THE DOP DOCTOR

by

RICHARD DEHAN

Author of "Between Two Thieves, " "The Headquarter Recruit, " "The Cost of Wings"

Popular Edition

London: William Heinemann Ltd. 

First printed 6s. Edition, April, 1910. 

New Impressions, May (three times), July, August, September, October, November, 1910; January, July, October, 1911; New Edition, May, 1912; NewImpressions, September, October, December, 1912; February, May, 1913. 

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

Printed in Great BritainThe Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey

TO ONE ACROSS THE SEA

_What have the long years brought me since first, with this pen forpickaxe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world aboutme, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the hearthplace, andchiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should honour you who, above all onearth, I hold most in honour--a name among the writers of books thatlive!_

_What have the long years brought me! Well, not the things I hoped. Justbread and clothing, fire, and a little roof-tree; the purchased soil tomake a grave, and a space of leisure, before that grave be needed, towrite, myself, this book for me and for you. Hope has spread heriridescent Psyche-wings and left me; Ambition long ago shed hers to becomea working-ant. Love never came to sit in the chair beside the ingle. Anocean heaves between us, only for nightly dreams and waking thoughts tospan. Were those dear eyes to see me as I am to-day, I wonder whether theywould know me? For I grow grey, and furrows deepen in the forehead thedear hand will never smooth again. Remember me, then, only as I used tobe; my heart is the same always; in it the long, long years have wroughtno change. _

_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 myfellow 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 whatmay yet have to be encountered. Fortitude to meet the end, where faithholds up the Cross. Much have the long years brought me--besides yourfirst smile and your last kiss. For your next, I look past Death, Godaiding me, to the Eternal Life beyond.... _

SOUTH WALES, _April 22, 1909. _

I

Upon a day near the end of August, one long, brilliant South Africanwinter, when the old Vierkleur waved over the Transvaal, and what is nowthe Orange River Colony was the Orange Free State, with the Dutch cantonstill showing on the staff-head corner of its tribarred flag, two large, heavily-laden waggons rolled over the grass-veld, only now thinking aboutchanging from yellow into green. Many years previously the wheels of theold voortrekkers had passed that way, bringing from Cape Colony, with thehousehold gods, goods and chattels, language and customs of the Dutch, theslips of the pomegranate and peach and orange trees, whose abundantblossoming dressed the orchards of the farms tucked away here and there inthe lap of the veld, with bridal white and pink, and hung their girdlingpomegranate hedges with stars of ruby red. But days and days, and nightsand nights of billowing, spreading, lonely sky-arched veld intervenedbetween each homestead. 

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 aveld fire leaping and dancing, with swirling columns of white smoke edgedwith flame. But it was many miles away, and the north-west wind blewstrongly, driving some puffs of gold cloud before it. Perhaps there wouldbe rain ere long. There had been rain already in the foremost waggon, notfrom the clouds, but from human eyes. 

The broad wheels crashed on, rolling over the yellow grass and the drybushes. Lizards and other creeping creatures scuttled across their widetracks. The patient oxen toiled under the yoke, their dappled nostrilswidespread, their great dewy eyes strained and dim with weariness. Theydumbly wondered why they must labour in the daytime when all night longthey had travelled without rest. The glorious sunrise had flamed incrimson and gold behind the eastern ranges full five hours before. Theywere weary to death, and no dorp or farm was yet in sight. The Cape boyswho tramped, each leading a fore-ox by the green reim bound about thecreature's wide horns, had no energy left even to swear at their beasts. 

The Boer driver was wearied like the ox-team and the Cape boys. Hisbestial 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-threefeet, had not smacked for a long time; the sjambok had not been used uponthe long-suffering wheelers. Huddled up in his ill-fitting clothes of tancord, he sat on the waggon-box and slept, his head nodding, his elbows onhis knees. He was dreaming of the bad Cape brandy that had been in thebottle, and would be, with luck, again, when the waggon reached a tavernor a store. 

A Kaffir drove the second waggon. It held stores and goods in bales, andsome trunks and other baggage belonging to the Englishman, for you wouldhave set down the tall, thin, high-featured, reddish-bearded, soft-speaking man who owned the waggons as English, even though he hadcalled himself by a Dutch name. The child of three years was his. And hishad been the dead body of the woman lying on the waggon-bed, covered witha new white sheet, with a stillborn boy baby lying on her breast. 

For this the man who had loved and taken her, and made her his, had weptsuch bitter, scalding tears. For this his dead love, with Love's blightedbud of fruit upon her bosom, had given up her world, her friends, herfamily--her husband, first and last of all. They had played the straightgame, and gone away openly together, to the immense scandal of Societythat is so willing to wink at things done cleverly under the rose. Theywere to be married the instant the injured husband obtained his decreeabsolute. The State sanctioned the re-marriage of the divorced if theChurches did not. Their church should thenceforwards be the State. Butthere was no _decree nisi_ even, the injured husband possessing a legalheir by a previously-deceased wife. Besides, in a cold way it gave himpleasure to think of that purpose foiled. He soon knew that his wife'slover had sold his commission in the Army, and he learned, later, througha communication forwarded through a London firm of solicitors, thatalthough he had chosen to ignore a certain appointment offered upon theopposite side of the Channel, the other man would merely consider itdeferred until a suitable opportunity should occur. Meanwhile the writerwas travelling in South Africa, not alone. 

Never to be alone again, she had promised him that not quite four yearsago. And to-day he sat on a box beside the waggon-bed where she lay deadwith her dead boy, and the only thing left to him that had the dear livingfragrance and sweet warmth of her slept smiling on his knees--theirdaughter. 

The long fine beard that he had grown swept the soft flushed cheek of thelittle creature, and mingled with her yellow curls. Within the last fewhours--hours packed with the anguish of a lifetime for him--there weresprinklings of white upon his high temples, where the hair had grown thinunder the pressure of the Hussar's furred busby, the khaki-covered helmetof foreign service, or the forage-cap, before these had given place to theColonial smasher of felt, and the silky reddish-brown beard had in itwide, ragged streaks of grey. He had worshipped the woman who had given upall for him; they had lived only for, and in one another during fourwonderful years. Hardly a passing twinge of regret, never a scorpion-stingof remorse, spoiled their union. 

But they never stayed long in any town or even in any village. Some soundor shape from the old unforgotten world beyond the barrier, some Englishvoice that had the indefinable tone and accent of high breeding, somefigure of Englishman or Englishwoman whose rough, careless clothing hadthe unmistakable cut of Bond Street, some face recognised under the greyfelt or the white Panama, would spur them to the desire of leaving itbehind them. Then the valises would be repacked, the oxen would be hastilyinspanned, and their owners would start again upon that never-endingjourney in search of something that the woman was to be the first to find. 

At last, when the sun was high and the worn-out beasts were almostsinking, a group of low buildings came in sight a few miles away beyond akloof 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 nearit, had a sprawling painted board across its front, signifying that theplace was the Free State Hotel. Behind it were an orchard and some fieldsunder rude cultivation, and a quarter of a mile to the north were thenative kraals. 

At the sight the Boer shook himself fully awake, and sent the long lashcracking over the thin, sweat-drenched backs of the ox-team. They labouredwith desperation at the yoke, and the waggon rumbled on. 

The Englishman, hidden with his sorrow under the canvas waggon-tilt, roused himself at the accelerated motion. He rose, and, holding thesleeping child upon one arm, pushed back the front flap and looked out. Hespoke to the taciturn driver, who shook his head. How did he, SmootsBeste, know whether a minister of the Church of England, or even a Dutchpredikant, was to be found at the place beyond? All he hoped for was thathe would be able to buy there tobacco and brandy cheap, and sleep drunken, to wake and drink again. 

The waggon halted on the brink of the kloof. Little birds of gay andbrilliant plumage, blue and crimson and emerald-green, rose in flocks fromthe bush and grasses that clothed the sides of the coomb; the hollows werefull of the tree-fern; the grass had little white and purple flowers init. At the valley-bottom a little stream, that would be a river after thefirst rains, wimpled over sandstone boulders, the barbel rose at flies. There was a drift lower down. It was all the goaded, worn-out oxen coulddo to stay the huge creaking waggons down the steep bank, and drag themover the river-bed of sand and boulders, through the muddied, churned-upwater that they were dying for, yet not allowed to taste, and toil withthem up the farther side. 

The Englishman was not cruel. He was usually humane and merciful to manand beast, but just now he was deaf and blind. Beside him there was hercorpse, beyond him was her grave, beyond that.... 

Both he and she, in that world that lay beyond the barrier had observedthe outward forms of Christianity. They had first met in the Park, one Maymorning, after a church parade. They sat on a couple of green-paintedchairs while Society, conscious of the ever-present newspaper-reporter, paraded past them in plumage as gorgeous as that of the gay-coloured birdsthat flocked among the tree-fern or rose in frightened clouds as thewaggons crashed by. And they discussed--together with the chances of therunners entered for the second Spring Meeting at Newmarket, and the meritsof the problem play, and the newest farcical comedy--the Immortality ofthe Soul. 

She wore a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shadesof cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Herhair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in thesunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears likeshells, and a delicate, softly-tinted skin undefiled by cosmetics. Shethought it wicked to doubt that one waked up again after dying, Somewhere--a vague Somewhere, with all the nice people of one's set aboutone. He said that Agnosticism and all that kind of thing was bad form. Menwho had religion made the best soldiers. Like the Presbyterian Highlandersof the Black Watch and the "Royal Irish" Catholics--but, of course, sheknew that. And she said yes, she knew; meeting his admiring eyes with herown, that were so grey and sweet and friendly, the little gloved hand thatheld the ivory and gold-bound Church Service lying in her lap. He longedto take that little white, delicate hand. Later on he took it, and alittle later the heart that throbbed in its pulses, and the frail, beautiful body out of which the something that had been she had gone witha brief gasping struggle and a long shuddering sigh.... 

He kept the beloved husk and shell of her steady on the waggon-bed withone arm thrown over it, and held the awakened, fretting child against hisbreast with the other, as the sinking oxen floundered up the farther sideof the kloof. Amidst the shouting and cursing of the native voor-loopersand the Boer and Kaffir drivers, the rain of blows on tortured, strugglingbodies, and the creaking of the teak-built waggon-frames, he only heardher weakly asking to be buried properly in some churchyard, or cemetery, with a clergyman to read the Service for the Dead. 

Before his field-glass showed him the sprawling hotel-sign he had hopedthat the buildings in sight might prove to mask the outskirts of a nativevillage with an English missionary station, or a Dutch settlementimportant enough to own a corrugated iron Dopper church and anoak-scrub-hedged or boulder-dyked graveyard, in charge of a pastor whoseloathing of the Briton should yield to the mollifying of poured-out gold. 

But Fate had brought him to this lonely veld tavern. He watched it growinginto ugly, sordid shape as the waggon drew nearer. To this horrible place, miscalled the Free State Hotel--a mere jumble of corrugated-ironbuildings, wattle and mud-walled stables for horses, and a barbed-wirewaggon-enclosure--he had brought his beloved at the end of their lastjourney together. He shuddered at the thought. 

The waggons were halted and outspanned before the tavern. The drivers wentin to get drink, and Bough, the man who sold it, leaving the women toserve them, came forth. He ordinarily gave himself out as an Afrikander. You see in him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man oftwenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either insolent orcringing, 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 itsowner's secret rage. Did he want every English officer to recognise him asan old deserter from the Cape Mounted Police? Not he--and yet the cursedhabit stuck. But he looked the stranger squarely in the face with thatfrank look that masked such depth of guile, and greeted him with thesimple manner that concealed so much, and the English officer lifted hisleft hand, as though it raised a sword, and began to talk. PresentlyBough called someone, and a smart, slatternly young woman came out andcarried the child, who leaned away from her rouged face, resisting, intothe house. 

The English traveller would take no refreshment. He needed nothing but toknow of a graveyard and men to dig a grave, and a minister or priest toread the Burial Service. He would pay all that was asked. He learned thatthe nearest village-town might be reached in three days' trek across theveld, and that the landlord did not know whether it had a pastor or not. 

Three days' trek! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious landlord back, andwent up into the foremost waggon, drawing the canvas close. He faced thetruth in there, and realized with a throe of mortal anguish that theburial must be soon--very soon. To prison what remained of her in ahastily knocked-together coffin, and drag it over the veld, looking forsome plot of consecrated earth to put it in, was desecration, horror. Hewould bury her, and fetch the minister or clergyman or priest to readprayers. Later, if it cost him all he had, the spot should be consecratedfor Christian burial. He came forth from the waggon and held parley withthe landlord of the tavern. There was a wire-fenced patch of sandy redearth a hundred yards from the house, a patch wherein the white woman whowas mistress at the tavern had tried to grow a few common Englishflower-seeds out of a gaily-covered packet left by a drummer who hadpassed that way. She had grown tired of the trouble of watering andtending them, so that some of them had withered, and the lean fowls hadflown over the fence and scratched the rest up. 

That patch of sandy earth brought a handsome price, paid down in goodEnglish sovereigns--the coinage that is welcome in every corner of theearth, save among the scattered islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, wheregin, tobacco, and coffee are more willingly taken in exchange for goods orsouls. 

The Englishman was business-like. He fetched pen and ink and paper out ofthat jealously closed-up waggon, drew up the deed of sale, and had itwitnessed by the Boer driver and the white woman at the hotel. 

He had made up his mind. He would bury her, since it must be, and thenfetch the clergyman. Knowing him on the road, or returning to thefulfilment of his promise, she would not mind lying there unblessed andwaiting for six lonely days and nights. He whispered in her deaf ears howit was going to be, and that she could not doubt him. He swore--notdreaming 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 Deathshould call him too. 

Then he left her for a moment, and sent for the Kaffir driver and the Boerto come, and, with him, dig her grave.... 

But Smoots Beste was already in hog-paradise, lying grunting on a bench inthe bar, and the Kaffir had gone to the kraals with the Cape boys. TheEnglish officer looked at the rowdy landlord and the loafing men about thetavern, and made up his mind. No hands other than his own should prepare alast bed for her, his dearest. 

So, all through the remainder of the long day, streaming and drenched withperspiration, which the cold wind dried upon him, he wrought at a gravefor her with spade and pick. 

It should be deep, because of the wild-cat and the hungry Kaffir dogs. Itshould be wide, to leave room for him. The ground was hard, with bouldersof ironstone embedded in it. What did that matter? All the day through, and all through the night of wind-driven mists and faint moonlight, hewrought like a giant possessed, whilst his child, lulled with thecondensed milk and water, in which biscuits had been sopped, lay sleepingin the tavern upon a little iron bed. 

He had had the waggon brought close up to the wired enclosure. All thetime he worked he kept a watch upon it. Did claws scrape the wide wheelsor scurrying feet patter across the shadows, he left off work until thevoracious creatures of the night were driven away. 

The pale dawn came, and the east showed a lake of yellow.... When thegreat South African sun rose and flooded the veld with miraculous liquidambers and flaming, melted rubies, the deep, wide grave at last was done. 

He climbed out of it by the waggon ladder, struggling under the weight ofthe last great basketful of stones and sandy earth. He dumped that downby 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 hadso loved that everything that touched her should be pure, and dainty, andsweet. 

He had dressed her silken, plentiful, squirrel-brown hair many times, forthe sheer love of its loveliness. With what care he now combed and brushedand arranged the perfumed locks! He laid reverent kisses on the sealedeyelids that his own hands had closed for ever; he whispered words ofpassionate love, vows of undying gratitude and remembrance, in theshell-like ears. He bathed with fresh water and reclad in fragrant linenthe exquisite body, upon which faint discolouring patches already heraldedthe inevitable end. When he had done, he swathed her in a sheet, andfetched a bolt of new white canvas from the store-waggon, and lined thegrave with that. 

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 downthe light wooden ladder, and laid her in her last earthly home, with akiss from the lips that had never been her husband's. It was so cruel tothink of that. It was so hard to cover up the cold, sweet face again, buthe 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 shouldspeak over it the words that are of God. 

But first--fill in the grave. 

The cold sweat drenched him at the thought of heaping back those tons ofearth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inertmatter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soulhovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at hisgarments with imploring, impalpable hands. 

The thing must be done, though, before the sordid life stirred again underthe roof of the tavern, before the vulgar faces, with their greedy, pryingeyes, should be there to snigger and spy. 

He loaded a great basket with fine gravelly sand, and carried it down andlaid it on her by handfuls. What were his livid, parched lips muttering?Over and over, only this:

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... "

Soon the white swathed-up form was hidden with the sandy gravel. That wasa terrible pang. It wrenched the first groan from him, but he worked on. 

More and more of the sandy gravel, but for precaution the stones must lieabove. Should the voracious creatures of the night come, they must findthe treasure in impregnable security. That thought helped him to lay inthe first, and the second, and then greater and greater stones. He wasspent and breathless, but still he laboured. He tottered, and at times thetavern and the veld, and the waggons on it, and the flat-topped distantmountains that merged in the horizon, swung round him in a wild, maddance. Then the warm salt taste of blood was in his mouth, and he gaspedand panted, but he never rested until the grave was filled in. 

Then he built up over it an oblong cairn of the ironstone boulders, made arude temporary cross out of a spare waggon-pole, working quitemethodically with saw and hammer and nails, and set it up, under thecurious eyes he hated so, and wedged it fast and sure. Then he knelt downstiffly, and made, with rusty, long unpractised fingers, the sacred signupon his face and breast. He heard her still, asking him in that nearlyextinguished voice of hers, to pray for her. 

"Dicky!... "

Ah! the tragedy of the foolish little nickname, faltered by stiffeninglips upon the bed of death!

"Catholics pray for the souls of dead people, don't they? Pray for mineby-and-by. It will comfort me to know you are praying, darling, even ifGod is too angry with us to hear!"

He held her to his bursting heart, groaning. 

"If He is angry, it cannot be with you. The sin was mine--all mine. Hemust know!"

Later she awakened from a troubled sleep to murmur:

"Richard, I dreamed of Bridget-Mary. She was all in black, but there waswhite linen about her face and neck, and it was dabbled dreadfully withblood. " The weak, slight body shuddered in his embrace. "She said ourwickedness had brought her death, but that she would plead for us inHeaven. "

"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, asthose good women always are. "

"I was not one of those good women, Richard----"

He strained her to him in silence. She panted presently:

"You might have been happy--with her--if I had never come between you!"

He found some words to tell her that these things were meant to be. Fromthe beginning ... 

"Was it meant that I should die on these wild, wide, desolate plains, andleave you, Richard?"

He cried out frantically that he would die too, and follow her. Her dyingwhisper fluttered at his lips:

"You cannot! Think!--the child!"

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 kissit; and even in that Death foiled her, and her head fell back and her eyesrolled up, and she died. 

He remembered all this as he tried to say the prayer, without which shecould not have borne to have him leave her. 

The curious, mocking faces crowded at the tavern door to see himpraying--a strange, haggard scarecrow kneeling there in the face of day. 

But he was not the kind of scarecrow they would have dared to jeer atopenly. Too rich, with all that money in the valise in the locked-upwaggon-chest; too strong, with that sharp hunting-knife, the Winchesterrepeating-rifle, and the revolver he carried at his hip. 

"_Our Father Who art in Heaven.... _"

He knew, the man who repeated the words, that there was no One beyond theburning blue vault of ether Who heard ... And yet, for her sake, supposing, after all, some great Unseen Ear listened, was listening evennow.... 

_"Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come.... "_

And if it came, should those have any part in it who had lived togetherunwed in open sin?

_"Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.... "_

The words stuck in his dried throat. Be done, that Will that left himdesolate and laid her away, a still fair, fast-corrupting thing, under thered earth and the great ironstone boulders!

_"Give us this day our daily bread.... "_

Her love, her presence, her voice, her touch, had been the daily bread oflife to him, her fellow-sinner. Oh, how many base, sordid, lovelessmarriages had not that illicit bond of theirs put to shame! And yet as aboy he had learned the Seventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not commitadultery. " Had she not believed all along that the price of such sweetsinning must be paid, if not in this life, then in the life hereafter, andcould it--could it be that her soul was even now writhing in firesunquenchable, whither he, who would have gladly died in torment to saveher from outrage or death, had thrust her?

_"Forgive us our trespasses.... "_

O Man of Sorrows, pitying Son of Mary, before Whom the Scribes andPharisees brought the woman taken in adultery, forgive her, pardon her! Ifa soul must writhe in those eternal fires they preach of, in justice letit be mine! Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing white andshameful in the midst of the evil, jeering crowd, with the wicked fingerspointing at her, say to this other woman, lifting up Thyself before herterrified, desperate soul, confronted with the awful mystery that liesbehind the Veil.... 

_"Neither do I condemn thee.... "_

And do with me what Thou wilt!

The ragged, wild-eyed man who had been kneeling rigid and immovable beforethe wooden symbol reared upon the new-raised cairn of boulders swayed alittle. His head fell forward heavily upon his breast. His eyes closed inspite of his desperate effort to shake off the deadly, sickening collapseof will and brain and body that was mastering him. He fell sideways, andlay in a heap upon the ground. 

II

They went to him, and took up and carried him into the tavern, and laidhim down upon a frowzy bed in the room where the child lay upon theiron-framed cot. 

He lay there groaning in the fierce clutches of rheumatic fever. Theytended him in a rude way. A valise and an iron-bound leather lady's trunkhad been brought from the waggon by his orders, and set in the room wherehe was in his sight. These contained her clothes and jewels, and heguarded them jealously even in delirium. About his wasted body was buckleda heavy money-belt. Bough could feel that when he helped the woman of thetavern to lift the patient. He winked to her pleasantly across the bed. But the time was not ripe yet. They must wait awhile. The Englishtraveller was not always delirious. There were intervals of consciousness, and though he seemed at death's door, who knew? That strong purpose of hismight even yet lift him from the soiled and comfortless bed, and send himon the trek again. Meanwhile the oxen were hired out to work for a farmerfifty miles away. That was called sending them to graze and gain strengthfor more work; and there was the keep of two Cape boys, and the Kaffir andthe Boer driver, and the cost of nursing and sick man's diet, and the careof the child. A heavy bill of charges was mounting up against the Englishtraveller. Much of what the belt contained would honestly be Bough's. 

There was no doctor and no medicine save the few drugs the sick man hadcarried, as all travellers do. The milk for which he asked for himself andthe child, which was procured from the native cattle-kraals for a tikkie apint, and for which Bough charged at the price of champagne, kept himalive. Broth or eggs he sickened at and turned from, and, indeed, the onewas greasy and salt, the others of appalling mustiness. He would regularlyswallow the tabloids of quinine or lithia, and fall back on the hard, coarse pillow, exhausted by the mere effort of unscrewing the nickel-capof the little phial, and tell himself that he was getting stronger. Sometimes he really was so, and then the child sat on his wide hollowchest, and played with the beard that was now all grey and unkempt andmatted, until some word in her baby prattle, some look of wonderinginquiry 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 theweak, passionate, gentle mouth under the heavy moustache, would bring backall the anguish of his loss, and waken anew that torturing voice thataccused him of being false to his compact with the dead. Then he wouldcall, and send the child away, borne in the arms of the Hottentotchambermaid to breathe the fresh air upon the veld. And, left alone, hewould draw up the rough sheets over his head, with gaunt clutchingfingers, and weep, though sometimes no tears came to moisten his haggard, staring eyes. 

One night, while the flat gold hunting-watch ticked above his head in thelittle embroidered chamois-leather pouch dead hands had worked, Knowledgecame to him with a sudden rigor of the muscles of the wasted body, and abursting forth from every pore of the dank, dark-hued sweat of comingdissolution. 

He was not ever going to get well, and fetch the clergyman to pray overand 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 easysolution of the problem! He had been too intent upon gratifying her lastdesire to entertain for a moment the thought of suicide. He had alwaysheld self-destruction as the last resource of the coward and the criminal, and besides there was the child. 

The child!... 

With a pang of dread and terror unfelt by him before, he raised his gaunthead with an effort from the uneasy pillow, and looked towards where shelay, with staring, haunted eyes. The window was open a little way at thetop, and for fear of the night-chill his fine leopard-skin kaross had beenspread over her.... One dimpled, rounded, bare arm lay upon the softdappled fur, the babyish fingers curled one upon the other. Rosy humantendrils that should never twine again in a mother's hair. Her child, herdaughter!... Born of her body, sharing her nature and her sex, soon to beorphaned. For he who could not even lift himself from bed, and drag hisbody across the floor to cover that lovely babyish arm, would soon be nobetter protector than the restless ghost that tugged at his heart with itsunseen hands. He knew now why it could not rest. 

What would become of the child! Another fiery scourge, wielded by the HandUnseen, bit deep into his shrinking conscience, into his writhing soul. His own act had brought this about. Be a cur, and accuse Destiny, blameFate, lay the onus upon God, as so many defaulters do--he could not. Helay looking his deed in the foul face until the dawn crept up the sky, andlearning how it may be that the sins of their fathers are visited on thechildren. 

He called for ink and paper as soon as the house was awake, and withinfinite labour and many pauses to recover spent strength and breath, forhe was greedy of life now, for the reason that we know--he wrote a letterhome to England, to a relative who was the head of his family, and bore agreat historic title--so great that those who spelled it out upon theenvelope were half afraid to slip the heated knife under the crested seal. But Bough did it, and opened, and read. 

It was not going to be the soft snap he had thought, but it would be goodenough. Wires might be pulled from Downing Street that would set theGovernment at Cape Town working to trace the tall thin Englishman who hadtravelled up with two waggons from Cape Colony in the company of a childand the woman now dead, and for whose sake he had given up those almightyswell connections. What a fool--what a thundering, juicy, damned fool theman had been! whose gaunt eyes were even now making out the landfall ofKingdom Come through the gathering mists of death. 

The letter worried Bough. To have the English Government smelling at yourheels 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 ... Themost honest of speculators being occasionally compelled to dirty hishands, if only to tone down those immaculate extremities to somethingapproaching the colour of other people's--then what becomes of the riskybut profitable business of gun-running from the English ports through tothe Transvaal?

For by men like Bough and his associates vast supplies of munitions andengines of war were wormed through. The machine-guns in carefully numberedparts came in cases as "agricultural implements, " the big guns travelledin the boilers of locomotives, the empty cases of the shells, large andsmall, were packed in piano-cases, or in straw-filled crates as"hardware"; the black powder and the cordite and the lyddite came in roundwooden American cheese-boxes, with a special mark; and the Mausercartridges were soldered in tins like preserved meat. How handsomely thatbusiness paid only Bough and his merry men, and Oom Paul and his burghersof the Volksraad, knew. 

But Her Majesty's Government, bound about with red-tape, hoodwinked byDutch Assistant-Commissioners of British Colonies, and deceived bytraitorous English officials, were blind and deaf to the huge traffic inarms and munitions. Not that there were no warnings. To the very end theywere shouted in deaf ears. 

What of that letter sent from the Resident Commissioner's office atGueldersdorp, that little frontier hamlet on the north-east corner ofBritish Baraland, September 4, 1899, little more than a month before thewar broke out, the war that was to leave Britain and her Colonies bleedingat every vein?

The Boers were in laager over the Border. A desperate appeal for help hadbeen made to the Powers that were, and the reply received to the nowhistoric telegram, through the Resident Commissioner, has equally become amatter of history. 

"All that was possible" was being done by the Imperial authorities, HisExcellency assured the inquirer, to safeguard the lives and property ofthe inhabitants of the Gold-Reef Town in the event of an attack by ahostile force. 

Also the military armament of the place was about to be materiallyincreased. 

And yet up to the little frontier town upon which so much depended not asingle modern gun had been despatched. 

An easy prey had the little town upon the flat-topped hill, set in themiddle of a basin, proved to the Boer General and his commandos but forone thing. For weeks after the bursting of the first shell overGueldersdorp three sides of the beleaguered town were so many open doorsfor the enemy. Only upon the threshold of each door stood Fear, andguarded and held the citadel. 

III

That hard taskmaster, Satan, is sometimes wonderfully indulgent to thosewho serve him well. While Bough, the keeper of the tavern, was yet turningabout the open letter in his thick, short, hairy hands, weighing thechances attending the sending of it against the chances of keeping itback, the woman who served as mistress of the place thrust hercoarsely-waved head of yellow bleached hair and rouge-ruddled face in atthe room door, and called to him:

"Boss, the sick toff is doing a croak. Giving up the ghost for all he'sworth--he is. Better come and take a look for yourself if you don'tbelieve me. "

Bough swore with relief and surprise, delayed only to lock away theletter, and went to take a look. It was as he hoped, a real stroke of luckfor a man who knew how to work it. 

Richard Mildare--for Bough knew now what had been the name of theEnglishman: Captain the Hon. Richard Mildare, late of the GreyHussars--was dead. No hand made murderous by the lust of gold had helpedhim to his death. Sudden failure of the heart is common in aggravatedcases of rheumatic fever, and with one suffocating struggle, one brieffinal pang, he had gone to join her he loved. But his dead face did notlook at rest. There was some reflection in it of the terror that had comeupon him in the watches of that last night. 

Bough stayed some time alone in the room of death. When he came out he wasextremely affable and gentle. The woman, who knew him, chuckled to herselfwhen he met the Kaffir serving-maid bringing back the child from an airingin the sun, and told her to take it to the mistress. Then he went into thebar-room to speak to the Englishman's Boer driver. 

Leaning easily upon the zinc-covered counter he spoke to the man in theTaal, with which he was perfectly familiar:

"Your Baas has gone in, as my wife and I expected. "

Smoots Beste growled in his throat:

"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--andwhere am I to get it now that the heathen has gone to the burning?"

Smoots, who was all of a heathen himself, and regularly got drunk, notonly on week days, but on Sabbaths, felt virtuously certain that theEnglishman had gone to Hell. 

Bough smiled and poured out a four-finger swig of bad Cape brandy, andpushed it across the counter. 

"You shall get the money, every tikkie. Only listen to me. "

Smoots Beste tossed off the fiery liquid, and returned in a tone lesssurly:

"I am listening, Baas. "

Said Bough, speaking with the thickish lisp and slurring of the consonantsthat distinguished his utterance when he sought to appear more simple andcandid than usual:

"This dead toff, with his flash waggon and fine team, and Winchesterrepeating-rifles, had very little money. He has died in my debt for theroom and the nursing, and the good nourishment, for which I trusted himall these three weeks, and I am a poor man. The dollars I have paid youand 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 Ishall get back my own there's no knowing. But, of course, I shall actsquare. "

The Boer's thick lips parted in a grin, showing his dirty, greenish-yellowteeth. He scratched his shaggy head, and said, his tongue lubricated toincautiousness by the potent liquor:

"The waggons, and the oxen, and the guns and ammunition, and the stores inthe second waggon are worth good money. And the woman that is dead hadjewels--I have seen them on her--diamonds and rubies in rings andbracelets fit for the vrouw of King Solomon himself. The Englishman didnot bury them with her under that verdoemte kopje that he built with histwo hands, and they are not in the boxes in the living-waggon. "

"Did he not?" asked Bough, looking the Boer driver full in the face with apleasant smile. "Are they not?"

Smoots Beste's piggish eyes twinkled round the bar-room, looked up at theceiling, down at the floor, anywhere but into Bough's. He spat, and saidin a much more docile tone:

"What do you want me to do?"

Bough leaned over the counter, and said confidentially:

"Just this, friend. I want you to inspan, and take one of the waggons upto Gueldersdorp, with a letter from me to the Civil Commissioner. I willtell him how the man is dead, and he will send down a magistrate's clerkto put a seal on the boxes and cases, and then he will go through theletters and papers in the pocket-book, and write to the people of the deadman over in England, supposing he has any, for I have heard him tell mywife there was not a living soul of his name now, except the child----"

"But what good will all this do you and me, Baas?" asked the Boersubserviently. 

Bough spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. 

"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 topay the expenses of his burying, and the child's keep here and passagefrom 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 settlementof our just claims. They will never let honest men suffer for behavingsquare, sure no, they'll not do that!"

But though Bough's words were full of faith in the fair dealing of thelawyers and magistrates, his tone implied doubt. 

"Boer lawyers are slim rogues at best, and Engelsch lawyers are duyvels aswell as rogues, " said Smoots Beste, with a dull flash of originality. 

Bough nodded, and pushed another glass of liquor across the bar. 

"And that's true enough. I've a score to settle with one or two of 'em. Bygum! I call myself lucky to be in this with a square man like you. There'sthe waggon, brand-new--you know what it cost at Cape Town--and the team, Itrust you to take up to Gueldersdorp, and who's to hinder a man who hasn'tthe 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 livingon a snug farm of your own for the rest of your life under another man'sname, where the English magistrates and the police will never find you, though their noses were keener than the wild dogs?"

"Alamachtig!" gasped Smoots Beste, rendered breathless by the alluring, tempting prospect. Surely the devil spoke with the voice of thetavern-keeper Bough, when, in human form, he tempted children of men. Sweat glistened on Smoots' flabby features, his thick hands trembled, andhis bowels were as water. But his purpose was solidifying in his brain ashe said innocently, looking over Bough's left shoulder at the woodenpartition that divided off the bar from the landlord's dwelling-room:

"Aye, I am no dirty schelm that cannot be trusted. Therefore would it notbe better if I took both teams and waggons, and all the rooinek's goodswith me up to Gueldersdorp, and handed it over to the Engelsch landrostthere?"

The fish was hooked. Bough said, steadily avoiding those twirling eyes:

"A good notion, but the lawyer chaps at Gueldersdorp will want to look atthe Englishman's dead body to be able to satisfy his people that he didnot 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 toferret in all the corners of the room where he died, and make sure thathis bags and boxes have not been tampered with--and then there is thechild. In a way"--he spoke slowly and apologetically--"the kid and thegoods are my security for getting my own back again--if ever I do. So youwill inspan one of the waggons--the best if you like, with a team of sixbeasts, and you will trek up to Gueldersdorp--you will travel light enoughwith only the grub you will need, and the Cape boys, and you will handover the letter to the Resident Magistrate, and bring back the man whowill act as his deputy. "

But at this point Smoots Beste set down his splay foot. He would undertaketo deliver the letter, but he objected to the company of the colouredvoor-loopers or the Kaffir driver. He was firm upon that and, finding hismost honeyed persuasions of no avail, Bough said no more. He would pay offthe niggers and dismiss them, or get rid of them without paying; therewere 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, andhollow flanks, and ribs that showed painfully. Smoots Beste was about togrumble, but he changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up inthe flapped pocket of his tan-cord jacket, and the long whip cracked likea revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs of the wincing oxen, andthe white tilt rocked over the veld, heading to the nor'-west. 

"When will the Dutchy be back, boss?" asked the woman, with a knowinglook. 

Bough played the game up to her. He answered quite seriously: "In threeweeks' time. "

Then he strolled out, smoking a cigar, his hat tilted at an angle thatspoke of satisfaction. His walk led him past the oblong cairn of ironstoneboulders in the middle of the sandy patch of ground enclosed with zincwire-netting. At the foot of the cairn was a new grave. 

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 somefaithful hound that could not live without the touch of the worshippedhand, for the dead to rise again. 

Why is it that Failure is the inevitable fate of some men and women?Despite brilliant prospects, positions that seem assured, commandingtalents nobly used, splendid opportunities that are multiplied as thoughin mockery, the result is Nothing from first to last; while the badflourish and the evil prosper, and the world honours the stealer of thefruit of the brains that have been scattered in frenzied despair, or havebecome so worn out from the constant effort of creation that the workerhas sunk into hopeless apathy and died. 

Bough was not one of those men whose plans come to nothing. He hadprospered as a rogue of old in England, really his native country, thoughhe called himself an Afrikander. Reared in the gutters of the Irishquarter of Liverpool, he had early learned to pilfer for a living, hadprospered in prison as sharp young gaol-birds may prosper, and returned toit again and again, until, having served out part of a sentence forburglary and obtained his ticket-of-leave, he had shifted his convict'sskin, and made his way out to Cape Colony under a false name andcharacter. He had made a mistake, it was true, enlisting as a trooper ofColonial Police, but the step had been forced upon him by circumstances. Then he had deserted, and had since been successful as a white-slavedealer at Port Elizabeth, and as a gold-miner in the Transvaal, and he haddone better and better still at that ticklish trade of gun-running for OomPaul. Though, get caught--only once get caught--and the ImperialGovernment authorities, under whose noses you had been playing the gamewith 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, asemi-innocent dupe, who would appear to have been responsible foreverything, and who would get pinched. 

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-polestill faithfully pointed to the north-west. But before it was yet day thewaggon began to move again, and it was to the north-east that thewaggon-pole pointed thenceforwards, and the letter Bough had given SmootsBeste for the Chief Resident Magistrate at Gueldersdorp was saved from thekindling of the camp-fire by a mere accident. 

The cat's-paw could not read, or the illegible, meaningless ink scrawlupon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused hissuspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, understood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, notelaborate--a mere stage property, nothing more. But yet he gave it in fullbelief that it would be burned, and that, the boats of Smoots Beste beingconsumed with it, according to the thick judgment of the said Smoots, itwould be as a pillar of fire behind that slim child of the oldvoortrekkers, hastening his journey north-eastwards. It is typical of theclass of Smoots that it never once occurred to him to go north. 

But Smoots Beste never bought a farm with the price of the oxen and thehigh-bulwarked, teak-built, waterproof-canvas tilted waggon that had costsuch a good round sum. There was a big rainfall on the third day. It beganwith the typical African thunderstorm--deafening, continuous rolls andcrashes of heavy cloud-artillery, and lightning that blazed and dartedwithout intermission, and ran zigzagging in a horrible, deadly, playfulfashion over the veld, as though looking for dishonest folks to shrivel. One terrible flash struck the wheel-oxen, a thin double tongue of blueflame sped flickering from ridge to ridge of the six gaunt backs ... Therewas a smell of burning hair--a reek of sulphur. The team lay outstretcheddead on the veld, the heavy yoke across their patient necks, the longhorns curving, the thin starved bodies already beginning to bloat andswell in the swift decomposition that follows death by the electric fluid. 

Smoots Beste crawled under the waggon, and, remembering all he had heardhis father spell out from the Dutch Bible about the Judgment Day, and thepunishment of sinners in everlasting flame, felt very ill at ease. Thestorm passed over, and the rain poured all through the night, but dawnbrought in a clear blue day; and with it a train of eighttransport-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, underconvoy of an escort of B. S. A. Police. To the non-commissioned officer incommand Smoots Beste, resigned to the discharge of a trust, handed theletter for the Civil Commissioner. 

The sergeant, sitting easily in the saddle, looked at the boldly-writtendirection on the envelope, and smelt no rats--at least until he coollyopened the supposed letter. The scrawled sheet of paper it contained was asurprise, but he did not let Smoots see that. Then the following briefdialogue took place:

"You were trekking up to Gueldersdorp, " he said to the decidedly nervousSmoots, "to fetch down a Deputy Civil Commissioner to deal with theeffects of a dead English traveller, at a house kept by the man who wrotethis letter--that is, three days' trek over the veld to the southward, andcalled the Free State Hotel?"

Smoots nodded heavily. The dapper sergeant cocked his felt smasher hat, and turned between pleasantly smiling lips the cigar he was smoking. Thenhe pointed with his riding-whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smartsilver top, to the north-west. 

"There lies Gueldersdorp. Rum that when the lightning killed the ox-teamyou should have been trekking north-east, isn't it?"

Smoots Beste agreed that it was decidedly rum. 

The sergeant said, without a change in his agreeable smile:

"All right; you can inspan six of our drove-bullocks, and drive the waggonwith us to Gueldersdorp. "

"Thank you, Baas!" said Smoots, without enthusiasm. 

"If you like to take the risk, " added the sergeant, who had not quitefinished. He ended with an irrepressible outburst of honest indignation:"Why, you blasted, thieving Dutch scum, do you think I don't _know_ youwere stealing that span and waggon?"

And as Smoots, sweating freely, unyoked the dead oxen, he decided in hisheavy mind that he would be missing long before the convoy got toGueldersdorp. 

Nine waggons rolled on where only eight had been before. The mounted menhurried on the daubed and wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. SmootsBeste drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as waterwithin his belly, and there was no resonance in the smack of his whip. When the convoy came to a town, he vanished, and the story thenceforthknows him no more. The discreet sergeant of police did not even noticethat he was missing until several days later, when the end of the journeywas near at hand. He was a sober, careful man, and a good husband. Heshortly afterwards made quite a liberal remittance to his wife, and histroopers pushed Kruger half-sovereigns across most of the bars inGueldersdorp shortly after the purchase by a Dopper farmer of a teak-builtCape 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 timewent on the story of the English traveller who had brought the body of thewoman to the Free State Hotel, so many days' trek to the southwards fromGueldersdorp, trickled from lip to lip. And years later, years too late, it came to the ears of a friend of dead Richard Mildare. 

The sergeant maintained silence. He was a careful officer, and a discreetman, and, what is more, religious. In controversial arguments with thegodless he would sometimes employ a paraphrase of the story of SmootsBeste to strengthen his side. 

"A chap's a blamed fool that doesn't believe in God, I tell you. I wasonce after a bung-nosed Dutch thief of a transport-driver, that hadwaltzed 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'sburghers, he was. Ay, they were worth a tidy lump! A storm came on--aregular Vaal display of sky-fireworks. The rain came down likegun-barrels, the veld turned into a swamp, but we kept on after theDutchman, who drove like gay old Hell. Presently comes a blue blaze and asplitting crack, as if a comet had come shouldering into the map of SouthAfrica, and knocked its head in. We pushed on, smelling sulphur, burntflesh, and hair. 'By gum!' said I; 'something's got it'; and I was torights. The Cape cart stood on the veld, without a scratch on thepaintwork. The four mules lay in their traces, deader than pork. TheDutchman sat on the box, holding the lines and his voorslag, and grinning. He was dead, too--struck by the lightning in the act of stealingthose mules and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air afterthat trying to persuade me that there isn't such a thing as an overrulingProvidence!"

Thus the sergeant: and his audience, whether Free-thinkers, Agnostics, orbelievers, would break up, feeling that one who has the courage of hisopinions is a respectable man. 

As for Bough, in whose hands even the astute sergeant had been as a peeledrush, we may go back and find him counting money in gold and notes thathad been taken from the belt of the dead English traveller. 

Seventeen hundred pounds, hard cash--a pretty windfall for an honest man. The honest man whistled softly, handling the white crackling notes, andfeeling the smooth, heavy English sovereigns slip between his fingers. 

There were certificates of Rand stock, also a goodly number of ColonialRailway 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 Boerwaggon-driver had said, that had belonged to the dead woman--diamondrings, and a bracelet or two; and there were silk dresses of lovely huesand texture, and cambric and linen dresses, and tweed dresses, in thetrunks; and a great cloak of sables, trimmed with many tails, andbeautiful underclothing of silk and linen, trimmed with real lace, overwhich the mouth of the woman of the tavern watered. She got some of thedresses and all the undergarments when Bough had dexterously picked outthe embroidered initials. He knew diamonds and rubies, but he had neverbeen a judge of lace. 

There was a coronet upon one or two handkerchiefs that had been overlookedwhen the dead woman had burned the others four years previously. Boughpicked this out too, working deftly with a needle. 

He was clever, very clever. He could take to pieces a steam-engine or awatch, and put it together again. He knew all there is to know aboutlocks, and how they may best be opened without their keys. He could alterplate-marks with graving tools and the jeweller's blow-pipe, and testmetals with acids, and make plaster-cast moulds that would turn outdollars and other coins, remarkably like the real thing. He was not aclever forger; he had learned to write somewhat late in life, and thelarge, bold round hand, with the capital letters that invariably beganwith the wrong quirk or twirl, was too characteristic, though he wroteanonymous letters sometimes, risking detection in the enjoyment of whatwas to him a dear delight, only smaller than that other pleasure ofmoulding bodies to his own purposes, of malice, or gain, or lust. 

IV

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 thedaub-and-wattle outhouse, where the Hottentot woman, called thechambermaid, and the Kaffir woman, who was cook, slept together on onefilthy pallet. Sometimes they stayed up at the tavern, drinking andcarousing with the Dutch travellers who brought the supplies of Hollandsand Cape brandy and lager beer, and the American or English gold-minersand German drummers who put up there from time to time. Then the child layin the outhouse alone. It was a frail, puny creature, always frightenedand silent. It lived on a little mealie pap and odd bits of roaster-cakesthat were thrown to it as though it were a dog. When the coloured womenforgot to feed it, they said: "It does not matter. Anyhow, the thing willdie soon!" But it lived on when another child would have died.... Therewas something uncanny about its great-eyed silence and its tenacious holdon life. 

It had only been able to toddle when brought to the tavern. The rains andthunderstorms of spring went by, the summer passed, and it could walkabout. 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 itshair was soft yellow--just the colour of a chicken's down. Many a cuff itgot, and many a hard word, when its straying feet brought it into the wayof the rough life up at the tavern. But still the scrap of food was tossedto it, and the worn-out petticoat roughly cobbled into a garment for itslittle body; for Bough was a charitable man. 

It was a poor orphan, he explained to people, the child of a consumptiveemigrant Englishman who had worked for the landlord of the tavern, andleft this burden for other shoulders when he died. Charitable travellersfrequently 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 alwayscame 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 removedfrom the enclosure; it had gone to make a chicken-pen in a more suitablespot. The cross had been taken down when a prop was wanted for theclothes-line. 

The child, often beaten by Bough and the woman of the tavern, might havebeen even worse treated by the coloured servants but for those two gravesout on the veld. Black blood flows thick with superstition, and both theKaffir cook and the snuff-coloured Hottentot chambermaid nourished awholesome dread of spooks. Who knew but that the white woman's ghost wouldrise out of the kopje there, some dark night, and pinch and cuff and thumpand beat people who had ill-used her bantling? As for the dead man buriedat her feet, his dim shape had often been seen by one of the Baralastablemen, keeping guard before the heap of boulders, in the white blazeof the moon-rays, or the paler radiance of a starry night, or more oftenof a night of mist and rain; not moving as a sentry moves, but upright andstill, with shining fiery eyes in his shadowy face, and with teeth thatshowed, as the dead grin. After that none of the servants would pass nearthese two graves later than sundown, and Bough welted the Barala boy withan ox-reim for scaring silly jades of women with lying tales. But thenBough avoided the spot by day as well as by night. Therefore, it became aconstant place of refuge for the child, who now slept in the outhousealone. 

In the long, brilliant winter nights she would leave the straw-stuffedsack 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 atthe great glowing constellation of the Southern Cross. In spring, whenpools and river-beds were full of foaming beer-coloured water, and everykloof and donga was brimmed with flowers and ferns, she would be drawnaway by these, would return, trailing after her armfuls of rare blooms, and thenceforward, until these faded, the ridgy grave-mound and the heapedcairn of boulders would be gay with them. She never took them to thehouse. It might have meant a beating--so many things did. 

Late in November, when the apricots and plums and peaches were ripening onthe laden, starling-haunted boughs, she would wander in the orchardbelonging to the house, while the heavy drenching rains drummed on theleaves overhead, and sudden furious thunderstorms rent the livid-colouredclouds above with jagged scythes and reaping-hooks of white electric fire, or leaping, dancing, playing, vanishing tongues of thin blue. Once thisfire struck a krantz, under the lee of which the child was sheltering, andmade a black scorched mark all down the cliff-face, but left the childunscathed. 

No one had ever taught her anything; no one had ever laid a gentle handupon her. When she first saw mother and daughter, friend and friend, sweetheart and sweetheart kiss, it seemed to her that they licked eachother, as friendly dogs do. She had no name that she knew of. 

"You kid, go there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. You kid, go to thedrift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out theroom there--do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast whenat last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she wasvery young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A real mother'sheart--all mothers are not real ones--would have ached to see the dirt andbruises on the delicate childish limbs, and the vermin that crawled underthe yellow rings of hair. How to be clean and tidy nobody had ever shownher, though she had learned by instinct other things. 

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 onegets a bigger roaster-cake, or the scrapings of the syrup-can. That tolittle, weak, and feeble creatures of their race grown human beings can bemarvellously cruel. That the devil lived down in the kraals with thenatives, and that God was a swear. It is a wonder that she had not sunkinto idiocy, or hopelessly sickened and died, neglected, ill-used, half-starved as she was. But when the little one might have been six yearsof age, the Lady began coming. And after the first time, with very briefintervals of absence, she came every night. 

V

As soon as you lay down on the sack of straw in the corner of theouthouse, slipping out of the ragged frock if the weather were hot, orpulling 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 lookedinto the thick dark, shot with gleams of lovely colours, sometimes withwhirling rings of stars, and gradually, as you looked, all theseconcentrated into two stars, large and not twinkling, but softly radiant, and you were happy, for you knew that the Lady was coming. 

For she always came, even when you had been most wicked: when you weresent to bed without even the supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body andarms and legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you youdeserved. The stars would go a long way off, and while you tingled andtrembled and panted with expectation, would come back again as eyes. Looking up into them, you saw them clearly; the rest of the person theybelonged to arrived quite a little while after her eyes were there. Sucheyes--neither grey, nor brown, nor violet, but a mingling of all thesecolours, and deepening as you gazed up into them into bottomless lakes oflove. 

Then her face, framed in a soft darkness, which was hair--the Kid neverknew of what colour--her face formed itself out of the darkness thatframed those eyes, and a warm, balmy breath came nearer, and you werekissed. 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 longand close that your heart left off beating, and only began again when itwas 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 inthem, or you lay awake, and the Lady talked to you in a voice that wasmellow as honey and soft as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of thewild pigeons that nested in the krantzes, or the sighing of the wind amongthe high veld grasses, and the murmur of the little river playing amongthe 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, thoughshe was sorry, because she hated badness, she loved you just as dearly asshe did when you were good. And oh! how you loved her--how you loved her!

"Please, " you said that night when she came first--you remember it quitewell, though it is so long ago--"please, why did you never come before?"

And she answered, with her cool, sweet, fragrant lips upon your eyelids, and your head upon her breast:

"Because you never wanted me so much as now. "

"Please take me back home with you, " you begged, holding her fast. And sheanswered in the voice that is always like the sigh of the wind amongst thetree-tops and the murmur of the river:

"I cannot yet--but I will come again. "

And she does come, and again and again. By degrees, though she comes toyou only at night, when the outhouse is dark, or lighted only by the starsor the moonshine, you learn exactly what the Lady is like. 

She wears a silken, softly-rustling gown that is of any lovely colour youchoose. The hue of the blue overarching sky at midday, or the tender roseof dawn, or of the violet clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of thesunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment issable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendidpillar of her throat reveal the beauty of her form even to the eyes of anuntaught, neglected child. Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as ofshadow, and her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. Thesorrow of all the world and all its joy seem to have rolled over her likemany waters, and when she smiles the sweetness of it is always almost morethan the Kid can bear. 

Who is the Lady!

She has no other name than that. She is very, very good, as well asbeautiful, 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 sosoftly and clearly and gaily that you, who have never learned but to dreadgrown people's cruel merriment, join in and laugh too. When she laughs thecorners of her eyes crinkle so like the corners of her lips that you haveto kiss them, and there are dimples that come with the laughter, and makeher dearer than ever. 

Who is the Lady, tall, and strong, and tender? That dead woman lying outthere under the Little Kopje was small, and slight, and frail. Who may theLady be? Is she a dream or a mere illusion born of loneliness andstarvation, physical and mental? Or has Mary, the Mother of Pity, laidaside her girdle of decades of golden roses, her mantle of glory, and herdiadem of stars, and come stepping fair-footed down the stairway thatNight builds between Earth and Heaven, to comfort a desolate child lyingin a stable who never heard the story of the Christ-Babe of Bethlehem?

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. Youwhisper how you love her, with your face hidden in her neck. The greatkind dark that brings her is your real, real daytime in which you live andare glad. Each morning to which you waken, bringing its stint of hungerand abuse and blows renewed, is only a dreadful dream, you say toyourself, and so can face your world. 

Oh, deep beyond fathoming, mysterious beyond comprehension is the hiddenheart of a child!

VI

One afternoon when the Kid was quite as tall as the broom she swept thestoep 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 bluesky-arch; small, gaily-plumaged birds twittered in the bushes; the tinyblack ants scurried to and fro in the pinkish sand of the river beach. Shewaded into the now clear, sherry-pale water to cool her hot bare limbs, and, bending over, stared down into the reflected eyes that looked backout of the pool. 

Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a curling tousleof matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid littlefigure, 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 thebar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there wereswing toilet-glasses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirredin her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "_It is good to be clean_, "and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the womanly purposeframed. 

She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from head to foot in thewarm clear water. She took fine sand, and scrubbed her head. She dippedand wrung and rinsed her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in theshallows, the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming herslight girlish body through and through as she spread her washed rags todry on the big hot stones. 

There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was a rustling soundamong the green bushes. She had never heard of modesty, but she cowereddown among the boulders, and the heavy footstep passed by. She hid amongthe fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, and went backwith her filled water-bucket to the hotel. How could she know what injurythe kind peremptory voice, bidding her be foul no longer, had done her!But thenceforwards a new cruelty, a fresh peril, attended her steps. 

Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels often. She was no wifeof his. He had not brought her from Cape Colony. When the hotel was builthe had gone up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and broughther back with him from an establishment he knew. He was generally notbrutal to her except when she was ailing, when he gave her medicine thatmade her worse, much worse--so very ill that she would lie groaning upon afoul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with the coloured womenand the customers in the bar. Then, still groaning, she would drag herselfup and be about her work again. She did not want to go back to the houseat Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, poor boughtwretch. 

She had quarrelled with him many times for many things, and been silencedwith blows, or curses, or even caresses, were he in the mood. But she hadnever quarrelled with him about the Kid before. Now when he bought somecoloured print and a Boer sunbonnet, and some shifts and stockings of atraveller in drapery and hosiery, and ordered her thenceforwards to seethat the girl went properly clothed, a new terror, a fresh torture, wasadded to the young life. The woman had ignored, neglected, sometimesill-used her, but she had never hated her until now. 

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 hefollow 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 theman and his mistress, and learn to use knife and fork. 

She outgrew the dress Bough had bought her, and another, and another, andthis did not make Bough angry; he only smiled. A man having some secretluxury or treasure locked away in a private cupboard will smile so. Heknows it is there, and he means to go to the hiding-place one day, but inthe meantime he waits, licking his lips. 

The girl had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger withunutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable thanhis smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to thekraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables, or to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, padding footsteps coming after her, and would turn and pass him withdowncast eyes, and go back to the inn, and take a beating for not havingdone her errand. Beating she comprehended, but this mysterious change inthe man Bough filled her with sick, secret loathing and dread. She did notknow why she bolted the door of the outhouse now when she crept to hermiserable bed. 

Once Bough dropped into her lap a silver dollar, saying with a smile thatshe was getting to be quite a little woman of late. She leaped to her feetas though a scorpion had stung her, and stood white to the very lips, andspeechless, while the big silver coin rolled merrily away into a distantcorner, and lay there. The frowzy woman with the bleached hair happened tocome in at that moment; or had she been spying through a crack of thedoor? Bough pretended he had accidentally dropped the coin, picked it up, and went away. 

That night he and the woman quarrelled fiercely. She could hear themraging at each other as she lay trembling. Then came shrieks, and the dullsound of the sjambok cutting soft human flesh. In the morning the womanhad a black eye; there were livid weals on her tear-blurred face. Shepacked her boxes, snivelling. She was going back along up to Johannesburgby the next thither-bound transport-waggon-train that should halt at thehotel--thrown off like an old shoe after all these years. And she was notyoung enough for the old life, what with hard work and hard usage andworry, and she knew to whom she owed her dismissal.... 

Ay, and if she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil shewould have done it! Only--there would have been Bough to reckon withafterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend ofhers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskersand the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburgtransport-rider's waggons returning from the district town not yet linkedup to the north by the railway came in sight. 

Bough poured her out a big glass of liquor, his universal panacea, andanother for the transport-rider, with many a jovial word. He would berunning up to Johannesburg before she had well shaken down after thejourney. Then they would have a rare old time, going round the bars anddoing the shows. Though, perhaps if she had got fixed up with a newfriend, some flash young fellow with pots of money, she would not bewanting old faces around?

Then he turned aside to pay the transport-rider, and the exile dabbed herswollen face with a rouge-stained, lace-edged handkerchief, and went outto get into the waggon. 

The girl stood by the stoep, staring, puzzled, overwhelmed, afraid. Apiece of her world was breaking off. As long as she could rememberanything she had known this woman. She had never received any kindnessfrom her; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but--she wished shewas not going. Instinctively she had felt that her presence was someslight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzyskirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, andthe padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the woman passed hernow, a rage of unspeakable, agonising fear rose in her bosom. She criedout to her, and clutched at her shabby gay mantle. 

The woman snatched the garment from her hold. Her distorted mouth andblazing eyes were close to the white young face. She could have spat uponit. But she snarled at her three words ... No more, and passed her, andgot into the waggon. 

"Halloa, there!" said Bough, coming forward threateningly, "what yourowing about, eh?" But no one answered. The girl had fled to theboulder-cairn, and the woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary, goaded teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad-beamedvehicles lumbered away. 

But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the dust of thebosom from whence it had first drunk life sat there immovable until thesun went down, pondering. 

"_Missis now, eh!_"

What did those three words mean?

Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served as waitress of thebar 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 theDutch stove, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they called thecoffee-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. Herheart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly consciousof those light eyes of Bough's following, following her, with thatinscrutable look. 

When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught her arm, and pulledher near him, and said between his teeth:

"You will sleep in the mistress's room to-night. "

Then he went away chuckling to himself, thinking of that frightened lookin her eyes. Later, he went out on horseback, and did not return. 

The slatternly bedchamber, with its red turkey twill window-curtains andcheap gaudy wallpaper, which had belonged to the ruddled woman with thebleached hair, was a palace to the little one. But she could not breathethere. Late that night she rose from the big feather bed, and unfastenedthe inner window shutters, and drew the cotton blind and opened thewindow, though the paint had stuck, and looked out upon the veld. Thegreat stars throbbed in the purple velvet darkness overhead. The fallingdew wetted the hand she stretched out into the cool night air. She drewback 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 sheonce had known. She thought for the first time that if the woman who hadbeen her mother, and who slept out there in the dark under theboulder-cairn, had lived, she might have touched her child so. Then sheclosed the window quickly, for she heard, afar off, the gallop of ahard-ridden horse drawing nearer--nearer. And she knew that Bough wascoming back. 

He came. 

She heard him dismount before the door, give the horse to the sleepyBarala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among theglasses and bottles. She heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and onthe landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the roomwhere she was. 

Then his voice bade her rise and open the door. She could not speak ormove. 

She was dumb and paralysed with deadly terror. She heard his coaxing voiceturn angry; she listened in helpless terrified silence to his oaths andthreats; then she heard him laugh softly, and the laugh was followed bythe jingle of a bunch of skeleton keys. He always carried them; they savedtrouble, he used to say. 

They saved him trouble now. When the bent wire rattled in the lock, andthe key fell out upon the floor, she screamed, and his coarse chuckleanswered. She was cowering against the wall in a corner of the room whenhe came in and picked up the key and locked the door. But when hisstretched-out, grasping hand came down upon her slight shoulder, sheturned and bit it like some savage, desperate little animal, drawing theblood. Bough swore at the sudden sting of the sharp white teeth. So thelittle beast showed fight, eh? Well, he would teach her that the masterwill have his way. 

There was no one else in the house, and if there had been it would haveserved her not at all. God sat in timeless Eternity beyond these mists ofearth, and saw, and made no sign. It was not until the man Bough slept theheavy sleep of liquor and satiety that the thought of flight was born inher with desperate courage to escape him. The shutters had been leftunbolted, and the window was yet a little way open. She sprang up andthrew it wide, leaped out upon the stoep, and from thence to the ground, and fled blindly, breathlessly over the veld into the night. 

VII

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. 

He had chosen the right direction for riding down the quarry. At broadhigh 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 blueshadow on the sun-baked, sun-bleached ground, trying to eat the fruit inthe native way with two sticks. But she had no knife, and her mouth wasbleeding. Bough gave the tired pony both spurs when the prey he huntedcame in sight. She leaped up like a wild cat when the mounted man rodedown upon her, and ran, doubling like a hare. When overtaken, she fellupon 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 hisbandaged right hand. He beat her about her cheeks with his hard, openleft. Then he threw her across his saddle, but she writhed down, and layunder the pony's feet. 

He kicked her then, for giving so much trouble, lifted her again, andtried to mount, holding her in one arm. But the frightened pony swervedand backed, and the girl writhed, and struggled, and scratched like a wildcat. She did not know what mercy meant, but she saw by the look that cameinto those light eyes that this man would have none upon her. She foughtand bit and screamed. 

Bough took an ox-reim then, that was coiled behind his saddle, and boundher hands. He tied the end of the leather rope to the iron ring behind hissaddle, and remounted, and spurred his weary beast into a canter. Thelittle one was forced to run behind. Again and again she fell, and eachtime 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 thestones. And at last she fell, and rose no more, showing no sign of lifeunder the whip and the spur-rowel. Then Bough bent over and drew his longhunting-knife and cut the reim, leaving her hands still bound. If anyspark of life remained in he girl, he could not tell. Her knees were drawnin towards her body; her eyes were open, and rolled upwards; there wasfoam upon her torn and bleeding mouth. She was as good as dead, anyway, and the wild dogs would be sure to come by-and-by. Already an aasvogelwas hovering above; a mere speck, the great bird poised upon widespreadwings, high up in the illimitable blue. 

Presently there would be a flock of these carrion feeders, that are notaverse to fresh-killed meat when it is to be had. 

Bough remounted, and, humming a dance tune that was often on his lips, rode away over the veld. 

The great vulture wheeled. Then he dropped like a falling stone for athousand yards or so, and hovered and dropped again, getting nearer--everso much nearer--with each descent. And where he had hovered at the firstwere now a dozen specks of black upon the hot, bright blue. 

A wild dog crept down from a cone-topped spitzkop, and stood, sniffing theblood-tainted air eagerly, whining a little in its throat. 

The great vulture dropped lower. His comrades of the flock, eagerlyfollowing his gyrations and descents, had begun to wheel and drop also. Another wild dog appeared on the cone-shaped kop. Other furry, sharp-earedheads, with eager, sniffing noses, could be seen amongst the grass andbush. 

Then suddenly the higher vultures rose. They wheeled and soared and flew, a bevy of winged black specks hurrying to the north. They had seensomething 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 witha hoarse, croaking cry took flight after the rest. 

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. 

Would the ox-team veer in another direction? Would the big blue waggonwith the new white tilt roll by?

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 blackgarments, with a starched white coif like a Dutchwoman's kapje, coveredwith a floating black veil. At her side dangled and clashed a long rosaryof brown wooden beads, with a copper crucifix attached. There were twoother women in the big waggon, dressed in the same way. They were RomanCatholic nuns--Sisters of Mercy coming up from Natal, by the order of theBishop of Bellmina, Vicar-Apostolic, at the request of the Bishop ofParacos, suffragan to North-East Baraland, to swell the numbers of theCommunity already established in Gueldersdorp at the Convent of the HolyWay. 

The oxen halted some fifty yards from that inanimate ragged little body, lying prone, face downwards, among the scrubby bushes that sprouted in thehot sand. Little crowding tiny ants already blackened the bloodstains onthe ground, and the wild dogs would not have stayed long from the feast ifthe waggon had passed on. 

One white-coifed, tall, black-clad figure sprang lightly down from thewaggon-box, and hurried across to where the body was lying. A mellow, womanly cry of pity came from under the starched coif. She turned andbeckoned. Then she knelt down by the girl's side, opened the torngarments, and felt with compassionate, kindly touches about the stillheart. 

The other two black figures came hurrying over then, stumbling amongst thestones and karroo-bushes in their haste. Lifting her, they turned thewhite, bloodless young face to the blue sky. It was cut and scratched, butnot otherwise disfigured. Her bound arms, dragged upwards before it, hadshielded it from the thorns and the sharp stones. They were raw from theelbows to the wrists. 

They listened at the torn childish bosom with anxious ears. They got a fewdrops of brandy between the clenched little teeth. The sealed lipsquivered; the heart fluttered feebly, like a dying bird. They gave hermore stimulant, and waited, while the Hottentot driver dozed, and thesleek, well-fed oxen chewed the cud patiently, standing in the sun. 

Then the Sisters lifted her, with infinite care, and carried her to thewaggon. The twenty-four-foot whip-lash cracked, and the patient beastsmoved on. Very soon the big white tilt was a mere retreating speck uponthe veld. The ants were still busy when the wild dogs came out andsniffed regretfully at those traces on the ground. 

Coincidence, did you say, lifting your eyebrows over the book, as the bluewaggon of the Sisters rolled lumberingly into the story? The long arm ofcoincidence stretched to aching tenuity by the dramatist and the novelist!Nay! but the thing happened, just as I have told. 

What is the thing we are agreed to call coincidence?

Once I was passing over one of the bridges that span the unclean Londonditch called the Regent's Canal. I had walked all the way from PiccadillyCircus to Gloucester Crescent, haunted by the memory of a man I had onceknown. He was the broken-down, drunken, studio-drudge of a great artist, asplendid Bohemian, who had died some years before. Why did the thought ofthe palette-scraper, the errand-goer, the drunken creature with thecultivated voice and the ingratiating, gentlemanly manners, possess me asI went? I recalled his high, intellectual, pimply forehead, and largebenevolent nose, in a chronic state of inflammation, and seedysemi-clerical garb, for the thing had been an ordained clergyman of theChurch of England, and I grinned, remembering how, when a Royal visitorwas expected at the great man's studio, the factotum had been bidden towash his face, and had washed one half of it, leaving the other half indrab eclipse, like the picture-restorers' trade-advertisement of a canvaspartially cleansed. 

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 thatflows round the bend, under the damp rear-garden walls below. 

A policeman and a bargeman were just taking the body of an old man out ofthat turbid canal-stream. It was dressed in pauper's garments, and itsstiffened knees were bent, and its rigid elbows crooked, and adishonoured, dripping beard of grey hung over the soulless breast. 

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 arough but not unkindly hand, was cleaner than I had ever seen it in life. 

Nevertheless, I recognised in the soaked body in its workhouse livery thevery man the thought of whom had haunted me, the great Bohemian painter'sdrunken studio-drudge. 

VIII

School at the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp was breaking up, suddenly and without warning, very soon after the beginning of theChristmas term. Many of the pupils had already left in obedience to urgenttelegrams from relatives in Cape Colony or in the Transvaal, and everyDutch girl among the sixty knew the reason why, but was too astute to hintof it, and every English girl was at least as wise, but pride kept hersilent, and the Americans and the Germans exchanged glances ofintelligence, and whispered in corners of impending war between John Bulland Oom Paul. 

That deep and festering political hatreds, fierce enthusiasms, inheritedpride of race, and instilled pride in nationality, were covered by workedapron-bibs, and even childish pinafores, is anyone likely to doubt?Schoolgirls can be patriots as well as rebels, and the seminary can viewith the college, or possibly outdo it, occasion given. Ask Juliette Adamwhether the bread-and-butter misses of France in the year 1847 did notsquabble over the obstinacy of King Louis Philippe and the greed of M. Guizot, the claims of Louis Napoleon and the theories of Louis Blanc, ofOdilon Barrot, and Ledru-Rollin? And I who write, have I not seen a NorthAntrim Sunday-school wrecked in a faction-fight between the Orange and theGreen? Lord! how the red-edged hymnals and shiny-covered S. P. G. Bookshurtled through the air, to burst like hand-grenades upon the textedwalls. In vain the panting, crimson clergyman mounted the superintendent'splatform, and strove to shed the oil of peace upon those seething waters. Even the class-teachers had broken the rails out of the Windsorchair-backs, and joined the hideous fray, irrespective of age or sex. 

"Miss Maloney--Miss Geoghegan--I am shocked--appalled! In the name ofdecency I command yees to desist!"

"Hit him again, Moggy Lenahan, a taste lower down!"

"Serve you right, Mulcahy! why would you march wid the Green?"

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 birthdayoutrage received from an Evangelical aunt, Julia Dolan, aged twelve, beganto pound me about the face with it. As a snub-nosed urchin, gifted with amarvellous capacity for the cold storage and quick delivery of Scripturegenealogies and Hebrew proper and improper names, I had often reduced mymild, long-legged girl-neighbour to tearful confusion. Now meek Juliaseemed as though possessed by seven devils. I had been taught theelementary rule that boys must not hurt girls, but the code had no precepthelpful in the present instance, when a girl was hurting me. Castingchivalry to the winds, I remember that I kicked Julia's shins, and shefled howling; but not before she had reduced my leading feature to a stateof ruin, which created a tremendous sensation when they led me home. Later, during the election riots, two young women fought in the MarketPlace, stripped to the waist, and wielding boards wrenched from the sideof a packing-case, heavy, jagged, and full of nails. And when the soldierswere called out, we know how many a saddle was emptied by the stones thechildren threw.... 

Only a day previously the centipede-like procession of girls of all ages, in charge of nuns and pupil-teachers, in passing over the GueldersdorpRecreation-Ground, had sustained an experience with which every maidenbosom would have been still vibrating had not an event even more excitingoccurred between the early morning roll-call and prayers-muster andbreakfast. 

Greta Du Taine had had another love-letter!

The news darted from class-room to class-room more quickly than littleMonsieur Pilotell, the French literature professor; it spread like themeasles, and magnified like the mumps. 

The Red Class, composed of the elder girls, "young ladies" who wereundergoing 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 beenimmersed in graver things, but were not. They waited on mental tiptoe fordetails, and a peep at the delicious document. The Blue Class, as becamemere infants ranging from six to ten years old, remained phlegmaticallyindifferent to the missive, yet avid for samples of the chocolates thathad accompanied the declaration, made to eighty girls of all ages by oneundersized, pasty, freckled young man employed as junior clerk andchain-assistant in a surveyor's office, and who signed at the end of along row of symbolistic crosses the unheroic name of Billy Keyse. 

He had seen and been helplessly stunned by the vision of Greta Du Taineout walking at the head of the long winding procession of English, German, Dutch, Dutch-French, Dutch-American, and Jewish girls. They are sent nowto be taught in Europe, those daughters of the Rand millionaires, theStock Exchange speculators, the wealthy fruit-farmers, or cereal-growers, or cattle and sheep breeders, who are descended themselves from the oldpioneers and voortrekkers, but they do not get a better education than wasto be had at the Convent school at Gueldersdorp, where the Sisters ofMercy took in and taught and trained coltish girl-children, born in astrongly stimulating climate, and accustomed to lord it over Kaffir andHottentot servants to their hearts' content. These they tamed, these theytransformed into refined, cultivated, accomplished young women, stampedwith the indefinable seal of high breeding, possessed of the tone andmanner that belongs to the upper world. 

What shall I say of the Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Way atGueldersdorp, I who know but little of any Order of Religious? They are aCommunity, chiefly of ladies of high breeding and ancient family, vowed tofeed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, comfort the dying, andinstruct the ignorant. Like the Fathers of the Society of Jesuits, thoseskilled, patient, wise tillers in the soil of the human mind, their dailytask is to hoe and tend, and prune and train, and water the young greenthings growing in what to them is the Garden of God, and to other good andeven holy people, the vineyard of the devil. Possibly both are right?

I have heard the habit of the Order called ugly. But upon the statelyperson of the Mother Superior the garb was regal. The sweeping black foldswere as imposing as imperial purple, and the starched guimpe framed abeauty that was grave, stern, almost severe until she smiled, and then youcaught your breath, because you had seen what great poets write of, andgreat painters try to render, and only great musicians by theirimpalpable, mysterious tone-art can come nearest to conveying--the earthlybeauty that has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the whitefires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could nothave loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; thepoint 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 woebetide the disobedient. Also, though kind and gracious to all, tenderlysolicitous for, and incessantly watchful of, the welfare of the least ofher 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 thejewel of an Imperial Order was coveted in the bigger world outside it, andthe most rebellious of the pupils held her in respect mingled with fear. The head-mistresses of the classes had their followers and admirers. Itwas for the Mother Superior to command enthusiasm, and to sway ambition, and to govern the hearts and minds of children with the personal charm andthe intellectual powers that could have ruled a nation from a throne. 

Well, she has gone to God. It is good for many souls that she lived uponearth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical inher character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to herSaviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthlylove. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most wereswayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well asMartyr. And there is One Who knows. 

It was not until recess after the midday dinner that Greta Du Taine couldexhibit her love-letter. She was a Transvaal Dutch girl with old Frenchblood in her, a vivacious, sparkling Gallic champagne mingling with theDopper in her dainty blue veins. Nothing could be prettier than Greta in agood temper, unless it might be Greta in a rage. She was in a good tempernow, as, tossing back her superb golden hair plait, as thick as a child'sarm, and nearly four feet long, she drew a smeary envelope from the frontof her black alpaca school-dress, and, delicately withdrawing the epistleenclosed, yielded the envelope for the inspection of the Red Class. 

"What niggly writing!" objected Nellie Bliecker, wrinkling her snub nosein the disgust that masks the gnawing tooth of envy. 

"And the envelope is all over sticky brown, " said another carping critic. 

"That's because _he_ put the letter inside the chocolate-box, " explainedGreta, "instead of outside. And the best chocolates--the expensiveones--always go squashy. Only the cheap ones don't melt--because they havegot stuff like chalk inside. But wait till I show you as much as theenvelope of my next letter--that's all, Julia K. Shaw!"

Julia K. Wilted. Greta proceeded:

"It's directed 'To My Fair Addored One, ' because, of course, he didn'tknow my name. I don't object to his putting a d too much in adored; Irather prefer it. His own name is simple, and rather pretty. " She madehaste to say that, because she felt doubtful about it. "Billy Keyse. "

"_Billy?_"

"Billy Keyse?"

"B-i-l-l-y K-e-y-s-e!"

The name went the round of the Red Class. Nobody liked it. 

"He must, of course, have been christened William. Shakespeare was aWilliam. The Emperor of Germany, " stated Greta loftily, "is a William. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Gladstone were both Williams. Many other great men havebeen Williams. "

"But not Billies, " said Christine Silber, provoking a giggle from thegreedily-listening White Class. 

Greta scorched them into silence with a look, and continued:

"He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner in the firm of Gaddand Saxby, on Market Square, but something very near it. " (Do you who readsee W. Keyse carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out theoffice when the Kaffir boy forgets?). "He saw me walking in the Stad withthe Centipede, " Greta added. 

This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenadingupon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search ofexercise and fresh air. 

"Go on!" said the Red Class in a breath, as the White Class giggled andnudged each other, and the Blue Class opened eyes and ears. 

"He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by my eyes and my figureand my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from Londonthrough chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp" (do youhear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). "And if I'llonly be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell onthe Rand as Marks or Du Taine--isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taineis my father?--and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class Englishdrag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes thecolour of my eyes. "

Greta threw her golden head back and laughed, displaying a double row ofenviable pearls. 

"But I've got to wait for all these things until Billy Keyse strikespay-reef. Poor Billy! Hand over those chocolates, you greedy things!"

Somebody wanted to know how the package had been smuggled into theConvent. Those lay-Sisters were so sharp.... 

"They're perfect needles--Sister Tarsesias particularly, and SisterTobias. But there's a new Emigration Jane among the housemaids. You'veseen her--the sallow thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe incurlers, who walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expectingto hear her quack.... Well, Billy got hold of her. She didn't know myname, being new, but she recognised me by Billy's description, andsympathised with him, having a young man herself, who doesn't speak a wordof English, except 'damn' and 'Three of Scotch, please. ' I've promised totranslate her letters; he writes them in the Taal. And Billy gave her twodollars, and I've given her a hat. It's the big red one mother broughtback from Paris--she paid a hundred francs for it at the Maison Cluny--andEmigration Jane thinks, though it's a bit too quiet for her taste, it'lldo her a fair old treat when she trims it up with a bit more colour andone or two 'imitation ostridge' tips.... I'd give another hundred francsfor the Maison Cluny _modiste_ to hear. " Again the birdlike laugh rangout. "Now you know everything there is in the letter, girls, except thebit of poetry at the end, which only my most intimate friends may bepermitted to read. Lynette Mildare!"

Lynette, bending over a separate table-desk in the light of the northwindow of the long deal match-boarded class-room, looked up from her workof tooling leather, the delicate steel instrument in her hand, a littlegilding-brush between her white teeth, a little fold of concentratedattention between her slender brown eyebrows. 

"Yes. Did you want anything?"

Greta jumped up, leaving the rest of the box of chocolates to dissolveamong the White Class, and came over, threading her way between the longrows of desk-stalls. 

"Of course I want something. "

"What is it?" asked Lynette, laying down the little tool. 

"What everyone has a right to expect from the person who is her dearestfriend--sympathy, " said Greta, jumping up and sitting on the corner of thedesk, and biting the thick end of her long flaxen pigtail. 

"You have it--when there is anything to sympathise about. "

Greta tapped the letter, trying to frown. 

"Do you call this nothing?"

"You have saved me from doing so. "

"Lynette Mildare, have you a heart inside you?"

"Certainly; I can feel it beating, and it does its work very well. "

"Am I, then, nothing to you?"

Lynette smiled, looking up at the piquant, charming face. 

"You are a great deal to me. "

"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 anythingnasty of you behind your back--a thing which you never do--is tosympathise with you in all your love-affairs--a thing which you do evenseldomer. "

Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe that rested on thebeeswaxed boards of the class-room, and kicked the leg of the desk withthe heel of the other. 

"Please don't spill the white of egg, or upset the gold-leaf. And as Ishall be pupil-teacher of the youngest class next term, I suppose I oughtto tell you that 'seldomer' isn't in the English dictionary. "

"I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me, my own self. Ishould be ashamed to owe everything I say to silly Nuttall or stupid oldWebster. You're artful, Lynette Mildare, trying to change theconversation. I say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs ofthe heart--and you never, never tell me about yours. "

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. 

"Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any, " scolded Greta. "You'retoo lovely by half. Don't try to scowl me down--you are! I'm pretty enoughto make the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them to, butyou'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 inEngland, where the Dukes and Marquesses and Earls began fencing in theveld somewhere about the eleventh century, to keep common people fromkilling the deer, or carving their vulgar names on the castle walls, andcoming between the wind and their nobility. There's a quotation from yourdear Shakespeare for you! He does come in handy sometimes. "

"Doesn't he!" agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush. 

"And you're descended from some of the people he wrote about, " pressedGreta. "Own it!"

There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips. 

"Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of Kings and noblemen. "

"If you were a clown, you wouldn't be what you are. The very shape of yourhead, and ears, and nails, bespeaks a Princess, disguised as a finishedhead-pupil, going to take over a class of grubby-fingered littleones--pah!--next term. And don't we all know that an English Duchess sendsyou your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts! Come, you might as wellspeak out, when this is my last term, and we have always been such dearfriends, and always will be, " coaxed Greta, "because the Duchess lets youout, you know!"

She said it so quaintly that Lynette laughed, though there was a painedcontraction between the delicate eyebrows and a vexed and sorrowful shadowon her face. Greta went on:

"We have all of us always known that you were--a mystery. Has it gotanything to do with the Duchess?"

The round, shallow blue eyes were too greedily curious to be pretty at themoment. Lynette met them with a full, grave, answering denial. 

"No; I am nothing to the Duchess of Broads, or she to me. She is sister tothe Mother-Superior, and she sends to me at Christmas and Easter, and onbirthdays, by the Mother's wish. Doesn't the Mother's second sister, thePrincesse de Dignmont-Veziers, send Katie"--Katie was a little Irishnovice--"presents from Paris twice a year?"

Greta's pretty eyebrows went up. Her blue greedy eyes became circular withsurprise. 

"Yes, of course--out of charity, because Katie was a foundling, picked upin the Irish quarter in Cape Town. "

Lynette went on steadily, but, looking out of the window at the greatwistaria that climbed upon the angle of the Convent wing in which were thenuns' cells. 

"If Katie was a foundling, I am nothing better. "

"Lynette Mildare, you're never in earnest?"

The shocked tone and the scandalised disgust on Greta's pretty face stungand hurt. But Lynette went on:

"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 neveronce let me feel there was any difference between me and the othergirls--not once in all these years. And I can never thank themenough--never be grateful enough for their great goodness--especially_hers_. " The steady voice shook a little. 

"We all know that you have always been the Mother's favourite. " There wasa little cool inflection of contempt in Greta's high, sweet, birdliketones that had been lacking before. "And she is the niece of a greatEnglish Cardinal, and the sister of a Duchess and a Princess, and herstep-brother is an Earl. " The inflection added for Greta: "_And yet sheturns to the charity child!_"

Lynette said in a low voice:

"It is because she is perfect in the way of humility. She is beyond allpride ... Greater than all prejudice ... She has been more to me than Ican say, since she and Sister Ignatius and Sister Tobias found me on theveld seven years ago, when they were trekking up from Natal to join theSisters who were already working here. "

Greta's face dimpled, and the bright, cold eyes grew greedy again. Therewas a romance, after all. 

"My gracious! How did you get there? Did your people lose you, or had yourun away from home?"

The delicate wild-rose colour sank out of Lynette's cheeks. Her eyes sankunder those bold, curious, blue ones of Greta's. She said, with a painfuleffort:

"I--had run away from the place that was called my home. I don't rememberever having lived anywhere else before. "

"My! And ... ?"

"It was a--dreadful place. " A little convulsive shudder rippled throughthe girl's slight frame. Little points of moisture showed upon thedelicate white temples, where clung the little stray rings and tendrils ofthe red-brown hair. "I wore worse rags than the children at the nativekraals, and was worse fed. I scrubbed floors, and fetched water, and wasbeaten every day. Then"--she drew a deep, quivering breath--"I ranaway--and--and ran until I could run no more, and fell down.... I don'tremember being picked up. I woke up one day here at the Convent; and I wasin 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 myeyes, and said, 'You are at home. ' And the Convent has been my home eversince, and I hope with all my heart it always will be!"

Greta descended from the desk. She drew her embroidered cambric skirtsprimly about her, and said in a shocked voice:

"And I asked you to visit me--to come and stay with us at our place nearJohannesburg--you who are not even respectable!"

Lynette grew burning red. One moment her eyes wavered and fell. Then shelifted them and looked back bravely into the pretty, shallow, blue ones. 

"That is why I have told you--what you know now. "

"Of course, " Greta said patronisingly, "if you wish it, I shall not tellthe class. "

Lynette deliberately put away her tools and the calf-bound volume she hadbeen working on, and shut and locked her desk. Then she rose. Her eyesswept over the long room, its lower end packed with giggling, whispering, squabbling, listening, gossiping, or reading girls. She said very clearly:

"It will be best that you should tell the class. Do it now. The girls canthink it over while they are away, and make up their minds whether theywill speak to me or not when they come back. Make no delay. "

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 caughtfragments of the colloquy, wanted the rest; eager tongues plied Greta withquestions, as she stood reticent, knowing, bursting with informationwithheld, in the middle of the class-room, where honours she coveted hadbeen won and prizes gained by the charity-bred foundling. 

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. Thestamp of the woman who ruled this place was upon many minds and intellectsand hearts here, and her teaching was to bear fruit in bitter, stormy, bloodstained years of days that were waiting at the very threshold. 

"I tell you, " said Christine Silber, the handsome Jewess, with a fierceflash of her black Oriental eyes, "foundling or charity girl, or whateverelse you choose to call her, Lynette Mildare is the pride of the school. "

Silber's father was President of the Groenfontein Legislative Council. Ahum of assent followed on her utterance, and an English girl got up upon aform. She was the niece of a High Commissioner, daughter of a Secretary ofImperial Government, at Cape Town, who wrote K. C. M. G. After his name. 

"Silber speaks the truth. Not a girl here is a patch on the shoes ofLynette 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 ifLynette will come and visit us, I can tell her that she will be treated asan honoured guest. As for you, Greta Du Taine, who are always braggingabout your father and his money, tell me which three letters of thealphabet you would find tattooed upon his conscience--if the strongestmicroscope ever made could find his conscience out? Shall _I_ tell youthem?" She held up her finger. "Shall I tell you how he bought thoseorange-groves at Rustenburg--and the country seat near Johannesburg--andthe drag with the silver-mounted harness and the team of blood bays?"

"No, please!" begged Greta, flinching from the torture. 

But the English girl was pitiless. She checked the letters off upon herfingers:

"I. D. B. "

A shout went up from the Red Class. 

Greta turned and ran. 

IX

The cell was a large, light, airy room on the first-floor of the bigtwo-storied Convent building that stood in its spacious, tree-shaded, high-fenced gardens beyond the Hospital at the north end of the town. Tallstained-wood presses full of papers and account-files covered the wallupon one side. There also stood a great iron safe, with heavy ledgerspiled 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 categorisedupon the "Index Expurgatorius. " Rows there were of English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish classical authors, and many volumes ofrecently-published scientific works. It might have been the room of abusiness man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. There wereroller 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 intinted alabaster--a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of Padua at theother; in the middle, the Virgin bearing the Child. 

The Mother-Superior sat writing at a bare solid deal table of the kitchenkind, with stained legs to add to its ugliness, and stained black-knobbedfronts to the drawers in it. Her pen flew over the paper. 

Seated though she was, you could see her to be of noble figure, tall andfinely proportioned. The habit of the nun does not hide everything thatmakes for beauty and for grace. The pure outlines of the small, perfectly-shaped head showed through the thin black veil that fell overthe white starched coif. The small, high-instepped foot could not behidden in walking; the make of the thick shoe might not disguise its form. The delicate whiteness and smooth, supple beauty of her hands, larger thanthe hands of ordinary women, their owner being of more heroic build, as ofampler mind and keener intellect, betrayed her to be a woman not yet old, though there were some deep lines and many fine ones on the attentiveface that bent over the large square sheet of paper. 

It was a curious face; its olive skin bleached to dull whiteness, itsexpression stern almost to severity. I have heard it likened to aWestmoreland hill-landscape. Lonely tarns lie under the black brows of theprecipice; one feels chilly, and a little afraid. But the sun shines outsuddenly from behind concealing mists, and everything is transformed toloveliness. I can in no other words describe the change wrought in her byher rare, sudden, illuminating smile. Her voice was the softest and theclearest I ever heard, a sigh made most audible speech; but in her justanger, only turned to wrath by the baser faults, the fouler vices, itcould roll in organ-tones of thunder, or ring like a silver trumpet. Andher eye made the lightning for such thunder, and the sword-thrust thatfollowed the clarion-note of war. 

She could have ruled an empire or a court, this woman who managed thethronged, buzzing Convent with the lifting of her finger, with the softesttone of her soft West of Ireland voice, devoid of all trace of theunbeautiful brogue, cultured, elegant, refined. As I have said, thelessons that she taught bore great fruit during that red time of war thatwas coming, and will bear greater fruit hereafter. 

A little is known to me of the personal history of Lady Bridget-MaryBawne--in religion known as Mother Mary of Bethlehem--that may be here setdown. Some twenty-three years previously that devout Irish Catholicnobleman, the Right Honourable James Dominic Bawne, tenth Earl ofCastleclare, Baron Kilhail, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and D. L. ForWest Connemara, not contented with the possession of three very tall, veryhandsome, very popular daughters--the Right Honourable LadiesBridget-Mary, Alyse, and Alethea Bawne--consulted his favourite spiritualdirector, and, as advised, offered his thin white hand and piouslyregulated affections to Miss Nancy McIleevy, niece and heiress of McIleevyof McIleevystown, the eminent County Down brewer, so celebrated for hisold Irish ales and nourishing bottled porter. 

