount Beauvayse. +Killed in action during the defence of Gueldersdorp, Feb., +1900, while atta: as Junior aide to the Staff of Colonel +Commanding H.M. Forces, leaving issue one dau: The Hon. +Alyse Rosabel Tobart, now aged eighteen months."</p></div> + +<p>At the Clubs, Service and Civil, Saxham had heard the impromptu marriage +of the late John Basil Edward Tobart freely discussed. The story of his +subsequent entanglement "with some girl or other at Gueldersdorp" had been +mooted in his presence a dozen times by Society chatterers, whose +enjoyment of the scandal would have been pleasantly stimulated by the +knowledge that "Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., late Attached Medical Staff," was +married to the girl. But they did not know, and she ...</p> + +<p>What use—what use in her knowing? Of what avail could be the melting of +the ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, the +quickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for a +reason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burning +forehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolate +soul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him. +Far better that she should never know!</p> + +<p>It was growing late, and he had promised to fetch her from the theatre. +The silver clock upon the mantelshelf chimed ten. He had stretched his +hand to the telephone to ring up his motor-brougham from the garage, when +he heard the click of her latchkey in the outer door and the silken +whisper of her garments passing quickly through the hallway. Then came a +knock at the consulting-room door—sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlike +Lynette's soft tap.... At the summons Saxham made two strides across the +carpet and opened to her, a question on his lips.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why have you come back so early? Has anything happened?"</p> + +<p>Even as he asked, her look told why. She knew....</p> + +<p>She knew.... Her face was rigid, a pure white mask of ivory; there was not +a trace of colour even in the set lips. Her eyes burned upon him, twin +flames of dark amber, steady under levelled brows. She was wrapped in a +long ermine-caped and bordered black brocade mantle, that gleamed with jet +<i>passementerie</i>; a scarf of white lace covered her head. It hid the +red-brown hair with the Clytie ripple in it, and the great silken coils, +transfixed by a sapphire and diamond dagger, that were massed at the nape +of the slender neck. Seen so, she was nunlike in her chaste severity, but +for those stern, resentful eyes.</p> + +<p>"I have come to tell you that I am no longer in ignorance. I have found +out what you have hidden from me so long—what the Wrynches knew and would +not tell me; what the world has known while I sat in the dark...."</p> + +<p>A spasm wrung her mouth. Saxham rolled a chair towards her. He said +guardedly, avoiding her eyes:</p> + +<p>"Until you acquaint me in detail with what you have heard, I cannot +explain or defend myself. Will you not sit down? You are looking pale and +overwrought."</p> + +<p>She laid one slight gloved hand upon the chair-back, and leaned upon it.</p> + +<p>"I would rather stand, if you have no objection, whilst I tell you what I +have learned to-night. I dined alone with Lady Hannah at the Carlton; we +went together to the theatre—Major Wrynche had had a summons to attend at +Marlborough House."</p> + +<p>She untied the knot of lace beneath her chin, and stripped away the long +gloves with nervous haste and impatience, and tossed them with the scarf +upon the chair beside her, and went on:</p> + +<p>"I had heard much of 'The Chiffon Girl.' I wanted to see it. When the +First Act began I wondered very much why they called it a Musical Comedy, +when the noise the orchestra made could hardly be called music; and there +was no comedy—only slang expressions and stupid jokes. But the actress +who sang and danced in the principal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span> part ... Miss Lavigne ..." She had +loosened her mantle; now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emerging +from its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging, +creamy-white draperies; her exquisite arms bare to the shoulder, and +clasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets of barbaric gold, her +nymph-like bosom swelling from the folded draperies of the low-cut bodice +like a twin-budded narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweet +throat clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls.</p> + +<p>"She could not sing, though the people applauded and encored her"—there +was a gleam of disdain in the golden eyes—"but she was very pretty ... +she danced with wonderful grace and lightness ... it was like a swallow +dipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore—like a branch of +red pomegranate-blossoms swayed and swung by a spring breeze.... I admired +her, and yet I was sorry for her.... To have to pose and bound and whirl +before all those rows and rows of staring faces night after night!..."</p> + +<p>Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his cheek as he said:</p> + +<p>"She would hardly thank you for pitying her."</p> + +<p>"She would be right to resent my pity!" Lynette burst out with sudden +vehemence. "She has been injured, and I was the cause! Oh! how could you +be so cruel as to let me go on loving him? Was it kind? Was it fair to +yourself and me?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's square, pale face was perfectly expressionless. He waited in +silence to hear the rest.</p> + +<p>"You know of whom I speak ..." said Lynette. "He was gay and beautiful and +winning—not chivalrous, as I believed him; not honest, or sincere, or +true. Months before we met at Gueldersdorp he was the husband of this +actress—the woman I saw upon the stage to-night. And you knew all this, +and never told me! You knew that his memory was sacred in my heart. A +woman I was introduced to here in London once tried to blacken it. She +said she wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I laughed +in her face as I turned and left her. 'You thought to make me hate him,' I +said. 'You have failed miserably. If it were possible to love him +better—if I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span> honour his memory more than I do now, I would, because +of the evil you have spoken of my dead!'"</p> + +<p>She heard Saxham draw breath heavily. She went on with increased passion, +and gathering resentment:</p> + +<p>"All my life long I might have gone on in my blindness, honouring the +dishonourable, cherishing the base, but for the idle gossip of two +strangers in the theatre to-night—a man and a woman in the stalls behind +us. They talked all the louder when the lights went down. They wondered +'why the Lavigne did not star on the programme as a Viscountess?' but, of +course, they said, 'the Foltlebarres would never stand that! They were +nearly wild when that handsome scamp of theirs married her—poor Beauty +Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars.' He and she had kept house together; there +was a kiddie coming; they said the little woman played her cards +uncommonly well!... The marriage was pulled off on the quiet at a +Registrar's a week or so before Beau got his appointment on the Staff. +Straight of the fellow, but afterwards, at Gueldersdorp, didn't he kick +over the matrimonial pole? Somebody had seen his engagement to a Miss +Something-or-other announced in a Siege newspaper, published the very day +he got killed.... Poor beggar! Rough on him, and rough on the +Foltlebarres, and a facer for Lessie ... and what price the girl?' And I +was the girl!... It was of me they were talking!..."</p> + +<p>Her lips writhed back from her white teeth. She winced and shuddered. "Oh! +can't you see me sitting and listening, and every word vitriol, burning to +the bone?"</p> + +<p>"Why did you remain," said Saxham, wrung by pity, "to be tortured by such +prurient prattlers? Why did you not get up and leave the place?"</p> + +<p>"I could not move," she said.... "I could only sit and listen. Then the +First Act ended, and the lights went up, and Lady Hannah touched my arm. I +knew when our eyes met that she had heard as I had. She got up, saying, 'I +think we have had enough of this?' and then we came away."</p> + +<p>She caught her breath and bit her underlip, and he saw her eyes grow +misty.</p> + +<p>"She sent a Commissionaire to call a hansom.... She took my hand as we +stood waiting in the empty vestibule.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span> She said: 'Those chattering pies +behind us have saved me some bad half-hours! Your husband, for some reason +of his own, has never told you. And it has more than once occurred to me +that if I were the true friend I want to be to both of you, I'd have +proved it before now by telling you myself. But I've learned to be +doubtful of my own inspirations!...' I asked her then if all they had said +was true? She shrugged her shoulders and nodded: '<i>Pour tout dire</i>, they +let Beau down rather gently.... But if he never could tell the truth to a +woman, he never went back on a man; and, after all, these things run in +the blood. <i>Passons l'éponge là-dessus.</i> Forget him, and thank your good +Angel you're married to an honourable man!'"</p> + +<p>Saxham's eyes were on the carpet. He did not raise them or move a muscle +of his face.</p> + +<p>"She told me to forget him. It is easier to forgive him; there are deceits +that smirch the soul of the deceived no less than the deceiver. He lied to +the Mother—that I cannot pardon! Perhaps some day—but I do not know. +Lady Hannah called you honourable.... I needed no one to tell me what you +are and have always been! You hide the things that other men boast of.... +You are loyal even to those you scorn. You kept his secret. I have +reproached you to-night for keeping it, even while I honoured you in my +heart!"</p> + +<p>"Do not honour me," said Saxham harshly, "for behaving with common +decency! Can a man tell tales on another who is dead? To commit murder +would be a crime less cowardly. I do myself mere justice when I say that I +am incapable of an act so vile! Nor would I blacken a living man to make +myself show whiter in any man's—or woman's eyes!"</p> + +<p>She was no longer pale. A lovely colour flushed her, and her eyes were +wistful and very kind. Her draperies rustled as she moved towards him. +"Owen ..." she said, and her white hands were held out to him, and her +sweet mouth quivered, and her voice was a sigh, "I am alive at last to +your infinite generosity. I beg you to forgive me for being blind before!"</p> + +<p>"Generosity," said Saxham, "does not enter into the question. My silence +has no merits whatever. What good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span> could I have gained by telling you?" He +lifted his eyes, and met hers full, dropping the words coldly one by one. +"The advantage one has ceased to desire can hardly be called gain, in any +sense of the word. And—I have left off crying for the moon. Even were you +willing to give it me, I have ceased to wish for your love!"</p> + +<p>She looked at him with piteous, incredulous wistfulness, as he told the +hardy lie. His mask of a face revealed nothing, but he could not disguise +the rage of hunger for her that ravened in his famished eyes. They were +upon her lips, her throat, the lovely curves of her young bosom even as he +spoke; she felt them as the kisses of a fierce, possessive mouth, and +glowed with sudden shame, and something more. He saw her beauty change +from the pale rose to the fire-hearted crimson, tore away his eyes, and +mastered himself. He stepped back, and the still out-stretched, quivering +hands dropped nervelessly at her sides.</p> + +<p>"You have asked me to pardon you," he said, "for some fancied lack of +perception. It is I who owe an apology to you. Try and forgive me for +having married you.... I should have known from the first that no good or +happiness could ever come of a contract like ours."</p> + +<p>"Have I ever said I was unhappy?" she demanded. Her breath came quick and +short.</p> + +<p>"Your face has said so very often," returned Saxham, looking at it, +"though you were too considerate to tell me so in words. But I ask you on +this night that sees you freed from an illusion, to have courage and not +yield to depression. Your fetters may be broken sooner than you think!"</p> + +<p>"Owen!..."</p> + +<p>She was paler than before, if that could be possible. She swayed a little, +and caught at the back of a chair that was near, and there was terror in +her darkened, dilated eyes....</p> + +<p>"Do you say this to prepare me? Have you any illness? Do you mean that you +are going to die?"</p> + +<p>"I meant nothing ..." answered Saxham, "except that men are mortal, +sometimes fortunately for the women who are bound to them! Go to bed, my +child; to sleep will do you good."</p> + +<p>"Good-night," she said, and dropped her head, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span> went away. He opened +the door for her, and locked it after her, and went back to the +writing-table, and sat in his chair. He gripped the arms of it in anguish, +and the sweat of agony stood on the broad forehead where a woman who had +loved him would have laid her lips.</p> + +<p>He had repelled her, slighted her, wounded her.... He knew what it had +cost him not to take those offered hands.... He was tortured and wrung in +body and in soul as he took a key that hung upon his chain and unlocked a +deep drawer, and took a flask from it that gurgled as if some mocking +sprite had laughed aloud when he shook it close to his ear. He whom she +had praised as honourable was a traitor no less than the dead man. He had +said to her, months ago in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp:</p> + +<p>"I may die, but I will never fail you!"</p> + +<p>He had not died, and he had failed her. The Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp was +drinking hard again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LIX" id="LIX"></a>LIX</h2> + + +<p>Before you turn away in loathing of the man whose experience of Life's +game of football had been chiefly gained from the ball's point of view, +hear how it happened that the work of all those months of stern +self-repression and strenuous denial had been rendered useless.</p> + +<p>In the previous July, when Sir Danvers Muller was visiting Lord Williams +of Afghanistan at Pretoria, Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., had been married +to Lynette Bridget-Mary Mildare at the Registrar's Office, Gueldersdorp, +and at the Catholic Church. One hour after the ceremony the happy pair +left by the mail for Cape Town.</p> + +<p>Gueldersdorp turned out to do them honour. We have heard the people cheer. +Three days and three nights of the Express, delayed in places by the +wrecking of the line, and then the Alpine mountain-ranges sank and +dwindled with the mercury in the thermometer. The little white towns +succeeded each other like pearls on a green string. Humpy blue hills gave +way to the flats, and then in the shadow of Table Mountain—Babel's +confusion of tongues—and the stalwart flower of many nations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span> arrayed +and armed for battle, and the glory, and pomp, and power of War.</p> + +<p>The grey and white transports disgorged them, ants of sober, neutral +colours, marching in columns to attack other ants. They grew upon the +vision and filled it, and the sound of their feet was louder than the +beating of the surf on Sea Point, and although martial music beat and blew +them on—a brazen whirlwind dominating the mind, blaring at the ears—the +trampling of men's feet and the hoofs of horses, and the rolling of +iron-shod wheels, triumphed in the long-run.</p> + +<p>Saxham engaged rooms at the Trafalgar Hotel, a handsome caravanserai +standing in its own gardens at the top of Imperial Avenue, for himself and +his wife, and the savage irony that can be conveyed in the term struck +him, not for the first time since he had laid gold and silver on the open +book, and endowed a woman with the gift of himself and all his worldly +goods.</p> + +<p>It was early in the forenoon. They were to sail next day. The big building +was crammed, not only with officers under orders for the Front, and their +wives, who had come to see them start. Society had descended like a flock +of chattering, gaudily-plumaged paroquets upon the spot where new and +exciting sensations were to be had. For the trampling feet and the rolling +wheels that ceaselessly went North imparted one set of thrills, and the +long trains of wounded and dying that met and passed them, coming down as +they went up, gave another kind. Amongst the poor dears in the trucks, and +waggons, and Ambulance-carriages you might eventually find a man you +knew.... The sporting odds were given and taken on these exciting chances; +and the fluttering and screaming paroquets that crowded the Railway +Stations, in spite of their gay feathers, bore no little resemblance to +carrion-feeding birds of prey.</p> + +<p>Saxham, Recently Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, suffered from the +notoriety inseparable from the name of a man who has been thrice mentioned +in Despatches, and has been publicly thanked by the representatives of an +Imperial Government. The Interviewer yapped at his heels whithersoever he +went, and the Correspondent strove to lure him into confidences, and +Society fluttered at him with shrill squawkings, and wanted to know, don't +you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span> know? It must have been "devey" and "twee" to have gone through all +those experiences. It was the year when "devey," and "twee," and similar +abbreviations first became fashionable.</p> + +<p>There were pleasanter episodes than these, when soldierly, bronzed +warriors and simple, unaffected men of great affairs, expressed to Saxham +in few words their belief that he had done his duty. The approval of these +warmed him and helped to raise him higher. It was a little creature, a +human insect no bigger than a bar-tender, that brought about the mischief.</p> + +<p>There was an American bar on the ground-floor of the Trafalgar. Saxham +stood upon the threshold of the place, replying to the questions of a +group of Colonial officers, New South Wales Mounted Engineers and Canadian +Rangers, when somebody suggested Drinks, and led the way in. Invited to +make his choice from a long list of alcoholic mixtures, beginning with +Whisky Straight, and ending with Bosom Caresser and Gin Sour, Saxham said +that he would take a glass of ice-water.</p> + +<p>"Well, boss, since you're on the Temperance Walk," said the Australian, +his would-be host, a little huffily, "you'll please yourself, I suppose?" +He collected the preferences of his other guests, and gave the orders to +the man behind the bar.</p> + +<p>The barman had the misfortune to be a joker of the practical kind. Seeing +Saxham held in conversation by one of the other men, he winked +portentously at the New South Waler, and whispered in his ear.</p> + +<p>The Australian understood. A reason for Saxham's abstinence had been given +him. The new-made bridegroom as a rule shuns Alcohol. And in proportion to +his desire to avoid, grows the determination of other men to compel him to +drink. The bridegroom is fair game all the world over for the Rabelaisian +jest and the clown's horseplay.</p> + +<p>The bar-tender, hoisting his eyebrows to his scollops of gummed hair, +winked at the New South Waler with infinite meaning, and pointed to a +cut-glass carafe that stood on the shining nickel-plated counter. It +appeared to contain pure sparkling water, but the liquor it held was +knock-out whisky, a tintless drink of exceeding potency, above proof.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span> The +Australian shook his head. But he laughed under his neat moustache as he +turned away, and the bar-tender concluded to carry his joke through. He +dealt out the drinks to their respective owners, and with a dexterous +sweep of a shirt-sleeved arm brought the innocent-seeming carafe and a +gleaming, polished tumbler immediately before the square-faced hulking +doctor with the queer blue eyes, whose pretty bride of three days was +waiting for him in their room upon the third floor of the humming, +overcrowded caravanserai. Saxham, absorbed by the thought of her, poured +out a tumblerful of the clear, sparkling stuff, and had half emptied it +before he realised the trick. His eyes grew red with injected blood, and +his hair bristled on his head. He struck out once across the narrow +counter. The long wall-mirror behind the bar-tender cracked and starred +with the crashing impact of the joker's skull, and the man fell senseless, +bleeding from the mouth and nostrils.</p> + +<p>Another attendant came running at the crash, and the exclamations of those +who had seen the swift retaliation wreaked. Saxham, leaving a banknote +lying on the counter, wheeled abruptly, and went out of the bar.</p> + +<p>His brain was on fire. His blood ran riot in his burning veins, and the +vice he had deemed dead stirred in the depths of his being, lifted its +slender head, and hissed, quivered a forked tongue, and struck with +poisoned fangs. He went out into the purple night that wedded lovers would +have found so perfect. The great white stars winked down at him jeeringly, +and a little mocking breeze sniggered among the mimosas and palms of the +hotel gardens. He passed out of them into the many-tongued Babel of the +streets, packed with humanity, throbbing with virile life, and tramped the +magnificent avenues and wide electric-lighted streets of Cape Town with +the thousands who had no beds at all, and the ten thousand who had, but +preferred not to occupy them. To his narrow couch in the dressing-room +adjoining Lynette's bedroom her husband dared not go.</p> + +<p>So he wore the night out, doggedly wrestling with the demon that boils the +blood of strong fierce men to forgetfulness of compacts and breach of +oaths. Daybreak touched him with a chilly shivering finger, a hulking +figure dozing on one of the white-painted iron seats near the Athletic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span> +Ground on Greenpoint Common. The last lingering star throbbed itself out, +a white moth dying in the marvellous rose and orange fires of dawn, and +the overwhelming, brooding bulk of Table Mountain gleamed, an emerald and +sapphire splendour against the rising sun, and the two lesser peaks that +are the mountain's bodyguard shone glowing in golden mail as Saxham got to +his feet, and shook some order into the disorder of his dress, and faced +hotelwards.</p> + +<p>Despair was in the heart of the Dop Doctor, and for him the wonder of the +dawn, the marvel of the sunrise meant no more than if he had been born +blind. A menial's trick had wrought him confusion; his will, in the saving +strength of which he had trusted, was a leaf in the wind of his desire. +Even now his throat and tongue were parched, his being thirsted for the +liquor he had abjured.</p> + +<p>What was to be done? What was to happen in the future? He asked himself in +vain. As Mouille Point shut its fixed red eye in apparent derision, and +the Greenpoint Light winked a thirteen-mile wink and went out, unlike the +Hope that had burned in Saxham, and would be rekindled never more.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LX" id="LX"></a>LX</h2> + + +<p>Pity the man now as he sat brooding alone in the consulting-room, consumed +by the thirst he shuddered at, once more an unwilling slave to the habit +he abhorred.</p> + +<p>He unscrewed the large flask and drank, and his lips curled back with +loathing of the whisky, and his gorge rose at it as it went down. Then he +put the flask back and locked the drawer, and laid his head down upon his +folded arms in silence. No help anywhere! No hope, no joy, no love!</p> + +<p>Death must come. Death should come, before the shadow of disgrace fell +upon the Beloved, of whose love he knew now that he had never been worthy. +Well for Lynette that he had never won it! Happy for her that she had +never even learned to care for him a little!</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>A few days more, and the great Victorian Age had drawn its last breath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span></p> + +<p>The people went about the London streets softly, as though their footsteps +led them through the stately, grand, and solemn chamber where lay the +august, illustrious Dead.</p> + +<p>A subdued, busy hum of preparation was perceptible to the ear. The eye saw +the thoroughfares being covered with sand, the draperies of purple rising +at the bidding of the pulley and the rope, the carts laden with wreaths +and garlands of laurel, passing from point to point, discharging their +loads, often renewed.</p> + +<p>A lady was ushered into Saxham's consulting-room as a long procession of +those carts went creaking by. She was a dainty, piquante, golden-haired, +blue-eyed little woman, quite beautifully dressed. Her gown was of black, +in deference to the national mourning, but it glittered with sequins, and +huge diamonds scintillated in her tiny ears, and she wore a mantle of +royal ermine, that reached to the high heels of her little shoes. Her hat +was of the toque description. Ermine and lace and artificial blooms from +Parisian shop-window-gardens went to make up the delicious effect. A +titled name adorned her card, which bore a Mayfair address. She seemed in +radiant health. As Saxham waited, leaning forward in his consulting-chair, +to receive the would-be patient's confidence, you can imagine those blue +eyes of his, once so hard and keen, looking out of their hollowing caves +with a sorrowful, clear sympathy that was very different from their old +regard. To his women-patients he was exquisitely considerate. Only to one +class of patient was he merciless and unsparing.</p> + +<p>Upon the woman who desired to rid herself of her sex-privilege, upon the +wedded wanton who sought to make of her body, designed by her Maker to be +the cradle of an unborn generation, its sepulchre, Saxham's glance fell +like a sharp curved sword. He wasted few words upon her, but each +sentence, as it fell from his grim mouth, shrivelled and corroded, as +vitriol dropped on naked human flesh. He listened now in silence that grew +grimmer and grimmer, and as in flute-like accents, their smooth course +hampered by the very slightest diffidence, the little lady explained, +those heavy brows of his grew thunderous.</p> + +<p>Ah, the tragic errand, the snaky purpose, coiled behind those graceful, +ambiguous forms of speech! Not new the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span> tale to the man who sat and heard. +She admired the black-haired, powerful head, and the square, pale face +with its short, aquiline, rather heavily-modelled features, and the broad, +white forehead that the single smudge of eyebrow barred pleased her, as it +did most women. Only the man's vivid blue eyes were unpleasantly hard and +fixed in their regard, and his mouth frightened her, it was so stern and +set.</p> + +<p>She was not as robust as she appeared, she said. When she had been +married, the family physician had mentioned to her mother that it would +hardly be advisable.... Delay for a year or two would be wise. And her +husband did not care for children. He was quite willing. He had sent her +to Saxham, in fact. Of course, the Profession of Surgery had made such +huge strides that risk need not enter into consideration for a moment.... +And heaps of her women friends did the same. And expense was absolutely no +object, and would not Dr. Saxham——</p> + +<p>Saxham struck a bell that was upon his table, and rose up with his +piercing eyes upon her and crossed the room in two strides. He flung the +door wide. He bowed to her with cool, withering, ironical courtesy as he +stood waiting for her to depart.</p> + +<p>She hesitated, laughed with the ring of hysteria, fluttered into speech.