This lady, being sufficiently youthful, of good education and manners, and of like faith with her elderly wooer, undertook, in return for anancient name and the title of Countess of Castleclare, to find the widowerin conjugal affection for the rest of his mortified life, and to do herbest to supply him with the grievously-needed heir. There was no wickedfairy at Lord Castleclare's wedding, distinguished by the black-browedbeauty of the three bridesmaids, his daughters; and two years later sawthe beacons at the entrance of Ballybawne Harbour, on the West Connemaracoast, illuminated by the Castleclare tenants in honour of the arrival ofthe desired heir, upon whom before his birth so much wealth had beenexpended by Lord Castleclare in pilgrimages, donations, foundations, andendowments that, some months after it, his lordship conveyed to his threedaughters that, in the interests of the Viscount, to whose swollen gums agold-set pebble enclosing a pious relic of an early Christian martyr wasat that moment affording miraculous relief, he, their father, would beobliged by their providing themselves as soon as possible with husbands ofsuitable rank, corresponding religion, and sufficient means to dispensewith the customary marriage portion. 

Lady Alyse saw the justice of her father's views, and married the Duke ofBroads, an English Catholic peer; her younger sister, Alethea, wentobediently to the altar with the aged and enormously wealthy Prince deDignmont-Veziers. Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, eldest and handsomest of thethree, pleaded--if a creature so stormy and imperious could be said toplead--a previous engagement to an Ineligible. 

"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 shrieksthat had proceeded from the Viscount's sumptuous suite of apartments, situated at the top of the staircase rising at the end of the corridorleading 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 Bokhararug that had been under the _prie-Dieu_ in the oratory of James II. AtDublin Castle, and resumed. "We have all heard of Captain Mildare. At thetaking of Ali Musjid--arah!--at Futtehabad, with Gough--arah!--and atAhmed Khel, where Stewart cut up the Afghans so tremendously, Mildareearned great distinction as well as the Victoria Cross, which I amdelighted to see, in glancing through the _Army and Navy Gazette_, HerMajesty has been pleased to confer upon him. As a gentleman and a soldierhe presents all that is desirable; as a member of an old Catholic family, he certainly commands my suffrages. But as the husband of my eldestdaughter I cannot look upon a younger son with--arah!--toleration. Honourable reputation is much, bravery is much, but my son-in-law mustpossess--arah!--other--other qualifications. " The old gentleman stutteredpitiably. 

"_One_ other qualification, you mean, father, if that term can be given tothe possession of a certain amount of money, " said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very straight and looking very proudly at her father. "Will youobject to telling me plainly for how much you would be content to sellyour stock, with goodwill?"

Lord Castleclare was a thin, courtly old gentleman, who had conquered, hehumbly trusted, all his passions, except the passion for early CatholicTheological Fathers and the passion for Spanish snuff. But he was stung bythe irony. He spilt quite a quantity of choice mixture over the long, ivory-yellow nail of his lean, delicate thumb as he looked consciouslyaside from the great scornful grey eyes that judged and questioned andcondemned him as a mercenary old gentleman. And he caught himself wishingthat this fine fiery creature had been born a boy. He looked back again athis eldest daughter. Her white arms were folded upon her bosom, herpearl-coloured silk evening gown was swept aside from the fire, to whosewarmth she held an arched and exquisite foot. Her noble head, with itsrich coronet of silken black coils, was bent; her broad brows had ceasedto be stormy. With a half-dreamy smile upon her beautiful firm mouth, shewas looking at a green flashing ring she wore on the third finger of herleft hand. And the sight of her so sent a sudden pang of remembranceleaping 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 ringwith her in silence. 

"My dear daughter, " he said, more simply and more sweetly than LadyBridget-Mary had ever heard him speak before, "I think you love this bravegentleman sincerely?"

His daughter's large, beautifully-shaped hand closed strongly over the oldivory fingers. The great brilliant dark grey eyes looked at him through asudden mist of tears, though she lifted her head and held it high. Shesaid in a low, clear voice:

"Father, you remember how my mother loved you? And Richard is as dear tome as you were to her. I want words when it comes to speaking of so greata thing as the love I feel for him. But it is my life.... I seem tobreathe 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 forEternity. " Then she added, with a lovely smile that had a touch of humourin it: "And he will be quite content to take me with only my share ofmother's money. "

"Tschah!" said the old father. "Nonsense! Of course, St. Barre will bedelighted to provide for you. Excuse me ... I must go. "

St. Barre, in the Castleclare nursery, had set up another squeal. 

Thenceforwards the course of true love might have been expected to runsmoothly for Lady Bridget-Mary and her gallant lover. But she hadreckoned, not without her host, but without her Grey Hussar. In love thereis always one who loves the more, and Lady Bridget-Mary, that fine, enthusiastic, tempestuous creature, was far from realising that she wasless to her Richard than he was to her. The reason was not farther to seekthan a few doors off in London, when the Ladies Bawne occupied theirsombre old corner-house in Grosvenor Square. It was Lady Bridget-Mary'sdearest Lucy and bosom-friend, who had married that handsome, grey-moustached martinet, Richard's Colonel. In Lady Lucy Hawting'sdrawing-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-browedhandsome friend, and much more learned, as, of course, befitted a marriedwoman, in the ways of the world. And Lady Lucy saw the budding of youngpassion in the heart of her junior ... And it occurred to her that itwould furnish a very excellent excuse for the constant presence of CaptainMildare, if ... ! the sweetest and most limpid women have their turbiddepths, their muddy secrets--and she had confided everything to dearestBridget-Mary, except the one thing that mattered!

Well! We all know for what reason Le Roi Soleil addressed himself to thewooing of La Vallière. Louis fell genuinely in love with the decoy, notquite so Richard. But sometimes, when those proud lips meekly gave backhis kisses, and that lofty beauty humbled itself to obey his will, healmost wished that he had never met the other. A day came when the secretorchard he had joyed in with that other was threaded with a golden clue, and the hidden bower unveiled to the cold-eyed staring day. 

Captain Mildare and Lady Lucy Hawting went away together, and from ParisRichard wrote and broke to the girl who loved him, and had been hisbetrothed wife, the common, vulgar, horrible little truth. Bridget-Maryhad been deceived by both of them from the very beginning. Estimate thenumbing, overwhelming weight of that blow, delivered by a hand soworshipped, upon so proud a heart. Those who saw her, and should havehonoured her great grief with decent reticence, say that she was mad for awhile; that she grovelled on the earth in her abandonment, calling uponGod and man to be merciful and kill her. Pass over this. I cannot bear tothink that the mere love of a Richard Mildare should bring that lofty headso low. 

While the scandal lived in the mouths of Society, Lady Bridget-Mary Bawneremained unseen. She was pitied--oh, burning, intolerable shame! She wascommiserated as a catspaw, and sneered at as a dupe. Her sisters and herstepmother, her father and her seven aunts, her relatives, innumerable asstars in the Milky Way, found infinite relish in the comfortableconviction that every one of them had said from the very outset thatBridget-Mary would regret the step she had taken in engaging herself tothat Captain Mildare. Sharp claws of steel were added to her scourge ofhumiliation by a thousand petty liberties taken with this, her great, sacred sorrow, as by letters of sympathy from friends, who wrote as if shehad suffered the loss of a pet hunter, or a prize Persian cat. 

A suitor ventured to propose for that white rejected hand, addressinghimself with stammering diffidence to Lord Castleclare. A young man, theson of an industrious father who had consolidated the sweat of his browinto three millions and a Peerage, hideously conscious of the raw newnessof his title, painfully burdened with the bosom-weight of a genuine, ifincoherent love, he seemed to Lady Bridget-Mary's family tolerable, almostdesirable, nearly quite the thing.... 

"He has boiled jam into sweetness for the whole civilised world, " said themost influential and awful of Lord Castleclare's seven sisters, aDowager-Duchess who was Lady-in-Waiting, and exhaled the choicest essenceof the Middle Victorian era. She still adhered to the mushroom-shapedstraw hats of her youth, trimmed with black velvet rosettes, in the centreof each of which reposed a cut jet button. She went always voluminouslyclad in black or shot-silk gowns, their skirts so swelled out by amultiplicity of starched cambric petticoats, adorned with tambour-work, that she was credited with the existence of a crinoline. She had, inmarrying her now defunct Scots Duke, embraced Presbyterianism, and thoughher brother believed her, as far as the next world was concerned, to belost beyond redemption, he entertained for her judgment in the matters ofthis planet a great esteem. 

"He has boiled jam enough to spread over the surface of the civilisedglobe, and now proposes to hive its concentrated extract for the benefitof our dearest girl, in the shape of a settlement that a Princess of theBlood 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 superiorintelligence and tact would undertake to plead for the young man. Histerrible title has quite escaped me. Lord Plumbanks? Thank you! It mighthave been Strawberrybeds, and that would have increased our difficulty. Notime should be lost. Therefore, as you, dear Castleclare, with your wifeand the boy, who, I am gratified to hear, has cut another, are going toRome for Holy Week, perhaps you would wish me in your absence to break theice with Bridget-Mary?"

Lord Castleclare's long, solemn face and arched, lugubrious eyebrows boreno little resemblance to the well-known portrait of the conscientious butunlucky Stuart in whose service his ancestor had shed blood and money, receiving in lieu of both, a great many Royal promises, the Eastern carpetthat had belonged to the monarch's Irish oratory, and the fine sardintaglio, brilliant-set, and representing a Calvary, that loyal servant'sdescendant wore upon his thin ivory middle finger. He twiddled the ringnervously as he said:

"She has gone into Lenten Retreat at a Convent in Kensington. I--arah!--Ido not think it would be advisable to disturb salutary and seasonablemeditations with--arah!--worldly matters at this present moment. "

"Fiddle-faddle!" said the Dowager-Duchess sharply. 

Lord Castleclare lifted his melancholy arched eyebrows. 

"'Fiddle-faddle, ' my dear Constantia?"

"You have the expression!" said she. "Young women of Bridget-Mary's ageand temperament will think of marriage in convents as much as outsidethem. Further, I dread delay, entertaining as I do the very certainconviction that this weak-minded man who has thrown your daughter overwill be back, begging Bridget-Mary to forgive him and reinstate him in thepossession of her affections before another two months are over our heads. That little cat-eyed, squirrel-haired woman he has run away with, andagainst whom I have warned our poor dear girl times out of number"--shereally believed this--"is the sort of pussy, purring creature to make aman feel her claws, once she has got him. Therefore, although my familymay not thank me for it, I shall continue to repeat, 'No time is to belost!' Still, in deference to your religious prejudices, and although Inever heard that the Catholic Church prohibited jam as an article ofLenten diet, we will defer from offering Bridget-Mary the pot untilEaster. "

But Easter brought the news that Lady Bridget-Mary had decided upon takingthe veil, and begged her father not to oppose her wishes. TheDowager-Duchess rushed to the Kensington Convent.... All the littlestraw-mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like chaffbefore the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as she bore down upon themost disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought thegrey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacaldecision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited that thistall, pale, quiet woman in the plain, close-fitting, black woollen gowncould be Bridget-Mary at all. Realising that it could be nobody else, shebegan to cry quite hysterically, subsiding upon a Berlin woolwork coveredsofa, while her niece rang the bell for that customary Conventrestorative, a teaspoonful of essence of orange-flower in a glass ofwater, and returning to the side of her agitated relative, took her hand, encased in a tight one-button puce glove, saying:

"Dear Aunt Constantia, what is the use of crying? I have done with it forgood. "

"You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully composed, and I always wassensitive. And, besides, to find you like this when I expected you to beatyour head upon the floor--or was it against the wall, they said?--and prayto be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, as thoughanybody would be wicked enough to do it ... "

A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's white cheeks. 

"All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have done, and drink alittle of this. The Sisters believe it to be calming to the nerves. "

"To naturally calm nerves, I suppose. " The Dowager accepted the tumbler. "What a nice, thick, old-fashioned glass!" She sipped. "You hear how myteeth are chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown here insuch a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your father that you havedecided to enter the Novitiate at once. "

"It is true, " said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very tall and dark andstraight against the background of the parlour window, that was filled inwith ground-glass, and veiled with snowy curtains of starchedthread-lace. 

"True! When not ten months ago you declared to me that you would not be anun for all the world.... You begged me to befriend you in the matter ofCaptain Mildare. I undertook, alas! that office.... "

The Dowager-Duchess blew her nose. 

"A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt?"

"'Dear aunt, ' when you are trampling upon my very heart-strings! And letme tell you, Bridget-Mary, you have always been my favourite niece. '_Forall the world, _' you said with your own lips, '_I would not be a nun!_'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 Dowagerextended a puce kid glove. "The husband who goes with them is a goodcreature. I have seen and spoken with him, and the dear Queen regards meas a judge of men. 'Consie, ' she has said, 'you have perception.... ' Whatmy Sovereign credits may not my niece believe?"

Lady Bridget-Mary's black brows were stern over the great joyless eyesthat looked out of their sculptured caves upon the world she had biddengood-bye to. But the fine lines of humour about the wings of the sensitivenostrils and the corners of the large finely-modelled mouth quivered alittle. 

"Drink a little more orange-flower water, dear, and never tell me who theman is. I do not wish to hear. I decline to hear. "

The Dowager-Duchess lost her temper. 

"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 notforfeited the right to be fastidious. That is the last thing I wished tosay, but you have wrung it from me. Have you no pride? Do you want Societyto say that you have embraced the profession of a Religious, and intendhenceforth to employ your talents in teaching sniffy-nosed schoolgirlsGreek and Algebra and Mathematics, because this Mildare has jilted you?Again, have you no pride?" She agitated the Britannia-metal teaspoonfuriously in the empty tumbler. 

Lady Bridget-Mary took the tumbler away. Why should the humble propertyof the Sisters be broken because this kind, fussy woman chose to upbraid?

"You ask, Have I no pride?" she said. "Why should I have pride when OurLord is so humble that He does not disdain to take for His bride the womanRichard Mildare has rejected?"

"You are incorrigible, dearest, " said the sobbing Dowager-Duchess, as shekissed her, "and Castleclare must use all his influence with the HolyFather to induce the Comtesse de Lutetia to give you the veil. All of youthink I am damned, and possibly I may be, but if so I shall be afforded anopportunity (which will not be mine in this life) of giving CaptainMildare a piece of my mind!"

So the Dowager-Duchess melted out of the story, and Lady Bridget-MaryBawne became a nun. 

X

This is what the Mother-Superior wrote to her kinswoman, with her mobile, eloquent lips folded closely together as she thought, and her grave eyesfollowing the swift journey of the pen as it formed the sentences:

 _"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. "_

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 theNovitiate:

"Indeed! It would seem, then, that you are devoid of ambition, my dear, unlike the other people of your house. "

She had said, paraphrasing a retort previously made:

"Does it strike you as lack of ambition that one of our family shouldprefer Christ before any earthly spouse?"

What a base utterance that had seemed to her afterwards! How devoid of thetrue spirit of the religious, how hateful, petty, profane! But the greatlady had been greatly struck by it, and had gone about quoting the wordseverywhere. She, who had spoken them, repented them with tears, and setthe memory of them between her and ill-considered, worldly speech, forever. 

She wrote on now:

 _"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.... "_

The firm mouth quivered, and a mist stole before her eyes. Being human, she took the handkerchief that lay amongst her papers and wiped thecrowding tears away, and went on:

 _"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. "_

She wrote on, knowing that the implied wish would be observed as acommand:

 _"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. "_

Her eyes were tearless, and her hand quite steady as she continued:

 _"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:_

 _"The country is greatly disturbed, in spite of the reassuring 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. _

 _"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----"_

There was a light knock at the door. She responded with the permission toenter, and a tall, slight girl, with red-brown hair, came in and closedthe door, dropping her little curtsy to the Mother-Superior. She wore theplain black alpaca uniform of the Convent, with the ribbon of the Headshipof the Red Class, to be resigned when she should become a pupil-teacherat the opening of the next term; and the rare and beautiful smile brokeover the face of the elder woman as the younger came to her side. 

"Are you busy, Reverend Mother? Do you want me to go away?"

"I shall have finished in another five minutes, and then there will be nomore letters to write, my child. Sit where you choose; take a book, and bequiet; I shall not keep you waiting long. "

The words were few; the Mother-Superior's manner a little curt in speakingthem. But where Lynette chose to sit was on the cheap drugget that coveredthe beeswaxed boards, with her squirrel-coloured hair and soft cheekpressed against the black serge habit. 

The Mother-Superior wrote on, apparently absorbed, and with knitted browsof attention, but her large, white, beautiful left hand dropped halfunconsciously to the silken hair and the velvet cheek, and stayed there. 

There is a type of woman the lightest touch of whose hand is subtler andmore sweet than the most honeyed kisses of others. And the Mother-Superiorwas not liberal of caresses. When Lynette turned her lips to the hand, theface 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 itaside under a pebble of white quartz, lined and streaked with the faintsilvery green of gold. 

"Now, my child?"

The girl said, flushing scarlet:

"Reverend Mother, I have told the Red Class the truth about me!"

The Mother-Superior started; dismay was in her face. 

"Why, child?"

"I--I mean"--the scarlet flush gave place to paleness--"that I have noname 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. "

"Was it necessary to have told--anything whatever?"

"I think so, Mother, and I am glad now that I have done it. There will beno need for deception any more. "

"My daughter, there has never been the slightest deception of any kindwhatsoever upon your part, or the part of anyone else who knew. Nointerests suffered by your keeping your own secret. Who first solicitedyour confidence in this matter?"

"Greta Du Taine. "

"Greta Du Taine. " Very cold was the tone of the Mother-Superior. "May Iask how she received the information she had the bad taste to seek?"

"Mother--she took it--not quite as I expected. "

"Yet she and you have always been friends, my child. "

Lynette rose up upon her knees. The long arm of the Mother-Superior wentround the slight figure that leaned against her, and in the sudden gesturewas a passion of protecting motherhood. 

"Mother, she does not wish to be my friend any longer. She was quitehorrified to remember that she had invited me to stay with her at the DuTaine place near Johannesburg. But she said that if I liked she would nottell the class. "

"I have no fear of the rest of the class. They have honour, and goodfeeling, and warm hearts. What was your reply to Greta's obligingproposition?"

"I told her that the sooner everybody knew the better; and I went out ofthe room, and came to you--as I always do--as I always have done, eversince----"

Her voice broke in the first sob. 

"_Ah!_" cried the voice of the mother-heart she crept to, as the long armsin the loose black serge sleeves went out and folded her close, "_ah, if Imight be always here for you to run to! But God knows best!_"

She said aloud, gently putting the girl away:

"Well, the ordeal is over, and will not have to be gone through again. Andfor the future, bear in mind that every human being has a right to regardhis own business--or hers--as private, and to exclude the curious fromaffairs which do not concern them. " She reached out quick tender hands, and framed the wistful, sensitive face in them, and added, in a lowertone: "For a little told may beget in them the desire to know more. Andalways remember this: that the only just claim to your perfect confidencein all that concerns your past life, and I say _all_ with meaning"--thegirl's white eyelids fell under her earnest gaze, and the delicate lipsbegan to quiver--"will rest in the man--the honourable and brave andworthy gentleman--who I pray may one day be your husband. "

"No!" she cried out sharply as if in terror, and the slight figure wasshaken by a sudden spasm of trembling. "Oh, Mother, no! Never, never!"

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 lipsupon the red-brown hair:

"My lamb, my dearest, my poor, poor child! It shall be never if youchoose, Lynette. But make no rash vows, no determinations that you thinkirrevocable. Leave the future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put oldthoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away fromyou. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. Anddo not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She hasacted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind that shine inmarshy places, a better Light will shine upon her path one day. I knowthat you have real affection for her ... Though I must own I have alwayswondered in what lay the secret of her popularity in the school?"

"She is so amusing--and so pretty, Mother. "

"She is exquisitely pretty. And beauty is one of the most excellent amongall the gifts of God. Our sense of what is beautiful and the delight wehave in the perception of it must linger with us from those days whenAngels walked visibly on earth, and talked with the children of men. Alovely soul in a lovely body, nothing can be more excellent, but such abody does not always cage what St. Columb called 'the bird of beauty. ' Andwe must not be swayed or led by outward and perishable things, that areillusions, and deceits, and snares. "

The Mother-Superior reached out a long arm, and took a solidleather-bound, red-edged volume from the table, and opened it at a pagemarked by a flamingo's feather, whose delicate pink faded at the tip intorosy-white. 

"I was reading this a little while before you came in. If you were not alittle dunce at Greek, you would be able to construe the classic authorfor yourself. "

"But I am a dunce, dear, and so I leave you to read him to me, " saidLynette triumphantly. 

"Well, balance this heavy book, and listen. "

She read:

 _"'When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with his divine hands the human shape:_

 _"'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. _

 _"'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. _

 _"'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. _

 _"'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. _

 _"'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. '"_

"And yet, Mother, if your beautiful soul had not been given beautifulwindows 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!"

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. 

"This, not for the compliment, but because it is seven years to-day sinceI found you, lying like some poor little strayed lamb on the veld, underthe burning sun. "

"That was my real birthday, dearest, dearest.... "

The girl pressed closer to her with dumb, vehement affection, as thoughshe would have grown to the bosom that had been her shield since then. 

"On that day a little later, when I looked down and you looked up with bigeyes that begged for love, I knew that we had found each other. And wehave never lost each other since, I think?"

She smiled radiantly into the loving eyes. 

"Never, my Mother. But if we did ... If we are ever to be estranged orparted, it would be better ... Oh! it would be better if you had passed byin the waggon, and left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs haddone the rest. "

The Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, and speakingsternly:

"Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so. Holy Baptism has beenyours, and Confirmation, and you have shared with His Faithful in the Bodyof Christ.... Never let me hear you say that again!"

"Mother, I promise you, you never shall. But I had a dream last night thatwas most vivid and strange and awful. It has haunted me ever since. "

The Mother-Superior started, for she also had had a strange dream. Of thatvision had been born the written letter that now lay under the quartzpaper-weight--the letter that was to be sent, with others, by the nextEnglish mail that should go out from Gueldersdorp, which said mail, beingintercepted by the Boers, was not for many months to reach itsdestination. Supposing it had, this story need never have been written, or else another would have been written in its place. 

"Dear heart, I do not think that it is good or useful to brood upon suchthings, or to relate them. And the Church forbids us to take account ofmere dreams, or in any way be swayed by them. "

"That has always puzzled me. Because, you know ... Supposing St. Josephhad refused to credit a dream?... "

"There are dreams and dreams, my dear. And the heavenly visions of theSaints are not to be confounded with our trivial subconscious memories. Besides, sweets and fruits and pastry consumed in the seniors' dormitoryat night are not only an infringement of school rules, but an insult tothe digestion. "

"Mother, how did you find out?" cried Lynette. There was something verylike a dimple in the bleached olive of the sweet worn cheek, lurking nearthe edge of the close coif, and a twinkle of laughter in the deep greyeyes that you thought were black until you had learned better. 

"Well, though you may not find it easy to believe, I was once a girl at aboarding-school, and I possibly remember how we usually celebrated abreaking-up. There is the washing-bell; the pupils' tea-bell will ringdirectly; you must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of thisunpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon walk yesterday?Sister Cleophée and Sister Francis-Clare have not given me a very definiteaccount. "

Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red. 

"Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation Ground. "

Upon the great brows of the Mother-Superior sat the majesty of comingtempest. Her white hand clenched, her tone was awfully stern:

"Who were 'they'?"

"Some drunken Boers and store-boys--at least, I think they were drunk--andsome Dutch railway-men. They cried shame on the Dutch girls for learningfrom vile English idolaters. Then more men came up and joined them. Theythrew stones, and threatened to duck Sister Cleophée and the two otherSisters in the river. And they might have tried to, though we senior girlsgot round them--at least, some of us did--and said they should try thaton us first----"

"That was courageous. "

"We"--Lynette laughed a little nervously--"we were awfully frightened, allthe same. "

"My dear, without fear there would have been no courage. Then I am told anEnglish officer interposed?"

"He was coming from the direction of the Hospital--a tall thin man inService khâki, with a riding-sjambok under his arm. But it would have beenas good as a sword if he had used it on those men. When he lifted it inspeaking to them they huddled together like sheep. "

"You have no idea who he was, of course?"

"I do not know his name, but I heard one of the Boers say, 'That slimduyvel with the sjambok is the new Military Commandant. ' Another officerwas with him, much younger, taller, and with fair hair. He----"

"I hope I shall soon have an opportunity of thanking the Commandantpersonally. As it is, I shall write. Now go, my dear. "

Lynette took her familiar kiss, and dropped her formal curtsy, and wentwith the red sunset touching her squirrel-coloured hair to flame. Thetea-bell rang as she shut the door behind her, and directly afterwards thegate-bell clanged, sending an iron shout echoing through the whitewashed, tile-paved passages, as if heralding a visitor who would not be denied. AnIrish novice who was on duty with the Sister attendant on the gate cameshortly afterwards to the room of the Mother-Superior, bringing a card ona little wooden tray. 

The Mother, the opening sentences of her note of thanks wet upon the sheetbefore her, took the card, and knew that the letter need not be sent. 

"This gentleman desired to see me?"

"He did so, Reverend Mother, " whispered the timid Irish girl, who stood inoverwhelming awe of the majestic personality before her. "'Ask theMother-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 amessage that bowld, but if you'll please to wait, I'll tell her whatyou're after saying. '"

"Quite right, Katie. Now go and tell Sister Tobias to show him into theparlour. I will be there directly. "

Katie bobbed and vanished. When the Mother-Superior came into the parlour, the visitor was standing near the fireplace, with his hands behind hisback. One wore a shabby dogskin riding-glove. The other, lean and brownand 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 thathung above. 

It represented a Syrian desert landscape, pale and ghastly, under thelight of a great white moon, with one lonely Figure standing like asentinel against a towering fang of rock. Lurking forms of fierce beastsof prey were dimly to be distinguished amongst the shadows, and by theside of the patient, lonely watcher brooded with outspread bat-wings, aShadow infinitely more terrible than any of these. It was rather a poorcopy of a modern picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of theoriginal had made of the copyist an artist for the time. The pure dignityand lofty faith and patience of the Christ-eyes, haggard with bodilysleeplessness and spiritual battle, the indomitable resistance breathingin the lines of the Christ figure, wan and gaunt with physical famine aswith the nobler hunger of the soul, were rendered with fidelity and power. 

The stranger's keen ear caught the Mother's long, swift step, and thesweep of her woollen draperies over the shiny beeswaxed floor. He wheeledsharply, brought his heels together, and bowed. She returned hissalutation with her inimitable dignity and grace. With his eyes on thepure, still calmness of the face framed in the white close coif, theColonel commented mentally:

"What a noble-looking woman!"

The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall, spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with itsalert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouthunconcealed by the short-clipped moustache:

"This is a brave man. "

XI

The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These tworecognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, shehad thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timelyinterference of the previous day. 

"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is officialin character, " he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladiesin charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in thoseparts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely eventhere. It would be wise of you under existing circumstances, which I shallexplain as fully and as briefly as I may, to send your pupils withoutdelay to their homes. "

"All that have not already left, " she assured him, "with the exception ofthose whose parents reside in the town, or who have no living relatives, and therefore do not leave us, go North and South by early trainsto-morrow. "

"Ma'am, " he said, "I am heartily glad to hear it. " He added, as sheinvited him to be seated: "Thank you, but I have been in the saddle sincefive 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 willallow 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 severelymarshalled in Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board. 

"They are not fixtures, " she said, with quiet amusement at his evidentrelief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the roomoffered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, withone hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of aspurred riding-boot on the plain brick kerb. 

"I may as well say ... "--he ran a finger round the inside of the collarthat showed above the khâki jacket--"that, though I have often had thepleasure, and I will add, the great advantage, of meeting ladies of--ofyour religious profession before, this is the first time that I ever wasinside a Convent. "

"Or a boarding-school?" she asked, and her rare, sudden smile irradiatedher. His hand dropped from his collar. He looked at her with a suddenwarmth of admiration there was no mistaking. But her beauty went assuddenly as it had come, and her arched, black brows frowned slightly asshe said, in tones that were very cold and very clear, and ratherironical:

"Sir, you are good enough to waste valuable time in trying to break, withdue consideration for the nerves of a large household of unprotectedwomen, the news we have expected daily for months. You have come here toannounce to us the bursting of the cloud of War. Is it not so?"

He was taken aback, but hid it like a diplomat. 

"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 waitthat signal, but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipatethese.... And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself, having been despatched by the British Government on special service toreport to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North--it is anopen secret now--I have been sent down here to put the town into acondition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessaryand inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditionsis--that the women and children should be got out of it. "

The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did notinvade the pale olive of her cheeks. 

He added:

"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I amnot naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather thecontrary. Quite the contrary. "

She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom shehad danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. Thatboy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could notkeep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant. But she went under directly, and left nothing but a spark of laughter inthe beautiful grave eyes. 

"I understand, " she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certainwelcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helplessincubus. "

"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses acapacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male, without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, sheeats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keepalive the combatant members of the community. "

"Eating is a habit, " agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the mostrigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break. "

His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache. Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding theGarrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consultedit. 

"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Governmentat the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wishto 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 orJohnstown, places at a certain distance from the Transvaal Border, wherethey will be almost certain to find safety. Those who insist uponremaining in the town I cannot, of course, remove by force. I will makeall possible arrangements to laager them safely, but this will entailheavy extra labour upon the forces at my command, and inevitablediscomfort--possibly severe suffering and privation--upon themselves. Toyou, madam, I appeal to set a high example. Your Community numbers, unlessI am incorrectly informed, twelve religious. Consent to take the step Iurge upon you, retreat with your nuns to Cape Town while the opportunityis yours. "

He folded his arms, having spoken this curtly and crisply. TheMother-Superior rose up out of her chair. It seemed to him as though shewould never have done rising, but at last she stood before him, verystraight and awfully tall, with her great stern eyes an inch above thelevel of his own, and her white hands folded in her black serge sleeves. 

"Sir, " she said, "we are here under the episcopal jurisdiction of theCatholic Bishop of the Diocese. We have received no order from HisEminence to quit our post--and until we receive it, give me leave to tellyou, with all respect for your high official authority, that we shallremain in Gueldersdorp. "

Their looks crossed like swords. He grew crimson over the whiteunsunburned line upon his forehead, and his moustache straightened like abar of rusty-red iron across his thin, tanned face. But he respected moralpower and determination when he encountered them, and this salient womanprovoked his respect. 

"Let us keep cool----" he began. 

"I assure you that I have never been otherwise, " she said, "since thebeginning of this interview. "

"Ma'am, " he said, "you state the fact. Let me keep cool, and point out toyou a few of the--peculiarities in which the present situationunfortunately abounds. "

He laid down, with a look that asked permission, his hat and cane and theodd glove upon the round, shining walnut-table that stood, adorned withmild little religious works, in the geometrical centre of the Conventparlour, and checked the various points off upon the fingers of the glovedhand with the lean, brown, bare one. 

"I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities. " He had quiteforgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking sex. "I havebegun immediately upon my arrival here to prepare for them. The nucleus ofa sand-bag fort-system has been formed already, mines are being laid downfar in the front, and every male of the population who has a pair ofcapable hands has had a rifle put into them. "

She looked at him, and approved the male type of energy and action. "If Ihad been a man, " she thought, "I should have wished to be one like this. "But she bent her head silently, and he went on. 

"We have an armoured train in the railway-yard, with a Maxim and aHotchkiss. We have a Nordenfeldt, a couple of Maxims more, fourseven-pounder guns of almost prehistoric date, slow of fire, uncertain asregards 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 thatwere grey-headed in the seventies. By the Lord! I wish one or twoWhitehall heads I know were mopping 'em out this minute. Ahem! Ahem!"

He coughed, and grew red under his sun-tan. Her eyes were elsewhere. 

"Ma'am, you must try to recollect that the Boer forces are armed with thenewest Krupps and other guns, and that it is more than possible they mayattempt to shell the town. In that case artillery of tremendous range, anda flight almost equal to that of sound itself--I won't be too technical, Iassure you!--will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for thescrap-heap, or for gate ornaments. Understand, I tell you what is commonknowledge among our friends--common jest among our enemies. And anotherthing I will tell you, ma'am. Those enemies shall never enterGueldersdorp!"

She was radiant now, with that smile upon her lips, and that glow in thegreat eyes that met his with such frank approval. Confound it, whatbusiness had a nun to be anything like so beautiful? Would she pale, wouldshe tremble, when he told her the last truth of all?

"Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, happens to be, if notthe biggest, at least the most conspicuously situated building in theplace, 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 theprotection of the Red-Cross Flag. But the Boer is not chivalrous. He doesnot object to killing women or sick people, nor does he observe with anystanding scrupulousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows upnicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away at, and the Red-CrossFlag 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 tonspoured through these walls. "

She said:

"When they fall about our ears, Colonel, it will be time to leave them!"

He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed. 

"Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this way. "

"It is the only way in which to take them, " she said. "There should be nopanic in the hearts of those who wait on the Divine Will. Moreover, Ishould wish you to understand in case of siege, and an extra demand uponthe staffs of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all--or nearlyall--certificated nurses, and would willingly place our services at yourdisposal. Let me hope that you will call upon us without hesitation if thenecessity should arise. "

He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with diffidence if hemight be permitted to see the Convent chapel. She consented willingly, andpassed on before, tall and stately, and moving with long, light, evensteps, her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled passages. Thechapel was at the end of a long whitewashed corridor upon the airy floorabove. His keen glance took in every feature of the simple, spotlesslittle sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly to theupper end of the aisle between the rows of rush-seated chairs, and kneltfor an instant in veneration of the Divine Presence hidden in theTabernacle. 

"Unfortunately situated!" he muttered, standing stiffly by the west door. Then he glanced right and left, a thumb and finger in the breast-pocket ofhis jacket, feeling for a worn little pigskin purse. As he passed outbefore her at the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in theholy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she closed thechapel door, she saw that he held out to her a five-pound note. 

"Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but ... "

"There is no box for alms, " she said, pausing outside the shut door, whilethe lay-Sister waited at the passage end, "as this is only a privatechapel. "

"I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a Protestant. But in thebehalf of a dear friend of mine, a British officer, of your own faith, who I have reason to believe died without benefit of his clergy, perhapswith this you would arrange that a service should be held in memory of thedead?"

"I understand, " said the Mother-Superior. "You suggest that Holy Massshould be offered for the repose of your friend's soul? Well, I willconvey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it. "

"I do desire it--or, rather, poor Mildare would. "

An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, throughthe foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Hereyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of hersinking forces. Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it forsupport against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But hiseyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, worst blow. 

"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 beeninconsiderate, and over-tired you. " He had become aware that great darkcircles had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her lips werecolourless. She said, with a valiant effort:

"I assure you, with thanks, that you have been most considerate, and thatI am perfectly well. Are you at liberty to tell me, sir, the date ofCaptain Mildare's death? For I know one who was also his friend, andwould"--a spasm passed over her face--"take an interest in hearing theparticulars. "

"Ma'am, you shall know what I know myself. About twenty years ago CaptainMildare, owing to certain unhappy circumstances, social, and not pecuniaryones, sent in his papers, sold his Commission, and left England. "

She waited. 

"I heard of him in Paris. Then, later, I heard from him. He was with herhere 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. "

"Yes?"

The voice was curiously toneless. 

"Where he buried her has only recently come to my knowledge. It was at akind of veld tavern in the Orange Free State, a shanty in thegrass-country between Driepoort and Kroonfontein, where travellers can geta bad lodging, and bad liquor, and worse company. 'Trekkers Plaats' theycall the place now. But when my friend was there it was known as the 'FreeState Hotel. '"

Her lips shut as if to keep out bitter, drowning waters; her face waswhite as wax within the starched blue-white of the nun's coif; his slowsentences fell one by one upon her naked heart, and ate their way in likevitriol. Quite well, too well, she knew what was coming. 

"He dug her grave with his own hands. He meant to have a clergyman readthe Burial Service over it, but before that could be arranged for he alsodied--of fever, I gather, though nothing is very clear, except that thetwo graves are there. I have seen them, and have also ascertained thatwhatever property he left was appropriated by the scoundrel who kept thehotel, and afterwards sold it, and cleared out of South Africa; and thatthe child is not to be found. God knows what has become of her! The manwho robbed her father may have murdered or sold her--or taken her toEngland. A man bearing his name was mixed up in a notorious case tried atthe Central Criminal Court five years ago. And the case, which ruined awell-known West End surgeon, involved the death of a young woman. I trustthe victim may not have been the unhappy girl herself. My solicitors inLondon have been instructed to make inquiries towards the removal of thatdoubt.... "

If those keen eyes of his had not been averted, he must have seen thestrong shuddering that convulsed the woman's frame, and the spasm of agonythat wrung the lips she pressed together, and the glistening damps ofanguish that broke out upon the broad white forehead. To save her life shecould not have said to him, "She whom you seek is here!" But a voicewailed in her heart, more piercingly than Rachel's, and it cried:"Richard's daughter! She is Richard's daughter! The homeless thing, theblighted child I found upon the veld, and nursed back to life andhappiness and forgetfulness of a hideous past; whom I took into my emptyheart, and taught to call me Mother.... She is the fruit of my ownbetrayal! the offspring of the friend who deceived and the man whodeserted me!"

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 speakof--everything depends upon that. Mildare's daughter was a child of threeyears old when she lost father and mother. If alive to-day she would benineteen years of age. I wish it had been my great good fortune to traceand find her. She should have had the opportunity of growing up to be anoble woman. In this place, if it might have been, and with an examplelike yours before her eyes ... Ma'am, good-afternoon. "

He bowed to her, and went away with short, quick, even steps, followingthe lay-Sister who was to take him to the gate. 

She tottered into the chapel, and sank down before the altar, and stroveto pray. Her mind was an eddying blackness shot with the livid glare ofelectric fires. Her faith rocked like a palm in the tempest; her soul wastossed across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone. Being so great, she suffered greatly; being so strong, she had strongpassions 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, byseven devils. And then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-piercedFeet, and found there at last the healing gift of tears. 

XII

Emigration Jane, the new under-housemaid on trial at the Convent, had agathering on the top joint of the first finger of the hand that burned towear Walt Slabberts' betrothal-ring, and the abscess being ripe for thelancet, she had an extra afternoon in the week to get it attended to. Shefound Walt waiting at the street-corner under the lamp-post, and her heartbounded, for by their punctuality at the trysting-place you know whetherthey are serious in their intentions towards you, or merely carrying on, and her other young men had invariably kept her waiting. This new one wasclass, and no mistake. 

"Watto, Walt!" she hailed joyously. 

Her Walt uttered a guttural greeting in the Taal, and displayeduncared-for and moss-grown teeth in the smile that Emigration Jane foundstrangely fascinating. To the eye that did not survey Walt through therose-coloured glasses of affection he appeared merely as ahigh-shouldered, slab-sided young Boer, whose cheap store-clothes baggedwhere they did not crease, and whose boots curled upwards at the toes withmediæval effect. His cravat, of a lively green, patterned with yellowrockets, warred with his tallowy complexion; his drab-coloured hair hungin clumps; he was growing a beard that sprouted in reddish tufts from thetough hide of his jaws, leaving bare patches between, like the karroo. TheSlabberts was an assistant-clerk at the Gueldersdorp Railway-StationParcels-Office, and his widowed mother, the Tante Slabberts, took inwashing from Uitlanders, who are mad enough to change their underwear withfrequency, and did the cleaning at the Gerevormed Kerk at Rustenberg, aduty which involves the emptying of spittoons. Her boy was her joy andpride. 

Young Walt, the true Boer's son that he was, did not entertain the idea ofmarrying Emigration Jane. The child of the Amalekite might never bebrought 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. , andher manners, which were easy, and her taste in dress, which was dazzling, attracted him. As regards their spoken intercourse, it had been hamperedby the Slabbertian habit of pretending only a limited acquaintance withthe barbarous dialect of England. But a young man who conversed chiefly bygrunts, nudges, and signs was infinitely more welcome than no young man atall, and Emigration Jane knew that the language of love is universal. Shehad sent him a lovely letter in the Taal making this appointment, causinghis pachydermatous hide to know the needle-prick of curiosity. For onlylast Sabbath she had spoken nothing but the English, and a young womancapable of mastering Boer Dutch in a week might be made useful in avariety of ways--some of them tortuous, all of them secret, as theSlabbertian ways were wont to be. 

He advanced to her, without the needless ceremony of touching his hat, eagerly asking how she had acquired her new accomplishment?

But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come from the MaisonCluny, and cost a hundred francs, and had been smartened up with a bunchof pink and yellow artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of acheerful blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal had writtenfor her. The bilingual young woman who was to be of such use to Walt hadonly existed in his dreams. And yet--the disappointing creature wasexceeding fair. 

"Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy!" giggled Emigration Jane, deliciously conscious that those rather muddy orbs were glued on heradmiringly. 

The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and rolled over thehorsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks, usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers, " frizzled wonderfullyabout her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, withthree bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslinstamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockingspink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown greyin the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson"sunshyde, " with green and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of thestick. 

The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking a squeal from theenchantress. 

"Mind me bad finger! Lumme! you did give us a squeeze an' a' arf. "

"If I shall to hurt you I been sorry, Miss!" apologized the Slabbert. 

"All righto, Dutchy!" smiled Emigration Jane. "Don't tear your features. "She bestowed a glance of almost vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl inturkey-red cotton twill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woollyhair. At another ebony female who advanced along the sidewalk pushing awhite 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 theMaster continual sayin', 'Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen'swork; 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 bitbetter, 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 cometo talk langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our meanings. 'Owdo you like me dress, Walty dear? An' me 'at? That chap what passed withthe 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 enoughEnglish to do it with. Wot do I care about the perisher along of you?"

It was hard work to talk for two, and keep the ball of courtship rollingafter the approved fashion of Kentish Town, when the slouching young Boerwould only grunt in reply, or twinkle at her out of his piggish eyes. ButEmigration Jane had come out to South Africa, hearing that places at fiveshillings a day were offered you by employers, literally upon their knees, and that husbands were thick as orange-peel and programmes on thepit-floor of the Britanniar Theayter, 'Oxton, or the Camden Varieties onthe morning after a Bank Holiday. She had left her first situation at CapeTown, being a girl of spirit, because her mistress had neglected tointroduce her to eligible gentlemen acquaintances, as the pleasant-spokenagent at the Emigrants' Information Office in Cheapside, the younggentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, waxed moustache, and diamondtie-pin had made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of hisclient, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an earlyopportunity of doing. The reality had not corresponded with the glowingpicture. The employer had failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had notappeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with atrooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American bar-tender. But notone of these had breathed of indissoluble union, though each had wanted toborrow her savings. And Emigration Jane had "bin 'ad" in that way before, and gone with her bleeding heart and depleted Post Office Savings-bookbefore the fat, sallow magistrate at the Regent's Road County Court, andwinced and smarted under his brutal waggeries, only to learn that theappropriator of her womanly affections and her fifteen sovereigns hadalready three wives. 

The brute, the 'artless beast! Emigration Jane wondered at herself, shedid, as 'ad bin such a reg'ler soft as to be took in by one to whom shenever referred in speech except as "That There Green. " That she softenedto him in her weaker moments, in spite of his remembered appetite forsavings and his regrettable multiplicity of wives, gave her the fair hump. That something in the expression of this new one's muddy eyes recalled theloving leer of "That There Green, " she admitted to herself. Womanlyanxiety throbbed in the bosom, not too coyly hidden by the pneumoniablouse, as the couple passed the gilded portals of a public bar, and theSlabberts' elbow was thrust painfully into her side, as its owner saidheavily:

"Have you thirst?"

She coyly owned to aridity, and they entered the saloon, kept by aDutchman who spoke English. Two ginger-beers with a stick of Hollands weresupplied, and the stick of Slabberts was as the rod of Moses to the otherstick for strength and power. But as Emigration Jane daintily sipped thecooling 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 ifyou're thirsty, and 'ave you in, whether or no, and order drinks asliberal as lords, and then discover that they're short of the bob, andborrow from you in a joking way.... Her heart bounded as the Slabberts puthis hand in his pocket, saying:

"Wat kost het?"

The Dutch bar-keeper, who seemed to know Slabberts, answered in English, looking at Emigration Jane:

"Half a dollar. "

Half a dollar is South African for eighteenpence. Slabberts rattledsomething metallic in his trousers-pocket, and said something rapidly inthe Taal. The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and said toEmigration Jane:

"Your young man has not got the money. "

They were all, all alike. A tear rose to her eye. She bravely dried itwith a finger of a white cotton glove, and produced her purse, animitation crocodile-leather and sham-silver affair, bought in KentishTown, where you may walk through odorous groves of dried haddocks that arereally whiting, and Yarmouth bloaters that never were at Yarmouth, andpurchase whole Rambler roses, the latest Paris style, for threepence, andtry on feather-boas at two-and-eleven-three, plucked from the defunctcarcase of the domestic fowl. She paid for the drinks with a florin, andit was quite like old times when Slabberts calmly pocketed the sixpence ofchange. The bar-keeper leaned over to her again, and said, surrounding herwith a confidential atmosphere of tobacco and schnaps:

"He is a good man, that young man of yours, and gets much money. He meansto give you a nice present by-and-by. "

Her grateful heart overflowed to this friendly patronage. She showed thebar-keeper her gathered finger, and said it did 'urt a treat. She expectedit would 'urt worse before Dr. De Boursy-Williams--"'adn't 'e got a toff'sname?"--'ad done with it. 

"You go to that Engelsch doktor on Harris Street, eh?" said thebar-keeper, spitting dexterously. 

"Sister Tobias--that's the nun wot 'ousekeeps at the Convent--give me aorder to see 'im, to 'ave me finger larnced, " explained Emigration Jane. "Ain't 'e all right?"

"Right enough, " said the bar-keeper, winking at the Slabberts, and addingsomething in the Taal, that provoked chuckles among the bystanders andcalled forth a fine display of neglected teeth on the part of thepersonage addressed. "There are plenty other Engelsch will be wishing tobe as right, oh, very soon! For De Boursy-Williams, he has sent his wifeand 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 hispatients to the Dop Doctor. "

"Some red-necked baboons are wiser than others, " said the Slabberts in theTaal, and there was a hoarse laugh, and the humorist turned his big heavybody away, and became one of a crowd of other Dutchmen, who were, inveiled hints and crooked allusions, discussing the situation across theBorder. Emigration Jane was not sensitive to the electricity in theatmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and was perfect in the etiquette of theouting, which, when the young woman has been supplied with the oneregulation drink, stands her up in the corner like an umbrella in dryweather as long as her young man is a-talking to 'is pals. 

"So, " the bar-keeper went on, "if you shall want that bad finger of yourslooked to, you will have to wait until the Dop Doctor wakes up. He is abig man, who can drink as much as three Boers.... He came in this morningto get drunk, and you shall not wake him now if you fire off a rifle athis ear. But he will get up presently and shake himself, and then he willbe quite steady; you would not guess how drunk he had been unless you hadseen.... He is over there, sleeping on that table in the corner, and itwill be very bad for the man who shall wake him up. For, look you, thatDop Doctor is a duyvel. I have seen him break a man like a stick betweenhis hands for nothing but cutting up a thieving monkey of a little Kaffirwith 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 asif it had been a child of Christians. But every Engelschman is mad. GrootBrittanje breeds a nation of madmen. "

The saloon got fuller and fuller. The air solidified with the Taal and thetobacco, and other things less pleasant. It was not the hour for a crowdof customers, but nobody had seemed to be working much of late. They wereall Transvaalers and Free Staters, tradesmen of the town, or Boers fromoutlying farms, and not a man there but was waiting a certain signal toclear out and leave Gueldersdorp to her fate, or remain in the place on asalary paid by the Republics as a spy. The English customer who came inknew at one whiff of the thick atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and ifthe man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and wentout quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed hisconversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the appearance of undue haste. 

Once the swing-doors of the saloon opened to admit a short, spare, hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, whose insignificant Cockneycountenance was splashed with orange-coloured freckles of immense size. Between his thin anæmic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. AndEmigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, recognized thepert, sharp, sallow face seen over the sleeve of a large burgher'soutstretched arm. With some trouble she caught the eye of the short, paleyoung 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 frailperson between the blockish bodies with a cool address that reminded herof the first night of a "noo show" at the Camden "Theayter, " and the queueoutside the gallery door. 

"'Ullo, 'ullo! Thought I reckonised you, Miss. " He touched his cheapimitation Panama with swaggering gallantry, and winked. "But seeing youeight sizes more of a toff than what you were when I previously 'ad thepleasure, I 'esitated to tip you the 'Ow Do. "

She tossed her imitation ostrich plumes in joyous coquetry. 

"As if I didn't know wot you're after. Garn! You only wants to know if Iacted on the stryte about ... "

His projecting ears burned crimson. 

"Well, an' suppose I do. Did she----"

"Did she wot?"

"You pipe well enough. Did she 'ave it?"

"Ain't you anxious?"

"Tyke it I am anxious. Did she? No cod?"

"Did she git your letter wot you put in the box o' choc's? O' course shedid, Mister. Wot do you tyke me for? A silly looney or a sneakin' thief?"

"I'll tell you what I tyke you for. A jolly little bit of English AllRight. Say! Do you think ... " The prominent Adam's apple jutting over theedge of the guillotining double collar worked emotionally. "Think she'llsend an answer, eh?"

"Reckon she will; you watch out an' see!"

"You fust-clarss little brick!"

"Garn!"

"I mean it. Stryte. Next door to a angel--that's wot you are. She's theangel. Tell 'er I said so--that's if you can, you twig? And say that whenI 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, daybefore yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'dgone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with theidear--mind you rub that in!--of strikin' a blow for Beauty as well as forBritanniar, twig?" The thin elbow in the tweed sleeve nudged her, provoking a joyous giggle. 

"I'm fly, no fear. Are you to 'ave a uniform, an' all like that?"

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 thebandolier--an' the gun. She ain't the newest rifle served out to HerMajesty's Army, not by twenty years. Condemned Martini, a chap says, who'sin the know--an' kicks like a mule when I let 'er off--made me nose bleedfust time I tried with blank. But when we gets a bit more used to eachother, it 'll be a case of bloomin' Doppers rollin' over in the dust, likerock-rabbits. Don't forget to tell 'er as wot I said so. "

"Why ... Ain't she a Dutchy 'erself? She wrote a letter for me in theirrummy lingo to my young man!"

"Cripps!" He stared in dismay. "Blessed if I 'adn't forgot. But if anEnglishman marries a foreigner, " he swelled heroic, "that puts 'er in thestryte runnin'. And 'art an' 'and I'm 'ers, whenever she'll 'ave me! Tell'er THAT--with a double row of crosses from W. Keyse! And--can youremember a bit o' poetry?" He recited with shamefaced rapidity:

 "It is my sentry-go to-night, And when I watch the moon so bright, Shining o'er South Africa plain, I'll think of thee, sweet Greta Du Taine. "

Her eyes were full of awe and wonder. "Lor! you don't mean to say you madeup that by yourself?"

The poet nodded. "Reckon about as much. Like it?"

"It's perfect lovely! Better than they 'ave in the penny books. "

"Where Coralline and the Marquis are playin' the spooney game, and 'imwith a Lady Reginer up 'is dirty sleeve. An' there's another thing I wantyou to let 'er know. " His eyes were on hers, his breath fanned her hotcheeks. "There isn't another woman on the earth but her for me. Dessaythere may be others; wot I say is--I don't see 'em!" He waved his hand, dismissing the ardent creatures. 

A pang transpierced the conscience hiding under the cheap flowery blouse. Emigration Jane hesitated, biting the dog's-eared finger-ends of a cottonglove. Should she tell this ardent, chivalrous lover that the Convent roofno longer sheltered the magnificent fair hair-plait and the mischievousblue eyes of his adored? That Miss Greta Du Taine had left forJohannesburg 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 chanceencountered on the street, pass by with a casual greeting and a touch ofthe cheap Panama. Emigration Jane was no heroine, only a daughter of Eve. Arithmetic and what was termed the "tonic sofa" had been more sternlyinculcated than the moral virtues at the Board School in Kentish Town. Andshe was not long in making up her mind that she would not tell him--notjust yet, anyway. 

What was he saying, in the Cockney that cut like a knife through the thickgutturals 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 youanother--trust me. Stryte--I mean it! You ask chaps 'oo know me if BillyKeyse ever went back on a pal?"

She swayed her hips, and disclaimed all obligation. But, garn! he wasgittin' at 'er, she knew!

"I ain't; I mean it! You should 'ave 'arf me 'eredittary estates--if I 'adany. As I 'aven't, say wot you'll drink? Do, Miss, to oblige yours truly, W. Keyse, Esquire. "

W. Keyse plunged a royal, reckless hand into the pocket of his tweedriding-breeches, bought against the time when he should bestride somethingnobler than a bicycle, and produced a half-sovereign. He owed it to hislandlady and the rest, the coin that he threw down so magnificently on theshiny counter, but you do not treat your good angel every day.... Emigration Jane bridled, and swayed her hips still more. His largeness wasintoxicating. One had dreamed of meeting such young men. 

"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' lookslippy!"

The brimming glasses of sparkling, creaming fluid, juice of vines thatnever grew in the historic soil of France, were passed over the bar. Aminiature berg clinked in each, the coldness of its contact with theglowing lip forcing slight rapturous shrieks from Emigration Jane. 

"We'll drink 'Er 'ealth!" W. Keyse raised his goblet. "And Friends at 'Omein our Isle across the Sea!"

He drank, pleased with the sentiment, and set down the empty glass. 

The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and tapped him on the armwith a thick, stubby forefinger. 

"Mister Engelschman, I think you shall best go out of here. "

"Me? Go out? 'Oo are you gettin' at, Myn'eer Van Dunck?" swaggered W. Keyse. And he slipped one thin, freckled hand ostentatiously under hiscoat of shoddy summer tweed. A very cheap revolver lurked in thehip-pocket of which Billy was so proud. In his third-floor backbed-sitting-room in Judd Street, London, W. C. , he had promised himself amoment when that hip-pocket should be referred to, just in that way. Itwas a cheap bit of theatrical swagger, but the saloon was full, not ofharmless theatrical pretences, but bitter racial antagonisms, seethinganimosities, fanged and venomed hatreds, only waiting the prearrangedsignal to strike and slay. 

Emigration Jane tugged at the hero's sleeve, as he felt for an almostinvisible moustache, scanning the piled-up, serried faces with pert, pale, hardy eyes. 

"'E ain't coddin'. See 'ow black they're lookin'. "

"I see 'em, plyne enough. Waxworks only fit for the Chamber of 'Orrors, ain't 'em?"

"It's a young woman wot arsks you to go, not a bloke! Please! For my syke, if you won't for your own!"

Billy Keyse, with a flourish, offered the thin, boyish arm in the tweedsleeve. 

"Righto! Will you allow me, Miss?"

She faltered:

"I--I can't, deer. I--I'm wiv my young man. "

"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'sdrunk, lyin' over the table there in the corner. That ain't 'im, is it?"

"Nah, that isn't 'im. That big Dutchy, lookin' this way, showin' 'is teethas 'e smiles. That's my young man. "

She indicated the Slabberts, heavily observant of the couple with themuddy eyes under the tow-coloured thatch. 

"'Strewth!" W. Keyse whistled depreciatively between his teeth, andelevated his scanty eyebrows. "That tow-'eaded, bung-nosed, 'ulking, bigDopper. An' you a daughter of the Empire!"

Oh! the thrice-retorted scorn in the sharp-edged Cockney voice! Thescorching contempt in the pale, ugly little eyes of W. Keyse! She wiltedto her tallest feather, and the tears came crowding, stinging the back ofher throat, compelling a miserable sniff. Yet Emigration Jane was notdestitute of spirit. 

"I ... I took 'im to please meself ... Not you, nor the Hempire neither. "

"Reckon you was precious 'ard up for a chap. Good-afternoon, Miss. "

He touched the cheap Panama, and swung theatrically round on his heel. Between him and the saloon-door there was a solid barricade of heavyDutch bodies, in moleskin, tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped bylowering Dutch faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the reedycrow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched in the baggy pockets ofold shooting-jackets. Others gripped leaded sjamboks, and others crept tohip-pockets, where German army revolvers were. The bar-keeper and theSlabberts exchanged a meaning wink. 

"Gents, I'll trouble you. By your leave?... "

Nobody moved. And suddenly W. Keyse became conscious that these wereenemies, and that he was alone. A little hooliganism, a few street-fights, one scuffle with the police, some rows in music-halls constituted all hisexperience. In the midst of these men, burly, brutal, strong, used to shedblood of beast and human, his cheap swagger failed him with his stock ofbreath. He was no longer the hero in an East End melodrama; his heroicmood had gone, and there was a feel of tragedy in the air. The Boerswaited sluggishly for the next move. It would come when there should be astep forward on the part of the little Englishman. Then a clumsy foot in acow-leather boot or heavy wooden-pegged veldschoen would be thrust out, and the boy would be tripped up and go down, and the crowd woulddeliberately kick and trample the life out of him, and no one would beable to say how or by whom the thing had been done. And, reading in thehard eyes set in the stolid yellow and drab faces that he was "up againstit, " and no mistake, W. Keyse felt singularly small and lonely. 

Then something happened. 

The drunken Englishman who had been lying in a hoggish stupor over thelittle iron table in the corner of the saloon hiccoughed, and lifted acrimson, puffy face, with bleary eyes in it that were startlingly blue. Hedrew back the great arms that had been hanging over the edge of hisimpromptu pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, and gotslowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, but not stumbling, hemoved across the little space of saw-dusted, hard-beaten earth thatdivided him from W. Keyse, and drew up beside that insignificant minority. The action was not purposeless or unimpressive. The alcoholic wastrel hadsuddenly become protagonist in the common little drama that was veeringtowards tragedy. Beside the man, Billy Keyse dwindled to a stunted boy, asteam-pinnace bobbing under the quarter of an armoured battle-ship, itshuge mailed bulk pregnant with possibilities of destruction, its barbettesfull of unseen, watchful eyes, and hands powerful to manipulate the leversof Titanic death-machines. 

Let it be understood that the intervener did not present the aspect of ahero. He had been drunk, and would be again, unless some miraculousquickening of the alcohol-drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivifythe dormant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of bushy blackeyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, blunt, hooked nose, andgrim-lipped yet tender mouth, from the corner of which an extinct andforgotten 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 greyfelt smasher hat was crammed on awry. But there was a thick lanyard roundthe muscular neck, ending in a leather revolver-pouch that was attached tohis stout belt of webbing. A boy with a fifteen-and-sixpenny toy revolveryou can laugh at and squelch; but, Alamachtig! a big man with a Webley andScott was another thing. And the frowy barrier of thick, coarsely-clad, bulky bodies and scowling, yellow-tan faces, began to melt away. 

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 heldupright on his great gaunt shoulders. W. Keyse, Esquire, moved in theshadow of him, taking two steps to one of his. The swing doors opened, thudded to behind them.... 

"Outside.... Time, too!"

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' nomistyke, when you rallied up. An', Mister, you're a Fair Old Brick, an' ifyou've no objection to shykin' 'ands ... ?"

But the big man did not seem to see the little Cockney's offered hand. Henodded, looking with the bloodshot and extremely blue eyes that were setunder his heavy straight black brows, not at W. Keyse, but over the boy'shead, and with a surly noise in his throat that stopped short of beingspeech, swung heavily round and went down the dusty street, that wasgrilling in the full blaze of the afternoon heat, lurching a little in hiswalk. 

Then, suddenly, running figures of men came round the corner. Voicesshouted, and houses and shops and saloons emptied themselves of theirhuman contents. The news flew from kerb to kerb, and jumped from windowsto windows, out of which women, European and coloured, thrust eager, questioning heads. 

The Cape Town train that had started at midday had returned toGueldersdorp, having been held up by a force of armed and mounted Boerstwenty miles down the line. And a London newspaper correspondent hadhanded in a cable at the post-office, and the operator's instrument, aftera futile click or so, had failed to work any more. 

The telegraphic wire was cut. Hostilities had commenced in earnest, andGueldersdorp, severed from the South by this opening act of war, must findher salvation thenceforwards in the cool brains and steady nerves of thehandful of defenders behind her sand-bags, when the hour of need shouldcome. 

History has it written in her imperishable record, that is not onlyprinted upon paper, and graven upon brass, and cut in marble, but stampedinto the minds and hearts of millions of men and women of the Britishrace, how, when that hour came, the hero-spirit in their countrymen roseup to meet it. And for such undying memories as these, and not for themere word of suzerainty, it is worth while to have paid as Britain haspaid, in gold, and blood, and tears. 

XIII

"Dop, " being the native name for the cheapest and most villainous of Capebrandies, has come to signify alcoholic drinks in general to men of manynations dwelling under the 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, Americanand Briton, Paddy from Cork, and Heinrich from the German Fatherland, thanby John Chinkey--in default of arrack--and the swart and woolly-headeddescendant of Ham, may be signified under the all-embracing designation. 

It did not matter what the liquor was, the bar-tenders were aware whoserved the Dop Doctor, as long as the stuff scorched the throat andstupefied the brain, and you got enough of it for your money. 

His eyes were blood-red with brutal debauch now, as he neared the DeBoursy-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-fencehad turned it into a gentlemanly residence for a medical practitioner. Mrs. De Boursy-Williams, a lady of refinement, stamped with theineffaceable cachet of Bayswater, had hung cheap lace curtains in all thewindows, tying them up with silk sashes of Transvaal green. Between thewooden pillars of the stoep dangled curtains yet other, of chopped, dyed, and threaded bamboo, while whitewashed drain-pipes, packed with earth andset on end, overflowed with Indian cress, flowering now in extravagant, gorgeous hues of red and brown, sulphur and orange. 

The Dop Doctor, left to maintain the inviolate sanctity of this EnglishColonial home, hiccoughed as he stumbled up the stately flight of threecement steps that led between white-painted railings, enclosing on theleft hand a narrow strip of garden with some dusty mimosa shrubs growingin it, to the green door that bore the brass plate, and had the red lampfitted in the hall-light above it. The plate bore this comprehensiveinscription:

 G. DE BOURSY-WILLIAMS, M. D. , F. R. C. S. Lond. 

 CONSULTING-ROOM HOURS: 10 A. M. TO 12 A. M. ; 6 P. M. TO 8 P. M. 

 MODERN DENTISTRY IN ALL ITS BRANCHES. 

And, scanning the inscription for perhaps the thousandth time, the grim, tender mouth under the ragged black moustache took a satirical twist atthe corners, for nobody knew better than Owen Saxham, called of men inGueldersdorp the "Dop Doctor, " what a brazen lie it proclaimed. He heardthe town-clock on the stad square strike five as he pulled out thelatchkey from his pocket and let himself in, shouting:

"Koets!"

A glazed door at the end of the passage, advertised in letters of blackpaint upon the ground-glass as "Dispensary, " opened, and a long, thinDutchman, dressed in respectable black, looked out. He had been hopingthat the drunken Englishman had been shot or stabbed in a saloon-brawl, orhad fallen down in apoplexy in a liquor-bout, and had been brought homedead on a shutter at last. His long ginger-coloured face showed his crueldisappointment. But he said, as though the question had been asked:

"No, there is no telegram from Cape Town. "

Then he shut the glazed door, and returned to the very congenialoccupation in which he had been engaged, and Owen Saxham went heavily tothe bedroom placed at the disposal of the _locum tenens_. The singlewindow looked out upon a square garden with a tennis-ground, where the DeBoursy-Williams girls had been used to play. The apricot on the south wallwas laden with the as yet immature fruit, an abandoned household catslept, unconscious of impending starvation, upon a bench under apepper-tree. 

It was a small, sordid, shabby chamber, with a fly-spotted paper, a chestof drawers lacking knobs, a greenish swing looking-glass, and a narrowiron bedstead. His scanty belongings were scattered about. There were nomedical books or surgical instruments. The Dop Doctor had sold all thetools of his trade years before. He turned to Williams's books, standardworks which had been bought at his recommendation, when he wished torefresh his excellent memory; the instruments he used when to theentreaties of a fatherly friend Williams added the alluring chink of goldbelonged also to that generous patron. There were some old clothes in theramshackle deal wardrobe; there was some linen and underclothing in theknobless chest of drawers. With the exception of a Winchesterrepeating-rifle in excellent condition, a bandolier and ammunition-pouch, a hunting-knife and a Colt's revolver of large calibre, in addition tothe weapon he carried, there was not an article of property of any valuein the room. Old riding-boots with dusty spurs and a pair of veldschoensstood by the wall; a pair of trodden-down carpet slippers lay beside a bigcheap zinc bath that stood there, full of cold water; some well-used pipeswere on the chest of drawers, with a tin of Virginia; and an old browncamel's-hair dressing-gown hung over a castorless, shabby, American-cloth-covered armchair. And an empty whisky-bottle stood upon thewashstand, melancholy witness to the drunkard's passion. 

Yet there were a few poor little toilet articles upon the dressing-tablethat betokened the dainty personal habits of cleanliness and care thatfrom lifelong use become instinctive. The hands of the untidy, slovenly, big man with the drink-swollen features were exquisitely kept; and whenthe dark-red colour should go out of the square face, the skin would showwonderfully unblemished and healthy for a drunkard, and the blue eyeswould be steady and clear. Excess had not injured a splendid constitutionas yet. But Saxham knew that by-and-by ... 

What did he care? He pulled off his soiled, untidy garments, and sousedhis aching head in the cold, fresh water, and bathed and changed. Sixo'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, andsitting calmly waiting for patients in the respectably-appointedconsulting-room of De Boursy-Williams, M. D. , F. R. C. S. Lond. 

Usually he sat in the adjoining study, near enough to thecarefully-curtained door to hear the patient describe in the artlessvernacular of the ignorant, or the more cultivated phraseology of theeducated, the symptoms, his or hers. 

Because the cultured man of science, the real M. D. Of Cambridge Universityand owner of those other letters of attainment, was the drunken wastrelwho had sunk low enough to serve as the impostor's ghost. If G. DeBoursy-Williams, of all those lying capitals, were a member of the LondonPharmaceutical Society and properly-qualified dentist, which perhaps mightbe the case, he certainly possessed no other claim upon the confidence ofhis fellow-creatures, sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctorbrought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst toGueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey-haired, pink-faced, neatly-dressedlittle humbug possessed an enviable practice. 

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, addingto the python-length of the bill for medical attendance. 

This world is thick with De Boursy-Williamses, throwing in bromides with aliberal hand, ungrudging of strychnine, happily at home with quinine andcathartics, ready at a case of simple rubeola; hideously, secretly, helplessly perplexed between the false diphtheria and the true; treatinginternal cancer and fibrous tumours as digestive derangements for happy, profitable years, until the specialist comes by, and dissipates with abrief examination and with half a dozen trenchant words the victim's faithin the quack. 

Three years before, when the Dop Doctor, coming up from Kimberley bytransport-waggon, had stumbled in upon Gueldersdorp, the verdict of aspecialist consulted by one of his patients, much lacking in the desirablearticle of faith, had given De Boursy-Williams's self-confidence aconsiderable shock. 

Does it matter how De Boursy, much reduced in bulk by a considerableleakage of conceit, came across the Dop Doctor? In a drink-saloon, in amusic-hall, in a gaming-house or an opium-den, at any other of the placesof recreation where, after consulting and visiting hours, that exemplaryfather and serious-minded Established Churchman, was to be found? It isenough that the bargain was proposed and accepted. Four sovereigns a weeksecured to De Boursy-Williams the stored and applied knowledge, the wideexperience, and the unerring diagnosis of the rising young Londonpractitioner, who had had a brilliant career before him when a Hand hadreached forth from the clouds to topple down the castle of his labours andhis hopes. For Owen Saxham the money would purchase forgetfulness. You canbuy a great deal of his kind of forgetfulness with four pounds, and drinkwas all the Dop Doctor wanted. 

Now, as the red South African sunset burned beyond the flattened westernridge of the semicircle of irregular hills that fence in the unpretendinghamlet town that lies on the low central rise, Owen Saxham sat, as for hismiserable weekly wage he must sit, twice daily for two hours at a stretch, enduring torments akin to those of the damned in Hell. 

For these were the hours when he remembered most all that he had lost. 

Remembrance, like the magic carpet of the Eastern story, carried him backto a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and manyroses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilexand Spanish chestnut, and rhododendron, upon the South Dorset cliffs, thatare vanishing so slowly yet so surely in the maw of the rapacious sea. 

Boom! In the heart of a still, foggy night, following a day of lashingrain, and the boy Owen Saxham, whom the Dop Doctor remembered, would wakeupon his lavender-scented pillow in the low-pitched room with the heavyceiling-beams and the shallow diamond-paned casements, and call out toDavid, dreaming in the other white bed, to plan an excursion with thebreaking of the day, to see how much more of their kingdom had toppledover on those wave-smoothed rock-pavements far below, that were studdedwith great and little fossils, as the schoolroom suet-pudding with thefrequent raisin. 

More faces came. The boys' father, fair and florid, bluff, handsome, andkindly, an English country gentleman of simple affectionate nature andupright life. He came in weather-stained velveteen and low-crowned felt, with the red setter-bitch at his heels, and the old sporting Mantoncarried in the crook of his elbow, where the mother used to sew a leatherpatch, always cut out of the palm-piece of one of the right-hand glovesthat were never worn out, never being put on. A dark-eyed, black-hairedWelsh mother, hot-tempered, keen-witted, humorous, sarcastic, passionatelydevoted to her husband and his boys, David and Owen. 

David and Owen. David was the elder, fair like the father, destined forHarrow, Sandhurst, and the Army. Owen had dreamed of the Merchant Service, until, having succeeded in giving the Persian kitten, overfed to repletionby an admiring cook, a dose of castor-oil, and being allowed to aid thelocal veterinary in setting the fox-terrier's broken leg, the revelationof 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, faithfullyplodded the course laid down by the Council of Medical Education, became agraduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took his degree brilliantly;registered as a student at St. Stephen's Hospital; won an EntranceScholarship in Science, and secured the William Brown Exhibition in hissecond year. Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened withscalpel and with bistoury by Owen Saxham. 

Oh, the good days! the delectable years of intellectual development, andarduous study, and high hope, and patient, strenuous endeavour! The mansitting with knitted hands and tense brain and staring eyes there in thedarkening room groaned aloud as he looked back. Nobody envied thatbroad-shouldered, lean-flanked, bright-eyed young fellow his successes. Companions shared his triumphs, lecturers and professors came down fromtheir high pedestals of dignity to help him on. When he obtained hisLondon University diploma with honours for a thesis of exceptional merit, he had already held the post of principal anæsthetist at St. Stephen'sHospital for a year. Now, a vacancy occurring upon the Junior staff ofsurgeons to the Hospital's in-patient Department, Owen Saxham, M. D. , waschosen to fill it. This brought Mildred very near. 

For he was very much in love. The hot red blood in his veins had carriedhim away sometimes upon a mad race for pleasure, but he was clean of souland free from the taint of vice, inherited or acquired, and the Briton'slove of home was strong in him. And wedded love had always seemed to him abeautiful and gracious thing; and fatherhood a glorious privilege. Sternas he seemed, grave and quiet and undemonstrative as he was, the youngestand shyest children did not shrink from him. The pink rose-leaf tonguepeeped from between the budding rows of teeth, and the innocentconsidering eyes questioned him only a moment before the smile came. To bethe father of Mildred's children seemed the lofty end of all desire thatwas not mere worldly ambition. 

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 tocalling at the house in Pont Street, to which Mildred, with herfamily--mere satellites revolving in the orbit of that shining star ofLove--migrated in the Season. She was tall, slight, and willowy, with asweet head that drooped a little, and round brown eyes that were extremelypretty and wore a perpetual expression of surprise. She was rather anæmic, preferred croquet to lawn-tennis--then the rage--and kept a journal, afterthe style of an American model. But the space which Mary McMullins cribbedfrom Mary McMullins to devote to a description of the bathroom in whichthe ablutions of her family were performed, and a vivid word-picture oftheir tooth-brushes ranged in a row, and their recently wrung-out garmentsin the act of taking the air upon the back-garden clothes-line, was alldevoted to Mildred in Mildred's journal. In it Owen found a place. He wasdescribed as a blend between "Rochester" in "Jane Eyre" and "Bazarov" inTurgenev's "Fathers and Children. " In one specially high-flown passage hewas referred to as a grim granite rock, to which the delicateclematis-like nature of Mildred, clinging, was to envelop it with leaf andblossom. She read him the passage one day. Their faces were very closetogether 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 themidst of his anguish. So trivial and so weak a thing had been that love ofhers on which he had founded the castle of his hopes and desires. 

Now the aspiring young man bought a practice with some thousands advancedby 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 mayfeel the pulse of Dives for gold, and look at the tongue of Lazarus fornothing, and supply medicine into the bargain, if he be of kindly soul, and this hopeful, rising surgeon and physician had an open hand and anunsuspecting nature. 

God! how much the worse for him. The sweat-drops ran down into the DopDoctor's eyes as he remembered that. 

He set up his bachelor tent in Chilworth Street, furnishing the rooms hemeant to inhabit with a certain sober luxury. By-and-by the house could bemade pretty, unless Mildred should insist upon his moving to WigmoreStreet, or to Harley Street, that Mecca of the ambitious youngpractitioner. Probably Mildred's people would insist upon Harley Street. They were wealthy; their daughter would be quite an heiress, "anotherinstance of Owen's luck, " as David, long ago gazetted to a crack Cavalryregiment, would say, and Owen would laugh, and admit that, though he wouldhave been glad enough to take his young fair love without dower andplenishing, it was pleasant enough to know that his wife would have anindependent fortune of her own. It was one of David's best jokes that Owenwas marrying Mildred for her money. David's ideas of humour were crude andelemental. On the other hand, his manners were admirable, and his physicalbeauty perfect of its type, though men and women turned oftenest to lookat the younger brother, whom the women called "plain, but so interesting, "and the men "an uncommonly attractive sort of fellow, and as clever asthey make them. " When the great crash came Owen Saxham, M. D. , F. R. C. S. , was about twenty-nine. 

Do you care for a description of the man at his prime?

He was probably five feet ten in height, but his scholar's stoop robbedhim 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 afalse air of clumsiness. His arms were long and powerful, terminating instrong, supple, white hands, the hands of the skilled surgical operator;his thick, smooth, opaque, white skin covered an admirable structure ofbone, knit with tough muscles, clothed with healthful flesh. One noticed, seeing him walk, that his legs were bowed a little, because he had beenaccustomed to the saddle from earliest childhood, though he rode butseldom now, and one saw also that his small muscular feet gripped theground vigorously, through the glove-thin boots he liked to wear. Heshowed no tendency to dandyism. His loosely-cut suits of fine, silky blackcloth were invariably of the same fashion. In abhorring jewellery, inpreferring white cashmere shirts, and strictly limiting the amount ofstarch in the thin linen cuffs and collars, perhaps he showed a tendencyto faddism. David told him that he dressed himself like a septuagenarianProfessor. Mildred would have preferred dear Owen to pay a little moreattention 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 haveeverything, at least, not in this world.... 

She said that one day, standing beside the writing-table in the ChilworthStreet 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 blueand scarlet of a crack Dragoon Regiment. Owen stood upon the hearthrug, for once in Mildred's company, and not thinking of Mildred. And with tearsrising in her round, pretty, foolish eyes the girl looked from the faceand figure enclosed within the silver frame, to the face and bust that hadfor background the high mantel-mirror in its carved frame of Spanish oak. 

There was the square black head bending forwards--"poking, " she termedit--upon the massive, bowed shoulders; the white face, square too, withits short, blunt, hooked nose and grim, determined mouth and jaws, showingthe bluish grain of the strong beard and moustache that Owen kept closelyshaven. The heavy forehead, the smutty brows overshadowing eyes of clear, vivid, startling Alpine blue, the close small ears, the thick whitethroat, were very, very unattractive in Mildred's eyes--at least, incomparison with the three-volume-novel charms of the grey-eyed, golden-moustached, classically-featured, swaggering young military dandyin the coloured photograph. David had been with his regiment in India whenOwen had first seemed to be a good deal attracted to Pont Street. He hadwooed Mildred with dogged persistency, and won her without perceptibletriumph, and Mildred had been immensely flattered at first by the conquestof this man, whom everybody said was going to be famous, great, distinguished ... And now ... The wedding-day was coming awfully near. Andhow on earth was it possible for a girl to tell a man with Owen'sdreadfully grim, sarcastic mouth, and those terrible blue eyes thatsometimes looked through and through you--that she preferred his brother?

Poor, dear, beautiful, devoted David! so honourable, so shocked at thediscovery that his passion was reciprocated, so very romantically in love. Only the day previously, calling in at Pont Street at an hour unusual forhim, Owen had found them together, Mildred and David, who, having beenunexpectedly relieved of duty by an accommodating brother-officer, had, ashe rather laboriously explained, run up from Spurhambury for the day. Itwas an awfully near thing, the guilty ones agreed afterwards, but Owen hadsuspected nothing. These swell scientific men were often a little bit slowin the uptake.... 

But to-day--to-day their dupe saw clearly. He recalled the Pont Streetincident, and the flushed faces of the couple. He saw once more thesilver-framed photograph in the girl's hand, he felt the mutedisparagement of her glance, and was conscious of the relief with which itleft him to settle on the portrait again. Ah, how unsuspicious he had beenwhom they were duping! Doubtless Mildred would not have had the courage toown the truth, doubtless she would have married him but for the scandal ofthe Trial. He wrenched his knitted hands together until the jointscracked. She would have married him, and forgotten David. He, the man ofwill, and power, and patience would have possessed her, stamped himselflike a seal upon her heart and mind, given her other interests, otherhopes, other desires, children, and happiness. But for the Trial thelittle germinating seed of treachery would never have grown up and bornefruit. 

Had it been treachery, after all? Far, far too grand the word. Who wouldexpect a modern woman to practise the obsolete virtue of Fidelity? Fool, do you expect your miniature French bulldog or your toy-terrier to dive inand swim out to you, and hold your drowning carcase up, should you happento become cramped while bathing in the sea? The little, feeble, pretty, feather-brained thing, what can it do but whimper on the shore while youare sinking, perhaps be consoled upon a friendly stranger's lap while yourlast bubbles are taking upward flight, and your knees are drawing inwardsin the final contraction? Happy for the little creature if the kindlystranger carry it away!

Poor, pretty, foolish Mildred, whose gentle predilections were as threadsof gossamer compared with the cable-ropes of stronger women's passions!She had nestled into the strong protecting arm, and dried her tears forthe old master on the sleeve of the new one, whimpering a little, gently, just like the toy-terrier bitch or the miniature bull. 

And yet he had once seen a creature tinier and feebler than either ofthese, a mere handful of yellow floss-silk curls, defend its insensiblemaster with frenzy, as the sick man lay in the deadly stupor of cerebralcongestion, from those who sought to aid. Valet and nurse and doctor wereheld at bay until that snapping, foaming, raging speck of love anddevotion and fidelity had been whelmed in a travelling-rug, and borne awayto a distant room, from whence its shrill, defiant, imploring barks andyelps could be heard night and day until, its owner being at lastconscious and out of danger, the tiny creature was set free. 

Ergo, there are small things and small things. Beside that epic atomMildred dwindled inconceivably. 

And David ... David, who had shaken his handsome head sorrowfully over hisbrother's ruined career, who had been horribly sick at the scandal, shudderingly alive to the disgrace, sorrowfully, regretfully compelled toadmit that the evidence of guilt was overwhelming ... He did not trusthimself to think of David overmuch. That way of thought led to Cain'sportion in the very pit of Hell. For six months subsequently to thefinding of the Jury in the well-known criminal case, The Crown _v. _Saxham, David had married Mildred. If she had been innocent of actualtreachery, here was the smooth, brotherly betrayer, unmasked and loathlyin the sight of the betrayed. 

How quietly the storm-clouds had piled up on his bright horizon at theclose of his second year of active, brilliant, successful work!

The first lightning-flash, the first faint mutter of thunder, had passedalmost unnoticed. Then the tempest broke, and the building wrought by astrong man's labours, and toils, and hopes, and joys, and dolours had beenlifted, and torn, and rent, and scattered as a hill-bothy of poles andstraw-bundles, or a moorland shelter of heather and bushes is scattered bythe fury of a northern mountain-blast. 

His practice had become a large and, despite the many claims of Lazarus atthe gates, a lucrative one by the commencement of his third year ofresidence in Chilworth Street. It was the end of April. He was to bemarried to Mildred in July. That move to Harley Street had been decidedupon, the house taken and beautified. Though his love for her was notdemonstrative or romantic, it was deep, and tender, and strong, andhopeful, and Life to this man had seemed very sweet--five years ago. Hewas successful professionally and socially. He had been chosen to assist asurgeon of great eminence in the performance of a critical operation upona semi-Royalty. He had written, and publishers had published, a remarkablework. "The Diseases of Civilisation" had been greeted by the scientificreviewers with a chorus of praise, passed through four or fiveeditions--had been translated into several European languages; and his"Text-Book of Clinical Surgery" had been recommended to advanced studentsby the leading professors of the Medical Schools when the horrible thingbefell. 

XIV

It was in '94, when even the electro-motor was not in general use, and thepetrol-driven machine was slowly convincing Paris and New York of itsmagnificent possibilities. Saxham used a smart, well-horsed, hiredbrougham for day-visits, and for night work a motor-tricycle. There wereno stables to the house in Chilworth Street. He left the motor-tricycle atthe place where he had bought it second-hand. The machine was cleaned andkept in order, and brought to his door by one of the employés at a certainhour, for a fixed weekly sum paid to the proprietor of the establishment, Bough by name, an Englishman born in the Transvaal, who had quiterecently, or so he gave out, emigrated from South Africa, and set up inLondon as a cycle-seller and repairer, though there were not many cyclesat the shop. Heavy packing-cases and crates were always being deliveredthere, and always being despatched from thence, via Cape Town and PortElizabeth and Delagoa Bay to the Transvaal, Bough being agent, or so hesaid, for several South African firms engaged in the transport ofagricultural machines. Bough had a wife, a large-eyed, delicate-looking, pretty little woman, who seemed afraid of the big, muscular, tanned fellowof thirty-eight or so, with the odd light eyes, and the smooth manner, andthe ready smile, and the short, expert, hairy, cruel-looking hands. He hadseen life, had Bough, at the goldfields and at the diamond-mines, and as atrooper through the Zulu and Matabele campaigns, and he was ready to talkabout what he had seen. Still there were reservations about Bough, andmysteries. The Doctor suspected him of being brutal to his wife, and wouldnot have been surprised any morning upon receiving the news of the man'sarrest as one of a gang of forgers, or coiners, or burglars. But he livedand let live, and whatever else the big Afrikander may have been, he wasan excellent workman at his trade. 

One evening Bough rode round on the motor-tricycle himself, and mentionedcasually that his wife was ailing. The Doctor, in the act of mounting themachine, put a brief question or two, registered the replies in theautomatic sub-memory he kept for business, and told the man to send herround at ten o'clock upon the following morning. 

She came, punctual to the hour, and was shown into Owen'sconsulting-room--a little woman with beautiful, melancholy eyes and apretty 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 thespelling of which it has no part. 

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. 

He heard her tell the tale that was not new to him. Cultured, highly-bredwomen had made such appeals to him before, and without shame. How shouldthis little vulgar creature be expected to have more conscience than they?

They beat about the bush longer, they put the thing more prettily. Theyspoke 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 thewhole was, that they did not want children, and Dr. Saxham had such agreat and justly-earned reputation in skilful and delicate operations ... And, in short, would he not be compliant and oblige? They would payanything. Money was positively no object. 

How many such tempting sirens sing in the ears of young, risingprofessional men, who are hampered by honourable debts which threaten toimpede and drag them down; who are possessed of high ideals and moralscruples, which, not being essentially, fundamentally embedded andingrained in the conscience of the man, may possibly be argued away; whohave not implanted in their souls and hearts the high reverence formotherhood and the deep tenderness for helpless infancy that distinguishedOwen Saxham!

He heard this woman out, as he had heard all the others. He began as hehad begun with every one of them--the delicate, titled aristocrats, theambitious Society beauties, the popular actresses, the women who enviedthese and read about them in the illustrated interviews published in thefashion-papers, and sighed to be interviewed also--to not one of these hadhe weighed out one drachm less of the bitter salutary medicine that he nowadministered to Mrs. Bough. 

He invariably began with the personal peril and the inevitable risk. Strange how they ignored it, blinded themselves to it, thrust it, thegrinning, threatening Death's-head, on one side. Of course, he talked likethat! It was most candid of him, and most conscientious. But if they werewilling to take the risk--and antiseptic surgery had made such _huge_strides in these days that the risk was a mere nothing.... Besides, therewas not really need for anything like an operation, was there? He couldprescribe the kind of dose that ought to be taken, and everything wouldthen be all right. 

He would open that grim mouth of his yet again, and speak even more to thepurpose. To these mothers who did not wish to be mothers, who threw thegift of Heaven back in the face of Heaven, preferring artificialbarrenness to natural fecundity, and who made of their bodies, that shouldhave 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 surgicalknife, cut to heal. When they argued with him, saying that the thing wasdone, 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; headmitted the force of their arguments. Let other men of his great callingpile up and amass wealth, if they chose, by tampering with the uncleanthing. Owen Saxham would none of it. At this juncture the woman would havehysterics of the weeping or the scolding kind, or would be convinced ofthe righteousness of the forlorn cause he championed, or would pretend thehysterics or the conviction. Generally she pretended to the latter, andswam or stumbled out, pulling down her veil to mask the rage and hatred inher haggard eyes, and went to that other man. Then, after a brief absenceaccounted for as a "rest cure, " she would shine forth again upon herworld, smiling, triumphant, prettier than ever, since she had begun tomake up a little more. Or, as a woman who had passed through the Valley ofthe Shadow, with only her own rod and staff of vanity and pride to comforther, she would emerge from that seclusion a nervous wreck, and take topegging or chloral or spiritualism. Most rarely she would not emerge atall, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin andcarriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in theirboudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had attended her. For ofcourse he had bungled shockingly, or everything would have gone off asright as rain for that poor dear thing!

Little Mrs. Bough was of the type of woman that pretends to be convinced. She had cried bitterly in the beginning, as she confessed to Saxham thatshe was not really married to Bough, and that the said Bough, whom Saxhamhad 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. " Shecried even more bitterly afterwards, as she wondered how she ever could 'adreamed o' being that wicked! Bough might kill her--that he might!--or goback to South Africa without her; she never would give in, not now. Nevernow--the Doctor might depend upon that, she assured him, drying herswollen eyes with a cheap lace-edged handkerchief loaded with patchouli. She was shaken and nervous, and in need of a sedative, and Saxham, havingthe drugs at hand, made her up a simple draught, unluckily omitting tomake a memorandum of the prescription in his pocket-book, and gave her thefirst dose of it before she went away, profuse in thanks, and carrying thebottle. 

And he saw his waiting patients, and stepped into his waiting brougham, and, having for once no urgent call upon his professional attention, dinedwith Mildred at Pont Street, and was coaxed into promising to take her tothe opening performance of a classic play which was to be revived threenights later at a fashionable West End theatre. Mildred had set her heartupon being seen in a box at this particular function, and Saxham had hadsome trouble to gratify her wish. 

He remembered with startling clearness every remote detail of that nightat the theatre. Mildred had looked exquisitely fair and girlish in herwhite dress, with a necklace of pearls he had given her rising and fallingon the lovely virginal bosom, where the lover's eyes dwelt and lingered inthe masterful hunger of his heart. Soon, soon, that hunger of his forpossession would be gratified! It was April, and at the end of July, whenwork was growing slack, they would be married. They were going North forthe honeymoon. A wealthy and grateful patient of Saxham's had placed athis disposal a grey, historic Scotch turret-mansion, standing upon mossylawns, with woods of larch and birch and ancient Spanish chestnuts allabout it, looking over the silver Tweed. In the heat and hurry of hisdaily round of work, Saxham, who had spent an autumn holiday at thisplace, would find himself dreaming about it. The smell of the heatherwould spice the air that was no longer hot and sickly with the effluvia ofthe city, and the hum of the drowsy black bees, and the cooing of thewood-pigeons would replace the din of the London traffic, and Mildred'seyes would be looking into his, and her cool, fragrant lips would befreely yielded, and her arms would be about his neck, and all those secretaspirations and yearnings and dreams of wedded joy would be realised atlast. 

He grinned to himself sitting there in the hot darkness of the SouthAfrican night, the great white stars and the vast purple dome theythrobbed in shut out of sight by the miserable little gaily-paperedceiling with its cornice of gilt wood, remembering that everything hadended there. Thenceforth no more hopes, no dreams, for the man whom Fateand Destiny, hitherto propitious and obliging, had conspired to lash withscourges, and drive with goads, and hound with despairs and horrors to thesheer brink where Madness waits to hurl the desperate over upon the jaggedrocks below. 

He supped with them at Pont Street. Mildred came down to say good-night atthe door. 

"Have you been happy?" he had asked, framing the sweet young face intender hands, and looking in the pretty, gentle brown eyes. 

"You have been so very dear and kind to-night, " she had answered, "howcould I have helped being happy? And He"--she meant the Semiticactor-manager, whom she romantically adored; whose thick, flabby featuresand pale gooseberry orbs, thickly outlined in blue pencil, eyebrowed withbrown grease-paint; whose long, shapeless body, eloquent, expressivehands, and legs that were very good as legs go, taking them separately, but did not match, had been that night, his admirers declared, moved andpossessed by the very spirit of Shakespearean Tragedy--"He was so great!Don't you agree with me--marvellously great?"

Saxham had laughed and kissed the enthusiast. It had appeared to him adreary performance enough, or it would have, had it not been for Mildredand the dear glamour with which her presence had invested the greatgilded auditorium, with its rows of bored, familiar, notable faces in thestalls, representing Society, Art, Literature, Music, and Finance; its pitand gallery crowded with organised bodies of theatre-goers, one partycertain to boo where the other applauded, riot and disorder the inevitableresult, unless by a coincidence rare as snow at Midsummer the rivalassociations might be won upon to display a unanimity of approval, uponwhich the dramatic Press-critics would rapturously descant in thenewspapers next morning. 

XV

Saxham said his lingering sweet good-night, and shut Mildred into thewarm, 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 lookeddown between drifting veils of greyish vapour upon the little human livespassing below. 

As he jumped down at his door and paid his cabman, his quick eye noticed abicycle leaning against the area-railings. One of his poorer patients waswaiting for the Doctor. Or a messenger had been sent to summon him. He lethimself into the lighted hall, whistling the pretty plaintive melody ofOphelia's song. 

A woman sat on the oak bench under the electric globe, her littlehuddled-up figure making rather a sordid blotch of drab against thestrong, rich background of the wall, coloured Pompeian red, and hung withfine old prints in black frames. Her tawdry hat lay beside her, herhaggard eyes were set, staring at the opposite wall; her lower jaw hunglax; 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 asthe wife of the man Bough. And in instant, vivid, wrathful realisation ofthe desperate reason of her being there, Saxham cried out so loudly thatthe servant who had let her in and was waiting up for his master in thebasement heard the words:

"Are you mad? What do you mean by coming here? Haven't I told you that Iwill have nothing to do with you and your affairs.... "

The voice that issued from her blue lips might have been a scream, judgingby the wrung anguish of the awful face she turned upon him; but it was nomore than a dry, clicking whisper that the now listening servant couldbarely hear:

"Don't be 'ard on a woman ... Hin trouble, Doctor. "

"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. "

His square face was very stern as he took the cab-whistle from thehall-salver, that was packed with cards and notes, and letters that hadcome by the last post, and a telegram or two. She moaned as he laid hishand on the knob of the hall-door. 

"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'dbe damned but 'e'd find a woman as would! And she come next night--alittle, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' an' shakin'. Five pounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' shiverin'. An' he wasn't to sendno more to the haddress he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Alwaysmove hout ... She says, after a fresh job! Oh, my Gawd! An' Bough, hehordered 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' theirblooming sicknesses. So Hi biked 'ere because Hi couldn't walk. An'now!... " She groaned: "Hi _ham_ dyin', aren't Hi?"

Even to an observation less skilled than that of the expert medicalpractitioner the signs of swift and speedy dissolution were written on theinsignificant, once pretty, little face. Dying, the miserable littlecreature had ridden to Chilworth Street, hastening her own inevitable endby the stupendous act of folly, and ensuring Saxham's. That certainty hadpierced him, even as the first horrible convulsion seized her and wrenchedher sideways off the bench. He caught her, and shouted for his man, andthey carried her into the consulting-room, and laid her on a sofa, and hedid what might be done, knowing that his mercy on her involved swift andpitiless retribution upon himself. Mrs. Bough died three hours later, asthe grey dawn straggled through the blinds, and the men with the districtambulance waited at the door, and Dr. Owen Saxham went about his work thatday with a strange sensation of expecting some heavy blow that was aboutto fall. It fell upon the day following the Coroner's Inquest. He wassitting down to breakfast when a Superintendent of Police arrested himupon a warrant from Scotland Yard. 

His servant, very pale, had announced that the Superintendent wished tosee the Doctor. The Superintendent was in the room, courteously salutingSaxham, before the man had fairly got out the words. 

"Good-morning, sir. A pleasant day!"

"Unlike the business that brings you here, I think, Mr. Superintendent?"said Saxham, with his square jaw set. His man spilt the coffee and hotmilk over the cloth in trying to fill his master's cup. "You are nervous, Tait. You had better go downstairs, I think, unless----" Saxham lookedinterrogatively at the burly, officially-clad figure of the Law. 

"No, sir, thank you. We do not at present require your man, but it is myduty to tell him that he had better not be out of the way, in case histestimony is wanted. "

"You hear?" said Saxham; and as white-faced Tait fled, trembling, to thelower regions: "Of course, you are here, " he went on, pouring out thecoffee himself with a firm hand, and looking steadily at theSuperintendent, "with regard to the case of Mrs. Bough? I have expectedthat a magistrate's inquiry would follow the Inquest. It seemed onlynatural----"

The Superintendent interrupted, holding up a large hand. 

"It is my duty to tell you, Dr. Saxham, that everything you say will betaken down and used against you in evidence. "

"Naturally, " said Saxham, putting sugar in his coffee. The sugar was usedagainst him. It amused him now to remember that. The Superintendent hadnever seen a gentleman more cool, he told the magistrate. 

"You see, sir, this Case has been fully considered by the authorities, andit has an ugly look; and it has therefore been decided to charge you withcausing the death of the woman Bough by an illegal act, performed here, inyour consulting-room, on the twentieth instant, when she visited you ... "

"For the first time, " put in Saxham quietly. 

"That may be or may not be, " said the Superintendent. "You were often ather husband's place of business, you know, and may have seen her or notseen her. "

"As she used to be in Bough's shop, it is possible that a great many ofthe man's customers besides myself did see her, " Saxham went on, eatinghis breakfast. 

"One of my men out there in the hall--I've noticed you looking towards thedoor----" began the Superintendent. 

"Wondering what the shuffling and breathing at the keyhole meant?" saidSaxham quietly. "Thank you for explaining. "

"One of my men will fetch a cab when you have finished breakfast, andthen, sir, " said the Superintendent, "I am afraid I must trouble you tocome with me to Paddington Police Station. "

"Very well, " said Saxham, frowning, "unless you object to using mybrougham, which will be at the door"--he looked at his silver table-clock, a present from a grateful patient--"in ten minutes' time. "

"I don't at all mind that, sir, " agreed the obliging Superintendent; "andthe men can follow in the cab. Any objection?"

Saxham had winced and flushed scarlet to the hair. 

"For God's sake, don't make a procession of it! Let things be kept asquiet as possible for the sake of my--family--and--my friends. " He thoughtwith agony of Mildred. They were to be married in July, unless----

The Superintendent coughed behind his glove. "The question of Bail willrest with the magistrate, of course, " he said. "But I should expect thatit would be admitted, upon responsible persons entering into the customaryrecognisances. "

Saxham rose. He had drunk the coffee, but he could not eat. "Like all therest of them, in spite of his show of coolness, " thought theSuperintendent. 

"I will ask you for time to telephone to some friends who will, I have nodoubt, be willing to give the required undertaking, and arrange for acolleague to visit my patients. You will take a glass of wine while I stepinto the next room? The telephone is there, on the writing-table. "

"And a loaded revolver in the drawer underneath, and poisons of all kindshandy on the shelves of a neat little cabinet, " thought theSuperintendent. But he said: "With pleasure, sir, only I must trouble youto put up with my company. "

A tingling thrill of revulsion ran through Saxham. He set his teeth, andconquered the furious, momentary impulse to knock down this big, burly, smooth-spoken blue-uniformed official. 

"Ah, very well. The usual procedure in cases of this kind. Please comethis way. But take a glass of wine first. There are glasses on thesideboard there, and claret and port in those decanters. "

"To your very good health, Dr. Saxham, sir, and a speedy and favourableending to--the present--difficulty. " The Superintendent emptied a bumperneatly, and with discreet relish, and followed Saxham into theconsulting-room, and once more, at the sound of the measured footfallpadding behind him over the thick carpet, the suspect's blood surged madlyto his temples, and his hands clenched until the nails drove deep into thepalms. For from that moment began the long, slow torture of watching andfollowing, and dogging by the suspicious, vigilant, observant Man In Blue. 

A Treasury Prosecution succeeded the Police-Court Inquiry, and the accusedwas formally arrested upon the criminal charge, and committed to Hollowaypending the Trial. The Trial took place before Mr. Justice Bodmin in thefollowing July, occupying five days of oppressive heat in the thrashingout 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 andslept and waked in the Valley of the Shadow of Penal Servitude. Who wasconveyed from the dock to the cell and from the cell to the dock bywarders and policemen, rumbling through back streets and unfrequented waysin a shiny prison-van. Who came at last to look upon the Owen Saxham ofthis hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crownreared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite adifferent person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocatedescribed in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of anunheard-of combination of adverse circumstances. 

Things went badly. The case against the prisoner looked extremely black. That monstrous figure of Owen Saxham, based upon an ingenious hypothesisof guilt, and plastered over with a marvellous mixture of truths andfalsities, facts and conjectures, grew uglier and more sinister every day. 

The principal witness, the bereaved husband of the hapless victim, dressedin deep mourning and neatly handled by Counsel, evoked a display ofhandkerchiefs upon his every appearance in the witness-box, from the smartSociety women seated near the Bench. Many of them had been Saxham'spatients. Several had made love to him, nearly all of them had made muchof him, and quite an appreciable number of them had asked him to beaccommodating, and render them temporarily immune against the menace ofMaternity. These had received a curt refusal, accompanied with wholesomeadvice, for which they revenged themselves now, in graceful womanlyfashion, by being quite sure the wretched man was guilty. More thanpossible, was it not? they whispered behind their palm-leaf fans: it wassultry weather, and the vendors of these made little fortunes, hawkingthem outside. Was it not more than possible that he had been the deadwoman's lover? The Crown Counsel improved on this idea. Wretched littleMrs. Bough, of infinitesimal account in Life, had become through Death aperson of importance. Much was made out of the fact that she had gone toChilworth Street some days previously to her deplorable ending, andremained closeted with Dr. Saxham for some time. He had supplied her witha bottle of medicine upon her leaving--medicine of which no memorandum wasto be found in his notes for the day. She had taken the first dose thenand there. According to the testimony of the Accused, the bottle hadcontained a harmless bromide sedative. Upon the oath of the PublicAnalyst, the same bottle, handed by the husband of the deceased woman tothe Police upon the night of her death, and now produced in Court with twoor three doses of dark liquid remaining in it, contained a powerfulsolution of ergotoxine--a much less innocent drug. Who should presume todoubt its administration by the Prisoner, when the label bore directionsin his own characteristic handwriting? Who should dare to affirm hisinnocence, seeing that to him his victim had hastened, almost in the actof death, begging him, with her expiring breath, "not to be hard on awoman, " who had ignorantly trusted him, Gentlemen of the Jury! only tofind, too late, the deceptive nature of his specious promises? A whip, cried the Bard of Avon, England's glorious, immortal Shakespeare, shouldbe placed in every honest hand to lash such scoundrels naked through theworld! Let that whip, in the honest hands of twelve good Britons, be--theverdict of guilt! The Counsel for the Crown, red-hot and perspiring, satdown mopping his streaming face, for it was tropical weather, with thewhite handkerchief of a blameless life. Irrepressible applause followed, round upon round thudding against the dingy yellow-white walls, beatingagainst the dirty barred skylight of the stifling, close-packed Court. Then the Judge interposed, and the clapping of hands and thumping of stickand sunshade ferrules upon the dirty floor died down, and the Counsel forthe Defence got up to plead for his man, who, by the way, he firmlybelieved to be guilty. 

That remembrance made the Dop Doctor merry again, this scorching night inGueldersdorp, five years later. But it was ugly mirth, especially when herecalled his agony of sympathy upon hearing, through her mother, thatMildred was ill in bed. Ah! how he hated the simpering, whispering, sneering, giggling women in Court when he pictured her, his innocentdarling, his sweet girl, suffering for love of him and sorrow for him. David, detained by onerous duties at Regimental Headquarters throughoutthe whole of the Case, wrote chilly but fraternally expressed letters onblue 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. 

It had killed them, the Dop Doctor remembered, within a few years of eachother--the hale old Squire and Madam, his Welsh wife, feared by the SouthDorset village folks for her caustic tongue, beloved for her generousheart, her liberal nature. It was Mildred who he had believed would die ifthe Verdict went against him--Mildred, who had consoled herself so quicklyand so well--Mildred, whom he had held a spotless blossom of Paradise, ayoung saint in purity and singleness of heart, in comparison with thoseother women. 

Bah! what a besotted idiot he had been! She was as they were. The noddingof their towering hats was before his eyes; the subdued titter thataccompanied their whispered comments was in his ears; the lavender, whiterose, and violet essences with which they perfumed their baths andsprinkled their clothes were in his nostrils; suffocatingly, as hisCounsel went on pleading. The intention of his trenchant cross-questioningof 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. 

Here, free and unsuspect and doing his best to send another man to PenalServitude, was the man who had all to gain by fixing the guilt upon theAccused. He had sent the woman, his mistress, to the prisoner; he hadresented the prisoner's refusal to commit or to abet a dangerous andillegal operation. He had compelled his hapless victim to submit herselfto the hands of a wretch who lived by such deeds. Possibly he had sickenedof his poor toy--he had told her as much. Possibly he had determined, by abold and daring stroke, to free himself of a wearisome burden, and letanother man pay the penalty for his own crime. The substitution of thelethal drug found in the bottle for the harmless bromide mixture given toMrs. Bough by Dr. Saxham would naturally suggest itself to such a wretch, whose calculating cleverness had been crowned with success by theculminating masterstroke, admirable in its simplicity, damnable in itsfiendish cunning, of sending the unhappy woman whose deliberate murder hehad really planned and carried out, to die upon the threshold of theinnocent victim of this diabolical plot. Let those who heard hesitatebefore they played into the hands of a villain by condemning the blamelessto suffer! Let them look at the young man before them, whose hard work hadwon him, early in life, his brilliant position as one of the recognisedpioneers of the new School of Surgery, as an admitted authority onClinical Medicine, whose wedding-bells--the handkerchiefs came out atthis--had rung to-morrow but for this harrowing and bitter stroke ofadverse Destiny. Which would they have? Let the Jury decide for Christ orBarabbas! He spoke in all reverence, because the upright, innocent, charitable, self-denying life of a diligent healer of men would supportthe analogy of Christ-likeness beside that of the principal witness inthis Case, the evil liver, the slanderer, the ex-thief and burglar, theEnglish ticket-of-leave man who had emigrated to South Africa eighteenyears previously, had enlisted under a false name in the Cape MountedPolice, had deserted, been traced to Kimberley, and there lost sight of, and who, under the name of Bough, had recently returned to England, givinghimself out as an Afrikander, and setting up in business in London uponthe accumulated savings of a career most probably in keeping with hisabominable record. 

Warders from Wormwood Scrubbs and Portland Prisons were there to swear tothe identity of Abraham Brake, _alias_ Lister, _alias_ Bough, whosephotographs, thumb-prints, and measurements an official from the CriminalIdentification Department of Scotland Yard was prepared to place beforethe Court, for whose re-arrest, as a ticket-of-leave man who had failed tokeep 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 Saxhaminnocent or guilty? If innocent, then, in the name of God, let him goforth from bondage, to the unutterable relief of those who waited inanguish for the Verdict. His father, his mother, and the fair younggirl--the Court was drowned in tears at this last touching reference, even his Lordship the Judge being observed to remove and wipe eyeglassesthat were gemmy with emotion, as Counsel dwelt upon the touching pictureof the sorrowing bride-elect, whose orange-blossoms had been blighted bythe breath of this hideous, this unbearable, this most unfoundedcharge.... 

XVI

The Judge summed up, with an evident bias in favour of the Accused. An oldadvocate in criminal causes, his Lordship had formed his own opinion ofthe principal witness for the Crown, though there was no evidence to provethe guilt of the astute Mr. Abraham Brake, _alias_ Lister, _alias_ Bough. 

The Jury retired, to return immediately. The Verdict "Not Guilty" wasreceived with applause and cheers. Bough departed, to pay the prisonpenalty of not keeping in touch with the Police.... More cheers, stronglydeprecated by the Judge. The Dop Doctor could hear that ironical clappingand braying five years off. It was over, over! He was free! Oh, themockery of the word!

His Counsel shook his hand warmly, and several old friends and colleaguespressed round him with hearty congratulations. Then a telegram was handedto him. 

"No bad news, I hope, " said the advocate who had defended, seeing Saxham'slips blanch. "You have had enough trouble to last for some time, Iimagine?"

"It appears as if my measure was not quite full enough, " said Saxhamquietly. "My father died suddenly last night, down at our place in SouthDorset. The wire says, 'An attack of cerebral hæmorrhage, ' probablybrought 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 withoutdelay. How soon can I get away from here?"

It was oddly difficult to realise that all the doors were open, and thatthe following shadow of the Man In Blue would no longer dog his footsteps. It was strange to drive home in the brougham of a friend to ChilworthStreet, and let himself into the dusty, neglected, close-smelling, shut-uphouse. All the servants were out; probably they had been making holidaythrough all the weeks that had preceded the Trial. His man returned as themaster finished packing a portmanteau for that journey down toDorsetshire. Saxham left him to finish while he changed his clothes andscrawled a letter to Mildred. Nothing else but this death could have kepthim from hurrying to the embrace of those dear arms. As it was, he halfexpected her to rush in upon him, stammering, weeping, clinging to him inher overwhelming relief and gladness.... At every rumble and stoppage ofwheels in the street, at every ring, he made sure that she was coming. Butshe did not come, and he sent his man to Pont Street with his letter, andwent down into Dorsetshire by special train from Waterloo, and found thedead man's dogcart waiting for him, with the old bay cob in harness, andthe old coachman who had taught him to ride his pony, waiting, with a bandof crape about his sleeve, and drove through the deep, ferny lanes to theold home standing in its mantle of midsummer leafage and blossom in thewide gardens whose myrtle and lavender hedges overhung the beach below. There was a little, old, bent, white-haired woman in a shabby black gownand white India shawl waiting for him on the threshold, and only by theindomitable, unquailing spirit that looked out of her bright black eyesdid Owen Saxham recognise his mother. She called him her David's dearestson, and her own boy, and took both his hands, and drew his head down, andkissed him solemnly upon the forehead. 

"That is for your father, my dear, " she said. "He never doubted you forone moment, Owen. And this is for myself. We have both believed in youimplicitly throughout. We would not even write and tell you so. It wouldhave seemed, your father thought, like admitting, tacitly, that we doubtedour son. But other people believed you guilty, and oh! Owen, I think itkilled him!"

"I know that it has killed him, " Owen Saxham said simply. The earlymorning light showed to the mother's eyes the ravages wrought in herson's face by the mental anguish and the physical strain of those terribleweeks that were over, and Mrs. Saxham, for the first time since theSquire'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 oldgrey head that lay upon the snowy, lavender-scented pillow in the cool, airy death-chamber, where the perfume of the climbing roses that floweredabout the open casements came in drifts across the sharp, clean odour ofdisinfectant. 

Captain Saxham arrived late that night. His greeting of his brother wasstiff and constrained; his grey eyes avoided Owen's blue ones; he did notrefer to the events of the past ten weeks. He had always had a habit oftwisting and biting at one of the short, thick ends of his frizzy lightbrown moustache. Now he wrenched and gnawed at it incessantly, and hisusually florid complexion had deteriorated to a muddy pallor. Black muftidid not suit the handsome martial figure, and there is no dwelling sowearisome as a house of mourning, when the servants move about on tiptoe, wearing faces of funereal solemnity, and the afternoon tea-tray is carriedin in state, like the corpse of a domestic usage on its way to thecemetery, with the silver spirit-kettle bubbling behind it as chiefmourner. But, as the elder son, there was plenty to occupy Captain Saxham. There was business to be transacted with the Squire's solicitor, with hisbailiff, with one or two of the principal tenants. There were thearrangements to be made for the Funeral, and for the extension ofhospitality to relatives and friends who came from a distance to attendit. When it was over and the long string of County carriages had drivenhome to their respective coach-houses, Owen Saxham returned to town. 

"Give my dear love to Mildred. Tell her, if she grudged the first sight ofyou to me, she will forgive me when she has a son of her own, " his mothersaid. 

"You talk as though she were my wife!" he said, the bitter lines about hisset mouth softening in a smile. 

"She would be but for what is past, " said Mrs. Saxham. "She must be soon, for your sake. Your father would have wished that there should be aslittle delay as possible. Marry quietly at once, and take her abroad. Ifshe loves you, as I know she does, and must, she will not regret thewedding-gown from Paquin's and the six bridesmaids in Directoire hats. "

For that deferred wedding was to have been a gorgeous and impressivefunction at St. George's, Hanover Square, with a Bishop in lawn sleeves topronounce the nuptial benediction, palms, Japanese lilies, smilax, andwhite Rambler roses everywhere, while the celebrated "Non Angli sedAngeli" choir of boy-choristers had been specially engaged to render theanthem with proper fervour and give due effect to "The Voice thatBreathed. "

Owen promised and went back to London. There were cards and envelopes uponthe salver in the hall, but not one from Mildred. That stabbed him to theheart.... Not a line, O God!--not a written line, in answer to that letterin which he told her of the acquittal, and of his father's death, and ofhis own anguish at having to answer the stern call of filial duty, andleave dear Love uncomforted by even one kiss after all these weeks offamine, and hurry away to lay that grand grey head in the vault thatcovered so many Saxhams. Not a line. But here was the letter, which hisidiot of a servant, demoralised by the recent catastrophe, had forgottento send on lying waiting upon the writing-table in his study. He snatchedat it in desperate haste, and tore the envelope open. 

Her letter bore the date of that day. She said she had written before andtorn the confession up ... It was so difficult to be just to him and trueto herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquentepistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, thatnothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, evermarry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, and presents, and letters, and would ever remain _his friend_ (underlined)Mildred. In a rather wobbly postscript, she begged him not to write or toattempt to see her, because her decision was irrevocable. She spelt theword with only one _r_. 

Saxham read the letter three times deliberately. The walls of the castlehe had built, and fondly believed to be a work of Cyclopean masonry, hadcome tumbling about his ears, and lo! the huge blocks were only bits ofpainted card, and the Lady of the Castle, his true love, was the falseQueen, after all. He folded up the letter and put it away in hispocket-book, and went over to the mantel-glass and looked steadily at thereflection of his own square face, haggard and drawn and ghastly, witheyes of startling blue flaring out from under a scowling smudge of meetingblack eyebrows. He laughed harshly, and a mocking devil looked out ofthose desperate eyes, and laughed back. He unlocked an oak-carved, silver-mounted cellaret, and got out a decanter of brandy, and filled atumbler, and drank the liquor off. It numbed the unbearable mental agony, though it had apparently no other effect. But probably he was drunk whenhe rang the bell and said quietly to his man:

"Tait, do you believe there is a God?"

Tait's smooth, waxy countenance did not easily express surprise. Heanswered, as though the question had been the most commonplace andordinary of queries:

"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 inHeaven 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 sayso, sir--I know the breed!"

"He knows ... The breed ... " repeated Saxham heavily. 

He asked another question, in the same thick, hesitating way, as he movedacross the carpet to the oak-and-silver cellaret. 

"Tait, when things went damned badly with you, when that other man let youin for the bill you backed for him, and that girl you were to have marriedwent off with someone else, what did you do to keep yourself frombrooding? Because you must have done something, man, as you're aliveto-day!"

Tait looked at his master dubiously as he poured out more brandy, and wentover and stood upon the hearthrug with his back to the empty fireplace, drinking it in gulps. "I did what you're doing now, sir: I took a sight ofdrink to keep the trouble down. And----" He hesitated. 

"Go on, " said Saxham, nodding over the tumbler. 

"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, agreeableyoung 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----"

"Why, you damned, white-gilled, prying brute! you must have been readingmy correspondence, " said Saxham thickly, as he lifted the tumbler to hismouth. 

Tait grinned. He could venture to tell his master, drunk, what he wouldnot have dared to tell him sober. 

"No need for that, sir. I've come and gone between this house and PontStreet too often not to know what was in the wind. Why, Captain Saxham wasthere with her often and often when you never suspected.... "

The tumbler fell from Saxham's hand, and struck the fender, and smashedinto a hundred glittering bits. 

"Go!" said Tait's master, perfectly, suddenly, dangerously sober, andpointing to the door. The man delayed to finish his sentence. 

"While you were in Holloway, sir, and all through the Trial.... "

The door, contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. Hevanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-facedblack figure seemed to leap upon him.... 

"I've 'ad an escape for my life!" he said, having reached in a series ofbounds the safer regions below stairs. 

"Of the Doctor?... Go on with your rubbishing nonsense!" said the cook. 

"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 passionfor one who should be for ever nameless:

"Her at Pont Street has wrote to give 'im the go-by--that's what she'vedone, " said pale-faced Tait, wiping his dewy brow. "And seeing the Doctorfor the first time since I've been in his service a bit overtook withliquor, and more free and easy like than customary--being a gentleman youor 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. "

"Of them two.... " interpolated the cook--"Her and the Captain?"

"Shameless, I call 'em!" exclaimed the incandescent housemaid as Taitsignified assent. 

"'Aven't they kep' it dark, though!" wondered the cook. 

"They're what I call, " stated Tait, who had not quite got over thedesertion of the young woman he was to have married, and who had gone offwith somebody else, "a precious downy couple. And what I say is--it's aRiddance!"

"How did 'e take it, pore dear?" gulped the housemaid. 

"Like he's took everythink--that is, up to the present moment, " admittedTait. "But this is about the last straw. "

The housemaid dissolved in tears. 

"He'll get another young lady, " said the cook confidently. "And him so'andsome an' so clever, an' with such heaps of carriage-swells forpatients. "

Tait shook his prim, respectable head. 

"The swells'll show their tongues to another man now, my gal, who 'asn'tthe 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. Andit'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 certainamount of cocksureness, and what I say is--Done for! Best he can dois--sell the practice, and lease, and plate, and pictures, furniture, andso on, for whatever he can get--the movables would have provoked spiritedbiddin' at auction if the verdict had been Guilty, but, under thecircumstances, they won't bring a twentieth part of their valoo--and goAbroad. " Tait's gesture was large and vague. 

"Foreign parts. Pore dear, it do seem cruel!" sighed the cook. 

"And 'is young lady false to 'im, and all. I wonder he don't do away withhisself, " sobbed the housemaid. "I do, reely!"

"With all them wicked knives and deadly bottles handy, " added the cook. 

"Not him!" said Tait. "I'm ready to lay any man the sporting odd againsthim committing sooicide. He's not the sort. Lord! what was that?"

That was only the oversetting of a chair upstairs. 

XVII

While the servants talked in the kitchen the master had been sittingquietly in the darkening study. All without and within the man waseddying, swirling blackness. Heat beat and glowed upon his forehead, likethe radiation from molten metal; there was a winnowing and fanning as ofgiant wings or leaping of furnace-fires. The blood in his throbbingtemples sang a dull, tuneless song. But presently he became aware ofanother kind of singing. 

It was a little hissing voice that came from the inside of theoak-and-silver cellaret. And it sang a song that the man who sat near hadnever heard before. 

"Why think of the sharp lancet or the keen razor, why long for the swiftdismissing pang of the fragrant acid, or the leap down upon therailway-track under the crushing, pulping iron wheels?" sang the littlevoice. "I can give you Forgetfulness. I can bring you Death. Not thatdeath of the body which, for all you know, may mean a keener, more perfectcapability to live and suffer on the part of the Soul, stripped from theearthly husk that has burdened and deadened it. The Death that is Death inLife.... Here am I, ready to be your minister. Drink deep, and die!"

The man who heard lifted his white, wild, desperate face. The song camemore clearly. 

"Wronged, outraged, betrayed of the God you blindly believed in and theman and the woman who had your passionate love, your absolute faith, haveyour 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 Beingwith the Will He forged and freed. Your Body, is it not your own, to dowith as you choose? Your Soul, is it not your helpless prisoner, while youkeep it in its cage of clay? Revenge, revenge, through the body and thesoul, upon Him who has mocked you! Do you not hear Him laugh as you sitthere desolate in the darkness--poor, broken reed that thought itself anoak of might--alone, while your brother kisses the sweet lips that wereyours. David and Mildred are laughing too, at you. Hasten to efface everymemory of the lying kisses she has given you upon the bosoms of theDaughters of Pleasure! Love, revel, drink! Drink, I say, and you will beable to laugh at the One and the two.... "

The little hissing voice drove Saxham mad. He leaped up, frenzied, oversetting the chair. He tore open and threw wide the doors of theoak-and-silver cellaret, and sought in it with shaking hands. He found abottle of champagne and the brandy-decanter, and a long tumbler, andknocked off the wired neck of the bottle against the chimneypiece, andcrashed the foaming wine into the crystal, and filled up the glass withbrandy, and tossed off the stinging, bubbling, hissing mixture, andlaughed as he set the tumbler down. 

The thing inside the oak-and-silver cellaret laughed too. 

 * * * * *

The hall-door shut heavily as Tait and the women in the kitchen sat andlistened. They had not spoken since the crash of the falling chair in theroom overhead. The area-door was open to the hot, sickly night air ofLondon in midsummer. Tait slid noiselessly out and listened as his masterhailed a passing hansom and jumped lightly in. The flaps banged together, the driver pulled open the roof-trap and leaned down to catch the shoutedaddress. Tait's sharp ear caught it too, and the knowing grin thatdecorated the features of the cabman was reflected upon his decent smugcountenance. 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. 

Thenceforwards the door would have shut for ever upon the strenuous, honourable, cleanly, useful life of Owen Saxham, were it not that the ForEver of humanity means only a little space of years with God--sometimesonly a little space of hours. Saxham did not need the evidence of theshower of cheques from people who hated paying, the request from theCommittee of his Club that he would resign membership, the averted facesof his acquaintances, the elaborate cordiality of his friends, to tell himwhat he knew already. As the astute Tait had said, as Society knewalready, he was a ruined man. He had made money, but the enormous expensesof the Defence swallowed up thousands. By bringing an action against theTreasury 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, inspite of a thinly-worded remonstrance from the Senior Physician. Hedismissed his servants generously. He disposed of his lease and furnitureand other property through a firm of auctioneers who robbed him, and soldwhat stocks he had not realised upon, and wrote a farewell letter to hismother, and sailed for South Africa. Thenceforwards he was to build hisnest with the birds of night, and rise from the stertorous sleep that isborn of drunkenness only to drink himself drunk again. 

From assiduous letter-writing friends David heard reports of his brotherthat grieved him deeply. He told these things to Mildred, and they shooktheir heads over them and sighed together. Poor Owen! It was mostfortunate for his family that the Jury had taken so lenient a view of thecase ... Otherwise ... ! They were quite certain in their own minds thatpoor Owen had been culpable, if not guilty. They were married six monthslater. 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 thatBreathed" to perfection. 

And Mildred, who never omitted her nightly prayers, made a specialpetition for the reformation of poor misguided Owen upon herwedding-night. 

"Because we are so happy, " she told David, who had found her kneeling, white and exquisitely virginal in her lace and cambric draperies by thebedside. "And _he_ must be so miserable. And you know, though I never_really_ cared for him, he was perfectly devoted to me. "

"Who could help it?" cooed enamoured David, and knelt and kissed hisbride's white feet. The white feet would show no ugly stains, although toreach the bridal bed, towards which her husband now drew her, they musttread upon his brother's bleeding heart. 

XVIII

The Dop Doctor lifted his head as the bell of the front door rang loudlyat the back passage-end. Two mounted officers of the Military Staff atGueldersdorp had trotted up the street with an orderly behind them amoment before. The elder of the two had pulled sharply up in front of thegreen door whose brass-plate flamed in the last rays of sunset. He haddismounted lightly and gone up the steps and rung, saying something to hiscompanion. The other officer had saluted and ridden on, as though to carryout some order: the orderly had come up and got off his horse and takenthe bridle of the officer's, as the Dutch dispensary-attendant, Koets, hadplodded heavily along the passage and opened the door, and now slouchedheavily back, ushering in a presumable patient. 

"Light the lamp, " said the Dop Doctor in Dutch to the factotum, as he roseup heavily out of his chair. "It will be dark directly. "

"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 theactual 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 assistantfurther?"

In indirect answer to the pointed question, the Dop Doctor turned to theDutch dispensary-assistant, and said curtly:

"Ga uit!"

Koets went, not without a scowl at the visitor. 

"A sulky man and a surly master, " thought the stranger, scanning withthose observant eyes of his the gaunt figure in the shabby tweed suit. "Has seen trouble and lived hard, " he added, mentally noting the haggardlines of the square face under the massive forehead, over which a plume ofbadly-brushed hair, black with threads of grey in it, fell awkwardly. 

"English and a University man, I should say. Those clothes were cut by aBond Street tailor in the height of fashion about five years ago. And theman is in the second stage of recovery from a bout of drunkenness--unlesshe drugs?" But even while the visitor was taking these memoranda, he wassaying in the customary tone of polite inquiry:

"I have, I think, the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Williams?"

"Sir, you have not. Dr. De Boursy-Williams has left for Cape Town with hisfamily. You are speaking to his temporary substitute. " The bloodshot blueeyes met his own indifferently. 

"Indeed! Well, I do not grudge the family if, as I believe is the case, itchiefly ranks upon the distaff side. But the Doctor will miss a good dealof interesting practice. As to yourself, you will allow the inquiry.... Are you a surgeon as well as a medical practitioner?"

"If I were not, I should not be here. "

"I will put my question differently. I trust you will not consider itsrepetition offensive. Have you an extensive experience in dealing withgunshot wounds?"

Saxham said roughly:

"I have experience to a certain extent. I will go no further than to sayso. I am not undergoing examination as to my professional capabilitiesthat I am aware of, and if you doubt them you are perfectly at liberty toseek medical advice elsewhere. "

"My good sir, I _have_ been elsewhere, and the other doctor, when helearned the purport of my visit, relished it as little as your principalis likely to do. With the imminent prospect of a siege before us, we aremaking ... " The speaker, slipping one hand behind him, moved a stepbackwards and nearer to the room-door. "As I said, sir, with the imminentprospect of a siege before us, we are making a house-to-houserequisition.... Ah, I thought as much!"

The door-knob had been quietly turned, the door suddenly pulled open, bringing with it Koets, the Dutch dispensary-attendant, whose large redear had been glued to the outer keyhole. 

"Your Dutch factotum has been listening. Pick yourself off the mat, Jan, and take yourself out of earshot. " The stranger whistled the beginning ofa pleasant little tune, with a flavour of Savoy Opera about it. 

"Ik heb not the neem of Jan, " snarled the detected Koets, retiring indisorder. 

The whistler left off in the middle of a deftly-executed embellishment tosay: "Unfortunate; because I don't know the Dutch word for spy. " The keenhazel eyes and the haggard blue ones met, and there was the faintsemblance of a smile on the grim mouth of the Dop Doctor. Keeping the dooropen, the visitor went on:

"I have some notes here--entries copied from the Railway freight-books. Three weeks ago twenty carboys of carbolic acid, with a considerableconsignment of other antiseptics, surgical necessaries, drugs, and soforth were delivered to Dr. Williams' order at this address. Frankly, asthe officer commanding Her Majesty's troops on this border, I am here tomake a sequestration of the things I have mentioned, with all othermedical and surgical requisites stored upon the premises, that are likelyto be of use to us at the Hospital. In the name of the ImperialGovernment. "

The smile died out on the grim mouth. A sombre anger burned in the blueeyes of the haggard man in shabby tweeds. 

"Damn the Imperial Government!" said the Dop Doctor. 

The stranger nodded in serious assent. "Certainly, damn it! It is yourprivilege and mine, shared in common with all other Britons, to damn ourGovernment, as long as we remain loyal to our Queen and country. "

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:

"You employ the stock phrases of your profession. They have long ceased tomean anything to me. I have been the victim and the sacrifice of Britishlaws. I have been formally pardoned by the State for a crime I nevercommitted. I have been robbed, plundered, ruined, betrayed, by themonstrous thing that bears the name of British Justice. And as I loatheand hate it, so do I cast off and repudiate the name of Englishman. Youspeak of the imminent prospect of a siege. What other causes have operatedto bring it about but British greed, and the British lust for paramountcyand suzerainty and possession? Liberal, or Conservative, or Radical, orUnionist, the diplomats and lawyers and financiers who urge on yourpolitical machinery by bombast and bribes and catchwords and lyingpromises, are swayed by one motive--governed by one desire--lands anddiamonds and gold. Wealth that is the property of other men, soil that hasbeen fertilised by the sweat of a nation of agriculturists, whom GreatBritain despised until she learned that gold lay under their orchards andcornfields. " He broke into a jarring laugh. "And it is for these, therobbers and desperadoes, that the British Army is to do its duty, and forthem that De Boursy-Williams is to help pay the piper. As for hisproperty, which you are about to commandeer in the name of the BritishImperial Government, I suppose I am legally responsible, being left herein charge. Well, be it so!... I can only protest against what I am free toregard as an act of brigandage, reflecting small credit upon your Service, and leave you, sir, to discover the whereabouts of the carboys foryourself!"

He waved his hand contemptuously, and swung towards the door. 

"A moment, " said the other man, "in which to assure you that the fullestacknowledgments will be given in the case of the stores, and that theirowner will be paid for them liberally and ungrudgingly. And, grantingthat much of what you have said is true, and that the leaven ofself-seeking is to be found in every man's nature, and that greed is thepredominating motive with those men who, more than others, work for thebuilding-up of an Empire and the profitable union of Britain with herColonies, don't you think that there may be something in the good oldfootballer's motto, 'Play the game, that your side may win'?"

The Dop Doctor made a slight sound that might have been of indifferentassent or of contradiction. The other chose to take it as assent. 

"Take the present situation, purely as football. They have picked me as aforward player. And I mean--to play the game!"

The Dop Doctor might or might not have heard. His square, impassive facelooked as if carved in stone. 

"To play the game, Doctor. Perhaps I have my bone or two to pickwith--several of the Institutions of my country. Possibly, but I mean toplay the game. Fate has ridden me on a saddle-gall or two, and mixed toomuch chopped straw in proportion to the beans, but--there's the game, andI'm going to play it for all I'm worth. As an old University man, that wayof looking at things ought to appeal to you. "

Still no answer from the big, sullen, black-haired man in the shabby wornclothes. But his breathing was a little quickened, and a faint, smouldering glow of something not yet quenched in him showed in thehaggard blue eyes. 

"It's a confoundedly handicapped game, too, on the defending side. Doesn'tthat fact rather appeal to the sportsman in you, Doctor?"

The other said slowly:

"I gather that the struggle will be unequal. It was stated in my hearingyesterday afternoon that a considerable force of Boers were advancing onGueldersdorp from the direction of Geitfontein, and, later, that anotherlarge 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. Iwas--otherwise engaged. " The half-incredulous surprise that the other mancould not keep out of his eyes stung him into adding: "Frankly, I did notcare to trouble. It did not interest me. "

The Colonel said, with a dry chuckle:

"No? But it will presently, though! And, seen through the glass even now, it's an instructive spectacle. Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed andthoroughly fed if insufficiently washed, gathering in allquarters--marching to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, goinginto laager. Ten thousand Boers, at a rough estimate, not counting theblacks they have armed against us.... And, behind our railway-sleepers andsand-bags, eight hundred fighting European units, twenty per cent, of themraw civilians; and seven thousand neutral Barala and Kaffirs and Zulus inthe native Stad--an element of danger lying dormant, waiting the sparkthat may hurry us all sky-high.... By God, Doctor, the game's worthplaying, except by cowards and curs!"

The smouldering glow in the Dop Doctor's eyes had been fanned into a fire. The visitor saw the flame leap, and went on:

"There's a native proverb--I wonder whether you know it?--a kind of Zuluversion of the regimental motto, _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_. It runs likethis: '_If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die. Better goforward and die. _'" He reached out a long, lean, brown right hand. "Comeforward with us, Doctor. We can do with a man like you!"

The impassive face broke up. Saxham gripped the offered hand as a drowningman might have done. He cried out hoarsely:

"You don't know the sort of man I am, Colonel. But everybody else in thiscursed place knows, or should know. They call me the Dop Doctor. Youunderstand what that nickname implies?" He held out his shaking hands. "Look at these! They would tell you the truth, even if I lied. What usecan a man like me be to you, or men like you? I am a drunkard, sir. I havenot gone to bed sober one night in the last five years!"

There was a pause before the Colonel answered, filled up in the odd waycharacteristic of the man by a softly-whistled repetition of the openingbars of the pleasant little tune. Then he said quietly and dryly:

"There is another proverb, not Latin nor Zulu, but English, whichimpresses on us that it is never too late to mend!" He looked at atarnished Waterbury watch, worn on a horse's lip-strap. "I am due toinspect the Hospital tomorrow at ten o'clock sharp. If you will meet methere punctually at the half-hour, I shall have the pleasure ofintroducing you to--your Colleagues of the Medical Staff. And now, if youplease, as I have just five minutes left to spare, we will have a look atthose carboys of carbolic. "

"They are in the old Chinese godown at the bottom of the garden, " saidSaxham. He felt in one of the baggy pockets of the old tweed coat, pulledout a key, and offered it silently to the conqueror, who motioned it back. 

"Keep it, if you'll be so good. We'll send a waggon and a careful man ortwo round from the Army Service Stores Department within an hour; for thatstuff in your friend's carboys is more precious than rubies to us justnow--a man's life in every teaspoonful. And if, as you tell me, there issome mercurial perchloride, Taggart and the Medical Staff will jump forjoy. What we owe to Lister, Koch, and those fellows! You'd say so if you'dever seen gangrene on War Hospital scale--in Afghanistan, in 1880, even asrecently as the Zululand Campaign of 1888. The Pathan and the Zulu areslim, and the Boer is even slimmer, but the wiliest customer of 'em all isthe Microbe. No wonder Wellington's old campaigners used to slit thethroats of badly-wounded soldiers, or that the ambulance-men of Soult andBonaparte were merciful enough to knock on the head every poor beggar whohad been bayonetted in the body. They knew there was not the atom of achance. But to-day we know how to deal with the invisible enemy. Thanks toAntiseptic Surgery, that younger daughter of Science and Genius, as somesmart fellow puts it in the _National Review_. "

And the pleasant little tune was whistled through to its final grace-noteas 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 beengiven to be fishers of their kind! This man said that night to an officerof the Staff:

XIX

"I landed twenty carboys of carbolic to-day, and a lot of other Hospitalstores, by talking football to a man who knows the game, chiefly from theball's point of view. "

"That counts to you, Colonel, " called out Beauvayse, the Chief's fair, boyish junior aide-de-camp, from the bottom of the table, "against theawful failure you were grousing about this morning. "

"Ah! you mean when I tried to frighten some Sisters of Mercy into leavingthe town by painting them a luridly-coloured verbal picture of the perilsof the present situation, " said the Colonel. His keen hazel eyes twinkled, though his mouth was grave. "I ought to have remembered that you can'tscare 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 forthe others Death's grisly skeleton-hand holds out the Keys of Heaven. "

"What will it hold for some of us others, I wonder, " said one of thedinner-guests, a moody-looking civilian, of Semitic features, whoseevening clothes made a dull contrast with the mess-dress of the Staffofficers gathered about their Chief's table in his quarters at Nixey'sHotel on the Market Square, "before this month is out?"

The host leaned forward to reply:

"My dear Mr. Levison ... Special mention in Despatches Above, with honoursand promotion for those of us who have been approved worthy. For others, who have tried and failed, a merciful overlooking of blunders, a generousacceptance of the intention where the performance came short.... And forthe rest ... A grave on the yellow veld in the shadow of a rock orthorn-bush, with the turquoise sky of day overhead, shimmering in thewhite-hot sunshine; or an ocean of purple ether, ridden by what old Luciancalled 'the golden galley of the regnant Moon. ' That in South Africa; andat home in England, one's memory kept warm and living in, say, threehearts that recognised the best in one, and loved it. A mother's heart, the heart of a friend--and _hers_!"

There was no insincerity of flattery in the hum of applauding comment thatensued. All earnest original thought has beauty; and this man could notonly think, but clothe his thoughts in direct and simple language, and addto it the charm of well-modulated and musical utterance. 

"I call that good enough, " said the senior Staff Officer, a dark, handsome, eagle-faced Guardsman, who bore a great historic name, "for youor me or any other fellow here--we're not taking into account the livingdead ones. "

The Chief leaned forward in his characteristic attitude, and spoke, along, lean brown forefinger emphasising the sentences, his hawk-keenglance driving them home. "I tell you, Leighbury, that some of those, therottenest corpses among 'em, will shed their grave-clothes, and rise upand do the deeds of living men before, to quote Levison, this month isout. Never take it for granted that a man is dead until the grass isgrowing 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 anuncanny sight. "

"Whose were the bones, Colonel?" called out the handsome young aide at thebottom of the table. 

The host, his thin, brown fingers busy at the clipped moustache, waslistening to the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, who sat upon his right. Hewithdrew his attentive eyes from that stalwart sportsman's broad, ruddycountenance, to glance smilingly at the fair, handsome face, and reply:

"Whose? Well, up to the present they have belonged to the Dop Doctor. "

"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 portlyshoulders. "Surely you know who the fellow is, Colonel? He drifted up herefrom Cape Colony three years ago. A capable--confoundedly capable man, handicapped by a severe muscular strain, " the Mayor's twinkling eyeheralded the resurrection of an ancient jest--"contracted in lifting acask of whisky--a glass at a time!"

White teeth flashed in alert tanned faces. The schoolboy laugh went roundthe table; then the Babel of talk rose up again. Most of these men werequite young ... Their seniors barely middle-aged, not a man but was whatthey themselves would have termed both "fit" and "keen. " They had wroughtfor many days in the erection of sand-bag defences, in the digging oftrenches, in the drilling of Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers andthe newly-enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time of lullbefore the storm, and they were not to get many more good dinners orpeaceful nights in bed for a long siege to come. They did not showoutwardly the tension of strung nerves that waited, as the whole worldwaited, for the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills tothe south. Nor did it occur to them that there was anything heroic ordramatic in their quiet unaffected pose. Gathered together upon one littlespot of border earth destined to be the vital, tragic, throbbing centre ofgreat events and tremendous issues, actions glorious, and deeds scarceparalleled upon the page of History, let us look upon them, well-groomed, well-bred, easy-mannered, cheery, demolishing the good dishes furnished bythe _chef_ of Nixey's Hotel, with the hungry zest of schoolboys, exchanging fusillades of not very brilliant chaff. 

Scraps of scientific and technical conversation with reference totelephonic and telegraphic installations between outlying forts andheadquarters, electric communication with mines, automaticwarning-apparatus, the most effective methods of constructing bomb-proofshelters, the comparative merits of Maxim and Nordenfeldt, crossed in theair like fragments of bursting projectiles, impelled by those admirableengines 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 andRanelagh, Maidenhead and Henley, Eton and Oxford, Sandhurst and Aldershot, Piccadilly in the season, Simla in the heats, the results for Kempton Parkand Newmarket Races--of all these they talked, with rhino and elephantshooting and the big battues of pheasants now taking place in the HomeMidlands and up North. But though the watch-fires of their pickets burnedupon the veld, and though the Boer lay in laager over the Border, of himthey said not one word. That reticence upon the vital point wascharacteristically English. The excitable Gaul would have wept, kneadedhis manly bosom, and alluded to his mother; the stolid Muscovite wouldhave wept also, referring to his Little Father, the Czar; the Teuton wouldhave poured forth oceans of turgid sentiment about the Fatherland; thedignified Spaniard would have recognised himself as a warrior upon theverge of a Homeric struggle, and said so candidly; the hysterical Americanwould have sung "Hail, Columbia!" and waved pocket-handkerchief-sizedreplicas of the Star-Spangled Banner until too exhausted to agitate orvocalise. But to these men indulgence in sentiment was "bad form, " andunrestrained patriotic utterance merely "gas, " tainting the air with anodour as of election-eggs or sulphuretted hydrogen. Therefore were manywords to be avoided. 

A pose, if you will, an affectation, this studied avoidance of allappearance of enthusiasm or excitement; showing the weak spot in thearmour of these heroes, henceforth to be of epic fame. But Man isessentially a weak being. It is only when the immortal spirit of himnerves the frame of perishable bone and muscle that he rises to heightsthat are sublime. Such souls of fire burned within these men, that whenthe Wind of Death blew coldest and the lead-and-iron hail beat hardest, they only glowed more fiercely radiant; and Want and Privation, instead ofweakening, only seemed to make them more strong;--strong to endure, strongto foresee plots and avert perils and oppose wit to cunning, and strategyto deceit; so strong that, by reason of their strength, that littlefrontier town became a fortress of Titans. And their names, other thanthose I have given them in this story, shall go ringing down the groovesof Time, until Time itself shall be no more. 

XX

While they ate and drank, laughed, and chatted, the man who was to betheir comrade, sharer in all those perils and privations yet to come, wastramping up and down the bare boards of the dingy bedchamber in HarrisStreet, wrestling desperately with his tragic thirst. 

"Why did he come and look at me, and take me by the hand, and awaken mydeadened senses to the sting of anguish that has no name? Why could he nothave left me alone in this living death I had attained!" he cried. "Whenfirst I took to the infernal, blessed liquor, it was for the sake ofrespite from mental pain, torture unbearable. Then I was a man, onlyunhappy. Now I am lower than the lowest of the sensible, cleanly, decentbrutes, because I desire the drink for its own sake, and findgratification in physical degradation. O God, if Thou indeed art, and Imust perforce return to live the life of a man amongst men, help to burstthe chains that fetter me! Help me to be free!"

He swallowed a great draught of water, and stumbled to the unused bed, andthrew himself across it, raging and panting, and defiant of the very Powerhe invoked. And then, against hope, sleep came to him, drowning memory andobliterating thought, and relieving physical suffering. The lines smoothedout of the heavy forehead, and the grim mouth relaxed in the smile thathis dead mother had kissed, coming in with the shaded candle to look ather sleeping boy. 

Just as the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, that stalwart Yorkshireman, mightyhunter of elephant, rhino, giraffe, and lion in the reckless days ofbloodshed that were before the introduction of the Game Laws into SouthAfrica, was saying to the Colonel:

"Irreclaimable, sir. Hopeless! A confirmed drunkard, who has soaked awayall self-respect, who has been cautioned and warned and fined a score oftimes, by myself and other magistrates. Dr. De Boursy-Williams, ourleading practitioner here, has taken the fellow under his wing, in amanner--bails him out when it is necessary, and, I believe, when the manis sober enough, gives him work in his dispensary and allows him toadminister the anæsthetic when it's a question of a surgical operation. Wonder he trusts him, for my part! Yet De Boursy-Williams is a remarkablysuccessful operator, and hardly ever loses a case. It is unfortunate thathe should have been called away to Cape Town at this juncture. "

"He has left Dr. Saxham as _locum tenens_, I understand. "

The Mayor shrugged his portly shoulders

"As to his qualifications, there's no doubt. Ranked high at one time as aLondon West End specialist. I have seen his name myself in a BritishMedical Directory of some years back as principal visiting-surgeon to St. Stephen's and the Ludgate Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. Has writtenbooks--scientific works that are quoted now. Must have been making moneyhand-over-hand when the collapse came. The usual thing--one slip--and aPolice-court Inquiry follows, and down goes the unlucky wretch with theCrown 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 havingbeen a prosecution was enough to ruin Saxham professionally. Ah, I thoughtyou must have heard the name!"

For the listener had moved suddenly. He did remember the name of thedistinguished London practitioner who had been discreditably mixed up inthe case of Mrs. Bough, the young, miserable, murdered creature, who mightpossibly have been the daughter of Richard Mildare. Tough and cool as histried nerves were, he shuddered at the thought, and a sickly heat made thepoints of perspiration stand out upon his forehead. But the Mayor, goodman, was prosing on:

"I can't say the facts of the case are very clear in my recollection, butI have a file of the _Daily Wire_ at home, extending over six years back, so the Criminal Court proceedings must be reported in it. The woman'sname, I do remember, was Bough. As regards her age, now you ask me"--forthe Colonel had put a quick question--"I fancy she must have beentwenty-two or three. Indeed, I am almost certain that was the age asstated by the Medical Witness for the Prosecution.... However, I'll gointo the reports and let you know for certain. "

"Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, in case those _Daily Wire_ files arebomb-proof, possibly it would be better to take the family with you--andstop until times improve. "

"Not bad, not half bad, Colonel! But to tell the truth, I wouldn't misswhat 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, ifI am in the sere and yellow sixties. " The Mayor was slightly ruffled; thediplomatic touch smoothed him down. 

"My money is on you, Mr. Mayor, when it comes to stopping a Boer with arifle-bullet at four hundred yards. By the way, I have a little confidenceto repose in you. When you meet--as I am convinced you will meet--Dr. Saxham at the Hospital or elsewhere, metaphorically clothed and in hisright mind, and in the active discharge of duties which no man, judging byyour own testimony, is better fitted to perform, let him down gently. "

The Mayor, conscious of civic dignity and magisterial warnings from theBench ignored, swelled obviously. 

"My dear sir, you can't let the Dop Doctor down anyhow. He is--just aboutas low as a man can get--short of being underground. "

"Lend him a hand up--in the first instance--by forgetting that confoundednickname which I was clumsy enough to blurt out just now. Be oblivious ofwhat he is, because of what he has been in the past, and will be in thefuture. For there is tremendous stuff in the fellow even now--or I am abad judge of men. "

"Colonel, you're a thundering bad judge of drunkards, from the Bench'spoint of view, but you'd be a damned good special pleader for a client inneed of all the excuses that could be trumped up for him. "

"We all have something we'd like to have an excuse for, Mr. Mayor. " Thekeen hawk-eyes held a twinkle in reserve. "There was a man I knew, amighty hunter before the Lord--and before the Game Laws. " The thin brownfingers of the muscular hard-palmed hand played with the stem of awineglass as the sentences came out, crisp and pointed. "Well, this is thestory of a mistake, and an old _shikari_ of your experience can find evenmore excuses for it than I can ... But perhaps I bore you?"

"On the contrary--on the contrary, sir. "

The fish had taken the bait, remained to play the quivering captive untilhis last swirling struggle brought him within reach of the skilful dip andlift of the angler's net. 

"It was about four years ago, in the Portuguese coast-lands, South of theZambesi, where elephants are to be had, and rhino, particularly theKeitloa variety with the long posterior horn, and a bad habit of chargingthe man behind the 600 bore.... "

Mr. Mayor's capacious white waistcoat was agitated by a subterraneanchuckle. His double chin shook merrily. "A side shot through thehead--solid bullet--is the best cure for that, Colonel. But you had towait in the high swamp-grass and keep the wind of him, and make sure ofyour aim. "

"Quite so. This man, from the shelter of a rock, waited to make sure ofhis 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 forwardlunge of the brute's head--and the hunter could get that side-shot. Forthat he waited, patience being, as we know, a virtue to be cultivated bythe successful stalker of big game----"

The Mayor, boiled prawn-pink to the receding boundary-line of his uprightwhite hair, coughed awkwardly. 

"The man waited two hours. Then the unclad and obese native lady, carryinga long pointed grass-basket on her back, who had squatted down in the highgrass to smoke a pipe and administer maternal refreshment to a shiny blackpiccannin of three or four----!"

The Mayor, purple now, burst out:

"Got up and went on! And, if these boys of yours get wind of that story, Ishall be roasted within an inch of my life. Whoever told you? For the loveof Heaven, don't give me away!"

The keen eyes, were dancing now--the big fish had fairly got the gaff. 

"I promise, Mr. Mayor, upon the understanding that you don't give away myman.... It's a compact? Thanks tremendously! And here comes the Managerto be congratulated upon the haunch. I never tasted better venison, Mr. Nixey, though, as you say, this is rather far North for koodoo. And thequail were beyond praise. Waiter, a glass for Mr. Nixey.... Port--andwe're going to ask you to join us in drinking a toast.... "

The beautiful, flushed boy rose solemnly, glass in hand. About the longboard, adorned with a fine epergne full of roses, Cape jessamine andpurple bougainvillea, spread with Nixey's best plate and linen, crystal, and dishes of Staffordshire china piled with golden mandarins, andloquats, the fruit of October; there was a great uprising of thosephlegmatic, self-contained Britons. Straight as the flames of unblowntorches, they burned about the table. And with a simultaneous movement allthose eyes of varied colours turned to the lean brown face of the Chief, as the sweet young clarion rang out:

"Gentlemen--the Queen!"

The brimming glasses rose high, --one crystal wave with the crimson ofblood in it. The resonant English and the thinner Colonial voices answeredtogether 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 toEngland, throbbing to the steps of the Throne where She sat, bowed withgreat griefs and great joys and great triumphs and glories, andwhite-haired with the full burden of her venerable years. 

"The Queen!"

XXI

They lingered not long over wine and cigars. Lady Hannah Wrynche, entertaining what she disdainfully termed a "hen party" in her privaterooms at Nixey's, vacated in her honour by the landlord's wife--expectedthem to coffee. Much to the relief of the military authorities at CapeTown, Milady, most erratic of Society meteors, had quitted that centre ofpainstaking official misinformation, for the throbbing spot of debatableland whence events might be gathered as they sprang. Shooting across theorbit of the reddening, low-hanging War-planet, she had descended uponGueldersdorp in a shower of baggage-trunks, fox-terriers, andinterrogations. For one thing, she explained to everybody, she hadundertaken to supply a London Daily with a series of articles, writtenfrom the Seat of Hostilities, and for another, Bingo was on the Staff, andit would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his wife near him in casehe happened to get ... Was "chipped" the proper technical term, or"potted"? The articles were intended to be the real thing--racy of thesoil, don't you know? and full of "go" and atmosphere. Let it be said herethat they achieved raciness. The London print in which they appeared cameto be christened by the scoffer and the incredulous the _Daily Whale_--itswallowed and disgorged so many of the Jonahs rejected by other editors. But the profits increased, and the proprietors could afford to smile atenvy. 

Just now the insatiable gold fountain-pen from whence our indefatigableLady Correspondent derived her literary pseudonym, was employed inrecording merest gossip, in the absence of the longed-for opportunity forits 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 _The Thunderbolt_, War Correspondent, financial expert, political leader-writer, and diplomatic go-between when Cabinet Ministersand Empire-builders would arrive at understandings, the serfdom of sex, the trammels of the petticoat, may have been said to weigh as lightly uponthis thrice-fortunate spinster as though it were no drawback to be adaughter of Eve. 

Oh! prayed Lady Hannah, for the chance of proving that another woman canequal this brilliant feminine Phoenix! Meanwhile her bright eyes and quicksense of humour took note of the toilettes of some of her guests, wivesand daughters of notable citizens who had not hurried South at the firstmutterings of the storm. The purple satin worn by the Mayoress tickled herno less than the unfeigned horror of its wearer when offered from herhostess's châtelaine cigarette-case the choicest of Sobranies. LadyHannah's laugh was the rattling of a mischievous boy's stick across hissister's piano-wires, and the metallic jangle preceded her assurance thateverybody did it--all women in Society, at least, and you were thoughtodd if you didn't. After dinner, in the most exclusive houses, the mostrigid of hostesses invariably allowed their women guests to smoke. Theyknew people worth having wouldn't come if they weren't allowed to. 

"Never beneath my roof!" gasped the shocked and scandalised wearer of thepurple splendours demanded of the wife of a Chief Magistrate. "Never at mytable!" Of course, the agitated Mayoress went on to say, one had heard ofthe doings of the Smart Set. But one had hoped it wasn't true, or, atleast, had been very much exaggerated by "writing-people. " The Mayoress, though a mild woman, had her sting. 

Lady Hannah, immensely tickled to find the morals of Bayswater rampant, asshe afterwards expressed it, in the centre of South Africa, cackled as shehelped herself to a second liqueur-glass of Nixey's excellentapricot-brandy. Small, thin, restless, she presented a parched appearance, with bright, round, beady eyes continually roving in search of informationfrom beneath the straggling fringe of a crumpled Pompadour transformation, for those horrors had recently become fashionable, and the whole world ofwomen were vying with one another in the simulation of the criminal typeof skull, with the Dolichocephalic Bulge. 

"My dear lady, tobacco-ash is an excellent thing for killing moth incarpets, and Time, --when one is compelled to bestow it upon dull people;and a perfectly healthy, Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortablelodger. But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, it's aquestion how long both British institutions remain intact, with those bigguns getting into position round us.... " She waved her small hand, itsonce well-tended nails superbly ignored, its sun-cracks neglected, itsload of South African diamonds coruscating magnificently in the light ofNixey's electric bulbs, and shrugged her thin, vivacious shoulders. 

The entrance of the gentlemen relieved the situation. Lady Hannah jumpedup and rushed at the Colonel. "As if she meant to eat the man, " theMayoress said afterwards, in the shadow of that threatened roof. But, impervious to the entreaty of the bright black eyes and the glitteringhand that gesticulated with the urgent fan, he bowed, smiled, said a fewpleasant words to his hostess, and walked "straight across"--as theMayoress afterwards confided to the Mayor--to take a seat beside thelarge, placid, matronly figure palpitating in purple satin on an importedMaple sofa. 

Pleased and flattered, she made room for him, while Lady Hannah became thegossip-centre of a knot of Mess uniforms.... 

"Both babies well?" It would have been unlike him not to have rememberedthat he had seen children at her house. "Hammy and Berta made greatfriends with me the other day.... Tell them I haven't forgotten thepromise to rummage up some odd native toys I picked up in Rhodesia--madeof mud and feathers and bits of fur and queerly-shaped seed-pods--the mostenchanting 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 whobuilt a house of reeds and skins that floated.... The North AmericanIndians will tell you that it was a Big Medicine Canoe, and amongst thetribes of the Nilghiri Hills you find exactly the same story that theChaldean scribes wrote on their tablets of clay. To-day in EasternKurdistan they'll point you out the peak on which the Ark grounded. TheArmenians hold it was Ararat.... It's curious how the root-legend crops upeverywhere.... "

"But of course it must. " Her good, calm eyes showed surprise, and herbroad, white, matronly bosom was a little fluttered. "Doesn't the Bibleteach us that the Deluge covered the whole earth? Even Hammy and Berta cantell you the whole story about Noah, and the raven--and the dove. "

He smoothed his moustache with a palm that wiped the smile out. 

"I must get them to tell it me one of these days. " The twinkle in his eyewas not to be repressed. "It would save such a deal of trouble to believethere was only one Noah, and only one Ark, don't you know?"

Her motherly bosom panted. 

"_My_ children shall _never_ believe anything else!"

He was grave and sympathetic, though a muscle in his thin cheek twitched. 

"I believe the toy Ark of our happy childish memories is built, if not ofgopher-wood, at least upon the lines laid down in Scripture. Has Hammyever tried to get his to float? Mine invariably used to sink--straight tothe bottom of the bath. Perhaps that continually-recurrent catastrophe hadsomething to do with the sapping of my infant faith, or the establishmentof a sinking-fund of doubt regarding the veracity of the Noachianreporter?"

She leaned towards him, her placid grey eyes dilating with pity for thisman. 

"You ought to come and sit under our minister Mr. Oddris, on Sundays. Praydo. He would convince you if anybody could. Such an eloquent, able, well-informed man, and so _truly pious_ and _brave_!"

The laugh perforce escaped him. The convincing Apostle Oddris had calledon him at official headquarters that day, to inquire whether, as the saidOddris's wife and children were going to the Women's Laager, his place asa husband and father was not by their side? Being informed thatable-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 shelterto be erected in his back-yard. 

"I had rather sit under Hammy and hear about Noah, with Berta on the otherknee. "

Her heart went out wholly to him.... 'Out of the mouths of babes. ' ... Wasn't _that_ one of the texts with promise?... 

"You love children?"

"Bless the little beggars!" he said heartily, "they're the jolliestcompany in the world. "

She leaned towards him, palpitating between her shyness of the Commanderof the Garrison and her womanly curiosity to know more about the man. 

"Hammond--the Mayor has told me--I hope it is not indiscreet to mentionit--that the first thing you did, on joining your regiment in India as ayoung subaltern, was to gather all the European children in cantonmentstogether and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left BehindMe' on the flute. "

His brow grew black as thunder. The utterance came, terse and sharp. 

"Ma'am, you have been gravely misinformed. "

She jumped in terror. 

"Oh!... Can it be?... Colonel, I do so beg you to forgive me! Let meassure you that neither the Mayor nor myself will ever again repeat thestory. "

"Ma'am, if you do ... "

"But I promise, never ... "

"Ma'am, if you never do, at least remember that the flute was an ocarina. "

He left the good soul in an ecstasy of giggles, and crossed to LadyHannah. She welcomed him with a glitter of eyes and teeth and discoveredthe reserve-chair that had been covered by her somewhat fatigued andwilted draperies of maize Liberty-silk, veiled with black Maltese lace. 

"What it is to be a man of tact! You've made that purple creatureperfectly happy. Don't say you're going to be less kind to another woman!"

She tapped with a reproachful fan the scarlet sleeve of his thin sergemess-jacket, her appraising eye busy with the badges worn on the darkgreen roll-collar and the miniature medals and star. If a clever womancould be the confidante of a Cabinet Minister, the post of right-hand tothe Officer Commanding H. M. Forces in Gueldersdorp might be won. And thenthe world would know what Hannah Wrynche was born for. What was he saying?

"I never warn my victims beforehand. "

"Sphinx! and I hoped to find you in the relenting mood!"

"If possible, ma'am, my granite bosom is more unyielding than on the lastoccasion when ... "

"Do go on!" said the fan. 

"When you tried to tap it. "

"You're all alike. " She sighed. "That is, you give the keynote, and theothers take up the tune. Even Bingo--Bingo, whom I firmly believedincapable of keeping a secret in which his dearest interests wereconcerned longer than ten minutes--Bingo has sprung a surprise on me. Ishall end by falling in love with my own husband--such an indecent thingto do after seven years of married life!"

"Fortunately, the scene of your lapse from the crooked path of custom isdistant from the West End of London nearly seven thousand miles. And youcan rely upon me for secrecy. "

"Ah, that!... If only you _did_ 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 myreputation as a Special Correspondent----"

"Drive over and call on General Brounckers at Head Laager, Geitfontein, onthe Border, early to-morrow. Perhaps he would oblige you with matter for aparagraph, and forward the cable by private wire?"

Her birdlike eyes were bright on him. 

"I would go if I thought I could get anything by going. Specialinformation--with reference to a Plan of Attack. Oh! if you knew how I'mdying to be really under fire. To hear bullets zip-zip--isn't that thesound?--as they strike the ground or walls, and shells scream overhead!"

She clasped her sunburnt little jewelled hands in affected ecstasy. Hiseyes were stern, and the lines about his mouth deepened. 

"Pray to-night that you may never hear those sounds you speak of!"

She struck an exaggerated attitude of horrified consternation. 

"But no! Why am I here?"

"The Lord only knows. I've seen a hen peck at a lump of dynamite.... "

"Ah, you never will take me seriously. But own in your secret heart you'reas much afraid as I am that a Relieving Column will be sent downfrom----Do tell me again where Grumer is with the Brigade? Uli, in UpperRhodesia--thanks! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend of Bingo's, and anold flame of mine. But--to burst our lovely peacock bubble of Siege andlet the whole situation down, _sans coup férir_, into muddycommonplace--may Grumer never come!" She held up her coffee-cup, and drankthe toast. 

"Only for the women and children here, " he said, and his thin nostrilsmoved to the measure of his quickened breathing, and a hot spark glowedin his keen eyes, "I'd have joined you in that. But under the presentcircumstances--I'd give five years of life--and I love life!--if ourlookouts could pick up Grumer's Advance by the time grey dawn creeps upthe east again. "

She was incredulous. 

"You, who said when you got orders to sail for South Africa--I have it onthe authority of your Henley hostess--'I hope they'll give me a warmcorner'!"

"I did say--just that. And I meant it. "

His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. She went on:

"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 theRailway siding, ready for business. And the earthworks! And thetrek-waggon barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed withcorrugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, the iron skullthat's to hold the working brain of the place ... With undergroundtelegraphic and telephonic communications with all the forts and outposts. It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... Ithought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expectation that theschoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for thecurtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given itto me--you and our friends out there!" She waved the dry little glitteringhand. "And you can talk in cold blood of marching out--and leaving thehive--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 howto play it in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers andDominions looking on. Preserve us! Oh, to be in your shoes this minute, ifonly for one week! But as I can't, it's you I hope to see riding thewhirlwind and directing the storm. Not only for my own sake and thewretched paper's--though, mind you, I don't pretend to be anything but amercenary, calculating worldly creature ... "

His eyes were very kind. 

"Bingo knows better!"

Her laugh did not jangle this time. 

"Lady Grasby, that vitriol-tongued water-nymph, as somebody clever oncecalled her, said that if Bingo got killed by any chance, I should sit downand 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 Iknow you only pretend to despise, I found the son of a mutual acquaintancedying in the Hospital here. You know the Bishop of H ... ?"

"His eldest son, Major Fraithorn, was my senior when I was AssistantMilitary Secretary at Gibraltar in '90. And the Bishop is quite a dearcrony of my mother's. "

"The Bishop, " she said, "was always a person of excellent goodtaste--except when he cut off his second son, Julius, with two hundred ayear for turning Anglican, wearing a soft hat and Roman collars, andjoining the staff at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street West asJunior Curate. "

"St. Margaret's. I know the church. Often go there when I'm at home. "

"It's the Halfway House to Rome, according to the Bishop, who won't becontent with running at every red rag of Ritualism that flutters in hisown diocese, but keeps up the character of belligerent Broad Churchman bywriting pamphlets and asking questions in the House of Lords withreference to affairs which are the business of other people. According tohim, the red cassocks of the acolytes at St. Margaret's are cut out of thevery skirts of the Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and hiscurates--they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice--are wolves inwool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the liberties of the Church. _Punch_ published a cartoon of the Bishop shutting his eyes and chargingat a windmill in a cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string ofProtestant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, Scotland, and Walesthis season, with acetylene-lantern pictures from Foxe's 'Book ofMartyrs, ' and a lecturer to point the morals and adorn the tales.... Butif he could see his Mary's boy to-day, he'd put up with any amount offelt-basin hats and Roman collars, and incense and altar-genuflectionswouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh! it's been a sore with me this many ayear, but when I saw him to-day I said, 'Thank God I never had a child!'Because to have seen a boy or girl grow up and wither away as thatbeautiful young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must shudderto look back upon, even when she has found her lost one again in Heaven. "

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 withsympathetic interest. 

"The Bishop will be obliged to you for finding this out. No hint of it hadreached me. I am due at the Hospital in the morning, and we'll see ifsomething can't be done for the boy. "

She shook her head. 

"It's a case of tuberculous lung-disease. He developed it in the ClergyHouse at St. Margaret's, and made light of it, supposing or pretendingthat the cough and wasting and difficulty of breathing meant bronchialtrouble, the result of London fogs. These young people who don't valueLife--glorious gift that it is! When he broke down utterly, at the end ofa rampant campaign against Intemperance--he wouldn't be the Bishop's sonif he didn't gall the withers of some hobby-horse or other--the doctorsagreed there was nothing for him but South Africa. "

He frowned, knowing how many sufferers had died of that deadlyprescription. She went on:

"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 untilthe end. And the end is coming--in Gueldersdorp Hospital--with giantstrides. " She blinked. "They've isolated him in a small detached ward. Hehas 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 likeSt. Francis of Assisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty--and coughs--fitto tear your heart. B'rrh!" she shuddered. 

He repeated: "I'll see what can be done to-morrow. These cases aredeceptive. There may be a gleam of hope. "

"There is one doubt about the case which might infer a hope. I don't knowwhat discoveries the London doctors made, but I wormed out of thechart-nurse, who plainly adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorpcan't scare up a bacillus for the life of them. "

His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his tone was jesting. 

"You're thrown away on mere journalism. Criminal Investigation or SecretIntelligence would offer wider fields for your abilities. "

"Wait!" she said, her beady eyes black diamonds. "I shall hope to proveone day that an English woman-journalist can be as useful as a Boer spy inthe matter of useful information. Why, why am I not a man? You only don'ttrust me because I am a woman. "

He had touched the rankling point in her ambition. He applied balm as heknew how. 

"Your being a woman may have made all the difference--for Fraithorn. Ishall set Taggart of the R. A. M. C. At him to-morrow; the Major's a bit of acrack at pulmonary cases. And he shall consult with Saxham, and----"

"Saxham. " Her eyebrows were knitted. "I thought I knew the names of yourMedical Staff men. But I can't recall a Saxham. "

"This Saxham is Civilian--and rather a big pot--M. D. , F. R. C. S. , and lotsmore. We're lucky to have got him. "

She stiffened, scenting the paragraph. 

"Can it be that you mean the Dr. Saxham of the Old Bailey Case?"

"The Jury acquitted, let me remind you. "

"I believe so, " she said; "but--he vanished afterwards. I think aninnocent man would have stopped and faced the music, and not beaten aretreat with the Wedding March almost sounding in his ears. But--whoknows? You have met his brother, Captain Saxham, of the --th Dragoons? Itwas he who stepped into the matrimonial breach, and married the youngwoman. "

"The young woman?"

"His brother's fiancée--an heiress of the Dorsetshire Lee-Haileys, andrather a pretty-faced, silly person, with a penchant for French novels andsulphonal tabloids. I always shall believe that she liked the handsomeDragoon best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being--under the cloud ofacquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the dear Irish call 'theback of her hand. '"

"The better luck for him!"

"It was mere instinct to let go when the man was dragging them both underwater, " she asserted. 

"A Newfoundland bitch would have risen above it. "

"You hit back quick and hard. "

"I'm a tennis-player and a polo-player and a cricketer. "

"What game is there that you don't play?"

"I could tell you of one or two.... But I must really go and speak to someof these ladies. One of them is an old friend. "

"I know whom you mean. If I didn't, her glare of envy would haveenlightened me. Did I tell you that _I_ encountered an old friend--or, atleast, a friend of old--at the Hospital yesterday?"

"You mean poor Fraithorn?"

"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 framedin a starched white _guimpe_ and floating black veil--belonged to my Pastin several ways. "

He showed interest. 

"Your friend is a nun? At the Convent here? How did you come across her?"

"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 otherHigh Church contraptions, the Matron had got him on the Hospital books asa Roman Catholic. And, consequently, when my friend looked in to visit aday-scholar who was to be operated on for adenoids--I've no idea what theyare, but a thing with a name like that would naturally have to be cut outof one--she was told of this poor fellow, and has shed the light of hercountenance 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'donly parted last week. Nuns are wonderful creatures: _she's_ unique, evenas a nun. "

He said: "I believe I had the honour of meeting the lady of whom you speakwhen I called at the Convent yesterday afternoon. A remarkable, noble, andmost interesting personality. "

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 theJuniors' Division, she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carriedeverything before her there, and emerged with a B. A. Degree Certificate inthe days when it was thought hardly proper for a woman to go about withsuch a thing tacked to her skirts. And all the students idolised her, andthe male lecturers worshipped the ground she trod. And when she waspresented--what a sensation! They called her the 'Irish Rose, ' and'Deirdre, ' for her skin of cream and her grey eyes and billowing clouds ofblack hair. Society raved of her for three seasons, until the fools wenteven madder about that little Hawting woman--a stiff starched martinet'sfrisky half--who bolted with the man my glorious Biddy had given herbeautiful hand to. And the result! She--who might have married anAmbassador and queened it in Petersburg with the best of 'em--she's in awhitewashed Convent, superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikanderschoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathematics, calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, and the twiddle of theglobes. He has something to answer for, that old crony of yours!"

Lady Hannah stopped for breath, giving the listener his opportunity. 

"My dear lady, you have told me a great deal without enlightening me inthe least. Who is my 'crony, ' and who was your friend?"

Lady Hannah opened her round beady eyes in astonishment. 

"Haven't I told you? She is--or was--Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, sister ofthat high-falutin' little donkey the present Earl of Castleclare, who cameinto 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, wasBiddy's aunt, and Cardinal Voisey, handsome being! is an uncle on thedistaff side. All the Catholic world and his wife were at her taking ofthe veil of profession nineteen years ago. The Pope's Nuncio, theCardinal-Bishop of Mozella, officiated, and the Comtesse de Lutetia wasthere with the Duc d'O.... They didn't cut off her beautiful black hair, though we outsiders were on tiptoe to see the thing done. I don't think Iever cried so much in my life. Had hysterics--real--when I got home, andmother scolded fearfully. The Duke of C---- came with his equerry, andafter the cloister-gates had shut--crash--on beautiful Biddy in her bridallaces, 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, notthat the dear old thing ever meant to be profane: 'By God! General, I'mdamned if Captain Mildare hasn't made Heaven an uncommonly handsomepresent!' And the man he said that to was the husband of the very womanDicky had run away with not quite twelve months before. Mercy on us!"

"Good Heavens!" the listener had cried and started to his feet, the darkblood rushing to his forehead. The ivory-pale, mutely-suffering faceagainst the background of whitewashed wall flashed back upon his memory, in a circle of dazzling light. He saw her again, leaning against the doorof the chapel as he told her the cruel news. He heard her saying:

"Are you at liberty to tell me the date of Captain Mildare's death? For Iknow--one who was also his friend--and would take an interest in theparticulars. "

The particulars! And he had bludgeoned the woman with them--stabbed her tothe heart, poor soul, unknowing.... 

He was blameless, but he could not forgive himself.... He drove his teethdown savagely into his lower lip, and muttered an excuse, and went awayabruptly, leaving Lady Hannah staring. He took leave soon after, and wentto his own quarters with the D. A. A. G. , while her ladyship, with infiniterelief, getting rid of her feminine guests, repaired with Captain BinghamWrynche, familiarly known to a wide circle of friends as "Bingo, " andseveral chosen spirits to the billiard-room, for snooker-pool, andwhisky-and-soda. 

"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 thetable at Bingo, sunset-red with dinner, champagne, and stroke-play. 

"S'st!" sibilated the Captain warningly, winking in the direction of hiswife. Lady Hannah, her little thumb cocked in the air, her round, birdlikeeyes scientifically calculating angles, paused before making a rapidstroke, to say:

"Don't be cheaply mysterious, my dear man. Of course, the Colonel visitsthe defences and outposts and so forth regularly after dark. It's part ofthe routine, surely?"

"Of course. But you don't suppose he goes alone, do you, old lady?"queried Captain Bingo. 

"I suppose he takes his A. D. C. ?"

"Not to mention a detachment of the B. S. A. Also a squad of the Town Guardin red neckties, solar topees and bandoliers; with the Rifles' Band, and DSquadron 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 achange in the order for the evenin'. "

"Rather!" assented Beauvayse, continuing, to the rapture of winking Bingo. "On reaching the earthworks where our obsoletes are mounted, the townieswill now fire a salute of blank, without falling down; and the Band haveinstructions to play 'There's Death in the Old Guns Yet. ' Those were theonly material changes, except that sentries will for the future wearfly- and fever-belts outside instead of in. "

"So that he can see at a glance, " Lady Hannah said approvingly, "that allprecautions are being taken. Very sensible, I call it. "

"Ha, ha, haw!" Bingo's joyous explosion revealed to the outraged woman thefact that she had been "had. " "Haw, haw! What a beggar you are to rot, Beauvayse! and that makes five to us. "

Lady Hannah, vibrating with womanly indignation, had made her long-delayedstroke, 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. 

"You--schoolboys!" She threw them a glance of disdain, as Beauvayse, hisseraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and loungedover the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely toswallow such a _feuille de chou_ without even oil and vinegar? For pity'ssake, leave off winking, Bingo! It's a habit that dates back to the erawhen women wore ringlets and white book-muslin, and men sported shaggywhite beaver hats and pegtop trousers, and all the world read the novelsof Lever and Dickens. "

"Have Lever and Boz gone out?" asked Beauvayse, pocketing his pyramidball. "I play at Blue. " He hit Blue scientifically off the cushion andwent on. "Read 'em myself over and over again, and find 'em give points inthe way of amusement to the piffle Mudie sends out. Not that I pretend tobe a judge of literature. Only know when I'm not bored, you know. You toplay, Lord Henry. "

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 baror so of a particularly pleasant little tune. Another man took LordHenry's place, and the game went on, but never finished, for one by one, after the same quiet, unobtrusive fashion, the male players meltedaway.... Left alone, Lady Hannah, feeling uncommonly like the idle boy inthe nursery-story who asked the beasts and birds and insects to play withhim, betook herself to bed. 

The arrogance of men! she thought as she hung her transformation Pompadourcoiffure on the looking-glass. How cool, how unshaken in their convictionof superiority, in spite of all deference, courtesy, pretence ofconsideration for Queen Dolt.... But she would show them all one of thesedays, what could be achieved by a unit of the despised majority.... 

"I should like to see him at night-work, " she said afterwards, when, verylate, her Bingo appeared in the shadow of the conjugal mosquito-curtains. 

"You wouldn't, " was her martial lord's reply. 

"Wouldn't what?" asked Lady Hannah, sitting up in tropical sleepingattire. 

Bingo, applying her cold cream to a sun-cracked nose, replied to herreflection in the looking-glass:

"You wouldn't see him. Like the flea in the American story, when you'vegot your finger on him is the time he isn't there. "

"But he is there for you?"

Bingo shook his head, holding the candle near the glass and regarding hisleading feature with interest. 

"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 atthe British Museum. Piff, what a smell of burning! It's the hair-thinghangin' on the lookin'-glass. "

Male Society began to practise the shedding of its final g's, you willremember, about the time that Female Society took to wearingtransformation coiffures. Lady Hannah, her active little figure rustlingin the thinnest of silk drapery, jumped nimbly out of bed, and rushed tosave her property. 

"Idiot!" she shrieked. 

"Frightfully sorry! But you're lumps prettier without, " said Bingo. 

"Don't pile insult on injury. "

"Couldn't flatter for nuts!"

"I'll forgive you if you'll tell me how _he_ manages--to attaininvisibility?"

Bingo struck an attitude and began to declaim:

"As the sable shades of Night were broodin' over the beleaguered town ofGueldersdorp, the manly form of a mysterious bearded stranger in greyreach-me-downs and a felt slouch might have been observed directin' itssteps from one to the other of the various outlyin' pickets posted on theveld ... "

"Once for all, I decline to believe such theatrical rubbish! A beard, indeed! Why not a paper nose and a Pierrot's cap?"

"Why not?" acquiesced placid Bingo, getting into bed. But the eyeconcealed 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 toBeauvayse next morning. 

XXII

"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, standguard, and do sentry-go, and tumble to arms, just as the town dogs leaveoff barkin', an' the old gal in the room next yours is startin' to snorelike a Kaffir sow. "

Later on, even more was asked of the townie, and he rose to the demand. 

The smasher hat was not unbecoming to the manly brow it shaded, when W. Keyse put it on and anxiously consulted the small greenish swinglooking-glass that graced the chest of drawers, the most commandingarticle 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 herresident gentlemen in connection with gravy; but, unlike Mrs. Todgers, shenever supplied even browned and heated water as an equivalent. And themutton was wonderfully lean, and the fowls, but for difference in size, might have been ostriches, they were so wiry of muscle, especially asregarded the legs. A time was to come when Mrs. Filliter was to cookshrapnel-killed mule and exhausted cavalry charger for her gentlemen, andwhen they were to bear up better than most sufferers from this tough andlasting form of diet, because of not having previously been pampered, asMrs. Filliter expressed it, with delicacies and kickshaws. 

The bandolier was heavy upon the thin shoulders and hollow chest of a paleyoung Cockney, who had drifted down from Southampton in the steerage, androared and rattled up from Cape Town by the three foot six inch gaugerailway, eight hundred and seventy miles, to Gueldersdorp, that he mightfind his crown of manhood waiting there. The second-hand Sam Browne beltwas distinctly good; the yellow puttees, worn with his own brown lace-upboots, took trouble to adjust. And it was barely possible, even bystanding the small swing looking-glass on the floor, and tilting itexcessively, to see how one's legs looked. W. Keyse suffered from theconviction that these limbs were over-thin. Behind the counter of afried-fish shop in High Street, Camden Town, serving slabs of brownedhake, and skate, and penn'orths of fried eels and chips to the hungrycustomers who surge in tempestuously to be fed on their homeward way fromthe Oxford or the Camden Hall of Varieties, or the theatre at the junctionof Gower Street and the Hampstead Road--one develops acuteness ofobservation, one gains experience, there being always the bloke who cutsand runs without paying, or eats and shows reversed trouser-pockets indefault of settlement, to deal with.... But one does not develop muscle, the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to possess. When he wentinto the printing-business and bent all day over the formes of type in thecomposing-room, hand-setting up the columns of the North London_Half-penny Herald_, to the tune of three-and-eightpence a day, the hollowchest grew hollower, and he developed a "corf. " The physician in charge ofthe out-patients' department at University College Hospital said there waslung-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 inthe Post-Office Savings Bank, earned by the sweat of a brow which was hisbest feature, and the steamships were advertising ten-pound third-classsingle fares to Cape Town. One of the Societies for the Aid of Emigrantswould have helped him, but while W. Keyse 'ad a bit of 'is own, noBlooming Paupery, said he, for him! His sole living relative, an aunt whoinhabited one of a row of ginger-brick Virginia-creeper-clad almshouses"over aginst 'Ighgyte Cimitery, " sniffled a little when he called to saygood-bye, bringing in a parting present of a half-pound of Liphook'sLuscious Tea and a screw of snuff. 

"I shan't never see you no more, William. "

"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, bestowingan amorous ogle upon Lobster, who sat well forward upon a backless Windsorchair, sucking the silver top of his swagger cane, --Lobster, who was sixfoot high and in the Grenadier Guards, and had supplanted William in'Melia's affections, for they 'ad used to walk out regularly on Sundaysand holidays before Lobster came along.... How William loved Lobster now!Why, but for him he might have been married to 'Melia to-day;--doomed totread in the ways of commonplace, ordinary married life, fated to live anddie without once having peeped into Paradise, without ever having lookedupon the 'only woman in the world!' Greta, of the glorious golden pigtail, the entrancing figure and the bewitching, twinkling, teasing eyes of blue!

Suppose--only suppose--the silent threatening Thing across the border, jewelled with the glowing Argus-eyes of many camp-fires, conjecturable indark masses flecked with the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes givingout 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 inexperienceof W. K. The sand-bagged earthworks built about Gueldersdorp, thebarricades of trek-waggons and railway-trucks blocking up the roadsdebouching on the veld, the extending lines of trenches, the watchdogforts, the sentinelled pickets, the noiseless, continually moving patrols, all the various parts of the marvellous machinery of defence, controlledby one master-hand upon the levers, would count for nothing against thatoverwhelming onrush of armed thousands, that flood of men dammed up abovethe town, and waiting the signal to roll down and overwhelm her, and----Cripps! what a chance to make a glorious, heroic splash in Greta'ssight! 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 ... 