</p> + +<p>"You are not, of course, aware of it, but I happen to be an old +schoolfellow of your wife's." Her pretty, inquisitive eyes went back to +the writing-table, where stood a photograph of Lynette, recently taken—an +exquisite, delicate, pearly-toned portrait in a heavy silver-gilt frame. +"We used to be great friends. Du Taine was my maiden name. Surely Mrs. +Saxham has spoken to you of Greta Du Taine? I left Gueldersdorp at the +beginning of the siege. Later, we went to Cape Town. I met my husband +there. He is Sir Philip Atherleigh, Baronet." She italicised the word. "He +was with his regiment, going to the Front. We were married almost +directly. It was a case of love at first sight. Now we are staying at our +town house in Werkeley Square. Mrs. Saxham must visit us—my husband is +dying to know her."</p> + +<p>"I regret that the desire cannot be gratified, madam."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span> The angry blood +darkened his face. His tone, even more plainly than his words, told her +that the boasted friendship was at an end.</p> + +<p>Greta reddened too, and her turquoise-hued eyes dealt him a glance of +bitter hatred.</p> + +<p>"I did not stay long at the Convent at Gueldersdorp. Nuns are good, simple +creatures, and easily imposed upon. And—mother did not wish me to be +educated with strays and foundlings—dressed up like young +ladies—actually allowed to mingle upon equal terms with them——"</p> + +<p>It was Cornelius Agrippa, I think, who once materialised the Devil as an +empty purse. The necromancer should have evoked the Spirit of Evil in the +shape of a spiteful woman. Greta went on:</p> + +<p>"—Such Society as there was, I should say. You were at Gueldersdorp +throughout the siege, and for some time before it, I think, Dr. Saxham?"</p> + +<p>Two pairs of blue eyes met, the man's hard as shining stones, the woman's +dancing with malicious intention. Saxham stiffly bent his head. But her +fear of him had evaporated in her triumph. Those inquisitive, turquoise +eyes had an excellent memory behind them. Something in the shape of the +square black head and hulking shoulders quickened it now.</p> + +<p>"It's odd——" Her smile was a grin that showed sharp little white teeth +ready to bite, and her speech was pointed with venomed meaning. "I used to +go out a great deal in such Society as the place possessed. Yet I do not +remember ever having met you!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's cold eyes clashed with the malicious turquoises.</p> + +<p>"I did not mingle in Society at Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>He signed to the waiting manservant to open the hall-door. She drew her +snowy ermines about her and rustled over the threshold. But in the hall +she turned and dealt her thrust.</p> + +<p>"No? You were too busy attending cases. Police-Court Cases ..."</p> + +<p>Her light laugh fluttered mockingly about his ears.</p> + +<p>"I remember the funny headings of some of the newspaper reports.... +'Another Rampant Drunk! The Town Painted Red Again by the Dop Doctor!'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Door!" said Saxham, shaping the word with stiff grey lips. His face was +the face of Death, who had come close up and touched him. Her little +ladyship went out to her waiting auto-brougham, and her light, malignant +laugh fluttered back as the servant shut the hall-door.</p> + +<p>Saxham went back into the consulting-room. The Spring sunshine poured in +through the tall muslin-screened window. There was a cheerful play of +light and colour in the place. But to the man who sat there it was full of +shadows, dark and gloomy, threatening and grim. And not the least +formidable among them was the shadow of the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, +looming portentously over that fair face within the silver-gilt frame upon +the writing-table, stretching out long octopus-arms to drag down shame +upon it, and heap ashes of humiliation undeserved upon the lovely head, +and mock her with the solemn altar-vows that bound her to the drunkard.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXI" id="LXI"></a>LXI</h2> + + +<p>The Great Victorian Age was laid to rest.</p> + +<p>The great pageant of mortality had wound along the officially-appointed +route, under the cold grey sky, an apparently endless, slowly-marching +column of Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry of the Line, progressing pace +by pace between the immovable barriers of great-coated soldiers, and the +surging, restless sea of black-clad men and women pent up on either hand +behind them. The long rolling of muffled drums, and the dull boom of +cannon; the baring of men's heads; the wail of the Funeral March, the +flash of suddenly whitened faces turned one way to greet Her as She +passed, borne to Her rest upon a gun-carriage, as fitting an aged warrior +Queen; drawn to her wedded couch within the tomb by the willing, faithful +hands of her sons of the twin Services, who shall forget, that heard and +witnessed?</p> + +<p>Who shall forget?</p> + +<p>The Royal Standard draped across the satin-white, gold-fringed pall, where +on rich crimson cushions rested the Three Emblems of Sovereignty. The +dignified, kingly figure of a man, no longer young, bowed with sorrow +under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span> the Imperial heritage, preceding the splendid sombre company of +crowned heads; the blaze of uniforms and orders, the clank of sword and +bridle, the potent ring of steel on steel, the sumptuously-trapped, +shining horses pacing slowly, drawing the mourning-carriages of State, +their closed windows, frosted with chilly fog, yielding scant glimpses of +well-known faces. One most beloved, most lovely, and no less so in sorrow +than in joy. "<i>Did you see her?</i>" the women asked of one another, as the +pageant passed and vanished, and one good soul, all breathless from the +crush, gasped as she straightened her battered bonnet and twitched her +trodden skirt: "There never was a better than the blessed soul that's +gone, but there couldn't be a sweeter nor a beautifuller Queen than the +one she leaves behind her!"</p> + +<p>The last wail of the Funeral March having died away into silence, the last +cannon-shot gone booming out, down came the foggy dusk on bereaved London. +A chill rime settled on the swaying laurel wreaths, and on the folds of +the fluttering purple draperies at the close of the dismal day. The shops +were shut, and many of the restaurants, but the windows of the Clubs +gleamed radiantly down Piccadilly, and every refreshment-bar and +public-house was thronged to bursting. Noon changed to evening, and +evening lengthened into night, and the pavements began to be crowded. The +Flesh Bazaar was being held in Piccadilly, and all up Regent Street and +all down the Haymarket the chaffering went on for bodies and for souls.</p> + +<p>A deadly physical and mental lassitude weighed on Saxham. His soul was +sick with the long, hopeless struggle. He would end it. He would die, and +take away the shadow from Lynette's pure life, and leave her free. His +will devised to her everything he possessed, leaving her untrammelled. Let +her learn to love once more, let her marry a better man, and be happy in +her husband and her children....</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>He turned in at one of the chemist's shops. One or two gaudily-dressed, +haggard women were at the distant end of the counter, in conference with +an assistant. Saxham spoke to the chemist, a grey-whiskered, fatherly +individual, who listened, bending his sleek bald head. The chemist bowed, +but as he had not the honour of knowing his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span> customer, would the gentleman +oblige by signing the poison-book, in compliance with Schedule F of the +Pharmacy Act, 1868?</p> + +<p>Saxham nodded. The chemist produced the register, and opened it on the +counter before Saxham, and supplied him with pen and ink. Then he found +that he had business at the other end of the shop, and when he returned he +smartly closed the book, without even satisfying himself whether the +client had written down his name and address, or merely pretended to. Then +he filled a two-ounce vial with the fragrant, deadly acid, and put on a +yellow label that named the poison, but not the vendor, and stoppered and +capsuled, and sealed, and made it into a neat little parcel, and Saxham +paid, and put the parcel in his inner breast-pocket, and turned to leave +the shop.</p> + +<p>It was crowded now; the roaring business of the little hours was in full +swing. The three assistants ran about like busy ants; the chemist joined +his merry men at the game of making money, serving alcoholic liquors, +mixing pick-me-ups, dispensing little bottles of tabloids and little boxes +of jujubes, taking cash and giving change.</p> + +<p>The crush was terrific. Saxham, his hat pulled low over his broad brows, +his great chest stemming the tide of humanity that incessantly rolled over +the threshold, was slowly making his way to the door, when he felt the +arresting touch of a hand upon his arm.</p> + +<p>The owner of the hand belonged, as ninety per cent. of the women in the +place belonged, to François Villon's liberal sisterhood. Something in the +pale square face and massive shoulders had attracted her vagrant fancy. +She had quitted her companions—two gaily-dressed, be-rouged women and a +blue-eyed, yellow-haired, moustached young German, whose stripy tweeds, +vociferously-patterned linen, necktie of too obvious pattern, and +high-crowned bowler hat, advertised the Berlin tailor and haberdasher and +hatter at their customer's expense, as Saxham went by. Now she looked up +into the strange, sorrowful eyes that were shaded by his tilted hat-brim, +and twined her thin hands caressingly about his arm, asking:</p> + +<p>"Why do you look so queer, dear? Is anything wrong?—excuse me asking—or +is it the Funeral has given you the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</a></span> blue hump? It did me! I've not felt +so bad since mother——" She broke off. Then as a shrill peal of laughter +from one of her female companions followed a comment made by the +other—"One of those ..."—she jerked her chin contemptuously, tossing an +unprintable epithet in the direction of her lady friends—"says you're +ugly. I don't think so. I like your face!" Her own was cruelly, terribly +young, even under the white cream of zinc, the rouge, and the rice-powder. +"Were you looking for a friend, dear?" she asked tightening the clasp of +her thin, feverish hands.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Saxham, with a curious smile that made no illumination in his +sombre face. "For Death! There is no better friend than Death, my child, +either for you or me!"</p> + +<p>Gently he unloosed the burning hands that clutched him, and turned and +pushed his way out through the noisy, raving, chaffering, +patchouli-scented crowd, and was gone, swallowed up in the roaring torrent +of humanity that foamed down Piccadilly, leaving her frozen and stricken +and staring.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXII" id="LXII"></a>LXII</h2> + + +<p>Months went by. The slight overtures Lynette had made towards a more +familiar friendship had ceased since that rebuff of Saxham's. She had +never since set foot in his third-floor bedroom, where Little Miss Muffet +and Georgy Porgy and the whole regiment of nursery-rhyme characters, +attired in the brilliant aniline hues adored of inartistic, +frankly-barbaric babyhood, adorned the top of the brown-paper dado, and +flourished on the fireplace-tiles.</p> + +<p>Only a few weeks more, he said to himself, and he would set her free. +Before the natural craving for love, and life, and happiness should brim +the cup of her fair sweet womanhood to overflowing; before her sex should +rise in desperate revolt against himself her gaoler, Death should unlock +her prison-doors and strike the fetters from those slender wrists, and +point to Hope beckoning her to cross the threshold of a new life.</p> + +<p>Soon, very soon now. The two-ounce vial that held the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span> swift dismissing +pang was in the locked drawer of the writing-table beside the +whisky-flask. When he was alone and undisturbed—for Lynette seldom came +to his consulting-room now—Saxham would take it out and dandle it, and +hold it in his hands.</p> + +<p>He would put the vial back presently, and lock the drawer, and, it being +dark, perhaps would delay to light his lamp that he might torture himself +with looking at that pitiless shadow-play, that humble comedy-drama of +sweet, common, unattainable things that was every night renewed in those +two rooms over the garage at the bottom of the yard.</p> + +<p>There was a third performer in the shadow-play now. You could hear him +roaring lustily at morn and noon and milky eve. The Wonderfullest Baby you +ever!</p> + +<p>When W. Keyse was invited by Saxham to inspect his son and heir, crimson, +and pulpy, and squirming in a flannel wrap, the Adam's apple in the lean +throat of the proud father jumped, and his ugly, honest eyes blinked +behind salt water. The nipper had grabbed at his ear as he stooped down. +And that made the Fourth Time, and he hadn't even thanked the Doctor yet!</p> + +<p>A date, he hoped, would arrive when a chalk or two of that mounting score +might be wiped off the board. He said so to Mrs. Keyse, the first time she +was allowed to sit up and play at doing a bit of needlework. Not that she +did a stitch, and charnce it! With her eyes—beautiful eyes, with that new +look of mother-love in them; proud eyes, with that inexhaustible store of +riches all her own,—worshipping the crinkly red snub nose and the funny +moving mouth, and the little downy head, and everything else that goes to +make up a properly-constituted Baby.</p> + +<p>"I think the time'll come, deer. Watch out, an' one d'y you'll see!"</p> + +<p>"I'll watch it!" affirmed W. Keyse. "And wot are you cranin' your neck +for, tryin' to look out o' winder? Blessed if I ever see such a precious +old Dutch!—--"</p> + +<p>The song was in the mouths of the people that year. She laughed, and +rubbed her pale cheek against his.</p> + +<p>"You be my eyes, deer. Peep and see if the Doctor is in 'is room."</p> + +<p>It was ten o'clock on a shining May morning, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</a></span> clouds that raced +over great grimy London were white, and there were patches of blue +between. The trees in the squares were dressed in new green leaves, and +the irises and ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen had +shed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths behind the glass there +were pots of tulips in bloom upon the window-sills of the two rooms over +the garage. And the Doctor, who had been seeing patients ever since nine, +was sitting at the writing-table, said W. Keyse, with his 'ead upon 'is +'ands.</p> + +<p>"Like as if 'e was tired, deer, or un'appy? Or tired an un'appy both?"</p> + +<p>"Stryte, you 'ave it!" admitted W. Keyse, after cautious inspection.</p> + +<p>"The Doctor—don't let 'im see you lookin' at 'im, darlin', or 'e might +think, which Good Gracious know how wrong it 'ud be, as you was a kind o' +Peepin' Pry—the Doctor 'ave fell orf an' chynged a good deal lately—in +'is looks, I mean!" said Mrs. Keyse, tucking in the corner of the flannel +over the little downy head. "Wasted in 'is flesh, like—got 'oller round +the eyes——"</p> + +<p>"So 'e 'as!" W. Keyse whistled and slapped his leg. "An' I bin' noticin' +it on me own for a long while back—now I come to think of it. Woddyou +pipe's the matter wiv 'im? Not ill? Lumme! if 'e was ill——" The eyes of +W. Keyse became circular with consternation.</p> + +<p>"No, no, deer!" She reassured him, in his ignorance that the maladies of +the soul are more agonising far than those that afflict the body. +"Down'arted, like, an' 'opeless an'—an' lonely——"</p> + +<p>Downhearted, and hopeless, and lonely! The jaw of W. Keyse dropped, and +his ugly eyes became circular with sheer astonishment.</p> + +<p>"<i>Him!</i> Wiv a beautiful 'ouse to live in—an' Carriage Toffs with Titles +fair beggin' 'im to come an' feel their pulses an' be pyde for it, an' +Scientific Institooshuns an' 'Orspital Committees fightin' to git 'im on +their staffs—an' all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done at +Gueldersdorp, an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do? an' thank you kindly, +Mister!—an'——" W. Keyse could only suppose that Mrs. Keyse was playing +a bit of gaff on hers truly—"and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</a></span> him with a wife, too! Married an' +'appy, an' goin' to be 'appier yet!" He pointed to the little red snub +nose peeping between the folds of the flannel. "When a little nipper like +that comes——"</p> + +<p>She reddened, paled, burst out crying.</p> + +<p>"O William! William——"</p> + +<p>Her William kissed her, and dried her tears. He called it mopping her +dial, but you have not forgotten that, as the upper house-and-parlour-maid +had at first said, both Her and Him were plainly descended from the Lowest +Circles. She had melted afterwards, on learning that Mrs. Keyse had been +actually mentioned in Despatches for carrying tea under fire to the +prisoners at the Fort; had sought her society, lent paper-patterns, and +imparted, in confidence, what she knew of the secret of Saxham's wedded +life.</p> + +<p>"Dear William! My good, kind Love! Best I should 'urt you, deer, if 'urt +you 'ave to be. You see them three large winders covered wiv lovely lace?"</p> + +<p>"'Ers—Mrs. Saxham's!" He nodded, trying to look wise.</p> + +<p>"Yes, darlin'. Mrs. Saxham's bedroom and dressin'-room they belongs to. +I've bin inside the bedroom wiv the upper 'ouse-an'-parlour-myde, an' a +Fairy Princess in a Drury Lane Pantomime might 'ave a bigger place to +sleep in—but not a beautifuller. When the Foreign Young Person come in of +evenin's to git 'er lady dressed for dinner, she snaps up the lights, +bein' a kind soul, before she draws the blinds, to give me a charnst like, +to see in." She stroked the tweed sleeve. "An' once or twice Mrs. Saxham +'as come in before they'd bin pull down, an' then—O William!—there was +everythink in that room on Gawd's good earth a 'usband could ask for to +make 'im 'appy, except the wife's 'art beatin' warm and lovin' in the +middle of it all!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Cripps!... You don't never mean ...?" He gasped. "Wot? Don't the Doctor +make no odds to 'er? A Man Like That?" ...</p> + +<p>She clung to the heart that loved her, and told him what she had heard.... +And if Saxham had known how two of the unconscious actors in his +shadow-play pitied him, the knowledge would have been as vitriol poured +into an open wound.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXIII" id="LXIII"></a>LXIII</h2> + + +<p>The card of Major Bingham Wrynche, C.B., was brought to Saxham one +morning, as, his early-calling patients seen and dismissed, the Doctor was +going out to his waiting motor-brougham.</p> + +<p>Bingo, following what he was prone to call his pasteboard, presented +himself—a large, cool, well-bred, if rather stupid-looking, man, arrayed +in excellently-fitting clothes, saying:</p> + +<p>"You were goin' out? Don't let me keep you. Look in again!"—even as he +deposited a tightly-rolled silk umbrella in the waste-paper basket, and +tenderly balanced his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, and +chose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortable chair, as a man prepared to +remain. Saxham, pushing a cigar-box across the consulting-room table, +asked after Lady Hannah.</p> + +<p>"First-rate! Seems to agree with her, having a one-armed husband to fuss +over!"</p> + +<p>"She won't have a one-armed husband long," returned Saxham, not unkindly, +glancing at the bandaged and strapped-up limb that had been shattered by +an expanding bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in the +shiny black sling.</p> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker! she's had him long enough for me!" exploded Bingo, +who seemed larger and fussier than ever, if a thought less pink. "So'd you +say if they tucked a napkin under your chin at meals, and cut your meat up +into dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your newspaper with one +hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just now +outside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand +trouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought to +have put your money in the other one."</p> + +<p>"You're lookin' at my head," pursued the Major, "and I don't wonder. She's +been and given me a fringe again. 'Stonishing thing the Feminine Touch is. +Let your servant part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look +a filthy bounder. Your wife does it—and you hardly know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</a></span> yourself in the +glass, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds +these, by half! You remember those cigars of Kreil's and the thunderin' +price me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other for fun?" +The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light blue smoke-wreath, and added: +"And before the last box was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was! And that +chap Levestre—never fit to brown his shoes—is wearing 'em; and 'll be +Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is—when +you come to think of it?"</p> + +<p>Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large, +bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat +had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that +assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole +of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat +in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, +West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen the +heavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe, +even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fashion. Now +he had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always destitute of the +saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son of +Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of black +eyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for "poor old Toby!" had +been misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly be +expected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of his +predecessor.</p> + +<p>"Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if the +dear old chap had lived," reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew +about—about Lessie? "Bound to," he mentally decided, "if he keeps his +ears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a brace of +bounders of the worst discuss the story in all its bearin's, sittin' +behind my wife and Mrs. Saxham in the stalls at the theatre the other +night! Everybody <i>is</i> discussin' it now that the Foltlebarres have left +off payin' Lessie not to talk, and provided for her and the youngster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</a></span> out +of the estate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat in the family.... +That family, too!... Lord! what a rum thing Luck is!"</p> + +<p>The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blonde +face was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, reminding +himself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, +Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratch +against him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling of +the shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he—Wrynche—had let +Beauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. He +wondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham had ever really +earned the degrading nickname that he could not get quite right. The 'Peg +Doctor,' was it?—or the 'Lush Doctor?' Something in that way.... Not that +Saxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with undue +frequency....</p> + +<p>"—But you never know," thought experienced Bingo sagely, even as, in his +heavy fashion, he went pounding on: "The Chief's continuin' the Work of +Pacification, and acceptin' the surrender of arms—any date of manufacture +you like between the <i>chassepot</i> of 1870 and the leather-breeched firelock +of Oliver Cromwell's time. The modern kind, you find by employin' the +Divinin' Rod"—the large narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added—"on +the backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails—used in that +way. And—as it chances—I have a communication to make to you."</p> + +<p>"A communication—a message—from the Chief to me?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened curiously and +pleasantly.</p> + +<p>Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He rebalanced his shiny hat +upon the table corner, and said with his eyes engaged in this way:</p> + +<p>"I was to remind you—from him—that—not long before the ending of the +Siege, a lady who is now a near connection of yours sustained a terrible +bereavement through the—infernally dastardly crime of a—person then +unknown!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag out the +knowledge he withheld. But Bingo was balancing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</a></span> the glossy triumph of a +Bond Street hatter, and looked at it and not at the Doctor, who said:</p> + +<p>"You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the Convent of the Holy +Way on February the —th, 1900. And you say a person <i>then</i> unknown.... +Has the murderer been arrested?"</p> + +<p>Major Bingo shook his head.</p> + +<p>"He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You remember the runner +who came in from Diamond Town with a letter for a man called Casey? Not +long after—after my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers'?"</p> + +<p>"I did not see the man myself," returned Saxham, "but I perfectly +recollect his getting through."</p> + +<p>Major Bingo said:</p> + +<p>"I thought you would. Well, the letter was a blind; the bearer an agent of +the firm of Huysmans and Eybel, sent to make certain of our weakest points +before they put in the attack on the Barala town; and—that's the man who +committed the murder!"</p> + +<p>"The man who committed the murder?"</p> + +<p>Saxham's vivid eyes were intent upon the Major's face. The Major coughed, +and went on:</p> + +<p>"My wife came across that man at Tweipans under curious circumstances, +which I'm here to put before you as plainly as may be.... She'd met him +before the Siege, travelling up from Cape Town. He scraped acquaintance, +called himself a loyal Johannesburger, and an Agent of the British South +African War-Intelligence-Bureau. Not that there ever was such a Bureau." +Major Bingo blinked nervously, and ran a thick finger round the inside of +his collar as he added: "The beggar spoofed Lady Hannah up hill and down +dale with that, and she believed him. And when she subsequently flew the +coop—dash this cold of mine!..."</p> + +<p>The Major drew out a very large pink cambric pocket-handkerchief, and +performed behind its shelter an elaborate but unconvincing sneeze:</p> + +<p>"—When she shot the moon with Nixey's mare and spider, it was by private +arrangement with this oily, lying blackguard, who had given her an +address—a farm on the Transvaal Border, known as Haargrond Plaats—where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</a></span> +she might communicate with him through another scoundrel in the Transport +Agency line, supposin' she chose to do a little business on her own in +Secret Intelligence——"</p> + +<p>Saxham interrupted:</p> + +<p>"I shall say nothing to my wife of this, and I trust you will impress upon +Lady Hannah that it would be highly inadvisable for her to do so."