Confident in the coming of that time, W. Keyse took the brown rifletenderly from the corner, and replaced the meagre little looking-glassupon the yellow chest of drawers. In the act of bestowing a final glanceof scrutiny upon his upper lip, whose manly crop had unaccountablydelayed, he caught sight of a cheap paper-covered book lying beside thetin 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 in it, coloured with liberal splashes of redand blue and yellow, and the print contained matter more lurid still. Vicemopped and mowed and slavered, obscene and hideous, within those gaudycovers. 

He looked round the mean, poor, ugly room, the volume in his hand; aphotograph of the dubious sort leered from the wall beside the bed.... 

"If they rushed us to-night, an' I got shot in the scrap, an' they broughtme back 'ere, dyin', and She came ... An' saw _that_ ... !" His ears werescarlet 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 hadnot 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 ofashes, 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 weremustering, and fell in. As though the Powers deigned to reward an act ofvirtue on the very night of its performance, he was posted by his picketin the shadow of the high corrugated iron fence of the tree-borderedtennis-ground behind the Convent, as "Lights Out" sounded from the camp ofthe Irregulars, beyond the Railway-sheds and storehouses. 

It was glorious to be there, taking care of Her, though it would have beennicer if one had been allowed to smoke. The moon of William'spassion-inspired verse was not shining o'er South Africa's plain upon thisthe very night for her. It was dark and close and stiflingly hot. Adust-wind had blown that day, and the suspended particles thickened theatmosphere, to the oppression of the lungs and the hiding of the stars. Heknew his picket posted a quarter of a mile away on the other side of theCemetery; his fellow-sentry was on the opposite flank of the Convent. Hewas a stout, middle-aged tradesman, with a large wife and a correspondingfamily, and it wrung the heart of W. Keyse to think that a tricky fatemight have placed that insensible man on the side where Her window was!Through the boughs of the peach and orange trees, heavily burdened withunripe fruit, you could get an occasional glimpse of whitewashed brickwalls, darkened by the outline of shuttered oblongs here and there. AndImagination could blow her cloud of fragrant vapour, though tobacco weredenied you. 

"They're all Her windows while she's there behind them walls, " was thereflection in which W. Keyse found comfort. 

She was not there. She was at that moment being kissed on the stoep of theDu Taine homestead near Johannesburg, by a young officer of StaatsArtillery, to whom she had agreed to be clandestinely engaged, though PapaDu Taine had other views. 

W. Keyse was spared this tragic knowledge. But if the moon, shiningbeautifully over the Du Taine gardens and orange-groves, had chosen totell tales!

It was still--still and quiet; a blue radiance of electric light burnedhere and there; at the Staff Office on the Market Square, and at othercentres of purposeful activity. Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloonsgave out a yellow glare of gas-jets; the red lamp of an apothecary showeda wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp sprawled in the outline of a sleeping turtleon her squat hillock of gravelly earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds, closely matching the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding overhead, theprairie spread about her, deepening to a basined valley in the middledistances, sweeping to a rise beyond, so that the edges of the basinlooked down upon the town. High on the hill-ranges in the South morechains of red sparks burned ... He knew them for the watch-fires of theBoer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and West were setthickly with similar twinkling jewels where the laagers were; whilesmaller groups shone nearer, marking the situation of isolated vedettes. The sickly taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clusteredhumanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes! He hoped there was enoughof 'em, lying doggo up there, waiting the word to roll down and swallowthe blooming dorp! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon histemples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the palms of his handswere moist and clammy. Also, under the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was asinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps itswearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side ofthe Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his bodyjarring from the shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk. 

Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, he gritted histeeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a blooming coward inside the otherwho was not. He told the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what hethought of him. He only wished--that is, one of him only wished--that agang of the Dutchies would come along now!

He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and when theyoung soldier had fired into the brown of them and seen the whites oftheir eyes, and fallen, pierced by a hundred wounds, in the successfuldefence of the Convent, he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobodycould recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, with herwhite little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy nightgown, and herunbraided pigtail swamping the white with gold, and knew that it was herlover, 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. 

For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, and lookingtowards those firefly sparks shining on the heights, came the sound ofstealthy measured footsteps and muffled voices talking Dutch. The enemyhad made a sortie. The defences had been rushed, the town surrounded! Yetthere were only two of them--a big, slouching villain and a short thinone, who wore a giant hat. The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fiercemartial ardour of William, and greatly reassured Billy. It was only atownsman taking a night walk with his girl!

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 haltedat the angle of the fence. 

"'Ain't it a 'eavenly night?" came from the short figure, who leanedagainst the tall one affectionately. "An' me got to go in. A crooil shyme, I call it. 'Ain't it, deer? Leggo me wyste, there's a love. You've nonotion 'ow I shall cop it for bein' lyte. "

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. 

"Leggo, I tell you! Where's your manners, 'orlin' me abart! If that's theway you be'ayve with your Dutch ones ... !"

He spat and asseverated:

"Neen! I no other girls but you heb got. "

It was the Slabberts with Emigration Jane. 

"Ho! So you _can_ talk English a bit--give you a charnce?"

"Ja, a little now and then when it is useful. But when we are to bemarried, you shall only to me talk in my own moder Taal. "

"Shan't I myke a gay old 'ash of it!" Recklessly she crushed the large hatagainst the unwieldy shoulder. "There, good-night agyne, deer! SisterTobias--that's what they call the one that 'ousekeeps and manages thekitchen--Sister Tobias 'll be sittin' up for me, thinkin' I've got meselflost or bin run away with. " She gurgled enjoyingly. 

"Tell me again, before you shall go, about the Engelsch Commandant whocame to visit at the Convent to-day?"

"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'tthat 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 inthe gardin fust thing to-morrow mornin', an' 'e'll undertake that theworkin'-party detached for the purpose will know 'ow to be'ayvetheirselves respectful. An' then 'e touches 'is 'at an' gets on 'is 'orsean' ... "

"Listen to me. " The Slabbertian command of that barbaric language of theEnglanders evoked her surprise, but the painful squeeze he gave her armcompelled attention. "Next time the English Commandant to the house shallcome, you to listen at the keyhole is. "

"Wot for?"

"For what have you before at keyholes listened, little fool?"

"To find out when they was goin' to sack me, so's to git me own notice infust--see? Then you can say to the lydy at the Registry Office--and don'tthey give theirselves hairs!--as wot you're leaving because the placedon't suit. Twiggy?"

"You for yourself did listen, then. Goed. Now it is for me you listenwill, if you a true Boer's vrouw wish to become by-and-by. "

She rose to the immemorial allure that is never out of season in anglingfor her simple kind. 

"That word you said means--wife, don't it, deer?" Her voice trembled; thejoyous, longed-for haven of marriage--was it possible that it might be insight?

"It shall mean wife, if you obey me--ja!--otherwise it will be that Ishall 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 husbandgets!"

Her underlip dropped pitifully, and the tears welled up. It was too darkto see her crying, but he heard her sob, and grinned, himself unseen. 

"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'tyou know it, Walt?"

"I shall it know when I hear what you have found out, " proclaimed theSlabberts grimly. 

There was a boiling W. Keyse in the deep shadow of the tallcorrugated-iron fence, who restrained with difficulty a snort ofindignation. 

"On'y tell me, deer. I'll find out anythink you want me to. " Before herspread a lovely vista of floors--her own floors--to scrub, and a kitchenrange--hers, too--which should cook dinners nice enough to make anyhusband adore you. 

"You shall for me find out what that Commandant of the rooineks is up tounder his Flag of the Red Cross. "

"He didn't say nothink about no Red Cross, darlin'. "

"Stilte! They will the Red Cross Flag hoist, I tell you, and it willcover more than a parcel of nuns and schoolgirls. That Commandant is soverdoemte slim! Tell me, do you cartridges well know when you shall seethem? Little brown rolls with at one end a copper cap--and at the other abullet. And gunpowder--you have that seen also?"

She quavered. 

"Yes; but you don't want me to touch the narsty, dreadful stuff, do you, Walty deer?"

He scoffed. 

"Afraid of gunpowder, Meisje, that like a whey-blooded Engelschwoman is. Atrue Boer's daughter would know how to load a gun, look you, and shoot aman--many men--if for the help of the Republic it should be! But you willlearn. Watch out, I tell you, for stores that Commandant will be sendinginto the Convent. Square boxes and long boxes, and cases--some of themheavy as if lined with iron; painted black with white letters, and othersstone-colour with black letters, and yet others grey with red letters; theletters remember--'A. O. S. '"

"But wot'll be in the boxes, deer?"

His English, conned from recently published Imperial Army Service manuals, grew severely technical:

"If you could their big screws unscrew, and their big locks unlock, youwould see, but you will not be able. What in them? Cakes! Black, squarecakes, with in them holes; and grey, square cakes, and red cakes, lightand crumbly, that dog-biscuits resemble; and long brown sticks, likepeppermint-candy, in bundles tied together with string and paper. Boxes ofstuff like the hair of horse, and packets of evil little electricdetonators in tubes of copper. Alamachtig! who knows what he has notgot--that Engelsch Commandant--both in the dorp and hidden in thosethrice-accursed mines that he has laid on the veld about her. Prismaticpowder and gun-cotton, dynamite and cordite enough to blow a dozencommandos of honest Booren into dust--a small, fine dust of bones andflesh that shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood. For I tellyou that man has the wickedness of the duyvel in him, and the cunning ofan old baboon!"

She babbled:

"'Ow pretty you talk English when you want to, Walty deer! 'Aven't youbin gittin' at me all along, makin' out ... "

He swore at her savagely, and she held her tongue, worshipping this newdevelopment of masterful brutality in a man whom she had regarded as a"big softy. "

He went on:

"Now you shall know what to look for, and when the verdoemte explosivescome, you will know them by the boxes and the letters 'A. O. S. '--and youwill tell me--and the guns of our Staats Artillery will not shoot thatway, for the sake of the little woman who is going to be a true Boer'svrouw by-and-by. "

She threw her arms about his rascally neck, and laid her head upon hishulking shoulder, regardless of the hat she wrecked, and cried in ecstasy:

"I'll do it, deer! I'll do it, Walty! But why should there be anyshootin', lovey? At 'Ome I never could abear to see them theayter playswhat 'ad guns an' firin' in 'em; it made me 'art beat so crooil bad. "

He grinned over the big hat into the darkness. 

"All right! I will tell the men with the guns that you do not like to hearthem, and they will not perhaps shoot at all. But you will look out forthe boxes with the dynamite, and send me the message when it comes?"

"Course I will, deer! But 'ow am I to send the message?"

The shadowy right arm of Slabberts swept out, taking in the black and voidand formless veld with a large free gesture. 

"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 nothave done that three times before you shall see him answer. "

"But oo's 'im?"

"He is my friend--out there upon the veld. "

"Lor! but where'll you be? Didn't you say as I'd be talkin' to you? Idon't 'arf fancy wot you calls the gyme, not if I 'ave to play it with astrynge bloke!"

The answer came, accompanied by a scraping, familiar sound. 

The Slabberts was striking a match of the fizzling, spluttering, Swedish-made non-safety kind, known to W. Keyse and his circle by thefamiliar abbreviation of "stinkers. "

"Voor den donder! Have I not told you I shall be there with him--afterto-night!"

Her womanly tenderness quickened at the hint of coming separation. Sheclung fondly to his arm, and the match went out, extinguished by amaiden's sigh. He shook her roughly off, and struck another. 

"I shall go away--ja--and here is the only way for you to reach me!"

As the fresh match glimmered blue, he held it at arm's length in front ofhim, counting silently up to ten, then blew it out, and set his heavy bootupon the faintly-glowing spark, and did the thing again. 

Endeavouring not to breathe so as to be heard, W. Keyse flattened himselfagainst the corrugated fence, and waited, looking ahead into the thickvelvet darkness, sensing the faint human taint upon the tell-tale breeze, and counting with the Slabberts; and then, out in the blackness thatconcealed so much that was sinister, sprang into sudden life an answeringbluish glimmer, and lasted for ten beats of the pulse, and went out assuddenly as though a human breath had blown upon it. 

"Is that your pal?" she whispered. 

"That is my pal now. " He struck another match, and flared it, and screenedit with his big hand, and showed the light again, and repeated themanoeuvre three times. "That is my pal now--and I have said to him 'Nonews to-night'; but to-morrow night and the night after, and so on formany nights to come, I shall be out there where he is, and after you havecalled me and I have answered, just as he has done, you will tell me whatthere is to tell. Can you spell your language?"

"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, tryall I could, I never ... "

"Hou jou smoel! With our Boer people, when men speak, the women listen;but you English ones chatter and chatter! Remember that this match-talkgoes thus: For the letter A one flare, and hide the light as you saw medo just now. For B, two flares, and hide the light; for C, three, andhide; for D, four, and hide; and so on ... It is slow, of course, andmatches will blow out when you do not want them to, and a cycle-lamp or acandle-lantern would be easier to deal with, but for the verdoemtepatrols. Do you understand? Say now what I say, after me. For the letter Aone flare and hide. For B ... "

He put her through the alphabet from end to end; she laboured faithfully, and pleased her taskmaster. He grunted approvingly. 

"Zeer goed! See that you do not forget. And remember, you are to listenand watch, and tell me what you hear and see. If you are obedient, I willmarry you--by-and-by. "

He gave her a clumsy hug in earnest of endearments to come. 

"But if you do not please me"--the grip of his heavy hand bruised hershoulder through the thin, flowery "blowse"--"I will punish you--yes, bythe Lord! I will marry a fine Boer maiden who is the daughter of alandrost, and who has got much money and plenty of sheep. And you can giveyourself to any dirty verdoemte schelm of an Engelschman you please, for Iwill have none of you! To-morrow you shall have a paper showing you how totell me very many things in match-talk, and earn much money to buypresents for my nice little Boer vrouw. Alamachtig! what is this?"

"This" was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a condemned Martinipoked violently out of the blackness into the Slabbertian thorax. 

"Not in such a 'urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper, " spluttered theghastly 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!"

The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts wagged inexplanation. 

"This is assault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful burgher. You shallanswer to your officer for it, I tell you slap. Voor den donder! Is not ayoung man to light his pipe as he talks to a young woman without beingcalled spy by a verdoemte sentry! Tell him, Jannje, that is all I diddo!"

W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncommonly heavy. TheSlabberts felt it tremble, and thought about taking his hands down andreaching for that Colts six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But thoughthe finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, and Walt was not fond of risks. 

"Tell him, Jannje!" he spluttered once more. 

She had not needed a second bidding. 

As the domestic hen in defence of her chicken will give battle to thewilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with ruffled plumage, blazing, defianteyes, and shrill objurgations, couched in the vernacular most familiar totheir object, hurled herself upon the enemy. 

"You narsty little brute, you! To up and try an' murder my young man. Withyour jor about spies! Sauce! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Offthe fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun, you silly little imitation sojer--d' you 'eer?"

The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully. Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He feltdamp and small, and desperately at a loss. And--as though in malice--themoon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim vapour, as he saidwith a lordly air:

"You be off, young woman, and don't interfere!"

Gawd! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her rage burst theflood-gates. She screeched:

"You!... It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to--an' this is 'ow I gits itback?" She gasped. "Because you're arter one young woman wot wouldn't beseen dead in the syme street wi' you ... "

Pierced with the awful thought that the adored one might be listening, W. Keyse lifted up his voice. 

"Sentry.... 'Ere!... Mister!" he cried despairingly, "You on the otherside, can't you hear?"

In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. Keyse, comfortablypropped in an angle of the opposite fence, the bulk of the Convent and thewidth of its garden and tennis-ground being between them, continued tosleep and snore peacefully and undisturbed. 

Emigration Jane continued:

"Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear o' you, you tryto git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke pinched! Yah, greedy! Boo! Youplate-faced, erring-backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with yourlove-letters an' messages! Wait till I give 'er another o' yourscreevin'--that's all!"

"Patrol!" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper. 

She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself as she came, tofrenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it outside the big gaudy pubs in theTottenham Court Road, and the Britannia, Camden Town! Perhaps therecollection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes of thelittle perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal memory, and provokedthe act. Who can tell? We may only know that she plucked the weapon oflower-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 herSlabberts gripped the rifle-barrel, and wrested it with iron strength fromthe failing hands of W. Keyse, the equal of those dauntless Boer women whokilled men when it was necessary. But, oh! the 'orrible, 'ideous feelingof 'aving stuck something into live flesh! Sick and giddy, the heroineshut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous phantasmagoria ofcoloured pyrotechny, rivalling the most marvellous triumphs of themagician Brock.... 

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 thelargely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tintedtentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of strivingmen:

"Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your picket. Don't fire; blowyour whistle instead!"

"_Pip-ip-ip-'r'r! Pip-ip-r'r!_"

The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of the darkness onthe other side of the Cemetery, and considerably quickened the arrival ofthe visiting patrol. 

"Communicating with persons outside the defences by flashlight signals. Wecan't shoot him for it just yet, but we _can_ gaol him on suspicion, "said the Commander of the picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort ofB. S. A. Troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of theguard-house. 

"Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer whohad ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picketcame up, you say, " he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of thestory. "A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark wideawake and shortpointed beard! H'm!"

"Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from town, " said the picketCommander. "Must have known the countersign, or the sentries out therewould have stopped him. I--see!"

He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The moonlight wasquite bright enough for the exchange of a wink. Then:

"Hold on, man, you're bleeding, " said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old NavalBrigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?"

W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. Hisfingers were red when they came away. 

"The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she jabbed me with a 'at-pin, to git me to let 'im go. "

"There's a blindin' vixen for you!" commented the Sergeant. "Two inchhigher, and she'd have doused your light out. Where did she come from, d'ye know?"

"Have you any idea who she was?" asked the Commander of the picket. 

W. Keyse shook his head. 

"'Aven't the least idear, sir. Never sor 'er before in my natural!" hedeclared stoutly. 

"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her--or she will you, " said thepatrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggeringinto the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey, Johnny, where's your gun?"

It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank of the Convent. 

"And time you turned up, I don't think, " commented W. Keyse. "Didn't you'ear me sing out to you just now?"

"Come, now, what were you up to?" the Sergeant pressed. "Better up an' ownit if you've bin asleep on guard. "

The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest and comment, not atall sympathetic or polite, was a stout, respectable tradesman, with alarge, round, ghastly face, who saluted his officer with a trembling hand. 

"I--I have been the victim of an outrage, sir!"

"Sorry to hear it; what's your name?"

"Brooker, sir, " volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. "The other sentry we puton with Keyse here. "

"Mr. Brooker, sir, General Stores, Market Square, " babbled the citizen. 

"Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say?"

"I have been drugged or hypnotised, sir, and robbed of my gun while in astate of insensibility, sir--upon my honour as an Alderman and Magistrateof this borough! Swear me, sir, if you have any doubt of my veracity!" Heflapped his hands like fins, and his bandolier heaved above a labouringbosom. 

The Commander of the picket looked preternaturally grave. 

"Very sorry, Private Brooker, but unless the Sergeant has brought hisTestament 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 awayyour rifle. Of course you saw it done?"

"No, sir, I did not see it done. When I woke up ... "

"Ah, when you woke up! Please go on. "

The crowding faces of B. S. A. Men and Town Guardsmen were grinning now. Thepatrol-officer was rocking in his saddle. 

"When I revived, sir, from the swoon or trance ... "

"Very good, Private Brooker; we'll hear the rest of that in the morning. Sergeant, relieve these sentries, and bring Private Keyse and the hypnoticsubject before me in the morning. Make this man Brooker a prisoner atlarge for the present, and fall in the picket. "

The Sergeant saluted. "Very good, sir. "

The bubbling Brooker boiled over frothily as the sentries were changing. 

"A prisoner! Good God! do they take me for a traitor? A Magistrate ... AnAlderman, the President of the Gas Committee ... "

"I should 'ave guessed you to be that if I 'adn't 'eard it, sonny, " saidthe Sergeant dryly, the implied sarcasm provoking a subdued guffaw. Headded, as the visiting patrol rode on and the picket marched back to theCemetery: "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 outto-morrow. Left face; quick march!"

Counting left-right, and keeping elbow-touch with the next man, W. Keysegot in a whisper:

"I say, Sergeant, am I in for it as well as Ole Bulgy Weskit? You might aswell let me know and charnce it!"

The Sergeant answered with unfeeling indifference:

"Since you ask, I should say you was. "

"That's a bit 'ard! Wot'll I git?"

"Ten to one, your skater. "

"Wot is my skater?"

"Your Corporal's stripe, you suckin' innocent! Wot for? For takin' a Boerspy pris'ner--that's wot for!"

"Cripps!" said W. Keyse, enlightened, illuminated and glowing in thedarkness. 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. "

The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking to the officer incharge. It was the Corporal who answered, across the man who marched uponthe left of W. Keyse:

"O' course it was. But you 'ad the Dopper fust, and, " he cackled quietly, "the Colonel won't be jealous. "

The eyes and mouth of W. Keyse became circular. 

"The who?"

"The Colonel, didn't you 'ear me say?"

"That wasn't never ... _'im_"?

"All right, since you know best. But him, for all that!"

"Great Jiminy Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse. 

XXIII

You are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the interminableplain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, and before threatened, nowisolated like some undaunted coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested withscreaming sea-birds, girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst ofwaters haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent menace, shesquatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting the event. 

It was known that on the previous day the telegraph wires north of Beatonhad been cut, and this day was to sever the last link with Cape Town atMaripo, some forty miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the OlopoRiver might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy there overnight. Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, that the armoured train that had beensent up from the Cape with two light guns of superseded pattern--agenerous contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines nowbristling 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 bythe arrival of an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in theomnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of this chapter he washiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud of his experiences, in default ofother pabulum, and did not get in before dark of the long blazing day. 

Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the northern end of thetown to see the Military Executive take over the Hospital. But that thestreets were barricaded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizencarried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion of nationalrejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the pepper-trees fringing thethoroughfares and clumped in the Market Square rustled in the faint hotbreeze. By-and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked underthe iron hail that beat in blizzards upon them, and die in the noxiouslyddite fumes dispersed by bursting shells. 

The variegated crowd cheered as the Staff dismounted at the white-paintediron gates of the railed-in Hospital grounds. It was not the acclamationof admiration, it was the cheer expectant. They wanted to know what theOfficer in Command was going to do? Intolerable suspense racked them. Wherever it was known that he would be, there they followed at thisjuncture--solid masses of humanity, bored with innumerable ear-holes, andenamelled with patient, glittering, expectant eyes. His own keen, kindlyglance swept over them as he touched his grey felt hat in acknowledgmentof their dubious greeting, that half-hearted but well-meant cheer. He readthe mute question written upon all the faces. Part of his answer to theinterrogation was standing in the Railway-yard, but they would have towait a little while longer yet--just a little longer. He whistled hispleasant melodious little tune as the porter hurried to open the gates. 

One pair of pale, rather ugly eyes in the crowd were illumined with purehero-worship. "That's 'im, " explained their owner, nudging a big man inshabby white drill, who was shouldering a deliberate way through thepress. 

"The Colonel--and ain't 'e a Regular Oner! Them along of 'im--with the redshoulder-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 wotI've got on--they're the Medical Swells. Military Saw-boneses--twig? Youcan tell 'em, when you're near enough, by the bronze badges with a serpintclimbin' up a stick inside a wreath, wot they 'ave on the fronts o' theircaps an' on their jacket-collars, an' the instrument-cases wot theycarries in their bres' pockets. I'm a bit in the know about these things, being a sort of Service man meself. "

Thus delicately did W. Keyse invite comment. Splendid additions hadcertainly been made to the martial outfit of the previous day. The tweedNorfolk had been replaced by a khâki jacket, evidently second-hand, andobligingly taken in by the lady of the boarding-house. A Corporal'sstripe, purchased from a trooper of the B. S. A. , who, as the consequence ofover-indulgence in liquor and language, had one to sell, had been sewnupon the sleeve. The original owner had charged an extra tikkie for doingit, and it burned the arm that bore it like a vaccination-pustule on thefifth day. 

"Being a sort of Service man meself, " repeated W. Keyse. He twitched thestripe carelessly into sight. "C'manding orficer marked me down for thisto-day, " he continued, with elaborate indifference, "along of a FavourableMention 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. "

In the act of feeling for the invisible moustache, he recognised the faceunder the Panama hat worn by the big neighbour in white drill, and blushesswamped his yellow freckles. The owner of that square, powerful face, nolonger bloated and crimson, but pale and drawn, was the man who hadstepped 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 leadingattitude of W. Keyse had perforce given place to the minor rôle of thejuvenile walking-gentleman. "Watto!" he began. "It's you, Mister! I binwantin' to say thank----" But a surge of the crowd flattened W. Keyseagainst the green-painted iron railings surrounding a municipal gum-tree, and the big man was lost to view. Perhaps it was as well that theacquaintance made under conditions remote from respectability should notbe renewed. But W. Keyse would have preferred to thank the rescuer. 

The taking over of the Hospital was accomplished in a moment, to thedisappointment of the ceremony-loving Briton and the Colonial of Britishrace, to say nothing of the Kaffirs and the Barala, who anticipated a bigindaba. The little party of officers in khâki walked up the gravel-drivebetween the carefully-tended grass plats to the stoep where the Mayor ofGueldersdorp, with the matron, house-surgeon, secretary, and severalprominent members of the Committee--including Alderman Brooker, puffy-cheeked and yellow-eyed for lack of a night's rest--waited. MilitaryAuthority saluted Civic Dignity, shook hands, and the thing was done. Inspection followed. 

"The warr'ds, said ye?" The Chief Medical Officer, a tall raw-bonedpersonage, very evidently hailed from North of the Tweed. "I'm obliged toye, ma'am, " he addressed the flustered matron, "but the warr'ds an' thecontents o' the beds in them are no' to say of the firr'st importance--atleast, whaur I'm concerr'ned. With your permeesion we'll tak' a look atthe Operating Theatre, and overhaul the sterileezing plant, and thesanitary arrangements, and maybe, after a gliff at the kitchens, therewould be a moment to spend in ganging through the warr'ds. Unless theColonel would prefer to begin wi' them?" He turned a small, twinkling pairof blue eyes set in dry wrinkles upon his Chief. 

"Not I, Major. This is your department. But I shall ask five minutes moregrace in the interests of the friend I spoke of, Dr. Saxham; with whom Imade an appointment at the half-hour. "

"You're no' by any chance meaning the Saxham that wrote 'The Diseases ofCivilisation, ' are ye, Colonel? I mind a sentence in it that must havebeen a douse of cauld watter--toch! vitriol would be the better worr'd--inthe faces o' some o' the dandy operators. '_Young men_, ' he ca'ed them, asif he was a greybeard himsel', 'young men who, led to take up Surgery bythe houp o' gains an' notoriety, have given themselves nae time to learnits scienteefic principles--showy operators, who diagnose wi' the knifean' endeavour to dictate to Nature and no' to assist her. ' And yet Saxhamcould daur! 'I shall prove that the gastric ulcer can be cured wi'outexceesion, ' he said, or they say he said in the _Lancet_ report o' theoperation 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' mortalterror soakin' his Gladstone collar. He cut a hole in the Duke's stomach, ye will understand, in front o' the ulcer, clipped off the smallerintesteene, spliced the twa together wi' a Collins button, and by asuccessful deveece o' plumbing--naething less--earned the eterr'nalgratitude o' the autocrat an' the everlastin' currses o' the Nihilists. All that, seven years ago, an' the thing is dune the day wi'oot ahair's-breadth difference. For why? Ye canna paint the lily, or improveupon perfection. Toch!... Colonel, that man would be worth the waitin'for, if he stood in your friend's shoes the day!"

"Rejoice then, Major, and be exceeding glad, for I believe this is theman who wrote the book and plugged--or was it plumbed--the potentate. "

The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. "I promise myself a crack ortwa 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 WinterSeason Ahem! ahem!"

By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing the conversation, it was plain that he had recalled the circumstances under which the "busychiel" had turned his back upon the private patients and the Hospitalwards. "Colonel, " he went on, "I could be wishing this varrycreeditable-appearing institution--judging from the ootside o't--weretwice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe or so to the back of that. "

"My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and happy but once, andthat was when we had fifty men down with dysentery and fever in atin-roofed Railway goods-shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leakycanvas, and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could get nomilk. "

"That goes to prove the eleementary difference between the male an' thefemale character. A man will no' keep on dithering for what he kens hecanna' get. A woman, especially a young an' pretty----" He broke off tosay: "Toch! will ye hark to Beauvayse! The very name of the sex sets thatlad rampaging. "

"Beautiful! I tell you, sir, " the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-campwas emphatically assuring that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, "theloveliest girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see--bar none! I sawher first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang of Boer blackguardsinsulted some nuns who were in charge of a ladies' school, and to-day shepassed with two other Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as theStaff dismounted at the gate. "

"Another _rara avis_, Beau?" the Colonel called across the interveninggroup of talkers. The group of khâki-clad figures separated, and turnedfirst to the Chief, then to the bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast. White teeth flashed in tanned faces, chaff began:

"In love again, for the first and only time, Toby?"

"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. "

"Don't forget the velvet-voiced beauty of the dark, moonless night on theCape Town Hotel verandah!"

"_She_ turned out to be a Hottentot lady, didn't she?"

"Cavalry Problem No. 1. Put yourself in Lieutenant the Right Hon. The LordViscount Beauvayse's place, and give in detail the precautions you wouldhave taken to insure the transport of your heart uninjured from the StaffHeadquarters to the Hospital Gate. Show on the map the disposition of theenemy, whether desirous to enslave, or likely to be mashed.... "

"She was neither, " the crimson boy declared. "She was simply a lady, quietand high-bred and simple enough to have been a Princess of the blood, orto look a fellow in the face and pass him by without the slightestidea--I'd swear to it--that she'd fairly taken his breath away. "

"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 maysay the word--in her praise. But you go one, or half a dozen, better thanMrs. Greening, who will be perfectly willing, I don't doubt, to introduceyou, unless the Colonel entertains objections ... "

"To Staff flirtations? Regard 'em as inevitable, Mr. Mayor, like Indianprickly-heat, or fever here. And probably the best cure for the complaintin the present instance would be to meet the cause of it. "

"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 herbefore, and it isn't the kind of face one forgets. Here they are ... Hereshe is now, coming back, with the other ladies. The railing spoils one'sview, but the gates are open, and in another moment you'll see her passthem. "

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 withBeauvayse, in a clear half-circle of figures attired like his own, inService browns and drabs and umbers, waiting until the three approachingfeminine shapes should pass across the open space. One or two Staffmonocles went up. The Chief Medical Officer removed and wiped hissteel-rimmed eyeglasses before replacing them on his bony aquiline nose. 

They came and passed--the white figure and the two black ones. Of theseone was very tall, one short and dumpy--veiled and mantled, their handshidden in their ample sleeves, they went by with their eyes upon theground. But the girl with them--a slight, willowy creature in a creamycambric dress, a wide hat of black transparent material, frilled andbowed, upon her dead-leaf coloured hair, and tied by wide strings ofmuslin under her delicate round chin--looked with innocent, candidinterest at the group of men outside the Hospital. The tanned faces, thesimple workman-like Service dress, setting off the well-knit, alertfigures, the quiet, soldierly bearing, even the distant sound of thewell-bred voices, pleased her, even as the whiff of cigars and Russianleather that the breeze brought down from the stoep struck some latentchord of subconscious memory, and brought a puzzled little frown betweenthe delicately-drawn dark eyebrows arching over black-lashed golden hazeleyes. And cognisant of every fleeting change of expression in those lovelyeyes, the taller of her two companions thought, with a stab of pain:

"_Your father was that man's friend, and the comrade of others like him. _"

"Now, then!" challenged Beauvayse, as the three figures moved out ofsight. 

"The 'Girl With the Golden Eyes'?" said somebody. 

"You wouldn't speak of her in the same breath with that brainless beast ofBalzac's, hang it all!" expostulated the champion. He turned eagerly tothe Colonel. "Now you've seen her, sir, would you?"

"Not exactly. And I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possessionof good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Lookout! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of theMother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes ofperfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing theflowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the nextinstant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly beforethe gates, and rendered nervous by the pressure of the crowd, shied at thetowering _panache_ of imitation grass-made ostrich feathers trailing fromthe aged and crownless pot-hat worn by a headman of the Barala in holidayattire, jerked the bridle from the hand of the trooper, and backed, rearing, in the direction of the three women passing on the sidewalk. Theother horses shied, frustrating the efforts of the orderly to catch theflying bridle, and the danger from the huge, towering brown body anddangling iron-shod hoofs was very real, seemed inevitable, when a man inwhite drill and wearing a Panama hat ran out of the crowd, sprang up anddeftly caught the loose bridoon-rein, mastered the frightened beast, anddragged it back into the roadway, in time to avert harm. 

"Cleverly done, but a close thing, " the Chief said, as he turned away. "_Iwish I had had that fellow's chance!_" was written in Beauvayse's face. Tohave won a look of gratitude from those wonderful black-fringed eyes, brought a flush of admiration into those white-rose cheeks, would havebeen worth while. The slight, tall, girlish figure in its dainty creamydraperies had passed out of sight now between its two black-robedguardians. And had not Luck, that mutable-minded deity, given the goldenchance to a hulking stranger in white drill, his, Beauvayse's, might havebeen the hand to intervene in the matter of the Colonel's restive charger, and his the ears to receive Beauty's acknowledgments. 

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 inbetween her and possible danger! The most innocent girl will have herideal of a lover and thrill at the imagined touch, and furnish the dumbimage with a dream-voice that woos her in impossible, elaborate, impassioned sentences, very unlike the real utterances of Love when hecomes. The blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, golden-locked St. Michael portrayedin celestial-martial splendour upon one of the panels of the triptych overthe altar in the Convent chapel, had, as he bent stern young brows overthe writhing demon with the vainly-enveloping snake-folds, something ofthe 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 Armiesof Heaven. 

But she knew another who would understand. There was no flaw in theperfect sympathy that maintained between Lynette and the Mother-Superior, though, certainly, since the Colonel's visit of the previous day, theMother had seemed strangely preoccupied and sad.... Her good-night kiss, invariably so warm and tender, had been the merest brush of lips againstthe 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 herabandonment, weaving a very pretty, ineffably silly romance, in which anoble and beautiful young Hussar lover, suddenly appearing over thecorrugated-iron fence of the tennis-ground, the foliage of its fringe ofpepper-trees waving in the night-breeze, strode towards the slender whitefigure leaning from her chamber-casement, whispering, with outstretchedhands, and eyes that gleamed through the darkness:

"_Open the door! Do you hear, you Kid? Open the door!_"

Her heart beat once, heavily, and seemed to stop. A cold breath seemed toblow upon the little silken hair-tendrils at the nape of her white neck, spreading a creeping, stiffening horror through her body, deadeningsensation, paralysing every limb. 

The close approach of any man, even the thought of such contact, turnedher deadly faint, checked her pulses, stopped her breath. At picnics andparties and dances to which the Mayor's wife or the mothers of some of thepupils would invite or chaperon her, her vivid, delicate, fragile beautywould draw, first men's eyes, and then their owners, not all unhandsome orundesirable; while showier girls looked in vain for partners orcompanions. The little triumph, the consciousness of being admired andsought after, would quicken Lynette's pulses, and heighten the radiance ofher eyes, and lend animation to her girlish chatter and gaiety to herlaughter--at first. Then some over-bold advance, some hot look orwhispered word, would bring quick recollection leaping into the lovelyeyes, and drive the vivid colour from the virginal transparent face, andstamp the smiling mouth into pale, breathless lines of Fear. That night inthe tavern on the veld had branded a child with premature knowledge of theferocious, ravening, devouring Beast that lies in Man concealed. Again shefelt the scorching breath of lust upon her; she quailed under theintolerable touch; she shook like a reed in the brutal hands of the evil, dominating power that would brook no resistance and knew no mercy. Thehorrible obsession came upon her now, all the stronger for those momentsof forgetfulness:

"_Clang--clang--clang!_"

The little Irish novice had rung the chapel bell for Sext and None. Shecould hear, from the nuns' end of the big rambling, two-storied house, therustling habits sweeping along the passage. She hurried to the door, andtore it open, frantically as though that ravening breath had been hot uponher 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 hadturned from in his blindness. 

Just as Beauvayse, stimulated by the recollection of the Mayor's promiseto introduce him to the loveliest girl he had ever seen in his life, orever should see, mentally registered a vow that he would keep the oldbuffer up to that, by listening to his interminable hunting-stories, andlaughing at his venerable jokes, to tears if necessary. Love, like War, sharpened a fellow's faculties.... 

"It's rum to reflect, " Beauvayse said, conscious of perpetrating anepigram, "that from time immemorial the fellow who wants to make up to ayoung woman has always had to begin by getting round an old man!"

He looked round for the old man, whom the title would have estranged forever. He had buttonholed the Chief, and was gassing away--joy!--upon thevery subject. 

"I fancy the ladies of the Convent, who occasionally visit the Hospital, were coming in at this gate. The short nun, I noticed, had a littlebasket in her hand. Probably they went round to the side entrance, seeingthe--ha, ha!--the stoep garrisoned by Her Majesty's Imperial Forces. Certainly.... Without doubt. We respect the Mother-Superior highly. A mostgifted, most estimable person in every way, if rather stern andreserved.... Unapproachable, my wife calls her. But Miss Mildare, herward----"

XXIV

"Miss Mildare!"

The Chief's keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The whole face had darkenedand narrowed, and the clipped brown moustache lost its smiling curve, andstraightened into a hard line. 

"Miss _Mildare_?"

"Why, yes, that is her name.... An orphan, I have heard, and with noliving relatives. But she seems happy enough at the Convent, judging bywhat Mrs. Greening says. "

The hearer experienced a momentary feeling of relief and of anger--reliefto think that dead Dick Mildare's daughter should have found refuge insuch a woman's heart; anger that the woman should have concealed from himthe girl's identity, knowing her the object of his own anxious search. 

Then he understood. His anger died as suddenly as it had been kindled. Herecalled something that he had seen when the rearing horse had inclinedperilously towards the footway--that protecting maternal gesture, thatswift interposition of the tall, active, black-robed figure between thewhite-clad, flower-faced, girlish creature and those threatening iron-shodhoofs.... 

"She loves the girl--Dick Mildare's daughter by the treacherous friend whostole him from her. Is there a doubt? With poor little Lady Lucy Hawting'swillowy figure and the same nymph-like droop of the little head, with itsrich twists and coils of dead-leaf-coloured hair, shaded by the big blackhat. That woman has taken her to her heart, however she came by her; theparting would be agony, stern, proud, tender creature that she is! Isuppose she will be doing thundering penance for not having told me, afellow who simply walked into the place and assegaied her with mydeath-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-uplittle chrysalis. For God made all women, though He only turned out a fewof 'em perfect, and some only just a little better than the ruck. "

He roused himself from the brown study that brought into relief manylurking lines and furrows in the thin, keen face, as the Chief MedicalOfficer, fixing him through suspicious eyeglasses, demanded:

"Ye got your full allowance o' sleep last nicht?"

He nodded. 

"Thanks to a Cockney babe in bandoliers, who was born not only with eyesand ears, like other infants, but with the capacity for using 'em. "

"Ay. It's remarr'kable how many men will daudle complacently through life, from the cradle to the grave, wi'out the remotest consciousness thatthey're practically blind and no better than deaf, as far as regards realseeing and hearing. But who's your prodeegy?"

"One of Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. They put him on at the Convent withanother sentry, their first experience of a night on guard. By not beingin a hurry to challenge, and keeping his ears open while a conversation ofthe confidentially-affectionate kind was going on between a Dutchman--afellow employed in the booking-office at the railway, on whom I've had myeye for some little time past--and his sweetheart, my townie found out forhimself something that most of us knew before, and something else that wewanted to know particularly badly.... "

"Namely?"

"For one thing, that the town is a hotbed of spies, and that our friendsin laager outside are nightly communicated with by means offlash-signals. "

"And that's an indeesputable fact. Toch!" No other combination of lettersmay convey the guttural, "Have I no' seen the lamps at warr'k mysel', after darr'k, at the end o' the roads that debouch upon the veld! TheDutchman would be able to plead precedent, I'm thinking. "

"He will have plenty of time to think where he is at present. When thesentry interfered he was instructing the young woman in a simple buteffective code of match-flare signals, by means of which she was tocommunicate with him when he had cleared out. And he had announced hisintention of doing that without delay. "

"An' skipping to his freends upo' the Borr'der.... Toch!" The network ofwrinkles tightened about the sharp little blue-grey eyes of the ChiefMedical Officer. "That would gie a thochtfu' man a kind o' notion that areese in the temperature may be expectit shortly. An' so you--sleptsoundly on the strength o' many wakeful nichts to come? Ay, that would bethe kind o' information ye were badly wanting!"

"You're wrong, Major. The bit of information was this--from the spy to hisfriends outside: '_No--news--to-night. _'" The keen hazel eyes conveyedsomething into the Northern blue ones that was not said in words: "'Nonews to-night. ' And the sender of that message was a railway man!"

The wiry hairs of the Chief Medical Officer's red moustache bristled likea cat's. 

"Toch! Colonel, you will have reason to be considering me dull in theuptake, but I see through the mud wall now. And so the knowledge that yehave no equal at hiding your deeds o' darkness even in the licht o' therailway-yard was as good to ye as Daffy's Elixir. And when micht we reckonon getting notification from what I may presume to ca' your doublesurpreese-packet?"

He looked at his watch--a well-used Waterbury, worn upon the silveredsteel lip-strap of a cavalry bridle, and said:

"Ten o'clock. At a quarter past eleven I think we may count uponsomething. The driver of Engine 123 has given me the word of an Irishmanfrom County Kildare; and the stoker, a Cardiff man, and the guard, whohails from Shoreditch, are quite as keen as Kildare. "

"You're sending the stuff up North?"

"In the direction of the stretch of railway-line they're busy wrecking, inthe hope that it may come in useful. "

"Weel, I will gie ye the guid wish that the affair may go off exactly asye are hoping. "

"Thanks, Major! You could hardly word the sentence more happily. "

They exchanged a laugh as the Mayor bustled up, rubicund, important, andwith a Member of the Committee to introduce. 

"Colonel, you'll permit me to present Alderman Brooker, one of our mostenergetic and valued townsmen, President of the Gas Committee, and anAssistant Borough Magistrate. One of Major Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. Wason sentry-go last night not far from here, and had a most extraordinaryexperience. Worth your hearing, if you can spare time to listen to myfriend's account of it. "

"With pleasure, Mr. Mayor. "

Brooker, a stout and flabby man, with pouches under biliously tinged eyes, bowed and broke into a violent perspiration, not wholly due to the shinyblack frock-coat suit of broadcloth donned for the occasion. 

"Sir, I humbly venture to submit that I have been the victim of aconspiracy!"

"Indeed? Step this way, Mr. Brooker. "

Brooker, soothed by the courteous affability of the reception, his senseof importance magnified by being led aside, apart from the others, intothe 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 towhom he now addressed himself, would understand--none better--how tounravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den ofsecret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon hisunder-lip. He waved his hands, thick, short-fingered, clammy members.... 

"My story is as follows, sir.... "

"I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on condition thatyou will do me first the favour of listening to a story of mine?"

Deferred Brooker protested willingness. 

"Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, Iwas returning from a little tour of inspection"--the slight ridingsjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward--"outthere, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent, where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had beenposted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce:

"_Gr'rumph! Honk'k! Gr'rumph!_"

Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes. 

The face upon which he glued his bulging eyes was grave to sternness. Hestuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance:

"It--it sounds something like a snore. "

"It was a snore, Mr. Brooker, and it proceeded from one of the sentriesupon guard. "

"Sir ... I ... I can expl----"

"Oblige me by not interrupting, Mr. Brooker. This sentry sat upon a shortpost, his back fitted comfortably into an angle of the Convent fence, hishead thrown back, and his mouth wide open. From it, or from the organimmediately above, the snore proceeded. He was having a capital night'srest--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 ceasedto snore, and said":--the wretched Brooker heard his own voice, renderedwith marvellous fidelity, speaking in the muffled tone of thesleeper--"'_Annie, it's damned cold to-night; and you've got all theblanket. _'"

"Sir ... Sir!" The stricken Brooker babbled hideously.... "Colonel ... Formercy's sake!... "

"I could not oblige the gentleman with a blanket, Mr. Brooker, but Irelieved him of his rifle and left him, to tell his picket a cock-and-bullstory of having been drugged and hypnotised by Boer spies. And--I willoverlook it upon the present occasion, but in War-time, Mr. Brooker, menhave been shot for less. I think I need not detain you further. Your riflehas been sent to your headquarters--with my card and an explanation. Oneword more, Mr. Brooker----"

Brooker, grey, streaky, and desperately wretched, was blind to thelaughter brimming the keen hazel eyes. 

"I am entrusted by the Imperial Government with the preservation of PublicMorality in Gueldersdorp, as well as with the maintenance of the PublicSafety--and I should be glad of an assurance from you that Mrs. Brooker'sChristian name is really Annie?"

"I--I swear it, Colonel!"

Brooker fled, leaving the preserver of public morality to have his laughout before he rejoined the Staff, glancing at the Waterbury on the shortsteel chain. Half-past ten. Would the Dop Doctor turn up to appointment, or had the battle with habit and the deadly craving born of indulgenceended in defeat? As his eyes moved from the dial, they lighted upon theman:

"_Clothed and in his right mind.... _"

His own words of the night before recurred to memory as he came forwardswith his long, light step, greeting the new-comer with the easy, cordialgrace of high-breeding. 

"Ah, Dr. Saxham, obliged to you for being punctual. Let me introduce youto Major Lord Henry Leighbury, D. S. O. , Grenadier Guards, our D. A. A. G. Dr. Saxham, Colonel Ware, Baraland Rifles, and Sir George Wendysh, WessexRegiment, commanding the Irregular Horse; Captain Bingham Wrynche, RoyalBay Dragoons, my senior aide-de-camp, and his junior, Lieutenant LordBeauvayse, of the Grey Hussars. And Dr. Saxham, Major Taggart, R. A. M. C. , our Chief Medical Officer. "

He watched the man keenly as he made the introductions, saying to himselfthat this was better than he had hoped. The ragged black moustache hadbeen shaved away; the frayed but spotless suit of white drill fitted theheavy-shouldered, thin-flanked, muscular figure perfectly; the faded blueflannel shirt, with the white double collar and narrow black tie; theshabby black kamarband about his waist, the black-ribboned Panama, maintaining respectability in extremest old age, as that expensive butlasting headgear is wont to do, possessed, as worn by the Dop Doctor, acertain _cachet_ of style. His slight, curt, almost frowning salutationsdisplayed a well-graduated recognition of the official status of eachindividual to whom he was made known, betokening the man accustomed tomove in circles where such knowledge and the application of it wasindispensable, and who knew, too, that slight from him would have givenchagrin. But another moment, and the junior Medical Officer, ablack-avised little Irishman from County Meath, had gripped him by bothhands, and was exclaiming in his juicy brogue, real delight beaming in hisround, rosy face:

"Saxham! Saxham of St. Stephens, and the grand ould days! Deny me now, tomy face. Say, 'Tom McFadyen, I don't know you, ' if you dare. "

The blue eyes shone out vivid gentian-colour in the kindly smile thatillumined them, the stern lips parted in a laugh that showed the soundwhite closely-set teeth. 

"Tom McFadyen, I do know you. But if you offer to pay me that cab-fare youowe me, I shall say I'm wrong, and that it's another man. "

"Hould your tongue, jewel, " drolled the little junior, who delighted inexaggerating the brogue that tripped naturally off his Irish tongue. "Don't be after giving me away to the Chief and the Senior that believeme, by me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that was King ofTara, and owned the cow-grazing from Trim to Athboy, and ate boiledturnips off shields of gold before potatoes were invented, when thebog-oaks were growing as acorns on the tree. And as to the cab-fare, sureI hailed the hansom out of politeness to your honour's glory, the day thatsaw me going off to the Army Medical School at Netley, wid all my worldlybelongin'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 platformsheddin' half-crowns out av every pore for the newspaper boys an' portersto pick up, and smilin' like a baby dhramin' av the bottle. You'd passedyour exam in Anatomy wid wan hand held behind you an' a glove on theother, you'd got your London University Scholarship in Physiology, andyou'd fallen head over ears in love with the prettiest and sweetest girlthat ever wore out shoe-leather. You wrote to me two years later to sayyou'd been appointed an in-surgeon on the Junior Staff, an' that you wereengaged to be married. But divil the taste of weddin'-cake did I ever getoff you. What----"

The little Irishman, thoughtlessly rattling on, pulled up in an instant, seeing the ghastly unmistakable change upon the other's face. Heremembered the grim black reason for the change in Saxham, and for once, his habitual tact deserted him. His rosy gills purpled, even as had theMayor's on the Dop Doctor's entrance. His eyes winced under the heavypetrifying, unseeing stare of Saxham's blue ones.... 

"Sorry to stem the flood of your reminiscences, McFadyen, but we're goingto overhaul the Hospital now. "

It was the voice of the visitor who had come to the Harris Street house onthe previous night, the tall, loosely-built, closely-knit figure in theeasily fitting Service-dress that now stepped across the gulf that hadsuddenly opened between the two old friends, and laid a hand in pleasant, familiar fashion upon Saxham's heavy, rather bowed shoulders. But for thatscholar's stoop they would have been of equal height. He went on: "Youwill 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 ofLondon. "

The blue eyes met his almost defiantly. 

"As I think I remember telling you, sir, it is five years since I sawLondon. "

"Well, I don't blame you for taking a long holiday while it wasprocurable. There are a few of us who would benefit by a gallop withoutthe halter, eh, Taggart?"

Saxham would not stoop even to benefit indirectly by the shrewd, kindlytact. He drew himself to his full height, and the words were spoken withsuch ringing clearness that they arrested the attention of every manpresent. 

"My holiday was compulsory. I underwent--innocently--a legal prosecutionfor malpractice. The Crown Jury decided in my favour, but my West Endconnection was ruined. I resigned my Hospital and other appointments, andleft England. "

"Ay!" It was the Chief Medical Officer's broad Scots tongue that dronedout 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 memorythat ye had set your mind on beginnin' wi' the Operating Theatre?... "

XXV

The chart-nurse looked in to say that the Medical officers of the GarrisonStaff were making the rounds, and was stricken to the soul by thediscovery that the Reverend Julius Fraithorn had had no breakfast. Occupying a small, single-cotted, electric-bell-less room in the outlyingward--brick-lined and corrugated-iron-built like the greater building, andreserved for infectious cases--the Reverend Julius might have been said tobe marooned, had not his dark-eyed, transparent, wasted young face createdsuch hot competition among the nurses for the privilege of attending onhim, that he had frequently received breakfast and dinner in duplicate, and once three teas. Some of the probationers, reared in the outerdarkness of Dissent, knew no better than to term him "the minister. " Tothe matron, who was High Church, he existed as "Father Fraithorn. " Juliusis hardly complete to the reader without an intimation that he very dearlyloved to be dubbed "Father. " The matron had never failed in this. 

A letter from Father Tatham, Julius's senior at St. Margaret's, lay underthe bony hand--a mere bunch of fleshless fingers, in which theskin-covered stick that had been a man's arm ended. Father Tatham wrote tosay that, after a bright, enjoyable summer holiday, spent with a chosenband of West-Central London barrow-boys at a Rest Home atCookham-on-Thames, he has started his Friday evening Confirmation classesfor young costermongers in Little Schoolhouse Court, and obtained a recordattendance by the simple plan of rewarding punctual attendance andultimate mastery gained over the Catechism and Athanasian Creed with pairsof trousers. Julius had shaken his head over the trousers, knowing thatthe first walk taken by the garments in company with the winners would beas far as the pop-shop. But lying there in the clean-smelling, airyHospital ward, he yearned with a mighty yearning for the stuffyWest-Central classroom, and the rowdy crew of London roughs hulking andhustling on the benches, learning per medium of "the dodger, " that one'sduty to one's neighbour was not to abuse him foully without cause, torefrain one's hands from pocket-picking, shop-raiding, hustling, andjellying heads with brass-buckled belts or iron knuckle-dusters, and notto get drunk before Saturday night. 

He had come out to South Africa upon the advice ofphysicians--honestly-meaning wiseacres--ignorant of the shifts, thefatigues, the inevitable exertions and privations that the panting, tottering invalid must inevitably undergo, in company with the haletraveller and the sound emigrant; the rough, protracted journeys, theneglect and discomfort of the inns and taverns and boarding-houses, whereKaffirs are the servants, and dirt and discomfort reign. He bore thembecause he must, and struggled on, learning by painful experience thatfever-patches are best avoided, and finding out what dust-winds mean tothe man who has got sick lungs, and sometimes thinking he was gettingbetter, and would be one day able to go back to the Clergy House, and takeup his mission in the West and West-Central districts, and begin workagain. 

Now, lying panting on his pillows, raised high by the light chair slippedin behind them, hospital-fashion, he looked beyond the whitewashed wallsnorthwards, to grimy London. He dreamed, while the chart-nurse was stillapologising about the forgotten breakfast, of the High Ritual in thesacred place, and the solemn joy of the vested celebrant of theEucharistic Sacrifice. The incense rose in clouds to the gilded, diaperedroof, the organ pealed ... Then the ward seemed to fill with men in khâkiService dress, keen-eyed and tan-faced beings, of quiet movements andwell-bred gestures, obviously stamped with the _cachet_ of authority. Upright, alert, well-knit, and strong, the visitors exhaled the compoundfragrance of healthy virility, clean linen, and excellent cigars; and thepoor sufferer yielded to a pang of envy as he looked at them, standingabout his bed, and thought of that resting-place even narrower, in whichhis wasted body must soon lie. And then he mentally smote his breast andrepented. What was he, the unworthy servant of Heaven, that he should dareto oppose the Holy Will?

"Weel now, and how are we the day?" said the Chief Medical Officer, presented by the Resident Surgeon to the occupant of the bed. He readapproaching death in the sunken face against the pillows, and in thefeeble pulse as he touched the skeleton wrist, and the Resident Surgeon, catching the Scotsman's eye, shook his head slightly, impartinginformation that was not needed. 

"It is not in my power, I am afraid, sir, to return you the conventionalanswer, " said Julius Fraithorn. "To be plain and brief, I am sufferingfrom tuberculous lung-disease, and I am advised that I have not many daysto live. "

He smiled gratefully at the Resident Surgeon. 

"Everything that can be done for me here is done. I cannot be toothankful. But I should have liked--I should have wished to have beenspared to return to England, if not to live a little longer among myfriends, at least to ... " He broke off panting, and his rattling breathsseemed to shake him. He sounded like Indian corn shaken in a gunny-bag; hewheezed like the mildewed harmonium in the Hospital chapel, on which hehad 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 movedhe had suffered torture: the shoulder-blades and hip-bones had pierced thewasted muscular tissues and projected through the skin. 

"I can't!" he gasped out. "You see----"

A dizziness of deadly weakness seized him. His soft, muffled voice trailedaway into a whisper, blue shadows gathered about his large, mobile, sensitive mouth, much like that of Keats as shown in the Death Cast, andhis head fell back upon the pillows. Julius had fainted. 

"Poor beggar!" said a large, pink man, wearing the red shoulder-straps andbrown-leather leggings of the Staff, to another, a fair, handsome, younggiant who leaned against the opposite door-post, as the chart-nursehurried to take away the pillows, and lay the patient flat, and theshorter of the two medical officers dropped brandy from a flask into aglass with water in it, while the tall Scot, his finger on the pulse, stooped over the pale figure on the bed;

"No doubt about his next address being the Cemetery. Should grouse myselfif I was in his shoes--or bed-socks would be the proper word--what?"

Beauvayse agreed. "He looks like a chap I saw once get into a coffin atthe Cabaret de l'Enfer--that shady restaurant place in the Boulevard deClichy. When they turned on the lights ... " He shrugged. "The women of theparty thought it simply ripping. I wanted to be sick. "

Captain Bingo had also known the sensation of nausea during a similarexperience. "But women'll stand anything, " he said, "particularly ifthey've been told it's _chic_. My own part, I can stand any amount of deadmen--healthy dead men, don't you know? But--give you my word--a cadaverousspectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, andbreathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like theProdigal Son, gives me the downright horrors!"

Thus they conferred, supporting opposite door-posts with solid shoulders, until the C. M. O. , turning his head, addressed them brusquely, curtly:

"Wrynche, if you'd transfer yourself with Lord Beauvayse to the passage, myself and my colleagues here would be the better obliged to ye. "

"Pleasure!" They removed, with a simultaneous clink of scabbards and aring of spurred heels on the tiled pavement. 

The Colonel remained, making those about the bed a group of five. Thechart-nurse stayed, pending the nod of dismissal, a rigid statue of cappedand aproned discipline, upright in the corner. 

"Phew!" Captain Bingo blew a vast sigh of relief, and produced acigar-case. "Well out of that, my boy. All jumps this morning; wouldn'ttake the odds you're not as bad?"

"Rather!" Beauvayse nodded, and drew the elder man's attention, with alook, to the strong young hand that held a choice Havana just acceptedfrom the offered case. "Shaky, isn't it? and yet I didn't punish thechampagne much last night. It's sheer excitement, just what one feelsbefore 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--fromPeshawar, under Wilks-Dayrell, splitting up some North-West Frontiertribes that had lumped themselves together against British Authority--upto now. But I'm looking out for the chance of something better worthhaving, like you and all the rest of us. Trouble you for a light!"

"By the Living Tinker, and that's the fourth! Where d'you think I'd give acool fifty to be this minute? Not cooling my heels in a brick-pavedpassage while a pack of doctors are swoppin' dog-Latin over the body of amoribund young parson, but on the roof of the Staff Quarters, lookin'North, with my eyes glued to the binoculars and my ears pricked for--youknow what!"

Beauvayse groaned. "Isn't that what I'm suffering for? And the Chief mustbe ten times worse. How he keeps his countenance--demure as mygrandmother's cat lappin' cream.... I say, the Transvaal Dutch; they callthemselves the true Children of Israel, don't they? Well, which did Mosesand 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 rawmaterial for a sky-journey, only waitin' till Brer' Boer plugs a bullet inamong the dynamite? It makes me feel good all over, as the American womensay, when I think of it. " He smiled like a mischievous young archangel, masquerading in Service kit. 

Within the room the fainting man was coming back to consciousness, hisdry, rattling breaths bearing out Captain Bingo Wrynche's similituderegarding husks and shavings, rings of blue fire swimming before hisdarkened vision, and a dull roaring in his ears.... The Royal Army MedicalCorps wrought over him; the nurse lent a deft helping hand; the ResidentSurgeon talked eagerly to the Colonel; and he, lending ear, scarcely heardthe reiterated, stereotyped parrot-phrases, so taken up was his attentionwith the man in shabby white drill clothes, who leaned over the foot ofthe bed, his square face set into an expressionless mask, hisgentian-blue, oddly vivid eyes fixed upon the wasted, waxy-yellow face ofthe sick man, his head bent, as he listened with profound, absorbedattention to the husky, rattling, laboured breaths. 

Suddenly he straightened himself and spoke, addressing himself to theResident Surgeon. 

"The patient has told us, sir, that he is suffering from tuberculousdisease of the lungs. May I ask, was that the conclusion arrived at by aLondon consulting physician, and whether your own diagnosis has confirmedthe assertion?"

The Resident Surgeon nodded with patronising indifference. He was notgoing to waste civilities upon this rowdy, drunken remittance-man, whom hehad seen reeling through the streets of the stad as he went upon his ownrespectable way. 

"_Phthisis pulmonalis. _" He addressed his reply to the Chief. "And theprocess of lung-destruction is, as you will observe, sir, nearlycomplete. "

He encountered from the Chief a look of cool displeasure that flushed himto the top of his knobby forehead, and set him blinking nervously behindhis big round spectacles. 

"Dr. Saxham asked you, sir, unless I mistake, whether you had ascertainedby your own diagnosis, the ... " Lady Hannah's words came back to him. Herecalled the "bit of information wormed out of the nurse, " and ended with"the presence of the bacillus?"

Saxham's blue eyes thrust their rapier-points at him, and then plungedinto 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. 

"Koch's bacillus, sir, were this a case of tuberculosis proper, would bepresent in the expectoration of the patient, and easy of demonstrationunder the microscope. " Saxham's voice was cold as ice and cutting astempered steel. "May we take it that you can personally testify to itspresence here?" He pointed to the bed. 

"And varra possibly, " put in Taggart, "ye could submit a culture forpresent inspection? It would be gratifeeying to me and Captain McFadyenhere, as weel as to our friend an' colleague Dr. Saxham, late of St. Stephen's-in-the-West, London, to varrafy the correctness o' yourdiagnosis. "

"And it would that!" the Irishman chimed in. "So trot out your bacillus, by all manner of means!"

The Resident Surgeon babbled something incoherent, and melted out of theroom. 

"Moppin' his head as he goes down the passage, " said McFadyen, coming backfrom the door. 

"He'll no be in sic a sweatin' hurry to come back, " pronounced the cannyScot, shedding a wink from a dry, red-fringed eyelid. He produced from theroomy breast-pocket of his khâki Service jacket a rubber-tubedstethoscope, and put it silently into the hand Saxham had mechanicallystretched out for it. Then he drew back, his eyes, like those of the othertwo spectators of the strange scene that was beginning, fixed upon thechief actor in it. One other, weak after his swoon as a new-born child, lay passively, helplessly upon the bed. 

Saxham, his square face stony and set, moved with a noiseless, feline, padding step towards the prone victim. A gleam of apprehension shot intoJulius Fraithorn's great dark eyes, reopening now to consciousness. Theyfixed themselves, with an instinct born of that sudden thrill of fear, upon the lightly-closed right hand. Instantly comprehending, Saxham liftedthe hand, showed that it held no instrument save the stethoscope, anddropped 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. Themassive shoulders bowed, the supple body curved, the keen ear joineditself to the heaving surface. In a moment more the agonising, hacking, rending cough came on. Julius battled for air. Raising him deftly andtenderly, Saxham signed to the nurse, who hurried to him, answering hislow questions in whispers, giving aid where he indicated it required. 

Steadily, patiently, the binaural stethoscope travelled over the lungarea, gathering abnormal sounds, searching for silent spaces, suckingevidence into the assimilative brain behind the eyes that saw nothing butthe man upon the bed, the locked human casket housing the secret that wasslowly, surely coming to light. In the fierce determination to gain it, hethrew the stethoscope away, and glued his avid ear to the man again. 

"Toch! but I wouldna' have missed this for a kittie o' Kruger sovereigns!"the Chief Medical Officer whispered to his colleague from Meath. AndMcFadyen whispered back:

"Nor me, for your shoes. 'Ssh!"

Saxham was lifting up the great stooping shoulders, and beginning tospeak in a voice totally different from that of the man known inGueldersdorp as the Dop Doctor. Clear, ringing, concise, the sentencesleft his lips:

"Gentlemen, I invite your attention to a case of involuntary simulation ofthe symptoms distinguishing pulmonary tuberculosis by a patient sufferingfrom a grave disease of totally different and possibly much less malignantcharacter. Oblige me by stepping nearer!"

They crowded about the bed like eager students. 

"In order to show what false conclusions loose modes of reasoning and thehabitual reliance upon precedent may lead to, take the instance of theconsulting physician to whom some years ago this young man, now barelythirty, and reduced, as you may see for yourselves, to the final extremityof physical decline, resorted. "

"I would gie five shillin' if the man could hear his ain judgment!"murmured the Chief Medical Officer; for he had gleaned from a whisperedanswer of Julius's the omnipotent name of Sir Jedbury Fargoe. "Toch!" Hechuckled dryly. Saxham went on:

"The consulting patient suffers from cough, painful and racking, fromimpaired digestive power, from increasing debility, fever, andnight-sweats. He visits the specialist, convinced that he is consumptive, he receives confirmation of his convictions, and you see him to-daypresenting the appearance, and reproducing all the symptoms of a patientin consumption's final stage. Possibly the germs of tuberculosis may bedormant in his organisation, waiting the opportunity to develop intoactivity! Possibly--a very remote possibility--the disease may havealready attacked some organ of his body! But--and upon this point I cantake my stand with the confidence of absolute certainty--the lungs of thisso-called pulmonary sufferer are absolutely sound!"

"My certie! Send I may live to foregather wi' Sir Jedbury Fargoe!" theChief Medical Officer prayed inaudibly. "He will gang to the nextInternational Consumption Congress wi' a smaller conceit of himsel', or myname's no Duncan Taggart!"

The lecturer, absorbed in his subject, lifted his hand to silence themurmur, and pursued:

"From what disease, then, is this man suffering? Logical and progressiveconclusions drawn from experience, and based upon the local enlargementwhich the physicians previously consulted have apparently failed toperceive, lead me to diagnose the presence of a tumour in the mediastinum, extending its claws into the lungs, and seriously impeding their actionand the action of the heart. An operation, serious and necessarilyinvolving danger, is imperative. The growth may be benign or malignant; inthe 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 withcertainty. Upon the presence of the growth, simple or otherwise, I amready to stake my credit, my good name, my professional reputation----"

Ah! It rushed upon Saxham with a sickening shock of recollection that hewas bankrupt in these things, and shame and anger strove for the masteryin his face, and anguish wrung a sob from him, despite his iron composure. 

He wrenched at the collar about his swelling throat, as he turned awayblindly towards the window, seeing nothing, fighting desperately with thehorrible despair that had gripped him, and the mad, wild frenzy ofyearning for the old, glorious life of strenuous effort and consciouspower. Lost! lost! all that had been won. 

"I ... I had forgotten ... !" he muttered; and then a hard, vigorous handfound his and gripped it. 

"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 elsecould have done, his lost self-control. "You have earned the right!"

"Man, you're a wonder!" groaned the enraptured Chief Medical Officer. Headded, with a relapse into the national caution: "That is, ye will be ifyour prognosis proves correc'. But the Taggarts are a' of the canny breedof Doobtin' Tammas, an sae I'll just keep a calm sugh till I see what theknife lays bare. "

"Use the knife now, sir. At once--without delay!"

It was the weak, muffled voice of the patient on the bed. Saxham wheeledsharply about, and the stern blue eyes and the great lustrous pleadingbrown ones, looked into each other. 

The pale Julius spoke again:

"I entreat you, Doctor!"

Saxham spoke in his curt way:

"You are aware that there is risk?"

Julius Fraithorn stretched out his transparent hands. 

"What risk can there be to a man in my state? Look at these; and did I nothear you say ... "

"Whatever I may have said, sir, and however urgent I may admit thenecessity for immediate operation, you must wait until to-morrow morning. "

"I am fasting, sir, and fed. I received Holy Communion this morning, andhave not yet breakfasted. "

The return of the chart-nurse followed by a probationer carrying a ladentray provoked an exclamation from the little Irishman. 

"Signs on it, the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil a wonder he went offlike he did a bit back. And you can't deny him, Saxham?"

"I wad gie him the chance, Saxham"--this from Surgeon-Major Taggart--"inyour place; and maybe I'm putting in six worrds for mysel' as well as halfa dozen for the patient. For I have an auld bone to pyke wi' Sir JedburyFargoe, aboot a Regimental patient he slew for me, three years back, wi'his jawbone of a Philistine ass. "

Saxham spoke to Fraithorn authoritatively, kindly. 

"You have no near relative to sign the Hospital Register?"

"My family are all in England, sir. I have not thought it necessary todistress them with the knowledge of my state. "

"I think Lady Hannah Wrynche, who is now in Gueldersdorp, happens to be anacquaintance of theirs, if not a friend?"

Julius turned eagerly to the Colonel. 

"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 myfaculties"--there was a smile on the pale lips--"I may be allowed to signthe book myself?"

The doctors interchanged a look. The Colonel said to the patient:

"Mr. Fraithorn, if the idea is not unwelcome to you, I myself will signthe book, and"--he stooped over the bed and laid his hard, soldierly handkindly on the pale one--"in the event of a less fortunate termination thanthat we hope for"--the faces of the three surgeons were a study ininscrutability--"I will communicate, as soon as any communication isrendered possible, with the Bishop and Mrs. Fraithorn. "

The cough shook Julius as a terrier shakes a rat before he could gasp out:

"Thank you, sir. With all my heart I thank you!"

"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, andtook him by the arm. They went out of the ward together, talking in lowtones. The medical officers followed. Then the chart-nurse and theprobationer who had been banished with the tray, came bustling back withtowels, and razors, and a soapy solution in a basin, having a carbolicsmell. 

Dr. Saxham had gone to take a disinfecting bath, the nurse said, as shewent about her minute preparations; and the Commanding Officer had gonewith the Staff, and now her poor dear must let himself be got ready. 

They wrapped the gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe with a heavymonkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded blanket-stockings over theligament-tied, skin-covered bones that served the wasted wretch for legs, and wheeled in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushionedstretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a very handful of humanity, and wheeled him, hooded and head-first, through the tile-floored passageand out into the golden African sunshine, that baked him gloriouslythrough the coverings, and so into the main building and down atile-floored passage there. 

He prayed silently as he was wheeled, with blinded, cowled eyes, throughdouble doors at the end.... 

XXVI

The operation was over, and the two Celts, self-appointed to the temporaryposts of assistant-surgeon and anæsthetist, expressed their emotions incharacteristic manner.... 

"Twelve minutes to a second between the first incision an' the laststitch.... Och, Owen, the jewel you are! Give me the loan of your fist, man, this minute. "

"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, orI'm no Taggart of Taggartshowe. Speaking wi' seriousness, Saxham, it was apretty operation, an' performed wi' extraordinary quickness. And I'm sorrythere 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. "

"You could have done it yourself, Major, in less time. "

"Maybe I could, and maybe I couldna! I doubt but we Army billies arebetter at puttin' men thegither than at takin' them to pieces in the longrun.... 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 toluik at? A wheen blue an' puffy, but the pulse is better than I would haveexpeckit. Wheel him awa', nurse; he'll no come round for another hour.... "

They wheeled him away, back to the distant ward. The porter followed. Thethree surgeons standing by that grim table in the rubber-floored centralspace of the amphitheatre, fenced in by students' benches, vacant save forhalf a dozen whispering dressers, looked at one another. Bloused andaproned with sterilised material, masked, rubber-gloved, and slippered, and splashed with the same ominous stains that were on the table and uponthe floor, Saxham's heavy-shouldered figure was as ominous and sinister asever played a part in mediæval torture-chamber, or figured in anightmare-tale of Poe's device. You can see the other surgeons, bibbed andsleeved, the Irishman, small and dark and wiry, sousing a lethal array ofsharp and gleaming implements in a glass bath of carbolic; Taggart, standing at a glass table, rubber-wheeled and movable, like everythingelse for use, and laden with rolls of lint and bandaging, and blue-glassbottles of peroxide of hydrogen and mercurial perchloride, daintilyreturning reels of silk-worm-gut and bobbins of silver wire to theirvelvet-lined case. 

"You're no' fatigued? You would no' like a steemulant?"

Saxham started and withdrew his gaze. He had been staring with dullintensity of desire at the brandy-decanter, forgotten by the matron, whoseusual charge it was. And the sharp blue-grey eye of Surgeon-Major Taggartfollowed the glance to its end in the golden-gleaming crystal. 

"Fatigued? I hardly think so!"

He laughed, and the others joined in the laugh, remembering the lengthyline 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 bedsober, had risen after three hours of blessed, unexpected, helpful sleep, to battle with his desperate craving until morning. When the old womanleft in charge of the housekeeping arrangements had come to his door withhot water and his usual breakfast--a mug of strong coffee with milk and aroll--he had gulped down the reviving, steadying draught thirstily, andswallowed a mouthful or two of the bread; and when he was shaved andtubbed and clothed in the shabby white drill suit, had gone down to thedispensary and mixed himself a dose of chloric ether and strychnine, strong enough to brace his jarred nerves for the coming ordeal. 

Not that Saxham habitually drugged: that craving was not yet known to him. But the habitual intemperance had exacted even from his iron constitutionits forfeit of shakiness in the morning, and the rare sobriety left theman suffering and unstrung. 

Looking about him as the dose began its work of stringing the lax nervesand stimulating the action of the heart, he saw that many of the drawerswere open, a costly set of graduated scales missing, with theirplush-lined box.... 

With a certain premonition of what would next be missing, he went into thesurgery. A case of silver-mounted surgical instruments had vanished from ashelf, with a presentation loving-cup, given by admirers among DeBoursy-Williams's patients to that gifted practitioner. A roll-top deskwas partly broken open, but not rifled, the American boltlocks havingdefied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, whohad cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, thebarbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the BritishImperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to waityet another day, and take many things more, but the coming of thoseverdoemte soldiers of the Engelsch Commandant to fetch away the carboys ofcarbolic acid and the other medical stores had roused him to promptaction. 

Later, wearing the brass badge of a Surgeon on the sleeve of his greasyblack tail-coat, Koets ruled a Boer Field-Hospital, fearlessly slashinghis way into the confidence of the United Republics through the tough, wincing brawn and muscle of Free Stater and Transvaaler. It speaks for theenduring qualities of the Boer constitution to say that many of hispatients survived. 

 * * * * *

But the brandy in the decanter.... 

How it beckoned and allured and tempted. And the throat and palate of theman were parched with the desire of it. And yet, a moment before, with thetoils about his feet, Saxham had wondered at the thought of these degradedyears of bondage. He shook his head sullenly as Taggart repeated hisquestion, and went away to wash and get dressed. 

Then he meant to shake off his companions and go where he could quenchthat inward fire. He loathed them as they followed, chattingpleasantly.... 

But above the hissing of the hot water from the faucets over the basinscame presently another sound, most familiar to the ears of the gossipingCelts.... 

"Rifle-fire! Out on the veld over yonder. " McFadyen's towel waved North. "Do ye hear it?"

"Ay, do I! First bluid has been drawn. And to which side?"

_Boom!... _

The Hospital quivered to its foundations at the tremendous detonation. Shattered glass fell in showers of fragments from the roof of theoperating-theatre, as the force of the explosion passed beneath thebuildings in a surging of the ground on which they stood, a slow waverolling southwards, without a backward draw. 

The lavatory door had jammed, as doors will jam in earthquakes. Saxhamtore it open, and the three shirt-sleeved, ensanguined men ran through thetheatre, strewn with the débris from the roof, and through the doubleglazed doors communicating with the passage, populous with patients whoshould have been in bed, pursued by nurses as pale and shaken as theirstampeding charges. The rear of the Hospital faces North, and they randown a corridor full of dust, ending in more glazed doors, and tore outupon the back stoep, wide and roomy, and full of deck chairs and wickerlounges. 

"Do ye see it? Ten thousand salted South African deevils! Do ye no' seeit?" the Surgeon-Major yelled, pointing to a monstrous milk-whitesoap-bubble-shaped cloud that slowly rose up in the hot blue sky to theNorth and hung there, sullenly brooding. 

"What is it, Major?" shouted Saxham, for behind them the Hospital was fullof clamour. Nurses and dressers were running out into the grounds tolisten and question and conjecture, the barely reclaimed veld beyond thepalings was black with hurrying, shouting men, bandoliered, and carryingguns of every kind and calibre, from the venerable gaspipe of the nativeand the aged but still useful Martini-Henry of the citizen, to theLee-Metford repeating-carbine, and the German magazine rifle of latestdelivery to the troops of Imperial Majesty at Berlin. Men were clusteredlike bees on the flat tin roofs of the sheds at the Railway Works; men hadclimbed the signal-posts and were looking out from them over the sea ofveld; the Volunteers garrisoning the Cemetery had poured from theirtemporary huts and dug-out shelters, and were massed on the top of theirsand-bag mounds. A fair, handsome Staff officer, the younger of the twomen who had accompanied the Colonel, went by at a tearing gallop, mountedon a fine grey charger, and followed by an orderly, while the pot-hat andtruncheon of a scared native constable emerged timidly from the gapingjaws of a rusty water-cistern, long dismissed from Hospital use, andexiled to the open with other rubbish waiting transference to thescrap-heap; and far out upon the railway-line that vanished in theyellowing sea of veld an unseen engine screeched and screeched.... 

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 linesabout his keen eyes and mouth curved into a cheerful smile. The sound wascoming nearer, and presently Engine 123 backed into view, a mile or sofrom waiting, expectant Gueldersdorp, and snorting, raced at full speedfor her home in the railway-yard. Her driver was the young Irishman fromthe County Kildare, and her guard hailed from Shoreditch. And both of themhad a tale to tell of what Taggart had called the Colonel's doublesurprise-packet, to a tall man whom they found waiting on the metals bythe upper Signal Cabin. 

"Six mile from the start, sorra a yard more or less, sorr! I sees acomp'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 avodthers, that was rippin' up the rails undher the directions av ahead-gaffer wid a hat brim like me granny's tay-thray, an' a beard likethe Prophet Moses. "

"I sor 'is whoppin' big 'at myself, though we was two mile off when wepicked the beggars out, " the guard objected; "but 'ow could you twig 'isbeard or that the other blokes was smokin'?"

"Did ye ever know a Dutch boss av any kind clane-shaved an' nothairy-faced?" was Kildare's just retort, "or see a crowd av Doppersgathered together that the blue smoke av the Blessed Creature was notcurlin' out av their mouths an' ears an' noses, an' Old Square Face or Vander Hump makin' the rounds?"

"You thought the blokes on the metals was a workin' gang of our chaps atthe fust go off, " complained the guard, "an' you opened the whistle towarn 'em!"

"He did that for sure, " put in the Cardiff stoker. "But he was tipping methe wink while he did it, so he was; as much as to say he knew they wereBoers all the time. "

"Would they have stopped where they was, well widin range, av I had let onI knew they was a parcel av unwashed Dutchmen?" demanded Kildare hotly. "Would they have hung on as I pushed her towards thim--would they havestopped to watch me uncouplin' the two thrucks, smilin' wid simpleinterest 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?"

"They got a bit suspicious when we steamed orf, " said the guard; "morethan a bit suspicious, they did. "

"They took the thrucks for the Armoured Thrain, " recounted Kildare, with aradiant smile illuminating a countenance of surpassing griminess, "an'they rode to widin range, an' got off their hairies, an' dhropped in avolley just to insinse them they took to be squattin' down inside theminsijious divizes, into what they would be gettin' if they put up theheads av them. " He mopped his brimming eyes with a handful of cottonwaste, not innocent of lubricating fluid. "Tower av Ivory! 'twas grand tosee 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 avall the billygoats. 'Is this, ' he says, 'the British pluck they talkabout? 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 widall 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 thelot!'"

"You could never hear him, so you could not, not at all that distance, "the Cardiff stoker objected. 

"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 rooibatchers Jimmy O! Ga-_lant_-ly they respondid, battherin' the sides av themysterious locomotive containin' the bloody an' rapacious soldiery avthreacherous England wid nickel-plated Mauser bullets, ontil she hiccoughsindacintly, an' wid a bellow to bate St. Fin Barr's bull, kicks herself topieces!"

"She did so, surely, " affirmed the Cardiff stoker. "Surely she did so. "

"Tell the Colonel 'ow the engine jumped right off the metals, " advised theguard. 

"Clane she did, " went on Kildare jubilantly, "an' rattled Davis an' meinside the cab like pays in an iron pod. See the funny-bone I sthrippedagin' the side av her!" He exhibited a raw elbow for the inspection of theChief. "An' when Davis gets the betther av the rest av the black that's onhim wid soft soap an' hot wather, there's an oi he'll not wash off. "

"The brake-handle did that, it did so, " said Davis, touching the optictenderly. But Kildare was answering a question of the Chiefs. 

"Killed! Wisha, yarra! av I'd left a dozen an twenty to the back av thatsthretched on the bog behind me, it's a glad man I'd be to have it to tellye, sorr. But barrin' they wor' blown to smithereens entirely, not alivin' man or horse av thim did I see dead at all, at all. But theSergeant an' the Reconnoithrin' Party will asy know the place--asy--by thethundherin' big hole that's knocked in the permanent way there, sizableenough to bury.... " He paused, for once at a loss. 

"Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, " suggested Davis, who, as a Bible Baptist, hada fund of Scripture knowledge upon which he occasionally drew, "with theirfamilies and their pavilions and all their substance.... "

"Av Cora was there, " said Kildare, "she was disguised as a Dutchman, forsorrow an' oi I clapped on any human baste that was not a square-buttockedBoer in tan-cord throusers. Thank you, sorr, your Honour, an' good luck toyourself an' all av us! An' we'll dhrink your Honour's health wid it. "

"We will so!" agreed Davis, as the sovereign, dropped into his owntwice-greased palm, vanished in the recesses of his black and oleaginousoveralls. 

"Thankee, sir. You're a gentleman, sir!" the guard acknowledged, touchinghis cap and concealing the gold coin slid into his own ready hand withprofessional celerity. 

"Begob! an' you might have tould the Colonel somethin' that was news, "commented Kildare, as the tall, active figure stepped lightly over themetals and passed up the ramp, and 123 trundled on, and backed into theengine-shed amidst a salvo of cheers and hand-clapping. 

The Colonel whistled his pleasant little tune quite through as, theReconnoitring Party despatched to the scene of the explosion, he wentcontentedly back to luncheon at Nixey's. True, Kildare had said, and asthe Sergeant in command regretfully testified later, said correctly, thatneither Boer nor beast had been put out of action by the flying débris. Apoor reprisal had been made, in the opinion of some malcontents, for theact of War committed by the forces of the Republics in crossing theBorder, in cutting the telegraph lines, and destroying the railway-bridge. But the moral result was anything but trifling, in its effect upon theBoer mind. The "new square gun" became a proverb of dread, inspiring asalutary fear of more traps of the same kind, "set by that slim duyvel, the English Commandant, " and threw over the innocent stretch of veldoutside those trivial sand-bagged defences the glamour of the Mysteriousand the Unknown. No solid Dutchman welcomed the idea of soaring skywardsin a multitude of infinitesimal fragments, in company with other FreeStaters or sons of the Transvaal Republic similarly reduced. 

No more boasts on the part of Brounckers, General in command of thosemassed, menacing, united laagers on the Border, seven miles fromGueldersdorp as the crow flew. No more imaginative promises with referenceto the taking of the small, defiant hamlet before breakfast, wiping outthe garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march refreshedwith coffee and biltong, and driving the towns-people before them asprisoners of War. The desperate perils presented by the conjectural andlargely non-existent mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly inthe telegrams that went up to Pretoria. 

"There's a lot in bluff, you know, " that "slim duyvel, " the Commandant ofthe rooineks, said long afterwards. "And we bluffed about the Mines, realand dummy, for all we were worth!"

So, possibly with premonition of the telegram that was even then clickingout its message at Pretoria, there was a note of satisfaction in hiswhistle out of keeping with the execution actually done, as Nixey's Hotelcame in sight with the Union Jack floating over it, denoting that all waswell. That flagstaff, with its changing signals, was to dominate thepopular pulse ere long. But in these days it merely denoted StaffQuarters, and War, with its grim accompanying horrors, seemed a long wayoff. 

A white-gowned European nursemaid on the opposite street-corner waved andshrieked to her deserting elder charges, and the Chief's quick eye notedthat the small, sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in coolsailor-suits of blue-and-white linen twill, were scampering in hisdirection. He knew his fascination for children, and instinctivelyslackened his stride as they came up, abreast now, and shyly hand in hand:

"Mister Colonel ... ?" The speaker touched the expansive brim of a strawsailor hat with a fine assumption of adult coolness. 

"Quite right, and who are you?"

The small boy hesitated, plainly at a nonplus. The round-eyed girl tuggedat the boy's sailor jumper, whispering:

"I _saided_ he wouldn't know you!"

"I fought he would. Because Mummy said he wemembered our names ve uvvernight at ve Hotel ... When he promised ... About ve animals from Wodesia... All made of mud, an' feavers, and bits of fur ... "

Memory gave up the missing names, helped by those boyish replicas of thecandid clear grey eyes of the Mayor's wife, shining under the droopingplume of fair hair. 

"Mummy was quite right, Hammy, and Berta was wrong, because I rememberyour names quite well, you see. And the birds and beasts and insects arein a box at my quarters. Come and get them. "

"If Anne doesn't kick up a wow?" hesitated Hammy, his small brown handalready in the larger one. 

"We'll arrange it with Anne. " He waited for the arrival of thewhite-canopied perambulator and its fluttering-ribboned guardian to say, with a tone and smile that won her instant suffrages: "I'm going to borrowthese children for a minute or so. Will you come into the shade and rest?I promise not to keep you long. "

Beauvayse and Lady Hannah's Captain Bingo, relieved from lookout duty, anddescending in quest of food from the Chief's particular eyrie on the roofof Nixey's Hotel, heard shrieks of infant laughter coming from thecoffee-room. Knives, forks, and glasses had been ruthlessly swept from theupper end of one of the tables laid for the Staff luncheon, and across thefair expanse of linen, pounded into whiteness and occasional holes by thevigorous thumpers of the Kaffir laundry-women, meandered a marvellousprocession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion and giraffe, ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful hands of Matabeletoy-makers. Tarantula, with wicked bright eyes of shining berries, broughtup the rear, with the bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown, white-striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its back, atsetse of appallingly gigantic size.... 

"Oh, fank you, Mister Colonel, " Hammy was saying, with shining eyes ofrapture fixed upon the glorious ones; "and is they weally my own, my vewyown, for good?"

"Yours and Berta's, really and for good. "

"And won't you"--Hammy's magnificent effort at disinterestedness broughtthe tears into his eyes--"won't you want vem to play wif, _ever_yourself?"

The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula and tsetse, intothe wooden box, and lifted the children from their chairs, as CaptainBingo and Beauvayse, following the D. A. A. G. , came in, brimming withvarious versions of what had happened out there on the veld.... 

"I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run along with Bertanow. You'll find your nurse in the hall. "

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 oftoys. As Berta's little legs scampered through the door, he delayed toask:

"What are your playfings, Mister Colonel?"

"Live men and big guns, just now, Hammy; and chances and issues, andresults and risks. "

The plume of fair hair fell back, clearing the candid grey eyes as Hammylifted up his face, confidently lisping:

"I don't quite fink I know what wesults and wisks are, but I'd like toplay wif the live men an' the big guns too sometimes ... If you didn'twant vem always?"

"We'll see about it, Hammy, when you're grown up. "

"Good-bye, Mister Colonel. And I would lend you my beasts an' fings, because I know you wouldn't bweak them?"

"See that Berta has her share in them meanwhile. Off with you, now!"

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:

"What do you suppose was the Chief's next move, after the engine andtender got in, and the crowd hoorayed him back from the Railway Works? Nouse your guessin', though. Even a woman wouldn't have expected to find himplayin' Noah's Ark in the coffee-room with the Mayor's two kids!"

"I like that!" said Lady Hannah meditatively, arranging the Pompadourtransformation, not apparently the worse for the candle-accident of theprevious night. 

"Because you're a woman and sentimental, " said her spouse, wrestling witha cuff-link. 

"No; because I am a woman whose instinct tells her that nothing will seemtoo big for a man for whom nothing is too small. And--what an incident fora paragraph!"

He grinned: "With headin's in thunderin' big capitals.... 'The SoldierHero Sports With A Babbling Babe.... The Defender Of British Prestige AtGueldersdorp Puts In Half an Hour At Cat's-Cradle Ere The Armoured TrainToddles Out With The B. S. A. P. To Give Beans To The Blooming Boer!'"

She darted at him, caught him by the lapels ... Made him look at her. 

"It's true? You really mean it? The ball begins?"

"Upon the honour of a henpecked husband--before daybreak to-morrow, you'llhear the music. "

She sparkled with delight. 

"Oh, poor, unlucky, humdrum women at home in England, walking with theshooters, or lolling in hammocks under trees, and trying to flirt with fatCity financiers or vapid young attachés of Legation! I shall take theIrish mare, and borrow an orderly, and ride out to see a Real Action!"

His round pink face grew long. "The devil you will!"