</p> + +<p>"She won't, you may depend on it." Major Bingo palpably grew warm, and +mopped the dew from his large, kind, rather stupid countenance with the +pink cambric handkerchief—"She's awfully afraid, as it is, that a word or +two she dropped quite innocently, to that infernal liar and swindler, +who'd bled her of a monkey, good English cash—paid for procurin' and +forwardin' items of information that he took damned good care should reach +us at Gueldersdorp too late to be of use, led up to—to the crime!... By +the Living Tinker! it's out at last!"</p> + +<p>The big man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himself +with the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and went +red, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of his +flurried pulse.</p> + +<p>"—Out at last, Saxham, and that's why I've been gulpin' and blunderin' +and bogglin' for the last ten minutes. Poof!" Major Bingo exhaled a vast +breath of relief. "Tellin' tales on a woman—and her your wife—even when +she's begged you to, isn't the sweetest job a man can tackle!"</p> + +<p>"Let me have this story in detail once and for all," said Saxham, turning +a stern, white face, and hard, compelling eyes upon the embarrassed Major. +"What utterance of Lady Hannah's do you suppose to have led to the tragedy +in the Convent Chapel? Upon this point I must and shall be clear before +you leave me!"</p> + +<p>"You shall have things as clearly as I can put 'em. This pretended Secret +Agent of the War-Intelligence-Bureau that never existed, and who called +himself Van Busch—a name that's as common among Boers as Murphy is among +Irishmen—arranged to pass off my wife as his sister, a refugee from +Gueldersdorp, who'd married a German drummer, and buried him not long +before. Women are so dashed fond of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</a></span> play-actin'! Kids, Saxham,—that's +what they are in their weakness for dressin' up and makin'-believe! And my +wife——"</p> + +<p>The large Major was in a violent lather as he ran the thick finger round +inside his collar, and swallowed at the lump in his throat.</p> + +<p>"—My wife saw Van Busch at Kink's hotel at Tweipans from time to time. He +came, I've already explained, to sell bogus information for good money. +And as the boodle ran low, the cloven hoof began to show, and the brute +became downright insolent."</p> + +<p>"As might have been expected," said Saxham, coldly.</p> + +<p>"—Kept his hat on in my wife's room, talked big, and twiddled a +signet-ring he wore," went on the Major. "And, bein' quick, you know, and +sharp as they make 'em, you know, my wife recognised the crest of an old +acquaintance cut upon the stone. I knew the man myself"—declared Major +Bingo—"and a better never stepped in leather. A brother-officer of the +Chiefs, too, and a rippin' good fellow!—Dicky Mildare, of the Grey +Hussars."</p> + +<p>"Mildare!" repeated Saxham.</p> + +<p>"You understand, Saxham, the name did it. My wife had seen the present +Mrs. Saxham at Gueldersdorp, and, not knowin' that the surname of Mildare +had been taken by her at the wish of her adopted mother, supposed—got the +maggot into her head that the Mother-Superior's ward might possibly be +a—a daughter of the man the seal-ring had belonged to, knowing—Lord! +what a mull I'm making of it!—that Mildare had at one time been engaged +to marry that"—the Major boggled horribly—"that uncommonly brave and +noble lady, and had, in fact, thrown her over, and made a bolt of it with +the wife of his Regimental C.O., Colonel Sir George Hawting."</p> + +<p>The faint stain of colour that had showed through Saxham's dead-white skin +faded. He waited with strained attention for what was coming.</p> + +<p>"South Africa Lady Lucy and Mildare bolted to," went on Bingo, "and now +you know the kind of mare's-nest her ladyship had scratched up. And," +declared Bingo, "rather than have had to spin this yarn. I'd have faced a +Court-Martial of Inquiry respectin' my conduct in the Field.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</a></span> For my wife +has a kind heart and a keen sense of honour, and rather than bring harm +upon Miss Mildare that was, or anyone connected with her, she'd have stood +up to be shot! By G——!" trumpeted Bingo, "I know she would!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's face was blue-white now, and looked oddly shrunken. His voice +came in a rasping croak from his ashen lips as he said:</p> + +<p>"Lady Hannah mentioned my wife to this man, thinking that she might prove +to be the daughter of the owner of the ring. What could possibly lead her +to infer such a relationship?"</p> + +<p>"You must understand that the blackguard had given my wife details of +Mildare's death at a farm owned by a friend of his in Natal, and that +Hannah—that my wife knew poor little Lucy Hawting had had a child by +Mildare," Major Bingo spluttered. "That was why she asked Van Busch +outright whether the girl with the nuns at Gueldersdorp was—could be—the +same child, grown up? By the Living Tinker!—I never was in such a lather +in my life! The better the light I try to put the thing in, the dirtier it +looks. And I'm not half through yet, that's the worst of it!"</p> + +<p>He mopped and mopped, and took several violent turns about the room, and +subsided in a chair at length, and went on, waving the large pink cambric +handkerchief, now a damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it.</p> + +<p>"She says—Lady Hannah says—that the eagerness and curiosity with which +the brute snapped up the hint she'd never meant to drop, warned her to +shunt him off on another line, and give no more information. They got on +money matters; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, my wife gave the +welsher a bit of her mind, and he showed his teeth in a way that meant +Murder. Just in time—before he could wring her neck round—and he'd +started in to do it, you understand—Brounckers came stormin' and bullyin' +in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and would be sent down to +Gueldersdorp.... They packed her back that very day.... And not a week +after, the pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the bogus +letter from Mrs. Casey."</p> + +<p>Saxham had thought. He said now:</p> + +<p>"This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</a></span> for Brounckers, was +disguised as the runner? Is that what has been proved? Did Lady Hannah see +the man and recognise him?"</p> + +<p>Bingo leaned forward to answer.</p> + +<p>"Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond Town. But the day the +<i>Siege Gazette</i> came out, with a blithering paragraph in it that never +ought to have appeared, announcin'"—he coughed and crimsoned—"Lord +Beauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare;—my wife was rung up at the +Convalescent Hospital by a caller who wouldn't say where he telephoned +from. And the message that came through—couched in queer, ambiguous +language, and purportin' to come from an old friend—was a message for the +young lady who is now Mrs. Saxham!"</p> + +<p>Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a word. The Major went +on:</p> + +<p>"My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with Van Busch's. She +remembered the name given her as that of the owner of the farm at which +Mildare died, a place which by rights was in what's now the Orange River +Colony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain: 'Are you +So-and-So?' There was no answer to the question. But seven hours later the +Mother-Superior was shot; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way to +the Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran into one of +the Sisters in his hurry, and nearly knocked her down."</p> + +<p>"That," said Saxham, "has always been regarded as a suspicious +circumstance. But the man was never subsequently traced."</p> + +<p>"No! Because," said Bingo, "the runner from Diamond Town evaporated that +night."</p> + +<p>Saxham said, with his grim under-jaw thrust out:</p> + +<p>"Surely that circumstance, when reported to the Officer commanding the +Garrison, might then have awakened his suspicions?"</p> + +<p>"Naturally," agreed Bingo, "and therefore he kept 'em dark. As for my +wife, the shock of the murder, accompanied with her own secret conviction +that, in some indirect way, she'd helped to set a malicious, lurking, +watchful, dangerous Force of some kind working against your wife—when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</a></span> +she dropped that hint I've told you of—bowled her over with a nervous +fever."</p> + +<p>"I remember," said Saxham, who had been called in.</p> + +<p>"Consequently, it wasn't until some days after the Relief—a bare hour or +two before the Division—Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, and a +company or so of Civilian Johnnies that had made believe they were genuine +fightin' Tommies till they couldn't get out of the notion—marched out of +Gueldersdorp for Frostenberg, that her ladyship got a chance of makin' a +clean breast to the Chief. Hold on a minute, Doctor——"</p> + +<p>For Saxham would have spoken.</p> + +<p>"—The Chief had had his own private opinion, from the very first. He +heard what my wife had to say. As you may guess, she'd worked herself up +into a regular cooker of remorse and anxiety—told him she was ready to go +anywhere and do anything—he'd only got to give her orders, and all that +sort of thing! He charged her with the simple but difficult rôle of +holdin' her tongue, and keepin' her oar out, and findin' him—if by good +luck she'd got it by her—a specimen of the handwritin' of the clever +scoundrel who'd played at bein' a War Intelligence Agent, and waltzed with +her five hundred pounds, which sample, as it chanced, she was able to +supply. And the fist of the man who'd swindled her, and the writin' of the +Mrs. Casey who'd sent a letter per despatch-runner from Diamond Town to a +husband who didn't exist, tallied to an upstroke and the crossin' of a +'<i>t</i>'!"</p> + +<p>"Is it beyond doubt that the letter from the supposed Mrs. Casey was not a +genuine communication?" Saxham asked.</p> + +<p>"Beyond doubt. As a fact, the neatly-directed envelope had simply got a +sheet of blank paper inside. Another odd fact brought to light was, that +the person who communicated with my wife at the Convalescent Hospital +about half-past twelve on the day of the murder, rang her up on the +telephone belongin' to the orderly-room at the Headquarters of the +Baraland Rifles. We had up the orderly, and after some solid lyin', he +owned that the man from Diamond Town had bribed him with 'baccy to let him +put a message through. And that's another link in the evidence, I take +it?" said Major Bingo.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly!"</p> + +<p>"There's not much more to tell, except," said Bingo, "that the first march +of the Division on its route to Frostenberg led past the Border farm +called Haargrond Plaats. It looked deserted and half-ruined, with only a +slipshod woman and a coloured man in charge; but something was known of +what had gone on there, and might be going on still, and the Boers are +clever stage-managers, and it don't do to trust to appearances! So the +Chief detached a party with dynamite cartridges and express orders to make +the ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly before they blew it +up; and hidden in a disused chimney—solid bit of old Dutch masonry big +enough to accommodate a baker's dozen of sweeps—were a few things +calculated to facilitate that search for the needle in the haystack—you +understand? Disguises of various kinds—a suit of clothes lined with +chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'—a good deal of the raw stuff +itself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up—and in a rusty cashbox +a diary or private ledger, posted up in a clumsy kind of thieves' cipher, +impossible to make out, but with the name written on it of the identical +man my wife suspected and the Chief believed to be the murderer of Miss +Mildare's adopted mother! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct, +Saxham, I rather fancy?"</p> + +<p>Major Bingo Wrynche leaned back with an air of some finality, and with +some little difficulty extracted a biggish square envelope from the left +inner pocket of the accurately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed the +envelope upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took the shiny +top-hat off the writing-table, fitted it with peculiar care on his +pinkish, sandy, close-cropped head, and said, looking at Saxham with a +pleasant smile.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you wouldn't mind throwin' your eye over the contents of that +envelope? There are three photographs of handwritin' inside, marked on the +backs respectively." He waited for Saxham to take the enclosures from the +big envelope, examining the polish of his own varnished patent-leather +boots with a fastidious air of anxiety that was extremely well assumed, if +it was not strictly genuine. His large face was as bland and +expressionless as the face of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</a></span> the grandfather-clock in the Sheraton case +that ticked against the wainscot behind him, as he advised:</p> + +<p>"Take 'em in numerical sequence. No. 1 is the photographed facsimile of +the cover of the bogus letter to Mr. Casey. No. 2"—the speaker lightly +touched it with a large round finger-tip—"that's the replica—also +photographed—of a card the man we're after wrote on and gave to Lady +Hannah, in case she found herself inclined to invest a hundred or so in +the kind of wares he professed to supply. Photo No. 3 is a reproduction of +an autograph and address that's written on the inside cover of the ledger +—posted up in thieves' cipher—that was in the cashbox found at Haargrond +Plaats." He waited, screwing painfully at the stiff, waxed ends of the +scrubby moustache.</p> + +<p>Saxham took the photographs in their order. The envelope of the bogus +letter brought by the supposed runner from Diamond Town had been addressed +in a big bold black round hand with curiously malformed capitals, to</p> + +<p> +"Mr. <span class="smcap">Barney Casey</span>,<br /> + "Commercial Traveller,<br /> + "Gueldersdorp.<br /> +<br /> +"Care of the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces"<br /> +</p> + +<p>"—Don't put it back in the envelope," said Major Bingo. "Compare the +writin' with No. 2."</p> + +<p>No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was written in ink, in +the same bold hand:</p> + +<p> +"Mr. <span class="smcap">Hendryk Van Busch</span>,<br /> + "C/o Mr. W. Bough,<br /> + "Transport Agent,<br /> + "Haargrond Plaats,<br /> + "Near Matambani,<br /> + "Transvaal."<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXIV" id="LXIV"></a>LXIV</h2> + + +<p>There was a silence in the consulting-room, only broken by street noises +filtered thin by walls and curtains, and the ticking of the Sheraton +grandfather clock, and the breathing of two people. Saxham glanced at +Major Bingo with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</a></span> eyes that seemed to have been bleached of colour, and +laid the second calligraphic specimen beside the first, and took up No. 3, +and read in the same large nourishing round hand:</p> + +<p> +"<span class="smcap">W. Bough</span>,<br /> + "Free State Hotel,<br /> + "50 m. from Driepoort,<br /> + "Orange Free State."<br /> +</p> + +<p>After that the silence was intense. The clock ticked, and the faint, +far-off street noises came through the intervening screens, but only one +of the men in the room seemed to be breathing. At last Saxham's grey lips +moved. He said in a horrible clicking whisper:</p> + +<p>"Van Busch and Bough are—one?"</p> + +<p>Major Wrynche's large face nodded in the affirmative. But it was as +expressionless as the grandfather clock's.</p> + +<p>"One man!—and that's what I may call the pith of my verbal Despatch for +you!"</p> + +<p>Saxham said with hard composure:</p> + +<p>"Van Busch is a Dutch surname that, as you say, is common in South Africa. +With the name of Bough, as the Chief is aware, I have—associations. It +was, in fact, one of the many aliases used by the witness for Regina in an +Old Bailey case in which I was concerned nearly seven years ago."</p> + +<p>The Major nodded once more, and said with brevity:</p> + +<p>"Same man!"</p> + +<p>Saxham seemed always to have known that the man was the same man. The +tense muscles of his face told nothing. Bingo added:</p> + +<p>"—But the wrong and injury done to you by Bough amount to little compared +with the wrong and injury inflicted upon Mrs. Saxham! That—— Good Lord! +what's the matter?"</p> + +<p>For Saxham, with a madman's face, had leapt to his feet, knocking over his +chair, and stuttered with foam on his blue lips:</p> + +<p>"What wrong? What injury? What—what are you hinting at?——"</p> + +<p>"Hinting!" The astonishment in the Major's round light blue eyes was so +palpably genuine that the crazy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</a></span> flame died out of the Doctor's, and his +clenched hand dropped. "I didn't hint. I referred to the murder of your +wife's adopted mother by this Bough, or Van Busch, that's all!"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Major!" Saxham picked up his chair and sat down on it, +inwardly cursing his lack of self-control. "My nerves have been giving +trouble of late."</p> + +<p>Going by the evidence of the haggard face and fever-bright eyes, the +Doctor looked like that—uncommonly like that! And the big Major, +remembering Alderman Brooker's revelation, wondered, as he screwed at the +stiff, blunt ends of his sandy moustache, whether Saxham might not have +reverted to the old vice? "Bad for the girl he's married if he has!" he +thought, even as he said:</p> + +<p>"Overworked. Get away for a bit. Nothin' like relievin' the tension, don't +you know? Norway in June, or the Higher Austrian Tyrol. Make up your mind +and go!"</p> + +<p>"I have made up my mind," Saxham answered, smiling bitterly, as he +remembered the little phial with the yellow label that lay beside the +whisky-flask in the drawer beneath his hand. "I shall go very soon now!"</p> + +<p>"But not immediately?"</p> + +<p>"Not immediately." There was something strange, almost exalted, in the +look that accompanied the words. Saxham added: "If you could give me an +approximate date as regards the finding of that—needle in the haystack of +South Africa, it would—facilitate my departure more than you can guess!"</p> + +<p>"Would it, by George!" Bingo slipped the thumb and forefinger of the +useful hand into his waistcoat-pocket. Something sparkled in the big pink +palm he extended to Saxham—something sparkled, and spurted white and +green and scarlet points of fire from a myriad of facets. The something +was an oval miniature on ivory. A slender gold chain, broken, dangled from +its enamelled bow. From within a rim of brilliants the lovely, wistful +face of a young, refined, high-bred woman looked out, and with all his +iron self-control Saxham could not restrain a sudden movement and a +stifled exclamation of mingled anger and surprise.</p> + +<p>For at the first glance the face was Lynette's.</p> + +<p>With a dull roaring of the blood in his ears and an unspeakable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</a></span> rage and +horror seething in him, he took the portrait from the Major's palm, and +held it with a steady hand, in a favourable light.</p> + +<p>Marvellously like, but not Lynette's face!</p> + +<p>The eyes were larger, rounder, and of gentle blue-grey, the +squirrel-coloured hair of a brighter shade, the sensitive mouth sensuous +as well, the little chin pointed. She might have been a few years under +thirty; the arrangement of the hair, the cut of the bodice, might have +indicated the height of the latest fashion—say, twenty-two or even three +years back. Some delicately fine inscription was upon the dull gold of the +inner rim of the miniature-frame, within the diamonds that surrounded it. +Saxham deciphered: "Lucy, to Richard Mildare. For ever! 1879."</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>The dull, dark crimson that had stained the Dop Doctor's opaque skin had +given place to pallor. His face was sharp and thin, and of waxen +whiteness, like the face of one newly dead. His blue eyes burned ominously +in their caves under the heavy bar of meeting black eyebrows. His voice +was very quiet as he asked: "How did you come by this?"</p> + +<p>"It dropped down out of the sky," said Major Bingo measuredly, "with the +bits of evidence I've told you of, and a few others, when the big stone +chimney at Haargrond Plaats blew up with a thunderin' roar. The other bits +of evidence were bits of a man—two men you might call him! And, by the +Living Tinker, considerin' how he was mixed up with the rest of the +rubbish, he might have been half a dozen instead of Bough Van Busch!"</p> + +<p>"He had this upon him? He—wore it round his neck?" Saxham asked the +question in a grating whisper, dropping the clenched hand that held the +diamond-set miniature upon the arm of his chair.</p> + +<p>"I should think it probable he did," said Bingo placidly, "when he had a +neck to boast of." He added, as he got up to take his leave: "The thing +has been carefully cleaned. The chain is broken, and the crystal cracked +in one place, but otherwise it has come off wonderfully. Perhaps you'd +hand it over to—anybody it belongs to? Hope I haven't mulled many +professional appointments. Remember me to Mrs. Saxham. Thanks frightfully! +So long!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXV" id="LXV"></a>LXV</h2> + + +<p>In the days that followed Saxham had a letter, written by a man with whom +he had been fairly intimate at Gueldersdorp during the strenuous days of +the Siege—a man who would undoubtedly not have lived to go through those +days but for the Dop Doctor. It was rather an incoherent letter, written +by an unsteady hand.</p> + +<p>Saxham tore it up and dropped it into the waste-paper basket with a +contemptuous shrug. But he had made a mental note of the address, and +drove there that afternoon.</p> + +<p>The Doctor's motor-brougham stopped at the door of the grimy stucco +Clergy-House that is attached to St. Margaret's in Wendish Street, West. +Saxham rang a loud bell, that sent iron echoes pealing down flagged +passages, and brought a little bonneted woman in rusty black to answer the +door and the Doctor's query whether Mr. Julius Fraithorn was at home and +able to receive a visitor?</p> + +<p>The little woman, who had a nose like a preserved cherry, and wore one +eyebrow several inches higher than the other, shook her rusty +crape-trimmed bonnet discouragingly, as she informed Saxham in a husky +voice strongly flavoured with cloves that Father Julius 'ad been in the +Confessional all the morning, it being the Eve of the Feast of the +Ascension, and was quite wore out. If there was anything she could do, she +inferred, with quite a third-hand air of clerical responsibility, she +would be happy to oblige the gentleman.</p> + +<p>"I shall be obliged by your conveying my card to Mr. Fraithorn. You see +that I am a doctor," said Saxham, with unsmiling gravity, "and not an +ordinary caller on business connected with religion."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</a></span></p><p>The little cherry-nosed woman in rusty black snorted as scenting +godlessness, and conducted Saxham down a cream-washed, +brown-distemper-dadoed passage, smelling of kippered haddocks and +incense, to a sitting-room at the rear. It was a severe apartment, +commanding a view of mews, and had a parquet-patterned linoleum on the +floor, and a washable paper of a popular ecclesiastical design +suggestive of a ranunculus with its hands in its pockets.</p> + +<p>Stained deal bookcases contained Julius's Balliol library; +chrome-lithographic reproductions of Saints and Madonnas by Old Masters +hung above. The Philistine School of Art was represented by a Zoological +hearthrug; three Windsor chairs offered accommodation to the visitor; a +table of the kitchen pattern was covered by a square of green baize; and a +slippery hair-cloth sofa, with a knobbly bolster and a patchwork cushion, +supported the long, thin, black clad figure of the Reverend Julius +Fraithorn, who was lying down.</p> + +<p>"I have come," said Saxham, standing grimly over the prone figure, a +single stride having taken him to the side of the sofa, "to prescribe for +a man whose nerves are playing him tricks. I have torn up your letter—the +epistle in which you ask me to afford you an opportunity of making an +avowal which will prove to what depths of infamy a man may descend at the +bidding of his lower nature. Lower nature! If I am any judge of a man's +physical condition, a lower nature is what you want!" He threw down his +hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor +chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big +body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who +mustered breath to stammer:</p> + +<p>"There is nothing whatever the matter with my health. I am well—that is, +bodily." He got up from the sofa, and crossed to the Zoological hearthrug, +and poked the smoky little fire burning in the narrow grate, for the May +day was wet and chilly. "I shall be better, mentally," he said, with an +effort, looking over his shoulder towards Saxham, "when you have heard +what I have to tell." He rose up, and turned round, his thin face flaming. +"Mind, I'm not to be gagged by your not wanting to," for Saxham had +impatiently waved his hand. "Hear you shall, and must!"</p> + +<p>He ground his boot-heel into the orange-yellow lion that couched on a +field of aniline green hearthrug, and drove his hands down deep into his +pockets, and the painful scarlet surged over the rim of his Roman collar +and dyed his thin, sensitive, beautiful face and high, white forehead to +the roots of his dark, curling hair.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you may recall an oath I swore at your instigation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</a></span> one day in +your room at the Hospital at Gueldersdorp?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—no! What does it matter?" said Saxham thickly, with his angry, +brooding eyes upon the floor.</p> + +<p>"It matters," said Julius doggedly, "in the present case. I need hardly +tell you that I have kept that oath. If the man had not been dead, I might +have ended by breaking it—who knows? What I have to tell you is that, +some two months after the Relief, when your engagement to the lady who is +now your wife was first made public, I, impelled and prompted by a +despicable envy of the great good-fortune that had fallen—deservedly +fallen—to your lot, sought out Miss Mildare, and told her—something I +had learned to your detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, +worthless creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength of a +seat upon the local Bench, claimed to be informed."</p> + +<p>Saxham's head turned stiffly. He looked at the wall now instead of the +floor, and breathed unevenly and quickly. His right hand, resting on the +table near which he sat, softly closed and opened, opened and closed its +supple muscular fingers, with a curious, rhythmical movement. He waited to +hear more. And Julius groaned out, with his elbows on the parted wooden +mantelshelf, and his shamed face hidden:</p> + +<p>"I knew that the man lied—on my soul, I knew it! But the opportunity he +had given me of lowering your value in—in another's eyes was too tempting +to resist. The man had told me——"</p> + +<p>"In effect, that I was a confirmed and hopeless drunkard," said Saxham; +"and, as it happens, he told the truth!" He added: "And what I was then I +am now. There is no change in me, though once I thought it!"