"The devil I won't, you mean. Why, for what else under the sky did I comeout here but the glorious chance of War?" Her impatient foot tapped thefloor. He recognised the warning of domestic battle, glowered, and gavein. 

"Well, if you get chipped, don't blame me. There's about as much cover ona baccarat-table as you'll find on that small-bush veld. "

"All the better for seeing things, my dear!" She gave him a radiant glanceover her shoulder as she snapped her diamond necklace. 

"You'll see things you won't enjoy. Mind that. Unless the whole affairends in sheer fizzle. "

"I'll pray that it mayn't!"

"I'd pray to have you much more like the ordinary woman who funksraw-head-and-bloody-bones if I thought it would be any good!"

"My poor old boy, it's thirty years too late. You ought to have begunwhile I was crying in the cradle. And--I _was_ under the impression thatyou married me because you found me different from the ruck. Andbesides--think of my paper!"

"Damn the rag! I think of my wife!"

She swept him a curtsy:

"Cela va sans dire!"

"And how a woman of your birth and breedin' can dream of nothin' else butdoin' somethin' that'll make you notorious--set the smart crowd gabblin'and gapin' and crushin' to stare--is more than I can understand!"

She flashed round upon him. "You have the wrong word! Notoriety--anysocial _divorcée_ or big-hatted music-hall high-kicker can have _that_--ifonly they've kicked high enough! Popularity is what I'd have if Icould--and only the People can give it--as Brutus and Cromwell andNapoleon knew!"

He admitted that those old Roman johnnies who jawed in the Forum knew whatthey were about, but added that the Puritan chap with the wart on his nosewas a thundering old humbug, ending triumphantly: "And we whacked oldBony at Waterloo! And--suppose you stop a Boer bullet and get knockedout--where do I come in?"

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 outfor Number Two. And choose the ordinary kind, who funks raw-head and allthe rest of it, for the next venture. But I prophesy you'll be bored. It'ssettled about Sheila and the orderly?"

He nodded. 

"Righto! but there'll be two troopers, not one. And you'll be under theCorporal's orders about range, and distance, and keepin' out of the handsof--the other side. You don't absolutely yearn to be killed or takenprisoner, I suppose?"

Her heart beat high at the latter-named eventuality. She saw Londonrushing to read of the thrilling seizure and the yet more thrilling escapeof the Lady War Correspondent attached to H. I. M. Forces on the Frontier:

Who got clean away, mind you, with complete information of the strategicplans of the General in command of the enemy's laagers, sewn inside hercorsets or hidden in her shoes!

Bingo little dreamed of the definite plan seething under his little wife'stransformation coiffure. It had matured since her meeting on therailway-journey from Cape Town with an interesting personality. A big, brown-bearded Johannesburger, with light queer eyes, who had been reticentat first, but more interesting after his confidence had been gained. 

Van Busch he had named himself. Of the British South African WarIntelligence Bureau. That man knew how to value women. And he had provedthem at what he called the risky game. 

"With nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money for palm-oil ... " VanBusch had said, and winked, signifying that there were no lengths to whicha woman of Lady Hannah Wrynche's capabilities might not go. And he hadslipped into her hand a card scrawled with an address where he might begot at _in case_ ... 

The pencilled oblong of soiled pasteboard was yet in a secret compartmentof her handbag. By letter addressed care of W. Bough, Transport Agent andStock-dealer, Van Busch was to be communicated with at a farmstead somethirty miles north. 

The spice of adventure her palate craved could be had by correspondingwith Van Busch through the man Bough. After that---- Well! She had herplan ... 

She tied her husband's white tie, took him by the ears, kissed him warmlyon each side of his large pink face, glowing with blushes evoked by herunwonted display of affection, and led him away to dinner, her mentalvision seeing prophetic broadsheets papering the kerbs of Piccadilly, theears of her imagination making celestial melody of those raucous yells:

"Speshul Edition! Hextry Speshul Edition! 'Ere y'are, sir; on'y a'a'penny. SPESHUL!"

XXVII

For nearly two months, from dawn until dark, Gueldersdorp had squatted onher low-topped hill in a screaming blizzard of shrapnel and Mauserbullets. Never a town of imposing size or stately architecture, see hernow a battered hamlet of gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and wreckedchimneys; staring defiance through glassless windows like the blindeyeholes in the mouldered House that once has held the living thought ofMan. From dawn until dark the ancient seven-pounders of her batteries hadbanged and grumbled, her Maxims had rattled defiance from Kopje Fort, andthe Nordenfelt released its showers of effective, death-dealing littleprojectiles. Scant news from outside trickled into the town. Grumer, withhis Brigade, was guarding the Drifts, and when the Relief might beexpected was now a moss-grown topic of general conversation inGueldersdorp. 

And within her girdle of trenches, stern, grimy, haggard men lived, cheekto 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 menand dotted the Cemetery with little white crosses, nothing of much notehad occurred. The armoured train had done good service, and the BaralandRifle Volunteers had carried out their surprise against the enemy'swestern 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. 

The Convent of the Holy Way stood empty and deserted in itsshrapnel-littered garden-enclosure. 

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 aboutour ears, Colonel, " the Mother-Superior had declared, "it will be time toleave them. " They were lacework now, with a confusion of bare raftersoverhead, over which streamed, as if in mockery, the Red-Cross Flag. Grimfigures, like geometrical problems gone mad, were made by water and gaspipes torn from their bedding, and twisted as if by the hands of giants incruel play. The little iron bedsteads of the Sisters, and the holy symbolsover them, were the only articles missing from the cells, revealed insection by the huge gaps in the masonry. 

The Tabernacle of the chapel altar, void of the Unspeakable Mystery it hadhoused, fluttered its rearward curtains through the wreckage of the eastwall and the cheap little stained-glass window, where the Shepherds andthe Magi had bowed before the Virgin Mother and the Divine Child. Withinsight of their ruined home, the Sisterhood had found refuge. Anunderground dwelling had been dug for them in the garden before anabandoned soft-brick-and-corrugated-iron house, formerly inhabited by oneof the head officials of the railway, a personage of Dutch extraction andBoer sympathies, at present sequestered beneath the yellow flag of thetown gaol for their too incautious manifestation; while his wife and youngfamily were inhabitants of the Women's Laager. And from their subterraneanburrow the Sisters carried on their work of mercy as cheerfully as thoughtheir Order had been originally one of Troglodytes, nursing the sick andwounded, cooking and washing for the convalescents, comforting thebereaved, and tending the many orphans of the siege. 

South lay the laager of the Refugees. To the westward within the ring oftrenches and about a mile and a half from the town, was the Women'sLaager, visited not seldom by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of theRed-Cross Flag. Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalkedamong the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming their human toll. Women languished and little children pined and withered, dying for lack ofexercise and fresh air, with the free veld spreading away on all sides tothe horizon, and the burning blue South African sky overhead. Famine hadnot yet appeared among the Europeans, though grisly black spectres inKaffir blankets haunted the refuse-heaps, and fought with gaunt dogs forpicked bones and empty meat-tins, and were found dead not unseldom, afterfull 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 thepart of the enemy, and poor grazing. Shell and rifle-fire not infrequentlyspared the butcher trouble, so that your joints were sometimes weirdlyshaped. But they were joints, and there was plenty of the preservedarticle in Kriel's Warehouse and at the Army Service Stores. Tea andcoffee were becoming rare and precious, the sparkling draught of lager wasto be had only in remembrance; the aromatic beer was all drunk up, and thestone-ginger was three shillings a bottle. Whisky was to be had at theprice of liquid gold, brandy was treasured above rubies, and served outsparingly by the Hand of Authority, as medicine in urgent cases. 

You could get vegetables from the Chinaman, who continued to cultivateonions, cabbages, potatoes, and melons in the market-gardens about thetown, imperturbable under shot and shell, his large straw hat affording anadmirable target from the Boer sniper's point of view, as metaphoricallyhe gathered his fat harvest of dollars from the soil. What you could notget for any amount of dollars was peace and rest, clean air, and space tostretch your cramped-up limbs in, until Sunday came, bringing the Truce ofGod for Englishman and Transvaaler. 

The Hospital, like each of the smaller hospitals that had sprung from theparent stalk, was crowded. The operating theatre had been turned into award where the lane between the beds just gave room for a surgeon or anurse to pass, and hourly the cry went up: "Room, more room for thewounded and the sick!" And among these Saxham worked, night and day, likea man upheld by forces superhuman. 

"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 tothe work again. 

"Ye have a demon, man, " said Taggart, Major of the R. A. M. C. , himself ahaggard-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 yewere dealing with a select batch o' shell-fire an' rifle-shotcasualties--our friends outside being a gey sicht better marksmen whenrefreshed 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' theclock to attack the business o' the day, wi' a bag o' twa Boers to yourcreedit. "

"I only got one, Major. The other chap hobbled down bandaged, uponcrutches, to-day, and had a pot-shot at me as I lay doggo behind myparticular stone. I put up my hat on a stick, and--see!" Saxham gravelyexhibited a felt Service smasher with a clean hole through it, an inchabove the lining-edge. "He's a snowy-locked, hoary-bearded, FatherNoah-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 onenight. To-morrow he is to make the painful discovery that I am still inthe flesh. "

"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 theantediluvian headgear to-morrow. "

Then the luck of the game, thought the hearer, deep in that wounded heartof his, would not only be with the patriarch. And the great puzzle, Life, would be solved for good. 

Taggart had said he, Saxham, had a demon. He could have answered that onlyby hard, unceasing, unremitting work, or, when no more work was there todo, by the fierce excitement of those grilling hours spent lying behindthe stone, was the demon to be kept out. Of all things he dreadedinactivity, and though he would drop upon his cot in the tiny bedroom thathad been a Hospital ward-pantry, and sleep the heavy sleep of wearinessthe moment his head touched the pillow, yet he would start awake after anhour or two, parched with that savage, unquenched thirst, and drink greatdraughts of the brackish well-water, boiled for precaution's sake, andtramp the confined space until the grip of desire grew slack. But he hadnever once yielded since the night when a man with the eye and voice of aleader among men had come to the house in Harris Street and taken him bythe hand. 

Do you say impossible, that the man in whom the habit of vice had formedshould be able to cast off his degrading weakness, like a shamefulgarment, by sheer force of will, and be sane and strong and masterfulagain? I say, possible with this man. You see him plucked from the sloughby the strong hand of manly fellowship, and nerved and strengthened, ifonly for a little while, to play the game for the sake of that other'sbelief in him. Such influence have such men among their fellows for goodor for ill. 

You can see the Dop Doctor upon this brilliant November morning mounting acharger lent him by his friend, a handsome Waler full of mettle andspirit--oats not being yet required for the support of humans--and callingau revoir to Taggart as he rides away from the Hospital gates followed byan orderly of the R. A. M. C. In a spider, pulled by a wiry, shabby littleBoer mare. 

"The man rides like a fox-hunter, " commented Taggart, noticing the ease ofthe seat, the light handling of the rein, the way in which the fidgety, spirited beast Saxham rode answered to the gentling hand and the guidingpressure of the rider's knee, as a sharp storm of rifle-fire swept fromthe enemy's northern trenches, and the Mauser bullets spurted sand betweenthe wheels of the spider and under the horses' bellies. 

Saxham spurred ahead, the spider following. The bullet-pierced, grey feltsmasher hat, a manly and not unpicturesque headgear, sat on the man'sclose-cropped head with a soldierly air becoming to the square, opaque-skinned face that had power and strength and virility in every lineof it. The blue eyes, under their black bar of meeting eyebrows, wereclear now, and the short aquiline nose, rough-hewn but not coarse, and thegrimly-tender mouth were no longer thickened and swollen and reddened byintemperance. The figure, perfect in its manliness, if marred by the tooheavy muscular development of the throat and the slightly bowed shoulders, looked well in the jacket of Service khâki, the Bedford cords and putteesand spurred brown boots that had replaced the worn white drills, the blueshirt and shabby black kamarband and canvas shoes. Looking at Saxham, evenwith knowledge of his past, you could not have associated a personality sostriking and distinguished, an individuality so original and so strong, with the idea of the tipsy wastrel, wallowing like a hog in self-chosendegradation. 

The Mother-Superior, coming up the ladder leading out of her undergroundabode as the horseman and the attendant spider drew near, thought ofBartolomeo Colleoni, as you see him, last of the great Condottieri, in thebronze by great Verrochio at Venice to-day. In armour, complete in theembossed morion, one with the great Flemish war-horse, he sat to thesculptor, 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 menof the infantry to pack and harden snow about the granite boulders of themountains in the Val Seriana, and sent the giant snow-balls thunderingdown, crushing bloody lanes through the ranks of the Venetian cavalrymassed in the narrow defile below, and striking chill terror to the heartsof Doge and Prince and Senate. 

Only the bâton was a well-worn staghorn-handled crop, Squire Saxham'sgift, together with a hunter, to his boy Owen, at seventeen. It was one ofthe few relics of home that had stayed by Saxham during his wanderings. 

He reined up now, saluting the Mother-Superior with marked respect. 

"Good-morning, ma'am. All well with you and yours?"

She answered with unusual hesitation:

"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. "

"As many minutes as you wish, ma'am. It is not your day for the Hospital, I think?"

"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 somiserable, poor souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who arein the trenches, or who have been killed, and then there are the childrento be cared for and washed. Not only the siege orphans, but so many whohave sick or neglectful mothers. It takes us the whole day once we getthere. "

Saxham dismounted as she stooped to seize the end of a blue cotton-coveredwashing-basket impelled from below by an ascending Sister. The spiderpulled up under cover of the brick-and-corrugated-iron house vacated bythe railway-official, as another short storm of riflery cracked andrattled among the eastern foothills, and a whistling hurry of thesharp-nosed little messengers of death passed through Gueldersdorp. Someof them hit and flattened on the gable of the railway-official's house, one went through the leathern splashboard of the spider. Saxham movedinstinctively to place himself between the closely-standing group of nunsand possible danger. 

"No, no!" they cried, as one woman, their placid, cheerful tones taking ashade of anxiety. "You must not do that!"

"I know you are all well-seasoned, " he said, looking at them with thesmile that made his stern face changed and gentle. 

"I am not so sure. The bullets come in the usual way of things. We takeour chance of them, " the Mother-Superior answered. But she pressed herlips together and grew pale as a faint cry came up from the subterraneandwelling, roofed with sheets of corrugated iron laid upon steel rails, andmade bombproof with bags of earth. And Saxham, looking at the fine face, with its worn lines of fatigue and over-exertion, and noting the deepshadowy caves that housed the great luminous grey eyes, said:

"I think we must have you take some rest, or I shall be having my besthelper on my hands as a patient. And that won't do, you know. "

"No, it would not do, " she said, looking fully and seriously at him. "Andtherefore I think our Lord will not permit it. But if He should, be sureanother will rise up to fill my place. "

"Whoever your successor might be, " said Saxham sincerely, "she would notfulfil my ideal of an absolutely efficient nurse, as you do. So from thepersonal, if not the altruistic point of view, let me beg you to becareful. "

"I take all reasonable care, " she told him. "It is true, the work has beenheavy this week; but to-morrow is Sunday, and we shall rest all day andsleep at the Convent. Indeed, some of us have taken it in turn to be onguard there every night, or nothing would be left us. "

"I understand. "

He knew how prowlers and night-thieves made harvest in the darkness amongthe deserted dwellings since Police and Town Guardsmen had beenrequisitioned to man the trenches. She went on:

"The upper story of the house is sheer wreck, as you may see, but theground-floor is quite habitable. So much so that if the shells did notstrike the poor dear place so often, I should suggest your turning it intoa Convalescent Home. "

"We may have to try the plan yet, " said Saxham. "The Railway Institute isfrightfully overcrowded. "

"And, " she told him, "a shell struck there yesterday evening, and burst inthe larger ward. "

"I had not heard of it, " he said. "Was anybody hurt?"

"No one, thank God! But the fire was difficult to put out, until one ofthe Sisters thought of sand. "

"It was an incendiary shell?" Disgust and contempt swelled his deep-cutnostrils and flamed from his vivid blue eyes. "And yet these Kaiser'sgunners, in their blue-and-white Death or Glory uniforms, can hardlypretend ignorance of the Geneva Convention. But--your question?"

"It is--Children!" She beckoned to the two nuns, who stood at a littledistance apart holding the washing-basket between them. "I will ask you togo on slowly before me with the basket. I will overtake you when I havespoken to Dr. Saxham. "

"Surely, Reverend Mother. " One tall, pale, and thin, the other round androsy, they were alike in the placid, cheerful serenity of their good eyesand readily smiling lips. "And won't we be after taking the bundle?"

"No, no! It is heavy, and I am as strong as both of you together. "

"Very well, Reverend Mother. "

They were obediently moving on. 

"A moment. " Saxham stopped them. "If you two ladies have no objection to alittle crowding, the spider will hold both of you as well as the bundleand the basket of washing. At least, it looks like a basket of washing. "

All three laughed as they accepted his offer, assuring him that hissuspicions were correct. For neither Kaffir laundrywoman or Hindu _dhobi_would go down any more to the washing troughs by the river, for fear ofcrossing that Stygian flood of blackness rivalling their own, supposing, as Beauvayse once suggested, that there is a third-class ferry for niggersand persons of colour? And from the waterworks on the Eastern side of thetown the supply had been cut off by the enemy, so that the taps ofGueldersdorp had ceased to yield. 

Old wells and springs had been reopened, cleaned, and brought into use fordrinking purposes, so that of a water-famine there could be no fear. Butthe element became expensive when retailed by the tin bucketful, a bath arare luxury when the contents of the said bucket might be spilled orthrown away in the course of the gymnastics wherewith the sable orcoffee-brown bearer sought to evade the travelling unexploded shell or thefan-shaped charge of shrapnel. Therefore, the Sisters had turnedlaundry-women. You could hear the sound of Sister Tobias's smoothing-ironcoming up from below, thump-thumping on the blanketed board. 

"And where do you think we get the water, now?" the rosy Sister, inprocess of being packed into the spider, leaned over the wheel to ask. 

"Not from the Convent?" Saxham thought of the strip of veld between thereand the Hospital, even more fraught with peril than the patch he had justtraversed, or the distance yet to be covered between the Sisters'bombproof and the Women's Laager, where Death, with the red sickle in hisfleshless hand, stalked openly from dawn to nightfall. 

"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 wasin the rosy Sister's Dublin brogue--"and yet there's water there. "

"But how----" Saxham began. The Mother-Superior shook her head, and therosy Sister was silent. 

"There is no mystery about the water at all. It is very simple. " Standingthere with her head held high and the fine, free, graceful lines of hertall figure outlined by the heavy folds of the now worn and darned blackhabit, and her hands, still beautiful, though roughened by toil, calmlyfolded upon her scapular, she was as remarkable and noble a figure, itseemed to Saxham, as the golden sunlight could fall upon anywhere in theworld. And besides, she was his right hand at the Hospital. A capable, watchful, untiring nurse--and beauty would have decked her in hissurgeon's eyes if she had been physically ugly or deformed. 

"There is no mystery whatever, only when the bombardment first began Ithought of the waterworks, and that one of my first cares, supposing I hadbeen General Brounckers"--she smiled slightly--"would have been to operatethere. So I set the Sisters to work at filling every empty barrel andbucket and tub in the Convent with water from the taps. And as we happenedto have plenty of empty barrels and tubs, why, there is water to be hadthere now, and will be for some time to come. Go now, my children. "

The smiling Sisters waved their hands. The orderly saluted with his whipand drove on in obedience to Saxham's nod. 

"Of course, the Sisters are aware, " he said, meeting the Mother's graveglance, "that if it is quicker to drive, it is safer to walk?"

She nodded with the gay, sweet smile that had belonged to Lady Biddy. 

"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 notpass without the cost of life, we are prepared for that, and God's Willis done always. "

"You are very brave, " he said. It was the first time in his life that hehad used the phrase to any woman, and the words came out almostgrudgingly. 

"Oh no, not brave, " she told him; "only obedient. " Her veil fluttered inthe hot November breeze that bore with it the heavy fetid taint from theovercrowded trenches that ringed Gueldersdorp, and the acrid fumes of thecordite; though the air up here on the veld was sweet compared with thebefouled atmosphere of the Women's Laager and the crowded wards at theHospital, in spite of all that disinfectants could do. She went on:

"And we are very grateful to you for the lift. Sister Ruperta was on dutylast night, and Sister Hilda Antony--the rosy Sister--is not as well asshe would have us believe. Ah----"

With her grave eyes screened by her lifted hand, she had been watching theprogress of the spider westward over the dun-yellow veld. Now the longwailing notes of the headquarter bugle sounded, in slow time, theAssembly, and in the same instant, from the Staff over the Colonel'shotel, where the red lamp signalled danger by night and the Red Flag gaveits warning by day, the scarlet danger-signal fluttered in the breeze. Once, twice, again, the deep bell of the Catholic Church tolled. A dozenother bells echoed the warning, signifying danger by the number of theiriron-tongue strokes to the threatened quarter of the town. 

"'Ware big gun!" called the sentries. "West quarter, 'ware!"

The Mother-Superior grew pale, for the Women's Laager, towards which thelittle Boer mare was steadily trotting with the laden spider, lay in themenaced quarter, with a bare stretch of veld between it and the Camp ofthe Irregular Horse, whose white tents and dug-out shelters werepleasantly shaded by ancient blue gums, picturesque and stately in spiteof broken boughs and foliage torn by shrapnel and seared by the chemicalfumes of bursting charges innumerable. 

"Will you not go down?" Saxham asked her. 

She shook her head in reply, and stood with a waiting face in prayerfulsilence, not stirring save to make the Sign of the Cross. And as the longwhite fingers fluttered over the bosom of the black habit, the faint crythat Saxham's quick ear had heard before floated up from the populousdepths below. 

"What is that?"

Before the question had left Saxham's lips, the monster gun spoke out indeafening thunder from the enemy's position at East Point, nearly twomiles away. The heavy grey smoke-pillar of the driving-charge toweredagainst the sunbright distance, and simultaneously with the crack of thedischarge, sounding as though all the pent-up forces of Hell had burst thebrazen gates of Terror, and rushed forth to annihilate and destroy, theninety-four pound projectile passed overhead, sweeping half thecorrugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling with afiendish clatter and din, as it passed harmlessly over the Women's Laager, and, wrecking a sentry's shelter on the western line of defences, burstharmlessly upon the veld beyond, blotting out the low hills behind acurtain of acrid green vapour. 

"Get under cover, quick!" Saxham had shouted to his companion, as deafenedby the tremendous concussion, and dazed and half-asphyxiated by thepoisonous fumes, he strove for mastery with his maddened horse. Thisregained, he looked for the figure in the black habit and white coif, andknew a shock of horror in seeing it prone upon the ground. 

"No, no, I am not hurt!" she cried, lightly rising as he hurried towardsher. The tremendous air-concussion had thrown her down, and beyond ascratch upon her hand and some red dust on the black garments she was innothing the worse. 

"I don't know how I kept my own legs, " Saxham said, laughing. 

"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. Ican see the spider stopping near the Women's Laager. " She peered outearnestly over the shimmering waste of dusty yellow-brown, and cried outjoyfully: "Ah, Sister Hilda Antony and Sister Ruperta are getting out. All is well with them; all is well. "

"But not with the washing. "

Saxham had swung round his binoculars, and brought them to bear upon thevehicle and its late occupants. A grim smile played about his mouth as hehanded her the glasses, and heard her cry of womanly distress as shebeheld 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 astrictly feminine and private character. Her grave, discreet eyes avoidedhis as she handed back the binoculars, but a dimple showed near the edgeof the white coif. 

"And now, " Saxham said, glancing at his watch, "may I know in what I canbe of service?" It had seemed to him that the Mother-Superior hesitated tobroach the subject. Nor had he been mistaken. The dimple vanished. Hercalm eyes became troubled, and she asked, with a slight catching of thebreath:

"Yes, there was something.... Doctor, is it possible for a person to dieof fear?"

He answered promptly:

"In circumstances like the present? Certainly. Undoubtedly possible. Ihave seen twenty deaths from pure fright since the bombardment began, andI expect to see more before the siege ends, or people get callous to thepossibilities of sudden extermination that are afforded them a hundredtimes a day. Is the person to whom you refer a woman or a child?"

"A young girl----" she was beginning, when a buxom little figure, blackveiled and habited like herself, rose up as if from the bowels of theearth. 

"I vill look. But I can see nozing, " she called to someone invisiblebelow. "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 ofanxiety in her usually calm voice:

"Sister--Sister Cleophée; is anything the matter?"

"_Mon Dieu!_ It is ze Reverend Mozer!" ejaculated the other, relief andjoy expressed in the rapid movements of pliant hands and expressive eyes. "Nozing is ze matter, Reverend Mozer, if only you are safe. "

"Quite safe, and so are the Sisters. Only the linen was upset. "

"My 'eavens, but a miraculous escapement!" The supple hands and theexpressive eyes and shoulders of Sister Cleophée made great play. "Me andSister Tobias, 'ow we _pray_ when we 'ear ze great gun, vith knowledge zatyou and ze Sisters were upon the vay to ze Women's Laager. My faith, itvas 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. Shebehave like a little crazy, a little mad sing--I forget your vord for shezat have lost 'er vits! Sister Tobias and me, we 'ave to 'old 'er. " Thefine, expressive eyes went past the Mother-Superior, and lighted withevident relief on Saxham. "Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, it is incredible vatzat poor child she suffer. Madame 'ave told you----"

"Madame was about to tell me, my Sister, " Saxham said, in his smooth, fluent French, "when you appeared upon the scene. "

Sister Cleophée launched, unwitting of the Mother-Superior's gesture ofvexation, into voluble explanations in that native language which M. LeDocteur spoke so well. 

Mademoiselle Mildare, the ward of Madame the Mother-Superior, was nocoward. But no! the child had courage in plenty--it was the suspense thatdevoured her in the absence of the Mother, to whom Mademoiselle was mosttenderly attached, that reduced her to a state of the most pitiable. TheSisters left at home each day would talk of the work and the fineweather--anything to distract the mind, that presented itself to them--butnow, nothing was of any use. When the Reverend Mother came back atnightfall, behold a transformation. Mademoiselle would laugh and sing andchatter. Her eyes would shine like stars, she would be happy, said SisterCleophée, with dramatic emphasis and gesture, as a soul in Paradise. Nextday, taking her guardian from her side, would bring the terrors back, findredoubled the nervous sufferings of Mademoiselle, to-day reaching such aheight that Sister Cleophée felt convinced that something must be done. 

"Ah, my Sister, if I could do anything!" the Mother-Superior said, withthe velvet Southern Irish inflection in the breathing aspirate, and thesoft melodious cadence that made her pure, cultivated utterance soexquisite. The voice broke and faltered, and a spasm of mother-anguishwrung the firm mouth, and as a slow tear dimmed each of her underlids andsplashed on the white _guimpe_ she put out her hand blindly, and thesympathetic little Frenchwoman took it in both her own. 

"Reverend Mozer, you can do zis. You can bring Monsieur le Docteur to seeLynette. You can 'ave his advice upon 'er case, and you can----"

Another fusillade of rifle-fire, sweeping from the west over Gueldersdorp, brought a repetition of the faint moaning cry from below. Saxham consultedthe Reverend Mother with a look. She bent her head in silent assent. Hehitched the horse's bridle to what had been the gatepost of therailway-official's front-garden, as she signed to him to descend theladder leading to the Sisters' underground abode. And he went down to meethis Fate there. 

XXVIII

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 thesame material, supported by a solid frame of steel rails. Wide chinksbetween the metal sheets gave admission to light and air, and earthendrain-pipes made ventilators in the walls. But the sunlight penetratedlike spears of burning flame, and the air was stifling hot. The paraffinstove that heated irons for Sister Tobias smelled clamorously, and thedroning of myriads of flies, not the least of the seven plagues ofGueldersdorp, kept up a persistent bass to the shrill singing of thelittle tin kettle. Later, when the April rains began, and the tarpaulinswere pulled over the sand-bagged roof, tin lamps burning more paraffin didbattle with Cimmerian darkness. 

Saxham's professional approval was won by the marvellous cleanliness andneatness of the place, divided into living-room and dormitory by a heavygreen baize curtain, that at the Convent had shut off the noise of thegreat classroom from the rest of the house. The curtain was drawn, hidingthe little iron cots brought from the Sisters' cells, ascetic coucheswhose narrow wire mattresses must afford scant room for repose to doublesleepers now, where all were crowded, and Conventual rules must be inabeyance. The outer place held a deal table, the oil cooking-stove; somehousehold utensils shining with cleanliness were ranged upon a shelf, andseveral pictures hung upon the walls. Upon a bracket the silver Crucifixfrom the altar of the Convent chapel gleamed against the background of asnowy, lace-bordered linen cloth. There were orderly piles of cleaned andmended clothes, military and civilian, the garments of sick and woundedmale patients, who would leave the Hospital without a thought of theunselfish women who had foregone sleep to patch jackets and sew on missingbuttons. There were haversacks of coarse canvas for the Volunteers, finished and partly made, with ammunition-pouches and bandoliers. AndSister Tobias stood ironing at the deal table, partly screened by a lineof drying linen, while Sister Mary-Joseph turned the mangle, and thelittle brisk novice, her round cheeks no longer rosy, folded with activehands. The Dop Doctor's keen quick glance took note of the patientcheerful weariness written on the three faces, then rested on one otherface there. 

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, andthe hollow at the base of the throat, where the pulse throbbed andfluttered visibly, had grown deep. Her red-brown hair had lost itsburnished beauty. It had become dull like her skin, and her garments hungloosely upon the form whose soft roundnesses had fallen away. But her eyeshad changed most. Their golden-hazel irises had faded to pale bronze, thefull, fair eyelids had shrunk, the pupils were distended to twice theirnatural size. She sat upon a stool in a corner, a slight girlish figure ina holland skirt and white cambric blouse-bodice, her slender waistgirdled 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 herin recurrent gusts of trembling, whenever the guns of the Gueldersdorpbatteries spoke in thunder, whenever the Boer artillery bellowed Deathfrom the heights above. For since the great gun had spoken from EastPoint, Death's red sickle had not ceased to ply its task. 

Some work, one of the coarse canvas haversacks made by the nuns forGueldersdorp's enrolled defenders, lay at the girl's feet. Her right hand, horrible to see in its incessant, mechanical activity, made continuallythe motion of sewing. Her eyes stared blankly, unwinkingly at the oppositewall, and the gusts of trembling went over her without cessation. At amore deafening crash than ordinary, an irrepressible scream would breakfrom her, and her hand would snatch at an invisible garment as though sheplucked back its imaginary wearer from peril by main force. 

"She sees nobody. She hear nozing when we speak--she vould feel nozing, ifyou should pinch or shake her. Was I not right, Reverend Mozer, to say itis time zat somesing should be done?"

The shrill whisper came from Sister Cleophée. The Mother-Superior made asign in assent. Beyond words, her heart was crying--Oh, misery and joy inone 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'sgreat shoulder as he stood silently watching at the bottom of the ladderstairway, imposed silence on the busy, observant, tactful Sisters, whocontinued their labours without a break, as the sewing hand wentdiligently to and fro, and the recurrent convulsive shudders shook thegirl's slight frame, and the irrepressible cry of anguish was wrung fromher at each ear-splitting shellburst. And yet, with all her agony of loveintensifying her gaze, the Mother did not see as much as Saxham, who tookin every detail and symptom with skilled, consummate ease, realizing thedesperate effort that strove for self-command, noting the exhaustion ofsuspense in the dropped lines of the half-open, colourless mouth, theincipient mental breakdown in the vacant stare of the dilated eyes, themechanical action of the stitching needle-hand, the convulsive shudderthat rippled through the slight figure at each boom, or crash, orfusillade of rifle-fire that drifted over the shrapnel-torn veld andthrough the battered town. He threw a swift whisper over his shoulderpresently, that only reached the ear of the Mother-Superior, standingbehind him, her tall shape concealed from the sufferer's sight by hisgreat form. 

"How long has this been going on?"

She whispered back: "I am told ever since the bombardment began. Everyday, and at night too, should duty detain me at one or another of theHospitals. "

He added in the same low tone:

"She has a morbid terror of death under ordinary circumstances?"

The Mother-Superior murmured, a hand upon the ache in her bosom:

"Not of death for herself. For--another. "

His purely scientific attitude must have already abandoned him when heknew gladness that Self was not the dominant note in this dumb threnody offear. But he wore the professional mask of the physician as he ordered:

"Let one of the Sisters speak to her. "

The Mother-Superior glanced at the nun who was ironing, and then at thefigure on the stool. The Sister was about to obey when the BoerMaxim-Nordenfelt on the southern position rattled. There was a hissingrush overhead, and as a series of sharp, splitting cracks told that agroup of the shining little copper-banded shells had burst, and that theirsplinters were busily hunting far and wide for somebody to kill, thestitching hand dropped by the girl's side. A new wave of shuddering wentover the desolate young figure, pitiable and horrible to see. Dull dropsof sweat broke out upon her temples in the shadow of her red-brown hair. 

"How are you getting on with your work, dearie?"

Sister Tobias had spoken to her gently. She moved her head and her fixedeyes in a blind way, and the stitching hand resumed its mechanical task, but she gave no answer, except with the shudderings that shook her, as alily is shaken in an autumn blast. 

Then Saxham stepped backwards noiselessly, climbed the steep ladderstairway, and stood waiting for the Mother-Superior in the blazing yellowsunshine, beside the post to which his horse was hitched. The Motherfollowed instantly. He was making some pencil memoranda in a shabbynotebook, and kept his eyes upon his writing, and made a mere mask of hissquare, pale face as he began:

"It--the case presents a very interesting development. The subject has atone time or other--probably the critical period of girlhood--sustained asevere physical and mental shock?"

The great grey eyes swam in sudden tears that were not to be repressed, asthe Mother-Superior remembered the finding of that lost lamb on the veldseven years before. She bowed her head in silent assent. 

"You would wish candour, " Saxham said, looking away from her emotion. "AndI should tell you that this is grave. "

"I know it, " her desperate eyes said more plainly than her scarcely movinglips. "But so many others are suffering in the same way, and there isnothing that can be done for any of them. "

He answered with emphasis that struck her cold. "Some measures must betaken in the case, and without delay. This state of things must not goon. " He saw that the Mother-Superior caught her breath and wrung her handstogether in the loose, concealing sleeves as she said, with a breath ofanguish:

"If she only had more self-control. "

"She has self-control. " He echoed the word impatiently. "She is usingevery ounce she has for all she is worth. She has used it too long and toopersistently. "

"I will say then, if she only had more faith!"

"I know nothing of faith, " Saxham said curtly; "I deal in common-sense. "

She could have asked if it were commonly sensible for a creature made byGod, and existing but by His will, to live without Him? But she put thetemptation past her. No cordial flame of mutual esteem and liking eversprang up between these two, often brought together in their mutual workof help and healing. She recognised Saxham's power, she admitted hisskill. But, as his practised eye had diagnosed in the beloved of her heartthe signs of physical and mental crisis, so her clear gaze deciphered inhis face the story written by those unbridled years of vice anddissipation, and knew him diseased in soul. She may have been fullyacquainted with all Gueldersdorp had learned of him, going here, there, and everywhere, as was her wont, in obedience to her Spouse's call. But ifso, she never betrayed Saxham. There was no resentment, only delicateirony in the curve of her finely-modelled lips as she queried:

"Am I so deficient in the quality of common-sense?"

"Madam, " he said, "you have manifested it in each of the many instanceswhere I have been brought in contact with you. But in your solicitude forthis young girl you have shown, for the first time in my experience ofyou, some lack of good judgment, and have inflicted, and do inflict, severe suffering on her. "

Her eyes flashed grey fire under her stern brows as she demanded:

"How, pray?"

"It is out of the question, I suppose, " Saxham said coldly, "that youshould slacken in your ministrations among the sick and wounded, and keepout of daily and hourly danger--for her sake?"

"Impossible, " her voice answered, and her heart added unheard:"Impossible, unless I should be false to my Heavenly Bridegroom out oflove for the child He gave. "

"Then, " said Saxham bluntly, "unless these recurrent nerve-storms are toculminate in cerebral lesion and mental and physical collapse--a resultmore easy to avert than to deal with--take the girl about with you. "

"But----" the Mother uttered in irrepressible dismay. "I--we goeverywhere!"

It was most true. He had a vision, as she said it, of the black-robed, white-coifed, cheerful Sisters passing in couples through theshrapnel-littered streets, between houses of gaping walls, and shatteredroofs, and glassless windows, cheerful, serene, helpful, bringing comfortto the dying, and assistance to the sick, oblivious of whistling bulletsand bursting shells. And the most arduous duties, the most repulsivetasks, the most danger-fraught errands, were hers, always by right, andclaim, and choice. What a woman it was! A very Judith in Israel. He knewthat Judith did not like him, but unconcealed admiration was in his blueeyes as he looked at her. 

"I know it. Let _her_ go everywhere. It is the sole chance, and--you spokeof faith just now.... If you have it for yourself and the religious womenof your Order, who go about doing good in confidence of the protection--Ido not speak in mockery--of an Almighty Hand, why can't you have it forher?"

She had never seemed so noble in his eyes as when she took that impliedrebuke of his, with meek bending of her proud head, and candidself-condemnation in the eyes that were lowered and then raised to his, and beautiful humility in her speech:

"Sir, your reproach is just; it is I who have been lacking in faith. And--it shall be as you advise. "

The distant bugle blared out its warning. The bell tolled twice, stopped, and tolled four; the smaller bells echoed. The voices of the sentries cameto their ears, loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to themerest spider-thread of sound:

"'Ware big gun! South quarter, 'ware!"

"I must go to her, " the Mother-Superior said, and passed him swiftly andwent down the ladder. Saxham followed. The white figure on the stool hadnot stirred, apparently. Its blank eyes still stared at the wall, and themechanical hand moved, sewing at nothing, as diligently as ever. 

"Lynette!"

The fixed, blindly-staring eyes came to life. Colour throbbed back intothe wan ivory cheeks. The mouth lost its vacant droop. She rose up fromthe stool with a joyful cry, and, stumbling in her haste, ran into theoutstretched arms. As they wrapped about her, clinging to her sole earthlyfriend and guardian as though she could never let go, came the crash ofthe driving-charge, the yelling Brocken-hunt of the passage of the hugeprojectile, the ear-splitting din of the shellburst. She lifted up aradiant face of laughing defiance, and then choked and quivered and burstout crying, leaning her panting young bosom against the black habit, andweeping as though her whole being must dissolve, Undine-like, in tears. 

Ah, the lovely feminine woman who weeps and clings! She will never loseher dominion over the sons of men. The appealing glances of her beautifulwet eyes melt the stoniest male hearts, the soft tendril-like wreathing ofher arms about the pillar of salt upon the Plain would have had power tochange it back into a breathing human being once more, if Lot had lookedback, instead of his helpmeet. Her sterner sisters may feel as keenly, love as tenderly, sorrow even more bitterly than she. Who will believe itamong the sons of dead old Adam, who first felt the heaving bosom pantagainst his own, and saw the first bright tear-showers fall--forerunnersof what oceans of world-sorrow to be shed hereafter, when the Angel of theflaming sword drove the peccant pair from Paradise. Ah, the fair, weakwoman who weeps and clings!

And Owen Saxham, watching Lynette from the ladder-foot, and theMother-Superior, clasping her and murmuring soft comfort into thedelicate, fragile ear under the heaped waves of red-brown hair, shared thesame thought. 

How this trembling, vibrating, emotional creature will love one day, whenthe man arrives to whom imperious Nature shall bid her render up her all!

In whom, prayed the unselfish mother-heart, willing to be bereft of eventhe Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may shefind not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upona wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what will happen then?

Looking at the pair, Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. Lynette's tears hadbeen dried quickly, like all joy-drops that the eyes shed. She was talkinglow and earnestly, pleading her cause with clinging hands and wistfullooks and coaxing tones that were broken sometimes by a sob and sometimesby a little peal of girlish laughter. 

"Mother, I am not made of sugar to be melted in the sun, or Dresden chinato be broken. I am strong enough to take my share of the work; I am braveenough 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, sewingpowder-bags or giving Katie French lessons, or helping Sister Tobias, andlistening to the guns"--the blood fled from her cheeks and the greatpupils of her eyes dilated until they looked all black in her face ofwhiteness--"the dreadful guns, and wondering where you are when the shellsare bursting"--her voice rose in anguish--"I can't bear it! Mother, do youhear?" She threw her beautiful head back entreatingly, and the pulses inher white throat throbbed under Saxham's eyes, and her slight hands weredesperate in their clutch upon the arms that held her. "I want my share ofthe risk, whatever it is. I will have it! It is my right. I have tried tobe good and patient, but I can't, I can't, I can't stand this any more!"

Her voice broke upon a sob, and Saxham said from the doorway that wasfilled by his great shoulders from post to post:

"You will not have to stand it any more. The Reverend Mother hasreconsidered her decision. She will take you to the Hospital and elsewherefrom to-day. "

The man's curt manner and authoritative tone brought Lynette for the firsttime to knowledge of his presence. Her glance went to him, and joy wasmingled with surprise in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior. 

"Really, Mother?"

The Mother-Superior, though her own still face had flushed with quick, irrepressible resentment at Saxham's tone, said cheerfully:

"It is true, my child. Dr. Saxham thinks it will be best for you. Dr. Saxham, this is my ward, Miss Mildare. "

Saxham made his little brusque bow. Lynette, bending her lovely head, gavea grateful glance at the khâki-clad figure with the great hulkingshoulders, standing under the patch of hot blue sky that the top of theladder vanished in, and a strange shock and thrill went through the man'swhole frame. His odd, gentian-coloured eyes under the heavy thunder-cloudof black eyebrows lightened so suddenly in reply that the girl feltrepelled and half frightened. She was conscious of a curious oppression. As for Saxham, a delicate, stinging fire ran newly in his veins. Somethingstirred in the secret depths of him, and came to life with an awakeningthrill exquisitely poignant and sweet. For this slight, unsophisticated, Convent-bred creature, slender as a lily, reared in innocence among theblameless, was rich as her frail, lovely mother had been before her in themysterious allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the zenith of herstately beauty had never possessed one-tenth of the seductive charm thatemanated from this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seengleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made thesenses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with yourpassions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not lost the liltof the song that it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since theWoman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis may invite, ifunconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter; the shy, close-folded nymphamong the sedges may awaken the primal desire of Pan among the reeds.... Saxham, even in the years of his degradation, had scarcely sunk to thelevel of the crook-shinned, hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. But he had builthis 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 Powerthat 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 itis known of the honourable and the upright and the cleanly among men forever!"

And now ... His thoughts were tipped with fire as he drank in thesuddenly-awakened, vivid, delicate beauty of Lynette Mildare. Now herealised the depths of his own mad folly. Oh, to have had the right tohope again, to love again, to live again, and be grateful to David, whohad 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 andwin such purity, and wear both as a talisman upon his heart for ever! Hedrew breath heavily as he looked at the girl, transformed and glowingunder the touch she loved, shining from within like some 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 tothat new measure, the last link of his old fetters fell clanking to theground. And then, with a sting of intolerable remorse, came the memory ofhis shameful five years' Odyssey spent as a hog among other hogs of thehuman kind. It had not been an overthrow. It had been a surrender of allthat was noble and strong in him to all in him that was despicable andweak and vile. And his soul shuddered, and his heart contracted in thesickening clutch of shame. 

XXIX

He awakened from that lost moment of enthralment to the pang and the shockof self-discovery, and to the knowledge that somebody was hailing him byname from the top of the ladder. 

"Saxham! Doctor! Are you below there?"

It was the gay, fresh voice of Beauvayse, halted with a handful ofIrregulars, bandoliered, carrying their rifles and the day's provisions, wearing their bayonets on their hips, and sitting their wiry little horseswith the ease of old troopers in the lee-side of the piled-up mound ofsandbags that roofed the underground convent. Five men and a Corporal ofthe Town Guard, similarly burdened and accoutred--we know the pale Cockneyeyes and the thin face of the Corporal, whose freckles have long agovanished in a uniform gingerbread hue--had also taken momentary shelterfrom one of the intermittent blizzards of Mauser bullets that driftedthrough Gueldersdorp. 

One Irregular was sitting on an earth-filled packing-case, swearingsoftly, nursing a disabled right arm, and looking at the corded network ofhairy, sunburned muscles that were delicately outlined in the bright redstream that trickled from beneath the rolled-up shirt-sleeve of raspy"greyback. "

"We saw your hairy tied up outside, Doctor, and 'sensed' your whereabouts, as McFadyen says. Can the ladies spare you for a moment? Sorry to be anuisance, but one of my fellows has got winged on our way to relieve thegarrison at Maxim Outpost South, and though he swears he is as fit as afiddle, I don't believe he ought to come on. "

"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 atikkie the worse for it. Lay anybody 'ere a caulker I don't!"

Nobody took up the bet, fortunately for the sportsman, as surgicalexamination proved that the bullet had gone sheer through the fleshy partof the upper arm, breaking the bone, just missing the artery, and leavinga clean hole. 

"You'll have to go to Hospital, my man, " pronounced Saxham. 

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. "

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 theEnglish barrack-room, took up the tale. 

"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 toKhartoum. An' they shot Bob yesterday. Through the 'ead, clean, an' 'enever spoke another word. "

"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, withthe Dutchies, and Tom Kelly, wot 'as just bin speakin', 'eard Bob Ellispromisin' this bloke as 'ow if 'e'd on'y 'urry up an' git killed soonenough, Bob would 'ave 'is farm and 'is frow when 'e come marchin' alongto Pretoria. 'Oppin' mad the Dopper was at that, an' the names 'e calledpore Bob was something disgraceful. An' when 'e got Bob through theloop-'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 grewshaky--"they've corked me. Corked me, by God I--an' there's not a blokeamong the lot of us but me can play the concertina. " With his undamagedarm he swung round his haversack, bulging at the top with a cheap, bone-keyed, rosewood-veneered, gaudy-paper-sided instrument of Germanmake, and hung his head over it in silence. 

"But what on earth has the concertina got to do with it?" Saxham wasfrankly puzzled, and Beauvayse, with all his professional knowledge of"Tommy, " was for once nonplussed. 

"You'd better explain to the Doctor, Corporal Leash. I'm out of therunning when it comes to killing men with concertinas. And--you don't playas badly as all that, do you?"

"On the contrywise, Sir, " explained the comrade Kelly, "plays uncommonwell, he does--all the tunes of the latest music-'all and patrioticsongs. "

"An' them blasted Doppers are uncommon fond o' music, d'ye see, Sir, "explained the wounded trooper. "They can't keep their ugly 'eads downbehind the sand-bags when they hears it. Up they pops 'em over the edgeand then--you take care they don't pop down no more. "

The gay young laughter of Beauvayse was infectious, while white teethshowed, or teeth that were not white, in the tanned faces of Irregularsand Town Guardsmen. Even the mourning comrades grinned, and Saxham smiledgrimly as Beauvayse cried:

"By George, a more original method of reprisal I never came across! Butit's clear if you can't shoot with that drilled arm of yours you can'tplay 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 atmusical instruments--always was. What do you say, my man?"

"Beg pardon, Sir. " The Corporal with the Town Guardsmen saluted, makingthe most of his five feet two inches. "I can pl'y the squiffer--I mean theconcertina, Sir--a fair treat for a hammatore. And if I might be let totyke this man's plyce at Maxim Outpost South, Sir, I could 'elp serve thegun, too, Sir--we've bin' attendin' Artillery Drill in spare hours. "

"I shouldn't think you had any spare hours to spare?" Beauvayse looked atthe thin, tanned face with liking, and the keen pale eyes met his fairly. 

"We haven't, Sir, but we manage some'ow. "

"But what about your own duty?"

"I'm tykin' these men over, Sir. " He indicated a solid family grocer, aclerk of the County Court, a pseudo-Swiss baker, and two Navy Reserve menreduced to the ranks for aggressive intemperance of the methylated-spiritkind, which, in the absence of other liquor, had prevailed among a certainclass, until the intoxicating medium was confiscated by Government. 

"Captain Thwaite 'as spared us from the Cemetery Works to relieve CorporalBrice an' 'is little lot at Angle VII. South Trenches. A telephone-messagecome from our Colonel to say Brice's men was bad with rheumatism anddysentery--but Brice is all right an' fit, Sir--and"--the pale eyespleaded out of the brickdust-coloured face--"I'd like the charnce o'gettin' nearer to the enemy, Sir--an' that's the truth. "

Beauvayse conceded. "Very well. I'll square things with your commandingofficer as we go along, and explain matters to the Colonel per telephonefrom Maxim Outpost South. Come on there when you've handed over your mento Brice. "

The pale eyes danced. "Thank you, Sir. "

"An' I'll owe you a dollar whisky-peg for the good turn, " muttered theperforated musician, as he handed over the cherished concertina to thevolunteer, "till next Sunday that I see you in the stad. "

"Righto!" said Corporal Keyse, accepting the sacred charge. 

"Look here, though, " came from Beauvayse, "there's one thing you mustremember--what's your name?"

"Keyse, sir--Corporal, A Company, Gueldersdorp Town Guard. "

"Well, Keyse, you've heard Meisje hiccoughing ninety-four-poundprojectiles all the morning, haven't you?"

"Couldn't possibly miss 'er, sir"--the pale eyes twinkled as the Corporalfinished--"not as long as she misses me. "

"She has a talent for missing, otherwise a good many of us fellows wouldhave heard the Long Call before now. But most of her delicate littleattentions--with the exception of one shell she sent over the Women'sLaager, to show the people there that she doesn't mind killin' females andchildren if she can't get men--most of 'em are meant for Maxim OutpostSouth; and one of 'em may get home sometimes, when the German gunner isn'tthinking of his sweetheart. Then, if you find yourself soarin' heavenwardsin a kind of scattered anatomical puzzle-map of little bits, don't blameme for obligin' you, that's all. "

There was a guffaw from the listeners. W. Keyse saluted, cheerfullyjoining in. 

"I shan't s'y a word, sir. "

"By George, I believe you!" said Beauvayse. "What's up? Seen a ghost?"

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. TheMother-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 toSaxham, whipping a blue apron out of a big pocket, tying it about her, andpulling on a pair of sleeves of the same stuff as she went. Lynette turnedto take the basin of hot water that the arm of Sister Tobias extended frombelow, and the jaws of W. Keyse snapped together. Until he twigged thebronze-red coils of hair under the broad, rough straw hat, he had thought... Cripps!

We know how the dancing, provoking mischievous blue eyes and adorablewrist-thick golden pigtail of Greta du Taine dwelt in his love-strickenremembrance. Her worshipped image had got a little rubbed and dimmish oflate to be sure, but breathe on the colours, and you saw them come outclear, and oh! bewilderingly lovely. 

Billy Keyse had never even beheld the enchantress since thatnever-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of theserpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one thing. Weknow 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 theDu Taine homestead near Johannesburg. But if she were not in Gueldersdorp, why did the left breast-pocket of the now soiled and heavily-patched khâkitunic bulge so? There were six letters inside there, tied up with a frayedbit of blue ribbon. Hers? 'Strewth, they were! And each what you mightcall a Regular One-er of a love-letter. Never mind the paper beingthumb-marked as well as cheaply inferior, one cannot expect all therefinements of civilisation in a beleaguered town. It was the spellingthat--although we know W. Keyse to be no cold orthographist--occasionallygave him pause as he perused and re-perused the greasy but passionatepage. And why did she sign herself "Fare Air?" The sense of ingratitudepierced him even as he wondered. Why shouldn't she if she chose? What aproper beast he was to grumble! Him, that ought to be proud of herdemeaning herself to stoop to a young chap in a lower station, so to call. And her a Regular Swell. 

He hugged the letters against him with the arm belonging to the hand thatheld the concertina. Beloved missives, where was the worshipped writernow? Sitting by a tapestry-frame, for he could not imagine her peelingpotatoes, down in the Convent bombproof, dreaming of him, weeping over hislast letter, or blushfully aware of his vicinity, panting at the bottom ofthe ladder, listening for the beloved accents of the man who ... Holdhard, though! she had never heard the voice of W. Keyse; or he hers forthat matter, but he would have recognised it among a thousand. He had toldher so, writing with ink pencil, of the kind that when sucked in momentsof forgetfulness tastes peculiarly horrible, and tinges the saliva withviolet, at spare moments in the trench. A phlegmatic Chinaman acted asLove's postman, handing in the envelopes that were addressed to Mr. W. Keyse, Esquer, in caligraphy that began in the top left-hand corner, andtrickled gradually down into the right-hand bottom one. Pumping theCelestial was no use. John Tow sabee'd only that a fair foreign devil gavethe one missive, with a tikkie for delivery, and 'spose one time Tow makeeplenty good walkee back with anulla paper some pidgin bime-bye catcheemore tikkie. If walkee back no paper, too muchee John catchee hellee, reaping only reproaches and no tikkie at all. 

Judge how the heart of W. Keyse bumped against the concertina when theslender vision in the holland skirt and white blouse and broad straw hatappeared from underground. It was not she, though, Queen of heroicthoughts, inspirer of deeds of daring yet to be done, who followed theMother-Superior. 

It was the loveliest girl Beauvayse had ever seen, or ever would see. Thegirl who had stood up in defence of three nuns against a threatening gangof rowdy Transvaalers, one day in the Recreation Ground, --the girl who hadpassed as the Staff dismounted at the Hospital gate on the day ofappropriation. The Mayor had had no chance of fulfilling his promise of anintroduction. The Mayor's wife, with her two children, was an inmate ofthe Women's Laager. But at last the kind little genii that deal withhappenings and chances had brought Beauvayse and his divinity face toface. Now she rose out of the Convent dug-out, in the waste that had beenthe railway-official's front-garden, like a fair white Psyche-statue, delivered in the course of some convulsion of Nature from the matrix ofthe earth. And she was even more exquisite than his remembrance of her, even more ... 

Beauvayse descended abruptly from an empyrean flight of poetic imagery toremember his torn and soiled silk polo-shirt with its rolled-up sleeves, his earth-stained cords, girt with a belt of vari-coloured webbing, hismuddy leather leggings and boots with their caked and dusty spurs, tellingof hard service and unresting activity. 

But he looked radiantly handsome as he leapt to the ground and cameforward, his tall athletic figure, trained by arduous toil and incessantwork until the last superfluous ounce of flesh had vanished, looking thepersonification of manliness, his tanned face, still clean-shaven save forthe slight fair moustache, one to set any maiden dreaming of its straightclean-cut features and lazy, long-shaped grey-green eyes. The wide felthat he touched in salute sat with a jaunty air on the close-cropped goldenhead. Here was a gallant, heartsome vision to greet Lynette, steppingafter the Mother into that outer world, where fire belched warning fromiron mouths, and steel destruction sped through the skies, and bulletssang like hornets past your head, or hit the ground near your feet, sending up little bushy columns and spirts of dust. 

The wounded man, now carbolised, plugged, and bandaged by Saxham'sdexterous hands, took the hastily-scrawled admission-order, included hisofficer, the ladies, and the Doctor in a left-handed salute, distributed aparting wink among his comrades, counselled W. Keyse in a hoarse whisperto go tender on the off-side G of the instrument he dandled, and trudgedsturdily away in the direction of the Hospital. 

"Thank you, ma'am. There's no stealing a march on you, " Beauvayse said tothe Mother-Superior, touching his hat with his gay, swaggering grace, asshe emptied a bowl of red water on the ground, and whisked the blue apronand sleeves back into the vast recesses of the mysterious pocket. "Butyou're spoiling us. Hot water isn't on tap, as a rule, forField-dressings, and--and won't you----" He reddened to the fair untannedskin upon his temples. "Mayn't I ask, ma'am, to be introduced to MissMildare?"

The Mother complied with his request, smiling indulgently. She had knownand loved this bright boy's mother in her early married days. The DarkRose of Ireland and the White Rose of Devon, a noted Society phrasemongerhad dubbed them, seeing them together on the lawn one Ascot Cup Day, theirlight draperies and delicate ribbons whip-whipping in the pleasant Junebreeze, ivory-skinned, jetty-locked Celtic beauty and blue-eyed, flaxen-locked Saxon fairness in charming, confidential juxtaposition underone lace sunshade, lined with what has been the last new fashionablecolour under twenty names, since then; only that year they called it _Rosefané_. Richard Mildare had praised the sunshade, a Paris affair suppliedby Worth with his creation, Lady Biddy Bawne's beautiful gown. He askedLady Biddy to marry him at the back of the box on the Grand Stand whenVerneuil was winning the Cup. Who shall dare say that he was not then asincere lover? thought the Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way. And then she recalled her wandering thoughts, and turned them to the OneLover who never betrays His chosen. And her rapt eyes looking up, seemedto pierce beyond the flaming sky-vault overhead. She forgot all else, suddenly snatched from earthly consciousness to beatific realisation ofthe Divine. 

There had been for some minutes now a lull in the bombardment from theridges. The enemy's guns were silent a space, and the hot batteries ofharassed Gueldersdorp snatched a brief respite while Boers gathered forthe nine o'clock coffee-drinking round their little snapping fires ofdried dung and tindery bush. Now and then a rifle cracked, and a bulletsang past or whitted in the dust. But comparative peace brooded over theshattered hamlet of wrecked homes and ploughed-up, littered roads, and rawearthworks blistering in the pitiless sun. 

"Miss Mildare. " Beauvayse was speaking in that pleasant, boyish voice ofhis, standing close to Lynette, his tall head bending for a glimpse of theeyes of golden hazel, that were shaded by the broad, rough straw hat; "ifyou knew how I've waited for this. Nearly seven weeks since one day inearly October, when I saw you on the Recreation Ground, where some bruteswere annoying you, and a day or so later you went by the Hospital as Irode up with the Chief. But, of course, you don't remember?" His eyesbegged her to say she did. 

"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 thewistful appeal of her eyes. At the first sound of it a shudder ofexquisite delight went through him, as though she had touched him with herslender white, bare hand on the naked breast. 

"Thank you for not quite forgetting. You don't know what it means to me, being kept in mind by you. "

"I do not know that I kept you in mind. " There was a touch of girlishdignity in her utterance. "I only said that I remembered quite well. "

He bent his head nearer, and lowered his pleasant voice to a coaxing, confidential tone. 

"You'll think me a presumptuous kind of fellow for talking like this, won't you, Miss Mildare? But the circumstances are exceptional, aren'tthey? We're shut up away from the big world outside in a little world ofour own, and--such chances fall to every man and most of the women here: ashrapnel bullet or a shell-splinter might stop me before another hour goesby, from ever saying--what I've felt for weeks on end had got to besaid--what I'd risk a dozen lives, if I had 'em, to get the opportunity ofsaying to you. " His hot eagerness frightened her. Her downcast eyelidsquivered, and her flushed maiden-face shrank from him. 

"Oh, don't be angry! Don't move away!" Beauvayse entreated; for Lynette'sanxious glance had gone in search of the Mother-Superior, with whom Saxhamwas now discussing the nuns' idea of utilising the Convent as aConvalescent Hospital. In another instant she would have taken refuge byher side. "If you knew how I have thought of you and dreamed of you sinceI saw you! If you could only understand how I shall think of you now! Ifyou could only realise how awfully, utterly strange it is to feel as I amfeeling!" His voice was a tremulous, fervent whisper. His eyes gleamedlike emeralds in the shadow of the wide-brimmed felt hat. "And if I dieto-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and long for you, andworship you wherever I am!"

"Oh, why do you talk to me like this?"

Lynette's whisper was as tremulous as Beauvayse's own. Her eyes lifted tothe glowing, ardent face for one shy instant, and found it good to lookupon. Men, young and not undesirable, had tried to make love to herbefore, at dances and parties and picnics to which she had been chaperonedby the Mayor's wife. But the first hot glance, the first word that carriedthe 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 stepupon the bank, the first rustle of the sedges. She had never lingered tofeel the air stirred by another burning breath. She had never asked anyone of those other men why he talked like that. Beauvayse went on:

"Perhaps I even seem a little mad to you--fellows have told me lately thatI 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, Ithink--started it boiling and racing and leaping in my veins as no womanever 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 inDeath will ever loose me again. " His tone changed, became infinitelycaressing. "How sweet and dear you are to be so patient with me, while I'msending the Conventionalities to the rightabout and terrifying theProprieties. Forgive me, Miss Mildare. "

The pleading in his face was exquisite. She felt as a bee might feeldrowning in honey, as she wreathed her white fingers together upon thesilver buckle of the brown leather belt she wore, and said confusedly:

"I ... I believe I ought to be very angry with you. "

His whisper touched her ear like a kiss, and set her trembling. 

"But you're not?"

"I----"

She caught her breath as he came nearer. There was a fragrance from him--aperfume of youth and health and vitality--that was powerful, heady, intoxicating as the first warm, flower-scented wind of Spring, blowingdown a mountain-kloof from the high ranges. Her white-rose cheeks tooksudden warmth of hue, and her pale nostrils quivered. A faint, mysterioussmile dawned upon her lips. Something of the old terror was upon herstill, and yet--it was delicious to be afraid of him!

"Say that you aren't angry with me for being so thunderingly presumptuous. Please be kind to me and say it. "

Her lips began to utter disjointed phrases. "What can it matter really?... Oh, very well, then ... If my saying so is of such ... Importance.... "

"More important than anything in the world!" he declared. 

"Very well, then, I am not angry--not furiously so, at least. " The bud ofa smile repressed pouted her lips. 

"And, " he begged, "you'll let what I've said to you be our secret?Promise. "

"Very well. "

"You sweetest, kindest, loveliest----"

"Please don't, " she entreated. 

"And I may know your Christian name?" he persisted, "I've thought ofeverything in the world, and nothing's good enough to fit you. "

"Oh, how silly!" Her eyes gleamed with laughter. "It is Lynette. "

He caught at it with rapture. "Perfect! The last touch.... The scent ofthe rose, or say the dewdrop on it. By George, I'm in earnest!"

He had spoken incautiously loud. A grating voice addressing him pulled hishead round. 

"Lord Beauvayse ... "

"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 twincurses of South Africa. "

The harsh voice spoke to him again. He looked round, and met Saxham'seyes, hard and cold as blue stones. The Doctor said grimly:

"You may not be aware that your men are drawing fire. "

It was undeniable fact. The bullets had begun to hit the ground under thehorses' bellies, spirting little columns of dust and flattening againstthe stones. Coffee-drinking was over in the enemy's trenches, and thebusiness of the day had begun again. Beauvayse bade the ladiesgood-morning, and swung himself into the saddle. 

"Au revoir, Miss Mildare. Please get under cover at once. " Theproprietorship 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?"

The chatting troopers sprang to alert attention. W. Keyse, pensivelyboring the sandy earth with the pneumatic auger of imagination, in searchof the loved one believed to inhabit the Convent bomb-proof, was recalledto the surface by the curtly-uttered command, and knew the thrill ofhero-worship as Beauvayse threw out his lightly-clenched hand, and thetroopers, answering the signal, broke into a trot. The hot dust scurriedat the horses' retreating heels. Corporal Keyse, trudging staunchly intheir wake with his five Town Guardsmen, became ghostlike, enveloped in anAfrican replica of the ginger-coloured type of London fog. And theMother-Superior looked at her well-worn watch. 

"My child, we must be moving if you are coming with me to the Women'sLaager. I am nearly an hour late as it is. "

"I am ready, Mother dear. "

Lynette's eyes came back from following that dust-cloud in the distance tomeet the hungry, jealous fires of Saxham's gaze. 

He had seen Beauvayse's ardent look, and her shy heart's first leafunfolded in the answering blush, and a spasm of intolerable anger grippedhim as he saw. He turned away silently, cursing his own folly, andunhitched his horse's bridle from the broken gatepost. With the act acrowd rose up before Lynette and a frightened horse reared, threatening tofall upon three women who were hurrying along the sidewalk outside theHospital, and a heavy-shouldered, black-haired man in shabby white drillsstepped out of the throng and seized the flying bridoon-rein, and wrenchedthe brute down. She recognised the horse and the man again, and exclaimed:

"Why ... Mother, don't you remember the rearing horse outside the Hospitalthat day in October? It was Dr. Saxham who caught him, and saved us fromgetting hurt. "

"And we never even thanked you. " The Mother-Superior turned to Saxham withoutstretched hand and the smile that made her grave face beautiful. "Whatyou must have thought!... "

"I looked for the person who had been so prompt, but you hadvanished--where, nobody seemed to know, " Lynette told him with her cleareyes 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 brokeoff in dismay. Saxham had become livid. His grim jaws clamped themselvestogether, and the blue eyes grew hard as stone. One instant he stoodimmovable, the Waler's bridle on his left arm, his right hand clenchedupon the old hunting-crop. Then he said very coldly and distinctly:

"As you observe, it is a queer nickname. But, at any rate, I had fairlyearned----"

The bugle from the Staff headquarters sounded, drowning the rest of thesentence. The Catholic Church bell tolled. The other bells took up thewarning, and the sentries called again from post to post:

"'Ware gun, Number Two! Southern Quarter, 'ware!"

The Krupp bellowed from the enemy's north position, and cleverly lobbed aseven-pound shell not far behind that rapidly-moving, distant pillar ofdust, the nucleus of which was a little troop of cantering Irregulars, andnot far in front of the lower, slower-moving cloud, the heart of which wasa little knot of tramping Town Guardsmen. The shell burst with a splittingcrack, earth and flying stones mingled with the deadly green flame and thepoisonous chemical fumes of the lyddite. Figures scurried hither andthither in the smoke and smother; one lay prone upon the ground.... 

At the instant of the explosion Saxham had leaped forwards, setting hisbody 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 forceinvisible, he saw her safe, caught in the Mother-Superior's embrace, sheltered by the tall, protecting figure as the sapling is sheltered bythe pine. 

"We are not hurt, " the Mother protested, though her cheek had been cut bya flying flake of flint, and was bleeding. "But look ... Over there!" Shepointed over the veld to the prostrate brown figure, and a cry of alarmbroke from Lynette. 

"Oh, Mother, who ... ?"

"It is a Town Guardsman, " Saxham answered, his cold blue eyes meeting thewild frightened gaze of the pale girl. "Lord Beauvayse and the Irregularsgot off scot-free. Reverend Mother, do not think of coming. Please go onto the Women's Laager. I will see to the wounded man, and followby-and-by. "

He mounted, refusing all offers of aid, and rode off. Looking back aninstant, he saw the black figure of the woman and the white figure of thegirl setting out upon their perilous journey over the bare patch of groundwhere Death made harvest every day. They kissed each other before theystarted, and again Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. If Ruth had been onlyone half as lovely as this Convent-grown lily, Boaz was decidedly a luckyman. But he had been a respectable, sober, steady-going farmer, and not aman of thirty-six without a ten-pound note in the world, with a blightedcareer 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 earnedhis thousands. And the success that had been achieved, and lost, could berewon, and the career that had been pursued and abandoned could behis--Saxham's--again. And what were his publishers doing with thoseaccumulated royalties? For he knew from Taggart and McFadyen that hisbooks still sold. 

"The Past is done with, " he said aloud. "Why should not the Future befair?"

And yet he had nearly yielded to the impulse to own to those degradedyears, and claim the nickname they had earned him, and take her loathingand contempt in exchange. What sudden madness had possessed him, akin tothat unaccountable, overmastering surge of emotion that he had known justnow when he saw her tears?

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 twoare, it is upon you or upon me. The blood is changed to strange, etherealichor, the pulse beats a tune that is as old as the Earth itself, but yeteternally new. Every breath we draw is rapture, every step we take leadsus one way. One voice calls through all the voices, one hand beckonswhether it will or no, and we follow because we must. With the Atlanticrolling between us I can feel your heart beat against mine, and your lipsbreathe into me your soul. The light that was upon your face, the lookthat was in your eyes as you gave the unforgettable, immemorial kiss, theclasp of your hands, the rising and falling of your bosom, like a wavebeneath a sea-bird, like a sea-bird above a wave, shall be with me always, even to the end of time and beyond it. 

For there are many loves, but one Love. 

XXX

A long-legged, thinnish officer, riding a khâki-coloured bicycle over adusty stretch of shrapnel-raked ground, carrying a riding-whip tuckedunder his arm and wearing steel jack-spurs, might have been considered alaughter-provoking object elsewhere, but the point was lost forGueldersdorp. He got off his metal steed amongst the zipping bullets, andcame over to the little group of Town Guards that were gathered roundSaxham, who had just ridden up, and their prostrate comrade, who writhedand groaned lustily. 

"You have a casualty. Serious?"

Saxham looked up, and his hard glance softened in recognition of theChief. 

"I'll tell you in a moment, sir. "

The earth-stained khâki jacket was torn down the left side and drenchedwith ominous red. A little pool of the same colour had gathered under thesufferer. 

"He looks gassly, don't him?" muttered one of the Town Guardsmen, theSwiss baker who was not Swiss. 

"Makes plenty of noise, " said the County Court clerk hypercritically, "fora dying man. "

"Oh Lord! oh Lord!"

The subject had bellowed with sonority, testifying at least to thepossession of an uninjured diaphragm, as Saxham begun to cut away thejacket. 

"Oh, come now!" said a brisk, pleasant, incisive voice that sent anelectric shock volting through the presumably shattered frame. "That's notso bad!"

"I told you so, " muttered the County Court clerk to the Swiss baker. 

"You remember me, Colonel?"

Haggard, despairing eyes rolled up at the Chief appealingly. He had metthe gaze of those oyster-orbs before. He recognised Alderman Brooker, proprietor of the grocery stores in Market Square, victim of the outrageperpetrated on a sentry near the Convent on a certain memorable night inOctober last. 

"Yes, my man. Anything I can do?" He knelt down beside the prostrateform. 

"You can tell my country, sir, that I died willingly, " panted themoribund. 

"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 scissorsthrough the brown stuff and revelling in discovery. And Saxham's set, square face and stern eyes were for once all alight with laughter. Thedying man went on:

"It's a privilege, sir, an inestimable privilege, to have shed one's bloodin a great cause. "

"It is, Mr. Brooker, but this is different stuff. " His keen face wrinkledwith 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 himthe bottle, Saxham. "

The Doctor, imperturbably grave, held forth at the end of the scissors theripped-up ruins of a small-sized indiarubber hot-water bottle, a ductilevessel that, buttoned inside the khâki tunic, had adapted itself notuncomfortably to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. A hyæna-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding heads. Brooker'sface assumed the hue of the scarlet flannel chest-protector exposed by theruthless steel. 

"What the--what the----?" he stuttered. 

"Yes, that's the question. What the devil was inside it, Brooker, when theshell-splinter hit you in the tummy and it saved your life? Stand him onhis legs, men; he's as right as rain. Now, Brooker?"

Brooker, without volition, assumed the perpendicular, and began to babble:

"To tell the truth, sir, it was loquat syrup. Very soothing to the chest, and, upon my honour, perfectly wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularlyevery year, and--we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, besideswhat we keep for ourselves. And if I am to be exposed to mockery whenProvidence has snatched me from the verge of the grave ... "

"Not a watery grave, Brooker, " came from the Chief, with an irrepressiblechuckle--"a syrupy one. And--have I your word of honour that this is anon-alcoholic beverage?"

"Sir, to be candid with you, I won't deny but what it might contain acertain proportion of brandy. And the nights in the trench beingparticularly cold and myself constitutionally liable to chill ... I--Ifind a drop now and then a comfort, sir. "

"Ah, and have you any more of this kind of comfort at your place ofbusiness or elsewhere?"

"Why--why ... " the Alderman faltered, "there might be a little keg, sir, in the shop, under the desk in the counting-house. "

"Requisitioned, Mr. Brooker, as a Government store. You may feel morechilly without it; you'll certainly sleep more lightly. As far as I cansee, it has been more useful outside of you than ever it was in. And--thesafety of this town depends on the cool heads of the defenders who man thetrenches. A fuddled man behind a gun is worse than no man to me. "

The voice rang hard and clear as a gong. "I'm no teetotaller. Abstinenceis the rule I enforce, by precept and example. While men are men they'lldrink 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 finduntrustworthy I mark down, and they will be dealt with rigorously. Youunderstand me, Brooker? You look as if you did. You've had a narrowsqueak. Be thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs hascome of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your duty. "

W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the resuscitated Brookerflying rags of sanguine stain. Then the stern face of the Chief broke upin laughter. The crinkled-up eyes ran over with tears of mirth. 

"Lord, that fellow will be the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh--howold Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, thatround, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with thesentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech.... " Hewiped his brimming eyes. "Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him onguard--you remember that lovely affair?--he's registered a vow to impressme with his gallantry and devotion, or die in the attempt. He's the mostadmirably unconscious humbug I've ever yet met. Sands his sugar andbrown-papers his teas philanthropically, for the good of the public, anddenounces men who put in Old Squareface and whisky-pegs, as he fuddleshimself with his loquat brandy after shop-hours in the sitting-room backof the store. But let us be thankful that Providence has sent Brooker on aspecial mission to play Pantaloon in this grimmish little interlude ofours. 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. "

"I understand, sir. " Saxham, to whom this man's face was as a book wellloved, read in it that the Commissariat was caving. "There has beenanother Boer cattle-raid?"

The face that was turned to his own in reply had suddenly growndeeply-lined and haggard. "There has been a lot of cattle-shooting. Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was always quite a favourite game withBrounckers. But his gunners hit oftener than they used to. And theGovernment forage won't hold out for ever. " He patted the brown Waler, whopricked his sagacious ears and threw up his handsome bluntish head inacknowledgment of his master's caress. "Presently we shall be killing ourmounts to save their lives--and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep lifein men--and in children and women.... The devil of it is, Saxham, thatthere are such a lot of women. "

"And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out of pure curiosity, "came grimly from Saxham. 

"To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! Youwere going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my sayas I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrongwith the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can'tget anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be twoof the languages I haven't studied. " The dry, humorous smile curved thereddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred theshort-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of theWomen's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and wherethe spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass, waitedoutside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They werefastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender whitefigure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey acrossthe patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and ploughed byshrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day byday. 

"There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without, " commented hiscompanion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler. 

"It is the Mother-Superior, " Saxham said, "with her ward, Miss Mildare. "

"Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse--you know my junior A. D. C. , whodaily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare--is, that I have notyet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered theyoung lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she showed plentyof pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on theRecreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, and some Dutch loafers mobbed them--threatened to lay hands on theSisters--and Miss Mildare stood up in defence--head up, eyes blazing, aslim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was withme, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance. "

Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, and his tone was notpleasant: "Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a fewminutes ago. "

"Did he? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome of realisation. Upto the present"--the humorous, keen eyes were wrinkled at thecorners--"all the boy's swans have been geese, some of 'em the sablekind. "

Saxham answered stiffly: "I should say that in this case the swandecidedly predominates. "

The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune before he spokeagain. "It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, being shut up here, out ofthe way of women. "

"Are there no women in Gueldersdorp?"

"None of the kind Beauvayse's canoe is given to capsizing on. " The line inhis senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. "None of the kind thatrun after him, lie in wait for him, buzz round him like wasps about ahoney-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory scrapes, with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with theprofessional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, mostinexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman in the world. Queerworld!"

"A damned queer world!" agreed Saxham. 

"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! Icouldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more thanBeauvayse could get on _minus_ an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, thatamatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known itthrummed 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 amascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of thekind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could playnothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over atthe Jollity in June--is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you theexact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre OfThe Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' wouldmeet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to beBurlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of aPrincipal Boy, and a Chorus in long skirts. "

Saxham admitted with a cynical twitch of the mouth:

"There's nothing so short as a long skirt--properly managed. "

"You're right. And Lessie Lavigne and the rest of the nimble sisterhooddevote their gifts--Thespian and Terpsichorean--to demonstrating the fact. Oh, damned cowardly hounds!" The voice jarred and clanged withirrepressible anger. "Saxham, can't you see? Brouncker's sharpshooters aresniping at the women--the Sister of Mercy and the girl!"

His glance, as well as Saxham's, had followed the tall black figure andthe 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 ofsickly hot, reddish dust rising about their perilous path. They walkedquickly, but without hurry, keeping a pace apart, and holding one anotherby the hand. Saxham, watching them, said, with dry lips and a deadlysickness at the heart:

"And we can do nothing?"

"Nothing! It's one of those things a man has got to look on at, and wonderwhy the Almighty doesn't interfere? Oh, to have the fellows triced up forthree dozen of the best apiece--good old-fashioned measure. See, they'regetting near the laager now. They'll soon be under cover. But--I wonderthe Convent cares to risk its ewe lamb on that infernal patch of veld?"

"It is my doing. " Saxham's eyes were glued on the black figure and thewhite figure nearing, nearing the embrasure in the earthwork redoubt, andhis face was of an ugly blue-white, and dabbled with sweat. 

"Your doing?"

"Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking down from suspense, and the overstrain of inaction. And--to avert even worse evils, Iprescribed the tonic of danger. There was no choice---- In at last!"

The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind the dumpy earth-bagwalls. He thought the white figure had glanced back, and waved its hand, and then a question from his companion startled him beyond his ordinarystolid self-control. 

"By the way ... With reference to Miss Mildare, have you any idea whethershe proposes taking the veil?"

"How should I have ideas upon the possibility?" The opaque, smooth skin ofthe square, pale face was dyed with a sudden rush of dark blood. TheColonel did not look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone nearhis boot, and flattened into a shiny star of lead:

"I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, Saxham. You're toomuch in earnest, my dear fellow. Burnt Njal himself could hardly have beenmore grim. "

Saxham answered:

"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 mycastle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed then, Iremember. "

"And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and again, " said thekindly voice, "at the man who took it for granted that everything wasover, and did not set to work by dawn of the next day building up the hallgreater than before. Those old Vikings did, 'and each time the high seatwas dight more splendidly, and the hangings of the closed beds woven morefair. ' They never knew when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, andso it came about that they never were. By the way, I have something herethat concerns you. "

"Concerns me?"

"I think I may say, nearly concerns you. A paragraph in this copy of the_Cape Town Mercury_, which, by the way, is three weeks old. "

A rubbed and shabby newspaper, folded small, came out of the baggybreast-pocket of the khâki jacket. Saxham received it with visibleannoyance. 

"Some belated notice of one of my books. " The scowl with which he surveyedthe paper testified to a strong desire to pitch it to the winds. 

"Not a bit of it. It's an advertisement inserted by a London firm ofsolicitors--Donkin, Donkin, and Judd, Lincoln's Inn. Possibly you areacquainted with Donkin, if not with Judd?"

"They are the solicitors for the trustees of my mother's property, sir. Iheard from them three years ago, when I was at Diamond Town. They returnedmy last letter to her, and told me of her death. "

"They state in the usual formula that it will be to your advantage tocommunicate with them. May I, as a friend, urge on you the necessity ofdoing so?"

Saxham's grim mouth shut close. His eyes brooded sullenly. 

"I will think it over, sir. "

"You haven't much time. A despatch-runner from Koodoosvaal got through theenemy's lines last night with some letters and this paper. No, no word ofthe Relief. His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at midnightwith some cipher messages. And, if you will let me have your reply to theadvertisement with the returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see thatit is sent. " The rather peremptory tone softened--became persuasive; "Youmust build up the great hall again, Saxham, and building can't be donewithout money. And--it occurs to me that this may be some question of alegacy. "

"My father was not a wealthy man, " Saxham said. "He gave me a costlyeducation, and later advanced four thousand pounds for the purchase of aWest End practice, upon the understanding that I was to expect no morefrom him, and that the bulk of his property, with the exception of a sumleft as provision for my mother, should be strictly entailed upon mybrother 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, andmy father died before my circumstances altered for the worse. Independently of the provision he made for her, my mother possessed asmall jointure, a freehold estate in South Wales, bringing in, when thehouse is let, about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. That was to havebeen left to me as the younger son. But her trustees informed me, throughthese solicitors, that she had changed her mind, as she had a perfectright 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 yearsold. "

"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. "

Saxham agreed unwillingly: "Very well. "

The other knew the point gained, and adroitly changed the conversation. Itgrew severely technical, bristling with scientific terms, dealing chieflywith food-values. The black cloud cleared from Saxham's forehead as helectured on the energy-fuels, and settled the minimum of protein, fat, starch, and sugar necessary to keep the furnace of Life burning in thehuman body. 

Milk, that precious fluid, could henceforth only be given to invalids andchildren. Margarine and jam were severely relegated to the list ofluxuries. Sardines, tinned salmon, and American canned goods had entirelygiven out. And flour, the staff of life, was vanishing. 

The joy of battle lightened in their faces as they talked, forgingweapons that should make men enduring, and Saxham warmed. His icy armourof habitual silence melted and broke up. He became eloquent, pouring outhis treasured projects, suggesting substitutes for this, and makeshiftsfor 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 ashe talked to this man who understood; and every supple movement of hissurgeon's hand pointed out some fresh expedient, as the singing bulletswent by or whit-whitted about them in the dust, and now and then a shellburst over patient Gueldersdorp. 

They parted at the Women's Laager, and as the khâki bicycle grew small inthe distance, Saxham realised with a shock that he was happy, that lifehad suddenly become sweet, and opened out anew before him in a vista, notof shining promise, but with one golden gleam of hope in it, to a manfreed 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'ssticky loquat-brandy have set the long-denied palate craving? Saxham putthat question from him with both hands. 

And then he frowned, thinking of that adaptable instrument that hadthrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to theSociety drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who likednice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, andthe strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now mustserenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where thewhitest of maiden lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed, in a raging tempest of fire and steel and lead. 

XXXI

Pray give a thought to the spy, Walt Slabberts, languishing in durancevile under the yellow flag. Several times the first-class, up-to-date, effective artillery of his countrymen, being brought to bear upon thegaol, had caused the captive to bound like the proverbial parched pea, andto curse with curses not only loud but fervent the indiscriminating zealof his brother patriots. 

He was, though lost to sight behind the walls of what Emigration Janedesignated the jug, still fondly dear to one whose pliant affections, rudely disentangled by the hand of perfidy from the person of That ThereGreen, had twined vigorously about the slouching person of the young Boer. Letters were received, but not forwarded to suspects enjoying thehospitality of the Government, so communication with the object of herdreams was painfully impossible. Stratagems were not successful. Apassionate missive concealed in a plum-pudding--before it was put on toboil--had become incorporated with the individuality of a prison official, who objected on principle to waste. 

On Sundays, when you could go out without your 'art in your mouth anaccount of them 'orful shellses, a fair female form in a large andflamboyant hat, whose imitation ostridge tips were now mere bundles ofquill shavings, and whose flowers were as wilted as the other blossoms ofher heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place of bondage, waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen and recognised. Tacticsproductive of nothing but blown kisses on the part of extra-susceptiblewarders, and one or two troopers of the B. S. A. , who ought to have knownbetter. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected with ringingsniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements is the feminine heartcomposed, found them strangely solacing. 

She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon the morningfollowing the night of the tragedy, another score to the account of thetraitor Keyse. Arriving unseemly late, and in an agitated state ofmind--and could you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and tookaway?--she had mechanically accounted for her late return in the well-wornformula 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 inconsequence, the second being looked for at the month's end; and to leavethat pore dear in that state--her 'usband being at his Social Club--wasmore than Emigration Jane 'ad 'ad the 'art to do. She received herdismissal to bed, and the advice to examine her conscience carefullybefore retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whoopinghysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated by the knowledgethat nobody had slept in the Convent that night, until she had run down. The character supplied by Sister Tobias to her next employer specifiedterminological inexactitude among her failings, combined with lack ofemotional self-control; but laid stress on an affectionate disposition, and a tendency to intermittent attacks of hard work. 

She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging--you couldn'tcall it nothink else, not to be truthful you couldn't--at the Women'sLaager, along of them there dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from toocandid criticism of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard allthe same not to call crock and muck by their right names!

Languishing in seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of theCommissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets ofConsecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W. Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in thejogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not one to 'avethe world's 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and Chanceit! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and-elevenpenny peek-a-boo"blowse" as she registered her vow. That there Keyse--the conduct of thefaithless Mr. Green appeared almost blonde in complexion beside the sablevillainy of the other--That There Keyse should Rue the Day!

How to make him?--that was the question. Then came the dazzling flash ofinspiration--but not until they had met again. 

She was circulating hungry-hearted about the brick-built case that heldher jewel--the man who had held out that vista of a home, and called herhis good little Boer-wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed toallure and dazzle--the Boer spy had caught many women with it before. Doyou despise her and those others for the predominance of the primalinstinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much theyyearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about theheart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of whichshelter little downy heads. 

She encountered the traitor, I say, and her eyes darted fire beneath abristling palisade of iron curling-pins. She had not the heart in thesedays to free her imprisoned tresses. The villain had the perishing nerveto accost her, jauntily touching the smasher hat. 

"'Day, Miss! 'Aven't seen you since when I can't think. "

She replied with a ringing sniff and a glance of infinite scorn that shewould trouble him not to think; and that she regarded low, interfering, vulgar fellows as the dirt under her feet. So there!

"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 paleeyes were unmistakably good-natured; the loss of the yellow freckles, swamped in a fine, uniform, brick-dust colour, was an improvement, shecould not help thinking. "But I only did my duty, Miss, same as anotherchap would 'ave 'ad to. Look 'ere! Come and 'ave a split gingerade. "

The delicious beverage was three shillings the bottle. She frowned, buthesitated. He persisted; she ended by giving in. Weeks and weeks since shehad walked with a young man! The Dutchman's saloon was closed andbarricaded; its owner had made tracks to his Transvaal friends at thebeginning of the siege. But the aromatic-beer cellar was one of the placesopen. They went in there. Oh! the deliciousness of that first sip of thestinging, fizzling beverage! He lifted his glass in the way that sheremembered, and drank a toast. 

"'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 theConvent standin' empty.... Gone into laager near the railway works now, you 'ave, I know. Safe, if not stric'ly luxurious. But--I git the RegularHump when I think of--of a Angel like 'Er 'avin' to live an' eat an' sleepin a--a--in a bloomin' rabbit-'ole. " He sighed as he wiped the pungentfroth from his upper lip. 

"Pity you can't tell 'er so!" The sarcasm would have its way, but itfailed of his great simplicity. 

"That's why I bin lookin' out for you. " He blushed through the brick-dusthue as he extracted a fatigued-looking letter from a baggy leftbreast-pocket in which it had sojourned in company with a tobacco-pouch, apipe which must not be smoked in the trenches if a man would prefer to dowithout a bullet through his brain, a handful of screws not innocent oflubricating medium, a clasp-knife, a flat tin box of carbolised vaseline, a First-Aid bandage, and a ration of bread and cheese wrapped in oldnewspaper. The bread was getting deplorable, for even the dusty secondsflour was fast dribbling out. 

"You'll give 'er this, won't you, Miss, and tell her I bin thinkin' of 'ernight 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 aticker beatin' true to 'er. " He rapped a little awkwardly upon the bulgingleft breast-pocket, "To the bloomin' end, wotever it may be!"

"Oh, you--silly, you!"

She found him ridiculous and tragic, and so touching all at once that thegibe ended in a sob. It was not the stinging effervescence of thegingerade 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 owedhim, and saw that the chance had come for her revenge. She could piercethe heart beating under the khâki breast-pocket to its very core withthree words as easily as she had jabbed his face with her hat pin on thatnever-to-be-forgotten night. She would tell him that the lady of his lovehad gone up to Johannesburg weeks and weeks ago. Oh, but it would be sweetto see the duped lover's face! She would give him a bit of her mind, too--perhaps tear up the letter. 

Then flashed across the murky-black night of her stormy mind theforked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To takehis letter--write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top ofhis bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets. "And serve you glad--and no more than your deservings! Who put away myWalt?"

She accepted the letter, only permitting herself one scornful sniff, andput the missive in her pocket. Next day John Tow, the Chinaman, serenelyfatalistic, smilingly perpendicular in felt-soled shoes, amidst zippingbullets, brought to the trench a reply, signed "Fare Air. "

The writer Toke the Libberty of Hopeing W. Keyse was as it Left her atpreasent. She was Mutch obblig for his Dear Leter Witch it 'ad made herHapey to Know a Brave Man fiteing for her Saik. 