</p> + +<p>"Saxham!... For God's sake, Saxham!" stuttered Julius. But Saxham, +hunching his great shoulders, and lowering his square, black head, not at +all unlike the savage bull of Lady Hannah Wrynche's apt comparison, went +on:</p> + +<p>"It is a drunken world we live in, Parson, for all our sham of abstinence +and sobriety. But there are nice degrees and various grades in our +drunkenness, as in our other vices, and the man who is a druggard despises +the common drunkard; and the sippers of ether look down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</a></span> with infinite +contempt—or, more ludicrous still, with tender, pitying sorrow, upon the +toper and the slave of morphia and cocaine, and take no shame in seeing +the oxygenated greyhound win the coursing-match and the oxygenated +racehorse run for the Cup! A year or so, and the Transatlantic +oxygen-outfit will be an indispensable equipment of the British athlete. +Even to-day the professional footballer and cricketer, runner and swimmer, +inhale oxygen as a preliminary to effort, and bring the false energy that +is born of it to aid them in their trial tests of strength. The man who +scales an Alpine summit winds himself up with a whiff or so; the orator, +inspired by oxygen, astonishes the House of Commons or the Bar. And the +actor, delirious with oxygen, rushes on the stage; and the clergyman, +drunk on oxygen, mounts the pulpit to preach a Temperance sermon. And the +Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp prescribes palliatives for guinea-paying +tipplers; and there is not an honest man to rise up and say: 'Physician, +heal thyself!'"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Windsor chair creaked under Saxham's heavy figure as he got up. His +fierce blue eyes blazed in their sunken caves as he took his hat and stick +from the table.</p> + +<p>"What more have you to 'confess'? You did not wrong me. Moralists would +say that you acted conscientiously—played the part of a true friend in +telling—<i>her</i>—what you knew!"</p> + +<p>"Of my benefactor—the man who had saved my life!" Julius moistened his +dry lips. "Your approving moralist would be the devil's advocate. But I +have not forgotten what your own opinion is of the man who tries to +enhance his own virtues in a woman's eyes by pointing out the vices of a +rival. And, if you will believe me, I was punished for the attempt. Her +look of surprise ... the tone in which she said, 'Did he not save your +life?' that was enough!... Then I—I lost my head, and told her that I +loved her—entreated her to be my wife, only to learn that she never +had—never could——" Julius's thin white fingers knotted themselves +painfully at the back of his stooped head, and his voice came in jerks +between his gritted teeth: "It was revolting to her—a girl reared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</a></span> among +nuns in a Catholic Convent—that a man calling himself a priest should +speak to her of love. There was absolute horror in her look as she learned +the truth." He groaned. "I have never met her eyes since that day without +seeing—or imagining I saw—some reflection of that horror in them!"</p> + +<p>"Why torture yourself uselessly with imaginations?" said Saxham, not +unkindly.</p> + +<p>He was at the door, upon the threshold of departure, when Julius stopped +him.</p> + +<p>"One moment. Has—has Mrs. Saxham ever spoken to you of—this that I have +told you?"</p> + +<p>"Never!" answered Saxham, pausing at the door.</p> + +<p>"One moment more! Saxham, is it hopeless? Could you not by a desperate +effort break this habit that may—that must—inevitably bring misery to +your wife? In the name of her love for you—in the names of the children +that may be born of it——"</p> + +<p>—"Unless you want me to murder you," advised Saxham, facing the +passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a +breaking wave, "you had better be silent!"</p> + +<p>"My right to speak," Julius retorted fiercely, "is better than you know. +When I endeavoured—unsuccessfully—to injure you, I robbed myself of my +belief in myself. But you—you who gave me back my earthly life, you have +robbed me of my faith in the Living and Eternal God. Do you know the +effect of Doubt, once planted in what was a faithful soul? It is a choking +fungus, a dry rot, a creeping palsy! Since that day at the Hospital at +Gueldersdorp, when you said to me, 'The Human Will is even more omnipotent +than the Deity, because it has created Him, out of its own need!' I have +done my daily duty as a priest to the numbing burden of that utterance—I +have preached the Gospel with it sounding in my ears." He wrung his hands, +that were wet as though they had been dipped in water. "I have tended +souls as mechanically as a gardener might water pots in which there was +nothing but dead sticks and dry earth!"</p> + +<p>"Try to credit me when I tell you," said Saxham, wrung by the suffering in +the thin young face and in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</a></span> beautiful haggard eyes, "that I never +meant the harm that I appear to have done! Nor can I recall that I have +habitually attacked your faith, or for that matter any Christian man's. I +remember that I was suffering, physically and mentally, upon the day you +particularly refer to, when you came upon me at the Hospital. I had seen +an announcement in the <i>Siege Gazette</i> that ... I dare say you +understand?" He laughed harshly. "As to my theory of the Omnipotence of +Human Will, it is blown and exploded, and all the King's horses and all +the King's men will never set it back on the pedestal it has toppled from. +I owe you that admission, humbling to the pride that is left in me! Of how +far Will, in another man, may carry him, I dare not judge or calculate. My +own is a dead leaf, doomed to be the sport of any wind that blows!"</p> + +<p>He took up the walking-stick he had leaned against a bookcase, and said, +pulling his hat down over his sombre eyes:</p> + +<p>"The best of us are bad in spots, Parson: the worst of us are good in +patches. You Churchmen don't recognise that fact sufficiently.... And I +think no worse of you for what you have told me! If I have anything to +forgive—why, it is forgiven! Do you try, on the other hand, to think +leniently of a man who broke your staff of faith for you, and has nothing +of his own to lean upon. As for my wife, in whose interests I know you to +be honestly solicitous, I will tell you this much: She will be spared the +'inevitable misery' of which you spoke just now!"</p> + +<p>"How? Have you decided to undergo a cure? I have heard," hesitated Julius, +"that these things are not always successful—that they sometimes fail!"</p> + +<p>"Mine is the only cure that never fails," returned Saxham.</p> + +<p>A vision of the little blue-glass, yellow-labelled vial that held the +swift dismissing pang, floated before him. He shook hands with Julius, and +went upon his lonely way.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXVI" id="LXVI"></a>LXVI</h2> + + +<p>Even the saintly of this earth are prone to rare, occasional displays of +temper. Saxham's white saint had proved her descent from Eve by stamping +her slender foot at her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</a></span> hulking Doctor; had, after a sudden outburst of +passionate, unreasonable upbraiding, risen from the dinner-table and run +out of the room, to hide a petulant, remorseful shower of tears.</p> + +<p>Such a trivial thing had provoked the outburst—merely an invitation from +Captain and Mrs. Saxham, who were settled for the London summer season in +Eaton Square, for Owen and his wife to spend the scorching months of +August and September at the old home, perched on the South Dorset cliffs, +among its thrush-haunted shrubberies of ilex and oleander and +rose—nothing more.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Owen Saxham had passionately resented the idea. Why never +occurred to Saxham. He had long ago forgiven and forgotten Mildred's old +treachery. If David's betrayal had brought him shame and anguish, it had +borne him fruit of joy as well. And if the fruit might never be gathered, +if its divine juices might never solace her husband's bitter thirst, at +least, while he lived, it was his—to look at and long for. He owed that +cruel bliss to his brother and that brother's wife. And their meeting had +been, upon his side, free of constraint, unshadowed by the recollection of +what had once appeared to him a base betrayal—a gross, foul, unpardonable +wrong.</p> + +<p>Suppose he had married Mildred, and been uneventfully happy and +successful. Then, Saxham told himself, he would never have seen and known +Lynette. She would never have come to him and laid in his the slight hand +whose touch thrilled him to such piercing agony of yearning for the little +more that would have meant so much—so much....</p> + +<p>Ah, yes! he was even grateful to Mildred. She had not worn well. She had +grown thin and <i>passée</i>, and nervous and hysterical. But she was amiable, +even demonstrative in her professions of admiration and enthusiasm for +Owen's wife. Her regard for the Doctor was elaborate in the sisterliness +of its expression when he was present, if in his absence it was tempered +by a regretful sigh—even by a reference to the time:</p> + +<p>"<i>When poor dear Owen thought me the only woman worth looking at in the +whole world.</i> Ah, well! that is all over, long ago!" Mildred would say, +with an inflection that was meant to be tenderly reassuring. And she +would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</a></span> tilt her still pretty head on one side and smile with pensive +kindness at her successor upon the throne of poor dear Owen's heart.</p> + +<p>These gentle, retrospective references were never made in the Doctor's +hearing. With truly feminine tact they were reserved for Mrs. Owen's +delectation. And possibly they might have rankled in those pretty +shell-like ears, if their owner had loved Saxham.</p> + +<p>But Saxham knew that she did not;—had even ceased to wish that the +miracle might be wrought. Brainy men can be very dense. When she stamped +her foot and cried, "I decline to accept Mrs. Saxham's invitation, either +with you or without you. I wonder that you should dream of asking me to! +If you can forget how hideously she and your brother have treated you, I +cannot! I loathe treachery! I abominate ingratitude and deceit! And I hate +her—and I shall not go!" Saxham opened his eyes, as well he might. He had +never before seen his wife otherwise than gentle and submissive. He found +his own bitter explanation of the sudden storm that had burst among the +débris of dessert on the Harley Street dinner-table. Her fetters were +galling her to agony, he knew! His square pale face grew more +Rhadamanthine than ever, and the glass he had been filling with port +overflowed unnoticed on the cloth. But he kept the mask of set composure +before his agony of remorse. Then the frou-frou of light silken draperies +passed over the soft carpet. The door opened and shut with a slam. Lynette +had left the room. As Saxham sat alone, a heavy, brooding figure, +mechanically sipping at his port, and staring at the empty place opposite, +where the overset flower-glass, and the crookedly pushed-back chair, and +the serviette that made a white streak on the dark crimson carpet, marked +the haste and emotion of her departure, he said to himself that the West +End upholsterer who had the contract for refurnishing Plas Bendigaid must +be warned to complete his work without delay.</p> + +<p>For Plas Bendigaid, the solid, stone-built grange that had been a Convent +in the fifteenth century, and probably long before, the South Welsh home +of his mother's girlhood, perched in the shadow of Herion Castle upon a +wide shelf of the headland that commands the treacherous shoals and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</a></span> snowy +shell-strewn sands and wild tumbling waters of Nantmadoc Bay ... Plas +Bendigaid, with that hoarded, invested money, was to be Saxham's bequest +to his young widow.</p> + +<p>Everything that loving care and forethought could plan had already been +done to make the old home pleasant and charming. Nothing was needed but +the upholsterer's finishing touches. Saxham had planned that Lynette +should be there when he wiped out the shame of failure by keeping that +promise made in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, little more than a year +before.</p> + +<p>He had always meant to keep it, but not when the north-east gales of +winter and spring should be sweeping over the mountain-passes and lashing +the waves to madness; not when the ceaseless scurry of hunted clouds +should have piled the south-west horizon with scowling blue-black +ramparts, topped by awful towers, themselves belittled by stupendous +heights built of intangible vapours, and reproducing with added grandeur +and terror the soaring peaks and awful vales and appalling precipices of +snow-helmed Frore and her daughters.</p> + +<p>When the promise of Summer should have been fulfilled in sweetness, Saxham +would keep his promise. When the swallows should hatch out their young +broods between the huge stones that the hands of men who returned to dust +cycles of centuries ago hauled up with the twisted hide-rope and the +groaning crane, to rear with them upon the jut of the rugged headland two +hundred feet above the waves that now break a mile away, the Lonely Tower, +now merged in the huge dilapidated Edwardian keep that broods over Herion. +When those blocks of cyclopæan masonry should be tufted with the golden +wallflower and the perfumed wild geranium, and starred with the delicate +blossom of the lavender scabious and the wild marguerite, then the little +blue bottle that stood in the deep table-drawer near the big whisky-flask +should come into use.</p> + +<p>When the vast pale sweep of the sandy dunes should be covered for leagues +by the perfumed cloth-of-gold spread by the broom and the furze; when the +innumerable little yellow dwarf-roses should blossom on their prickly +bushes, thrusting pertly through the powdery white sand, and every hollow +and hillock should be gay with the star convolvulus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</a></span> and the flaunting +scarlet poppies—then Death should come, borne on winged feet, and bearing +the sword of keenness, to sever the iron bonds of Andromeda chained to the +rock. And here was Summer, knocking at the door!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Lynette did not reappear. He did not seek her out and ask the reason of +her strange display of emotion. Only a husband could do that who had the +right to take her in his arms and kiss the last remaining traces of her +tears away. Saxham went to his consulting-room, and while all the clocks +of London made time, and the moon veered southward, and the stars rose and +set, he toiled over his notes and case-books in the brilliant circle cast +by the shaded electric lamp upon his writing-table, and the tide in the +big whisky-flask in the table-drawer ebbed low.</p> + +<p>Hours hence he laid down his pen. The flask had long been emptied; the +alcohol-flare was dying out in the grey chambers of his brain. Weariness +of life weighed on him like a leaden panoply. He had almost stretched his +hand to take the little blue-glass vial that sat waiting, waiting in the +deep table-drawer aside the drained flask before sleep overcame him. His +head sank against the chair-back. His was a sudden, heavy lapsing into +forgetfulness, unmarred by dreams.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Time sped. The silver table-clock, the clock upon the mantelshelf, and the +grandfather clock in the corner, ran a race with the chronometer in the +pocket of the sleeping man. The brilliant unwavering circle of electric +light did not reach the face of the Dop Doctor. It bathed his hands, that +hung lax over the arms of the Sheraton chair, and tipped his lifted chin, +leaving the strong brow and closed eyes in shadow. But as the pale glimmer +of dawn began to outline the edges of the blinds and stretched at length a +broad, pointing finger across the quiet room, the sleeping face showed +greyish pale and luminous as a drawing by Whistler in silver-point.</p> + +<p>The dawn had not rested on it long before there came a knock upon the +panel of the consulting-room door. It was so faint and diffident a knock, +no wonder it passed unheeded. Then the door opened timidly, and a slender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</a></span> +figure in pale flowing draperies of creamy embroidered cashmere stole upon +small, noiseless, slippered feet over the thick Turkey carpet.</p> + +<p>It was Lynette. She had risen from her bed, and looked out from the +landing into the hall below, and, seeing the light of the unextinguished +lamp shining under the lintel of the consulting-room door, had stolen +timidly down to ask Owen's pardon. Why had she behaved so badly? She could +not explain. Only she was sorry. She must tell him so. His name was upon +her lips, when she saw the Dop Doctor sleeping in his chair.</p> + +<p>Breathlessly silent, she crossed the room to his side. And then—it was to +her as though she looked upon her husband's face for the first time.</p> + +<p>There was no stain of his secret excess upon it—no bloating of the +features. You would have said this was a sane and strong and temperate +man, upon whom the mighty brother of all-conquering Death had come, like +one armed, and overthrown in the heat and stress of the life-battle. Only +the sorrow of a suffering soul was written as deeply on that pale mask of +human flesh as though the sculptor-slaves of a Pharao, dead seven thousand +years agone, had cut it with tools of unknown, resistless temper in the +diamond-hard Egyptian granite.</p> + +<p>He breathed deeply and evenly, and not a muscle twitched as Lynette bent +over and looked at him. A mass of her red-brown hair, heavy with the +weight of its own glossy luxuriance, slipped from her half-bared bosom as +she leaned over him, and fell upon his breast. A sudden blush burned over +her as it fell. He never stirred. But as though the rod of Moses had +touched the rock in Horeb, one slow tear oozed from between Saxham's black +fringed, close-sealed eyelids, and hung there, a burnished, trembling +point of steely light. And the deep, still, manly anguish of his face +cried out to the reawakening womanhood in Lynette, and a strange, new, +overwhelming emotion seized and shook her as a stream of white and liquid +fire seemed to pass into her veins and mingle with her blood.</p> + +<p>She began to understand, as she pored, with beating heart and bated +breath, upon the living page before her eyes.</p> + +<p>In its reticence and lonely strength of endurance, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</a></span> face of Saxham's +pleaded with her. In its stern acceptance of suffering and disappointment +for Saxham, in its rugged confrontation of the inevitable; in its resolute +long-suffering and grim patience; in its silent abnegation of any claim +upon her gratitude or any right to demand her tenderness, the face was +more than eloquent to-night. In the pride that would never stoop to beg +for pity—would rather die hungered than accept one crumb of grudged and +measured love; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to that +promise given to a dead man; in the nobility of its refusal to shine +brighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the revelation of that +other man's mean baseness; in its almost paternal solicitude; in its agony +of love for her, insensible and careless; in the sick despair that had +given up and left off hoping: even in the pride that had—or so it seemed +to her—asserted itself at the last, and said, "I have left off crying for +the moon; I wish for your love no longer!"—it pleaded—pleaded.... Words +struggled for answering utterance in her, but none came.... She leaned +nearer, drawn by an irresistible fascination, and laid her lips lightly +upon the broad white forehead, with the bar of black meeting eyebrow +smudged across it, and then, with a sudden leap and thrill, she knew....</p> + +<p>All that had been in the past went for nothing. Only this man mattered who +sat sleeping in the chair. How easy to awaken him with a touch, and tell +him all! She dared not, though she longed to.</p> + +<p>He was her master as well as her mate. When he had said to her that he had +ceased to care, his eyes had given his words the lie. He had looked at +her.... She shivered deliciously at the recollection of that look. If he +were to open those stern, ardent eyes now, he would know her his. His—all +his, to deal with as he chose!... His alone!</p> + +<p>If Saxham had awakened then.... But he slept on. She did not dare to kiss +that broad white buckler of his forehead again. She kissed the sleeve of +his coat instead, and, scared by a sudden sigh and movement of one of the +hands that hung over the chair-arms, gathered her draperies around her, +and stole as noiselessly as a pale sunbeam, out of the room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXVII" id="LXVII"></a>LXVII</h2> + + +<p>It was barely five o'clock, and the balmiest summer day at Herion is wont +to waken, like a spoilt child, in a bad temper of angry wind and lashing +rain. Lynette, who had risen from her bed and thrown her dressing-gown +about her, to kneel on the broad window-seat and look out upon this +strange new world, shivered, standing barefoot on the mossy carpet. Then +she looked round the room, and smiled with delight. For she had found it, +upon her arrival of the previous night, a reproduction, down to the +smallest detail, of her blue-and-white bedroom at Harley Street, with this +notable difference—that on the wall facing the bed-head hung a fine copy +of a Millais portrait that was one of the treasures of Bawne House. Lady +Bridget-Mary, in the glory of her beautiful youth, shone from the canvas +splendid as a star.</p> + +<p>How kind, how kind of Owen!... Her eyes filled as she gazed, comparing the +glowing, radiant face upon the canvas with the enlarged photograph of the +Mother in her habit that stood in an ebony and silver frame upon a little +table beside the bed. A worn "Garden of the Soul" lay near, and the +"Imitation" of inspired À Kempis. Both had been the Mother's gifts. The +Breviary and the Little Office of Our Lady had belonged to the dead. +Lynette had brought these treasured possessions with her from Harley +Street, leaving the ivory Crucifix hanging in its place above the vacant +pillow. So many sleepless nights she had known of late upon that pillow +that there were faint bluish-shaded hollows under the beautiful eyes, and +wistful lines about the mouth.</p> + +<p>Since the revelation made to her by her own heart, when the heavy tress of +hair dropped from her bosom upon the unconscious breast above which she +bent, an insurmountable wall of diffidence and shyness upon her side, and +of stern, self-concentrated isolation on her husband's, had risen up +between them, dwarfing the barrier that was already there.</p> + +<p>His writing-table lamp had burned through the nights, but she had never +ventured upon another stolen visit to Saxham's consulting-room. The memory +of that kiss she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</a></span> had put upon the velvety-smooth space above the broad +meeting eyebrows stung in her like a sense of guilt, and yet it had its +sweetness. She had claimed her right. The man was hers, though she might +never be his.... To know it was to realise at once her riches and her +poverty.</p> + +<p>Out of a vague yearning and a formless, nameless pain had come to her the +knowledge of the true herb needed for her healing. The unsated hunger for +sympathy and love and loveliness, the loneliness that gnawed him, she +comprehended now. And as she looked about her at the dainty, +carefully-chosen furniture, and the exquisite old-world-patterned chintz +draperies, recognising what his care had been to please her, and how every +little taste and preference of hers had been remembered and gratified, a +sense of her own ingratitude pierced her to the quick.</p> + +<p>She had parted from Owen without one tender word, without even one glance +of greater kindness than she would have bestowed upon a stranger. She +ached with futile remorse at the recollection of that frigid, distant +good-bye at Euston Station, when Lady Hannah's shrill laugh had jangled +through Major Bingo's blustering admonitions to perspiring porters to put +the luggage in one compartment, to stow canvas bags of golf-clubs and +fishing-rods in the racks, and to damage bicycles at their personal peril, +since the company evaded liability.</p> + +<p>It had been Saxham's wish that Lady Hannah and Major Wrynche should be his +wife's guests at Plas Bendigaid. Looking from her bedroom casements over +the syringas and lilacs and larches, the laburnums and hawthorns and +hollies of the low-walled garden that ended at the sheer cliff-edge, from +whence you looked down upon the tops of the pines and chestnuts, whose +green foliage hid the shining metals of the iron way, and made a sea of +verdure in place of the salt blue waves that once had lapped and sighed +there—gazing across the powdery sand-dunes that were prickly with +sea-holly and gay with flaunting poppies and purple scabious, the pink and +white convolvulus, and the thorny yellow dwarf rose, that somehow finds +nourishment in the pale sand of Herion Links, to the line of white +breakers that rose and fell more than a mile away. Lynette sighed a small +sigh of resignation at the prospect of long weeks to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</a></span> be spent in the +society of these pleasant, well-bred, rather fidgety people Owen had +chosen to bear her company.</p> + +<p>Of course, Owen could not leave his patients! He had explained that, and +Lady Hannah and her big Major were old friends of hers and his. And the +little woman with the jangling laugh and the snapping black eyes had known +the Mother in her youth....</p> + +<p>At that remembrance Lynette's eyes went lovingly to the copy of the +Millais portrait, and as the sun burst through the streaming wind-chased +clouds, and smote bright diamond-rays from the dripping window-panes, the +firm lips seemed to curve in the rare, sudden smile, the great grey eyes +to gleam with life and tenderness.</p> + +<p>Ah, to spend a long, sweet summer here, alone with that dearest of all +companions! Lynette's white throat swelled at the thought, and a mist +blotted out the noble face, crowned with its diadem of rich black tresses. +She wiped the tears away, and beheld a world miraculously changed. For +land and sea were drenched in radiant sunshine.</p> + +<p>She unlatched the casements and threw them wide, and clean, salt, sweet +air came streaming in, bringing the fragrance of mignonette and wallflower +and sweetbriar, and the aromatic smells of the larch and pine. She leaned +her white arms upon the grey stone window-sill, and drank the freshness +and fragrance. And it seemed to her that this ancient grange, perched on +the cliff-ledge in the tremendous shadow of Herion Castle, looking across +the restless grey-blue waters of Nantmadoc Bay to St. Tirlan's Roads, was +an ideal place to spend a honeymoon in, supposing you loved the man you +had married, and were loved by him?</p> + +<p>Her bosom heaved and her wild heart fell to throbbing. A blush burned over +her, and she drove the thought away. It came back, whispering like a guest +who wishes not to be dismissed. It pleaded and urged and compelled. +Something like a strong hand closed upon her heart and drew her, drew +her.... A voice called to her in the silence that was only broken by the +voices of birds, and the rustling of wind-stirred leaves, and the crying +of the gulls above the white restless breakers. And the voice was Owen's.</p> + +<p>How strangely he had looked and spoken in that last moment of their +parting! It came back in every detail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</a></span> for the hundredth time, as she +leaned her white arms upon the window-sill and looked out with wistful +eyes upon the beauty of the blossoming world.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, good-bye! Be happy—and forget!"