"Cr'r----!" ejaculated W. Keyse, below his breath. His face was radiant ashe 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 blueeyes, and that great thick golden pigtail. The letter went on:

 "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. 

 "X X X X

 "FARE AIR. "

His senses reeled, as under pretence of masking a sneeze he pressed hisburning lips to those osculatory crosses. He wrote her a flaming answer, begging a Sunday rendezvous. She appointed a place and an hour. He wentthere on the wings of love, but nobody turned up except the Jane who couldbe trusted with pounds and pounds. 

She hurried to him trembling and quite pale, her blue eyes--he had nevernoticed that they were blue and really pretty--wide with fright under heryellow fringe of curls newly released from steely fetters. Her lips wereapart, but he failed to observe that the teeth they revealed werecreditably white; her cotton-gloved hand repressed her fluttering heart, but he did not see its tumultuous throbbing. He gulped as he said, with afallen jaw and a look of abject misery that pierced her to the quick:

"She--couldn't come, then?"

"No, pore deer!" gasped the comfort in trouble, casting about forsomething to tell him. She had made up her mind as she came along; shewould have her revenge there and then, and chance it. Something kept herfrom laying the candle-flame to the time-fuse. She did not know what itwas yet. But, oh! the sharp look of terror in the thin, eager face piercedher through and through. 

"My Gawd! She's not bin killed?" he cried. "Don't tell me she's bin----"

"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 backan' tell me all about 'im!'"

He swallowed the bait, and her spirits revived. Emigration Jane, if notthe rose, lived with it. Strictly speaking, they spent a pleasant Sunday, though when he found himself forgetting the absent one, he pulled himselfsharply up. He saw her part of the way home; more she would not allow. 

"And--and"--she whispered at their parting, her eyes avoiding his--"if shecan't git out next Sunday--an' it's a chance whether she does, that SisterTobias being such a watchful old cat--would you like to 'ave me meet youan' tell you all about 'er?"

W. Keyse assented, even eagerly, and so it began. Behold the poor deceiverdrinking perilous joys, and learning to shudder at the thought ofdiscovery. Think of her cherishing his letters, those passionate epistlesaddressed to the owner of the golden pigtail. 

Think of her pouring out her poor full heart in those wildly-speltmissives that found their way to him, and be a little pitiful. 

She did not thirst for that revenge now. But, oh! the day would come whenhe would find out and have his, in casting her off, with what contempt andloathing of her treachery she wept at night to picture. This feeling, thatlifted you to Heaven one instant, and cast you down to Hell the next, wasLove. Passion for the man, not yearning for the hearth-place, and thesheltering roof, and the security of marriage. 

She left off walking round the gaol--indeed, rather avoided the vicinityof the casket that for her had once held a treasure. What would theSlabberts think of his little Boer-wife that was to have been? What wouldhe say and do when they let him out? She took to losing breath and colourat the sound of a heavy step behind her, and would shrink close to themartial figure of W. Keyse when any hulking form distantly resembling theBoer's loomed up in the distance. 

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 wouldhe. She was mistaken. 

There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the path of single-hearteddevotion to the unseen but ever-present wearer of the golden pigtail. 

As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet sensible of thebelly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its tense muscles and wearybrains by getting up an entertainment here and there, W. Keyse escortedhis beloved--by proxy, as usual--to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in acleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial Government to thepromoters of the entertainment. 

Oh, the first delicious sniff of an atmosphere tinged with paint andacetylene from the stage-battens and footlights, and so flavoured withcrowded humanity as to be strongly reminiscent of the lower troop-deck instormy weather, when all the ports are shut and all the hatches arebattened down! The excess of brilliancy which must not stream from thewindows 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 fromher Sabbath quiet, and send in a ninety-four-pound shell to break up anorgy 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, MileEnd, on a Saturday night, when every gentleman sits in shirt-sleeves, withhis arm round the waist of a lady, and the faggots and sausage-rolls andstone-gingers are going off like smoke, and the orange-peel rains from theupper circle back-benches, and the nut-cracking runs up and down thepacked rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches when thefire is hottest.... 

Ah! that brought one back to Gueldersdorp at once. 

Meanwhile, a pale green canvas railway-truck cover, marked in black, "Light Goods--Destructible, " served as a drop-curtain. Another, upon whichthe interior of an impossible palace had been delineated in a bewilderingperspective of red and blue and yellow paint-smudges, served as a generalback-scene for the performance. 

The orchestra piano had been wounded by shell-fire, and had a leg insplints. Many members of the crowded audience were in strapping andbandages. Drink did not flow plentifully, but there was something to wetyour whistle with, and the tobacco-cloud that hung above thetrestle-benches, packed with black and yellow faces, as well as brown andwhite, could almost have been cut with a knife. 

It was a long, rambling programme, scrawled in huge, black-paintcharacters on a white planed board, hung where everyone could read it. There were comic songs and Christy Minstrel choruses by people who haddeveloped vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display ofconjuring 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 eachfresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveyingthe idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping towake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never reallyundertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's watch andproduce it intact from some unexpected place of concealment, thespectators rocked and roared. Then there was a Pantomimic Interlude, witha great deal of genuine knockabout, and, the crowning item of theentertainment, a comic song and stump-speech, announced to be given by TheAnonymous Mammoth Comique--an incognito not dimly suspected to conceal theidentity of the Chief himself, being delayed by the Mammoth's charactertop-hat--a fondly cherished property of the Stiggins brand--and thecabbage umbrella that went with it, having been accidentally left behindat the Mammoth's hotel, the Master of the Revels, still distinguished bythe jib-sail collar and shiny burnt-cork complexion of the corner-man, wassent to the front to ask if any lady or gentleman in the audience wouldkindly oblige with a ten-minute turn?

"All right, Mister!"

A soiled cotton glove waved, a flowery hat nodded to the appeal frombehind the acetylene footlights. The faces in the front rows of seats, pale and brick-dust, gingerbread and cigar-browned European, Africancountenances with rolling eyes and shining teeth; and here and there theimpassive, almond-eyed, yellow mask of the Asiatic, slewed round asEmigration Jane rose up in the place beside W. Keyse, a little pale, andwith damp patches in the palms of the washed white cotton gloves, as shesaid: If the gentleman pleased, she could sing--just a little!

No, thank you! She wasn't afryde, not she; they was all friends there. Anddo '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 theChristy-minstrel-collared, burnt-corked Master of the Revels was gallantlyhelping her up the short side-ladder, and culminated when he retreated, and left her there, standing on the platform in the bewildering glare ofthe acetylene footlights, a little, rather slight and flat-chested figureof 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 showedfaded and shabby in the yellow gas-flare. 

Oh! 'owever 'ad she dared? That dazzling sea of faces, with the eyes allfixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump grew in her throat, and thecrowded benches tilted, and the flaming lights leaped to the roof as thehelpless, timid tears welled into her blue eyes. 

And then the miracle happened. 

W. Keyse sat on a back-bench, the thin Cockney face a little raised abovethe others, because he had slipped a rolled-up overcoat under him, pretending that it was to get it out of the way, you understand. Alwaysvery sensitive about his shortness, W. Keyse. And she saw his face, asplain as you please, and with a look in the pale, eager eyes, that foronce was for Emigration Jane, her very own self, and not for That ThereOther One. She knew in that moment of revelation that she had always beenjealous. Oh, wasn't it strynge? Her heart surged out to W. Keyse acrossthe gulf of crowded faces. And her eyes had in them, all at once, the lookthat is born of Love. 

Ah! who can mistake it? It begets a solitude in a vast thronged assemblagefor you and for me. It sends its silent, wordless, eloquent messagethrilling to the heart of the Beloved, and wins its passionate answerback. Ah! who can err about the look of Love?

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 simplyand naturally, in an untutored but sweet and plaintive voice, and with theCockney accent that spoke of home to nearly all that heard. And her eyesnever moved from his face as she sang. 

The song was, I dare say, a foolish, trivial thing. But the air waspretty, and the words were simple, and it had a haunting refrain. To thiseffect, that the world is a big place and a hard place, with scant measureof joy in it, for you or for me. Bitter herbs grow side by side with theflowers in our Earth gardens. Salt tears mingle with our laughter; Nightcomes down in blotting darkness--perhaps in drenching rain, --at the closeof every short, bright day of sunshine. But Life gone by, its hopes andfears and sorrows laid with our once-beating hearts in the good grey dustto rest, I shall meet with you again, in the Land where dreams come true. 

"The Land Where Dreams Come True. " That was the title of the song and itsrefrain, and somehow it caught the listeners by the heart strings, makingthe women sob aloud, and wringing bright sudden drops from the bold eyesof 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 orhusband, child or friend or comrade since the beginning of the siege; andthus the touch of Nature made itself felt, and the simple pathos went hometo the sore quick. They sang the refrain with her, fervently, and when thesong was done, they sat in touched silence but one moment--and then theapplause came down. As it fell upon her like a wall, she screamed interror, and ran away behind the scene, and was found by W. Keyse a minutelater, sobbing hysterically, with her head jammed into an angle of thewall of un-plastered brick-work. 

None saw. He put his arms manfully about the waistline of the floweryblouse. 

"Oh, let me go! Oh, what a wicked, wicked girl I've bin! Oh, it's all comeover me on a sudden, like a flood! Don't touch me--I'm not good enough!Oh! how can you, can you?"

She sobbed the words out, and W. Keyse had kissed her. He did not getanother utterance of her that night. She parted from him in tinglingsilence. His own uneasy sense of faithlessness to One immeasurablybeloved, to whom he had pledged inviolable and eternal fidelity, nearlyprompted him to ask her not to up and tell. But he manfully kept silence. 

The worst of one kiss of that kind is that it begets the desire for otherslike it. She had turned her mouth to his in that whirling, breathlessmoment, and it was small, and warm, and clung. He tried to shake off theremembrance, but it haunted persistently. 

He knew he had behaved like a regular beast--a low cur, in fact. To kissone girl and mean it for another was, in the Keysian Code of morals, to beguilty of a baseness. The worst of it was that he knew, given the chance, he would do the same thing again. 

For he could not shake off the memory of the blushing face, wetted withstreaming 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 ofthe imagination, be termed golden. He heard her voice crying to him, "Howcan you, can you?" And he trembled at the thought of the mouth that kissedand clung. 

He had known bought kisses, of the kind that brand the lips and shame thebuyer as the seller. Never the kiss of Love, until now. 

And now--was any other worth the taking?

"Cr'ripps!" said W. Keyse. "Not much!"

XXXII

It was Wednesday again, and Saxham came riding through the embrasure inthe oblong earthwork, and down the gravelly glacis that led into theWomen's Laager. An obsequious Hindu, in an unclean shirt and a filthy redturban, rose up salaaming, almost under his horse's feet, and took thebridle. He dismounted and went his rounds. 

It might have been the dry bed of a high-banked placer-river, with sparelengths of steel railway-line borne across from bank to bank, covered withbeams and sheets of corrugated iron and tarpaulins, with wide chinks tolet in the much-needed air and light. A line of living-waggons, crowdedwith women and children--English, American, Irish, Dutch, andhalf-caste--ran down the centre of the giant trench. In each of itssloping faces a row of dug-out habitations gave accommodation to twice thenumber that the waggons held. At the eastern end a line of campcooking-places had been arranged in military fashion, but the Dutchwomen'slittle coffee-pipkin-bearing fires of dung and chips burned everywhere, and possibly they did something towards purifying the air. For, to befrank, it vied with the native village in the compound and variegatednature of its smells, without the African muskiness of odour that isperceptible in the vicinity of our sable brother. The fat, slatternly, frankly dirty vrouws had not the remotest idea of sanitation; the Germansand Irish, blandly or doggedly impervious to savage smells, pursued theirunsavoury way in defiance of the clamorous necessity for hygienicmeasures, until the majority of the pallid, untidy, scared Englishwomen, the energetic Americans, and the sturdier Africanders, after making whatheadway was possible against the ever-rising tide of filth, had yielded tothe lethargy bred of despair and lack of exercise, and ceased to strive. Afew, worthy of honour, still stoutly battled with the demon ofUncleanliness. 

But the first April rainfall would turn the dry ditch into an opensewer--a vast trough of muddy water--in which draggled women would paddlefor submerged household gods. Many would prefer to tramp back to the townat night and sleep in their own shrapnel-riddled homes. But the majoritystayed, of choice or of necessity, incubating sickness in that fetid placewhere nothing would thrive but fierce social and political hatreds, andpetty grudges, and rankling jealousies, and shrieking quarrels that burstout and raged a hundred times in a day. 

From one of the dug-out refuges Saxham now saw Lynette Mildare coming, making her swift way between the knots of frowsy refugees, the negrowomen-servants squatting over the little cooking-fires, the pallidchildren swarming on the narrow pathways. 

"Dr. Saxham. " Her simple brown holland skirt and thin linen blouse hungloosely upon her. Her face, too, had grown thinner, and looked tired. Butthe eyes were no longer unnaturally dilated, and the face had a morehealthful pallor. "Mrs. Greening begged me to look out for you. She is soanxious about Berta. We have been doing everything we can, but I am afraidthe child is seriously ill. It is the third shelter from the end, southside. " She pointed out the place. 

He had lifted his hat with his short, brusque salute. His vivid eyes worea preoccupied look, his mobile nostrils angrily sniffed the villainousair. 

"I'll come directly, Miss Mildare. But--who can expect children to keephealthy under conditions as insanitary as these?"

"It is--horrible!" Disgust was in her face. "But many of the women are asignorant as the Kaffirs and Cape boys, and they and the coolie sweeperswon't carry away refuse any more unless they're paid. "

"You are sure of this?" His tone was curt and official. 

"I am almost certain, " she told him. "I have heard some of the womencomplaining that the charges grew higher every day. And, when I asked oneof the boys why he did not do the work properly, he was--rude.... Oh, don't punish him!"

He had not said a word, but a white-hot spark had darted from his blueeye, and his grim jaws had clamped ominously together. 

"It is my duty to put down insubordination, and chastise inefficiencywhere I encounter it. May I ask you to point out the fellow who behavedinsolently?"

She said: "I--I think he is head of the carting-gang. A Kaffir boy theycall Jim Gubo. "

"That will do, thank you, Miss Mildare. You are not alone here?"

Her glad smile assured him of that. "Oh no, I am with the Mother. I goeverywhere with her, and I think I am of use. I am not at all afraid ofsickness, you know, or--the other things. "

"But yet, " Saxham said, "you must be careful of your health. "

"You have no idea how tremendously strong I am, " she answered him, and hebroke into laughter in spite of himself. She looked so tender, sodelicately frail a creature to be there in that malodorous Gehenna, ministering to the wants of slatternly vrouws and stalwart, down-at-heelIrishwomen. His smile emboldened her to say: "I did not thank you theother day, after all. "

"The Krupp shell came along and changed the subject of the conversation. "He added: "Were you alarmed? You had rather an escape. "

"I was with Mother. "

"You love her very dearly?" The words had escaped him unconsciously. Theywere his spoken thought. She flushed, and said with a thrill of tendernessin her clear girlish tones:

"More dearly than it is possible to say. I don't believe God Himself willbe angry with me that I have always seen His Face and Our Blessed Lady'sshining through hers and beyond it; for He knows as no one else can everknow what she has been since they brought me to the Convent years andyears ago. "

"They" were her people, presumably. It was odd--Saxham supposed it theoutcome of that Convent breeding--that she should speak of God as simply, to quote Gladstone's criticism on the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, asthough He were her grandfather. Saxham had been reared in the Christianfaith by a pious Welsh mother, but there had always been a littleawkwardness about domestic references to the Deity. In times of sadness orbereavement He was frequently referred to. But always in a deprecatorytone. 

"Your family is not Colonial?" he asked. 

She shook her lovely red-brown head. 

"I--don't know. "

"Mildare is an unusual surname. "

"You think it pretty?"

He thought her very pretty as she stood there, a slender willowy creaturewith the golden shadow of her rough straw-hat intensifying the clear amberof her thoughtful eyes. 

"Very. "

She looked him in the face and smiled. 

"So did I when the Mother gave it to me. I think it belonged to someoneshe used to know, and her mother was Lynette. So they baptised me LynetteMildare. It seems rather strange not having a name of one's own, butreally I never had one. "

"Never had one?"

Saxham echoed her half-consciously, revelling in the play of light andshadow over the delicate face, and the gleaming as of golden dust upon theouter edges of the waves of red-brown hair drawn carelessly back over thelittle ears. 

"Not to my knowledge. Of course, I may have had one once. " She added, ashe 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 thatslanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thickatmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wonderedwhat it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchangeLynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... That would be horrible. Don't youthink so?"

Saxham smiled. "I think you are joking, and that a young lady who can doso under the present circumstances deserves to be commended. "

She looked at him full. 

"I am not joking. " Borne by a waft of the sickly air a downy winged seedcame floating towards her, a frail gossamer courier coming from the worldabove with tidings that Dame Nature, in spite of all the destructionwreaked by men, was carrying on her business. "And--I do not even knowthat I am a young lady. See there"--she blew a little puff of breath atthe 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 knowabout myself; perhaps as much as I shall ever know. Why do you look soglad?"

His lips were sealed. The throb of selfish triumphant exultation came ofthe belief that the gulf between them was less wide and deep than he hadthought it. A wastrel may woo and wed a waif, surely, without manyquestions being asked. And then, at the clear, innocent questioning of hereyes, rushed in upon him, scalding, the memories he had thrust away. Hesaw the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, his short daily stint of labour done, settling down to drink himself into hoggish oblivion in his accustomedcorner of the Dutchman's liquor-saloon. He beheld him, his purposeaccomplished, sleeping stertorously, spilled out like the very dregs ofmanhood in the sawdust of that foul place; he shuddered as the bloated, dishevelled thing roused and reeled homewards, trickling at the mouth, asthe clear primrose day peeped over the flat-topped eastern hills. And hesickened at the thing he had been. 

"I felt glad, " he lied, with looks that shunned Lynette's, "that in yourneed you found so good a friend as the Mother-Superior. Yours must havebeen a sorrowful, lonely childhood. "

Her own vision rose before her, blotting out his face. She saw the littlekopje with the grave at its foot. She saw a ragged child sitting therewatching for the earliest flush of dawn or the solemn folding of night'swide wing over the lonely veld, and the coming of the great whitestars.... 

"She is much, much more than a friend. She is the Mother. " Her loyal heartwas in her face. "I have no secrets from her. I tell her everything. "

Was that deeper flush born of the remembrance of a secret unshared? Andhow strange that every change of colour and expression in the delicateface should mean so much, so soon. He said, with a hungry flash of thegentian-blue eyes:

"Your love and confidence repay her richly. "

"I can do so little. " There was an anxious fold between the slendereyebrows. "Only follow her and be near her; only look on as she spendsherself for others, never resting, never sparing, never discouraged orcast down. " Great tears brimmed the white, darkly-fringed underlids, andran over. "And she only laughs at me at night when I cry at the sight ofher dear, blistered feet. "

"You will be able to laugh with her when this is over, " Saxham said ratherclumsily. 

"Shall I? Perhaps. " Still that fold between the fine, delicate eyebrows. 

"You have seen War, " Saxham went on, his own voice sounding strange tohim. "And that is a terrible experience for a woman, young or old, but youwill be the richer by it in the end, believe me, Miss Mildare. Richer incourage and endurance and calmness in the presence of danger and death, and in sympathy with the pain and suffering inevitable under suchcircumstances. "

"Sympathy? They had all my sympathy before. " Her fair throat swelledagainst its encircling band of moss-green velvet, her voice rang, her eyesflashed golden fire under the shadow of the wide straw hat. "Do you thinkit needed War to teach me how hideously women suffer? How they havesuffered since the world began, and how they will suffer until its end, unless they rise up in revolt once for all, against the wickedness ofmen?"

She was transformed under Saxham's eyes. The slender virginal bodyincreased in stature and proportions as he gazed, and what obscureemotions seemed striving in her face!

"Look at them, " she said, indicating with a slight revealing gesture theswarming, dowdy, listless occupants of the crowded trench. "How patientthey are, how resigned to the dreadful life they drag on here from day today, full of the horror and the pain and the suffering that you say isinevitable. Why should it be inevitable? Did these women who are the chiefvictims of it and the greatest losers by it, choose that there should beWar? See that poor soul with the rag of crape upon her hat, who sits ather door peeling potatoes. Did she desire it? Yet her young husband wasshot in the trenches a week ago and her little baby died of fever thismorning.... And, did those other women whose homes have been wrecked andruined, whose sons and husbands and fathers may be shot, and whosechildren may sicken with the same fever before night, demand of theirGovernments, Imperial or Republican, that there should be War? You seethem patient and submissive because they neither realise their wrongs orunderstand 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 ageneral plebiscite, the women will vote as well as the men; and as womenare in the majority, and every woman will vote for Peace--how can there beWar?"

"You are an advocate of Universal Suffrage, then? You believe that theremust be absolute sex-equality before the world can be--I think 'finallyregenerated' is the stock phrase of the militant apostle of Women'sRights? I have heard this outcry from many feminine throats in London, butGueldersdorp, " said Saxham drily, "is about the last place one wouldexpect to ring with it. "

"'Universal Suffrage, Sex-Equality, Women's Rights.... '" The shibboleththat Saxham quoted was evidently unfamiliar to the girl. "I know"--therewas a sombre shadow in her glance--"what Women's Wrongs are, but I am notvery well informed about the things you speak of. The Mother tells me thatthere are many well-educated women in London and Paris, in Berlin and inNew York, who have devoted their lives to the study of such questions. Whowrite and speak and labour to teach their fellow-women that they have onlyto band themselves together to be powerful, only to be powerful to befeared, only to will it to be free. When I am twenty-four I mean to go outinto the world and meet those leader-women. Some of them, I am told, havesuffered loss and ill-usage; some of them have even undergone imprisonmentfor the sake of what they believe and teach. Well, I will hear what theyhave 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 mostcertain voice. "

"And until that time comes?" said Saxham. 

Her eyes grew bright again, a smile played about her exquisite lips. 

"Until that time comes I will study and gather more knowledge, andcapacity to fit myself for a struggle with the world. "

"_You_ 'struggle with the world'!"

Her girlish pride in her high purpose being sensitive, she mistook thebrusque tenderness in Saxham's face and voice for irony. 

"Yes. Perhaps you may not believe it, but I know a great many usefulthings. Latin and French and German and Italian, well enough to teach andtranslate. I am well grounded in History and Science and Mathematics. Ican take a temperature and make a poultice, or sweep a room and cook adinner. " She nodded at Saxham with a little spark of laughter underlyingthe sweet earnestness of her look. "Also, I have learned book-keeping andtypewriting, and shorthand. I earn enough now, by bookbinding, to pay formy clothes. The Mother says that I am competent to earn my livinganywhere, and to teach others to earn theirs. But I am not to begin untilI am twenty-four. That is our agreement. "

Saxham understood the fine maternal tact that never set this ardent youngenthusiast chafing at the tightened rein. But he said roughly:

"The Mother.... How can she approve your joining the ranks of theShrieking Sisterhood?"

"She knows, " Lynette explained, with adorable gravity, "that I shouldnever shriek. "

"How will you bear parting from her? And how will she endure parting fromyou?"

The girl's mobile lips began to tremble. The luminous amber eyes weredimmed with moisture as she said:

"It will not be losing me. Nor could I ever bear to leave her if I did notknow that I should come back. But I shall come back. And she will ask mewhat 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 oncesat in darkness and the Shadow of Death, and now have found the Way ofPeace. '"

"And those others, Beatrice?"

Saxham knew now the secret of the haunting familiarity of the beautifulgirlish face. The delicate oval outline, the pale wild-rose colouring, thereddish-brown of the fine, glistening tresses, the amber-hazel of thewistful, brilliant eyes, reproduced to a wonderful degree the modellingand tinting of the wonderful Guido portrait, the white-draped head in theBarberini Gallery, which, in defiance of Bertolotti and the _EdinburghReview_, will always be associated with the name of the sorrowful-sweetheroine of the most sombre of sex-tragedies. 

"Why do you call me Beatrice?" she asked, with that sudden darkening ofthose luminous eyes. He told her:

"Because you are like the Daughter of the Cenci. Shelley used to be myfavourite among the English poets, and when I first went to Rome, yearsago, the first thing I did was to hunt up the portrait in the BarberiniPalace Gallery; and it is marvellous. No reproduction has ever donejustice to it. One could not forget it if one tried. "

"I am glad I am like Beatrice, " she said slowly. "I have always loved andpitied her. I pray to her as my friend among the Blessed Souls inParadise, and she always hears. And by-and-by she will help me when I goout into the world----"

"To look for those others, " Saxham interpolated. "Tell me who they are?"

She looked at him, and for an instant the virginal veil fell from her, andthere was strange and terrible knowledge in her eyes. 

"They are women, and girls, and children, " she answered him. "They are themost unhappy of all the souls that suffer on earth. For they are theslaves 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. "

There was a dull burning under Saxham's opaque skin, and a drumming in hisears. His authority and knowledge fell from him as that virginal veil hadfallen from her; he stood before her humbled and ashamed, shunning hereyes, that penetrated and scathed his soul as the eyes of an avengingAngel might, with their clear, simple, direct estimate of himself and hisfellow-men. And the distance between them, that had seemed to be lesseningas they talked, spread illimitably vast; a dark, sunless plain, bounded bya livid horizon, reflected in the slimy pools of foul swamps andpestilential marshes, where poisonous reptiles bred in slimy, writhingknots, and the Eaters of Human Flesh lurked under the tangled shade of thejungles. Less vile of life, even in his degradation, than many men, hefelt himself beside this girl a moral leper. 

"Unclean, unclean!"

While that voice yet echoed in the desert places of his soul, he heard hersaying:

"I don't know why I should talk to you of these plans and projects ofmine. 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--youare not to suppose that I believe all men to be----"

He ended for her: "To be devouring beasts. No; but we are bad enough, thebest of us, if the truth must be told. And--I _have_ suffered, MissMildare, at the hands of men and women, and through the unwritten laws, asthrough the accepted institutions of what is called Society, mostbrutally. I would not soil and scorch your ears with the recital of myexperiences, for all that a miracle could give me back. I swear to youthat I would not!"

She touched the little ears with a smile that had pathos in it. 

"They have heard much that is evil, these ears of mine. "

"And the evil has left them undefiled, " said Saxham. 

"Thank you!"

She begged him again not to forget the sick child at Mrs. Greening'sshelter, and hurried away, keeping her face from Saxham. He knew thatthere was no hope for him, that there never would be any. And he lovedher--hungrily, hopelessly loved her. Dear innocent, wise enthusiast, withher impossible scheme for cleansing the Augean stable of this world!Chivalrous child-Quixote, tilting at the Black Windmills, whose sails arewhirled by burning blasts from Hell, and whose millstones grind the soulsof Eve's lost daughters into the dust that makes the devil's dailybread--how should the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp dare to love her? But hedid not cease to, for all the height of his self-knowledge and all thedepth of his self-scorn. 

He seemed to Lynette a strange, harsh man, but there was something in himthat 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 wasnot a sister. He must be quite old--the Mother had thought him certainlythirty-five--but possibly he had a young wife in England--or somewhereelse? And she had spoken to him of her great project. She wondered now atthat impulse of confidence. Perhaps she had yielded to it to convinceherself that her enthusiasm was as strong, her purpose still as clear, asever, in the mirror of the Future; that no gay, youthful reflection hadever risen up of late days between it and her wistful eyes when she peepedin. The remembered image of the handsome face that had laughed, even asBeauvayse had declared:

"Even if I die to-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and longfor you, and worship you wherever I am. "

The thought of Beauvayse's dying was horrible, intolerable. His name cameafter the Mother's in her prayers. He had asked her to keep thesecret--his and hers--and called her such exquisite, impossible things forpromising that the mere remembrance of his words and his eyes as he saidthem in that low, passionate, eager voice, took her breath deliciously. 

"_Sweetest, kindest, loveliest.... _" She whispered them to herself as shehurried back to comfort worried Mrs. Greening with the news that thedoctor was coming. 

Meanwhile Saxham went on his accustomed way between the long line ofwaggons and the corrugated-iron lined huts on the other hand, in across-fire of appeals, requests, complaints. Nothing escaped him. He wouldpass by, with the most casual glance and nod, women who volubly protestedthemselves dying, and single out the face that bore the dull, scorchedflush of fever or the yellow or livid stamp of rheumatism, or ague, orliver-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 hecarried, slung about his shoulders by its webbing band. 

"Dokter, " screeched a portly Tante in a soiled cotton bedgown and flappingkappje, appearing, copper stewpan in hand, from between the canvastilt-curtains of a living-waggon. "You are come at last; the Lord bethanked for it! I have much, much trouble inside. " She groaned, and laidher fat, unoccupied hand upon the afflicted area, adding: "I feel I shallnot be quite wholesome here. "

"Wat scheelt er aan, Tante?" He spoke the Taal with ease. 

The large Tante snorted:

"What is the matter? Do you ask me what is the matter? As if a dokteroughtn't to tell me that! But the Engelsch are regular devils for askingquestions. Since you must know, I have a mighty wallowing under myapron-band, and therewith a pain. How is it begun? It is begun sincemiddageten yesterday. And little Dierck here has the belly-ache, and isgiddy in the head. "

"Little Dierck will have something worse than the belly-ache, and youalso, if you eat of broth or vegetables cooked in a vessel as unclean asthat, mevrouw. "

"Hoe?" The large flabby face under the expansive kappje became red as theSouth African sunset. She flourished the venerable copper stewpan, its rimliberally garnished with verdigris, ancient deposit of fatty mattersaccumulated at the bottom. "Do you call my good stewpan, that my mothercooked beef and succotash and pottage-herbs in before me, an uncleanvessel--you? And were the pan otherwise than clean as my hand--as myapron!"--a double comparison of the unfortuitous kind--"how should I altermatters in a heathen place like this?" Her large bosom rockedtumultuously. "Dwelling at the bottom of a mud-hole like a frog, O God ofmy fathers! with bullets as big as pumpkins trundling overhead, ready towhip your head off your body if you as much as stick your nose aboveground--the accursed things!"

"They are pumpkins sent by your own countrymen, Tante, so you ought tospeak of them more civilly. And--scour the pot with a double-handful ofclean 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 himconfidently, and stuck it out, looking up with innocent wide eyes in thesquare, powerful face, as Saxham swung round his wallet, continuing, "Here, mevrouw, is a packet of Epsom salts. Take half of it, stirred in acup of warm water, to-morrow morning fasting----"

"Alamachtig!" she protested. "Is that the Engelsch way of doctoring? Toput another belly-grief on the top of the one you have got, what sense isin that?"

"It is the new nail, Tante, that drives out the rusty old one. Give theboy a teaspoonful in half a cup of water, and remember to scour the pans. "

Saxham passed on, stepping neatly with his small, tan-booted, spurred feetbetween the dung and chip fires curling up in blue smoke-spirals, and thesprawling children, seeming as though he did not notice them, yet catchingup one that had a rash, and satisfying himself that the eruption wasinnocent ere he passed on, visiting every waggon-dwelling and cave-refuge, rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emergingfrom three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frownthat boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnawthe vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and theresprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowdedcommunity with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to becrowded to the doors, to remain crowded for many months to come; and thecry, "Room for the sick! more room!" was to go up unceasingly. 

Coming out of a miserable habitation, where lay a woman in rheumaticfever, whose three children had developed measles on the previous day, and, seeing about the door of a neighbouring hovel a particularly noisomeaggregation of garbage and waste, he paused but to give a brief directionto the mild-faced Sister who had assumed charge of the sick. Then hisvoice rang out above all the feminine and childish Babel, strong, resonant, masculine:

"Where are the head-boys of the gangs that I told off to clean up andcarry ash-buckets to the dumping-place?"

Whence, under cover of night, the garbage and waste were carted to thedestructor in connection with the Acetylene Gas Company's plant, soon tobe shattered by one of Meisje's shells. There was no answer. Saxham tookthe worn hunting-crop from under his arm, and with an easy movement shookout the twisted thong. 

"Where are those two boys? Jim Gubo! Rasu!"

A pale young woman peeling potatoes at her door looked up knowingly. "Theywon't carry away a cabbage-leaf unless they're bribed, and they open theirmouths wider every day. It's a tikkie a bucket now. "

The young woman went back to her potatoes. The offenders, visibly quaking, crept from under a waggon, where they had been gambling with dry mealiesfor ill-gotten tikkies. A big Kaffir boy in ragged tan-cords and thecrownless brim of an Oxford straw, with a red-turbaned, bluedungaree-clad, supple Oriental of the coolie class. Jim Gubo, with liberaldisplay of ivory, assured the Baas, in defiance of the Baas's own eyes andthe organ in juxtaposition, that the work had been regularly done. Rasuthe Sweeper, with many oaths and protestations, assured the Presence thatsuch neglect as was apparent was owing to the incapacity of the hubshi andhis myrmidons, Rasu's own share of the labour and that of hisfellow-countryman being scrupulously performed. 

The Presence made short work of Kaffir and Hindu. Shrill feminine clamoursfilled the air as the singing lash performed its work of castigation; andwhile Saxham scored repentance upon the hide of his blacker brother, holding him writhing, shouting, and bellowing at the full stretch of onemuscular arm, as he plied the other he kept a foot on Rasu the Sweeper, soas to have him handy when his turn came. Meanwhile, the Oriental, withtears and lamentable howlings, wound about the doctor's leg, a vocal worm, deprecating tyranny. 

"Your Honour is my father and mother. Let the hand of justice refrain fromexcoriating the person of the unfortunate, wreaking double vengeance uponthe hubshi, who is but fuel for Hell, like all his accursed race, andfull explanation shall be made. "

He was jerked upward by the scruff, as, smarting, blubbering Africaretired to the shadow of the waggons. 

"Well, what have you got to say?"

The bellow of the town batteries, with the clack--clack--clack! of theHotchkiss that had been removed from the armoured train and mounted on theNorth Fort, reduced the tirade to pantomime. 

"This is a bad, a very bad, place for the son of my mother. " The leanbrown right hand swept upwards to the thick canopy of white smoke that theshifting breeze rolled back from the Cemetery Earthworks. "The food ofcoarse grain is diet for camels, and the water stinks very greatly. Moreover, it is better for thy slave to die amongst defilements than tocarry buckets and be chased by devils in iron pots thirsting for the bloodof men. Aie--aie!"

One of the enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelts had loosed off a group of thegaily-painted little shells. With the reduplicated rattle of thedetonation, they passed over the laager, bursting as they went, sendingtheir fan-shaped showers of splinters broadcast. Slatternly women andscared children bolted for their burrows. Rasu the Sweeper divedfrantically between the fore and hind wheels of a waggon, praying to allthe gods of the low-caste to ward off those wicked little bits of rendingmetal.... 

"Anyone hurt?" called Saxham. 

"No one, I think, " called back the strong sweet voice of theMother-Superior, who had come out of a hovel, where she was tending somesick. There was a glint in her deep eyes as she regarded Saxham's thoroughhandiwork that told her approval of castigation well deserved. Then:

"Maharaj! Oh, Maharaj! Succour in calamity! Aid for the dying! Hai, hai, behold how I bleed!"

The red-turbaned martyr rolled in the unclean litter, elevating astick-like brown leg, in the lean, muscular calf of which one of thesmallest of the wicked little splinters had, as Rasu the Sweeper dived forthe waggon, found a home. 

"That has saved you a well-earned hiding, so thank your stars for it. Letthe Kaffir see to it that he insults no more English ladies, or he shallpay for every word with an inch of skin. Now put up your leg. " Saxhamwhipped out the splinter with a little pair of tweezers, deftly cleansedand dressed the wound, bandaged it, and, dismissing Rasu the Sweeper witha caution, was coming across to the Reverend Mother when a chorus of criesand piercing shrieks broke forth:

"Mijn jongen! mijn jongen!"

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 weretrodden down at heel. But with her livid, purple face and protruding, bloodshot eyeballs uplifted to the drifting cloud of greenish lydditevapour that thinned away overhead, she was great and terrible, and thevery incarnation of Maternity Bereft. 

One huge arm gripped the little body to her broad, panting bosom. She hadcalled him, and he had not answered; she had sought and found him, just ashe had slidden off the box-seat, where he had been playing driver of theox-span, lying curled up against the dashboard, the little whip of stickand string he had been at pains to make only yesterday fallen from thelax, childish hand. The fair hair on the left temple was dabbled in blood, that trickled from the tiny three-cornered bluish hole. His eyes wereopen, as if in wonder at the sudden darkness that had fallen at brightmidday; the smile had frozen on the parted, innocent lips.... 

Oh, look at this, Premier and President! Look at this, my Lords andCommons and militant Burghers of Republican States! Grave Ministers whodecide in Cabinet Councils that the prestige of the Government yourepresent is at stake, and that the bedraggled honour of the Country canonly be washed clean in one red river, flowing from the veins of Humanity, look, look here! You who lust for Sovereignty, hiding rapacious Ambitionsand base lust for gold behind the splendid ermined folds of the Imperialpurple. You who resented Suzerainty, coveting to keep in your hands richesthat 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 whitemen should snatch it back from you again; and prating of Liberty andFreedom while the necks of three races of men were bending under the yokeof an oligarchy more imperious, more pitiless, more covetous, besotted, brutal, and ignorant than any other that the spotted records of Historycan show--look here, look here!

Nations that rush to dreadful War, loosing the direful threefold plague ofIron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and brand and desolate the once smilingface of your Mother Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolatingcataclysms of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the bloodstainedshe-devil you misname Glory, look here, in the Name of One who loved andsuffered little children, rating their innocent bodies and spotless soulsat such high value that Little Dierck and his countlessbrother-and-sister-babes that have perished of Iron, Fire, and Disease, asof Terror and Famine, Death's twin henchmen, shall weigh in the balanceagainst Crowned Heads and Lords and Commons and Presidents andRepresentatives and Deputies, until they kick the beam!

Should there be War? Of course there should be War! you say. 

Have you seen War? Perhaps, even as I have. And, having seen it, dare youjustify the shedding, by men who hold the Christian Faith, of thesespilled-out oceans of Christian blood?

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 shallanswer for his deeds before the Throne of God. And until then, look to itthat if you war in any cause, the cause be a just one. 

"My Dierck! My little Dierck! O God! God!----"

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 upliftedarm brandished in the Face of Heaven itself, the Boer mother demanded ofher Maker why this thing had been done?

"He was so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the ox-reim end totaste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie or a plum pilfered--he would takethem as bold as brass before your face if you didn't give. He said thenight-prayer regularly. For the morning, Lord, Thou knowest boys want tobe up and at mischief as soon as they have rubbed the sleep out of theireyes--'tis only natural. And the father a God-fearing man, and me a womanof piety. For when have I backslidden before Thee? If any of mine havehung back when I told them to loop and do a thing, or sneaked off and hidwhen we were inspanned for the kerk-going, did I fail to whack them as amother should? Nooit, nooit! And now--Death has fallen out of the sky uponthe Benjamin of my bosom. Oh, blasted be the eyesight and withered be thehand of the man that sighted and laid and fired the gun!"

She cursed the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner in every functionof his body and every corner of his soul, waking and sleeping, dying anddead, with fluent Scriptural curses. The crowded faces about her wentwhite. Some of the women were crying, others shook their heads:

"Thim that puts the Bad Black Wish on odhers finds sorra knock harrd attheir dure, " said an Irish voice oracularly. "An' who but herself did becallin' down all manner av' misfortune on ivery wan that crassed her?"

"It's a judgment--my opinion, " agreed the thin young woman who had beenpeeling potatoes, and who wore a wisp of draggled crape round a soiledrush hat. "Never a shell busted but you'd a-heered her say she hoped thatone had sent another parcel of verdant rooineks to Hell. And me sittingover against her with crape on for my husband and baby. 'Tis a judgment, that's what I say. "

"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 hascome!"

The thick voice of the Boer woman broke out again:

"Did ever I miss of the Nachtmaal? Alamachtig, no! Virtuous as Sarah haveI lain in the marriage-bed--never a sly look for another, and my husbandwith 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 wertThou, O God of Israel, when they killed my little Dierck?"

The Mother-Superior leaned to her, and threw a strong, tender arm aboutthe fleshy shoulders. She said, speaking in the Taal:

"Hush, hush! Remember that He gave the joy before He sent the sorrow. Andwe must submit ourselves to the Holy Will. "

The Boer woman snorted:

"As if I didn't know that better than a Papist. Look you, have I shed onetear?" She blinked hard bright eyes defiantly. The Mother went on in thatvelvet voice of hers, making the uncouth dialect sound like the cooing ofan Irish dove:

"Better that you had tears, poor mother! Ah! best to weep. Did not ourLord weep over His dearest city, and for His beloved friend? And when Hepitied the Widow of Nain, do you think His eyes were dry? Ah! best toweep. "

She strove to wrench herself away, shouting:

"He raised Lazarus from the dead for Mary his sister, and she had been ashameless wench. And He gave the other back her boy. What has He done forme?"

The sisterly arm held her fast; the great grey eyes looked into hers, wetwith the tears that were denied to her. 

"He has given you an Angel to pray for you in Heaven. "

She snorted rebelliously:

"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 atdriving the span?"

But she let the Mother-Superior take him from her, and dropped her greatarms 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 thedoktor shake his head and lay down the little hand. She saw theMother-Superior coax down the eyelids with tender, skilful fingers, andput a kiss on each, making the Sign of the Cross on the still, childishbreast, and murmuring a little prayer. She would have screamed to avertthe defiling, heathen thing from him, but the memory of the sister-embraceand the sister-look held her dumb. 

It was only when they were stripping him for the last sad toilet, and thecherished top and half a dozen highly-prized marbles rolled out of thepocket in the stumpy little round jacket she had made out of a cast-offgarment of his father's that her bosom heaved, and the fountains of hergrief sprang from the stony soil. She wept copiously, and foundresignation. Soon she was sufficiently herself to scold aprodigally-minded spinster relative who had proposed that Little Dierckshould be coffined in his new black Sabbath suit. 

"But you old maids have no sense, no more than so many cabbages. Littleangels in the hemel can fly about in clean nightgowns--look in thegrandfather's big picture-Bible if you don't believe me. But live boyscan't loop about without breeches. So I'll lay these by for the next one. "

XXXIII

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 thebattle of Big Tree Fort. To-day the Union Jack hangs limp upon theflagstaff that rears its slender height over Nixey's, and the new year issome weeks old. The blue, blue sky of January is without a single puff ofcloud, and the taint from the trenches is less sickening, unmingled withthe poisonous fumes of the lyddite bursting-charges, and the acrid odourof smokeless powder. It is Sunday, when Briton and Boer hold the Truce ofGod, and the church-bells ring to call and not to warn the people, andsweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shrapnel-scarred veld. Theaasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carcasses of horses and cattlelying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Lineof Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge andwild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry hot sandbetween the boulder-stones. 

The Market Square is populous with a chatting, sauntering crowd of people, who enjoy the luxury of using their limbs without being called on todisplays of acrobatic agility in dodging trundling shell. There areIrregulars and B. S. A. P. , Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There are theNative Contingent from the stad, and a company of Zulus, and the Kaffirsand the Cape Boys with their gaspipe rifles that do good service indefault of better, and bring down Oom Paul's Scripturally-flavoureddenunciations upon Englishmen, who arm black and coloured folk to dobattle for their own sable or brown or yellow rights. These have donnedodd garments and quaint bits of finery to mark the holiday, and everywhite man has indulged in the luxury of a comprehensive wash, a shave withhot water, and a change of clothing, if it is obtainable. Also, droopingfeminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from underground burrowsof Troglodytic type, arrayed in fluttering muslins, and crowned withcoquettish hats, which walk about in company with ragged khâki andclay-stained duck and out-at-elbows tweed, and are proud to be seen in itsbrave company. 

Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, lovers andsweethearts, meet after the week whose separating days have seemed likeweeks, and visit the houses whose pierced walls and roofs, that let thewhite-hot sunshine in through many jagged holes, may one day, so theywhisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in peace. Homehas 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 graceof repentance, and many more who denied their God have learned to knowHim, in this village town of battered dwellings, whose streets arelittered with all the grim débris of War. 

Nixey's has not come scathless through the ordeal. The stately brickchimneys of the kitchen and coffee-room have been broken off like carrots, and replaced by tin funnels. Patches of the universal medium, corrugatediron, indicate where one of Meisje's ninety-four-pound projectilesrecently plumped in through the soft brick of the east wall end, anddeparted by the west frontage, leaving two holes that might haveaccommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a window with it. Mrs. Nixey, the children, and the women of the staff inhabit a bombproof in theback-yard. The waiters have developed a grasshopper-like nimbleness, otherwise things go on as usual. 

It being Sunday, a large long man and another as long, but less bulky, areextended in a couple of long bamboo chairs on Nixey's longish frontverandah. The blue, fragrant smoke of two long cigars curls upwards overtheir supine heads, and two long drinks containing a very meagre modicumof inferior whisky are contained in two long tumblers, resting in thebamboo nests cunningly devised for their accommodation in the chair-arms. 

It is hot, but both the men look cool and lazy, and almost too fresh tohave spent the greater part of the night, the younger upon advancedpatrol-duty, and the elder at the Staff bombproof in the Southern Lines, where messages come in and where messages go out, and where reports arereceived and from whence orders are despatched from sunset to the peep ofday, and from peep of day to sunset. 

The wardrobes of both warriors are much impaired by active service, buttheir originally white flannel trousers, if patched, discoloured, andshrunken by amateur lavations, boast the cut of Bond Street; their shirts, if a trifle ragged, are immaculately clean, and the cracks in their canvasshoes are disguised by a lavish expenditure of pipeclay. Beauvayse hasrummaged out and mounted a snowy double collar in honour of the day, witha knitted silk necktie of his Regimental colours, and a kamarband to matchis wound about his narrow, springy waist, and knotted to perfection. Bothmen might be basking on an English river-bank after a stiff pullup-stream, or resting after a bout at tennis on an English lawn, but forthe revolver-lanyards round their strong, bronzed throats, ending in thebutts of Smith and Wesson's revolvers of Service calibre, the bandoliersand belts that lie handy on a table, and the Lee-Metford carbines thatlean in an angle made by the house-wall and the verandah end. Also, butfor the tension of long-sustained watchfulness on both faces, making itplain that, though resting and reposeful, they are neither of themunexpectant of a summons to be the opposite of these things. It is a lookthat, at different degrees of intensity, is stamped on every face inGueldersdorp. And the same uncertainty possesses and pervades evenunsentient things. The Union Jack, hanging listlessly from the summit ofits lofty staff, bathed in the golden, glowing atmosphere of this Januaryday, may, in an instant's space, give place to the red signal of danger;the bugle, now silent, may at any moment blare out its loud and dismalnote of warning; the bells that call with peaceful insistence, "Come tochurch! come to church!" in the twinkling of an eye may be clanging scaredtownsfolk to their burrowed hiding-places. You never know. For GeneralBrounckers, though a God-fearing man, sometimes goes in for Sundaygun-practice, quite unintentionally, as he afterwards explains. Hence, even on the Sabbath, it is as well to be prepared. 

Beauvayse is the first to break the drowsy silence by knocking thelengthened ash off his cigar, and expressing his opinion that the weedmight be a worse one. 

"Considerin' the price the box of fifty was knocked down to me for atKreils' auction yesterday, " states Captain Bingo, "it's simply smokin'gold. Nine pound fifteen-and-six runs me into, how much apiece?" He yawnscavernously, and gives the calculation up. "Always was a duffer atfigures, " he says, and relapses into silence until, in the act of throwingthe nearly smoked-out cigar-butt away, he pulls himself up, and, economically impaling it on his penknife-blade, secures a few more whiffs. 

"Against the Lenten days to come, when there will be no balm left inGilead, " says Beauvayse, cocking a grey-green eye at him in sleepyderision, "and no tobacco in Gueldersdorp. "

"Kreils' are sellin' dashed bad cigarettes at a pound the box of a hundrednow, " 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 thevery devil with the nerves. All jumps and twitches, you know, after a pipeor two. Nervous as a cat, or a woman. And, talking of women, I wonderwhere my wife is?"

He turns a large, pink, disconsolate face upon Beauvayse. Beauvayseresponds with the air of one who has suffered boredom from the toofrequent enumeration of this conjecture. "Not knowing, can't say. " Andthere is another silence. 

"How she got the maggot into her head, " presently resumes Lady Hannah'sspouse, "I can't think. I did suppose her vaultin' ambition to rival DoraCorr--woman who managed to burn her own and a lot of other people'sfingers by meddlin' in South African politics over the Raid business--hadbeen quenched for good that mornin' you took those fifty chaps of theIrregulars out for what she _would_ call their 'baptism of fire. '"

"That's newspaperese, " yawns Beauvayse, his supple brown hands knitted atthe back of his sleek golden head. "Goes with 'the tented field' and_casus belli: cherchez la femme_ and _cui bono_?"

"She's got the lingo at her finger-ends and in her blood, or we wouldn'tbe cherchaying now, " says Bingo dolorously. "I asked her if she wasparticularly keen on gettin' killed.... "

"Shouldn't have done that. Put her on her mettle not to show funk if shefelt it, " mumbles Beauvayse. 

"A man can't always be diplomatic, " grumbles Bingo. "Anyhow, she'd seen abit of a scrap at the outset of affairs, when the B. S. A. Went out with theArmoured Train, and was wild with me for wantin' to deprive her of another'glorious experience. ' ... And next morning she rides out with a Corporaland two troopers, both chaps beastly sensible of their responsibility, andwishin' 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 minutesbefore we heard you fellows poundin' away and bein' pounded at like JimmyO! I was on the roof with the Chief, the sweat runnin' down into thebinoculars, until the veld seemed swarmin' with brown mares and grey linenhabits and drab smasher hats, with my wife's head under 'em, and hoverin'troopers. But I did make out that your party had got intodifficulties----"

"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 intoplay, " Beauvayse interrupts rather huffily, "we'd have been as right asrain. "

"Possibly. If I hadn't been on special duty that day, and as nervous as acat in a thunderstorm, I'd have volunteered to bring No. 2 Troop of A outto the rescue, instead of Heseltine. As it was, I nearly fell off the roofwhen I saw my wife coming, one trooper, as pale with fright as a piece ofsoap, supportin' her on his saddle, another man leading the mare, deadlame and the Corporal's hairy. Plugged in the upper works, the Corporal, poor beggar! but he'd managed to stick on somehow until they got to theHospital. Have you ever had to deal with a woman in hysterics?"

Beauvayse nods sagely. 

"Once or twice. "

"Once is an experience that lasts a man all his lifetime. Phew!" CaptainBingo mops his large pink face. "Never had such a dressing-down in mylife. "

"But what had you to do with the Corporal getting chipped?"

"The Lord only knows!" says Bingo piously. "But, if you'd heard her, allthe rest of the day and half through the night!... "

"I did, " Beauvayse says with a faint grin. "Mine's the next bedroom toyours, you know. "

"'Oh, the blood! Oh, the blood!' ... " Not unsuccessfully does the spouseof Lady Hannah attempt to render the recurrent hiccough and the whoopingscreech of hysteria. "'Damn it, my dear!' I said, tryin' to reason withher, 'what else did you expect the fellow had got in him? Sawdust?' Thatseemed to rouse her like nothing else.... Turned on me like a tigress, bythe living Tinker!--called me everything she could lay her tongue to, andthreatened that she'd apply for a separation if I continued to outrageevery feeling of decency that association with such a thundering brutehadn't uprooted from her nature. "

"Whe--ew!"

Beauvayse's comment is a shrill-toned whistle. 

"Of course, her nerves were knocked to smithereens, and a man can overlooka lot, under the circumstances. She was a mere jelly when the bombardmentbegan----" goes on rueful Captain Bingo. 

"--Rather!" confirms Beauvayse. --"Lived in the hotel cellar for the firstfortnight, only emergin' from among the beer-barrels and wine-casks andliqueur-cases after dark----"

"--To blow me up and forgive me, turn and turn about, until daylight didappear. Luckily, " reflects Bingo, with a rather dreary chuckle, "I hadplenty of night-duty on just then, and so escaped a lot. "

"_That_ gave her her chance to shoot the moon!" hints Beauvayse, inaccents muffled by his long tumbler. 

"By the Living Tinker!" asseverates Captain Bingo, jerked out of hisreclining attitude by vigorous utterance of the expletive, "you could havebowled me over with a scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and foundher gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on thedressing-table pincushion, in regular elopement style; and another for theChief, 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_despised sex_--underlined, 'despised sex'--can be useful to her country. "

"'Can be useful to her country, '" repeats Beauvayse "Question is, in whatway?"

"Damme if I can imagine!" bursts explosively from the deserted husband. "All I know up to date, and all _you_ know, is that before it was quitelight she drove out of our lines in Nixey's spider, his mouse-colouredtrotter pullin', and her German maid sittin' behind, wavin' a white toweltied to the end of a walkin'-stick of mine, and went straight over to theenemy. We hear in the course of things from a Kaffir despatch-runner thatshe's stayin' in a hotel of sorts at Tweipans, where Brounckers has hadhis headquarters since he shifted Chief Laager from Geitfontein. And forany further information we may knock our rotten heads against a brick walland twiddle our thumbs. Never you marry, Toby, my boy!"

A V-shaped vein swells and darkens between the handsome grey-green eyesand 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 offdeliberately before he responds:

"Thanks for the advice. "

"Be warned, " says Captain Bingo sententiously, "by me. Know when you'rewell off, as I didn't. Take the advice of your seniors, as I was toopig-headed a fool to do, and don't put it in the power of any woman tomake you as rottenly wretched as I am at this minute. "

"Why! women _can_ make you rottenly wretched, " admits Beauvayse, with aconfirmatory creak of the bamboo chair. "But, on the other hand, they canmake you awfully happy--what?"

Captain Bingo throws his long legs off their resting-place, and sitssideways, staring rather owlishly at his young friend. He shakes his headin a dismal way several times, and sucks hard at his cigar as he shakesit. 

"For a bit, but does it last? When I came down to hunt you up last June atthe cottage at Cookham----"

"Look here, old man!" The bamboo chair creaks angrily as Beauvayse in histurn sits up and drops his own long legs on either side of it, and drivesthe foot-rest back under the table seat with a vicious punch. "Don'tremind me of the cottage at Cookham, will you? It's one of the things Iwant to forget just now. "

"You were as proud as Punch of it last June. Have you let it?" pursuesBingo, ignoring his junior's request. 

Beauvayse yawns with ostentatious weariness of the subject. 

"No; I haven't let it. "

"Ought to go off like smoke, properly advertised. Somethin' like this: 'Tolet, Roselawn Cottage, Cookham: a charmin' Thames-side bijou residence. Small grounds and large cellar, a boathouse and a houseboat, stables, apigeon-cote, and a private post-box. Duodecimo oak dinin'-room, boudoir byRellis. Ideal nest for a honeymoon, real thing or imitation. Might havebecome the real thing if owner hadn't been whisked off in time to SouthAfrica. ' And a dashed good job for him. For you've had a decentish lot ofnarrow escapes, Toby, my boy!" pursues the oracular Captain Bingo, disregarding his junior's forbidding scowl, "and come out of a goodish fewtight places, and you've got out of 'em, if I may say so, more throughluck than wit; but that little entanglement I'm delicately alludin' to wasone of the closest things on record in the career of a Prodigal Son. "

"Thanks. You're uncommonly complimentary to-day. " Beauvayse pitches awayhis cigar, knocks a feather of ash from his clean silk shirt, and foldshis arms resignedly on his broad flat chest. 

"Upon my word, I didn't mean to be. Does it ever strike you, " goes onCaptain Bingo doggedly, "that if that wire from the Chief asking for youraddress hadn't found me at the Club, and if I hadn't run down and dug youout at the--I won't repeat the name of the place, since you don't seem tolike it--you'd have been married and done for, old chap--any date you liketo name between then and the beginning of the war? And, to put thingsmildly, there would have been the mischief to pay with your people. "

"Yes, " Beauvayse agrees rather dreamily; "there would have been an awfullot of bother with my people. "

"Not that I object to the stage myself, " Captain Bingo says, waving alarge, tolerant hand; "and it seems getting to be rather the fashion torecruit the female ranks of the Peerage from Musical Comedy, and aprettier and cleverer little woman than Lessie ... What are you stoppin'your ears for?"

"I'm not, " says a muffled, surly voice. "It's a--twinge of toothache. "

"All I've got to say is, " declares Captain Bingo, "that marriage withone's equal in point of breedin' is sometimes a blank draw, but marriagewith one's inferior is a howling error. And if you had done as I'd stakemy best hat you would have done, supposin' you'd been left to loll in thelap of the lovely Lessie----"

Beauvayse jumps up in a rage. 

"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. "

"Oh, very well! But you haven't the ghost of a right to lay claim tonerves, " Captain Bingo obstinately asseverates. "Now look at me. "

"I'm hanged if I want to!" declares Beauvayse. "You're not a cheeringobject. " He drops back into the bamboo chair again. 

"Flyblown, do I look?" inquires Bingo, with dispassionate interest. 

"Well, yes, decidedly, " Beauvayse agrees, without removing his eyes fromthe whitewashed verandah-pillar at which they blankly stare. 

"Streaky yellow in the whites of the eyes, and pouchy under 'em?" CaptainBingo demands of his young friend with unmistakable relish. "'Yes' again?And I grouse and maunder? Of course I do, my dear chap! How can I helpit? A married man who, for all he knows, may be a widower----"

"I wish to God I knew I was one!"

"My good fellow?"

"You heard what I said, " Beauvayse flings over his shoulder. 

Captain Bingo, his hands upon his straddling knees, regards his juniorwith circular eyes staring out of a large, kind, rather foolish face ofutter consternation. 

"That you wished to God you were a widower?"

"Well, I mean it. "

XXXIV

"Good Lord!"

There is a gap of silence only broken when Captain Bingo says heavily:

"Then you did marry the Lavigne after all? When was it----"

"We'd pulled off the marriage at the local Registrar's a fortnight beforeyou came down with--_his_ wire. "

"By the Living Tinker, then it _was_ a genuine honeymoon after all!" Afaint grin appears on Captain Wrynche's large perturbed face. 

"Don't be epigrammatic, Wrynche. " The dull weariness in the young voicegives place to quick affront. "And keep the secret. Don't give me away. "

"Did I ever give you, or any other man who ever trusted me, away? Tell methat. "

Captain Bingo gets up and covers the distance between the deck-chairs witha single stride, and puts a big kind hand on the averted shoulder. 

"Of course you never did. " The boy reaches up and takes the hand, andsqueezes it with the shyness of the Englishman who responds to somedisplay of solicitude or affection on the part of a comrade. "Don't mindmy rotting like this. There are times when one must let off steam orexplode. "

"I thought--and so did a few others, the Chief among 'em--that SouthAfrica had saved you by the skin of your teeth, " says Captain Bingo, smoking vigorously, and driving his hands very deep into his pockets. "Confoundedly odd how taken in we were! I could have sworn, my part, thatyou'd just stopped short at----"

"At making a blithering idiot of myself, " interpolates Beauvayse. "Ifyou'll go back and sit decently in your chair, instead of standing behindme rattlin' keys and coins in your pocket, and dropping hot cigar-ash onmy head, I'll tell you how it happened. Nobody listening?"

"Not a soul, " says Captain Bingo, padding back after a noiseless prowl tothe coffee-room window. 

Beauvayse grips either arm of the chair he sits in so fiercely that theycrack again. 

"I--I was desperately hard hit over Lessie a year ago----"

"So were a lot of other young idiots. "

"That's a pleasant reflection. They were. "

"Of course, I"--Bingo's large face becomes very red--"I inferred nothingin any way against Miss Lavigne's chara---- Dash it, I beg your pardon! Iought to call her Lady Beauvayse. "

"Don't trouble. I think I'd rather you didn't. It would rub things inrather too much, " says Beauvayse, paling as the other has reddened. 

"Wouldn't it be as well, " hints Captain Bingo, "to get used to it?"

"No, " Beauvayse throws over his shoulder. "And don't assume a delicacy inspeaking of the--the lady, because it's unnecessary. As I've said, I wasvery much in love. She had--kept house with a man I knew, before we cametogether, and there may have been other affairs--for all I can tell, atleast--I should say most probably. " Something in Captain Bingo's faceseems to say "uncommonly probably, " though he utters no word. "But she wasawfully pretty, and I lost my head. " He shuts his eyes and leans back, andthe lines of his young face are strained and wan. "I--I lost my head. "

"It's--it's natural enough, " volunteers Captain Bingo. 

There is another short interval of silence in which the two men on Nixey'sverandah see the same vision--lime-lights of varying shades and coloursthrown from different angles across a darkened garden-scene whereimpossible tropical flowers expand giant petals, and a spangled waterfalltumbles over the edge of a blue precipice in sparkling foam. The nucleusof a cobweb of quivering rays, crossing and intersecting, is a dazzlinghuman butterfly, circling, spinning, waving white arms like quiveringantennæ, flashing back the coloured lights from the diamonds that are inher hair and on her bosom, are clasped about her rounded waist and wrists, gleam like fireflies from the folds of her diaphanous skirts, and sparkleon her fingers. A provoking, beguiling Impertinence with great stage eyesencircled by blue rims, a small mouth painted ruby-red, a complexion oftheatrical lilies and roses, and tiny, twinkling feet that beat out ameasure to which Beauvayse's pulses have throbbed madly and now throb nomore. 

"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 andbrilliants, and ended up with----"

"With an electric motor-brougham and a flat in Mayfair. Oh Lord, whatthunderin' donkeys we fellows are!" groans Captain Bingo, rubbing hishead, which has hair of a gingery hue, close-cropped until the scalpblushes pinkly through it, and rubbing nothing in the way of consolationinto the brain inside it. 

"I bought the cottage at Cookham as a surprise for her birthday, " goes onthe boy. "She's a year or two older than me----"

"And the rest, " blurts out Captain Bingo. But he drowns the end of thesentence in a giant sneeze. "Must have caught cold last night withoutknowin' it. Dashed treacherous climate this, " he murmurs behind the refugeof 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 foryou, --what? And in thingumbob retirement by the something-or-other streamyou hit on the notion of splicing the lovely Lessie Lavigne. Poetry, bythe Living Tinker!"

"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 hisyoung, handsome face; "because if you do, leave off playing the funnyclown and listen. "

"Never felt less inclined to be funny in my life. 'Pon my word, I assureyou!" asseverates Bingo. "You're simply a bundle of irritable nerves, mydear chap, and that's the truth. "

"You wouldn't wonder if you knew ... Oh, damn it, Wrynche!"--the youngvoice breaks in a miserable sob--"I'm so thundering miserable. And allbecause there--there was a kid coming, and I did the straight thing by itsmother. "

"Whew!" Captain Bingham Wrynche gives vent to a long, piercing, dismalwhistle, which so upsets a gaunt mongrel prowling vainly for garbage inthe 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 thething having been pulled off so quietly in these days, when confoundednewspapers won't let you call your soul your own. 

"That's because I signed my name 'John Basil Edward Tobart, '" explainsBeauvayse; "and because the Registrar--a benevolent old cock in a largewhite waistcoat, like somebody's father in a farcical comedy--wasn'tsufficiently up in the Peerage to be impressed. "

"Weren't there witnesses of sorts?" hints Bingo. 

"Of sorts. The housekeeper at the cottage and my man Saunders--thediscreet Saunders who's with me here. And a fortnight later came theappointment, " goes on the boy. "And--I was gladder than I cared to know atgetting away. She--Lessie--meant to play her part in the 'Chiffon Girl' upto the end of the Summer Season, and then rest until ... " He does notfinish the sentence. 

"I suppose she's fond of you--what?" hazards Captain Bingo. 

"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 ofmoney of her own. And when I went to stay with my people for a nightbefore sailing, I'd have broken the--the truth to my mother then, onlysomething 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 asnowball. But on the voyage out"--a change comes into the weary, levelvoice in which Beauvayse has told his story--"I forgot to grouse, and bythe time we'd lifted the Southern Cross I wasn't so much regretting whatI'd done as wondering whether I should ever shoot myself because I'd doneit? Up in Rhodesia I forgot. The wonderful champagne air, and the rousinghard work, the keen excitement and the tingling expectation of things thatwere going to happen by-and-by, that have been happening about as sinceOctober, were like pleasant drugs that keep you from thinking. I onlyremembered now and then, when I saw Lessie's photograph hanging on thewall of my quarters, and the portrait she had set in the back of mysovereign-case, that she and me were husband and wife. " He gives amirthless laugh. "It makes so little impression on a fellow's mindsomehow, to mooch into a Registrar's office with a woman and answer aquestion or two put by a fat, middle-aged duffer who's smiling himselfinto creases, and give your name and say, 'No, there's no impediment, ' andput on the ring and pay a fee--I believe it was seven-and-six--and take ablotchy certificate and walk out--married. "

"It never does take long, by Gad!" agrees Captain Bingo with fervour, "todo any of the things that can't be undone again. "

"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 undoit, ever since I first set eyes on Lynette Mildare!"

Captain Bingo gives vent to another of his loud, dismal whistles. Then hegets out of his chair, large, clumsy, irate, and begins:

"I might have known it, with a chap like you. Another woman's at thebottom of all your bellowing. You're not a bit sick at having brought anoutsider--a rank outsider, by Gad!--into the family stud; you're not a rapashamed at havin' disappointed the old man's hopes of you, for you know aswell as I do that when you'd done sowin' your wild oats and had yourfling, you'd have come in when he rang the bell and married Lady MaryMenzies. You're not a damned scrap sorry at having broken your mother'sheart, though you know in the bottom of your soul that she scented thismarriage in the wind, and had an interview with the Chief, and went downon her knees to him--her knees, by the Living Tinker!--to give you thechance of breakin' off an undesirable connection!"

Beauvayse is out of his chair now. "Is that true--about my mother?" hedemands, blazing. 

"I'm not in the habit of lyin', Lord Beauvayse!" states Captain Bingohuffily. 

"Don't fly off like a lunatic, Bingo, old man. How did youfind--that--out?"

"Your cousin Townham told me. "

"Damn my cousin Townham for a dried-up, wiggy, pratin' littlescandalmonger!"

Captain Bingo retorts irately:

"Damn him if you please; he's no friend of mine. As yours, what I ask youis, between man and man, how far have you gone in this fresh affair?"

Beauvayse drives his hands deep into the pockets of his patched flannels, and says, adjusting a footstool with his toe over a crack in theboard-flooring, as though the operation were a delicate one upon whichmuch depended:

"I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that I care for heras I never cared yet, and never shall care, for anyone else. "

The faint grin dawns again on Captain Wrynche's large, kindly, worriedface. 

"How many times have you met?"

"Only four or five times in all, " says Beauvayse. "I'd set eyes on hertwice before I was introduced. I couldn't rest for thinking about her. Shedrew me and drew me.... And when we did meet, there was no strangenessbetween us, even from the first minute. She just seemed waiting for what Ihad to own up. And when I spoke, I--I seemed to be only saying what I wasmeant to say.... From the beginning of the world! And you'd understandbetter if you'd seen her near----"

"I have seen her in the distance, walking with the Mother-Superior of theConvent. A tall, slight girl. Looks like a lady, " says Bingo, "and hasjolly hair. "

"It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn sunshine or a squirrel's back, "raves the boy, "and she's beautiful, Wrynche. My God! so beautiful thatyour heart stops beating when you look into her face, and nearly jumps outof your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. And I swearthere's no other woman for me in life or death!"

"I shouldn't be in such a cast-iron hurry to swear if I were you, " CaptainBingo replies judicially. "And--I've heard you say the same about theothers----"

"It was never true before. And she's a lady, " pleads Beauvayse hotly. "Alady in manners, and education, and everything. The sort of girl onerespects; the sort of girl one can talk to about one's mother andsisters----"

"You'd talk about your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman, " Captain Bingoblurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bredschoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you'vegot a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins at home inEngland. "

The footstool, impelled by a scientific lift of Beauvayse's toe, flies tothe 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!"

"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 shouldhave thought that this siege life would have put iron into a man's bloodinstead of--of Crème de Menthe. Are you takin' those dashed morphiatabloids of Taggart's for bad-water collywobbles again? Yes? I thought asmuch. Chuck 'em to the aasvogels; stick to your work--you can't complainof 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 youforget 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!"

"I tell you, " Beauvayse cries, white-hot with passion, and raising hisvoice incautiously, "that I mean to marry her. I tell you again that Iwill div----"

"Do you want the man in the street and every soul in the hotel to knowyour private affairs?" demands Bingo. "If so, go on shoutin'. As to yourbein' a widower, the chances are on the other side.... Gueldersdorp ain'texactly 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 youreason? And if she did, do you think a girl brought up in a CatholicConvent would marry you, even if you called to ask her with a copy of thedecree absolute pasted on your chest? Hang it, man, your mother's son youought to know better! And--oh come, I say!"

For Beauvayse sits down astride an iron chair, and lays his shirt-sleevedarms on the back-rail, and his golden, crisply-waved head upon them. 

"I--I love her so, Wrynche. And to stand by and see another man cut in andwin what I've lost by my own rotten folly hurts so--so damnably. " Hismouth is twisted with pain. 

"Is there another chap who wants to cut in?" Bingo demands. 

"You know one gets a bit clairvoyant when one is mad about a woman, " saysBeauvayse, lifting his shamed wet eyes and haggard young face from thepillow of his folded arms. "Well, I'm dead certain that there is anotherman who--who is as badly hit as me. "

"Who is the other man?"

"Saxham!"

"The Doctor! Shouldn't have supposed a fellow of that type would besusceptible now, " says Bingo. "Gives an uncompromisin' kind of impression, with his chin like the bows of an Armoured Destroyer, and his eyebrowslike another chap's moustaches. "

"And eyes like a pair of his own lancets underneath 'em. But he's afrightfully clever beast, " says Beauvayse. "And what he wants in looks hemakes up in brains. And--and if he knew there was a scratch against me, hemight force the running and win hands down. So hang on to my secret byyour eyelids, old fellow, and don't give me reason to be sorry I told----"

"You have my word, haven't you? And, talking about scratch entries, " saysBingo, inspired by a sudden rush of recollection, "I ain't so sure thatthe Doctor--though, mind you, this is between ourselves--is the sort ofwooer a parent of strict notions would be likely to encourage. Do youhappen to have come across a goggle-eyed, potty little AldermanBrooker?--a Town Guardsman who runs a general store in the MarketPlace--that's his place of business with the boarding up, and the endbutted 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 aboutSaxham. "

"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?"

"Nothing special nice. Said Saxham had lost his London connection throughgetting involved in a mess with a woman, " says the big Dragoon. 

"Don't we all get into messes of that kind? What more?" demands Beauvayse. 

"Said the Doctor had kicked over the traces pretty badly here. Pitched mea tale of his--Brooker's--having often acted as the Mayor's Deputy on thePolice Court Bench, Brooker being an Alderman, and swore that he'd hadSaxham up before him a dozen times at least in the last three years, alongwith the Drunks and Disorderlies. "

"It sounds like a hanged lie!"

"If I didn't say as much to Brooker, " responds Captain Bingo, "I shut himup like a box by referrin' politely to glass houses, knowin' Brooker hadbeen squiffy himself one night on guard, and by remindin' him that men whotalk scandal of their superior officers under circumstances like thepresent are liable to be Court-Martialled and given beans. And as theChief, and Saxham with him, dropped on Brooker in the act of smugglinglush into the trenches the other day, I fancy Brooker's teeth are fairlydrawn. Though he swore to me that there isn't a saloon-keeper or asaloon-loafer in the town that doesn't know Saxham by the nickname of theDop Doctor. "

"The man don't exist who objects to hear of the disqualifications, mentaland physical, of a fellow who he's thought likely to enter the lists withhim in the--in the dispute for a woman's favour, " says Beauvayse, with apleasant air of candour. "And though the story sounds like a lie, as I'vesaid, there's a possibility of its being the other thing. I'm sorry forSaxham--that goes without sayin'--though I don't like his overbearin'scientific side and his sledge-hammer manner. But that a man with a recordof that kind should set his heart upon a girl like Lynette Mildare ishorrible, intolerable, Wrynche; and while, for the man's own sake, Ishould respect his beastly secret, for _her_ sake and in _her_ interests, and if I consider that he's putting himself forward at the risk of my--myprospects and my hopes, I shall make use of what I know. "

"You don't mean you'd split on the man!" splutters Bingo; "because, if youdo----"

"All's fair in Love and War, " says Beauvayse, with a ring of defiance inhis pleasant, boyish voice, and a gleam of triumph in his beautiful sleepyeyes. "And this is Love in War. You've put a trump card in my hand againstSaxham, whether you meant to or not, and when the time comes, I shall playit. "

He gets up and lounges away. And Captain Bingo, emitting another wailingwhistle as he slews round to stare after the tall, retreating figure withthe crisp, golden head, is sure of nothing so certainly as that Beauvaysewill play that trump card. He is repentant for having broached theDoctor's secret as he climbs up by the narrow iron stair that leads outupon the roof of Nixey's Hotel, to relieve his commanding officer at thebinoculars. 

XXXV

You are invited, the very Sunday upon which the previously-recordedconversation 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. Blinders, a long-bodied, short-legged young Dutch apothecary of theFree State, with short-sighted eyes behind hugely magnifying spectacles, and many fiery pimples bursting through the earthy crust of him, possiblytestifying to the presence of volcanic fires beneath, had acted in theclerkly capacity to the Volksraad at Groenfontein. When Government did notsit at the Raad Zaal, Blinders, as calmly as any ordinary being mighthave done, dispensed jalap, castor-oil, and pill-stick over the counter ofhis store. These are the three heroic besoms employed by enlightened andconscientious Boer housewives for sweeping out the interiors of theirfamilies. 

Pill-stick is rhubarb-pill in the concrete. The thrifty mother buys a footor so, and pinches off a bolus of the required magnitude thrice in theyear. No dosing is allowed in between; the members of the family get itwhen the proper time comes round. To everyone his or her share, notforgetting the baby. 

When P. Blinders came away, he left his grandfather to keep store, previously explaining to the aged man the difference between hydrocyanicacid and almond-essence for cake-flavouring, powders of corrosivesublimate and Gregory's. By a subtle transition the apothecary-clerk thenbecame the epistolary right-hand of General Brounckers, whose wife, son, and grandson, with P. Blinders, made up his personal staff. And round theCommandant's living-waggon, where they harboured, Chaos reigned andConfusion prevailed, and disputes in many tongues--English severelyexcepted--made Babel. And, side by side with the domestic, decent virtuesweltered all the vices rampant in the Cities of The Plain. 

It goes without saying that the fresh site of Head Laager had beencunningly 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 vertebraof some huge reptile of the Diluvian Period, protected camp and villagefrom British shell-practice. 

Signs of this were not lacking. Waggons with shattered timbers andfantastically twisted irons, broken carts, and guns dismounted from theircarriages, were to be seen, near the dismembered or disembowelled bodiesof the beasts that had drawn them. Dead horse or mule or bullock, decomposing in the sun, seemed to have nothing of offence for Republicannoses. The yellow smear of lyddite was everywhere, and, looking over therock-rampart upon the works below, you saw it like a blight, or yolk ofegg spilt upon a war-map. 

Family parties bivouacked in those bottle-shaped trenches where eachfighting unit had his separate box of provisions sunk in the earth besidehim, and his cooking-fire of chips and dry dung, and ate and slept andsmoked and shot as he thought good. And in despite of such fires, theunrestricted space and pure hill-air notwithstanding, the noisome ditcheswherein the cribbed, cabined, and confined defenders of Gueldersdorpalternately grilled and soaked, were alleys of musk-roses, marvels ofsanitary purity compared with the works of the besiegers, and theabominable camps, where, in the absence of a nocturnally activeQuartermaster-Sergeant, with his band of pioneers, stench took you by thethroat and nose, while filth absorbed you over the ankles. 

A whiff of peculiarly overpowering potency, reaching you, made you turnaway, and then the immense disorder of the camp seized and held your eyes. 

Arms, saddles, karosses, blankets, clothing, panniers of provisions andboxes of ammunition, were piled about in mountainous heaps. Of militaryorganisation, discipline, authority, law, as these are understood bycivilised nations, there was nothing whatever. Men in well-worn velveteensand felt billycocks, hobnobbed with men in the gaudiest uniforms everevolved by the theatrical costumier. Green velvet and gold lace, topped bycocked hats that had despoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainlyridiculous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments belongun'to 'um at all at all! and had come over from the Distressful Country tomake a bould bid for glory, with the experience of warfare acquired whilelurking behind hedges with shot-guns, in waiting for persons in disfavourwith the Land League. 

Patriarchs of eighty years and callow schoolboys of sixteen fought side byside with the fine flower and the lusty prime of Boer manhood, and manyhad their wives and children with them under the Transvaal colours, andnot a few had brought their mothers. When an officer had any order to givehis men, he prefaced it with the Boer equivalent for "Hi!" When the menhad heard as much as they considered necessary, they would say, "Come on;let's be going, " and slouch away. 

P. Blinders, being a Dutchman of the Free State, minded smells no morethan a Transvaal Boer. Yet it sometimes occurred to him as odd that theduties of a Secretary should embrace the peeling of potatoes and theperformance of other duties of the domestic kind. 

He was squatting in the shadow of the Commandant's living-waggon, polishing off the last of a panful, when Van Busch came along. Englishbeing an unpopular language, the big Johannesburger and the little FreeStater exchanged greetings in the Taal. 

"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 thatmarried the German drummer, and is stopping at Kink's Hotel. "

You can see Van Busch taking off his broad-brimmed hat, and knocking thesweat from the leather lining-band. He was dressed in a black broadclothtailed-coat, flannel shirt, and cord breeches, wore heavy veldschoens, andcarried a Mauser rifle, as did everybody else, and had a longhunting-knife as well as a heavy six-shooter in the wide canvaspouch-belt, and a bandolier heavy with cartridges. Thus panoplied, heaccurately resembled ten thousand other men. 

But his dark, overfed, full-blooded, whiskered face was not that of anagriculturist, and the strange light eyes, rust-coloured like those of anadder, and, like the ophidian's, set flush with the oddly-flattened edgesof their orbits, were at variance with the high, rounded, benevolenttemples crowned with a thinning brake of curly hair. The rapacious mouth, with the thick scarlet lips, belonged to the eyes. 

He had put on his hat again, but he swept it off in a flourishing bow, asMevrouw Brounckers, in high-kilted wincey, a man's hat of coarse strawperched on her weather-beaten, sandy-grey head, came stumping down thewaggon-ladder, calling for her potatoes. What was that lazy bedelaar of aSecretary about, and it nearly eleven of the clock? Didn't he know thather Commandant liked his meals on time?

Mevrouw received the politeness less graciously than the potatoes. Thatman 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 herselfin house barn alone with a klant like that. But her Commandant had usesfor him, the twinkling-eyed, soft-mannered, big rogue. She watched himwalking off with P. Blinders, for whom she entertained a distaste groundedon the knowledge that no good ever came of these double-tongued FreeStaters. 

And this one could _write_ in the accursed shibboleth of England as wellas in the Taal. She shook her head as the potatoes rattled into the bigpot hanging over the fire. And he walked out on Sundays with the youngGerman woman who was maid to the refugee-widow staying at Kink's Hotel, and who never showed her nose inside the Gerevormed Kerk, the godlessthing! or went out except by bat-light. Of that one the Mevrouw Brounckershad her opinion also. And time would show who was right. 

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 thehills, conversed, in Sabbath security from English artillery, andreassuring remoteness from Dutch eavesdroppers. And their theme was theGerman drummer's refugee-widow who never went to kerk. 

Van Busch, who found it helpful in his business never to forget faces, hadmet her on the rail, months back, travelling up first-class from CapeTown. Early in October it was, while the road was still open. And men whokept their eyes skinned went backwards and forwards and round and about, getting the hang of things, and laying up accurate mental notes, becausethe other kind were even more risky to carry than the nuggets and raw dustthat are hidden in the padded linings of the gold-smugglers' heavygarments. 

The lady, small, dark, stylishly-tailored, and with bright black, bird-like eyes, was not a German drummer's widow when Van Busch and shefirst met. She had chatted in her native English with her square, bulky, sleek-looking fellow-passenger, well-dressed in grey linen drillfrock-coat and trousers, with blazing diamonds studding the bosom of hiswell-starched shirt and linking his cuffs. 

The wide felt hat he politely removed as he came into the carriagerevealed to Lady Hannah a tall, expansive, well-developed forehead. Belowthe line of the hat-rim he was burned coffee-brown, like many anotherBritish Colonial. The observant eye of "Gold Pen" took in the man'svulgarly handsome features and curiously light eyes, and twinkled at theflaring jewellery and the whiskers of obsolete Dundreary pattern thatstood 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 adisagreeable impression. One would have been grateful for a beard that hidthat mouth. 

Lady Hannah found it curiously disquieting until her fellow-travellerbegan to talk, in a thick, lisping voice, with curiously candid and simpleintonations. He presented himself, and she accepted him at his ownvaluation, as a British Johannesburger, and influential member of theChamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the tall chimneys andwhite dumping-heaps of the Rand. 

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 fieldofficer who had been ordered down from the north to take over theGueldersdorp command. Then he found she was only the grey mare of anofficer of the Staff.... 

She plied Van Busch in his triple character of politician, patriot, andmine-owner with questions. Thought she was juicing a lot of information, whereas Van Busch was the one who learned things. Kind of playing at beingnewspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London newspaper articlesall 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 thediplomatic go-betweening line; wanted to dabble in War Correspondence, andso on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest egg in the little lady'snest of ambitions was the desire to do a flutter on the Secret Servicelay. 

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. 

"What Woman has done Woman may do!" was the burden of her ceaseless song. And when she left the train at Gueldersdorp, "_Au revoir_" said she with aflash of her bright black eyes, nodding to the big Colonial, who was soexcessively civil about handing out her dressing-case and travelling-bag. "Many thanks, and don't give me away if you should happen to meet me in adifferent skin one of these fine days, Mr. Van Busch. "

"Sure, no; not I, " said the burly Johannesburger, with an effusion of whatlooked like genuine admiration. "By thunder! when it comes to playing therisky game there's no daring to beat a woman's. Give me a petticoat, sayI, for a partner every time. "

"Bravo!" Her eyes snapped approvingly. She waved a little hand towards alarge pink officer of the British Imperial Staff, who was looking into allthe first-class compartments in search of a wife who had been vainlyentreated to remain at Cape Town. "There's my husband, who entertains theprecisely opposite opinion. But he hasn't your experience--only a theoryworn thin by generations of ancestors, all chivalrous Conservativenoodles, who kept their females in figurative cotton-wool. Do let meintroduce you. I'd simply love to have him hear you talk. "

Van Busch did not pant to make the acquaintance of the MilitaryAuthorities. He thanked the impulsive Lady Hannah, but made haste to climbback into the train. The big pink officer recognised the object of hissearch, and strode down the platform bellowing a welcome. As Lady Hannahwaved in reply, the Johannesburger made a long arm from the window, andthrust a pencil-scrawled card into the tiny gloved hand. 

"S's'h! Shove that away somewhere safe, " said Van Busch, in a thrillinglymysterious whisper; "and, remember, any time you want to learn the lay ofthe land and follow up the spoor of movements on the quiet, that VanBusch, of the British South African Secret War-Intelligence-Bureau, is theman to put you on. A line to that address, care of W. Bough, will alwaysget me. And with nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money forpalm-oil.... " His greedy mouth made a grinning red gash in the smug brownface with the fine whiskers of blackish-brown. His cold eyes scintillatedand twinkled unspeakable things at the little lady as the train carriedhim away. 

Assuredly Van Busch understood women no less thoroughly than his nearrelative, Bough. He knew that you could bait for and catch the sex withthings that were not tangible. Men wanted to be made sure of money ormoney's worth. And for the co-operation of P. Blinders in the adroitlittle game by which the German drummer's refugee-widow who stayed atKink's Hotel, and only went out after dark, had been relieved of ahandsome sum, Van Busch had had to part with nearly one-third of the swag. No wonder he felt and talked like a robbed man. 

"All very well to talk, " said P. Blinders, scratching his newest pimple, and looking with exaggerated moonish simplicity at nobody in particularthrough his large round magnifying spectacles. "But what could you havedone without me, once the little Englishwoman smelled the porcupine in thebarrel? When she drove out to your friend Bough's plaats at Haarsgrond inthat spider, pretending she was your sister that had married a Duitscherdrummer in Gueldersdorp, and buried him, and was afraid to be shut up inthe stad with all those lustful rooineks, you thought it would be enoughto tell her Staats Police or Transvaal burghers were after her to make hercreep into a mousehole and pay you to keep her hid. And it did worknicely--for a while. Then the Englishwoman got angry--oh, very angry!--andtold you things that were not nice. Either you should put her in the wayof getting the information she wanted, or good-bye to her dear brother, Hendryk Van Busch, and his friend Bough. "

"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 countrywasn't safe for a couple of women to go looping about, " he added. "And oneof them with two hundred pounds in Bank of England notes stitched into thefront of her stays.... "

"_Five_ hundred pounds, " said the Secretary, with pleasantly twinklingspectacles. Van Busch's stare was admirable in its incredulity. 

"Sure, no, brother; not so much as that?"

"Trudi told me, " smirked P. Blinders. 

"You and her seem to be great and thick together, " said Van Busch, with aflattering leer. The little ex-apothecary placed his hand upon his chest, and said, with a gleam of tenderness lighting up his spectacles:

"I have sighed, and she has smiled. " He went on, "If your friend Bough hadbeen brave enough to try and take away that wad of banknotes from thelittle Englishwoman, he would have met trouble. For in a pocket of hergown 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, andwaved them in the direction of Kink's Hotel. "She is a lovely maiden!" Heblew his nose without the assistance of a pocket-handkerchief, andcontinued:

"Of course, Bough might have put some stuff in the Englishwoman's coffeethat would have made her sleep while he stole that money, or he might evenhave killed her quietly, and buried her on the farm. But a man who doesthat is not so clever and so wise as the man who makes a plan that getsthe 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 havegenuine information to sell the Englishwoman, and when she has bought it, paying well for it, and written it all down in her despatches to theCommandant at Gueldersdorp, she hands the letters back to you to besmuggled through the lines, and pays through the nose for that also. Andwho shall say she is cheated? For the letters do get through"--the pimplycountenance of P. Blinders was quite immobile, but the eyes behind thegreat spectacles twirled and twinkled with infinite meaning--"a week or soafter date, perhaps, but what is that? Nothing--nothing at all. "

"Nothing, " agreed Van Busch. The two men smiled pleasantly in each other'sfaces for a minute more. Then said Van Busch, with a loud sigh:

"But what I have to tell you now is something. The Englishwoman has got nomore money. Ask Trudi, if you think I lie. And, of course, the plan was agood plan, and you were a smart fellow to hit on it; but now the twohundred pounds is gone----"

"Three hundred remain to get. " P. Blinders briskly held up five stumpy redfingers and tucked down the thumb and little finger, leaving a trio ofmute witnesses to the correctness of his arithmetic. 

"No more remains to get. The cow has run dry. "

The brow of P. Blinders grew scarlet as a stormy sunrise. 

"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. Therehas been dishonesty somewhere. There have been tricks, unbefitting thedealings of scrupulous Christian men. Foei, foei!"