</p> + +<p>The train had begun to move as he uttered the words He had gripped her +hand painfully and released it. As he drew his arm sharply away, a button, +hanging loosely by a thread or two, became detached from his coat-cuff, +and fell upon the rubber matting of the corridor. She was conscious of the +button as Saxham and the crowded, grimy platform receded from her view. +And before she went back to her seat in the compartment that had been +reserved for herself and her fellow-travellers, she picked up the tiny +disc of black horn, and secretly kissed it, and slipped it into her purse. +She was silent and preoccupied during the eleven hours' journey, turning +over and over in her mind, mentally repeating with every shade of +expression that could vary their meaning, Saxham's strange words of +farewell.</p> + +<p>She repeated them now aloud. They were tossed to and fro in her heart on +waves of wonder and regret and apprehension. Did Owen really believe that +to be happy she must forget him? Did he comprehend that she had long +arrived at the conclusion that this loveless, joyless companionship, +mocked by the name of marriage, was a miserable mistake?</p> + +<p>He had never been under any illusion as concerned it. He had accepted the +iron terms of the contract she offered him with open eyes and full +knowledge. She heard his voice again, as it had spoken in the Cemetery at +Gueldersdorp, saying:</p> + +<p>"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriage +that should be practically no marriage at all—a formal contract that is +not wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and ripen into the +close union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and women +who love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"</p> + +<p>That was just what she had asked. He had accepted her iron conditions, and +stipulated for nothing. He had given his all. What had she given him? +Nothing but suffering, being rendered pitiless by the ache and sting in +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</a></span> own bosom—absorbed, swallowed up by her agony of grief for the +Mother, her passion of regret for dead Beauvayse.</p> + +<p>Beauvayse.... Suppose he and Owen Saxham stood side by side down there on +the green short grass beneath her windows, which of the two men would +to-day be the dearer and the more desired? The tall, soldierly young +figure, with the sunburnt, handsome face, the gay, amorous, challenging +glance, the red mouth that laughed under the golden moustache, and the +shallow brain under the close-clipped golden curls, or the black-haired, +hulking Doctor, with the square-cut, powerful face and the stern blue +eyes, the man of heart and intellect, whose indomitable, patient +tenderness had led a stricken girl back from the borders of that strange +land where the brain-sick dwell, to wholesome consciousness of common +things, and renewed healthfulness of body and of mind?</p> + +<p>She had hardly thanked him. She realised, with tears of shame, that this +inestimable service she had accepted as matter of course. It was the way +of Saxham's world to take of him and render nothing; he who was worthy to +be a King among his fellow-men had been their servant as long as she had +known him.</p> + +<p>To call him hard and stern, and seek his aid and sympathy at every pinch; +to deem him cold and grudging, and accept his sacrifices as matter of +course—that was the way of the world with grim-jawed, tender-hearted Owen +Saxham. And she, who had done like the rest, knew him now, and valued him +for what he was, and—loved him!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For this was love that had come upon her like a strong man armed, not as +he had shown himself to her before—laughing and merry, playful and +sweet.... This was no ephemeral, girlish passion, evoked by the beauty of +gay, wanton, grey-green jewel-eyes and a bold, smiling mouth. This was a +love that drew you with irresistible strength, and knitted you to the +soul, and the heart, and the flesh of another, until his breath became +your breath, and his life your life. It called you with a voice that +plucked at the secret chords of your being, and was stern and compelling +rather than sweet to implore. It drew you to the beloved, not with ribbons +of silk, but with ropes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</a></span> tempered steel. It was potent and resistless +as death, and infinitely deeper than the grave. It reached out aspiring +hands beyond the grave, into Eternity. And, newly born as it rose in the +heart of this woman, it was yet as old as Eden, where Heavenly Love +created the earthly love, that is more than half-divine.</p> + +<p>Why, why had he sent her away, bidding her be happy and forget him?... The +memory of his hollow eyes and haggard face pierced her to the quick. He +was ill—he was in trouble; he had sent her away that he might bear the +burden solely.... Or ... an iron hand closed upon her heart, and wrung it +until points of moisture started upon her fair temples under the fine +tendrils of her hair ... could the reason be—another woman?</p> + +<p>Another woman?... She set her little teeth and drove the unworthy thought +away. But it came again and again—a persistent mental gadfly. Was Owen +not worthy of love? Suppose another sweeter, gentler creature had found a +throne in the heart that his wife had prized so lightly, would it be so +very strange, after all? Perhaps that was why he had asked her to forgive +him for having married her a little while ago!</p> + +<p>She dropped her head upon her folded arms, and sobbed at the thought. Then +she dried her tears and rang for her maid, and presently came down to +breakfast with Lady Hannah, smiling and composed, cheerful and attentive +as a hostess ought to be. But her reddened eyelids told tales.</p> + +<p>"Misses her Doctor, no doubt," thought Lady Hannah, as she commended the +country eggs and butter, and was enthusiastic over the thyme-scented Welsh +mountain-honey, and apologetic over the absence of her Bingo from the +board.</p> + +<p>She would carry her nuisance his breakfast with her own hands, she vowed, +as he had left his man behind, on hearing from the Doctor that the house +was a small one.</p> + +<p>"But why?" asked Lynette. "There is Marie, my maid, and the red-cheeked +parlourmaid, whose name I don't yet know, and Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper +..."</p> + +<p>"Who was Dr. Saxham's nurse when he was a little boy, and adores him. And +Mrs. Pugh's husband, who is gardener, and handy-man, and coachman when +required."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</a></span> Lady Hannah's laugh jangled out over the capacious tray, +containing the comprehensive assortment of viands representing what the +invalid was wont to term his "brekker." "But I'm not to be deprived of my +privilege, for all that. Do you suppose you young married creatures are +the only wives who enjoy cosseting their husbands? There! it's out, and I +ought to be ashamed of myself, I suppose, but I'm not. Is that collared +brawn on the sideboard? Bingo has a devouring passion for collared brawn." +She added a goodly slice to the contents of the tray. "I warn you, if you +regard the billing and cooing of a middle-aged couple as indecent," she +went on, "to look the other way a great deal while we're here. For I was +for the first time seriously smitten with my husband when he rode out to +meet me, returning from ignoble captivity in the tents of Brounckers, +eighteen months ago. When I nursed him through enteric in the Hospital at +Frostenberg—I won't disguise it—I fell in love! With a bag of bones, for +he was nothing else: but genuine passion is indifferent to the personal +appearance of the beloved object, though I hadn't suspected it before. The +wound completed my conquest, and since then I'm madly jealous if another +woman looks at him!... I see red—green would be a better colour—because +he prefers to have his valet brush his hair. I don't know that I didn't +reduce the holding capacity of this house by a storey—there's a pun for +you!—so as to engineer my hated rival being left at home in Wilton Place. +Is that lovely murrey-coloured stuff in the cut-glass jar quince +marmalade? No! I won't pamper Bingo, if he is the idol of my soul. And +please don't wait for me. He likes me to take off the tops of his eggs for +him, and he usually eats three...."</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah tripped off with her load, and deposited it before the idol, +who was sitting up in a Japanese bed-jacket of wadded pink satin, +left-handedly reading the Herion newspaper that comes out once a week, and +is published at St. Tirlan's, twenty miles away.</p> + +<p>"I've made a discovery," she announced. "No, don't look frightened. It's +only that poor Biddy's <i>belle trouvaille</i> has got a heart. She's not the +tinted Canova-nymph, the piece of correct inanity, I honestly believed +her....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</a></span> She idolised Biddy—small credit, for who could help it? She +submitted to be adored by that poor foolish boy who's dead.... Now she's +her black-avised Doctor's humble worshipper and slave."</p> + +<p>"Can't understand a woman worshippin' a chap with a chin like the bows of +an armoured Destroyer, and eyebrows like another man's moustaches," Bingo +objected.</p> + +<p>"Chin or no chin, eyebrows or not a hair, what does that count to a woman +in love?" She placed the laden tray before him, and with a maternal air +proceeded to tuck a napkin under his chin. He grumbled:</p> + +<p>"There's no knowin' what will take the female fancy. But even if you +haven't harked away on a wrong scent, slave's a dash too strong. Struck me +they parted uncommon chilly and off-hand at Euston yesterday mornin', +considerin' they've not been married much above a year! Do take this thing +from round my neck! Makes me feel like Little Willie!"</p> + +<p>Lady Hannah unpinned the napkin that framed the bulldog jowl, and said, +patting the sandy-pink bullet-head:</p> + +<p>"That's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in amatory affairs. No Eyes sees +two people part, 'uncommon off-hand and chilly.'" She mimicked Bingo's +tone. "Eyes sees that and something more! A man's coat-button dropped on +the floor of a railway carriage, for instance, and a young woman who slyly +picks it up—silly little <i>gage d'amour</i>—and kisses it when a considerate +observer pretends not to be looking, and hides it away! Is that evidence, +Major Mole?"</p> + +<p>"By the Living Tinker!" he thundered, "I wouldn't have believed it of +her!"</p> + +<p>"Of course you wouldn't!" She rummaged in an open suit-case. "What necktie +do you want to wear to-day?"</p> + +<p>He mumbled ruefully, eyeing her over the coffee-cup:</p> + +<p>"Any of 'em. It don't matter which. They're all alike when you've tied +'em!"</p> + +<p>She beamed at what seemed to her a gallant speech.</p> + +<p>"<i>Sans compliment?</i> You really mean it? And you won't miss Grindlay so +frightfully, after all?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head ambiguously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I shan't begin really to suffer for Grindlay—not till it comes to +tubbin' with one fin."</p> + +<p>"Mercy upon us!" She gasped in consternation. He said, controlling his +features from wreathing into triumphant smiles:</p> + +<p>"You were so cast-iron certain you could fill his place, you know!"</p> + +<p>Her bright black eyes were hidden under abashed and drooping eyelids. +Blushes played hide-and-seek in the small cheeks that were usually pale.</p> + +<p>"In—in everything essential," she stammered, avoiding his intolerable +gaze.</p> + +<p>"Then that's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in ordinary, everyday +affairs!" The man pursued his advantage pitilessly. "Didn't you regard it +as essential that I should wash?"</p> + +<p>She winked tears away, though her laugh answered him.</p> + +<p>"Most certainly I did, and do. One of the reasons that decided me on +marrying you was that you were invariably <i>propre comme un sou neuf</i>."</p> + +<p>"I thought, on mature reflection," said Bingo, lying down under the +lightened tray with a replete and satisfied air, "that you would prefer a +clean husband to a dirty one. Therefore I engaged a bedroom for Grindlay +at the Herion Arms. That's his knock. Come in!"</p> + +<p>The valet presented himself upon the threshold, backing respectfully at +sight of her ladyship, who gave him a gracious good-morning, dissembling +the intense relief experienced at sight of his smug, clean-shaven +countenance.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning, Grindlay. I hope the Hotel people made you comfortable. And +now you have arrived to take responsibility off my hands," she announced, +"I'll go and get some breakfast."</p> + +<p>"Haven't you ... You're joking!" The tray shot from the bed into +Grindlay's saving clutch as Bingo suddenly assumed the perpendicular. "You +don't mean to say that you've been starving all the time I've been gorging +myself like—like a boa-constrictor?" he demanded furiously. "Why on earth +are women such blessed——"</p> + +<p>"—Idiots?" she supplied, turning on the threshold to launch her Parthian +shaft. "Because if they were intellectual,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</a></span> logical beings they would know +better than to lavish devotion upon stupid, selfish, unappreciative, +heartless, dull dolts of men!"</p> + +<p>The door slammed behind an injured woman. Grindlay's face was a study in +immobility. Bingo, after a little more meditation, ponderingly rose and +submitted himself to the hands of the attendant. When the Major's toilet +had reached the stage of hair-parting, he roused himself from his +reflections with a sigh.</p> + +<p>"Hold on. Put down that comb and go and ask her ladyship to be good enough +to step up here. Tell her that your style of hairdressin' don't suit me. I +want a little more imagination thrown into the thing! Hurry up, will you!"</p> + +<p>"O Lord! What a liar I am!" he murmured fervently, addressing his +reflection in the glass. His wife's face appeared over his shoulder, +bright, alert, and pleased. She said, as she adroitly assumed the office +vacated by the discarded Grindlay, who discreetly delayed his re-entrance +on the scene:</p> + +<p>"So you can't get on, it appears, without your blessed idiot?"</p> + +<p>"Blessed angel, you mean!" said mendacious Bingo, blinking under a Little +Lord Fauntleroy fringe. "You banged the door before I'd got out the word!"</p> + +<p>"If I could believe that!" she sighed, and the ivory-backed hair-brushes +played rather a tremulous fantasia upon her idol's head, "perhaps I might +be induced to confide to you a piece of genuine Secret Intelligence."</p> + +<p>"Concernin'——?"</p> + +<p>"Concerning your wife, Hannah Wrynche."</p> + +<p>"Well, what of her?"</p> + +<p>She took him by the chin and began to part his hair. But her eyes were +misty, and her hand travelled unsteadily.</p> + +<p>"This of her. She owned to you, months and months back, that in your place +she wouldn't have been one-millionth part as patient with a restless, +ambitious woman cursed with an especial capacity for getting herself and +other people into hot water." She made a little affected grimace that +masked a genuine smart. "Not hot water only—boiling lava +sometimes—fizzling vitriol——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</a></span></p> + +<p>He said, looking kindly up at the small mobile face and quivering chin:</p> + +<p>"Restlessness and ambition are in the blood, y' know, like gout and the +rest of it. You can't eradicate 'em, however much you try. It's like +shavin' a Danish carriage-dog to change his colour. You can't for nuts; +his spots are in his skin! See?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Merci du compliment!</i>" Her jangling laugh rang out as if a stick had +been smartly rattled down the keys of a piano. But her eyes were wet. His +own eyes reverted to his reflection in the toilet-glass. Now his sudden +bellow made her drop the comb.</p> + +<p>"My Aunt Maria! See what you've been and done! Made a Loop Railway down +the middle of my head, unless my liver's making me see things curly. Don't +swot at it any more; let that ass Grindlay earn his pay for once.... By +the Living Tinker! you're cryin'. Don't go and say I've been a brute!" he +pleaded.</p> + +<p>"Darling!—dearest!—you haven't—you've never!... The boot's on the other +leg, though wild horses wouldn't get you to own as much!" His strong left +arm was round her slight waist, her wet cheek pressed against her Major's +bulldog jowl. Bingo cleared his throat in his ponderous, scraping way, +admitting:</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps I may have dropped a briny or so—of nights in bed at +Nixey's, or on duty at Staff Bombproof South, between ring-ups on the +telephone when the off-duty men were snorin', and one had nothin' on the +blessed earth to do but wonder whether one had a wife or not?"</p> + +<p>"There were people ready to tell you—years before we saw +Gueldersdorp—that the one you'd got was as good as none...."</p> + +<p>"Lucky for 'em they refrained from expressin' their opinions!" She felt +his great muscles swell as the big hand tightened on her waist. "Though, +mind you, there have been times when for your own sake, by Jingo! I'd have +given all I was worth to have you a bit more like other women——"</p> + +<p>"Who weren't dying to dabble in Diplomacy and win distinction as War +Correspondents. Who funk raw-head and bloody bones"—she shook with a +nervous giggle—"and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</a></span> all that sort of thing.... Would it please you to +know that the plumes of my panache of ambition have been cut to the last +quill—that henceforth my sole aim is to rival the domestic Partlet, +clucking of barnyard matters in the discreet retirement of the coop?"</p> + +<p>"You've said as much before!" he objected.</p> + +<p>"But now I mean it! Put me to the test. Let the house in Wilton +Place—we'll live at Wrynche Rodelands, if you think you won't be bored?"</p> + +<p>He bellowed joyously!</p> + +<p>"Me bored! With ten thousand acres arable and wood and moorland to farm +and preserve and shoot over, two first-class packs meetin' within a +fifty-mile radius of my doorstep, the Committee of the local Polo +Association shriekin' for a President, and the whole County beggin' me +with tears in its eyes to take the hint a Certain Person dropped when he +gave me my C.B., and accept the Crown Commission as Lord-Lieutenant! +'Bored'—I like that!"</p> + +<p>"If you would like it, be it!" she flashed. "Trust me to back you up. I +can and I will! I'll help you entertain the military authorities and their +women, keep the Rolls, sit on the Bench when you weigh in as Chief +Magistrate, and prompt you when you get into a hat. I'll be all things to +one man—and you shall be the man! Only"—she laughed hysterically, her +face hidden against his big shoulder—"I don't quite know how far these +things are compatible with my new rôle!"</p> + +<p>"Of domestic Henny-Penny cluckin' in the Home Coop." His big hand patted +her almost paternally. "Leave cluckin' to hens with families. Do you +suppose I'm such a pachydermatous ass that I can't understand that home is +a make-believe to a real woman, when—when there isn't even one chicken to +tuck under her wing! Worse luck for me and you!"</p> + +<p>She laughed wildly, lifting her wet, flushed face up to him. Her black +eyes were shining through the tears that rose and brimmed over and fell.</p> + +<p>"If I told you that the luck had changed, would that make you happy?"</p> + +<p>He cried out with a great oath:</p> + +<p>"Yes, by G——!" and caught her to his leaping heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXVIII" id="LXVIII"></a>LXVIII</h2> + + +<p>In the weeks that followed, Lynette, in the course of many interviews held +with Janellan Pugh on the subject of lunch and dinner, learned much anent +the difficulty of obtaining fresh fish in a sea-coast village, more as +regards the Satanic duplicity with which even a Calvinistic Methodist +butcher will substitute New Zealand lamb for the native animal, and still +more about Saxham.</p> + +<p>Janellan, who had been a rosy maid in the service of the Doctor's +grandfather, the Parson, had thought the world's worth of Master Owen, +from the first time she set eyes on him in a white frock, with a +sausage-roll curl and diamond-patterned socks. She had a venerable and +spotty photograph of him as a square-headed, blinking little boy in a +velvet suit and lace collar, and another photograph, coloured by hand, +taken at the age of fourteen, and paid for out of his own pocket-money, to +send to Janellan, who had nursed him through a holiday scarlet-fever. And +regularly had her blessed boy remembered her and Tafydd, said Janellan, +until the Cruel Time came, and he was lost sight of in Foreign Parts. Then +Mrs. Saxham died, and the Captain—mentioned by Janellan with the ringing +sniff that speaks volumes of disparagement—had turned her and her old man +out of the Plas "without as much as that!"—here Janellan snapped her +strong thumb-nail against her remaining front tooth—in recognition of +their forty years of faithful service.</p> + +<p>But Master Owen, coming to his own again, "and 'deed an' 'deed, but the +Plas ought to have been his from the beginning!" had sought out the old +couple, living in decent poverty at St. Tirlan's, and reinstated them in +their old home. And well might Tafydd, who was a better judge of the +points of a pig than any man in Herion—or in all Wales for the matter of +that—well might Tafydd declare that the Lord never made a better man than +Dr. Owen Saxham! What grand things they had said of him in the papers! No +doubt the young mistress would have plenty more to tell that had not got +into print?</p> + +<p>"I can tell you many things of the Doctor," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</a></span> Lynette, smiling in the +black-eyed, streaky-apple face "that you and Tafydd will be proud and glad +to hear."</p> + +<p>She shunned the giving or receiving of caresses as a rule but this morning +she stooped and kissed the red-veined, wrinkled cheek within Janellan's +white-quilled cap-border. Then, her household duties done, she pinned a +rough, shady straw-hat upon the red-brown hair, and drew loose +chamois-leather gloves over the slim white exquisite hands that were, +perhaps her greatest beauty, chose a walking-stick from the hall-rack, ran +down the steep cliff pathway, crossed the spidery, red-rusted iron +foot-bridge that spanned the railway-line, descended upon the farther side +of the wood of chestnut and larch that made green shadows at the base of +the cliff, and was upon the sand-dunes, walking with the free, undulating +gait she had acquired from the Mother, towards the restless line of white +breakers that rose and fell a mile away.</p> + +<p>She was happy. A glorious secret kept her bosom-company; a new hope gave +her strength. She drank in long draughts of the strong, salt, fragrant +air, and as it filled her lungs, knew her soul brimmed with fresh delight +in the beauty of the world. And a renewed and quickened sense of the joy +of life made music of the beating of her pulses and the throbbing of her +heart.</p> + +<p>She was a child of the wild veld, but none the less a daughter of this +sea-girt Britain: the blue, restless waves beyond that line of white +frothing breakers washed the shores of the Mother's beloved green island, +Emerald Airinn, set in silver foam. A few miles, St. George's Channel +spanned—then straight as the crow flies over Wicklow, Queen's County, +King's County, taking Galway at the acute angle of the wild mallard's +flight; and there would be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers, +the grey-green mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys and +wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare rising +from its mossed lawns studded with immemorial oaks. And Loch Kilbawne +among the wild highlands, and Lochs Innsa and Barre, and Ballybarron +Harbour, with its Titanic breakwater, and three beacons, and the dun-brown +islands bidden in their veil of surf-edged spindrift, shaken by the voices +of hidden waters roaring in their secret caves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</a></span></p> + +<p>A faint smile played about her sensitive lips. Her golden eyes dreamed as +she walked on swiftly, a slender figure dressed in a plain skirt of rough +grey-blue, and a loose-sleeved blouse of thick white silk, her slight +waist belted with a silver-mounted lizard-skin girdle, a pleasant tinkle +of silver châtelaine appendages accompanying her steps.</p> + +<p>And those steps were to her no longer uncompanioned. It was as though the +Mother were living, so enfolding and close was the sense of her presence +to-day. God was in His Heaven, and the world, His footstool, bore the +visible impress of His Feet. And it seemed to Lynette, who had learned to +see the faces of Christ and of His Mother Mary through the lineaments of +the earthly face that had first looked love upon herself in her terrible +abandonment, that those Divine and glorious countenances looked down on +her and smiled. And her chilled faith spread quivering wings, basking in +their ineffable mild radiance as the little blue and tortoiseshell +butterflies basked in the glorious sunshine that had followed the +morning's storm.</p> + +<p>The tangible presence seemed to move beside her, through the white powdery +sand. Over the knotted grasses, between the tufts of poppies and the +prickly little yellow roses that fringed the hollows, the garments of +another seemed to sweep beside her own. The folds of a thin veil upborne +on the elastic breeze fluttered beside her cheek, blew against her lips, +bringing the rare delicate fragrance—the familiar perfume that clung to +everything the Mother habitually wore and used and touched. She did not +look round, or stretch out her hand. She walked along, drinking in +blissfulness and companionship at every pore of her thirsty soul, joyfully +realising that this would last; that by-and-by the great void of +loneliness would not close in on her again.</p> + +<p>Only the night before, upon the brink of the supreme discovery that the +dead in Christ are not only living in Him, but for us also who are His, +she had hesitated and doubted. Before the sunrise of this glorious day she +had learned to doubt no more.</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> + +<p>She had been restless and unhappy. Saxham had not written for a week. She +bitterly missed the short, cold, kind letters in the clear, small, firm +handwriting, that had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</a></span> reached her at intervals of three days, to be +answered by her constrained and timid notes, hoping that he was well and +not overworking, describing the place and her pleasure in it, without +mention of her loneliness; giving details of Major Wrynche's progress +towards recovery, and left-handed attempts at golf, winding up with +messages from Lady Hannah and dutiful remembrances from Tafydd and +Janellan, and signed, his affectionate wife, Lynette Saxham.</p> + +<p>Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles seemed to their +writer. To Saxham they were drops of rain upon the parching soil of his +heart, the one good that life had for him in this final lap of the race. +And yet he had ceased to write that they might come no more.</p> + +<p>If he had known how his own letters to her were welcomed, how tenderly +they were read and re-read, how sweetly kept and cherished.... But he did +not know! He could only look ahead, and strain on to the nearing goal with +the great, dim, mysterious curtain hanging beyond it, hearing the thudding +of his wearied heart, and the whistling of those sharp breaths in his +strained lungs, and the measured sound of his own footfalls bearing him on +to the end, while night closed in on her, fevered and wakeful in her bed, +thinking of him, praying for him, longing for the sight and sound of him. +Sleep, when it came now, brought her dreams less crystal than of old. Hued +with the fiery rose of opals some, because in these he loved her; and that +shadowy woman, in whose existence she only half-believed, had no part in +him at all. But on the night preceding the revelation she had not dreamed.</p> + +<p>She awakened in the grey of dawn, when the thrushes were calling, and lay +straight and still, listening to the glad bird-voices from the garden, her +soft, fringed eyelids closed, her white breasts gently heaving, her small +feet crossed, her slender, bare arms pillowing the little Greek head; a +heavy plait of the silken wealth that crowned it drawn down on either side +of the sweet, pale face and the pure throat, intensifying their virginal +beauty. The dull smart of loneliness, the famished ache of loss, were gone +altogether. She felt strangely peaceful and calm and glad. Then she knew +she was not at Herion; she was not even in London.... She was back at the +Convent, in the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</a></span> whitewashed room with the stained deal +furniture—the room with the pleasant outlook on the gardens that had been +hers from the first. Surely it was past the rising hour? Ah, yes! but she +had had a touch of fever. That was why she was lying here so quietly, with +the Mother sitting by the bed.</p> + +<p>There could be no doubt.... The light firm, pressure that she knew of old +was upon her bosom, just above the beating of her heart.... That was +always the Mother's way of waking you. She sat beside you, and looked at +you, and touched you, and presently your eyes opened, that was all!... +Thinking this, a streak of gold glimmered between Lynette's thick dusky +lashes; her lips wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, and +there it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand. The loose +sleeve of thin black serge flowed away from the strong, finely moulded +wrist; the white starched <i>guimpe</i> showed snowy between the drooping folds +of the nun's veil.... These familiar things Lynette drank in with a sense +of unspeakable content and pleasure. Then—her eyes opened widely, and she +knew.</p> + +<p>She was looking into eyes that had seen the Beatific Vision—great grey +eyes that were unfathomable lakes of heavenly tenderness and love divine. +And the face that framed them was a radiant pale splendour, indescribable +in its glorious beauty, unfathomable in its fulfilled peace. Her own eyes +drank peace from them, deeply, insatiably, while the Herion thrushes sang +their dewy matins, and the scent of mignonette and sweet-peas and early +roses mingled with the smell of the sea, stole in at the open casement +where the white blind swelled out like a breeze-filled sail.</p> + +<p>How long Lynette lay there storing up content and rapture she did not +know, or want to know. But at last the wonder of those eyes came +nearer—nearer! She felt the dear pressure of the familiar lips upon her +own. A fragrance enveloped her, an exquisite joy overbrimmed her, as a +voice—the beloved, unforgotten voice of matchless music—spoke. It said:</p> + +<p>"<i>Love your husband as I loved Richard! Be to a child of his what I have +been to you!</i>"</p> + +<p class='center'>* * * * *</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</a></span></p> + +<p>Eyes and face and voice, white hand and flowing veil, were all gone then. +Lynette sat up, sobbing for joy, and blindly holding out her arms, and the +rising sun looked over the mountains eastward, and drew one hushing, +golden finger over the lips of the cold, grey, whispering sea.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXIX" id="LXIX"></a>LXIX</h2> + + +<p>A thin, subterraneous screech, accompanied by a whiff of cinder-flavoured +steam, heralded the Down Express as it plunged out of the cliff-tunnel, +flashed across an intervening space, and was lost among the chestnuts and +larches. A metallic rattle and scroop told that the official in the box on +the other side of the Castle bluff had opened the points. And hearing the +clanking bustle of the train's arrival in the station, Lynette reminded +herself with a sigh of relief that her maid was packing, that she would +presently make her excuses to Major Wrynche and Lady Hannah, and that the +midnight up-mail should take her home to Owen.</p> + +<p>Her course lay clear now, pointed out by the beloved, lost hand. But for +this Heaven-sent light that had been cast upon her way, Lynette knew that +she might have wandered on in doubt and darkness to the very end.</p> + +<p>She was not of the race of hero-women, who deserve the most of men, and +are doomed to receive in grudging measure. A pliant, dependent, +essentially feminine creature, she was made to lean and look up, to be +swayed and influenced by the stronger nature, to be guided and ruled, and +led, and to love the guide.</p> + +<p>Her nature had flowered: sun and breeze and dew had worked their miracle +of form and fragrance and colour, the ripened carpels waited, conscious of +the crown of tall golden-powdered anthers bending overhead. Instead of the +homely hive-bee a messenger had come from Heaven, the air vibrated yet +with the beating of celestial wings.</p> + +<p>She was going to Saxham to ask him to forgive her, to throw down the +pitiless barrier she had reared between them in her ignorance of herself +and of him. She would humble herself to entreat for that rejected crown of +wifehood. Even though that conjectural other woman had won Owen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</a></span> from her, +she said to herself that she would win him back again.</p> + +<p>She reached the wet, shining strip of creamy sand where the frothing line +of foam-horses reared and wallowed. The prints of her little brown shoes +were brimmed with sea-water, she lifted her skirt daintily, and went +forward still. Numberless delicate little winged shells were scattered +over the moist surface, tenantless homes of tiny bivalves, wonderfully +tinted. Rose-pink, brilliant yellow, tawny-white, delicate lilac, it was +as though a lapful of blossoms rifled from some mermaid's deep-sea garden, +had been scattered by the spoiler at old Ocean's marge. Lynette cried out +with pleasure at their beauty, stooped and gathered a palmful, then +dropped them. She stood a moment longer drinking in the keen, stinging +freshness, then turned to retrace her steps, still with that unseen +companion at her side.</p> + +<p>The vast, undulating green and white expanse, save for a distant +golf-player with the inevitable ragged following, seemed bare of human +figures. The veering breeze shepherded flocks of white clouds across the +harebell-tinted meadows of the sky. It sang a thin, sweet song in +Lynette's little rose-tipped ears. And innumerable larks carolled, +building spiral towers of melody on fields of buoyant air. And suddenly a +human note mingled with their music and with the thick drone of the +little, black-and-grey humble-bees that feasted on the corn-bottles. And +Lynette's visionary companion was upon the instant gone.</p> + +<p>It was a baby's cooing chuckle that arrested the little brown shoes upon +the verge of a deep sand hollow. Lynette looked down. A pearly-pale cup +fringed with blazing poppies held the lost treasure of some weeping +mother—a flaxen-headed coquette of some eighteen months old, arrayed in +expensive, diaphanous, now sadly crumpled whiteness, the divine human +peach served up in whipped cream of muslin and frothy Valenciennes. +Absorbed in delightful sand-dabbling, Miss Baby crowed and gurgled; then, +as a little cry of womanly delight in her beauty and womanly pity for her +isolation broke from Lynette, she looked up and laughed roguishly in the +stranger's face, narrowing her eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</a></span></p> + +<p>Naughty, mischievous eyes of jewel-bright, grey-green, long-shaped and +thick-lashed; bold red, laughing mouth—where had Lynette seen them +before? With a strange sense of renewing an experience she ran down into +the hollow, and dropping on her knees beside the pretty thing, caught it +up and kissed it soundly.</p> + +<p>"Where do you come from, sweet?" she asked, between the kisses. "Where are +mother and nurse?"</p> + +<p>"Ga!" said the baby. Then, with a sudden puckering of pearly-golden brows, +and a little querulous cry of impatience, the Hon. Alyse Rosabel Tobart +squirmed out of the arms that held her, exhibiting in the process the most +cherubic of pink legs, and the loveliest silk socks and kid shoes, and +wriggled back into her sandy nest. Once re-established there, she answered +no more questions, but with truly aristocratic composure resumed her +interrupted task of stuffing a costly bonnet of embroidered cambric and +quilled lace with sand. When the bonnet would hold no more, she had +arranged to fill her shoe: she was perfectly clear upon the point of +having no other engagement so absorbing.</p> + +<p>Smiling, Lynette abandoned the attempt to question. Perhaps the missing +guardians of this lost jewel were quite near after all, sitting with books +and work and other babies in the shelter of some neighbouring hollow, from +whence this daring adventurer had escaped unseen.... She ran up the steep +side where the frieze of poppies nodded against the sky, and the white +sand streamed back from under the little brown shoes that had trodden upon +Saxham's heart so heavily.</p> + +<p>No one was near. Only in the distance, toiling over the dry waves of the +sand-dunes towards the steep ascent by which the hilly main street of +Herion may be gained, went a white perambulator, canopied with white, and +propelled by a nurse in starched white skirts and flying white +bonnet-strings—a nurse who kept her head well down, and was evidently +reading a novel as she went. Some yards in advance a red umbrella bobbed +against the breeze like a giant poppy on a very short stem. The lady who +carried the flaming object was young; that much was plain, for the +fluttering heliotrope chiffons of her gown were held at a high, perhaps at +an unnecessarily lofty, altitude above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</a></span> the powdery sand, and her +plumply-filled and gleaming stockings of scarlet, fantastically barred +with black, and her dainty little high-heeled shoes were very much in +evidence as they topped a rising crest. Then they disappeared over the +farther edge, the red umbrella followed, and the nurse, in charging up the +steep after her mistress, discovered, perhaps by a glance of investigation +underneath the canopy, prompted by a too tardy realisation of the +suspicious lightness of the perambulator, that the shell was void of the +pearl.</p> + +<p>Lynette heard the wretched woman's piercing shriek, glimpsed the red +umbrella as it reappeared over the sand-crest, comprehended the horrible +consternation of mistress and maid. She must signal to them—cry out.... +Involuntarily she gave the call of the Kaffir herd: the shrill, prolonged +ululation that carries from spitzkop to spitzkop across the miles of +karroo or high-grass veld between. And she unpinned her hat and waved it, +standing amongst the thickly-growing poppies and chamomile on the high +crest of the sand-wave, while her shadow—a squat, blue dwarf with arms +out of all proportion—flourished and gesticulated at her feet.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXX" id="LXX"></a>LXX</h2> + + +<p>It is Fate who comes hurrying to Lynette under the becoming shadow of a +red umbrella, on the starched and rustling skirts of the agitated nurse, +whose mouth is seen to be shaping sentences long before she can be heard +panting:</p> + +<p>"Did you call, 'm? Her ladyship thought you did, and might have found ... +Oh, ma'am! have you seen a baby? We've lost ours!"</p> + +<p>Lynette nods and laughs reassuringly, pointing down into the hollow. The +nurse, with a squawk of relief, leaves her perambulator bogged in the +sand, flutters up the powdery rise like some large species of seagull, +squawks again, and swoops to retrieve her lost charge. Miss Baby, +perfectly contented until the scarlet face and whipping ribbons of her +attendant appear over the edge of her Paradise, throws herself backwards, +strikes out with kicking, dimpled legs, and sets up an indignant roar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There now—there! 'A was a pessus!" vociferates the owner of the +streaming ribbons and the scarlet countenance. "And did she tumble out of +her pram, the duck, and wicked Polly never see her? And thank Good +Gracious, not a bruise on her blessed little body-woddy, nor nothing but +the very tiddiest scratch!"</p> + +<p>"Which is not your fault, Watkins, I am compelled to say it," pronounces +the Red Umbrella, arriving breathless and decidedly indignant, on the +scene. "The idea of a person of your class being so wrapped up in a rotten +penny novel that you can't even keep your eye upon the darling entrusted +to your charge is too perfectly shameful for words. Baby, don't cry," she +continues, as the repentant Polly appears, bearing the retrieved treasure. +"Come to mummy and kiss her, and tell her all about it, do!"</p> + +<p>"I sa-t!" bellows Baby, now keenly alive to the pathos of the situation, +and digging a sandy pink fist into either eye ...</p> + +<p>"Don't, then, you obstinate little pig!" returns Red Umbrella, with +maternal asperity. She looks up to the fair vision that stands on high +amongst the poppies, and nods and smiles. "However I am to thank you!... +Such a turn when we missed her!..." She utters these incoherences with a +great deal of eye-play, pressing a small, plump, jewelled hand, with +short, broad fingers, and squat, though elaborately rouged and polished, +nails, upon the bountiful curve of a Parisian corsage. "My heart did a +double flip-flap ... hasn't done thumping yet. Am I pale still, Watkins?" +She appeals to the recreant Watkins, who is busily repacking Baby in her +luxurious perambulator. "I felt to go as white as chalk!"</p> + +<p>"Perfect gassly, my lady!" agrees Watkins, and it occurs to Lynette that +the process of blanching must, taking into consideration the artificial +blushes that bloom so thickly upon the pretty, piquante face under the red +umbrella, have been attended with some difficulty.</p> + +<p>Everything is round in the coquettish face, shaded by a hat that is an +expensive triumph of Parisian millinery, trimmed with a whole branch of +wistaria in bloom. The big brown eyes are round, so is the cherry-stained +mouth, so is the pert, button nose. The thick, dark eyebrows are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</a></span> like +inky half-moons, in the middle of the little round chin a circular dimple +is cunningly set. Round, pinky-olive shoulders and rounded arms gleam +temptingly through the bodice of heliotrope chiffon. Other roundnesses, +artfully exaggerated by the Parisian <i>modiste</i>, are liberally suggested, +as Red Umbrella gathers her frothy draperies about her hips, lifting her +multitudinous frills to reveal black and scarlet openwork silk stockings, +bedecking her plump legs and tiny feet, whose high-heeled silver-buckled +shoes are sinking in the hot, white, powdery sand.</p> + +<p>"Please don't go on! I haven't half thanked you," she pleads, still +pressing the podgy little bejewelled paw upon the heaving corsage. Then +she sinks, with an air of graceful languor, down upon a long, prostrate +monolith of granite, that is thickly crusted with velvety orange lichen +and grey-green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers. And +Lynette, habitually courteous and rather amused, and not at all unwilling +to know a little more of the affected, slangy, overdressed little woman, +sits down upon the other end of the sprawling stone column, and says, +smiling at Baby, who is clutching at a hovering butterfly with her eager, +dimpled hands:</p> + +<p>"Of course, it was a terrible shock to you when you missed her. She is +such a darling! Aren't you, Baby?"</p> + +<p>Baby, her long, grey-green eyes melting and gleaming dangerously, her +golden head tilted coquettishly, and a gay, provoking laugh on the bold +red mouth, makes another snatch, captures the hovering blue butterfly, +opens the rosy hand, and with a wry face of disgust, drops the crushed +morsel over the edge of the perambulator. The superb, unconscious cruelty +of the act gives Lynette a little pang even as she goes on:</p> + +<p>"She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon be very great +friends. May her nurse bring her to see me sometimes? Most babies love +flowers, and there is a garden full of them where I am staying. Do you +live here?"</p> + +<p>"Live here? Gracious, no!" Red Umbrella opens the round, brown eyes that +Baby's are so unlike in shape and expression, and shrugs her pretty +shoulders as high as the big ruby buttons that blaze in her pretty ears. +"Me and Baby are only visiting—stopping with her nurse and my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span> two maids +for a change at the Herion Arms—me having been recommended sea-air by the +doctors for tonsils in the throat. The house is advertised as an +up-to-date hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more wretched I +never struck, and you do fetch up in some queer places on tour in the +Provinces, let alone the States," says Red Umbrella, tossing the +wistaria-wreathed hat. "Which may be a surprise to people who think it +must be nothing but jam for those ladies and gentlemen that have made +their mark in the Profession."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>Lynette's golden eyes smile back into the laughing brown ones with +pleasant friendliness, combined with an irritating lack of comprehension. +And Red Umbrella, who derives a considerable income from percentages upon +the sale of her photographs, and is conscious that her celebrated features +are figuring upon several of the postcards that hang up for sale in the +window of the only stationer in Herion, is a little nettled.</p> + +<p>"I refer to the stage, of course." She fingers a long neck-chain of +sapphires, and tinkles her innumerable bangles with their load of jingling +charms. "But perhaps you're not a Londoner? Or you don't patronise the +theatre?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. We have a house in Harley Street. And I am very fond of the +Opera," says Lynette, smiling still, "and of seeing plays too; and I often +go to the theatre with Lord and Lady Castleclare, or Major Wrynche and +Lady Hannah, when my husband is too much engaged to take me. One of the +last pieces we saw before we left town was 'The Chiffon Girl' at The +Variety," she adds.</p> + +<p>"Indeed! And how did you like 'The Chiffon Girl'?" asks the lady of the +red umbrella, with a gracious and encouraging smile. Unconscious tribute +rendered to one's beauty and one's genius is ever well worth the having. +And the editor of the <i>Keyhole</i>, a certain weekly journal of caterings for +the curious, will gladly publish any little anecdote which will serve the +dual purpose of amusing his readers and keeping the name of Miss Lessie +Lavigne before the public eye. "How did you enjoy the performance of the +lady who played the part?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lynette ponders, and her fine brows knit. Vexed and indignant, Red +Umbrella, scanning the thoughtful face, admits its youth, its +high-breeding, its delicate, chiselled beauty, and the slender grace of +the supple figure in the grey-blue serge skirt and white silk blouse; nor +is she slow to appreciate the value of the diamond keeper on the slight, +fine, ungloved hand that rests upon the sun-hot moss between them.</p> + +<p>"I think I felt rather sorry for her," says the soft cultured voice with +the exquisite, precise inflections. The golden eyes look dreamily out over +the undulating sand-dunes beyond the crisp line of foam to the silken +shimmer of the smoothing water. The little wind has fallen. It is very +still. The nurse, sitting on a hillock of bents in dutiful nearness to the +perambulator, has taken out her paper-covered volume, and is deep in a +story of blood and woe. And Baby, a sleepy, pink rosebud, dozes among her +white embroidered pillows, undisturbed by Red Umbrella's shrill +exclamation:</p> + +<p>"Sorry for her! Why on earth should you be?"</p> + +<p>The shriek startles Lynette. She brings back her grave eyes from the +distance, flushing faint coral pink to the red-brown waves at her fair +temples.</p> + +<p>"She—she had on so few clothes!" she says. And there is a profound +silence, broken by Lessie's saying with icy dignity:</p> + +<p>"If the Lord Chamberlain opined I'd got enough on, I expect that ought to +do for you!"</p> + +<p>"I—don't quite understand."</p> + +<p>Lynette opens her golden eyes in sincere wonder at the marvellous change +that has been wrought in the little lady who sits beside her.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> am Miss Lessie Lavigne," says the little lady, with an angry toss of +the pretty head, adorned with the wistaria-trimmed hat. "At least, that is +the name I am known by in the profession."</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," Lynette falters. "I did not recognise you. I am +afraid you must think me rather rude!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, pray don't mention it!" cries the owner of the red umbrella. +"Rude?—not in the least!"</p> + +<p>Mere rudeness would be preferable, infinitely, to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span> outrage the little +lady has suffered. She, Lessie Lavigne, the original exponent of the rôle +of "The Chiffon Girl," the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over +the hearts beating behind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, has +lived to hear herself pitied—not envied, but commiserated—for the +scantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joy +to trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers. +Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with +the desire to scratch and rend.</p> + +<p>Then she reveals the chief arrow in her quiver. Not for nothing is she the +widow of an English nobleman. With all the hereditary dignities of the +Foltlebarres she will arm herself, and reduce this presuming stranger to +the level of the dust. At the thought of the humiliation it is in her +power to inflict she smiles quite pleasantly, displaying a complete double +row of beautifully stopped teeth. And she says, as she fumbles in a +châtelaine bag of golden links, studded with turquoises, and with +elaborately ostentatious dignity produces therefrom a card-case, as +precious as regards material, and emblazoned with a monogram and coronet, +enriched with diamonds and pearls:</p> + +<p>"I think you mentioned that you lived in the neighbourhood? May I know who +I have the a—pleasure of being indebted to for finding my daughter +to-day?"</p> + +<p>"I am Mrs. Owen Saxham. I live at that grey stone house up there on the +cliff. 'Plas Bendigaid,' they call it," explains Lynette, a little +nervously, as her reluctant eyes scan the face and figure of the woman who +owns the legal right to bear Beauvayse's name. The encounter is +distasteful to her. She is painfully conscious of an acute sensation of +antagonism and dislike. "The house belongs to my husband, and this is my +first visit to Herion," she adds hurriedly, "because we—my husband and +I—have not been very long married. But I like the place. And the house is +charming, and there is a hall that was once the chapel, when it was a +Convent. It shall be a chapel again; that is"—the wild-rose colour +deepens on the lovely face—"if my husband agrees? To have it so restored +would make the Plas seem more like a home, because I was brought up in a +Convent, though not in England."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span></p> + +<p>Her eyes stray back to the sun-kissed beauty of Nantmadoc Bay and the +dotted line of white spots that indicate the town of St. Tudwalls at the +base of the green promontory beyond the Roads. She forgets that this +little overdressed person is Beauvayse's wife. She forgets in the moment +that she herself is Saxham's. She is back in the beloved past with the +Mother.</p> + +<p>"It was in South Africa, my Convent ... more than a thousand miles from +Cape Town, in British Baraland, on the Transvaal Border—in a little +village-town, dumped down in the middle of the veld."</p> + +<p>"What on earth is the veld?" asks the lady of the red umbrella, with +acerbity. "I'm sick of seeing the word in the papers, and nobody seems to +know what it means."</p> + +<p>Lynette's soft voice answers:</p> + +<p>"You can never know what it means until you have lived its life, and it +has become part of yours. It spreads away farther than your eyes can +follow it, for miles and miles. It is jade colour in spring, blue-green in +early summer, desolate, scorching yellow-brown in winter, with dreadful +black tracts of cinders, where it has been burned to let the young grass +grow up. There is hardly a tree; there is scarcely a bird, except a +vulture, a black speck high in the hot blue sky. There are flat-topped +mountains and cone-shaped kopjes, reddish, or pale pink, or +mauve-coloured, as they are nearer or farther away. And that is all!"</p> + +<p>"All?"</p> + +<p>"All, except the sunshine, bathing everything, soaking you through and +through."</p> + +<p>"But there is not always sunshine? It must be sometimes night?" argues +Lessie, a little peevishly.</p> + +<p>"There are deep violet nights, full of great white stars," Lynette +answers. "There are storms of dust and rain, lightning and thunder, such +as are only read of here.... There are plots, conspiracies, raids, +robberies, murders, slumps and losses, plagues and massacres. There are +rebellions of white men, and native risings. There have been wars; there +is war to-day, and there will be war again in the days that are yet to +come!"</p> + +<p>She has almost forgotten the little woman beside her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span> staring at her with +big, brown, rather animal eyes. Now she turns to her with her rare and +lovely smile:</p> + +<p>"The war that is going on now began at the little village-town where I was +a Convent schoolgirl. We were shut for months within the lines. But, of +course, you have read the newspaper accounts of the Siege of Gueldersdorp? +I am only telling you what you know!"</p> + +<p>Lessie laughs, and the laugh has the hard, unpleasant, mirthless little +tinkle of a toy dog's collar-bell, or bits of crushed ice rattled in a +champagne-glass.</p> + +<p>"What I have good reason to know!"</p> + +<p>Her podgy, jewelled hands are clenching and unclenching in her heliotrope +chiffon lap; there is a well-defined scowl between the black arched +eyebrows, and the murky light of battle gleams in the eyes that no longer +languish between their bistred eyelids as she scans the pure pale face +under the sweep of her heavily blackened lashes. She would almost give the +ruby buttons out of her ears to see it wince and quiver, and crimson into +angry blushes. And yet Lessie is rather amiable than otherwise in her +attitude towards other women. True, she has never before met one who had +the insolence to pity her to her face.</p> + +<p>"So quite too interesting!" she says, with an exaggerated affectation of +amiability, and in high, fashionable accents, "you having been at +Gueldersdorp through the Siege and all. Were you ever—I suppose you must +have been sometimes—shot at with a gun?"</p> + +<p>The faintest quiver of a smile comes over the lovely face her grudging +eyes are trying to find a flaw in.</p> + +<p>"Often when I have been crossing the veld between the town and the +Hospital, the Mauser bullets have hummed past like bees, or raised little +spurts of dust close by my feet where they had hit the ground. And once a +shell burst close to us, and a splinter knocked off my hat and tore a +corner of her veil——"</p> + +<p>"Weren't you in a petrified fright?" demands Lessie.</p> + +<p>"I was with her!"</p> + +<p>"Who was she?"</p> + +<p>A swift change of sudden, quickening, poignant emotion passes over the +still face. A sudden swelling of the white throat, a rising mist in the +golden eyes, suggests to Lessie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span> that she has been fortunate enough to +touch upon a painful subject, and that possibly this presumptuous young +woman who has pitied a Viscountess may be going to cry! But Lynette drives +back the tears.