Van Busch stuck his thumbs into his belt and smiled amiably down into theindignant eyes behind the spectacles. Then he said, with his most candidlook and simplest lisp:

"No tricks, brother; all fair and above-board. Ask the Commandant whetherVan Busch is square or not? He knows that the hundred and fifty was paidyou honestly on his account, and that I kept but fifty for myself. Andyou'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 SchenkEybel this morning, and he says the answer to the screeve you wrote to theOfficer in Command at Gueldersdorp--to patch up an exchange of theEnglishwoman for that slim kerel of a Boer's son they got their claws onat the beginning of the siege--has come in under the white flag thismorning. Schenk Eybel has a little plan he can't put through without WaltSlabberts, he says. Loop, brother. You'll find the old man on his greypony near the Field Hospital. "

The eyes behind the spectacles whirled in terror. The ex-apothecaryfaltered:

"What--what is this you say? The money paid me on the Commandant'saccount--when it was to be a secret between us.... Foei, foei! This isunfair. And suppose I have spent it, how shall I replace it? Do you wishto ruin an honest man?"

Van Busch grinned, and P. Blinders gave up hopelessly. At least, it seemedso, for he turned sharp round, and trotted off with sorrowfully-droopingblack coat-tails, in search of the meek grey pony and the terrible oldman. 

But the front view of the Secretary displayed a countenance whose pimplesradiated satisfaction, and spectacles that were alight with joy. Much--very much--would P. Blinders have liked to have kept that hundredand fifty, but his fear had proved greater than his desire. 

He had paid every tikkie of the money faithfully to Brounckers, and hishands were metaphorically clean, and his neck comfortably safe. He was thepoorer by a hundred and fifty pounds, but the richer in wisdom andexperience; and--he chuckled at the thought of this--in the joy of knowinghimself, in postscripts appended to those despatches of theEnglishwoman's, to have poked sly sarcasm at the British Lion. Whose spinytail P. Blinders imagined to be lashing, even then, at the prick of thegoad. 

For another thing, very pleasant to think of, he had successfully pittedthe cunning behind his giant spectacles against the superior villainy ofMr. Van Busch of Johannesburg. 

XXXVI

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 BoerMijnheer Hendryk Van Busch--"_a sister indeed!_" snorted Mevrouw Kink; andnever went to the kerk-praying, or put her nose out of doors at all beforedark, and had a maid who did her hair, and wore her own in waves, theimpudent wench! and whose portmanteau, and bag, and boots, and shoes, andskirt-bands, had fashionable London tradesmen's labels inside them, wasthe only person in the village of Tweipans and for a mile round it--goodNederlands measure--who did not know that she was an Englishprisoner-of-war. 

Her foray in quest of Secret Information had had its hardships, as itsalarms and excursions, but she plumed herself on having accomplishedsomething of what she had set out to do. Van Busch, not counting a week ofdays when she had found reason to suspect his entire good faith, hadbehaved like a staunch Johannesburger of British blood and Imperialsympathies. But his valuable services had been rendered for so much morethan nothing that Lady Hannah found herself in the condition her Bingo waswont to describe as "stony. " She had sent for Van Busch to tell him thatthe position was untenable. She would evacuate it, when he could manageto get hold of Nixey's mouse-coloured trotter and the spider, left in thecare of Van Busch's good friend Bough, at Haargrond Plaats. 

A dash for freedom then. In imagination she could hear the mouse-colouredtrotter's hoofs rattling over the stony ground, and the crack, crack ofthe sentries' Mausers, followed by a hail of bullets from the trenches.... She could see the headlines of the latest newspaper sensation, flaming onthe greenish gloom of the room with the closed shutters and drawn-downblinds:

"STIRRING STORY FROM THE SEAT OF HOSTILITIES: LADY WAR-CORRESPONDENT RUNSTHE GAUNTLET OF BOER RIFLES. "

"Speshul. Hextry Speshul!"

 * * * * *

Perhaps she would be mortally wounded by the time she got through thelines, so as to hang in bleeding festoons over the splashboard, and sinkinto the arms of the husband loved better than aught save Glory, gasping, as her heroic spirit fled----

 * * * * *

"Did the gracious lady say she would have her boots on?"

Trudi got up from the flattest and most uncomfortable of the twoforbidding beds Kink's principal guest-chamber boasted, and ran herunoccupied needles through her interminable knitting, a thick white cottonsofa-cover or counterpane of irritating pattern--and stood over againsther employer in an attitude of sulky submission. She was asquare-shouldered, sturdily-built young woman of twenty-five, with roundeyes of pinky-blue garnished with white eyelashes, no eyebrows, and asuperb and aggressively-brilliantined head of fair hair elaboratelydressed, waved, and curled. 

The hair was all attached to Trudi's scalp. Lady Hannah had lain in bedmorning after morning, for weary weeks, and watched her "doing it, " andwondered that any young feminine creature with such arms, such skin, andsuch hair should be so utterly unattractive. But she had lived all theseweeks in this one room with Trudi, had languished under her handmaid'slack of intelligence, had seen her eat, wielding her knife withmarvellous dexterity, and, wakeful, tossed the while she snored. 

And every morning, after Mevrouw Kink had brought in coffee, snortingwhenever Trudi's hair caught her virtuous eye, or whenever the Germandrummer's widow struck her as being more foreign of manners and appearancethan usual, Lady Hannah would call for her boots, attire herself as for apromenade outdoors, lift the corner of a blind, steal a glance at theseething, stenching single street of Tweipans between the slats of thegreen shutters, and--unpin her veil and take off her hat without aword.... 

By eleven o'clock at night the polyglot confusion of tongues would haveceased, the gaudily-uniformed swaggerers, the velveteen-coated, wide-awaked loafers, the filthy tatterdemalions of all nations and theirwomenkind would have turned in. Then Lady Hannah, attended by theunwilling Trudi, was accustomed to venture out for what she called, withsome exaggeration, "A whiff of fresh air. "

Except for the gnawing, prowling dogs, the pickets at either end of it, and the sentries posted at longish intervals all down its length, thestreet of new brick and tin, and old wooden houses that made Tweipans, belonged to Lady Hannah then. Accompanied by Trudi, whose quality of beingwhat I have heard called "deaf-nosed" with regard to noisy smells, shearrived at the pitch of envying, she would stumble up and down amongst therubbish, or wade through the slush if it had been wet, and stop atfavourable points to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blueglow-worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether anybodythere was thinking of her under the white stars or the drifting scud?... 

But what was Trudi saying?

"The gracious one cannot have her boots. "

"Why not?" asked Lady Hannah, with languid interest. Trudi struck theblow. 

"Because she has none. "

"No boots? Well, then, the walking-shoes. "

Trudi smiled all over her large face. This placidity should not longendure. 

"The gracious one has no shoes either. Boots and shoes--all have beentaken away. Nothing remains except the quilted bedroom slippers thegracious one is wearing. And it is impossible to walk out in bedroomslippers. "

"I suppose it is. " Lady Hannah yawned. "Well, suppose you go and look forthe boots. They may have been carried away by mistake, like----" Shewondered afresh what could have become of that transformation coiffure?

"There is no mistake. " Trudi announced. "And--the gracious lady forgot herlittle gun beneath her pillow this morning. That also is missing, "volunteered Trudi, who had had her instructions and scrupulously acted upto them. 

"My revolver has been stolen?" Lady Hannah sprang from her chair, maderapid search, and was convinced. The Browning revolver had been certainlyspirited away. 

Red patches burned in her thin little face, and her round black eyesregained some of their lost brightness. Nothing like a spice of excitementfor bringing you up to the mark. Just now she had felt positively mouldy, and here she was, herself again. 

"Nobody came into the room in the night. I sleep with the key round myneck, and if they had opened the door with another, I should have awakenedon the instant. Nobody has been in the room to-day except the FrauKink"--you will remember that a German drummer's widow would naturallyconverse in her defunct spouse's native language--"the Frau Kink, with thecoffee-tray. She did not come near the bed.... " The suddenness and forceof the suspicion that shot up in Lady Hannah's mind lifted her up out ofher chair, and set her upon her feet. "It must have been you. Was it you?"

She looked hard at Trudi, and Trudi sank upon her bed and dissolved innoisy weeping. 

"Ach, the wickedness!" she moaned. "To suspect of such shamelessness apoor young maiden brought up in honesty.... Ach, ach!"

But Lady Hannah went on:

"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 youwhispering with a little stumpy, pimply man, in a long-tailed black coatand large spectacles. Who is he, and of what were you talking?"

Trudi did not at all regard the verbal sketch of P. Blinders as a correctone, but though her love was blind to his pimples and ignored hisstumpiness, she could not deny the spectacles, which were to her aspeepholes affording visions of a blissful married future. 

"He is a Herr who brought me news from my Mutti at home in Germany. She issick, and my father also, and all my little brothers and sisters are sicktoo, " gulped Trudi, sobbing and wallowing and rasping her flushed featuresagainst 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 thatI will be dead. "

"You aren't dead yet. And you told me when I engaged you that you were anorphan brought up by an aunt. "

"Pay me my vage, " demanded Trudi, lifting a defiant and perfectly drycountenance, and launching the utterance in the forbidden Englishlanguage, "and I vill now go. I vish not to stop here longer. "

"Very well, but where are you going?"

"That, " remarked Trudi, tossing her elaborately-dressed head and relapsinginto her native language, "has nothing to do with the gracious lady. "

There was insolent triumph and unveiled spite in the large face attachedto the elaborate coiffure. The gracious lady, realising that Trudi formedthe one link between herself and the rough, strange, suspicious, unfriendly male world outside, pocketed her pride to temporise. Let Trudiremain as companion and attendant to the German refugee-widow yet anotherweek, and the month's due of wages, already trebled in virtue of a serviceinvolving risk, should be substantially increased.... But Trudi onlysnorted and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself confronting notonly a rat determined upon abandoning a sinking ship, but malignantlyinclined to hasten the vessel's foundering. 

What was to be done? It is quite possible to be brave, adventurous, anddaring without a revolver, its absence may even impart a faint sense ofrelief to one, as being no longer under the necessity of shooting somebodywith it at a pinch, but without boots or shoes, and a Trudi to put themon, Lady Hannah found herself at a nonplus. To conceal the fact from therejoicing Trudi, she moved to the window and drew the blind aside, andwas instantly confronted with a row of round, staring eyes, the nosebelonging to each pair being flattened eagerly against the glass. 

"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Hannah, dropping the blind in consternation at thismanifestation of public interest. A snorting chuckle from the malignantTrudi fanned the little lady's waning courage into flame. She crossed theroom and turned the door-handle. 

The door was locked from the outside, the key having been removed toaccommodate the eye of Mevrouw Kink, who reluctantly removed it to unlockthe door, and announce that Myjnheer Van Busch had asked to see hissister, as she ushered the visitor in. 

Sisters are not sensitive as a rule to subtle alterations in the regard oftheir brothers, but the German drummer's refugee-widow could not but readin the face and demeanour of her relative a perceptible diminution ofinterest in a woman who had no more money.... He kept on his broad-brimmedhat and pulled at his bushy whiskers as he exchanged a palpable wink withTrudi, who was accustomed, when the gracious lady's brother called, toretire with her knitting behind the shiny American cloth-covered screenthat coyly shielded the washstand from a visitor's observation. 

Those flat, light eyes of the visitor's twinkled oddly as Lady Hannah'sindignant whisper told of the missing footgear and the vanished revolver, and her conviction that the screened knitter was the active agent in theirspiriting away. 

"You believe the girl's slewed on you, eh, and that things are going topan out rough? Well, sure, that's a pity!" The big man lolled against thedeal table, covered with a cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours, trying to the complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of MevrouwKink, the red, white, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, with the greenstaff-line carried all round as an ornamental border. "And I'd not wonderbut you were right. " He stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with hishatted head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth: "So, now, and what did you think to do?"

Lady Hannah controlled an impulse to knock off the big man'sbroad-brimmed felt, and even smiled back in the grinning face.... One verylittle lady can hold a great deal of anger and resentment without spillingany over, if she is thoroughly convinced that it would be imprudent aswell as useless to display either. 

"As you gather, I intend returning to Gueldersdorp to-morrow at latest. Ishall not take my maid, as she wishes for her own reasons to remainbehind. Please have the mare and spider here by mid-day coffee-time. Wecan drive north towards Haargrond and double back when we're beyond thelines, as the coursed hare would do. "

Van Busch's red mouth gleamed, curved back from his tobacco-stained teeth. He said with meaning:

"Boers shoot hares--not run them. "

"They may shoot or not shoot, " proclaimed Lady Hannah. "I startto-morrow. "

"Without boots or shoes?" asked the red-edged, yellow-fanged smile. 

"Barefoot if I must, " she answered, with all the more spirit that she feltlike the hare struggling in a wire. "Please send for the mare and thetrap. I leave this place to-morrow. "

"The mare and the spider have been commandeered for the use of the UnitedRepublics, " said Van Busch. As the angry colour flamed up in Lady Hannah'ssmall, pale cheeks, he added, shrugging his shoulders and spreading hishands: "Bough did his best to save them for you, no bounce! But could oneman do anything against so many? Sure no, nothing at all!"

She lost patience, and stamped her little foot in its quilted satinslipper. 

"Do you suppose I haven't guessed by this time that Bough the Africanderand Van Busch the British-Johannesburger are one Boer when it suits themboth?"

His hand, copper-brown as his face, and with the marks of old tattooingobliterated by an acid burn, jerked as he raised it to stroke and feel hiswhiskers. Something else upon the hand, in the sharpened state of all hersenses, struck out a spark of old association, and recalled a name onceknown. She went on. 

"How many men are you, Mr. Van Busch or Bough? You provoke the questionwhen I see you wearing the Mildare crest and coat-of-arms. "

He had turned the deeply-engraved sard with his brown thumb and clenchedhis fist upon it, but as swiftly changed his mind, and took off the ringand handed it to her. 

"I had this ring off Bough, that's a real live man, and a thundering goodpal of mine, for all your funning. The chap it belonged to died at a farmBough owned once. Somewhere in Natal it might have been. And the bloke whodied there was a big bug in England, Bough always thought. But he cametramping, and hauled up with hardly duds to his back or leather to hisfeet. Sick, too, and coughing like a sheep with the rinderpest. Bough waskind to him, but he got worse and worse. One night Bough was sitting upwith him reading the Bible, when he made signs. 'Take this ring off of myfinger and keep it, ' says he. 'I've got nothing else to give you, but Ireckon 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 regularfancy style----"

"And sent the girl to the nuns at Gueldersdorp, or was she there already?"

Van Busch was in the act of taking back the sardonyx signet-ring. His handjerked again, so sharply that the ring was jerked into the air, fell tothe floor, and rolled under the table. He stooped and reached for it, andasked, with his face hidden by the patriotic tablecloth:

"What girl do you mean?"

His dark face was purple-brown with the exertion of stooping as he roseup. Lady Hannah answered:

"The Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp has anorphan ward, a singularly lovely girl of nineteen or twenty, whose surnameis Mildare. And it struck me just now--I don't know why now, and neverbefore--that she might be----"

"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 moresluggish 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 redcheeks and thick ankles?"

Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience of Van Busch, hadnot yet mastered his method of eliciting information. 

"Miss Mildare is absolutely the opposite of your description, " shedeclared. "She is quite tall, and very slight and pale, with slender handsand feet, and reddish-bronze hair, and eyes the colour of yellow topaz orold honey, with wonderful black lashes.... I have never seen anything tocompare----" She stopped. 

What strange eyes the man had, full of lines radiating from the pin-pointpupils, scintillating like a snake's.... He said, in his thick, lispingway:

"A beauty, eh? And how long might the nuns have had her?"

"The Mayor's wife told me she has been under the care of the Conventladies for some seven years. "

His brown full face looked solid, and his eyes veiled themselves behind aglassy film. He was thinking, as he said:

"And her name is Mildare, eh? And you know her?"

"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 suspectedin this place, Mr. Van Busch, and if not actually a prisoner, am certainlyunder restraint. For how much money down will you undertake to extricateme from this position, and convey me back to Gueldersdorp?"

He shook his head, and for once the scent of gain did not rouse hispredatory appetite. He was wondering how it should never have occurred tohim before that the scared little white-faced thing might have fallen intokindly hands, and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of? He waspuzzled to account for her remembering the name that had belonged to theman whose grave was at the foot of the Little Kopje. He was conscious ofan itching curiosity to find out for his friend Bough whether it reallywas the Kid or no? What was the little fool of a woman saying in hershrill voice?

"It would be burning your boats, I am quite aware. But if it _pays_ toburn them----" she suggested, with her black eyes probing vainly in theshallow ones. 

He roused himself. 

"A thousand pounds, English. You've not the money here?"

"No. "

"Or a cheque?"

Her laugh jangled contemptuously. 

"Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books--upon Secret Service?"

"I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have Ito tell you that? Do you suppose you are a prisoner here because I slewedon you? Wrong, by God! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you wouldcut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, that's whatany man would have done. " His tone of injury was excellently feigned, andhis lisp was simplicity itself. "And to call me a dirty spy, when I gotyou first-hand information, and ran your letters through to Gueldersdorp, at the risk of my blooming neck.... Well, you'll be ashamed when you getback there and see those letters, that's what you will, sure!"

"The letters got through--yes. But did they get through in time to be ofuse?"

The little she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his whiskers andscraped his foot upon the floor, and said in his blandest lisp:

"They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book and swear it, if youwant me. "

How deal with a knave like this, who popped in and out of holes like arabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a snake? Lady Hannah knew an immenseyearning for the absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity, man of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that primitiveweapon of punishment, the doubled human fist. 

"In useful time? Useful Gueldersdorp time or useful Tweipans time? That iswhat I want to get at. "

"Oh, hell! how do I know?" He had turned sulky and scowling, but her bloodwas fairly up. 

"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 yourplans and baited a trap----"

"To catch a silly woman. " His scarlet lips rolled back from histobacco-stained teeth. His jeering eyes were intolerable. "Ay, maybe Idid. And what's to say now?"

"I say you are a blackguard, Mr. Bough Van Busch!"

The dark face with the light eyes underwent a murderous change. He glancedover his shoulders right and left, and took a step towards her, carryingout the movement suddenly, as a tarantula darts upon its prey. Before thethick brown muscular fingers had choked the scream that rose in herthroat, the key crashed in the lock, and the door was violently kickedopen, admitting ... 

No portrait is required of that burly, bald-browed, sharp-eyed, grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed and sun-crackedcountenance, implacable under the slouch-hat with the orange-leather band. We know the old green overcoat, and coarse corduroy breeches, and roughlytanned leather boots, with heavy, old-fashioned spurs, to have been thehusk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, twinned with aquiet family-man of bucolic tastes and patriarchal habits. 

Van Busch, broader by inches and taller by half a head, dwindled, seen injuxtaposition 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, asthe great boots tramped heavily across the floor, and the great voiceroared, speaking in the Taal:

"Pull up that blind! Voor den donder! Shall we be mice, that sit andsqueak in the dark?"

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 wasblocked with heavy bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces; thestreet was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at thelittle Englishwoman who was a prisoner, and the big man who ruled them byFear. His angry grey eyes blazed at the gapers, and the crowd surged backa foot or two. Then the fierce eyes darted back at pale Lady Hannah, andthe roaring voice began again:

"You who came here in disguise, with a false story and false hair----"

Lady Hannah jumped in her bedroom slippers, and crimsoned to her naturalcoiffure, as the missing transformation, appallingly out of wave, wasplucked from the baggy pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandishedbefore her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual impulse toshriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a conscience-stricken creaturein that great man's watchful eyes. His big voice shook her and shook theroom as he thundered:

"Woman, you are no widow of a Duitscher drummer, but the vrouw of afield-cornet of the Army of Groot Brittanje. He holds a graafschap inEngeland"--a mistake on the part of the General's informant--"and ishand-in-glove with the Colonel Commandant at Gueldersdorp. " Not so farfrom the truth! thought Lady Hannah. "Would he spy out the land, let himcome himself next time. Boers hide not behind their wives' petticoats whenthere is such business to be done!"

In defence of blameless Bingo the hysterical little woman found voice tosay:

"He--didn't know I was coming. "

"What says she?"

Before Van Busch could bestir himself to interpret, Lady Hannah hadrepeated her words in faulty Dutch. 

"So! Engelsch mevrouws disobey their husbands, it seems?" Were the fierce, bloodshot grey eyes really capable of a twinkle? "We Boers have a cure forthat. Green reim, well laid on, after the third caution, teaches our wivesto fib and deceive no more. "

"You're wrong, sir. "

"Wrong, do you say? Hoe?"

"What the green reim does teach them, " explained Lady Hannah, secretlyaghast at her own temerity, "is, not to be found out next time. "

He gave a wooden chuckle, but his regard was as menacing and his voice asgruff as ever. 

"I make no mouth-play with words. I talk in men and guns, and there arehalf 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 worstduyvel of all"--he waved the big hand westward--"is he over there atGueldersdorp. "

She mentally registered the compliment. 

"You are a woman who writes for the Engelsch newspapers that are full ofshameless tales about the Boers. " He spat copiously upon the floor, andthe 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 writeto them and say: 'Selig Brounckers is a merciful man and a just. He is notas zwart as he is painted. He caught me mousing round his hoofd laager atTweipans--and what does he do?'" The pause was impressive. Then theroaring voice resumed:

"'He sends me marching down to the gaol at Groenfontein, that is packedwith dirty white and dirty coloured schelms until there is not room forone more----"

He named the homely parasite hymned by Burns ... 

--"'Or he packs me up to Oom Paul at Pretoria, chained to the waggon-taillike the others. ' ... "

Lady Hannah wondered, while the stuffy room spun round her, who the otherswere. 

"Geen, I will tell you what he does. " He pitched the crumpledtransformation contemptuously into the corner. "He writes to the EngelschCommandant at Gueldersdorp and says: 'I have here a silly female thingthat is no use to me. Take her you, and give me in exchange a man ofmine. ' ... "

"And he ... What does ... ?" She could get out nothing more. 

"He agrees. Mevrouw Vrynks"--"Dutch for Wrynche, " thought Lady Hannahdizzily--"you will now pay the Mevrouw Kink what is owing for her amiableentertainment, and you will start for Gueldersdorp in ten minutes' time. "

The roaring voice of the stern, fierce-eyed man, sounded lovelier than theswan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, with her joyful heart leaping at thegates of utterance:

"The--mare and spider. You will be so kind as to return them----?"

His face became as a human countenance rudely carved in seasoned oak. 

"I know nothing of a mare and spider, " blared the great voice. 

She looked him straight between the hot fierce eyes, and spoke outpluckily. 

"They are not my property. I hired the trap and the trotter from ahotel-keeper at Gueldersdorp. And Mr. Van Busch tells me that they haverecently been commandeered for the service of the United Forces of theTransvaal and Orange Free State. "

"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 theremote corner to which he had modestly retired. Van Busch cringedforwards, hat in hand, explaining:

"The English Mevrouw mistakes, Myjnheer. Sure, now, I never told heranything 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'slittle beast pulling in a cart of my own? Call the other woman, and shewill tell you it was as I say. "

Lady Hannah, supremely disdainful, turned her back upon the liar.... 

"So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld waggon?" demanded thebullying voice. 

"I'm willing to go back in anything that isn't a coffin, " she declared. 

He gave the wooden chuckle, swung about and trampled to the door, callingto Van Busch in the tone of a dog's master:

"Here, you ... !"

Van Busch followed, wriggling as obsequiously as the dog with a stolenmutton-chop upon his conscience. The door slammed, the key turned roughlyin the lock. Lady Hannah, oblivious of the absence of outdoor footwear, flew joyously to cram a few belongings into her travelling-bag and resumeher discarded hat. 

Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted away upon hisappearance, General Selig Brounckers was saying to Van Busch:

"It is a pity that the Engelschwoman's story was not true about that mareand spider. For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhapshave kept them for your trouble----"

--"Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant, " said Van Busch in ahurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has amouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spiderstands under the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let Boughknow Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have them. He'll make no bonesabout parting then. Sure, no! he'll never dare to. "

"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 easytone. "It is unlucky, " he added less pleasantly, "that you were such averdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I had commandeeredboth beast and vehicle for Republics' use. Because now I will do it, lookyou! No Boer's son that lives, by the Lord! will I suffer to make SeligBrounckers out a liar. " He added, as Van Busch salaamed and squirmed withmore than Oriental submissiveness, "Least of all a sneaking Africanderschelm like you. And now, about the money?"

"Excellentie----" lisped Van Busch, smiling his oily brown face intoingratiating creases ... 

"I am no Excellentie.... Of how much money, properly belonging to theRepublics' war-chest, have you cheated this little fool of anEngelschwoman?"

"Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant, " bleated Van Busch, "I had from herone hundred and fifty pounds, which I swear as an honest man has beenhanded over to Myjnheer Blinders----"

"He has accounted to me. "

"Five weeks back----?" Van Busch hinted. 

"He has accounted for it five weeks back. "

There are men who possess all the will to be rogues, but have not therequisite courage. Such a man was Blinders, who emerged plus a sweetheart, the approval of his Commandant, and the _éclat_ of having chaffed theBritish Lion, out of the affair that was to prove so expensive to Mr. VanBusch. 

"And"--the big voice trumpeted, as Van Busch, like a stout pinnedbutterfly, quivered, transfixed by the glare of the savage eyes--"you willnow account to me for the rest. "

Van Busch faltered with a sickly smile:

"Fifty more, Myjnheer, that I was bringing you myself----"

"One hundred and fifty you have paid me, and fifty you were going to payme. 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 sixwalnuts for every one that his wife gets to share with her youngster? WhenI 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 inplay. Pay Blinders the other five hundred pounds before kerk-time. If youhaven't got the cash about you, he and young Schenk Eybel shall ride withyou to Haargrond, where lives your friend Bough. They can bring back themoney 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 thattalks Engelsch to worm himself in over yonder"--he jerked his gnarledthumb in the direction of Gueldersdorp--"and bring back a plan of thedefences on the west, where the native stad lies. Perhaps I will let youkeep two hundred of that five hundred if you are the man to go.... Butwhether you go or stay, by the Lord! you will find it best to be squarewith Selig Brounckers. "

And the redoubtable Brounckers stumped off. Verily, in times of scarcity, when the lion is a-hungered, the jackal must lose his bone. 

It would be well, thought the dispirited jackal ruefully, to remove theunfavourable impression made, by a valuable service rendered to the UnitedRepublics. It would be a good thing to stand well with Myjnheer SchenkEybel, who would, when Brounckers went south, be left in sole command. Itwould be as well, also, to get a look at that girl that was living withthe nuns at Gueldersdorp. 

"Mildare ... " That was the puzzle--her having the name so pat. But theselittle frightened, white-faced things were sly, and kids remembered morethan you thought for.... 

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 greenshining beetle crawled there. He set his heavy foot upon the insect, andits beauty was no more. 

XXXVII

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, whois his orderly of the day. 

"I want a word with you, Wrynche. Rawlings will take the glasses. Come inhere under cover. "

He leads the way. The cover is a canvas shelter, perhaps a protection fromthe blazing sun, but none at all from shell and bullets. There are acouple of wooden chairs under its flimsy spread and a little table. TheChief sits down astride on one of the chairs, accepts a cigar from CaptainBingo's enormous crocodile-leather case, and says, as the first ring ofblue smoke goes wavering upwards:

"You'll be glad to know that Monboia's Barala runner has got through withgood news _for you_. " The last two words are rather strongly emphasised. "Just before dawn and after Beauvayse relieved you at Staff BombproofSouth. "

Captain Bingo swallows violently, runs a thick finger round inside hiscollar, and his big face goes through several changes of complexion, ranging from boiled suet-dumpling paleness to beetroot red. He looks awayand blinks before he says in a voice that wobbles:

"Then my wife's--all right?"

"Lady Hannah and her German attendant, as far back as the day beforeyesterday, when Monboia's man saw them, were in the enjoyment of excellenthealth. "

"Poof!" Captain Bingo blows a genuine sigh of relief, and the latentlugubriousness departs from him. "Good hearing. I've had--call ithippopotamus 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:

"My good news being told, I have a slice of bad for you. But first let memake an admission. Since Nixey's pony pulled Nixey's spider out ofGueldersdorp with Lady Hannah and her maid in it, I have had threecommunications from your wife. "

"You're pullin' my leg, sir, ain't you?" queries Bingo doubtfully. 

"Not a bit of it. "

In confirmation of the statement he takes out a shabby pocket-book, fatwith official documents, and, unstrapping it, selects three, and handsthem to Bingo. They are flimsy sheets of tissue-paper covered with spiderycharacters in violet ink, and Bingo, taking them, recognises thehandwriting, and is, as he states without hesitation, confoundedlyflabbergasted. 

"For they are in my wife's wild scrawl, " he splutters at last. "How onearth did they reach you, sir?"

"The first was brought in by a native boy who said he belonged to thekraals at Tweipans, " says the Chief. "Boiled small and stuffed into aquill stuck through his ear in the usual way. He trumped up a glib storyabout 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 beenkind to him----"

"Umph! Native gratitude don't run to being skinned alive withsjamboks--not much!" the other comments. "Chap must have been lyin', or akind of nigger Phoenix. "

"Exactly. So I couldn't find it in my heart to part with him. He's on thecoloured side of the gaol now, with two others, who subsequently landed inwith the documents you have in hand there. "

"Am I to read 'em?" Bingo queries. 

His commanding officer nods, with the muscle in his lean cheek twitching. 

"Certainly. Aloud, if you'll be so good. "

Bingo reads, with haltings on the way, for the tissue sheets stick to hislarge fingers, which are damp with suppressed agitation:

 "HAARGROND PLAATS, "NEAR TWEIPANS, "_October 30th_. 

 "_To the Colonel Commanding Her Majesty's Forces in Gueldersdorp. _

 "SIR, --I beg to report myself arrived at the above address, twelve miles distant from the head laager of the 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. 

 "I have the honour to be, "On Secret Service, "Yours most obediently, "H. WRYNCHE. "

Bingo stares blankly at his Chief, the sheets of crumpled tissue waveringbetween his thick, agitated fingers. 

"I got that letter exactly a week after the attack had been made andsuccessfully resisted, " says the Colonel's dry, quiet voice. "Read thefour lines in a different hand and ink, that are underlined at the bottom, and tell me what you think of 'em. "

Bingo obeyed, and read:

 "_Lady's information perfectly correct. We hope this intelligence will reach you in time to be useful. _

 "_I have the honour to be, _ "P. BLINDERS, "_Acting-Secretary to General_ "_Brounckers. _"

"By the Living Tinker!" exploded Bingo. 

"Don't be prodigal of emotion, " the Colonel's quiet voice warns theexcited husband. "There are two more letters following. Read 'em in theproper sequence. That one with the inky design at the top, that might bethe pattern for a pair of fancy pyjamas--that's the next. "

Bingo reads as follows:

 "KINK'S HOTEL, "TWEIPANS, "_November 28th_. 

 _"To the Colonel Commanding H. M. Forces in Gueldersdorp. _

 "SIR, --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, "I have the honour to be, "On Secret Service, "Yours most obediently, "H. WRYNCHE. "

The sarcastic P. Blinders had appended an italicised comment:

 "_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. _

 "P. BLINDERS. "

"D-a-a----"

The Chief does not happen to be looking Bingo's way as the infuriatedhusband menaces with a large clenched fist an imaginary countenanceattached to the conjectural personality of the sportive P. Blinders. 

"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. "

"Amusin'!" growls Bingo, with smarting eyes, and a lumpy throat, and atingling in his large muscles which P. Blinders, being out of reach, canafford to provoke. "You wouldn't think it amusin', sir, if it were yourwife, making herself a--a figure of fun for those Dutch bounders to shyat. "

This is the third letter:

 "_December 23rd. _

 "_To the Colonel Commanding, Gueldersdorp. _

 "SIR, --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. 

 "Obediently, "H. WRYNCHE. "

Underneath is the sarcastic comment:

 "_December 27th. _

 "_Nice if you had got this in time, eh? And we wanted those boots and badges. _

 "_P. B. _"

"She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway, " says Captain Bingo, blowinghis nose emphatically; "and--by the Living Tinker! if it _had_ reached usin time, we'd have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, andtwenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' into thebargain. "

"Perhaps, " says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow on the keen, sagaciousface, and both men are silent, remembering an assault the desperate, reckless valour of which deserves to be bracketed in memory with theCharge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, "If Defeat is ever shame, perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the question to each of thathandful of brave men sleeping side by side over there"--he nods in thedirection of the Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest hassprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses--"they would tell you itcan be more glorious than victory. "

"Of course, you're right, sir. I gather now what your bad news is, " saysBingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing his finger along the bristly edgesof his sandy moustache, for a minute past. "Judgin' by the marginalannotations of this man Blinders--brute I'd kick to Cape Town withpleasure--my wife's a prisoner in Brounckers' hands?"

"An unconscious prisoner--yes. Give 'em their due, Wrynche. I shouldn'thave credited 'em with the sense of humour they have displayed in theirdealings with her. "

If it were possible for Bingo to grow redder in the face, one would saythat he has done so, as he bursts out, in a violent perspiration, stridingup and down over Nixey's sheet-leaded roof. 

"Confound their humour! It's the humour of tom-cats playin' with a--adashed little silly dicky-bird. It's the humour of aasvogels watchin' ashot rock-rabbit kick. It's the humour of the battledore and theshuttlecock. 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 takeit smilin'!" He mops his scarlet and dripping face, and puffs and blowslike a large military walrus on dry land. 

"Perhaps you'll manage a smile when you've read this?"

Bingo stops in his stride, wheels, and receives an official document onblue paper. Under the date of the previous day, it runs as follows:

 "HEAD LAAGER, "TWEIPANS, "_January --th_. 

 "_To the Colonel Commanding the British Forces in Gueldersdorp. _

 "SIR, --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. 

 "I have the honour to be yours truly, "P. BLINDERS, "_Acting-Secretary to General_ "_Brounckers. _"

 "P. S. --_The young lady of German extraction who accompanied the Englishwoman has entered into an engagement to remain here. _

 "_P. B. _"

 "P. SS. --_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?_

 "_P. B. _"

Blinders has certainly had the last dig, but his principal victim failsthis time to wince or bellow under the point of his humour. With his bigface changing from red to white, and from white to crimson half a dozentimes in as many seconds, Captain Bingo says, refolding the paper andreturning it with a shaky hand:

"Then she--she----"

A lump in his throat slides down and sticks. 

"Gerevormed Kerk-time is eleven o'clock. " The Colonel looks at his shabbyWaterbury, as the brisk clatter of cantering horse-hoofs breaks up theSabbath stillness of the Market Square, and an orderly, leading anofficer's charger, halts before Nixey's door. "The B. S. A. Escort, withtheir man, are due to leave the gaol in ten minutes' time. Here's yourorderly with your mount, and you've eight minutes to change in. "

"One minute, sir, " Captain Bingo utters with an effort. "This man--thisSlabberts--is a well-known spy--a trump card in Brounckers' hand, or hewouldn't be so anxious to get hold of him. And therefore--by thisexchange--and a woman's dashed ambitious folly--you may lose heavily inthe end.... "

"I don't deny it. " The haggard shadow is again upon the Colonel's face, oris 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 theeyes that have so many lines about them is kind, if the mouth under thered-brown moustache is stern and sorrowful. "We don't have many of 'em. Off with you and meet her!"

Captain Bingo tries to say something more, but makes a hash of it; andwith eyes that fairly run over, can only grip the kindly hand again andagain, assuring its owner, with numerous references to the Living Tinker, that he is the most thundering brick on earth. Then, overthrowing thesmall table and one of the chairs, he plunges down the narrow ironstairway to get into what he calls his kit. Six minutes later, correct toa buckle and a puttee-fold, he salutes his commanding officer, noddingpleasantly to him from Nixey's roof, and buckets down the street at atremendous gallop, the happiest man in Gueldersdorp, with this shoutfollowing him:

"My regards to Lady Hannah. And tell her that the Staff dine on gee-gee atsix o'clock sharp, and I shall be charmed if she'll join us. "

XXXVIII

The little Olopo River, a mere branch of the bigger river that makesfertile British Baraland, runs from east to west, along the southern sideof Gueldersdorp, swelled by innumerable thready water-courses, dry in theblistering winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the foothillsthat bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from the altitude of aballoon or a war-kite, the course of the beer-coloured stream, flowinglazily between its high banks sparsely wooded with oak and blue gum, andlavishly clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall grasses, andthorny creepers, would have looked like a verdant ribbon meandering overthe dun-and-ochre-coloured veld, where patches of bluish-green arebeginning to spread. The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, wasfrequently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a place ofresort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, much more precipitous, was clothed with a tangled luxuriance of vegetation, and threaded only bynative paths, so narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirousof walking side by side. Where the outermost line of defences impingedupon the river-bed, the trees had been cut down and the bush levelled. Buteast of Maxim Outpost South, and the rifle-pits that flanked FortEllerslie, all was as it had been for hundreds of years, in theremembrance of the great granite boulder that stood on the south shore. 

The great boulder had known changes since the old Plutonic forces cast itupwards, a mere bubble of melted red granite, solidifying as it went intoa stone acorn thirty feet high, which the glacier brought down in a slowjourney of countless ages, and set upright like a phallic symbol, amongstother boulders of lesser size. The channel the glacier had chiselled wasnow full of shining honey-coloured water, hurrying over the granite stonesand blocks of quartz and pretty vari-coloured pebbles, while the bouldersat high and dry, with the tall-plumed grasses, and the gracefultree-fern, and the yellow-tasselled mimosa crowding about its knees; andremembered old times, long before the little Bushfellow had outlined thekoodoo and the buffalo, and the hunter-man with the spear, in blackpigments on its smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gatheredfrom the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the drawings. On thewestern side the great boulder was dressed in crimson lake andyellow-umber-hued lichens from base to summit, and in August, when thealoes flowered in magnificent fiery clusters upon its crown and at itsbase; and in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it inexquisite trails, and white and rose and purple pelargoniums made a carpetfor its feet; and in July, when the yellow everlastings bloomed in everycranny of the rocks, King Solomon in all his glory held less magnificenceof state. 

Insects and beasts and birds loved the boulder. The sun-beetle and theorange-tip and peacock butterflies loved to bask on its hottest side, while the old dog-faced baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to hisnumerous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its crannies andbred their young, too often as food for the giant tarantula and thetree-snake; while the francolin and grouse dusted themselves in the hotsand at the base of its throne of rocks, and the springbok and thewart-hogs came down at night to drink; and the woolly cheetah and the redlynx came after the springbok and the wart-hog. 

The boulder had seen War--War between black-skinned men and brown-skinnedmen, adventurers with great hooked noses and curled beards, with tasselsof silk and gold plaited into them and into the hair of their heads, terrible warriors, mighty hunters, and great miners, who came for slavesand ivory and gold, and hollowed strongholds out of the mountains, andworshipped strange bird-beaked gods, and passed away. Yet again, whenthese ceased to be, there had been War; and this time the black men of thesoil fought with white strangers, who wanted the same things--slaves, andskins, and ivory, and the yellow metal of the river-sands and of therocks. 

Now white men fought with white. The black men owned little of thecountry: they hid in the kloofs and thickets in terror, while the Europeanconquerors shed each other's blood for gold, and land, and power. Theboulder was so very old. It could afford to wait patiently until thesemen, like all that went before, had passed. 

Every seventh day the guns ceased bellowing and throwing iron things thatburst and scattered Death broadcast, and the rifles stoppedcrack-cracking and spitting steel and lead. Then the scared birds cameback: the waxbills, and love-birds, and finches, and sparrows darted inand out among the bushes, and the partridge, and quail, and francolinventured down to drink. The old baboon had retired to the hills with hisfamily; the springbok and the wart-hog had moved up Bulawayo way; thecheetah and the lynx had followed them.... 

But as long as human lovers came and whispered to each other, standingbeside the big boulder, or sitting in its shadow, the boulder would becontent. They spoke the old language that it had learned when the worldwas comparatively young. Black or yellow or white, African or Oriental orEuropean, this speech of theirs was always the same; their looks andactions never varied. Either they met and kissed and were happy, or theymet and quarrelled and were miserable. When no more lovers should come, the boulder knew that would be the end of the world. 

There was a gaudily dressed, white-faced young woman waiting now besidethe 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 herface was not unpretty, topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow curls. Sheleaned against the sun-warmed granite, and cried a little. That was theway of women when the man was late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyesand 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 figuremeant for a portrait of her lover, with a sharpened flake of flint. 

The young woman, as she sucked her lead-pencil, was quite unconscious thatthe boulder thought at all. She wrote in an unformed hand, and in lettersthat began by being large and round, and tailed off into a slantingniggle. "W. Keyse, Esquer. " Then she bit the pencil awhile, and dreameddreams. Then she wrote again, "Jane Keyse" and "Mrs. W. Keyse, " andblushed furiously, and then grew pale again in anticipation of the AwfulOrdeal to come. For she had made up her mind to tell him all, and chanceit. 

Yesterday had been his birthday. She had sent him, per John Tow, a costlygift. The four-ounce packet of honeydew, cheap at five dollars in thesedays of scarcity, had been opened, and the new pipe filled. A slip ofpaper coquettishly intimated that the sender had rendered the recipientthis delicate little service. She meant to sign "Jane Harris, " but hercourage failed her, and her trembling pen faltered for the last time, "Fare Air. "

Oh! how she hated that Other One, whom, perhaps, he liked the best, thoughhe had never kissed her! She would be done with the creature, she thankedher Gawd, after to-day! Oh, how many times she had made up her mind totell him the truth, and never done it! But if she took and died of it, tell him she would this time. 

How would he take the revelation? Possibly swearing. Probably he would beangry enough to hit her, _when he knew_. If he only would, and make it upafterwards! Oh! how cruel she did suffer! She thought she would not tellhim just yet. It was too hard. And then it seemed quite easy, and then shecried out in agony: "Is that 'im comin'? Oh, my Gawd, it is!"

She clasped her hands over a brand-new blowse, with something under itthat jumped and fluttered orful. Mother used to 'ave such palpitytionswhen her and father 'ad 'ad what you might call a jar. And he was coming, coming.... 

Surely W. Keyse looked stern and imposingly tall of stature, seen from herlower level, as he appeared among the blue gum-trees on the top of thebank, and began to descend into the ferny gorge where the great bouldersat and sunned himself beside the beer-coloured river, whose barbel kepton rising at the flies. Something W. Keyse dragged behind him, not by arope, but by a pigtail; an animated bundle of clean blue cotton, topped bythe impassive, almond-eyed countenance of John Tow, the letter-carryingChinaman, who in the unlawful pursuit of tikkies, finding the letterwritten by the foreign lady-devil to the male one eagerly paid for on thenail, had offered for half as much again to induce her for the future towrite two instead of one. Towing Tow, the smarting victim of feminineduplicity came crashing down upon the guilty girl who had betrayed him. 

"See 'ere! You know this 'ere young lady, and you remember what you've binand 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"--herapped himself dramatically upon the breast-pocket--"and how you see herdoing of it, before I kick your backbone through your hat. "

All was lost. The Chinaman had up an' give Emigration Jane away. Certainlyhe had saved her trouble, but what was he sayin' now, the 'orribleslant-eyed 'eathen? She could hardly hear him for the roaring in her poorbewildered head. 

"S'pose John tell, can catchee more tikkie? Plenty tikkie want to buychow, allee so baddee times. "

"Always on the make, ain't you?" commented W. Keyse. With a strong, imperious shove, he dumped the blue bundle down among the cowslips inwhich the feet of the guilty fair were hidden, saying sternly: "I give youthree minutes to git it off your chest, else kickie is wot you'll catchinstead o' tikkie. " He furnished a moderate sample on account. 

"Oh, ki--ah. Oh, ki--ah!" moaned the tingling John. 

"Don't you be 'ard on him, William"--he hardly knew the voice, it was soweak and small--"it's Gawspel truth. To pay you out--at first, for juggin'Walt, I did write them letters--every bloomin' screeve. "

"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 afat 'og of a Dutchman!"

The patriot to whom he referred, mounted on an attenuated mule, andescorted by a Sergeant and six men of the B. S. A. , under thesuperintendence of a large pink officer of the Staff, was at that momentbeing conducted at a sharp trot out of the lines, to meet a smallishwaggon pulled by a span of four that was being brought down from Tweipansby half a dozen Boers in weathered tan-cord and velveteen, batteredpot-hats and ragged shooting-jackets, carrying very carefully-tendedrifles, mounted on well-fed, wiry little horses, and accompanied by aWhite Flag. If she had known, what would it have mattered to her? All herthoughts were centred in this furious little man, whose pale, ugly eyesfairly blazed at her, as he repeated:

"To pay--me out. You brawsted little Treachery, you----"

She crimsoned to her hair; you could see the red blood rushing and rushingup from under the peekaboo embroidery in front of the tawdry blowse, in ahurry to tell her tingling ears what cruel names he called her. 

"To pay you out at first it was. An' afterwards"--her throat hurt her, andher 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!"

"You may take your dyin' oath I won't. " He was bitterly sarcastic. "Strite, an' no kid, didn't you know when you done--_that_--I'd neverforgive you as long as I lived?"

He plucked the stout package of letters signed "Fare Air" from hisindignant bosom, and threw them at her feet, with the new pipe, herhapless gift. His wrath was infinitely more terrible than she hadimagined. 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.... 

"Didn't you know it?" the voice of her judge demanded again. 

John Tow, finding himself no longer an object of attention, had discreetlyvanished. 

"Oh, I did, I did!" Her agony was frantic. "Oh, let me go away and hideand die somewhere! Oh, crooil, to break a pore gal's 'art! Wot--wot lovesthe bloomin' earth under your feet!"

"Garn!"--the scorn of W. Keyse was something awful--"you an' yourlove----"

She wrenched the cotton lace away from her thin throat, and tore some ofher hair out in the strenuous hysteria of her class, and screamed at him:

"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!"

He struck an indomitable attitude and thundered:

"So 'elp me Jiminy Cripps, I never will!"

She knew that the oath was irrevocable, and with a faint moan, turned tothe great boulder that was behind her, and clung to its hard red bosom asif it had been a mother's. She moaned to him as her thin figure flatteneditself against the stone, to let her go away and die somewhere. He stood amoment looking at her, and exulting in his power, meaning her to sufferyet a little longer ere he relented. Secretly, he knew relief that thegolden pigtail and the provoking blue eyes of Miss Greta Du Taine hadvanished out of Gueldersdorp before the first Act of War. He would havefelt them in the way now. Those shining, tearful eyes and the mouth thatkissed and clung to his had done their work on the night of the GrandVariety entertainment in the empty Government store. He would pretend togo away and leave her. He would come back, enjoy her astonishment, bemelted by renewed entreaties, stoop to relent, overwhelm her with hismagnanimity, and then proceed to love-making. 

But as a preliminary he swung round upon his heel and strode upwardsthrough the short bush and the tall grasses, the scandalised flowersthrashing his boots. She saw him, although her back was turned. If hecould 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 feltsure he was well out of sight, and hurried back. 

She was not there. 

He was indifferent at first, then angry, then anxious, then disconsolate. Repentance followed fast on the heels of all these moods. He picked up thepacket of letters and the rejected pipe, cursing his own cruelty, andsought her up and down the banks, calling her in tones that were urgent, affectionate, upbraiding, appealing; but not for all his luring would theflown bird come back to fist. No more beside the river, or in other placeswhere they had been wont to meet, did W. Keyse encounter Emigration Janeagain. 

XXXIX

But even without W. Keyse and the vanished author of "Fare Air's" lettersthe ferny tree-fringed kloof at the bottom of which the beer-colouredriver ran over its granite boulders and quartz pebbles, was not empty andvoid. On Sundays, when the birds returned from the hills, to which theyhad been scared by the hideous tumult of War, thither after High Mass inthe battered little Roman Catholic church in the stad, the Mother-Superiorand the Sisters would come, bringing with them such poor food as they had, and picnic soberly. All the week through they had laboured, nursed, andtended the sick and wounded in the Hospitals, and washed and fed andtaught the numberless orphans of the siege, and upon this day theMother-Superior had ruled that they were to be together. And all the weekthrough the thought of it kept them going, as she had hoped. You are tosee her holding her little court beside the river upon a certain Februaryafternoon, receiving friends in her sweet, stately fashion, and dispensinghospitality out of the largest and most battered Britannia-metal teapotthat ever brewed, what was later originally referred to in the weekly"Social Jottings" column of the _Gueldersdorp Siege Gazette_ as thecheering infusion. The _Siege Gazette_ was an intermittent daily, issuedfrom a subterranean printing-office, for the dissemination of generalorders and latest news, fluctuations in the weight and quality of themeat-rations, and the rise and fall of the free-soup level, being alsorecorded. To its back-files I must refer those who seek a fuller accountof the function described by the brilliant journalist who signed herself"Gold Pen, " as highly successful. She gives you to understand that thecompany was distinguished, and the conversation vivid and unflagging. Andwhen you realise that everybody present was suffering more or less fromthe active pinch of hunger, that social gathering of men and women ofBritish blood becomes heroic and historic and fine. 

"Dr Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, was observed, " we read. "Gold Pen"also notes "the presence of the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, son of theBishop of H----, and second curate--on leave--of St. Margaret's, WendishStreet; now happily recovered, thanks to the skill of Dr. Saxham, from anillness, held at no recent date to be incurable. Mr. Fraithorn hasundertaken the onerous duties of Chaplain to the Hospitals in charge ofthe Military Staff. It was gratifying to observe, " she continues, "thatthe Colonel commanding graced the occasion by his martial presence. Hewas attended by his junior aide, Lieutenant Lord Beauvayse. We also sawLady Hannah Wrynche with her distinguished husband, Captain BinghamWrynche, Royal Bay Dragoons, Acting Senior Aide, " etc. , etc. 

"Late apricots from the garden of the ruined Convent, and peaches from itswest wall, gathered in the dead of night by Sister Cleophée and SisterTobias, " "Gold Pen" goes on to say, "were greatly appreciated by theguests, each of whom brought his or her own bread. "

A most villainous kind of bannock of unleavened mealie-meal and crushedoats, calculated to try the strongest teeth and trouble the toughestdigestion, "Gold Pen" might have added. But the game was to make believeyou rather enjoyed it than otherwise. If you had no teeth and nodigestion, you were allowed a pint and a half of sowens porridge instead;and thus helped your portion of exhausted cavalry mount or your bit oftough mule-meat down. And so you went on like your neighbours, playing thegame, while your eyes grew larger and your girth less, and your cheekbonesmore in evidence with every day that dawned. 

Cheekbones have a strange, unnatural effect when they appear in childishfaces. There was a child in a rusty double perambulator that had been astylish baby-carriage only a little while ago, whose wizened face andshrunken hands were pitiable to see. He was wheeled by a sallow woman, with hollow, grey-blue eyes--a woman whose black alpaca gown hung looselyon her wasted figure, and whose shabby, crape-trimmed hat was pinned onanyhow. Siege confinement and siege terrors, siege smells and siege diet, had made strange havoc of the plump comeliness of a matronly lady who oncerustled in purple satin befitting a Mayor's wife. She had lost one of herchildren through diphtheria, and she knew, unless a miracle happened, thatshe would also lose the boy. 

Only look at him! She told you in that dull, toneless voice of hers howsturdy he had been, how strong and masterful--how pretty, too, with hisplume of fair hair tumbling into his big, shining, grey eyes! The eyeswere bigger than ever now, but the light and the life had sunk out ofthem, and his round face was pinched, and the colour of old wax. And thearm that hung idly over the side of the little carriage was withered andshrunken--the hand of an old man, and not of a child. The other, under thelight shawl that tucked him in, hugged something that bulged under thecoverlet. 

"His father can't bear to look at him, " the Mayor's wife said, glancing atthe Mayor's carefully-averted back. "And I'm sure it's no wonder. He justlies like this, day and night, and doesn't want to move, or answer whenyou speak to him, and he won't eat. The food is dreadful, but still hemight try, just to comfort his mother----"

"I does twy, " piped Hammy weakly, "and ven my tummy shuts, and it isn't nouse twying any more. "

The Mother-Superior brought a gaily-coloured little china cup of that rareluxury, new milk, and bent over him, saying cheerfully, as she held it tothe colourless mouth, "Not always, Hammy. Taste this. "

"No, fank you. " He turned his head away, tightly shutting his eyes. 

"It's real milk, Hammy, not condensed, " the soft voice pleaded. He shookhis head again, and knit his childish brows. 

"I saided it wasn't no use. My tummy just shuts. "

"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 ofthe uneven pulse. The Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. TheMother-Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing andsight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, and a crisp, decided voice said:

"Then Hammy's tummy is a mutinous soldier, and must be taught to obey theWord of Command. "

"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 fairhair, not glistening and silky now, but dull and unkempt, that fell overthe broad, darkly-veined waxen forehead. --"It is Mister Colonel.... And Ihaven'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 sowant to tell!" The hidden arm came from under the coverings "It's aboutmy Winocewus, vis beast what you gived me, ever so long ago. " He displayedthe treasured toy. 

"You shall tell me about Berta and the rhinoceros when I have told yousomething. 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'shealth?"

"Why, nothing in Heaven or upon earth will make any difference at thisjuncture, " returned Saxham, speaking in the same tone, "unless a CertainPerson can be roused to the necessary pitch of desiring food. Toadminister it forcibly would, in my opinion, be worse than useless. "

The Certain Person was lifted out of his cramped quarters by vigorous butgentle 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 ofmedal-ribbon that were sewn on the left breast of the khâki jacket, hebegan to talk, holding the limp little body with a kind, sustaining arm. 

"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 yoursoldiers. And it's mutiny if they refuse to carry out the Officer'sorders. And you're the Officer, you know. "

"Am I ve Officer, weally?"

Interest was quickening in the heavy eyes. 

"You're the Officer. And I'm the Colonel in Command. And when I say toyou, 'Lieutenant Hammy, drink this milk, ' why, you'll pass along the orderto Sergeant Brain and Corporal Eyes and Privates Hands and Mouth andTummy, and see that they carry it out. Where is----? Ah! thank you, ma'am;that was what I wanted. "

For the Mother-Superior had deftly put the gaily-coloured little china cupinto the lean, brown, outstretched hand, and, seeing what was coming, theLieutenant shed an unsoldierly tear and raised a feeble whimper. 

"Please, no, Mister Colonel! My tummy----"

"Private Tummy is a shirker, who doesn't want to do his duty. But it'syour duty as his Commanding Officer to show him that it must be done. Andthat's the game we're playing. You'll employ tact before you have recourseto stringent measures. Not make the fellow dogged or furious by angrywords or threats. When it's necessary to shoot, shoot straight. But, first, you give the order. "

"Oughtn't ve officer to have a wevolver?"

"Wait a second, and you shall have mine. "

The deft fingers twirled out and pocketed the cartridge-packed chambers, and put the harmless weapon into the childish hands. 

"It's veway heavy, " Hammy said dolefully, as the shining Army Smith &Wesson wobbled in his feeble clutches, then wavered and sank ingloriouslydown upon his lap. 

"If you had drunk the milk you might have found it lighter. Suppose we trynow. Attention!"

--"'Tention!" piped Hammy. 

"Hands, catch hold. Mouth, do your duty. And if Private Tummy disobeys, he'll have to take the consequences. "

"Please, what are ve confequences?"

"Drink down the milk, and then I'll tell you. "

The gay little china cup was slowly emptied. Hammy blinked eyes that werealready growing sleepy, and sucked the moustache of white from hisupper-lip with relish, remarking:

"I dwinked it all, and my tummy never shut. Now tell me what are veconfequences?"

"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 mincedmeat, and you'll live to see the Relief marching into Gueldersdorp onefine morning, boy. "

"Unless I get deaded like Berta. And that weminds me what I wanted to tellso bad. " The lips began to quiver, and the eyes brimmed. "Soldiers mustn'tcwy, must vey?"

"Not while there's work to be done, Hammy. Would you like to wait now andtell me another day?" For the little round head was nodding against therow of medal-ribbons stitched on the khâki jacket, and the big round eyeskept open with difficulty. 

"No, please. It's about the beasts--my beasts what you gived me. Winocewus, an' Lion, an' Tawantula, an' Tsetse, an' Black Bee--just likea weal Bee, only not so sharp at ve end.... Don't you wemember, MisterColonel?"

"Of course I remember. The toy beasts I brought down from Rhodesia andgave to a little boy. "

"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 tookedsuch care wof for fear of bweaking his horn--an' Berta was such a littlefing, vat--vat----"

"That you wouldn't let her play with Rhinoceros. And you think it wasn'tquite fair, or quite kind, and now you're sorry?"

Hammy sniffed dolorously, and two large tears splashed down. 

"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, normy dinner, nor nothing--and at last my tummy shut, and I didn't wantnuffing more. "

The Mother-Superior and the Colonel Commanding exchanged a glance over thelittle round head before the man's voice answered the child. 

"That wouldn't have made Bertha happy. She might have thought you a littlecoward for running away and leaving your mother and all the other ladiesbehind, shut up in Gueldersdorp. For an officer and a gentleman must go onliving and fighting while he has anything left to fight for, Hammy. Remember that. "

"Yes, Mister Colonel.... " The drowsy eyes closed, the little head noddedoff into slumber against the kind, strong shoulder. The Mother-Superiorwheeled the perambulator near, and the Colonel, rising, laid the nowsoundly-sleeping boy back upon his cushions. 

"What mysteries children are!" he said, as the Mother replaced the lightcovering, screening the sleeping face with tender, careful hands from sunand flies. "Imagine remorse for an act of selfishness leading a boy of sixto such a determination--and a normal, healthy boy, if ever I met one. "

"He has been living for some time under abnormal conditions, " the Mothersaid softly, looking at the quiet rise and fall of the light shawlcovering. "He will take a turn for the better now. "

"And forget his trouble and its cause. " The Chief's observant glance hadlighted on Rhinoceros, lying upside down in a little clump of floweringsword-grass, into which he had been whisked as the Mother shook out thelittle shawl. "I think, " he said, and pocketed the horned one, "that thisgentleman had better go into the fire. "

"Perhaps. And yet it would be a continual reminder to conquer selfishnessin great as in little things. " She smiled, meeting the keen hazel eyeswith her great pure grey ones. 

"If you think so, I will leave it. "

"I will not take the responsibility of advising you to. You have alreadyshown more tact than I can lay claim to in dealing with children. And thathas been the business of the greater part of my life, remember. "

He looked at her full, and said:

"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 bitterlyreproached myself for, I beg you to believe me! a gross and lamentableblunder as regards a woman----"

She put out her fine hand with a quick, protesting gesture, as if shewould have begged him to say no more. He went on:

"She is a lady whom you intimately know, and whom I have, like everyoneelse in this town, learned to esteem highly and to profoundly respect. Forthe terrible shock and the deep pain I must have given that lady inbreaking to her ignorantly and hastily the news of the death of a friendwho was dear to me, and infinitely dearer to--another with whom she isacquainted--I humbly entreat her pardon. "

He had not known her eyes were of so deep a purple-grey as to be nearlyblack. Perhaps they seemed so by contrast with the absolute whiteness ofher face. The eyes winced, and the mouth contracted as she entreated, voicelessly:

"I beg you, say no more!"

"I have but little more to say, " he returned. "I will only add that if atany time you wished in kindness to 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. Orto--anyone who is dear to you, and in whom for the sake of oldassociations and old ties I might even otherwise be deeply interested. "

He had spoken with intention, and now his deliberate glance dropped to thelevel of the strip of sandy shore beside the river, where the giantConvent kettle boiled upon a disproportionately little fire, and SisterHilda-Antony presided in the Reverend Mother's place at thetrestle-supported tray where the Britannia-metal teapot brooded, as doththe large domestic hen, over an immense family of cups and saucers. Busyas ants, the other Sisters hurried backwards and forwards, attending tothe wants of their guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or withdue precautions taken against puff-adders and tarantulas, lay upon thegrass of the high bank in the shade of the fern and bush. And as vivid bycontrast with their black-robed, white-wimpled figures, as a slenderdragon-fly among a bevy of homely gnats, the graceful, prettily-cladfigure of Lynette showed, as she shared the Sister's hospitable labours. 

She had her share of girlish vanity. She had put on a plain tailor-madeskirt of fine dark green cloth, short enough to show the dainty littlebrown buckled shoes that she specially affected, and a thin white silkshirt and knitted croquet-jacket of white wool. A scarlet leather beltgirt her slender waist, and a silver châtelaine jingled a gay tune at herside, and about her white slim throat was a band of scarlet velvet, andher 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. Andthe hair under the green-plumed hat gleamed bronze in the sunshine thatfiltered through the thick foliage of the blue gum-trees that grew oneither bank of the river, and stretched their branches out to clasp acrossthe stream, like hands. She was too pale and too thin, and her eyes werefeverishly bright, but she looked happy, carrying her tray of steamingteacups in spite of Beauvayse's anxious attempts to relieve her of theburden, and the Chaplain's diffident entreaties that she should entrustit to him. Their voices, mingled in gay argument, were borne by a warmpuff of spice-scented air to the ears of the elder people, standing in theshade of the trees at the summit of the high, sloping bank, with the rustyperambulator between them. 

"I thank you, " the Mother said, in her full, round tones. The eyes ofboth, travelling back from that delicate, slight young figure, had metonce more. "Believing that you speak in perfect sincerity, I thank you, and shall not hesitate to call upon you, should the need arise. "

Her voice was very calm, and her discreet glance told nothing. He wouldnot have been a man of woman born if he had not been a little piqued. Hesaid, with an air of changing the subject:

"Miss Mildare strikes me as a very beautiful girl. "

"Is she not?"

Her eyes grew tender, and her whole face was irradiated by the splendourof her smile. She looked down the bushed and grass-covered slope to whereLynette, all the guests supplied, had thrown herself down to rest on astone under a tree. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was fleckedwith sunshine as she leaned her head back with a little air of lassitudeand weariness against the scarred bark. But in spite of weariness she wassmiling and content. The rest was delicious, the peaceful quietenchanting, the air sweet after the fetid odours of the town; and it wassweet, too, whenever she glanced at the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, who waslying at her feet, or Beauvayse, who fanned her alternately with a leafybranch and the tea-tray, to behold her own beauty reflected in theadmiring eyes of two young and handsome men. 

The Mother had never seen her thus before. She had been absent from thescenes of Lynette's little social triumphs. Now a great tenderness swelledin her bosom, and a great pity gripped her throat, and wrung the bitter, slow tears into her eyes. 

"She is happy, " she whispered in her heart. "She has forgotten just for alittle while, and her kingdom of womanhood is hers, unspoiled, and thepresent 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. "

His voice beside her made her start. He was still speaking of Lynette. 

"Her type is unusual--amongst Colonials. "

She returned: "She was born in the Colony, I believe. "

"Ah! but of British parents, surely? I once knew an English lady, " he wentsteadily on, "whom she resembles strikingly. "

Her eyes were inscrutable, and her lips were folded close. 

"She was the wife of the Colonel commanding my old Regiment--Sir GeorgeHawting. A grand old warrior, and something of a martinet. He married athird daughter of the Duke of Runcorn--Lady Lucy Briddwater. "

She said without the betraying flicker of an eyelash: "I have seen thelady named.... "

He said, with a prick of self-reproach for having again turned the barbthat festered in her bosom:

"Lady Lucy was a very lovely creature, and a very impulsive one. She livednot happily, and she died tragically. "

There was the ring of steel and the coldness of ice in the Mother's words:

"She met the fate she chose. "

He thought, looking at her:

"What a woman this is! How silent, how resourceful, how calm, howimmeasurably deep! And why does she think of me as an opponent?" He wenton, stung by that quiet marshalling of all her forces against him:

"Unhappily, the fate we choose for ourselves sometimes involves others. The death of that unhappy woman and the father of her child left aninnocent creature at the mercy of sordid, evil hands. "

"In evil hands, indeed, judging by--what you have told me. "

"I would give much to be able to trace her. " There was a heavy linebetween his eyebrows, and his eyes were stern and sad. "It would besomething to know what had become of her, even if she were dead, or worsethan dead. "

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 nippedher lips together, and controlled her eyes. And still her silence angeredand defied him. He went on:

"If I seem to you to harp painfully upon this subject, pardon me. You havemy word that, without encouragement from you, I will not refer to it afterto-day. " His close-clipped brown moustache was straightened by the tensionof the muscles of his mouth. He passed his palm over it, and continuedspeaking without moving a muscle of his face or taking his searching eyesfrom the Mother's. 

"The name of the young lady who is so fortunate as to be your ward, andeven more, the striking likeness I spoke of just now, have led me to hopethat my dead friend's daughter was led by a Hand, in whose Divine guidanceI humbly believe, to find the very shelter he would have chosen for her. Pray answer, acquitting me in your own mind of persistence orinquisitiveness. Am I right or wrong?"

She might have been a statue of black marble, with wimple and face andhands of alabaster, she stood so breathlessly still. Her heart did notseem to beat; her blood was stagnant in her veins. She felt no faintness. Her observation was unnaturally keen, her mind dazzlingly clear; her brainseemed to work with twice its ordinary power. She thought. He glanced atthe shabby watch he wore upon the steel lip-strap, and waited. She wasaware of the action, though she never turned her head. She was weighingthe question, to tell or not to tell? Her soul hung poised like a seagullin the momentary shelter of a giant wave-crest. Another moment, and thebattle with the raging gale and the driving halberds of the sleet wouldbegin again. 

She looked again towards Lynette, and in an instant her purposecrystallised, her line of action was made clear. She saw a little bunch ofwax-belled white heath fall from the girl's scarlet belt in the act ofrising. She saw Beauvayse snatch it greedily from the grass and read theglance that passed between the golden-hazel and the green-grey eyes, andunderstood with a great pang of jealous mother-pain that she was no longerfirst in her beloved's heart. Then came a throb of unselfish joy at theknowledge that Richard's girl had come into her kingdom, that the divineright and heritage and crown of Womanhood were hers at last. 

Were hers? Not yet, but might be hers, if every clue that led back to thattavern upon the veld could be broken or tangled in such wise that thekeenest and most subtle seeker should be baffled and lost. It all layclear before her now, the manipulation of events, the deft rearrangementof actual fact that might best be used to this end. As her clear brainplanned, her bleeding heart trailed wings in the dust, seeking to lead thesearcher away from the hidden nest, and now her motherhood and her prideand all the diplomacy acquired in her long years of rule rose up in armsto meet him. 

They were not of equal height. Her great, changeful eyes, purple-grey now, dropped to encounter his. She regarded him quietly, and said:

"No one of your wide experience needs to be reminded that resemblancesbetween persons who are not allied by blood exist, and are strangelymisleading. But since you have conveyed to me in unmistakable terms yourconviction that Miss Mildare is the daughter of--a mutual friend who borethat surname--is actually identified in your idea with that most unhappychild who was left orphaned some seventeen years ago--at--I think you saida veld hotel in the Orange Free State?"

He bowed assent, biting the short hairs of his moustache in vexation andembarrassment. 

"Hardly an hotel--a wretched shanty of the usual corrugated-iron andmud-wall type, in the cattle-grazing country between Driepoort andKroonfontein. And--it seems my fate to be continually bringing ourconversation back to a--most unhappy and painful theme. "

"I acquit you of the intention to pain or wound. When I have finished whatI have to say, we will revert to the subject no more. It will be buriedbetween us for ever, though the memory of the Dead live in our pardoningand loving thoughts, and in our prayers. "

The vivid colour that had flamed in her cheeks had sunk and left themmarble. The humid mist of tears that veiled her eyes gave them a wonderfulbeauty. 

He answered her:

"Your thoughts could not be otherwise than noble and generous. Prayers aspure as yours could not be unheard. "

"No prayers are unheard, though all are not granted. "

She made the slight gesture with her large, beautiful hand that putunnecessary speech from her, and let the hand drop again by her side. Herbosom rose and fell quietly with her even speaking. None could haveguessed the tumult within, and the doubts and convictions andapprehensions that battled together, and the religious fears and scruplesthat rent and tore her suffering soul. But for the sake of Richard'sdaughter she rallied her grand forces, and nerved herself to carry out herhated task. 

"I will tell you how I came to be interested in the young lady who is nowmy adopted daughter, and whom you know as Lynette Mildare. At the end ofthe winter of 18-- the Reverend Mother of our Convent died, and I was sentup from the Mother-House at Natal, by order of the Bishop, to take herplace as Superior. Two Sisters came with me. It was the usual slow journeyof many weeks. The wet season had begun. Perhaps that was why we did notencounter many other waggons on the way. But one party of emigrants of thelabouring class--we never really learned where bound--trekked on beforeus, and generally outspanned within sight. There were three roughEnglishmen--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 cryingoften, and one of the Kaffir voor-loopers of their two waggons told a Capeboy who was in our service that the old Baas would kill the little whitething 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 noopportunity of wreaking his malice on her. "

"I understand, " he said. She went on:

"We would have helped the child if we could have reached her; but it wasnot possible. If she had run away and taken refuge with us, and the menhad followed her, I do not think we should have given her up for anythreats of theirs, or even for threats carried out in action. "

"I know you never would have. "

She made the slight gesture with her hand that put all inferred praiseaside. 

"The waggons of the emigrants were no longer in sight, one morning whenwe inspanned. They had headed south as if for the Diamond Mines, and wewere trekking west.... " There was a slight hesitation, and her lashesflickered, then she took up her story. "Perhaps we were a hundred andfifty miles from Gueldersdorp, perhaps more, when we came upon what webelieved 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 beencruelly beaten with the sjambok--she bears the scars of that terribleill-usage to-day.... We judged that she had fainted and fallen from one ofthe emigrants' trek-waggons. Months afterwards, when her wounds werehealed"--her steady lips quivered slightly--"and she had recovered from anattack 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--froma man who----"

"This distresses you. I am grieved----"

He noted the sickness of horror in her face, and the starting ofinnumerable little shining points of moisture on her white, broad foreheadand about her lips. She drew out her handkerchief and wiped them away witha hand that shook a little. 

"I have very little more to say. She was quite crushed and broken bycruelty and ill-usage. No native child could have been more ignorant--shecould not even tell us her name when we asked it. She probably had neverhad one. And Father Wix, who is our Convent Chaplain, and has charge ofthe Catholic Mission here, baptised her at my instance, giving her twonames that were dear to me in that old life that I left behind so longago. She is Lynette Mildare.... Are you surprised that in seven years ayoung creature so neglected should have become what you see? Those powerswere inherent in her which training can but develop. We found in her greatnatural capacity, an intelligence keen and quick, a taste naturallyrefined, a sweet and gentle disposition, a pure and loving heart----" Hervoice broke. Her eyes were blinded by a sudden rush of tears. She movedher hand as though to say: "There is no more to tell. "

"You shut the door upon my hope, " he said. 

It was to her veritably as though the gates of her own deed clashedbehind her with the closing of the sentence. For she had stated theabsolute truth, and yet left much untold. She saw disappointment andreluctant conviction in his face, coupled with an immense faith in herthat stung her to an agony of shame and self-reproach. What had shesuppressed?

Nothing, but that the waggons of the emigrants had turned south forDiamond Town a fortnight before the finding of that lost lamb upon theveld. And her scrupulous habit of truth, her crystal honour, her keen, clear judgment no less than her rigorous habit of self-examination, toldher that the half-truth was no better than falsehood, and that she, Christ's Bride and Mary's Daughter, had deliberately deceived this man. 

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 maternalduty to shield that dearest one from shame? She steeled herself with thatas he bared his head before her. 

"Ma'am, you have more than honoured me with your confidence, and I neednot say that it is sacred in my eyes, and shall be kept inviolate. And forthe rest----"

XL

"Reverend Mother, " sounded from below. 

"They are calling us, " she said, as though awakened from a dream. 

"May I take you down?"

He offered his arm with deference, and she touching it lightly, they wentdown together. Lynette came to them laughing, a cup in either hand, heraides-de-camp following with plates that held the siege apology for breadand butter and familiar-looking cubes of something.... 

"Thank you, Miss Mildare. What have you here, Beau? Cake, upon my word! Oris it a delusion born of long and painful abstinence from any form ofpastry?"

"Cake it is, sir, and thundering good cake, " proclaimed Beauvayse. "Madefrom Sister Tobias's special siege recipe, without candied peel or plumsor carraways, or any of the other what-do-you-call-'ems that go into theordinary article. Go in and win, sir. I've had three whacks. Haven't I, Miss Mildare?"

He spoke with the infectious enjoyment of a schoolboy, and Lynette'slaugh, sweet and gay as a thrush's sudden trill of melody, answered:

"I think you have had four. "

She flushed as she met the Colonel's eyes, reading in them masculineappreciation of her delicate, vivid beauty, and put her freed hand intothe lean palm he held out, saying, with a shy, sweet smile that lifted onecorner of the sensitive mouth higher than the other:

"I didn't come to say How do you do? before, because I saw you were busytalking 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 morecomfortable. Colonel, we're all under your command. Won't you please orderthe Mother to sit down and rest? She will be so tired to-morrow. Dearest, you know you will. "

She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. The end of the thinblack veil, that was shabby now, and had darns in many places, was waftedacross her face by a vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and shekissed it, bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked ather, and then turned away. Saxham, in default of any excuse for lingeringnear her, went back to Lady Hannah, who had been diligently mining in himwith the pick and shovel of Our Special Correspondent, and getting nothingout, and sat himself doggedly upon a stone beside her. 

"That is a sweet girl. " She nibbled bannock, sparsely margarined, andsipped her sugarless, milkless tea, sitting on a little bushy knoll, warranted free from puff-adders and tarantulas. Saxham answered stiffly:

"Many people here seem to be under--the same impression. "

"Don't you share it? Don't you think her sweet?"

"I have seen young ladies who were--less deserving of the adjective. "

Lady Hannah jangled a triumphant laugh. She wore the tailored garb theaverage Englishwoman looks best in, at home and abroad, an alpaca coatand skirt of cool grey; what the American belle terms a "shirt-waist" withpearl studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. Hersmall face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were as round and as brightas a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk was full of glitter and vivacity. 

"'Praise from Dr. Saxham. ' ... If I were a man, " she declared, "I should_perdre la boule_ over that girl. I don't wonder where she gets her lovelymanners from, with such a model of grace and good breeding as Biddy Bawnebefore her eyes, but I do ask how she came by that type of beauty? AndBiddy----"

"Biddy?" repeated Saxham, at a loss. 

Her laugh shrilled out. 

"I forgot. She is the Reverend Mother-Superior of the Convent to all ofyou. But I was at school with her, and I can't forget she used to beBiddy. She was one of the great girls, and I was a sprat of ten, but shecondescended to let me adore her, and I did, like everybody else. To beadored is her _métier_. The Sisters swear by her, and that girl worshipsthe ground under her feet. If I had a daughter I should like her to lookat 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_hadn't at her age--nineteen or twenty, if I am any guesser. What she willbe at thirty, if she don't go off! That little Greek head, and all thosewaves of rusty-coloured hair. Quite wonderful! And her hands and feet andskin--marvellous! And that small-boned slenderness of build that is soperfectly enchanting. Paquin would delight to dress her. And"--herjangling laugh rang out, waking echoes from hollow places--"it looks--doyou know?--it looks as though he would get the chance. "

"Why does it?" demanded Saxham, turning his square face full upon LadyHannah, and lowering his heavy brows. 

"Mercy upon us, Doctor, do you want me to be definite and literal? Can'tyou do as I do, and use your eyes?" Her own round, sparkling black oneswere full of provocation. "They look as if they could see rather fartherinto 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 find out that most of thethings Society regards as indispensable can be done without. I'm beginningto revert to Primitive Simplicity. Isn't there a prehistoric _flair_ aboutmost of us? If there isn't, there ought to be. For what are we fromweek-end to week-end but grimy male and female Troglodytes, eating mincedhorse and fried locusts in underground burrows by the light of paraffinlamps! Another peach.... Thanks. Can't you see those dear things, theSisters, gathering them by lantern-light, and being shelled by Brounckers'German gunners. Wretches! Beasts! Horrors!"

"I hope, " said Saxham, with rather heavy irony, "that you acquainted themwith your opinion of them while you had the opportunity?"

She gaily flipped him with the loose tan gloves she had drawn off. Herbangles clashed, and her eyes snapped sparks under the brim of her hat, whose feathers nodded and swished, and her jangling laugh brought moreechoes from the high banks. 

"Ha, ha, ha! Do you know, Doctor, I call that thoroughly nasty--to remindme, on such a fine day too, of the Frightful Fiasco. When my own husbandhasn't ventured to breathe a hint even.... Do you know, when he rode outto meet me with the Escort, all he said was, 'Hullo, old lady; is thatyou? The Chief wants to know if you'll peck with us at six, and I told himI thought you'd be agreeable. ' And when we met, _he_---- Why dohandkerchiefs invariably hide when people want to sneeze behind them?" Shefound the ridiculous little square of filmy embroidered cambric, and blewher thin little nose, and furtively whisked away a tear-drop. "He nevermoved a muscle; Just shook hands in his kind, hearty way, and began totell the news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped torub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been. " She gulped. "I could have putmy head down on the tablecloth and cried gallons"--she blew her noseagain--"knowing 'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, that flabbySlabberts creature counted for something in the game, or Brounckerswouldn't have wanted him. And Captain--my Captain!... " She threw asparkling eye-dart tipped with remorseful brine at the spare, soldierlyfigure and the lean, purposeful face. "If you were to say to me thisminute, '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!"

Saxham's blue eyes were kind. Here was a fellow hero-worshipper. 

"I believe you would do it, and--that he believes it too. "

She tapped him on the sleeve with the long cherry-wood stick of her whitegreen-lined umbrella. 

"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 toenjoy being bullied, tremendously, I remember. We're made like that. " Hershrill laugh came again. "To _sauter à pieds joints_ on people who areused to being deferred to, or made much of, is the best way to commandtheir cordial gratitude and sincere esteem, isn't it? Don't all yousuccessful professional men know that?"

"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 whowere my patients. It is natural and reasonable that when a man falls outof the race, he should be forgotten--at least, I hold it so. "

"You have a patient not very far away who lauds you to the skies. " LadyHannah indicated the slender pepper-and-salt clad figure of JuliusFraithorn with the cherry-wood umbrella-stick. "You know his father, theBishop 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 ofwhite fur glued on here and there for whiskers and eyebrows. We met himwith Mrs. Fraithorn at the Hôtel Schwert at Appenbad one June. Do you knowAppenbad? Views divine: such miles of eye-flight over the Lake ofConstance and the Rhine Valley. To quote Bingo, who suffered hideouslyfrom the whey-cure, every prospect pleases, and only man is bile--andwoman, 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. Can he havedone so, or am I hashing things? Do set my mind at rest?"

Saxham said with stiffness:

"It would be possible that the Bishop would remember me. I operated on himfor the removal of the appendix in 18--"

"If you had taken away his Ritualistic prejudices at the same time, youwould have made his wife a happy woman. Her soul yearns for incense andvestments, candles, and acolytes, and most of all for her boy. Well, shewill thank you herself for him one day, Doctor. " The little dry hand, glittering with magnificent rings, touched Saxham's gently. "In themeantime let a woman who hasn't got a son shake hands with you for her. "

"You make too much of that affair. " Saxham took the offered hand. Itpressed his kindly, and the little lady went on:

"You're still a prophet in your own country, you know, though it pleasesyou to make yourself out a--a kind of medical Rip Van Winkle. In June lastyear--when I did not guess that I should ever know you--I heard a womansay: 'If Owen had been here, the child wouldn't have died. ' And the womanwas your sister-in-law, Mrs. David Saxham. "

Saxham's blue eyes shot her a steely look. The wings of his mobilenostrils quivered as he drew quickened breath. He waited, with hisobstinate under-lip thrust out, for the rest. If he did not fully graspthe real and genuine kindliness that prompted the little woman, at leasthe did her the justice of not shutting her up as an impudent chatterbox. She went on, a little nervously:

"I don't think I ever mentioned to you before that I had met your brotherand his wife? She is still a very attractive person, but--it is not thetype to wear well, and the boy's death cut them both up terribly. "

"There was a boy--who died?"

"In the spring of last year. Of--meningitis, I think his mother said, andshe declared over and over that if you had been there, you would havesaved him. "

"At least, I should have done my best. "

She had turned her eyes away in telling him, or she would have seen therelief in his face. He understood now why his mother's trustees hadprompted the solicitors' advertisement. He was his nephew's heir, underthe late Mrs. Saxham's will. Seven thousand in Consols and Home Rails, andthe little freehold property in North Wales, that brought in, when thehouse was let, about one hundred and fifty pounds a year, counted aswealth to a man who had possessed nothing. He lifted his square head andthrew back his heavy shoulders with the air of one from whom a heavyburden has been taken. His vivid eyes lightened, his heavy brows smoothedout their puckers, and the tense lines about his lips relaxed. His ownwords came back to him:

"The Past is done with. Why should not the Future be fair?"

He knew, as he looked towards Lynette Mildare, who personified the Futurefor him, and his mood changed. He had loved her without hope. Now a faintgrey began to show in the blackness of his mental horizon. It might be afalse dawn, but what a lightening of the heavy heart--what a leap of thestagnant blood--answered to it! He was no longer penniless. He had neverloved money or thirsted for estate, but the thought of that sum of seventhousand pounds solidly invested, and the house that stood in its walledgarden on the cliffs at Herion, looking out on the wild, tumblinggrey-white waters of Nantavon Bay, was dear to him. 

Plas Bendigaid had been a Convent once. Its grey, stone-tiled, steep-pitched roof and solid walls of massive stone had sheltered hismother'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 fanciesthe rein, as Lady Hannah chattered beside him. He dreamed of that Futurethat might be fair, even as he filled up the little lady's pauses with"Yes's" and "No's. "

Love at first sight. He had laughed the possibility to scorn, in otherdays, 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. 

A rival! He laughed silently, grimly, remembering the resentful, jealousimpulse that had prompted his interruption when the boyish, handsome faceof Beauvayse had leaned so near to hers, and the blush that dyed herwhite-rose cheeks had answered, no doubt, to some hackneyed, stereotyped, garrison compliment. 

He had seen them together since then: once crossing the veld from theWomen's Laager on foot, in the company of the Mother-Superior; once herebeside the river, under the chaperonage of all the Sisters; once in theMarket Square, and always the sight had roused in him the same intolerableresentment and gnawing pain that rankled in him now as he watched them. 

What was Beauvayse whispering, so close to the delicate little ear thatnestled under the red-brown hair-waves? Something that set his grey-greeneyes gleaming dangerously, and lifted the wings of the fine nostrils, andopened the boldly-curved mouth in audacious laughter, under the shortgolden hairs of the clipped moustache. Somehow that laughter stung Saxham. His muscular hand gripped the old hunting-crop that he carried by habiteven when he did not ride, and his black brows were thunderous as hevainly tried to listen to the little woman who chattered beside him. 

"Look about you, " she bade him, putting up her tortoiseshell-rimmedeyeglasses as though she were in a picture-gallery or at a theatre. "Wouldn't the ordinary unimaginative person suppose that Love would be thelast flower to blossom in the soil of this battered little bit ofdebatable ground? But we know better. So does Miss Wiercke, the Germanoculist's daughter, and so does that tallow-candle-locked young man whoplays the harmonium at the Catholic Church. And that other pretty girl--Idon't know her name--who used to keep the book-registers at the PublicLibrary. 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 timeafter Monday morning will make quite a commonplace wedding into somethingtremendously romantic. But you don't even pretend to look when you'retold. Aha!" she cried; "I've caught you. You were watching another pair oflovers--the couple I kept for the last. "

"Not at all, " said Saxham, inexpressibly wearied by the voluble littlewoman's discourse. Ignoring the conventional disclaimer, Lady Hannah wenton:

"They're in the early stage--the First Act of the dear old play. Pretty towatch, isn't it? Though it makes one feel chilly and grown old, asBrowning or somebody says. Only the other day one was tipping that boy atEton, and he looking such a Fourth of June darling as you never saw, gotup in duck trousers and a braided blue jacket, and a straw hat with awreath of white and crimson Banksia roses round it for the Procession ofBoats. And now"--she sighed drolly--"he's a long-legged Lieutenant ofHussars, with a lady-killing reputation. Though, in the present instance, I'm ready to back my opinion that the biter is fairly bit. What regimentsof women will tear their hair--real or the other thing--when Beau becomesa Benedick. "

Saxham saw red, but he gave no sign. She turned down her little thumb witha twinkle of triumph. 

"_Habet!_ And I'm not sorry he has got it badly. His _leitmotif_ in themusic-play has been 'See the Conquering Hero' up to now; one isn't sorryto see one's sex avenged. But one _is_ sorry for Mary Fraithorn's boy. "She indicated the Chaplain with a twirl of her eyeglasses. "She used tovisit him with the Sisters when he was ill, and, of course, he has beenbowled over. But _il n'a pas un radis_, unless the Bishop comes round, anddon't you think that little Greek head of hers is aware that a great dealof money goes with the Foltlebarre title, and that the family diamondswould suit it to a marvel?"

Saxham said gratingly, and with a hostile look:

"Do you infer that Miss Mildare is vain and mercenary?"

"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 giftof charm, and that the young men are attracted to her as naturally asdrones to a honey-pot. Also, that, if she's wise, she will dispose of herhoney to the best advantage. " Her beady bright eyes snapped suddenly atSaxham, and her small face broke up into laughter. "Ha, ha, ha! Why, I dobelieve ... " She screamed at him triumphantly. "You, too! You'vesuccumbed. She carries your scalp at her pretty waist with the rest of'em. How perfectly delightful!"

Possibly Saxham had always been a bear, as her little ladyship had stated, but the last five years had certainly scraped off whatever social veneerhad adhered to his manners. The power of facial self-control, the commontact that would have carried things off with a laugh and a jest, were hisno longer, if he had ever possessed them. He got upon his feet and stoodbefore the woman whose six ounces less of brain-matter had beencounterbalanced by so large an allowance of intuition, dumbly furious withher, and so unspeakably savage with himself for not being able to hide hisanger and annoyance that, as he stood before her with his hulkingshoulders hunched and his square, black head sullenly lowered, and hiseyes blazing under their heavy brows, he suggested to Lady Hannah's nimblewit and travelled experience the undeniable analogy between a chaffed andirate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudypaper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequentexplosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentallysaid, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when it became none. 

"Do, please, forgive me!... What you must think of me!... " she begancontritely. 

Repentance gave place to resentment. Saxham, without even an abruptinclination of the head, had swung about and left her. She saw theheavily-shouldered, muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a littleway down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small, neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with adecidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he was knee-deep in thereeds of the north shore; now he was climbing the bank. A black-and-whitecrow flew up heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of theoaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of finches and linnets rose as thecovert of tree-fern and cactus and tall grass, knitted with thorny-stemmedcreeper, received him and swallowed him. She saw by the shaking of thefoliage that he turned up the stream, and then no more of him. Feather-headed idiot that she had been! Inconsiderate wretch! How, inHeaven's name, after reminding the man of the perfidy of that underbred_passée_ little person with the passion for French novels and sulphonaltabloids, who had thrown the Doctor over, years before, in favour of hisbrother the Dragoon--how could she have charged him with being a victim tothe charms of another young woman? If Mrs. David's desertion rankledstill, as no doubt it did, there being no accounting for masculine taste, he would, of course, resent the accusation almost as an insult. Men weresuch Conservatives in love. And, besides, she had just been telling himabout the child. She loathed herself for having perpetrated such ablunder. Saxham had murdered politeness by quitting her abruptly; buthadn't she deserved the snub? She deserved snubbing. She would go, for thehealth of her soul, and talk to dearest Biddy, who always made you feeleven smaller than you had thought yourself before. 

She stood up, shaking the sand-grams and grass-burrs from her dress andthe folds of the white umbrella. It was nearing six o'clock. The heat waslessening, and the pale turquoise sky overhead was flecked and dappledwith little puffs of rosy cloud, bulking in size and deepening in colourto the westward, where their upper edges were pure gold. And the riverlooked like a stream of liquid honey, upon which giant rose-leaves hadbeen scattered, and a breeze was stirring in the grasses and among theleaves. The Sisters were busily repacking their baskets. Little MissWiercke, and her lank-haired young organist, sat under a bush, gazing ineach 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 wasteaching her Cornish mining-engineer to wash up cups and saucers in a tinbasin--a process which resulted in the entanglement of fingers ofdifferent sexes, and made Sister Tobias pause over her task of wipingcrockery to shake her head and laugh. 