</p> + +<p>"She was the Reverend Mother, the Mother-Superior of the Convent where I +lived at Gueldersdorp."</p> + +<p>"Where is she now?"</p> + +<p>"She is with God."</p> + +<p>"With——"</p> + +<p>Lessie is oddly nonplussed by the calm, direct answer. People who talk in +that strangely familiar way of—of subjects that properly belong to +parsons are rare in her world. She hastens to put her next question.</p> + +<p>"Was yours the only Convent in Gueldersdorp where young ladies were +taught?"</p> + +<p>"It is the only Convent there."</p> + +<p>"Did you know—among the pupils—a young person by the name of Mildare?"</p> + +<p>There is such concentrated essence of spite in Lessie's utterance of the +name, that Lynette winces a little, and the faint, sweet colour rises in +her cheeks.</p> + +<p>"I—know her, certainly; as far as one can be said to know oneself. My +unmarried name was Mildare."</p> + +<p>"You—don't say so! Lord, how funny!"</p> + +<p>The seagulls fishing in the shallows beyond the foam-line, rise up +affrighted by the shrill peal of triumphant laughter with which Lessie +makes her discovery.</p> + +<p>"Ha, ha, ha! Talk of a situation!... On the boards I've never seen one to +touch it!" She jumps from the boulder, with more bounce than dignity, +dropping the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case, and, extending in +one pudgy ringed hand a highly-glazed and coroneted card, "Permit me to +introduce myself," she says through set teeth, smiling rancorously. "My +professional name, as I have had the honour and pleasure of explaining to +you, is Lessie Lavigne, but in private"—the dignity of the speaker's tone +is marred by its extreme huffiness—"in private I am Lady Beauvayse."</p> + +<p>As Lynette looks in the painted, angry, piquante face she is more than +ever conscious of that feeling of antagonism. Then her eyes, turning from +it, encounter the cherub rosily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span> sleeping on embroidered pillows, and a +rush of blood colours her to the hair. His child—his child by the +dancer—this dimpled creature she has clasped and kissed! The icy, +tinkling giggle of the mother breaks in upon the thought.</p> + +<p>"Of all the queer situations I ever struck, I do call this the queerest! +Me, meeting you like this, and both of us getting quite pally! All over +Baby, too!... Lord! isn't it enough to make you die? Don't mind me being a +bit hysterical!" Lady Beauvayse dabs her tearful eyes with a cobwebby +square of laced cambric. "It'll be over in a sec. And then, Miss +Mildare—I beg pardon—Mrs. Saxham—you and me will have it out!"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I must be going." Lynette rises, and stands beside Lessie, +looking down in painful hesitation at the blinking, reddened eyelids and +the working mouth. "I have guests waiting for me at the Plas. And would it +not be wise of you to go home and lie down?"</p> + +<p>The words, for some obscure reason or other, convey an intolerable sting. +Lessie jumps in her buckled Louis Quinze shoes, wheels, and confronts her +newly-discovered enemy with glaring eyes.</p> + +<p>"Go home ... lie down!" she shrieks, so shrilly that the sleeping cherub +awakens, and adds her frightened roars to the clamour that scares the +gulls. "If I <i>had</i> lain down and gone to my long home eighteen months ago, +when you were cooped up in Gueldersdorp with my husband, it would have +suited you both down to the ground!" She turns, with a stamp of her +imperious little foot, upon the scared nurse, who is vainly endeavouring +to still Baby. "Take her away! Carry her out of hearing! Do what you're +told, you silly fool!" she orders. "And you"—she wheels again upon +Lynette, her wistarias nodding, her chains and bangles clanking—"why do +you stand there, like a white deer in a park—like an image cut out of +ivory? Don't you understand that I, the woman you've pitied—my God! +pitied, for singing and dancing on the public stage 'with so few clothes +on'"—she savagely mimics the manner and tone—"I am the lawful wife of +the man you tried to trap—the Right Honourable John Basil Edward Tobart!" +The painted lips sneer savagely. "Beautiful Beau, who never went back on a +man, or told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span> the truth to a woman!—that's his character, and it pretty +well sizes him up!"</p> + +<p>Lessie stops, gasping and out of breath, the plump, jewelled hand +clutching at her heaving bosom. The theatrical instinct in the daughter of +the footlights has led her to work up the scene; but her rage of wounded +love and jealousy is genuine enough, though not as real as the innocence +in the eyes that meet hers, less poignant than the shame and indignation +that drive the blood from those ivory cheeks.</p> + +<p>"He married me on the strict QT at the Registrar's at Cookham," goes on +Lessie, her painted mouth twisting, "a fortnight before he was ordered out +on the Staff. We'd been friends for over a year. There was a child coming, +since we're by way of being plain-spoken," says Lessie, picking up the +prostrate red umbrella and the jewelled card-case, possibly to conceal a +blush; "and he swore he'd never look at another woman, and write by every +mail. And so he did at first, and I used to cry over the blooming piffle +he put into his letters, and wish I'd been a straighter woman, for his +sake. And then the Siege began, and the letters stopped coming, and I +cried enough to spoil my voice, little thinking how my husband was playing +the giddy bachelor thousands of miles away. And then came the news of the +Relief, and despatches, saying that he"—her pretty face is distorted by +the wry grimace of genuine anguish—"<i>he</i> was killed! And a month later I +got a copy of a rotten Siege newspaper, sent me by I don't know who, and +never shall, with a flowery paragraph in it, announcing his lordship's +engagement to Miss Something Mildare. Oh! it was merry hell to know how +he'd done me—me that worshipped the very ground he trod!... Me that had +made a Judy of myself in crape and weepers—widow's weepers for the man +that wished me dead!"</p> + +<p>Her voice is thick with rage. Her face is convulsed. Her eyes are burning +coals. She has never been so nearly a great actress, this meretricious +little dancer and comedian, as in this moment when she forgets her art.</p> + +<p>"Picture it, you!... Don't you fancy me in 'em? Don't you see me in my +bedroom tearing 'em off?" She rends her flimsy cobweb of a handkerchief +into tatters and spurns them from her. "So!... so!... that's what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span> I did +to 'em!" She snarls with a sudden access of tigerishness. "And if that +white face of yours had been within reach of my ten fingers, I'd have +ragged it into ribbons like the blooming fallals. Don't dare tell me you'd +not have done the same! Perhaps, though, you wouldn't. You're a lady, born +and bred," owns Lessie grudgingly, "and I was a jobbing tailor's kid, that +worked to keep myself and other folks as a baby imp in Pantomime, while +you were being coddled up and kept in cotton-wool!"</p> + +<p>She ends with a husky laugh and a shrug of the shoulders. The swollen face +with the wet eyes is averted, or Lessie might be roused to fresh +resentment by the tenderness of pity that is dawning in Lynette's.</p> + +<p>"You have suffered cruelly, Lady Beauvayse; but I was not knowingly or +wilfully to blame. Please try to believe it!"</p> + +<p>Lessie blows her small nose with a toot of incredulity, and says through +an intervening wad of damp lace-edged cambric:</p> + +<p>"Go on!"</p> + +<p>"I met Lord Beauvayse out at Gueldersdorp." The voice that comes from +Lynette's pale lips is singularly level and quiet. "He was very handsome +and very brave; he was an officer of the Colonel's Staff. He asked me to +marry him, and I—I believed him honourable and true, and I said, 'Yes.' +... That was one Sunday, when we were sitting by the river. On Thursday he +was killed, and later—nearly a year after my marriage to Dr. Saxham—I +found out the truth."</p> + +<p>Lessie shrugs her pretty shoulders, but the face and voice of the speaker +have brought conviction. She realises that if she has been injured, her +rival has suffered equal wrong.</p> + +<p>"You were pretty quick in taking on another man, it strikes me. But that's +not my business. You say you found out?" She shows her admirably preserved +teeth in a little grin of sardonic contempt—"nearly a year after your +marriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go on burning joss-sticks to +Beau's angelic memory when he might have made you spit on it by telling +you the truth!"</p> + +<p>Lynette's lip curls, and she lifts her little head proudly.</p> + +<p>"He never once hinted at the truth. Nor was it through him I learned it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Ought to be kept under glass, then," comments Lessie, "as a model +husband. Now, my poor——"</p> + +<p>Lynette interrupts, with angry emphasis:</p> + +<p>"I will not hear Dr. Saxham mentioned in the same breath with Lord +Beauvayse!"</p> + +<p>"He's dead—let him be!" Beau's widow snarls, her mouth twisting. Yet in +the same breath, with another of the mental pirouettes characteristic of +her class and type, she adds: "Do you suppose I don't know my own husband? +Take him one way with another, you might have sifted the world for liars, +and never found the equal of Beau."</p> + +<p>She gathers up the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case with reviving +briskness, and shakes out her crumpled chiffons in the bright hot sun.</p> + +<p>"Me and Baby are leaving to-morrow. I don't suppose we're likely ever to +come across you again. Good-bye! I forgive you for pitying me," she says +frankly, holding out the plump, over-jewelled hand. "As for the other +grudge.... What, are you going to kiss me?... Give Baby another before you +go, dear ... and ... forgive <i>him</i> when you can!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXXI" id="LXXI"></a>LXXI</h2> + + +<p>Lynette sat still upon the boulder, thinking, long after the red umbrella +had departed. While it was yet visible in the white-hot distance, hovering +like some gaudy Brobdingnagian butterfly in advance of the white +perambulator pushed by the white-clad nurse, the heads of two little +shabbyish, youngish people of the unmistakable Cockney tourist type rose +over the edge of a pale sand-crest, fringed with wild chamomile and +blazing poppies. And the female, a small draggled young woman in a large +hat, trimmed with fatigued and dusty peonies, called out excitedly:</p> + +<p>"Oh, William, it's 'er—it's 'er!"</p> + +<p>"By Cripps, so it is!" came from the male companion of the battered +peonies. He advanced with a swagger that was the unconvincing mask of +diffidence assumed by an undersized, lean young man, in the chauffeur's +doubtful-weather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span> panoply of black waterproof jacket, breeches merging +into knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked cap, with +absurd brass ventilators, and powdered with many thicknesses and shades of +dust. His hair was dusty. The very eyelashes of the honest, ugly light +eyes, set wide apart in the thin wedge-shaped, tanned face that the absurd +cap shaded, were dusty as a miller's; dust lay thick in all the chinks and +creases of his leading features, and a large black smudge of oily grime +was upon his wide upper lip, impinging upon his nose. Nor was his +companion much less dusty, though the checks of a travelling ulster of +green and yellow plaid, adorned with huge steel buttons, would have +advertised the Kentish Town Ladies' Drapery Establishment whence they +emanated, through the medium of a Fleet Street fog.</p> + +<p>"Might we speak to you, ma'am?" The dusty young man respectfully touched +the dusty peak of the cap with brass ventilators, and, with a shock of +surprise, Lynette recognised Saxham's chauffeur.</p> + +<p>"Keyse!... It is Keyse!" She looked at him in surprise.</p> + +<p>"Keyse, ma'am." He touched the cap again, and made a not ungraceful +gesture, indicating the wearer of the weather-beaten peonies and the +green-and-yellow ulster, who clung to his thin elbow with a red, +hard-working hand. "Me an' my wife, that is. Bein' on a sort of outin', a +kind of Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to South +Wyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' the 'Ow Do." He breathed hard, and +rivulets of perspiration began to trickle down from under the preposterous +cap, converting the dust that filled the haggard lines of his thin face +into mud. "An' payin' our respects." His eye slewed appealingly at his +companion, asking as plainly as an eye can, "What price that?" And the +glance that shot back from the dusty shadow of the exhausted peonies +answered, "Not bad by 'arf—for you!"</p> + +<p>Lynette smiled at the little Cockney couple. The surprise that had checked +the beating of her heart had passed. It was pleasant to see these faces +from Harley Street. She answered:</p> + +<p>"I understand. My husband has given you a holiday. Is he well?" She +flushed, realising that it was pain to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span> to ask others for the news of +him that he had denied her. "I mean because he has not written.... I have +been feeling rather anxious. Was he quite well when you left?"</p> + +<p>"'Was he——'? Yes, 'm!" W. Keyse shot out the affirmative with such +explosive suddenness that the hand upon his arm must have nipped hard.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad!" Lynette turned to the young woman in the ulster, whose +face betrayed no guilty knowledge of the pinch. She was small, and pale, +and gritty, and her blue eyes had red rims to them from the fatigue of the +journey, or some other cause. But they were honest and clear, and not +unpretty eyes, looking out from a forest of dusty yellowish fringe, +deplorably out of curl. Yet a fringe that had associations for Lynette, +reaching a long way from Harley Street, and back to the old days at +Gueldersdorp before the Siege.</p> + +<p>"Surely I know you? I must have known you at Gueldersdorp." She added as +Mrs. Keyse's eyes said "Yes": "You used to be a housemaid at the Convent. +How strange that I should not have remembered it until now! And your +husband.... I do not remember ever having seen him before he came to us at +Harley Street. But his name comes back to me in connection with a +letter"—she knitted her brows, chasing the vague, fleeting memory—"a +love-letter that was sent to Miss Du Taine inside a chocolate-box, just +when school was breaking up. It was you who smuggled the box in!"</p> + +<p>"To oblige, bein' begged to by Keyse as a fyvour. 'E didn't know 'is own +mind—them d'ys!" explained Mrs. Keyse, sweeping her husband's scorching +countenance with a glance of withering scorn.</p> + +<p>"Nor did you," retorted W. Keyse, stung to defiance. "Walkin' out with a +Dopper you was—if it comes to that." He spun round, mid-ankle deep in +sand, to finish. "An' you'd 'ave bin joined by a Dutch dodger and settled +down on a Vaal sheep-farm, if the order 'adn't come 'ummin' along the wire +from 'Eadquarters that said, 'Jane 'Arris, you're to 'ave this bloke, and +no other. Till Death do you part. Everlasting—Amen!'"</p> + +<p>There was so strong a flavour of Church about the final<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span> sentence that +Mrs. Keyse could not keep admiration out of her eyes.</p> + +<p>Her own eyes dancing with mirthful amusement, Lynette looked from one to +the other of the unexpected visitors, and, tactfully changing the subject +of the conversation, hoped that they were enjoying their trip?—a query +which so obviously failed to evoke an expression of pleased assent in +either of the small, thin, wearied faces that she hastened to add:</p> + +<p>"But perhaps this is the very beginning of your holiday? When did you +leave London?"</p> + +<p>"Yes'dy mornin' at 'arf-past six," said W. Keyse, carefully avoiding her +eyes. A spasm contracted the tired face under the dusty peonies. Their +wearer put her hand to the collar of the green-and-yellow ulster, and +undid a button there.</p> + +<p>"'Yesterday morning at half-past six'!" Lynette repeated in wonder.</p> + +<p>"An' if the machine I 'ad on 'ire from a pal o' mine—chap what keeps a +second-hand shop for 'em in the Portland Road—'adn't 'ad everythink +'appen to 'er wot <i>can</i> 'appen to a three-an'-a-'arf 'orse-power Baby +Junot wot 'ad seen 'er best d'ys before automobilin' 'ad cut its front +teeth," said W. Keyse, with bitterness, "we would 'ave bin 'ere before! As +it is, we've left the car at a little 'Temperance Tavern' in S'rewsbury, +kep' by a Methodist widder, 'oo thinks such new-fangled inventions +sinful—an' only consented to take charge on account o' the Prophet Elijer +a-going up to 'Eaven in a fiery chariot—an' come on 'ere by tryne."</p> + +<p>Lynette looked at the man in silence. She even repeated after him, rather +dully:</p> + +<p>"You came on here—by train?"</p> + +<p>"Slow Parliamentary—stoppin' at every 'arf-dozen stytions," explained W. +Keyse, "for collectors in velveteens and Scotch caps to ask for tickets, +plyse? And but that the porter on the 'Erion Down Platform 'ad see you +walkin' on the Links, and my wife knoo your dress and the colour of your +'air 'arf a mile 'orf, we'd 'ave lost precious time in finding you, and +giving you the—the message what we've come 'ere to bring!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span></p> + +<p>"From my husband? From Dr. Saxham?"</p> + +<p>W. Keyse shifted from one foot to the other, and coughed an embarrassed +cough.</p> + +<p>"Not exac'ly from Dr. Saxham."</p> + +<p>Lynette looked at W. Keyse, and it seemed to her that the little sallow +Cockney face had Fate in it. A sudden terror whitened her to the lips. She +cried out in a voice that had lost all its sweetness:</p> + +<p>"You have deceived me in saying he was well. Something has happened to +him! He is very ill, or——?"</p> + +<p>She could not utter the word. Instinctively her eyes went past the +stammering man to the woman who hung behind his elbow. And the wearer of +the nodding peonies cried out:</p> + +<p>"No, no! The Doctor isn't dead—or ill, to call ill!" She turned angrily +upon her husband. "See wot a turn you've give 'er," she snapped. "Why +couldn't you up and speak out?"</p> + +<p>W. Keyse was plainly nonplussed. He took off the giant cap with the brass +ventilators, and turned it round and round, looking carefully inside it. +But he found no eloquence therein.</p> + +<p>"Why did I bring a skirt, I arsk, if I'm to do the patter?" He addressed +himself in an audible aside to Mrs. Keyse. "You might as well 'ave stopped +at 'ome with the nipper," he added, complainingly, "if I ain't to 'ave no +better 'elp than this!"</p> + +<p>"You mean kindly, I know." Lynette tried to smile in saying it. "There is +trouble that you are here to break to me; I understand that very well. +Please tell me without delay, plainly what has happened? I am +very—strong! I shall not faint—if that is what you are afraid of?"</p> + +<p>She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into dry sobbing and cried +out wildly:</p> + +<p>"Oh, come back to 'im! Come back, if you're a woman! Gawd, Who made 'im, +knows as 'ow 'e can't bear no more! Oh! if my 'art's so wrung by what I've +seen him suffer, think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months!"</p> + +<p>The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's emotion. Her +hard-worked hands went out, entreating for him; her dowdy little figure +seemed to grow tall, so impressive was the earnestness of her appeal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common folks.... Flesh and +blood's the syme, though, only covered wiv different skins. An' Human +Nature's Human Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er! An' Love +must 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to die! Burn a lamp +wivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It goes out!—You're left in the +dark!"—Her homely gesture, illustrating the homely analogy, seemed to +bring down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her fateful lips.</p> + +<p>"—Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 'Smashed!' you'll +say, 'an' nobody but silly me to blyme! It would 'ave lighted up a 'appy +'ome if I 'adn't been a barmy idiot. It would 'ave showed me the face of +my 'usband leanin' to kiss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' my baby +smilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by.... Oh!—Oh!"—She choked and clutched +her bosom, and her voice rose in the throaty screech of incipient +hysteria—"An' I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say these +words to you!... An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with the bottle they're +tryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is mam.... And my breasts as 'ard as +stones, an' throbbin'!... Gawd 'elp me!" She panted and fought and choked, +striving for speech.</p> + +<p>"Keep your hair on!" advised W. Keyse in a hoarse whisper. She turned on +him like a tigress, her eyes flaming under her straightened fringe.</p> + +<p>"Keep yours! I've come to speak, and speak I mean to—for the sake of the +best man Gawd's made for a 'undred years. Bar one, you says, but bar none, +says I, an' charnce it! Since the day 'e stood up for you in that Dutch +saloon-bar at Gueldersdorp, what is there we don't owe to 'im—you and me, +and all the blooming crew of us? And because 'e'll tyke no thanks, 'e gits +ingratitude—the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched!"</p> + +<p>"Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken by this lofty flight of rhetoric. +Ignoring him, she pursued her way.</p> + +<p>"You're a beautiful young lydy"—her tone softened from its strenuous +pitch—"wot 'ave 'ad a disappyntment, like many of us 'ave at the start. +You'd set your 'art on Another One. 'E got killed, an' you married the +Doctor—but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span> it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, as the +sayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 'art to bloody rags +agynst it—d'y after d'y, an' night after night! I seen it, I tell you!" +she shrilled—"I seen it wiv me own eyes! You pretty, silly kid! Don't you +know wot 'arm you're doing? You crooil byby! do you reckon Gawd gave you +the man to torture an' break an' spoil?"</p> + +<p>A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. W. Keyse, stemmed the +torrent of her eloquence.</p> + +<p>"Dry up! You've said enough," ordered her spouse.</p> + +<p>"Do not stop her!" Lynette said, without removing her fascinated eyes from +the Pythoness. "Let her tell me everything that she has seen and knows."</p> + +<p>"I seen the Doctor—many, many times," the woman went on, as W. Keyse +reluctantly ungagged her, "watchin' Keyse and me in our poor 'ome-life +together—with the eyes of a starvin' dog lookin' at a bone. You ought to +know 'ow starvin' 'urts...." The strenuous voice soared and quivered. "You +learned that at Gueldersdorp! Yet you can see your 'usband dyin' of +'unger, an' never put out your 'and! Dyin' for want of a kiss an' a bit o' +cuddle—that's the kind o' dyin' I mean—dyin' for what Gawd gives to the +very brutes He myde! Seems to you I talk low!... Well, there's nothink +lower than Nature, <i>An' She Goes As 'Igh As 'Eaven</i>!" said Emigration +Jane.</p> + +<p>The wide, sweeping gesture with which the shabby little woman took in land +and sea and sky was quite noble and inspiring to witness. And now the +tears were running down her face, and her voice lost its raucous +shrillness, and became plaintive, and even soft.</p> + +<p>"I'm to tell you everythink I've seen, an' know about the Doctor.... I've +seen 'im age, age, a bit more every d'y. I've seen 'im waste, waste, with +loneliness and trouble—never turnin' bitter on accounts of it—never +grudgin' 'elp that 'e could give to man or woman or kid. Late on the night +you left 'ome I see 'im come up to your bedroom. 'E switched on the light. +'E forgot the blinds was up. 'E looked round, all 'aggard an' lost an' +wild-like, before 'e dropped down cryin' beside the bed."</p> + +<p>She sobbed, and dropped on her own knees in the sand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span> among the prickly +yellow dwarf roses, weeping quite wildly, and wringing her hands.</p> + +<p>"The mornin' found 'im there. Six weeks ago that was; an' every night +since then it's bin the syme gyme. Never the blinds left up since that +first time, but always light, and his shadow moves about. An' in my bed I +wake a-cryin' so, an' don't know which of 'em I'm cryin' for—the lonely +shadow or the lonely man——"</p> + +<p>She could not go on, and W. Keyse took up the tale.</p> + +<p>"She's told you true. Maybe we'd never 'ave come but for the feelin' that +things was workin' up to wot the pypers call a Domestic Tragedy. Or at the +best the break-up of a 'Ome. That's wot my wife she kep' on stuffin' into +me," said W. Keyse. "An'—strewth! when the Doctor sent for me an' pyde me +orf ... full wages right on up to the end o' the year, an' the syme to +Morris an' the 'ouse'old staff, tellin' us e's goin' on a voyage, I s'ys +to 'er, 'It's come!'"</p> + +<p>"On a voyage! Where?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, carn't you guess?" cried the woman on the ground, desperately looking +up with tragic eyes out of a swollen, tear-stained face.</p> + +<p>A mist came before Lynette's vision, and a sudden tremor shook her like a +reed. She swayed as though the ground had heaved beneath her, but she +would not fall. She choked back the cry that had risen in her throat. This +was the time to act, not the time to weep for him. She knelt an instant by +the woman on the ground, put her arms round her, kissed her wet cheek, and +then rose up, pale and calm and collected, saying to W. Keyse:</p> + +<p>"Take her to the Plas. Ask for Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper. She is to +prepare a room for you; you are to breakfast, and rest all day, and return +to London by the night mail. Good-bye! God bless you both! I was going to +him to-night at latest.... I am going to him now.... Pray that he is alive +when I reach him! But he will be. God is good!"</p> + +<p>Her face was transfigured by the new light that shone in it. She was +strong, salient, resourceful—no longer the shy willowy girl. She was +moving from them with her long swift step, when W. Keyse recovered +himself.</p> + +<p>"'Old 'ard! Beg pardon, ma'am! but 'ave you the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span> spondulics?" He blushed +at her puzzled look, and amended: "'Ave you money enough upon you to pay +the railway-fare?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She lifted a little gold-netted purse attached to her neck-chain.</p> + +<p>"Five pounds. My maid is to follow. You know Marie? You will let her +travel with you?"</p> + +<p>"Righto! But you'll want a wrap, coat or shawl, or somethink. Midnight +before you gits in—if you catch this next up-Express.... Watto! Give us +'old o' this 'ere, Missus! You can 'ave mine instead."</p> + +<p>"Please, no! I need nothing ... nothing!" She stayed his savage attack on +the buttons of Mrs. Keyse's green-and-yellow ulster by holding out her +watch. "How much time have I left to catch the up-Express?"</p> + +<p>"Eight minutes. By Cripps! you'll 'ave to run for it."</p> + +<p>She waved her white hand, and was gone, swiftly as a bird or a deer.</p> + +<p>"They've signalled!" W. Keyse announced after a breathless interval, +during which the slender flying figure grew smaller upon the straining +sight. It vanished, and a thin, nearing screech announced the up-Express. +His wife jumped up and clutched him.</p> + +<p>"William! Suppose she's lost it!"</p> + +<p>"Garn! No fear!" scoffed W. Keyse.</p> + +<p>As he scoffed he was full of fear. They heard the clanking stoppage, the +shrill whistle of departure. They looked breathlessly towards the green +wood that fringed the cliff-base under the Castle head. The iron way ran +through the belt of trees. The Express rushed through, broke roaring upon +their unimpeded vision, devoured the gleaming line of metals that lay +between wood and tunnel, and left them with the taste of cindery steam in +their open mouths, and the memory of a white handkerchief waved at a +carriage-window by a slender hand.</p> + +<p>"It's a'right, old gal!" said W. Keyse, beaming. "Come on up to the 'ouse. +I could do wiv a bit o' peck, an' I lay so could you. Lumme!" His +triumphant face fell by the fraction of an inch. "What'll she do when she +lands in 'ome, wivout a woman to git a cup o' tea for 'er? Or curl 'er +'air, or undo 'er st'yl'yoes an' things?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She'll do wot other young wimmen does under sim'lar circumstances," said +Mrs. Keyse enigmatically. She added: "If she 'as luck, she'll 'ave a man +for' er maid, an' if she 'as sense, she'll reckon the swop a good one!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXXII" id="LXXII"></a>LXXII</h2> + + +<p>Until the actual moment of their parting at Euston, Saxham had never fully +realised the anguish of the last moment when Lynette's face should pass +for ever out of his thirsting sight.</p> + +<p>It was going.... He quickened his long strides to keep up with it. He must +have called to her, for she came hurriedly to the corridor-window, her +sweet cheeks suffused with lovely glowing colour, her sweet eyes shining, +her small gloved hand held frankly out. He gripped it, uttered some +incoherency—what, he could not remember—was shouted at by a porter with +a greasy lamp-truck, cannoned heavily against a man with a basket of +papers, awakened with a great pang to the knowledge that she was gone. And +the great, bare, dirty, populous glass-hive of Euston, that has been the +forcing-house of so many sorrowful partings, held another breaking heart.</p> + +<p>In the days that followed he saw his private patients as usual, and +operated upon a regular mid-week morning at St. Stephen's, whose senior +surgeon had recently resigned. The rest of the time he spent in making his +arrangements.</p> + +<p>Sanely, logically, methodically, everything had been thought out. Major +Wrynche was to be her guardian, co-trustee with Lord Castleclare, and +executor of the Will. It left her, simply and unconditionally, everything +of which Saxham was possessed. She would live with the Wrynches until she +married again. His agents were instructed to find a tenant for the house, +and privately a purchaser for the practice. They wrote to him of a client +already found. Matters were progressing steadily. Very soon now the +desired end.</p> + +<p>His table-lamp burned through the nights as he made up his ledgers and +settled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable book +of the Past. Of all its sorrows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span> and failures, its frantic follies and its +besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages +was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. +His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen +crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is +stretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently I will cut +the bow-string, and the bow shall have rest! Even if my once-boasted +will-power reasserted itself—even if I rose triumphant for the second +time, cured of my vile craving, I do not the less owe my debt to the woman +I have married. I promised her that I would die rather than fail her. I +failed her! There is no excuse!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="LXXIII" id="LXXIII"></a>LXXII</h2> + + +<p>The West End pavements were shining wet. Belated cabs spun homewards with +sleepy revellers. Neat motor-broughams slid between the kerbs and rounded +corners at unrebuked excess-speeds, winking their blazing head-lights at +drowsy policemen muffled in oilskin capes. On all these accustomed things +the blue-white arc-lights shone.</p> + +<p>The most belated of all the hansom cabs in London stopped at the door of +the house in Harley Street as the narrow strip of sky between the grim, +drab-faced houses began to be dappled with the leaden grey of dawn. A +faint moon reeled northwards, hunted by sable shapes of screaming terror, +pale Venus clinging to her tattered robe. The house was all black and +silent, a dead face with blinded windows. Did Saxham wake behind them? Or +did he sleep, not to wake again?</p> + +<p>Lynette tried her latchkey. The unchained door swung backwards. She passed +into the house silently, a tall, slender shape. A light was shining under +the consulting-room door. Her heart leaped to greet it. She kissed her +hand to it, and turned, moving noiselessly, and put up the chain of the +hall-door. She felt for the switch of the electric light, and snapped it +on.</p> + +<p>She was jarred and aching and weary with her journey; but it was a very +fair woman whom she saw reflected in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span> hall-mirror as she unpinned her +hat and tossed it upon the hall-table, and passed on to the +consulting-room door—a woman whose face was strange to herself, with that +new fire, and decision, and strength of purpose in it; a woman with +glowing roses of colour in her cheeks, and eager, shining eyes.</p> + +<p>All through the long hours of the journey she had pictured him, her +husband, bending over his work, sleeping in his chair, or in his bed. Yet +behind these pictures was another image that started through their lines +and colours dreadfully, persistently, and the image was that of a dead +man. She thrust it from her for the hundredth time, as the door-handle +yielded to her touch. She went into the room. Saxham was not there.</p> + +<p>The lamp shed its circle of light upon the consulting-room writing-table. +The armchair stood aside, as though hastily pushed back.... Signs of his +recent presence were visible. The fireplace was heaped high with the ashes +of burned papers; the acrid smell of their burning hung still on the close +air.</p> + +<p>She glanced back at the table. All its drawers stood open. Ledgers and +case-books stood on it, neatly arrayed. A thick packet, heavily sealed, +was addressed in Saxham's small, firm handwriting to Major Bingham +Wrynche, Plas Bendigaid, Herion, South Wales. There were other letters in +an orderly pile.</p> + +<p>She glanced at the uppermost. It bore her own name. She took it and kissed +it, and put it in her breast. There was an enclosure, heavy, and of oval +shape. She wondered what it might be? As she did so, she looked at the +letter hers had covered, and read what was written on the cover in the +small, firm hand:</p> + +<p>"'To the Coroner.' ... Merciful God!..."</p> + +<p>The cry broke from her without her knowledge. The room rang with it as she +turned and ran. With the nightmare-feeling of running up dream-stairs, of +feeling nothing tangible under her footsteps, with the dreadful certainty +that of all those crowding pictures of him seen through the long hours in +the racing Express, only the one that she had not dared to look at was the +real, true picture of Saxham now.</p> + +<p>Higher, higher, in a series of swift rushes, she mounted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span> like the +dream-woman in her dream. From solid cubes of darkness to grey +landing-glimmers. To the third-story bedroom that had never been done up. +In the company of Little Miss Muffet, the Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, and +Georgy Porgy, would he be lying, cold and ghastly, with a wound across his +throat?</p> + +<p>But the room was unoccupied; the bed had not been slept in. Pale dawn +peeping in at the corners of the scanty blinds assured her of that. Where +might she find him? Where seek him?</p> + +<p>Fool! said a voice within her; there is but one answer to such a question! +Where has he gone night after night? Coward, you knew, and yet avoided!... +What threshold has he crossed when the world was sleeping round him? By +whose vacant pillow has his broken heart sought vain relief in tears?</p> + +<p>She passed downstairs, gliding noiselessly over the thick carpets, and +went into the room it had been his pleasure to furnish and decorate as his +wife's boudoir. Its seashell pinkness was merged in darkness, faintly +striped by the grey dawn-glimmer, but the door of the bedroom that opened +from it was ajar. Light edged the heavy fold of the portière curtain and +made a pool upon the carpet. She held her breath as she stole to the door, +and, trembling, looked in. He was there, kneeling by the bed. His +heavily-shouldered black figure made a blotch upon the dainty white and +azure draperies; his arms were outflung upon the silken counterpane.</p> + +<p>A rush of thanks sprang from her full heart to Heaven as she heard the +heavy sighing breaths that proved him living yet.</p> + +<p>She would have gone to him and touched him then, but the sound of his +voice took courage from her, and drew her strength away. He spoke, lifting +his face to the ivory Crucifix that hung upon the wall above the bed-head. +It was a voice of groanings rather than the quiet voice with which she was +familiar. She comprehended that a soul in mortal anguish was speaking +aloud to God.</p> + +<p>"I cannot live!" groaned Saxham. "I am weary, body and spirit. What I have +borne I have borne in the hope of laying my burden down. Everything is +ready! I have cleared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span> the way; my loins are girded for departure. All I +asked was to lie down in the earth and wake again no more. All I +asked—and what happens? My dead faith quickens again in me. I must bow my +neck once more to the yoke of the Inconceivable! I must perforce believe +in Thee again! I hear the voice of the pale thorn-crowned Victim, saying, +'I am Thy God who lived and suffered and died for thee! Live on, then, and +suffer also, and pass to the Life Eternal when thine hour comes!' O +God!—my God! have I not earned deliverance? Have I not borne anguish +enough?"</p> + +<p>His fierce, upbraiding voice died out in inarticulate mutterings. His head +fell forwards upon his arms. Presently he lifted it, and cried out, as if +replying to some unseen speaker:</p> + +<p>"If a self-sought death entails eternal torment, am I not in hell here +upon earth? How else, when to live is to hold her in bondage, knowing that +she longs and pines to be free? And yet, to go out into the dark and leave +her! never again to see her! never more to feel the light of her eyes flow +into me! Never to hear her voice—to be of my own deed separate from her +throughout Eternity—that were of all the Judgments that are Thine to +scourge with the most terrible that Thou couldst lay upon my soul!"</p> + +<p>A sob tore him. He moaned out brokenly:</p> + +<p>"Give me a sign, if Thou art indeed merciful! Show me that there is +relenting in Thee! Grant me the hope, at least, that my great renunciation +may open a gate by which, after cycles of expiatory suffering, I may at +last pass through to where she dwells in Thy Brightness. Give me to see +her face with a smile on it—to touch her hand—after all—after all! The +lips I have never kissed, may they not be mine, O God—mine one day in +Heaven? If Thou art Love, there should be love there."</p> + +<p>She glided over the deep carpet, stretched out a timid hand, and touched +his shoulder. He lifted his great square head, and slowly looked round. +The black hair, mingled with white, clung damp to the broad forehead. His +eyes were bloodshot, strained, and haggard, and wild. Sorrow was charted +deep upon the haggard features. Amazement struck them into folly as he +started up,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span> stammering out her name, and clutching for support at the +brass rail that was at the foot of the bed.</p> + +<p>"Lynette! You.... It is you?..." He shook, staring at her with dilated +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Owen, you are ill. You speak and look so strangely. It is me—really me!" +she said, trying to speak calmly through the tumult of her heart.</p> + +<p>"I am not ill. How is it that you are here?"</p> + +<p>He lifted a hand to his strained and smarting eyes and moved it to and fro +before them. He was staring at her still, but with pupils that were less +dilated, and the veins upon his broad forehead were no longer purple now.</p> + +<p>"Have I talked nonsense? I had dozed, and you startled me coming upon +me.... Why have you?..." He strove to speak and look as usual. "Has +anything happened, that you have come back?"</p> + +<p>She pressed her hands together, wrestling for collected thought and clear, +explicit utterance, though the room rocked about her, and the floor seemed +to rise and fall beneath her feet.</p> + +<p>"Something happened. I have come back from Wales to tell you that I ... I +cannot live upon your friendship any longer! I—I must have more, or I +shall die!"</p> + +<p>He knew all. She had met the man whose look and breath and touch had +revealed to her her own misery. Chained to her harsh yoke-fellow; denied +Love's bread and wine of life! He looked at her, and answered coldly:</p> + +<p>"You shall not die. You shall be free! If you had waited until +to-morrow——"</p> + +<p>"It is already day," she told him, and, as though to confirm her, a +neighbouring steeple-clock clanged twice. He moved uneasily as his eyes +fell on the disordered coverlet, half dragged from the bed and trailing on +the floor. They shunned hers as he said, a dark flush rising through his +haggard pallor:</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon for the intrusion here. But you were away.... I could +not sleep, and the house was lonely.... Is your maid with you? Surely you +are not alone?"</p> + +<p>She bent her head with a faint smile.</p> + +<p>"Quite alone. I did not wish for a companion."</p> + +<p>"It was not wise——" he began, and took a step door-wards.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span> "I will call +one of the servants," he added, and was going, when he remembered, and +stopped, saying hoarsely:</p> + +<p>"I forgot. They are gone. I have sent them all away!"</p> + +<p>She looked at him in silence. He continued:</p> + +<p>"I have paid and dismissed them. You will think it curious—you will know +the reason later—I have written to you to explain."</p> + +<p>"I found upon your table a letter addressed to me," she said. He started, +knitting his black brows.</p> + +<p>"You have not read it?" he asked, breathing quickly.</p> + +<p>"Not yet." She touched her bosom, where the letter lay. "I have it here."</p> + +<p>"Please do not open it! Give me back the letter!" He stretched out his +hand to take it, and breathed more freely when she drew it out and gave it +to him. And a sweet wild pang shot through him; the paper was so warm and +fragrant from the nest where it had lain so short a time. But he mastered +the emotion and tore open the envelope. He took from it the enclosure, +wrapped in folds of tissue-paper, and put it in her hand, saying, as he +thrust the letter in his coat-pocket:</p> + +<p>"There is something that by right is yours."</p> + +<p>"Mine?..." She unrolled the tissue-paper, and the brilliants that were set +about the miniature sent spurts of white and green and rosy fire between +the slender, ivory-hued fingers that turned it about. She gave a little +gasping cry of recognition:</p> + +<p>"It is—me! How could you have managed——?" Then, as the sweet grey eyes +of fair dead Lucy smiled up into her own: "I do not know how I am sure of +it," she said, with a catching in her breath, "but this must be my +mother!"</p> + +<p>Saxham bent his head in answer to her look. His eyes bade her question no +further. She faltered:</p> + +<p>"May I not know how it came into your hands?"</p> + +<p>"Through the death," Saxham answered, "of an evil man. You know his name. +He probably robbed your father of that miniature with other things; but I +can only surmise this. I cannot positively say."</p> + +<p>"You speak of my father." Her face was quivering, her eyes entreated. +"Tell me what you know of him, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span> of"—she kissed the miniature, and +held it to her cheek—"of my mother?"</p> + +<p>"Your father," said Saxham, "was an officer and a gentleman. The surname +that you exchanged for mine, poor child! was really his. His Christian +name is engraved there"—he pointed to the inner rim of the band of +brilliants —"with that of the lady who was your mother. She was +beautiful; she was tender and devoted; she loved your father well enough +to give up every social aim and every worldly advantage for his sake. She +died loving him. He died—I should not wonder if he died of sorrow for her +loss. For hearts can break, though the Faculty deny it!"</p> + +<p>He swung about to leave the room. She was murmuring over her new-found +treasure.</p> + +<p>"'Lucy to Richard' ... '<i>Richard</i>' ..." she repeated. A wave of roseate +colour broke over her with the memory of the hand that had touched and the +voice that had spoken to her in her Heaven-sent vision of the previous +morning, when the Beloved had come back from Paradise to lay a charge upon +her child.</p> + +<p>"My father knew the Mother?" It was not a question, it was a statement of +the fact. Saxham wondered at the assured tone, as he told her:</p> + +<p>"It is true. They had been friends—in the world they both gave up +afterwards—the man for the love that is of earth, the woman for the love +of Heaven."</p> + +<p>"She never told me then, but she must have known who I was from the +beginning," Lynette ventured. "She gave me the surname of Mildare because +it belonged to me! Do not you think so too?"</p> + +<p>Saxham made no answer. He swung about to leave the room. She slipped the +miniature into her bosom, where his letter had lain, and asked:</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>He answered, with his eyes avoiding hers:</p> + +<p>"You have been travelling all night; you must be tired and hungry. Go to +bed and try to rest, while I forage for you downstairs. You shall not +suffer for lack of attendance. I am quite a good cook, as you shall find +presently. When you have eaten you must sleep, and then we will talk of +your returning home to your friends."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Are not you my chief friend?" she asked. "Is not this my home?"</p> + +<p>He avoided her look, replying awkwardly:</p> + +<p>"Hardly, when there are no servants to wait upon you!"</p> + +<p>"May I not know why you sent them away?"</p> + +<p>He said, his haggard profile turned to her, a muscle of his pale cheek +twitching:</p> + +<p>"I am going away myself: that is the reason why. All debts are paid. I +have completed all the arrangements, entailing the minimum of annoyance +upon you."</p> + +<p>"May I not come with you upon your voyage?"</p> + +<p>His eyes were still averted as his grey lips answered:</p> + +<p>"No! I am going where you cannot come!"</p> + +<p>"Owen, tell me where you are going?"</p> + +<p>Her tone of entreaty knocked at the door of his barred heart. He winced +palpably. "Excuse me," he said, and took another step towards the door. +She stopped him with:</p> + +<p>"You are not excused from answering my question!"</p> + +<p>"I am going, first to get you some breakfast," said Saxham curtly, "and +then to find a woman to attend upon you here."</p> + +<p>"I need no breakfast, thanks! I want no attendant!"</p> + +<p>"You must have someone," said Saxham brusquely.</p> + +<p>"I must have your answer," she said in a tone quite new to him. "What is +your secret purpose? What are you hiding from me in that closed hand?"</p> + +<p>He moved his left hand slightly, undoing the fingers and giving a glimpse +of the empty palm.</p> + +<p>"Not that hand. The other!" She pointed to the clenched right. How tall +she had grown, and how womanly! "Love has done this!" was his aching +thought. She seemed a princess of faëry, fresh from a bath of magic +waters. Her very gait was changed, her every gesture seemed new. Purpose +and decision and quiet self-control breathed from her; her voice had tones +in it unheard of him before. Her eyes were radiant as he had never yet +seen them, golden stars, centred and rimmed with night, shining in a pale +glory that was her face....</p> + +<p>"All that for the other man! Well, let him have it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span> thought Saxham, and +involuntarily glanced at his clenched right hand.</p> + +<p>"Please open it and show me what you have there!" she begged him.</p> + +<p>Her tones were full of pleading music. His face hardened grimly to +withstand. His muscular fingers closed in a vice-like grip over what he +held. But she moved to him with a whisper of soft trailing garments, and +took the shut hand in both her own. She bent her exquisite head and kissed +it, and Saxham's fingers of iron were no more than wax. Something clicked +in his throat as they opened, that was like the turning of a rusty lock. +And the little blue phial, with the yellow poison-label, gave up his +deadly intention to her eyes. She cried out and snatched it, and flung it +away from her. It fell soundlessly on the soft carpet, and rolled under a +chair.</p> + +<p>"Owen! You would have ... done that!..."</p> + +<p>Divine reproach was to her face. He snarled:</p> + +<p>"It would have been done by now if you had not come back!"</p> + +<p>"I thank our Lord I came!... It is His doing! Once He had sent me +knowledge, I could not stay away. For, Owen ... I have made a +discovery...."</p> + +<p>"Yes." He laughed harshly. "As I knew you would one day! Never was I fool +enough to doubt what would come!"</p> + +<p>She put both her hands to her lips and kissed them, and held them out to +him. He cried:</p> + +<p>"What is this? What interlude of folly are you playing? It was your +freedom you came to demand. You have not told me who the man you love is. +I do not ask—I will not even know! He is your choice; that is enough!"</p> + +<p>"He is my choice!" Her bosom heaved to the measure of her quickened +breathing. The splendid colour rose over the edge of the lace scarf that +was loosely knotted about her sweet throat, and surged to the pure +temples, and climbed to the line of the rich red-brown hair.</p> + +<p>"You will soon be free to tell the world so. Marry him," said Saxham, "and +forget the dreary months dragged out beside the sot! For I who promised +you I would never fail you; I who told you so confidently that I was +cured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span> of the accursed liquor-crave; I—well, I reckoned without my +host——"</p> + +<p>His laugh jarred her heartstrings. She cried out hotly:</p> + +<p>"You did not deceive me wilfully! You believed what you said!"</p> + +<p>"I believed ... and the first snare set for me tripped up my heels," said +Saxham. "I paid the penalty of being cocksure. And I had not the common +decency to die then and release you. True, there were reasons—they are +swept away now!... I sent you to Wales that I might be free of the sight +of you, that I might end the sordid comedy and have done. You have come +too soon! There's no more to be said than that!"</p> + +<p>"There is this to be said."</p> + +<p>She came towards him, her tender eyes wooing his. Her lips were parted, +her breath came in sighs.</p> + +<p>"What you have told me is sorrowful, but not hopeless. You were cured +once—you will be cured again! And I will help you—comfort you—suffer +with you and pray for you. You shall never be alone, my husband, any +more!"</p> + +<p>He was melting. His hard blue eyes had the softening gleam of tears. He +stretched out his hands and took hers, holding them close. He stooped, and +let his burning lips rest on the cool, fragrant flesh, and said tenderly:</p> + +<p>"Dear saint, sweet would-be martyr, you <i>shall</i> not sacrifice your long +life's happiness to me. Rather than live on sane and sober, to see you +famishing beside me for the want of Love, I would die a thousand deaths, +Lynette! Try to believe it. You shall be free! You must be free, my +child!"</p> + +<p>She winced as though he had stabbed her, and cried out:</p> + +<p>"Why do you harp continually upon your death? I will not listen to you! If +I do not desire to be 'free,' as you term it, what barrier is there +between us now?"</p> + +<p>He said, amazed:</p> + +<p>"What barrier? Do you ask what barrier? Your love—for that other man!"</p> + +<p>"There is no other man!" She looked him full in the eyes now, with a +lovely colour dyeing her sweet cheeks, and an exquisite quivering +wistfulness about her mouth. She moved so near that her fragrant breath +fanned warm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span> upon his eyelids. "There is no man but you—there will never +be any other man!... Dearest"—her hands were on his shoulders; her bosom +rose and fell close to his broad breast—"I have been very slow at +learning. But—Owen!—I love you as your wife should love!"</p> + +<p>"You cannot!" He stepped back sharply, and her hands fell from him. "You +shall not! I am not worthy. I thought so once.... I know better now. Do +not deceive yourself. Love cannot be compelled at will, and I have ceased +to wish—to desire yours! All I want now is rest and silence and +forgetfulness—where alone they may be found!" He drew a breath of +weariness.</p> + +<p>"If you have ceased to wish for love from me, that is my punishment," she +said, very pale. "For without yours I cannot live! God hears me speak the +truth!"</p> + +<p>"Lynette!..."</p> + +<p>He swayed like a tree cut through and falling. She caught his hands, and +drew them to her heart.</p> + +<p>"I have been blind and deaf and senseless. I am changed, I am altered—I +am awake at last! I know how great and precious is the love you have given +me.... Do not tell me it is mine no longer! Owen, if you do that, it is I +who shall die!"</p> + +<p>A sob tore its way through him. His great frame quivered. His mask-like +immobility broke up ... was gone. Her own tears falling, she stretched her +arms to him; yet while his eyes devoured her, his arms hungered for her, +he delayed, knitting his brows. She caught a word or two, whispered +brokenly. He asked himself: "Can this be Love?"</p> + +<p>"It is Love! Owen, I kissed you one night when I found you sleeping! When +will you kiss me back again?"</p> + +<p>He cried out wildly upon God, and fell down upon his knees before her. He +reached out groping, desperate arms, and snatched her close. His deep, +shuddering breaths vibrated through her; her own knees were trembling, her +bosom in storm. She swayed like a young palm. Nearer—nearer! he felt her +hands about his neck, her tears upon his face....</p> + +<p>"Dear love, dearest husband, I have a message for you! Owen, shall I tell +you what it is?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Tell me, my heart's beloved," said Saxham in a whisper.</p> + +<p>Their looks united in azure fire and golden. Their breath mingled, their +lips were very near. She felt his strength about her; he drank in her +sweetness. The kiss, the supreme boon, was as yet withheld.</p> + +<p>She whispered....</p> + +<p>"I awakened in the light of the early morning—the morning of the day I +came to you. She sat beside me—the Mother, Owen! her dear hand on my +heart, her dear eyes waiting for mine. She stooped and kissed me ... it +was real ... I felt it! She said: 'Love your husband as I loved Richard! +Be to a child of his what I have been to you!'"</p> + +<p>His arms wrapped round her, gathered her, enfolded her. His scalding tears +wetted her white bosom as she drew the square black head to rest there, +and drooped her cheek upon the broad brow. Her rich hair, loosed from its +coils, fell in a heavy silken rope upon his shoulder ... their lips met in +the nuptial, sacramental kiss....</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOP DOCTOR***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 27966-h.txt or 27966-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/6/27966">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/9/6/27966</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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