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 whoscreamed coquettishly as the mining-engineer amorously squeezed her wetfingers under the soapsuds was shortly to be represented in theCornishman's memory by another white cross in the Cemetery, a trunk fullof pathetic feminine fripperies, and a wedding-ring that had been wornbarely two months. But they did not know this, and they were happy. Weshould never love or laugh if we knew. 

Two other people had passed along the path that ran by the margin of thesand and reed-patches, and were lost to sight. Lady Hannah glanced towardsthe Mother-Superior, who was being gracious to Captain Bingo and theChaplain, and hoped Biddy would not miss the owner of the little Greekhead and the enchanting willowy figure quite yet. 

Nuns were frightfully scrupulous and gimlet-eyed where their charges wereconcerned. And certainly, if young people never got away together without_qu'il ne vous en déplaise!_ there would be fewer engagements. And Biddymust know that it was a Heaven-sent chance for the girl. 

The Foltlebarres had sat too long on thorns to grumble at Beau's marryinga girl without a _dot_, who was not only lovely enough to set Societyscreaming over her, but modest and a lady. Up to the present his tendencyhad been to exalt Beauty above Breed, and personal attractiveness abovemoral immaculateness. 

As in the most recent case of that taking but extremely terrible littleperson with the toothy, photographic smile, Miss Lessie Lavigne of theJollity Theatre, the affair with whom might be counted, it was to behoped, as the last furrow of a heavy sowing of wild oats. As this would bea match _d'égal à égal_--in point of blood and education, at anyrate--certainly the Foltlebarres would have reason to bless their stars. 

Somebody came over to her just then, saying:

"Bingo seems in excellent spirits. "

She looked, a little apprehensively, across to where the Mother Superiorand the wistful-eyed, pepper-and-salt-clad Chaplain were patientlylistening to the recital of one of Bingo's stock anecdotes. 

"What is he telling the Reverend Mother?" Her tone was anxious. "I do hopenot that story about the unwashed Boer and the cake of soap!"

"Don't be alarmed. It's a recent and completely harmless anecdote aboutthe despatch-runner from Diamond Town who got in this morning. "

Her eyes sparkled. 

"Really ... ? And with news worth having?"

"Mr. Casey might be disposed to think so. "

"Who is Mr. Casey?"

"That's a question nobody can answer satisfactorily. "

"But is the intelligence absolutely useless to anybody who doesn't happento be Mr. Casey?" she insisted. 

"Not unless they happened to be deeply interested in Mrs. Casey. "

"There is a Mrs. Casey, then?"

"So says the man who travelled two hundred miles to bring her letters andthe message that she is, as Mr. Micawber would put it, _in statu quo_. "

"I understand. " The bright black eyes were compassionate. "She has writtento her husband--she doesn't know that he has been killed----"

"Nor do we. As far as we can ascertain, the garrison has never included aCasey. "

"Then you think----"

"I think"--he glanced aside as a stentorian bellow of laughter reachedthem--"that, judging by what I hear, Bingo has got to the soapy story. "

She frowned anxiously. 

"Bingo ought to remember that nuns aren't ordinary women. I shall have togo and gag him. " She took a dubious step. 

"Why? The Reverend Mother does not seem at all shocked, and Fraithorn isevidently amused. " He added, as Bingo's rapturous enjoyment of his ownanecdote reached the stamping and eye-mopping stage: "And undoubtedlyBingo is happy. "

"He has got out of hand lately. One can't keep a husband in a proper stateof subjection who may be brought home to one a corpse at any hour of theday. " Her laugh jangled harshly, and broke in the middle. "The soil ofGueldersdorp being so uncommonly favourable just now to the production ofweeds of the widow's description. "

"It grows other things. " His eyes were very kind. "Brave, helpful, unselfish women, for instance. "

"There is one!"

She indicated the tall, black-robed figure of the Mother with a quickgesture of her little jewelled hand. 

"And here is another. " He touched her sleeve lightly with a finger-tip. 

"Brave.... Helpful. " Her voice was choky. "Do you think I shall everforget the hindrance I have been to you? Didn't I lose you your Boer spy?"

"Granted you did. " His moustache curved cheerfully at the corners. "Butthat's Ancient History, and look what you brought back!"

"A unit of the despised majority who is thoroughly convinced of her ownsuperfluousness. Hannah Wrynche, with the conceit so completely taken outof her that she feels, say, like a deflated balloon; Hannah Wrynche, whobelieved herself born to be a War Correspondent, and has come down toscribbling gossipy paragraphs for a little siege newspaper printed in adamp cellar. "

He laughed. 

"Collectors will pay fancy prices for copies of that same little siegenewspaper, at auctions yet to be. "

"I've thought of that, " she confessed. "But, oh! I could make it so muchmore spicy if you'd only give me a freer hand. "

His hazel eyes had a smile in them. "I know you think me an editorialmartinet. "

"You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything that's interesting. "

"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control. "

"The Reading Public adore personalities and puerilities. "

"They can go to the _Daily Whale_ for them, then. "

"Isn't that rather a personal remark?"

"Let me say that if you are occasionally personal, you are never, underany circumstances, anything but clever. "

"Thank you. But, oh! the difference between what I am and what I aspiredto be!"

"And, ah! the difference between what I have done and what I meant to do!"he said. 

Her black eyes flashed. "You have never really felt it. Achievement withyou has never hit below the mark. You, of all men living, are least fittedto enter into the rueful regrets and dismal disillusions of a HannahWrynche. "

"Hannah Wrynche, who is content to do a woman's work and fill a woman'splace; Hannah Wrynche, who has atoned for a moment of ambitious--shall Isay imprudence?--splendidly and nobly, has no reason to be rueful orregretful. Don't shake your head. Do you think I don't know what you aredoing, day after day, to help and cheer those poor fellows at theConvalescent Hospital?"

Her eyes were full of tears. "You make too much of my poor efforts. Youunderestimate the effect of praise from you. "

"I said very little in the last cipher despatch that got through toColonel Rickson at Malamye, but what I did say was very much to thepurpose, believe me. "

She gasped, staring at him with circular eyes of incredulity. "You'vementioned--me--in your despatches. ME?"

"Just so!" he said, and left her groping for the ridiculous littlegossamer handkerchief to dry the tears of pride and gratitude that weretumbling down her cheeks. 

XLI

"Clang--clang--clang!"

A man and a girl came back out of Paradise when the Catholic church-bellrang the Angelus. The girl's sweet flushed face had paled at the firstthree 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 shadowof the great boulder, and bent her lovely head, Beauvayse watching herlips as they moved, soundlessly repeating the Angelic Salutation:

"_Ave María, grátia plena; Dóminus tecum! Benedícta tu in muliéribus, etbenedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. _"

The wonderful simplicity of the Chosen One's reply followed, and theannouncement of the Unspeakable Mystery. The little prayer followed, andthe rapid signing with the Cross, and she dropped her slight hand from herbosom, and turned her eyes back upon his. 

"You remind me of my mother, " he told her. "She is Catholic, you know. "

"And not you?"

"We fellows, my brothers Levestre and Daltham and myself, were brought upas pillars of the Established Church. " His sleepy, grey-green eyestwinkled, his white teeth showed in the laugh. "The girls are of mymother's faith. It was a family agreement. Are you quite sure you havecome down to earth again? Because there's such an awful lot I want to sayto you that I don't know where to begin. "

Though his mouth laughed, his eyes had wistful shadows under them. He hadtossed aside his Service felt when she had taken off her hat, and thesunshine, piercing the thick foliage overhead, dappled the scaly trunks ofthe blue-gum trees, and dripped gold upon the red-brown head and thecrisp-waved golden one. 

"I am here. I am listening. "

She stood before him with meekly drooping eyelids, feeling his ardent gazelike a palpable weight, under which her knees trembled and her whole bodyswayed. The great boulder rose upon her left hand like a beneficentpresence. Delicate ferns and ice-plants sprang from its chinks andcrannies. The long fronds of the sparaxis bowed at her small, brown-shodfeet, some bearing seed-pods, others rows of pink bells, or yellow--afairy chime. In the damper hollows iris bloomed, and the gold and scarletsword-flowers stood in martial ranks, and gaily-plumaged finches weresidling 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 andthe 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 aromaticleaves and the honeyed perfume of a great climbing trumpet-flower made theair languorous with sweetness. 

He answered her now. 

"You are here, and I am here. And for me that means everything. And I feelthat I want nothing more, and, still, such a tremendous lot besides. "

He breathed as though he had been running, and his sharply-cut nostrilsquivered. His white teeth gleamed under the clipped golden moustache. 

Perhaps it made his charm the more definite and irresistible that inthese days of storm, and stress, and hardship and peril, his handsome facewas never without its gay, confident smile. His tall, athletic figure, inthe neat workmanlike Service dress that suited him so well, leaned towardsher eagerly. He kept his clear eyes on her face, with the directsimplicity 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 fromhim, came to her mingled with the scent of the crushed spice-leaves andthe perfume of the waxen-belled heaths and the breath of the gianttrumpet-flower. She was turning dizzy. She could scarcely stand. 

"I--I will sit down, " she murmured, and he beat the grasses at the foot ofthe great granite slab and prodded in chinks and crannies for snakes andtarantulas; and when she sank down with a faint sigh of relief, threwhimself at her feet with a careless, powerful grace, and lay there lookingup at her, worshipping the golden lights that gleamed through the thickdark eyelashes, and the sweet shadows under them, and her little pointedchin. 

The lace-trimmed frills of a white cambric petticoat peeped under the hemof her green cloth skirt; below there was a glimpse of slender, crossedankles in brown silk hose, and the little brown shoes laced with wide silkties. She drew off one of her thin, loose tan gloves, and smoothed back astraying lock above her ear, and flushed, hearing him murmur in hiscaressing voice:

"Take off the other glove, too. "

She was well aware how beautiful her hands were--small, and slender, andivory-white, and exquisitely modelled, with little babyish nicks at thewrists, 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 knewit to be charming; but she ingenuously admired her slender feet, that werequite as pretty without the silk stockings and little brown shoes, and thedelicate hands she bared for him now. He looked at them with ardentlonging, and said:

"How dear of you to do that, because I asked you! And do you realise thatwe're here together alone, you and me, for the first time? Nobody saw ussteal away but Sister Cleophée, and I've a notion she wouldn't tell, blessed old soul!"

Her eyes smiled. 

"You would not call the Mother that?"

"No more than I would Queen Victoria or the Princess of Wales. And asnubbing from the Religious would be rather worse, on the whole, than asnubbing from the Royalty. "

"The Princess never snubbed you?"

"Didn't she? Tremendously, once. Do you want to hear about it? She hadsent away her brougham while the giddy old Dean and Chapter were showingher round St. Paul's. And--acting as Extra Equerry--I'd got instructionsto call her a hack conveyance, and--being young and downy, I'd pickedH. R. H. The glossiest growler on the rank. But you've been bred and bornhere. You don't even know what a growler is. And in five years' time therewon't be one left in London. "

"Perhaps I shall see London before the five years are over. And a growleris a four-wheeled cab. You see, I'm not so ignorant.... "

"You sweetest!" he burst out passionately. "I wish I knew all that youcould teach me!"

He might have frightened her if he had stretched out his arms to clasp herthen. 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 inwith thirsty eyes. And that something emanating from him enveloped her, delicately and yet forcefully, constraining and urging and compelling herto meet his gaze. And the perfume of the great honeyed flower came to herin waves of sweetness, growing in strength, and the monotonous buzzing ofthe black honey-bees mingled with the drumming of the crickets, and theflowing of the river, and the beating of her heart, and the rushing of herblood. She leaned her fair head back against the great boulder, and saidin a voice that shook a little:

"Tell me about the snubbing. "

"It was High Art. Three words--and I knew I'd behaved like a bounder ofthe worst--I had to go back and get the other cab, with a broken frontwindow and a cabby.... " He chuckled. "I've met red noses enough but youcould have seen that chap's glowing through the thickest fog that everblanketed Ludgate Hill and wrapped the Strand in greasy mystery. Don'tmove, please!... There's a ray of sunshine touching your head that makesyour hair look the colour of a chestnut when the prickly green hull firstcracks to let it out. Or ... There's a rose grows on the pergola at homeat Foltlebarre Royal, with a coppery sheen on the young leaves.... Iwondered why I kept thinking of it as I looked at you. But I know now. Andyour skin is creamy white like the flower. Oh, if I could only gather thegirl-rose and carry it home to the others!"

She was pink as the loveliest La France now. 

"You ought not to talk to me in that way. "

"Don't I know it?" Beauvayse groaned out. He turned over upon his face inthe grass, and lay quite still. A shuddering sigh heaved the strong youngshoulders from time to time, and his hands clenched and tore at thegrasses, "Don't I know it? Lynette, Lynette!"

She longed to touch the close-cropped golden head. Unseen by him, shestretched out a hand timidly and drew it back again, unsatisfied. 

"Lynette, Lynette! I'm paying at this moment for every rotten act ofheadlong folly I've ever committed in my life, and you're making me!" Hecaught 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 usedherself to offer where she most loved. To find yourself being worshippedinstead of worshipping is an experience. She touched the golden head now, as the Mother had often touched her own. He caught the hand. 

"No, no!" She grew deadly pale, and shivered. "Please let me go. I--I didnot----"

She tried to release the hand. He raised himself, and she started at thewarm, quivering pressure of his beautiful mouth, scarcely shaded by theyoung, wheat-golden moustache, upon her cool, sweet flesh. She snatchedher hand away with a faint cry, and sprang to her feet, and her cheeksblazed anew as she turned to go. 

"You want to leave me? You would punish me like that--just for a kissedhand?"

He barred her way, taller than herself, though he stood upon the slopinglower level. She had learned always to be true in thought and speech. 

"I--don't--like to be touched. " She said it without looking at him. 

"You put your hand upon my head. Why did you do it if you hate me so?"

"I--don't hate you!"

"I love you! My rose, my dove, my star, my joy! Queen of all the girlsthat ever I saw or dreamed of, say that you could love me back again!"

"I--must not. "

Her bosom heaved. He could see the delicate white throat vibrating withthe tumultuous beating of her heart. 

"Why not? Nobody has told you anything against me? Nobody has said to youthat I have no right to love you?" he demanded. 

"No. "

"Look at me. "

The golden hazel, dark-lashed eyes she shyly turned to his were full ofexquisite, melting tenderness. Her lips parted to speak, and closed again. He leaned towards her--hung over her, his own lips irresistibly attractedto those sweetest ones.... 

"Lord Beauvayse----" she began, and stopped. 

He begged:

"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: 'Mybeloved, the way's clear. Be my wife to-morrow!'"

His tone was masterful. His ardent eyes thrilled her. She murmured:

"Beauvayse ... !"

She swayed to him, as a young palm sways before a breeze, and he caughther in his strenuous, young embrace, and held her firmly against him. Herold terrors wakened, and dreadful, unforgettable things stirred in thedarkness, where they had lain hidden, and lifted hydra-heads. She criedout 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 upon the opposite bank, and Lynette realised that Beauvayse's arms nolonger held her. She leaned back against the boulder, panting andtrembling, and saw Beauvayse's revolver glitter in his steady hand, assomething came crashing down through the tangled jungle upon the edge ofthe farther shore, and a heavily-built man in khâki pushed through theshoulder-high growth of reeds, and leaped upon a rock that had a swirl ofwater round it. It was Saxham. 

"Miss Mildare!" called the strong, vibrating voice. 

She faltered:

"It--it is Dr. Saxham. "

"And what the devil does Dr. Saxham want?" was written in Beauvayse'sangry face. But he called out as he lowered his revolver-hand:

"You've had rather an escape of getting shot, Saxham, do you know? Youmight have been a Boer or a buffalo. Better be more careful next time, ifyou're anxious to avert accidents. "

Saxham was a little like the buffalo as he lowered his head and surveyedthe alert, virile young figure and the insolent, high-bred face from underominously scowling brows. He made no answer; only laid one finger upon thebutt of his own revolver, and the slight action fanned Beauvayse'sannoyance 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. 

"Miss Mildare, I was walking on one of the native paths that have beenmade in the bush there"--he indicated the bank behind him--"when I heardyou cry out. I am here, at your service, to offer you any help orprotection that is in my power to give. "

Lynette looked at him vaguely. Beauvayse, crimson to the crisp waves uponhis forehead and the white collar-line above the edge of his jacket, answered for her. 

"Miss Mildare does not require any help or protection other than what I amprivileged to place at her disposal. You had better go on with your walk, Doctor. You know the old adage about two being company?"

He laughed, but his voice had quivered with fury, and the hand that heldthe revolver shook too. And his eyes seemed colourless as water againstthe furious crimson of his face. Still ignoring him, Saxham said, his ownsquare, pale face turned full upon Lynette, and his vivid blue eyesconstraining her:

"Miss Mildare, I am at your commands. Tell me to cross the river and takeyou back to the ladies of the Convent, or order me to continue my walk. Inwhich case I shall understand that the familiarities of Lord Beauvayse arenot unwelcome to you. "

"By God ... ! You----"

Beauvayse choked, then suddenly remembered where and how to strike. But hewaited, and Saxham waited, and still she did not speak. 

"Am I to go or stay? Kindly answer, Miss Mildare!"

Beauvayse's eyes were on her. He said to her below his breath:

"Tell him to go!"

She stammered:

"Th--thank you. But--I--I--had rather you went on. "

Beauvayse saw his opportunity, and added, with an intolerable smile:

"My 'familiarities, ' as you are pleased to term them, being moreacceptable to a lady than the attentions of the Dop Doctor. "

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 buttof his revolver, and his eyes blazed murder. But with a frightful efforthe controlled himself, lifted his hat slightly to Lynette, turned andleaped back to the stone he had quitted, strode through the reed-beds, andplunged back into the tangled boscage. That he did not continue his walk, but turned back towards the town, was plain, for his retreat could betraced by the shaking of the thick bush and the high grasses through whichhe forced his way. It did him good to battle even with these vegetableforces, and the hooked thorns that tore his clothes and rent his fleshleft nothing like the traces that those few words of dismissal, spoken bya girl's voice, and the hateful taunt that had followed, had left upon hisheart. 

It was over. Over--over, the brief, sweet season of hope. Nothing was leftnow but his loyalty to the friend who believed in him. If that man hadnot stood between Saxham and his despair, Gueldersdorp would have got backher Dop Doctor that night. For the Hospital stores included a cherishedcase or two of Martell and Kinahan, and all these things were underSaxham's hand. 

The heavy footsteps crashed out of hearing. The startled finches settleddown again, except at that point, higher up on the opposite bank, to whichBeauvayse's attention had first been directed. There the little birds yethovered like a cloud of butterflies, but, practised scout as Beauvaysewas, he paid no heed to their distress. She had declared for him. TheDoctor's discomfiture enhanced his triumph. Gad! how like an angry buffalothe fellow was! The sort of beast who would put down his head and chargeat a stone wall as confidently as at a mud one. It was a confoundednuisance that he had seen what he had seen. But a man who had eventuallycut so poor a figure, had been snubbed so thoroughly and completely, mightprefer to hold his tongue. And if he did not, here in Gueldersdorp, whileno letters got through, while no news filtered in from the big hummingworld outside, it would be possible to carry things bravely off for a longtime. He had told Bingo, to be sure, about--about Lessie. But Bingo, though he might bluster and barge about dishonourable conduct, would nevergive 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?

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 thatface of hers. He watched it, breathless with the realisation of hisdreams, his hopes, his desires. The prize was his. Every other basermemory was drowning within him. It seemed to him that her purity, as hebathed in it, washed him clean of stain. He forgot everything but thesecret that those sweet eyes told at last. 

"My beloved! I'm not good enough to tie your blessed little shoes, andyet 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 getshot to-morrow. "

It was characteristic of him that his brave, gay mouth should laugh evenin the utterance of the appeal that melted her. She gave a little sob, andraised her sweet face to his, flushing loveliest rosy red. She lifted herslender arms and laid them about his strong young throat, and kissed himvery quietly and purely. He had meant to snatch her to his leaping heartand cover her with eager, passionate caresses. But the strong impulse wasquelled. He said, almost with a sob:

"Is this your promise? Does this mean that you belong to me?"

Her breath caressed his cheek as she whispered:

"Yes. "

He was thrilled and intoxicated and tortured at once to know himself herchosen. Ah! why was he not free? Why had Chance and Luck and Fate forcedhim to play a part like this?

"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 tounderstand what Love means.... Why, Lynette darling! what is the matter?What have I said that hurt?"

Her arms had fallen from about his neck. She shrank away from him. He drewback, shocked into silence by the sudden, dreadful change in her. Hereyes, curiously dulled and faded, looked at Beauvayse as though they sawnot him, but another man, through him and behind him. Her face was peakedand pinched; her supple, youthful figure contracted and bent like that ofa woman withered by some wasting sickness, her dainty garments seemed tolose their colouring and their freshness, and hang on her, by some strangeillusion 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 bythe inexorable worm. For she was remembering the tavern on the veld. Shewas recalling what had been--realising what must henceforth be, in itsfullest meaning. She shuddered, and her half-open mouth drew in the airin gasps, and the blankness of her stare appalled him. He called in alarm:

"Lynette dearest! what is the matter? Why do you look at me like that?Lynette!"

She did not answer. She shook like a leaf in the wind, and stared throughhim and beyond him into the Past. That was all. There was a rustling ofleaves and branches higher on the bank, and the sound of thick woollendraperies trailing through grass. The bush on the edge of the clearedspace that was about the great boulder was parted by a white, strong handand 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. Hereyes, sweeping past Beauvayse, fastened on the drooping, stricken figureof 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. 

"What is the reason of--this? What has passed between you to account forit? Has your mother's son no sense of honour, sir?"

The icy tone of contempt stung him to risk the leap. He drew himself tohis splendid height, and answered, his brave young eyes boldly meeting thestern eyes that questioned him:

"Ma'am, I am sorry that you should think me capable of dishonourableconduct. The fact is, that I have just asked Miss Mildare to be my wife. And she consents. "

A spasm passed over the pale face. So easily they leave us whom we havereared 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 herblack nun's robe over the pierced mother-heart, and said calmly, holdingout her hand to him:

"You will forgive me if I was unjust, knowing that she is dear to me. Andnow I shall ask you to leave us. Please tell the Sisters"--from habit sheglanced at her worn gold watch--"we shall join them in ten minutes' time. "

He bowed, and lifted his smasher hat from the grass, and took up theLee-Metford carbine he had been carrying and had laid aside, and went toLynette and took her passive hand, and bent over it and kissed it. Itdropped by her side lifelessly when he released it. Her face was a maskvoid of life. He looked towards the Mother in distress. Her white handimperiously motioned him away. He expostulated:

"Is it safe for two ladies, ma'am, so far from the town, withoutprotection? Natives or white loafers may be hanging about. "

"If you desire it, you can remain within hearing of a call. But go now. "

He went, lightly striding down the sandy path between the reed-beds on theforeshore. She watched the tall, athletic figure until it swung round abend and was lost to sight. 

Then she went to the girl and touched her. And at the touch Lynettedropped as though she had been shot, and lay among the trodden grasses andthe flaunting cowslips face downwards. A low, incessant moaning came fromthe muffled mouth. Her hands were knotted in her hair. She writhed like acrushed snake, and all of her slender neck and face that could be seen andthe little ears that her clutching, twining fingers sometimes bared andsometimes covered were one burning, shameful red. 

"Lynette! My dear one!" The Mother, wrung and torn with a very agony oftenderness and pity, knelt beside her, and began with gentle strength tountwine those clutching hands from the girl's hair. She prisoned both inone of hers, and passed the other arm beneath the slender rigid body, andlifted it up and held it in her strong embrace, silently until a moan, more articulate than the rest, voiced:

"Mother!"

"It is Mother. She holds you; she will not let you go. "

The head lay helplessly upon her bosom. She felt the rigor lessen. Themoaning ceased, and the tortured heart began to leap and strain againsther own, as though some invisible hand lashed it with an unseen thong. 

There were no tears. Only those moans and the leaping of the heart thatshook her whole body. And it seemed to the Mother that her own heart wepttears of blood. The hour had come at last, as always she had known itwould. The love of a man had wakened the woman in Lynette. She knew nowthe full value of the lost heritage, and realised the glory of the jewelthat had been snatched by the brutal hand of a thief. Ah, Lord! the pityof it!

The pity of it! She, the stainless one, could have stripped off her ownwhite robe of virgin purity, had it been possible, to clothe the despoiledyoung shoulders of Richard's daughter, cowering prostrate under her burdenof guiltless shame, crushed by the terrible knowledge that ruinedinnocence must always pay the penalty, whether the destroyer is punishedor goes free. 

The penalty! Suppose at the price of a lie from lips that had never liedyet it could be evaded? The Mother's face contracted with a spasm ofmental pain. A dull flush mounted to her temples, and died out in olivepaleness; her lips folded closely, and her black brows frowned over thesombre grey fires burning in their hollow caves. She rebuked a sinner atthat moment, and the culprit was herself. 

She, the just mistress and wise ruler of so many Sisters in the religiousprofession; she, so slow to judge and condemn others, was unsparing inausterity towards herself. She had always recognised her greatest weaknessin her love for this adopted daughter that might have been her own ifRichard Mildare had not played traitor. She had never once yielded to theclinging of those slight hands about her heart, but she had exactedforfeit from herself, and rigorously. So much for excess of partiality, somuch for over-consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, somuch more of late for the keen mother-jealousy that had quickened in herto anguish at the thought that another would one day usurp her undividedthrone, and claim and take the lion's share of the love that had been allhers. Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. She wasall the more exacting towards herself. What right had a nun to be so boundby an earthly tie? It was defrauding her Saviour and her Spouse to lovewith such excess of maternal passion the child He had given. Yet she lovedon. 

She reviewed all her shortcomings, even while the girl's head layhelplessly against her, and the scalding tears that had at last begun togush from those shut, quivering eyelids wetted her breast. She hadesteemed and valued perfect candour above all things. And yet of whatconcealments had she not been guilty in the shielding of this dearesthead?

She had deceived, for Richard's child, Richard's friend, in the deftinterweaving of fragmentary truths into a whole plausible fabric. She knewthat, if necessary, she would deceive again, trailing her wings, fluttering on before, as the golden plover lures the footsteps of thestranger from her nest. 

Perhaps you call her scruples fantastic, her sense of guilt morbid. Eventhe lay Catholic can with difficulty comprehend and enter fully into themental constitution of the Religious. This was a nun, to whom a blur uponthe crystal of the soul kept pure, like the virginal body, for the dailyreception of the Consecrated Host, meant defilement, outrage, insult, toher Master and her Lord. 

And she had always known, it seemed to her, that this terrible hour wouldcome. When the two young figures had moved away together into the greengloom of the trees, she had felt a premonitory chill that streamed overher whole body like icy water, paralysing and numbing her strength. Shehad read their secret in their faces, unconscious of her scrutiny, andwatched them out of sight, praying, as only such a mother can, that itmight not be as she feared. This was her beloved's great hour; she wouldnot have stretched out a finger to delay its coming, --she who had knownLove, and could not forget! It might be that in this splendid boy, who wasas 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 wouldnot be a blasphemy, like the young nun's snowy robe and veil. And yet--andyet, in Lynette's place she knew that she could never have looked into theface of a rosy, smiling, wedded Future without seeing under the myrtle andorange-blossom garland the leering satyr-face of the Past. 

Was it wise that another should be made to share that vision? She put thatquestion to herself, looking with great agonised, unseeing eyes over thehead that lay upon her bosom, out across the slowly moving water, stainedwith amber from ironstone beds through which it had wound its way, tingedwith ruddy crimson from the sunset. For the sky, from the western horizonto the zenith, and from thence to the serried peaks and frowning bastionsof purple-black cloud that lowered in the north, was all orange-crimsonnow, and the moon, then at the ending of her second quarter, swung like apale lamp of electrum at the eastward corner of the flaming tent. 

"Was it wise?" She seemed to hear her own voice echoing back out of thepast. And it said:

"The only just claim to your entire confidence in all that concerns yourpast life will rest in the hands of the man who may one day be yourhusband. "

The perfume of the great white trumpet-flower came to her in gusts ofintensified, sickening, loathsome sweetness. She glanced round and saw iton her right, clasping in its luxuriant embrace a slender young bush thatit was killing. The thick, juicy green stems and succulent green leaves, the greedily embracing tendrils and great fleshy-white, hanging flowersrevolted her. The creeper seemed the symbolisation of Lust battening uponInnocence. 

Other like images crowded thick and fast upon her. From a mossy cranny ina stone a hairy tarantula leaped upon a little lizard that sunned itself, not thinking Death so near. A lightning-quick pounce of the bloated thingwith the fierce, bright eyes and the relentless, greedy claws, and thelittle reptile vanished. She shuddered, thinking of its fate. 

The blue gums and oaks that fringed the river gorge and the bushes thatgrew about were ragged and torn with shell and shrapnel-ball. Chips andflinders had been knocked by the same forces from the boulders and therocks. Amongst the flowers near her shone something bright. It was anunexploded Maxim-shell, a pretty little messenger of Death, girt withbright copper bands and gaily painted. And a ninety-four-pound projectile, exploded, had scattered the shore with its fragments, and doubtless theriver-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 androcks and flowers of the Eden in which every daughter of Eve owns theright to walk, if only once in a whole lifetime, would be marred andbroken, scorched and spoiled, like these. 

Purblind that she had been. What claim had any man, seeing what the livesof men are, to this pitiful sacrifice of reticence, this rending of theveil of merciful, wise secrecy from an innocent young head? None. Not theshadow of a claim. She tossed away her former scruples. They sailed fromher on the faint hot breeze lightly as thistledown. And now thetear-blurred face was lifted from her bosom, and the voice, hoarse andweak and trembling, appealed:

"Mother, you are not angry? I never meant to be underhand, or tohide--anything from you. "

"No, " she said, hiding the pang it gave her to realise how much had beenconcealed between the lines that she had read so often. "You did not meanto. " The trembling voice went on:

"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:

"He has told me what has passed. He said that he had asked you to marryhim, and you had--agreed. " The bitterness of her wounded love was in hertone. 

"I--had forgotten, " she panted, "_that_--until one little careless thinghe 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 enfoldingarms. "Mother, Mother, must I tell him?"

A great wave of pity surged out from the deep mother-heart that throbbedagainst her own. The deep, melodious voice answered with one word:

"No. "

Amazement sat on the uplifted, woebegone face of the girl. The sorrowfuleyes questioned the Mother's incredulously. 

"You mean that you----"

She folded the slight figure to her. Her sorrowful eyes, under their greatjetty arches, looked out like stars through a night of storm. Her greyishpallor seemed a thin veil of ashes covering incandescent furnace-fires. She rose up, lifting the slender figure. She said, looking calmly in theface:

"I mean that you are not to tell him. Upon your obedience to me I chargeyou not to tell him. Upon your love for me I command you--never to tellhim! Kiss me, and dry these dear eyes. Put up your hair; a coil isloosened. He is waiting for us! Come!"

XLII

The tall, soldierly young figure was standing motionless and stiff, asthough on guard, on the river-shore beyond the bend. Whateverapprehensions, whatever regrets, whatever fears may have warred withinBeauvayse, whatever consciousness may have been his of having taken anirrevocable step, bound to bring disgrace and reproach, sorrow, andrepentance upon the innocent as upon the guilty, he showed no sign as hecame to meet them, and lifted the Service felt from his golden head, andheld out an eager hand for Lynette's. She gave it shyly, and with thethrill of contact Beauvayse's last scruple fled. He turned his beautiful, flushed face and shining eyes upon the Mother, and asked with gravesimplicity:

"Ma'am, is not this mine?"

"First tell me, do you know that there is nothing in it?"

Her stern eyes searched his. He laughed and said, as he kissed the slenderhand:

"It holds everything for me!"

"Another question. Are you aware that my ward is a Catholic?"

"My wife will be of my mother's faith. I would not have her of any other. "

The Mother gave Beauvayse her own hand then, that was marred by many deedsof charity, but still beautiful. 

Those two, linked together for a moment in their mutual love of her, madefor Lynette a picture never to be forgotten. Then Beauvayse said, in theboyish tone that made the man irresistible:

"You have made me awfully happy!"

"Make her happy, " the Mother answered him, with a tremble in her rich, melancholy tones, "and I ask no more. "

Her own heart was bleeding, but she drew her black draperies over thewound with a resolute hand. Was not here a Heaven-sent answer to all herprayers 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 lookedback at Lady Biddy Bawne out of her toilet-glass, upon the night of thatAscot Cup-Day, when Richard had asked her to be his wife. But Richard'seyes had never worn the look of Beauvayse's. Richard's hand had never sotrembled, 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 wherethe tea-making had been. 

The Sisters, basket and trestle-laden, were already in the act ofdeparture. The black circle of the dead fire marked where the giant kettlehad sung its hospitable song. Little Miss Wiercke and her long-lockedorganist, the young lady from the Free Library and her mining-engineer, had strolled away townwards, whispering, and arm-in-arm; the Mayor's wifewas laying the dust with tears of joy as she trudged back to the Women'sLaager beside a husband who pushed a perambulator containing a small boy, who had waked up hungry and wanted supper; the Colonel and Captain BingoWrynche had been summoned back to Staff Headquarters, and a pensive littleblack-eyed lady in tailor-made alpaca and a big grey hat, who was sittingon a tree-stump knocking red ants out of her white umbrella, as thosethree figures moved out of the shadows of the trees, jumped up and hurriedto meet them, prattling:

"I couldn't go without saying a word.... You have been so beset withpeople all the afternoon that I never got a chance to put my oar in. DearReverend Mother, everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will everpreach again about Providence spreading a table in the wilderness withoutmy coming back in memory to to-day. May we walk back together? I am a massof ants, and mosquito-bitten to a degree, but I don't think I ever enjoyedmyself so much. No, Lord Beauvayse, the path is narrow, and I have aperfect dread of puff-adders. Please go on before us with Miss Mildare. No!... Oh, what ... ? You haven't ... ?"

It was then that Lady Hannah dropped the white umbrella and clapped herhands 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 joyand anguish of the pierced maternal heart shining in the Mother's greatgrey eyes, had conveyed to the exultant little woman that the plant thathad thriven upon the arid soil of Gueldersdorp had borne a perfect blossomwith a heart of ruby red. 

"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 keptsecret!" She clasped her tiny hands with exaggerated entreaty. "For thesake of the _Gueldersdorp Siege Gazette_, and its seven hundredsubscribers all perishing for news, tell me I may let the cat out of thebag in my next Weekly Column. Only say that people may know!"

As her black eyes snapped at Beauvayse, and her tiny hands dramaticallyentreated, he had an instant of hesitation, palpable to one who stood by. In an instant he pulled himself together. 

"The whole world may know, as far as I am concerned. "

"It is best, " said the Mother's soft, melodious voice, "that our world, atleast, should know. "

"And when--oh, when Is It To Be?" begged Lady Hannah. 

Confound the woman! Why could she not let well alone? A sullen angerburned in Beauvayse as he said, and not in the tone of the ardent lover:

"As soon as we can possibly manage it. "

The Mother's voice said, coldly and clearly:

"I do not approve of long engagements. If the marriage takes place, itmust be soon. "

With the consciousness of one who is impelled to take a desperate leap, Beauvayse found himself saying:

"It cannot be too soon. "

"Then ... Before the Relief?" cried Lady Hannah, and Beauvayse heardhimself answering:

"If Lynette agrees?"

The rapture of submission in her look was intoxicating. He reached out hishand and laid it lightly on her shoulder. Then, without another word, theywent on together, and the tall, soldierly figure in brown, and theslender shape in the green skirt and little white coat, with the daintyplumed hat crowning the squirrel-coloured hair, were seen in darkeningrelief against the flaming orange of the sky. 

"A Wedding under Fire. Bridal Ceremony in a Beleaguered City, " murmuredthe enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at herchâtelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imaginedherself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down todescribe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. Shebabbled as her quick, bird-like gait carried her along beside the tall, stately-moving figure in the black habit:

"Dear Bridget ... I may call you that for the sake of old days?"

"If you like. "

"This must make you very happy. Society mothers of marriageable daughterswill tear their transformations from their heads, and dance upon them indespair, when they hear that Beau _s'est rangé_. But that I don't holdforth to worldly ears I would enlarge upon the immense social advantagesof such a union for that dear child. "

"Of course, I am aware that it is an excellent match. "

Were her ears so unworldly? The phrase rankled in her conscience like athorn. And in what respect were those Society mothers less managing thanthe nun? she asked herself. Could any of them have been more astute, moreeager, more bent on hooking the desirable _parti_ for their girls than shehad shown herself just now? And was this, again, an unworldly voicewhispering to her that the publicity ensured by a paragraph penned by thisgossip-loving little lady would fix him even more securely, bind him morestrongly, make it even less possible for him to retreat, should he desireit--by burning his boats behind him, so that he had no alternative but togo on? She sickened with loathing of herself. But for her there was noretreat either. Here Lady Hannah helped her unawares. With a side-glanceat the noble face beside her, pale olive-hued, worn and faded beyond theage of the woman by her great labours and her greater griefs, the archedblack eyebrows sprinkled of late with grey, the eyelids thin over themobile eyeballs, purpled with lack of sleep and secret, bitter weeping, the close-folded, deeply cut, eloquent mouth withered like ajaponica-bloom that lingers on in frost, the strong, salient chin framedin the snowy, starched _guimpe_, she faltered:

"You don't shy at the notion of the par--the announcement in the _SiegeGazette_, I mean?... "

"Upon the contrary, I approve of it, " said the Mother, and walked on veryfast, for the bells of the Catholic Church were ringing for Benediction. 

"Is it good-night, or may I come in?" Beauvayse whispered to Lynette inthe porch. 

She dipped her slender fingers in the little holy-water font beside thedoor, and held them out to him. 

"Come in, " she answered, and held white, wet fingers out to him. Hetouched them with a puzzled smile. 

"Am I to----? Ah, I remember!"

Their eyes met, and the golden radiance in hers passed into his blood. Hebared his high, fair head as she made the sign of the Cross, and followedher in and up the nave as Father Wix, in purple Lenten stole over thesnowy cotta starched and ironed by Sister Tobias's capable hands, began tointone the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. The Sisters were already intheir places--a double row of black-draped figures, the Mother at the endof the first row, Lady Hannah in the chair beside her, where Lynette hadalways sat until now. It was not without a pang that the one saw her placeusurped by a stranger; it was piercing pain to the other to feel thestrange presence at her side. But something had already come between thesetwo, dividing them. Something invisible, impalpable as air, butnevertheless thrusting them apart with a force that might not be resisted. 

Only the elder of the two as yet knew clearly what it meant. The youngerwas too dizzy with her first heady draught from the cup of joy, held toher lips by the strong, beautifully-shaped brown hand that rested onBeauvayse'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. 

Rosary ended, the thin, kind-eyed little elderly priest preached, takingfor the text of his discourse the Introit from the Office ofQuinquagesima. 

"_Esto mihi in Deum protectorum, et in locum refugii, ut salvum mefacias. _"

"Be Thou unto me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge, to save me:for Thou art my strength.... "

Then the _O Salutaris_ was sung, and followed by the Litany of the HolyName. 

The church was crowded. A Catholic congregation is always devout, butthese people, well-dressed or ill-dressed, prosperous or poor, pale-facedand hollow-eyed every one, joined in the office with passion. Theresponses came like the beating of one wave of human anguish upon the Rockof Ages. 

"_Have mercy on us!_"

Hungry, they cried to One Who had hungered. Sinking with weariness, theyappealed to One Who had known labours, faintings, agonies, anddesolations. 

"_Have mercy on us!_"

He had drunk of Death for them, had been buried and had risen again. 

Death was all about them. They could hear the beating of his wings, couldsee the red sweep of his blood-wet, dripping scythe. And they prayed asthey had never prayed before these things befell:

"_Have mercy on us!_"

They sang the _Tantum Ergo_, and the cloud of incense rose from the censerin the priest's hand. Then, at the thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and thefirst white gleam of the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of theAltar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden wind sweeps over a fieldof ripened corn. Only one or two remained unmoved, one of these a man'shead, young and crisply-waved, and golden.... 

And then came the orderly crowding to the door, and they were outsideunder the great violet sky, throbbing with splendid stars, breathing thetainted air that came from the laagers and the trenches. But oh, was thereever a sweeter night, following upon a sweeter day?

Beauvayse's hand found and pressed Lynette's. She looked up and saw hiseyes shining in the starlight. He looked down and saw the Convent lilytransformed into a very rose of womanhood. 

"I am on duty at Staff Bombproof South to-night. What I would give to befree to walk home with you!"

Lady Hannah's jangling laugh came in. 

"Haven't you had the whole day? Greedy, unconscionable young man! Saygood-night to her, and be off and get some food into you. Don't say youhaven't any appetite. I am hungry enough to be interested even in mincedmule and spatch-cocked locusts, after all this. Good-night! I must kissyou again, child! I hope you don't mind?"

Lynette gave her cheek, asking:

"Where is the Mother?"

The voice of Sister Tobias answered out of the purplish darkness:

"She has gone on with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister Cleophée, dearie. Sheis going to sleep at the Convent with them, and I was to give you herlove, and say good-night. "

Say good-night! On this of all nights was Lynette to be dismissed withouteven the Mother's kiss? She gave back Beauvayse's parting hand-pressurealmost mechanically. Then she heard his voice, close at her ear, saypantingly:

"No one will see.... Please, dearest!"

She turned her head, and their lips met under cover of the pansy-coloureddarkness.... Then he was gone with Lady Hannah, and Lynette was walkinghome to the Convent bombproof, explaining to the astonished Sisters thatthe Mother knew; that the Mother approved of her engagement to LordBeauvayse; and that they would probably be married very soon. Before theRelief ... 

"'Before the Relief. ' Well, no one but Our Lord knows when that's tobe.... And so you're very happy, are you, dearie?"

Even as she gave her shy assent in answer to Sister Tobias's question, itscommonplace homeliness, like the feeling of the thick dust and thescattered débris underfoot, brought back Lynette for a moment out of thegolden, diamond-dusted, pearl-gemmed dream-world in which she had beenstraying, to wonder, Was she really very happy?

She asked herself the question sitting with the Sisters at their littlescanty supper. She asked herself as she knelt with them in prayer, as shelay in bed, the Mother's place vacant beside her--Was she happy after all?

She had drunk sweetness, but there had been a tang of something in the cupthat cloyed the palate and sickened the soul. She had learned the love ofman, and in a measure it had cast out fear, that had been her earlierlesson. 

To be held and taken and made his completely, what must it be like? Sheglowed in the darkness at the thought. And then the recollection of aruthless strength that had rent away the veil of innocence from awoman-child surged back upon her. 

Just think. Suppose you laid your hand in the warm, strong clasp thatthrilled delight to every nerve, and set your heart beating, beating, and, drawn by the shining grey-green jewel-eyes and the mysterious, wooingsmile upon the beautiful lips, and the coaxing, caressing tones of thevoice that so allured, you gave up all else that had been so dear, andwent away with him? What then? Suppose----

Suppose the smiling face of Love should turn out to be nothing but a maskhiding the gross and brutal leer of Lust, what then? She saw that otherman'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. Sheshuddered and grew cold there in the sultry heat. The clasp of theprotecting mother-arms might have driven away her terror, but she wasalone. It would have been sweet to be alone that night if she had beenhappy. 

Why had the Mother shunned her? She knew that she had. Why had she felt, even with the glamour of _his_ presence about her, and the music of hisvoice in her ears, that all was not well?

Why, even with the lifting of her burden, in the unutterable relief ofhearing, from the lips that had been her law, that her dreadful secretneed never be revealed, had she felt consternation and alarm? The wordswere written in fiery letters, on the murky dark of the bombproof, wherethe tiny lamp that had hung before the Tabernacle on the altar of theConvent chapel now burned, a twinkling red star, before the silverCrucifix that hung upon the east wall. 

"He is not to be told. I command you never to tell him!"

The doubt germinated and presently pushed through a little spear. Hadthose lips given right counsel or wrong? Ought he to be told? Was itdishonest, was it traitorous, to hide the truth? And yet, what are thelives of even the upright, and clean, and continent among men, comparedwith 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 ... 

To this girl, who had learned to see the Face of Christ and of His Motherreflected in one human face that had smiled down upon her, waking in thelittle white bed in the Convent infirmary from the long, recuperatingsleep that turns the tide of brain-fever, the thought that a shadow ofdeceit could mar its earnest, candid purity was torture. Months back theyhad said to her--the lips that had given her the first kiss she hadreceived since a dying woman's cold mouth touched the sleeping face of ayellow-haired baby held to her in a strong man's shaking hands, as thetrek-waggon rolled and rumbled over the veld:

"The man who may one day be your husband will have the right to know. "

It was a different voice to the one that had commanded, "You are never totell him!" Lynette lay listening to those two voices until the alarm-clockbelled and the Sisters rose at midnight for matins. Then she lay listeningto the soft murmur of voices in the dark, as the red lamp glimmered beforethe silver Christ upon the wall. The nuns needed no light, knowing theoffice by heart:

"_Delicta quis intelligit? ab occultis meis munda me, et ab alienis parceservo tuo_"--"Who can comprehend what sin is? Cleanse me from my hiddensins, and from those of others save Thy servant. "

The antiphon followed the _Gloria_, and then the soft womanly voiceschanted the twenty-third Psalm:

"_Quis ascendit in montem Domini?_"--"Who shall ascend to the Mount ofthe Lord, and who shall dwell in His holy Sanctuary? Those who do no illand are pure.... Who do not give their heart to vain desires, or deceivetheir neighbour with false oaths. "

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 falseoath?

Lynette lay very still. The last "Hail, Mary!" over, the Sisters returnedsilently to bed. Wire mattresses creaked under superimposed weight. Longbreaths of wakefulness changed into the even breathing of slumber. Theonly one who snored was Sister Tobias, a confirmed nasal soloist, whosecustomary cornet-solo was strangely missing. Was Sister Tobias lying awakeand remembering too?

Sister Tobias was the only other person in the Convent besides the Mother, who knew. She had helped her faithfully and tenderly to nurse Lynettethrough the long illness that had followed the finding of that lost lambupon the veld. She was a homely creature of saintly virtues, the Mother'sstaff and right hand. And it was she who had asked Lynette if she washappy?

Somebody was moving. The grey light of dawn was filtering down thedrain-pipe ventilators and through the chinks in the tarpaulins overhead. A formless pale figure came swiftly to Lynette's bedside. She guessed whoit must be. She sat up wide awake, and with her heart beating wildly inher throat. 

"Dearie!" The whisper was Sister Tobias's. She could make out the glimmerof the white, plain nightcap framing the narrow face with the long, sagacious nose and wise, kindly, patient eyes. "Are you awake, dearie?"

"Yes, " Lynette whispered back, shuddering. The dry, warm, hard hand feltabout for her cold one, and found and took it. Lips came close to her ear, and breathed:

"Dearie, this grand young gentleman you're engaged to be married to ... "

"Yes?"

"_Has he been told? Does he know?_"

The long, plain face was close to Lynette's. In the greying light shecould see it clearly. Her heart beat in heavy, sickening thuds. Her teethchattered, and whole body shook as if with ague, as she faltered:

"The Mother says--he is not to be told. "

There was a dead silence. It was as if an iron shutter had suddenly beenpulled down and clamped home between them. Then Sister Tobias said in atone devoid of all expression:

"The Mother knows best, dearie, of course. Lie down and go to sleep. "

Then silence settled back upon the Convent bombproof, but sleep did notcome to everybody there. 

XLIII

The Mother was kneeling, as she had knelt the whole night through, beforethe dismantled altar in the battered little chapel of the Convent, withthe big white stars looking down upon her through the gaps in theshell-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 fastwith the Sisters, and went about the business of the day calmly, collectedly, capably as ever. Only her face was white and drawn, and greatviolet circles were about her great tragical grey eyes. 

"The blessed Saint she is!" whispered the nuns one to the other. 

If she had heard them, it would have added yet another iron point to themerciless scourge of her self-scorn. 

A Saint, in that stained garment! What tears of bitterness had fallen thatnight upon the shameful blots that marred its whiteness! But for Richard'schild, even though she herself should become a castaway, she must go on tothe end. All the chivalry in her rose in arms to defend the young, shame-burdened, blameless head. 

Ah! if she had known?... 

Cold, light, cruel eyes had watched from across the river that day as hertall, imposing figure, side by side with the slender, more lightly-cladone, moved between the mimosa-bushes and round the river-bend. When thetwo were fairly out of sight, the jungle of tree-fern and cactus hadrustled and cracked. Then the burly, thickset, powerful figure of abearded man pushed through, traversed the reed-beds, and, leaping fromboulder to boulder, crossed the river. Before long the man was standing onthe patch of trodden grass and flowers in the lee of the great boulder, shutting up a little single-barrelled, brass-mounted field-glass that hadserved him excellently well. 

He was Bough, _alias_ Van Busch, otherwise the man who had come in throughthe enemy's lines as a runner from Diamond Town, bringing the letter froma hypothetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. His lighteyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like an adder's, lookedabout and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake ofblack-brown beard that cleverly filled in the interval between Mr. VanBusch's luxuriant whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a littletan-leather glove, lying in a tuft of pink flowers. The daintiness of thelittle glove brought home to Bough more forcibly than anything else, thatthe Kid had become a lady. 

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 hadbeen too far off to hear a word, but he had made out what had been goingon very well. First, she had been giddying with the tall young Englishswell, drawing him on while he seemed courting her, as all women knew howto, and then the tall Sister of Mercy had come and rowed her; and she hadcried, thrown down there among the grass and flowers, exactly as ifsomebody had beaten her with a sjambok to cure her of the G. D. 'dobstinacy that had to be thrashed out of women, if you would have them getto heel when you chose it, or come at your call when you chose again. 

Suppose he chose again. When a man with brains in his holy head once setthem to work, there were few things he could not do. He could scare othersoff his property, for certain. He could exercise upon the girl herself theunlimited power of Fear. He must lie doggo because of the Doctor. It was athundering queer chance the Doctor turning up in this place. And as one ofthe bosses, helping to run the show, and powerful enough to pay off oldscores, if he should chance to recognise in the densely bearded face ofthe man from Diamond Town the features of the Principal Witness in theonce-famous Old Bailey Criminal Case: "The Crown _v. _ Saxham. "

Bough would lie low, and watch, and wait, and then spring, as thetarantula springs. He had cleverly blurred all trails leading back to thetavern on the veld, and he knew enough of girls and women to believe thatthis girl had kept secret what had happened there. He would pick up withher, anyway, and offer to marry her and make an honest girl of her. If shehad a snivelling fancy for the dandy swell who had made love to her andkissed her, he would threaten to tell the fellow the truth unless she gavehim up. Or he would blow on her to the nuns she lived with, and they wouldhave nothing more to do with her. 

Voor den donder! suppose they knew already? The plan wanted carefulworking out. A false step, and Gueldersdorp might become unhealthy for theman who had brought the letter from Diamond Town to oblige Mrs. Casey. 

Suppose the spoor that led back to the tavern on the veld and the grave bythe Little Kopje, not as well hidden as Bough had thought, those jewelsand securities and the one thousand seven hundred pounds cash might get anhonest man into trouble yet, even after the lapse of seventeen years. Hebreathed heavily, and the pupils of his strange light eyes dilated, andthe sweat rolled off his forehead and cheeks until the skin shone likecopper. He had been a reckless, easy-going young chap of twenty-sixseventeen years ago. Forty-three years of life had taught him that whenyou are least expecting them to, buried secrets are sure to resurrect. No, Gueldersdorp was not a healthy place for Bough or for Van Busch! Thatchattering little paroquet of a woman with the sharp black eyes might usethem one day, to the detriment of the philanthropist who had brought inthe letter from Diamond Town for Mrs. Casey. 

Then the girl!... He grinned in his bushy beard, thinking how thunderingscared she would look if she encountered him by chance, and recognisedhim. The beard would not hide him from her eyes. No, no! And he smelled atthe little tan glove, that had a slight, clean, delicate perfume aboutit, 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 snakedand twined and twisted through the tangled bush, as he himself made histortuous progress through the world. 

He was in an evil mood, made blacker by the prospect of spending a lonelynight without the solace of liquor or woman. For Vice was at a low ebb inGueldersdorp just now, and the commonest dop was barely obtainable at theprice of good champagne, and it would not do for the man from Diamond Townto seem flush of dollars. 

Sure, no, that would never do! He must make out with the tobacco he stillhad left, and the big lump of opium he carried in a tin box in a pocket ofthe heavy money-belt he wore under his miner's flannel shirt. He gropedfor the tin box, and got it, and bit off a corner of the sticky brownlump, and ate it as he went along, and his laboured breathing calmed, andthe chilly sweat dried upon his copper-burned skin, that had thepurplish-black tinge in it that comes of saturation with iodide ofpotassium. 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; andhe had learned the opium-habit from a woman who had managed a joint atJohannesburg, and it grew upon him--the need of the soothing, supportingdeadener. He went along now, under the influence of it, scarcely feelingthe ground under his heavy leather veldschoens. 

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 bluephosphorus-flame downwards, and saw a Kaffir girl, a servant of theBarala, who had crept out with a bow strung with twisted crocodile-gut anda sheaf of reed arrows, to try and shoot birds. The Barala, though theywere sorely pinched, like their European fellow-men, did not starve. Theyearned pay and rations. They helped to keep the enemy out on the south andwest sides of the town, and dug most of the trenches--often underfire--and ran the despatches, and sometimes brought in fresh meat. Buttheir 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, andfought with the live ones for bones, and picked up empty meat-tins andlicked them. They stalked about the town and the native stad like livingskeletons. They dropped and died on the dust-heaps they had been rummagingfor offal. Soup-kitchens were started later on, when it was found howthings were going with them, and hides and bones and heads of horses andmules were boiled down into soup, and they were fed. But a time was tocome when even that soup was wanted to keep the life in white people. Yousaw the famine-stricken black spectres crawling from refuse-pile torefuse-pile, and dying in that pitiless, beautiful sunshine, under theblue, blue February sky, because white people had got to keep on living. 

The native girl had been too weak to kill anything. Death had come uponher in the midst of the teeming life of the jungle, and she had fallendown there in her ragged red blanket among the tree-roots that arched andknotted over the path. Her eyes were already rolled up and set. Theystared blindly, horribly, out of the ashen-black face. When she heard thesteps 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 whiteman, and her cracked and swollen lips moved, and a voice like the soundmade by the rubbing of dry canes together uttered the word that is thesame in Dutch and English:

"Water!"

Bough's pale, flat, scintillating eyes were quite expressionless, but histhick lips parted, and his strong yellow teeth showed in his thick brakeof beard. With the caution of one who knows that a single glowingmatch-end dropped among dry vegetation may cause a devastatingconflagration, he blew out the lingering flame, and rolled the littlecharred stick between his tough-skinned fingers before he threw it down. Then he raised himself up, and stepped over the dying creature, and wentupon his way, humming a dance-tune he liked. He was not changed. It wasstill a joy to him to have feebler beings in his power, and taunt andtorture and use them at his will. 

He had assumed the skin of the man from Diamond Town in the well-paidservice of that bright boy of Brounckers', who had, it may be remembered, a plan. 

The plan involved a feint from the eastward, and an attack upon thatweakest 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 loungeabout its neighbourhood, using those sharp light eyes of his to excellentpurpose, and storing his retentive memory--for it would not do for astranger to be caught putting pencil to paper in a town under Martial Law, and bristling with suspicion--with the information indispensable for theputting in effect of young Schenk Eybel's ingenious plan. 

The jackal had had to yield his bone to the hungry lion. Still, it waswise to be in good odour with the Republics; that was why Van Busch hadtaken on the job. He had not been impelled to risk his skin, and get shutup in this stinking, starving hole by anything the sharp-eyed littleEnglishwoman, so unpleasantly awake at last regarding the genuine aims andreal character of the chivalrous Mr. Van Busch of Johannesburg, haddropped. Hell, no! That unripe nectarine had been plucked and eaten yearsago. And yet how the ripe fruit allured him to-day, seen against itsbackground of dull green leaves, its smooth cheeks glowing under thekisses of the sun. 

The swell English officer had kissed them too. As she meant, the slylittle devil, slipping away for her bit of fun. Grown a beauty, too, asanybody but a thundering, juicy, damned fool might have known she would!He swore bitterly, thinking what a gold-mine a face and figure like thatmight have proved to an honest speculator up Johannesburg way. 

His case, he thought, was somewhat similar to that of old Baas Jacobs, theBoer who found the first great South African diamond on his farm nearHopetown, and threw it down beside the door, with other pretty shiningpebbles, for his child to play with. The child's mother tossed it to VanNiekirk as a worthless gift. Van Niekirk passed it on to J. O'Reilly. Whenthe English Government mineralogist pronounced the stone a diamond, andthe Colonial Secretary and the French Consul sent it to the ParisExhibition, and the Governor of the Colony bought the jewel, old BaasJacobs 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. 

The jewel Bough had left on the veld had belonged to him once. Well, itshould be his again. He swore that with a blasphemous oath. Thenceforwardhe proceeded warily, feeling his way, formulating his plan, a humantarantula, evil-eyed and hairy-clawed, calculating the sudden leap uponits prey; an adder coiled, waiting the moment to strike.... 

XLIV

Saxham was shooting on the veld, north of the Clayfields, in a ginger-hueddust-wind and a grilling sun. Upon his right showed the raw red ridge ofthe earthworks, where two ancient seven-pounders were entrenched in chargeof a handful of Cape Police. The pits of the sniping riflemen scarredacross the river-bed some fifty yards in advance. Upon his left, some twohundred yards farther north, the recently resurrected ship's gun, twelvefeet of honeycombed metal, stamped on the flank "No. 6 Port, " and castingsolid shot of eighteenth-century pattern, projected a long black nose fromFort Ellerslie, and every time the venerable weapon went off withoutbursting, the Town Guards occupying the Fort and manning the easternentrenchments raised a cheer. 

Saxham, emptying and filling the magazine with cool, methodicalregularity, kept changing his position with a restlessness andrecklessness puzzling alike to friends and foes. Now he aimed and fired, lying "doggo" behind his favourite stone, while bullets from the enemy'strenches flattened themselves upon it, or buried themselves harmlessly inthe dry hot soil. Now he moved from cover, and shot squatting on hisheels, or sprawled lizard-like in the open, courting the King of Terrorswith a calm indifference that was commented upon by those who witnessed itaccording to their lights. 

"Begob!" said Kildare, ex-driver of Engine 123, who, with the Cardiff man, his stoker of old, was doing duty at Fort Ellerslie _vice_ two TownGuardsmen permanently resting, "'tis a great perfawrumance the Doc isafther givin' as this day!" He coolly borrowed the gunner'ssighting-glasses, and, with his keen eyes glued to them and his raggedelbows propped on the Fort parapet, he scanned the distant solitaryfigure, dropping the words out slowly one by one. "Twice have I seen thefur 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'dbe seem' ut all round 'um, the same as a young lady in the sky-in-terrificdhressmakin' line would be afther jabbin' out the pattern av' a shoot av'clothes. "

"And look you now, if the man is not lighting a pipe, " objected theCardiff stoker, whose religious tendencies were greatly fostered by thesurroundings and conditions of siege life. "Sitting on a stone, with therifle between his knees and the match between his two hands, as if theteffel was got tired of waiting, and had curled up and gone to sleep. " Thespeaker sucked in his breath and solemnly shook his head, adding: "It is atemptation of the Tivine Providence, so it is!"

"Sorra a timpt, " rejoined Kildare, reluctantly surrendering the glasses tothe gunner, a grey ex-sergeant of R. F. A. , "sorra a timpt, knowin', as theDocthur knows, that do what he will and thry as he may, no bullut will domore than graze the hide av him, or sing in his ear. "

"And how will he know that, maybe you would be telling?" demanded theCardiff stoker incredulously. 

"I seen his face, " said Kildare, jerking a blackened thumb towards thegunner'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-setwith the hunger for Death as the Docthur is this day, no harrum will come. 'Tis quare, but thrue. "

"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 asmart 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 pleasethe gals. There's the 'unger for revenge, wot drives yer to bash in abloke's face, and loses you yer stripes if 'e 'appens to be your Corp'ril. Then there's the 'unger for gettin' under cover when you're bein' sniped, an' the 'unger for blood, when you've got the Hafridis, or the Fuzzies, orthe 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 afilthy 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 bynights. But the 'unger to die is a 'unger _I_ ain't acquainted with. I'mfor livin' myself. "

"I was hungry when you began to jaw, " snarled the man who had been clerkto the County Court. His lips were black and cracking with fever, and histeeth chattered despite the fierce sunshine that baked the red clayparapet against which he leaned his thin back. "I'm hungrier now, andthirsty as well. Give the bucket over here. " He drank of the thick, yellowish, boiled water eagerly and yet with disgust, spilling the liquidon his tattered clothing through the shaking of his wasted hands. Then heturned to the wall, and lay down sullenly, scowling at the lantern-jawedsympathiser who tried to thrust a rolled-up coat under his aching head. 

"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 blockav baked sawdust for aich man that can get ut down. 'Tis an insult to themimory av the boiled bacon an' greens I would be aiting this day atCarricknavore, to say nothin' av' the porther an' whisky that would bewashing ut down. Lashin's and lavin's there 'ud be for ivery wan, an' whatwas over, me fadher--God be good to the ould boy alive or dead!--would bedisthributin' amongst the poor forninst the dure----"

"Beg pardon, sir. " Another of the famine-bitten, ragged little garrisonaddressed the question to the officer in charge of the Fort battery, as hestepped down from the lookout with his field-glass in his hand. "Can youtell us the difference of time between South Africa and England?"

"Two hours at Capetown. I'm not quite sure about the difference atGueldersdorp. " The Lieutenant went over to the ancient smooth-bore, andconferred with the gunners standing at her breech. The winches groaned, the heavy mass of metal tilted on the improvised mounting, as the man towhom the Lieutenant had replied said, with a quaver of longing in hisvoice:

"'Two hours! My God, suppose it only took that time to get home!"

"It 'ud be a sight easier to 'ang on 'ere, " said the R. E. Reserve man whoacted as gunner's mate, "if there was such a thing as a plug o' baccy tobe 'ad. Wot gives me the reg'lar sick is to see them well-fed Dutchieschawin' an' blowin', blowin' an' chawin', from mornin' till night----" Hespat disgustedly. 

"When honust men, " groaned Kildare, "would swop a year av life for a twistav naygurhead. Wirra-wirra!"

There was a dry and mirthless laugh, showing teeth, white or discoloured, in haggard and bristly faces. Then a short young Corporal, who had beenleaning back in an angle of the earthwork, hugging his sharp knees andstaring at nothing in particular with pale-coloured, ugly, honest eyes, grew painfully crimson through his crust of sun-tan and grime, and saidsomething that made the lean bodies in ragged, filthy tan-cord anddilapidated khâki, or torn and muddy tweed, slew round upon the uncleanstraw on which they squatted. All eyes, were they hunger-dull orfever-bright, sought the Corporal's face. 

"Dessay you'll think me a greedy 'ound, " said the Corporal, with a painfuleffort 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 ownpocket 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 onepartic'lar. " The Adam's apple jumped up and down as he gulped. He wasburning crimson now to the roots of his ragged, light-brown hair, and thetips of his flat-rimmed, jutting ears, and the patch of thin bare chestthat showed where his coarse grey back shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. 

All those eyes, feverishly bright or sickly dull, watched him as he puthis hand into the bulging breast-pocket, and slowly fished out a shiningbrown briar-root with a stem unchewed as yet by any smoker. 

"Twig this 'ere noo pipe. It was sent me by a--by a friend, along of apacket of 'Oneydew, for a--for a kind o' birthday present. " His voicewobbled strangely; there was scalding water dammed up behind his uglyhonest 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 'erown 'ands, an' not--not before. Next day we"--the Adam's apple went up anddown again--"we 'ad words, an' parted. I--I never set eyes on 'er dialsince. "

The voice of W. Keyse ended in an odd kind of squeak. Nobody looked at himas 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 afteranother bloke--a kind o' Dutchy spy 'oo was a pal of 'ers, or--or elseshe's dead. There's times I've dreamed I seen 'er dead!" His voice boundedup in that queer squeak again. The word "dead" was wrung out of him like along-fanged double molar. His lips were drawn awry in a grimace ofanguish, and the pipe he held shook in his gaunt and grimy hand, soperilously that half a dozen other hands, as gaunt and even grimier, shotout as by a single impulse to save it from falling. "Tyke it an' smoke itbetween you, " said W. Keyse, and the Adam's apple jerked again as hegulped. "But read the writin' on the bit o' pyper first, and mindyou--mind you give it back. " He resigned the treasure, and turned his faceaway. 

"Blessed Mary!" came in the accent of Kildare, breaking the silence, "letme hould ut in me han's!"

"Spell out the screeve, " ordered the R. E. Reserve man imperiously. 

The Town Guard who had questioned the officer about the difference oftime, deciphered the blotty writing on the slip of paper pinned round thestem of the new briar-root. It ran thus:

 "i ope yu wil Engoy this Pip Deer; i Fild it A Purpus with Love and Menney Apey Riturnse. From

 "FARE AIR. "

"'Is gal?" interrogated the Reserve man. 

"His girl, " assented the man who had read. 

"And he never saw her no more, so he did not!" commented the Cardiffstoker 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-headedex-Royal Field Artilleryman, maintained self-command by dint of lookingvery hard the other way. Then said Kildare impetuously:

"Take ut back, Corp'ril Keyse. 'Tis little wan poipe av tobacca wud countfor betune six starvin' savigees. "

"Wot I wants, " growled the Reserve man, "is to over-'aul a bacca factoryafire, and clap my mouth to 'er chimbley-shaft. So take it back, Corporal. It's no manner o' good to me!"

All the other voices joined in the chorus, and the be-papered pipe wasthrust back upon its owner. W. Keyse thanked them soberly, and put thegift of his lost love away. 

His pale, unbeautiful eyes had the anguish of despair in them, and thetooth of that sharp death-hunger of which Kildare had spoken was gnawingwhat he would have termed with simplicity "his inside. " For if EmigrationJane were dead, what had Life left for him?

After his first superb assumption of cold indifference had broken down hehad sought her, feverishly at first, then doggedly, then with a dizzysickness of terror and apprehension that made the letters of thetype-written casualty-lists posted outside the Staff Headquarters in theMarket Square turn apparent somersaults as he strove to read them. Thiswas his punishment, that he should hunger as she had hungered, and stillbe disappointed, and learn by fellowship in keenest suffering what herpain had been. 

The "Fare Air" letters were some comfort. In the trench at night, whenfever and rheumatism kept him from the dog-sleep that other men weresnatching, he would hear her crying over and over: "Oh, cruel, to break apoor girl's heart!" And when sleep came he would track her through strangeplaces, calling her to come back--to come back and be forgiven. And whenhe awakened from such dreams there would be tears upon his face. And eachday he consulted the lists of killed and wounded, and once had staggeredwhite-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and foundher--oh, with what unutterable relief!--to be a coloured lady who hadmarried a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his questfor the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewedbelief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle ofone awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridlyilluminated by the conviction that she had joined Slabberts. Now strangevoices whispered always in his ears, saying that she was dead, and urginghim to follow by the same dark road over which her trembling feet hadstumbled. 

He heard those voices as he wrought and sweated with the gun-team at thelevers, and the ponderous muzzle-loader rolled back upon the grooves ofher improvised mounting. He heard it as they sponged the antique monsterout, and fed it with a three-pound bolus of cordite, and a ten-pound ballof ancient pattern with the date of 1770. He heard it now again as hekneeled at a loophole in the parapet, watching Saxham. Those pale, uglyeyes of Billy Keyse were extraordinarily keen. He saw a grimy handcarefully balance an old meat-tin on the top of the parapet of the enemy'swestern entrenchment. He saw Saxham kneeling, aim and fire, and with thesharp rap of the exploding cartridge came a howl from the owner of thehand, who had not withdrawn it with sufficient quickness. 

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 inSaxham's vicinity told of the employment of explosive bullets. But not onehit the man. An unkempt Boer head bobbed up, looking for his corpse. TheWinchester cracked, and the unkempt head fell forwards, its chin over theedge of the parapet, and stayed there staring until the comrades of itslate owner pulled the dead man down by the heels. 

There was a cheer from the rifle-pits in the river-bed, and another fromFort Ellerslie, where eager, excited spectators jostled at the loopholes. A minute later the Fort's ancient bow-chaser barked loudly, and pitched asolid shot. The metal spheroid hit the ploughed-up ground some ninety feetin front of the parapet where the bloody head had hung, and over whichthose explosive bullets had been fired, rose in a cloud of dust, andliterally jumped the trench. There was a roar of distant laughter as theball began to roll, and shaggy heads of curious Boers, inured only to thelatest inventions in lethal engineering, bobbed up to watch. More laughteraccompanied the progress of the ball. But presently it encountered a moundof earth, behind which certain patriots were taking coffee, and rolledthrough, and the laughter ceased abruptly. There was a baggage-waggonbeyond through which it also rolled, and behind the waggon a plump, contented pony was wallowing in the sand. When the ancient cannon-ballrolled through the pony, the owner spoke of witchcraft. But the patriotswho had been sitting behind the mound made no comment then orthenceforward. 

At this juncture, and with almost a sensation of pleasure, Saxham saw hisold acquaintance Father Noah climb out of his particular trench, brisklyfor one well stricken in years, and toddle out, laden with rifle, biltongbag, and coffee-can, to his favourite sniping-post, where a bush rosebeside a rock, which was shaded by a small group of blue-gums. Soon thesmoke of the veteran's pipe rose above his lurking-place, and as Saxham, with a grunt of satisfaction, stretched himself upon his stomach on thehot, sandy earth and pulled the lever, a return bullet sheared a piece offhis boot-heel, and painfully jarred his ankle-bone. 

No one else was shooting at the big rooinek now. It was understood thatFather Noah had a prior claim. And the old man peered hopefully up to seethe result of his shot, and rubbed his eyes. For the hulking dief wasstanding, voor den donder! standing as he emptied his magazine, and thebullets sang about Father Noah as viciously as hornets roused to anger bythe stripping of a decayed thatch. The magazine of the repeating-rifleemptied, Saxham calmly refilled it, causing the puzzled patriarch to wastemany cartridges in wild shooting at that erect, indifferent mark, andfinally to abandon the level-headed caution to which he owed his venerableyears, and climb a tree to obtain a better view of the tactics of theenemy. 

Saxham laughed as the invisible hornets sang in the air about him. Thebattered solar helmet he wore was pierced through the hinder brim, and hewas bleeding from a bullet-graze upon the knuckle of the second finger ofhis left hand. Since that Sunday afternoon beside the river, when helearned the madness of his hope and the hopelessness of his madness, hehad taken risks like this daily, not in the deliberate desire of death, but as a man consulting Fate negatively. 

Father Noah would decide, one way or the other: the issue of theirprotracted duel should determine things for Saxham. If he sent the old manin, then there was Hope, if the superannuated, short-stocked Martini, withthat steady old finger on the trigger, and that sharp old eye at thebacksight, ended by accounting for Saxham, then there would be an end tothis burning torment for ever. Strangely, he did not believe that he couldbe killed by any other hand than Father Noah's. Doubtless the longoverstrain was telling upon him mentally, though physically the man seemedof wrought steel. 

"To-day will settle it, one way or the other. To-day----"

As the thought passed through his mind, and he brought the sights intoline with the mark, a scrap of white, fluttering some twenty inches lowerdown, caught his eye. He dropped the tip of the Winchester's foresight tothe bottom of the backsight's V, and knew, almost before the shot rangout, and an ownerless Martini tumbled out of the tree-crotch, that Fatehad decided for Saxham. 

Then he went back to the Hospital, grim-jawed and inscrutable as ever. Adirty white rag was being hoisted on a pole by one of the relatives of thedeceased. Father Noah, with the long ends of his dirty grey beard raggedlybannering in the dust-wind, was still waiting for the bearers of thehastily improvised stretcher of sticks and green reims, as Saxham, havingobtained 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 hislittle room, and neatly tacked a mourning-band upon the upper part of theleft sleeve. 

It was his nature to absorb himself in whatever work he undertook. As hestitched, the crowded Hospital buzzed about him like a hive, the moans ofsick men and the rattling breaths of the dying beat in waves of soundupon his brain, for the long rows of beds stood upon either side of thecorridors now, with barely a foot of room between them. In the necessarilyopen 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 wasthrust underneath. 

"The _Siege Gazette_, 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 otherhuman being in the town, the sight of the little badly-printed sheet waswelcome, although it could hardly contain anything to satisfy his need. Heset the last stitches, fastened and cut the thread, reached down a longarm from the foot of the bed, and took up the paper. 

The Latest Information had whiskers. The General Orders announced an issueof paper currency in small amounts, owing to the deplorable shortage ofsilver, congratulated those N. C. O. 's and men of the Baraland Irregularswho, under Lieutenant Byass, occupying the advanced Nordenfeldt position, had brought so effective a fire to bear upon the enemy's big gun thatMeisje had been compelled to abandon her commanding position, and take upher 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 SocialJottings followed, rows of asterisks exploding like squibs under everyparagraphic utterance of the Gold Pen. 

Not for nothing had Captain Bingo dolefully boasted that his wife exudedJournalese from her very finger-ends. Saxham recognised in the style, thevery table-Moselle of Fashionable Journalism. So like the genuine articlein the shape of the bottle, the topping of gilt-foil, the arrangement ofwire and string, that as the stinging foam overflowed the goblet, snappingin iridescent bubbles at the cautious sipper's nose, and evaporated, leaving nothing in particular at the bottom, it was barely possible tobelieve the vintage other than the genuine article from Fleet Street. Stay.... The French quotations were not enclosed in inverted commas. Thatlet Lady Hannah out. 

"Society in Gueldersdorp, " she wrote, "bubbles with interested expectationof the public announcement of a matrimonial engagement with which theintimate friends of the happy lovers profess _être aux anges_. 

 * * * * *

"Not for worlds would we draw the veil of delightful mystery completelyaside from the secret of two young, charming and popular people. Yet itmay be hinted that the elder son of a representative English House andheir of a sixteenth-century Marquisate, who is one of the most gallant anddashing among the many heroic defenders of our beleaguered town, proposesat no very distant date to lead to the altar one of the loveliest amongthe many lovely girls who grace Gueldersdorp's social functions. 

 * * * * *

"Both bride-elect and bridegroom-to-be attended High Mass at the CatholicChurch on Sunday, when the Rev. Father Wix, in apprising parishioners ofthe near approach of Lent, caused an irresistible smile to ripple over thefaces of his hearers. _Toujours perdrix_ may sate in the long-run, butperpetually to _faire maigre_ is attended with even greater discomfort. 

 * * * * *

"We have pleasure in announcing the approaching marriage of Lieutenant theRight Hon. Viscount Beauvayse, Grey Hussars, Junior Aide to the ColonelCommanding H. M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, to Miss Lynette Bridget-MaryMildare, ward of the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Holy Way, North VeldRoad. "

XLV

Saxham has not been staring at the printed words because they have struckhim to the heart with their intelligence, but--or so it seems tohim--because they convey nothing. There is an aching pain at the back ofhis neck, and his mind is curiously dull and sluggish. But after a littlehe becomes aware that somebody is knocking at his door. 

"Who is it----"

The Doctor thinks he utters these words, but in reality he has only madea harsh croaking sound that might mean anything. The door opens and showsthe Chaplain standing smiling on the threshold. 

The Reverend Julius Fraithorn, no longer a worn and wasted pilgrimstumbling amongst the thorns and sharp stones of the Valley of the Shadow, appears in these days as a perfectly sound and healthy, if rather toonarrow-shouldered, young Anglican clergyman, not unbecomingly arrayed, invirtue of his official position under martial authority, in a suit ofService khâki such as Saxham wears, with the black Maltese Cross on thecollar and the band of the wide-peaked cap. Yellow puttees conceal theunduly spare proportions of his active legs, and the brown boots upon hislong slender feet are dusty, as, indeed, is the rest of him, not with thereddish dust of the veld that powders Saxham to the very eyelashes, andlies in light drifts in every wrinkle of his garments, but with theyellowish dust of the town. 

"I rather thought, " the Chaplain says, hesitating, as Saxham, withoutlifting his eyes, turns his square, white face upon the visitor, "that yousaid 'Come in'?"

"Come in, and shut the door, and sit down, " says Saxham heavily andthickly. And Julius does so, and, occupying the single cane-seated chairthe bedroom boasts, glows upon Saxham with a sincerity of affection and asimplicity of admiration pleasant to see, and asks in his thin, sweetvoice how things are going. 

"Things _are_ going, " Saxham returns, seeming to wake from a heavy brownstudy. "You could not put it better or more clearly. Will you smoke?" Hepitches a rubber tobacco-pouch to the Chaplain, who catches it, and thetreasured box of matches that comes after, and as one man sparingly fillsa well-browned meerschaum, and the other a blackened briar-root, with theweed that grows more rare and precious with every hour of these days ofdearth: "That's one of the things that are going quickest afterperchloride of mercury, carbolic, and extract of beef. As a fact, we areusing formaldehyde as an anæsthetic in minor operations; and violet powderand starch, upon the external use of which I laid an embargo weeks ago, tothe great indignation of the younger nurses, are being employed insteadof arrowroot. And the more the medical stores diminish, the more thepatients come rolling in. "

"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 Chaplainfervently. He is disposed to make a hero of this brilliant surgeon who hassaved his life, and his enthusiasm is only marred by Saxham'spainfully-apparent lack of belief in certain vital spiritual truths thatare the daily bread of fervent Christian souls. Now that he has becomeaware of the black band upon the sleeve of the jacket that lies acrossSaxham's knees, where he sits upon the end of the cot-bed that, with atiny chest of drawers and a hanging bookshelf laden with volumes andinstrument-cases, completes the furnishing of the narrow room, he says, with sympathy in his gentle voice and in the brown eyes that have the softlustre of a deer's or of a beautiful woman's:

"I am sorry to see this, Saxham. You have lost a friend?"

"_Lost a friend?_"

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 behad in Gueldersdorp in these days, and though it is not Sunday, whenbathing in the river becomes a possibility, the Chaplain observes that theDoctor's thick, close-cropped black hair is wet, and that broad streaks ofshining moisture are upon his pale, square face, and that he breathes asthough he had been running. But perhaps he has been sluicing his head inthe washstand basin, thinks the Chaplain. No; the basin has not recentlybeen used. And then it occurs to Julius, but not until he has noticed thestarting veins and corded muscles on the backs of the hands that areclenched upon the jacket, that Saxham is suffering. 

"I always said he felt a great deal more than he permitted himself toshow, " reflects the man of Religion looking at the man of Medicine. "Andthe absence of belief in Divine Redemption and a Future State mustterribly intensify the pain of a bereavement. If I only knew how tocomfort him!" And all he can do is to ask, still in that tone of sympathy, when the Funeral is to be. 

"Perhaps about the midday coffee-drinking, " says Saxham heavily, "theywould 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. "

Julius Fraithorn longs, more than ever, that eloquence and inspirationwere his to employ in the healing of the man who has raised himself almostfrom the dead. But he can only falter something about the inscrutabledesigns of Providence, and not a sparrow falling to the ground unnoticed. And he expresses, somewhat tritely, the hope that Saxham's friend wasprepared to meet his end. 

"I don't exactly suppose he expected it. He had a right to count uponpulling 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 easilymeet. And Boers are fine shots, as a rule. "

"Boers.... A Boer.... I thought you told me you had lost a friend?" Mildastonishment is written on the Chaplain's face. And Saxham looks up, andthe other sees that his eyeballs are heavily injected with blood, and thatthe vivid blue of their irises has strangely faded. 

"I gave him every opportunity to be my friend, " says the dull voiceheavily, "by moving out from cover, even by standing up. But no good. Hesuspected a ruse, and it worried him. Then he climbed a tree, emptied hisbandolier at me from a perch of vantage among the branches, and hadstarted to refill it from a fresh package, when I got the chance, andbrought him down spreadeagled. And so ends Father Noah. "

The Chaplain comprehends fully now, turns pale, and shudders. A blue linemarks itself about his mouth; he is conscious of a qualm of positivenausea as he says:

"You--you don't mean you have been talking of a man you have shot?"

"Just so, " assents Saxham, and the sentence that follows is not utteredaloud. "And I wish with all my soul that the man had shot me!"

"And this is War, " says Julius Fraithorn. He pulls out his handkerchiefand wipes his damp forehead and the beady blue lines about his mouth, andthe crack and rattle of rifle-fire sweeping over the veld and through thetown, and the ping, ping, ping! of Mauser bullets flattening on the irongutter-pipe and the corrugated iron of the roof above them seem to answer"Certainly, War. "

"Why, you look sick, man, " says Saxham the surgeon, whose keenprofessional eye has not missed the Chaplain's pallor, though the otherSaxham is still dazed and blind, and stupefied by the blow that has beendealt him by Lady Hannah's gold fountain-pen. He leans forward, andlightly touches one of the Chaplain's thin wrists, suspecting him of atouch of fever, or town-water dysentery. But Julius jerks the wrist away. 

"I am perfectly well. It was--the way in which you spoke just now thatrather--rather----"

"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 beone 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 thebowels of the earth, he burrows like a mole and gets it. Let him once seeutility in flying, give him time and opportunity, and he will fly. So ifit is to his interests to be clean-lived, high-minded, exemplary, he willbe all these things to admiration. Or, if he should happen to have lostthe _goût_ for virtue, if he determines that Evil shall be his good, hewill make it so. " He smiled dourly. "Deprive him of a solid reason forliving, he can die. Hold up before his dying eyes the prospect ofcontinued existence under hopeful conditions, he takes up his bed andwalks, like the moribund paralytic in the Gospel you preach. You're aliving proof of the human power of working miracles.... Granted I cut awaya tumour from under your breast-bone more skilfully than a certainpercentage of surgeons could have done it. But what brought you safelythrough the operation, healed your wound by the first intention, and setyou on your legs again? I'll trouble you to tell me?"

"The mercy and the grace of God, " says the Chaplain, "manifested in Hisunworthy servant through your science and your skill. "

"You employ the technical terminology of your profession, " Saxham answers, with a shrug. 

The blank stare and the congested redness have gone out of his eyes, andhis voice is less dull and toneless. He is coming back to his outward selfagain, even while the inner man lies mangled and bleeding, crushed by thattremendous broadsword stroke of Fate that has been dealt him by the goldpen of Lady Hannah, and he is ready enough to argue with the Chaplain. Hegets off the bed and slips on his jacket, takes a turn or two across thenarrow floor-space, then leans against the distempered wall beside thewindow, puffing at his jetty briar-root, his muscular arms folded on hisgreat chest, his powerful shoulders bowed, his square, black head thrustforward, and his blue eyes coolly studying Julius as he talks. 

"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 stimulatedyour nervous centres, roused and sustained in you the determinationwithout which my science and my skill--and I do not value them lightly, Iassure you--would have availed you nothing. You said to yourself, 'If Godwill it, I shall get over this, ' and because _you_ willed it, it was so. Were I a drunkard, an outcast, the very refuse of humanity, tainted withvice to the very centre of my being, I have but to will to be sober andlive decently, and while I continue to will it, I shall be what I desireto be. "

Saxham's eyes hold Julius's, and challenge them. But no shadow of a DopDoctor who once reeled the streets of Gueldersdorp rises from those clearbrown depths as the speaker ends, "Don't underestimate the power of theHuman Will, Fraithorn, for it can remove mountains, and raise the livingdead. "

"Nor do you venture to deny the Power of the Almighty Hand, Saxham, "answers the thin, sweet voice of the Churchman; "because It strewed themyriad worlds in the Dust of the The Infinite, and set the jewelledfeathers in the butterfly's wing, and forged the very intellect whosepower you misuse in uttering the boast that denies It. Think again. Canyou assure me with truth that you have never, in the stress of some greatmental or physical crisis, cried to Heaven for help when the struggle wasat its worst? Think again, Saxham. "

But Saxham obstinately shakes his head, still smiling. As he stands theretransfigured by the dark, fierce spirit that has come upon him andpossessed him, there is something about the hulking man with the square, black head and the powerful frame, that breathes of that superb andterrible Prince of the Heavenly Hierarchy who fell through a kindred sin, and the priest in Julius shudders, recognising the tremendous power ofsuch a nature as this, whether turned towards Evil or bent to achieveGood. The while, in letters of delicate, keen flame, the denier seeswritten on the tables of his inward consciousness the utterance that oncebroke from him, as, racked and tortured in body and in soul, he wrestledwith his devil on that unforgettable night. 

"O God! if indeed Thou Art, and I must perforce return to live the life ofa man amongst men, help me to burst the chains that fetter me. Helpme--oh, help me to be free!"

And in his heart he knows that the desperate prayer has been granted. Butin this new-born, curious mood of his he will not yield, but combats hisown innermost conviction, being, in a strange, perverted way, even prouderof this Owen Saxham who has gone down of his own choice to the muddiestdepths of moral and physical decadence, and come up of the strength of hisown will from among the hideous things that hang suspended and drifting inthe primeval sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His is acombative nature, and the great blow he has sustained this day in thewreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left him quivering to the centre ofhis being with resentment that strikes back. 

"Think again yourself. Ask yourself whether the Deity who creates, preserves, blesses, punishes, slays, and raises up, is the natural outcomeof man's need of such a Being, or His own desire of Himself? And whichconception is the greater--that the God in whom you Churchmen and themillions of lay-folk who recognise you as Divinely-appointed teachersbelieve, should have commanded, 'Let the universe exist, ' and have beenobeyed, or that the stupendous pigmy Man should have dared to say, 'Letthere be God, ' and so created Him?"

He laughs jarringly as he knocks the ashes out of the blackened pipe uponthe corner of the window-ledge. 

"Give credit to the human imagination and the human will for inventing apersonage so useful to the Christian Churches as the Devil. For as in thebeginning it was necessary for Man to build up Heaven and set his Godtherein, so, to throw His unimaginable purity and inconceivable perfectioninto yet more glorious relief, it was required that Hell should be delvedout and the objective personality of Satan conceived and kennelled there, and given just sufficient power to pay the marplot where the Divine plansare concerned, and just enough malevolence to find amusement in theoccupation. What should we do, where should we be, without our Satanic_souffre-douleur_--our horned scapegoat, our black puppet, without whosesuggestions we should never have erred, whose wooden head we bang whenthings go wrong with us, " says Saxham bitterly. He reaches out a hand forthe tobacco-pouch and his glance falls upon the day's issue of the _SiegeGazette_ lying on the parquet linoleum, where it has fallen from his handa little while ago. He stoops and picks it up, and offers it to Julius. 

"There's the announcement of an engagement here----" He smooths thecrumpled sheet, holds it under the Chaplain's eye, and points to the twolast paragraphs of the "Social Jottings" column. "Take it as aninstance.... Did Heaven play the matchmaker here, or has Hell had a fingerin the matrimonial pie? Or has the blind and crazy chance that governsthis desolate world for me, tipped the balance in favour of one youngrake, who may be saved and purified and renewed by such a marriage, whilehis elder in iniquity is doomed to be wrecked upon it, ruined by it, destroyed through it, damned socially and morally because of it ... "

The fierce words break from Saxham against his will. He resents thebetrayal of his own confidence savagely, even as he utters them. But theyare spoken, beyond recall. And the effect of the paragraph upon theChaplain is remarkable. His meek, luminous brown eyes blaze withindignation. He is aflame, from the edge of his collar--a patent clericalguillotine of washable xylonite, purchased at a famous travellers'emporium in the Strand--to the thin, silky rings of dark hair that arewearing from his high, pale temples. He says, and stutters angrily insaying:

"This is a lie--a monstrous misstatement which shall be withdrawnto-morrow!"

"How do you know that?"

The Chaplain crushes the _Siege Gazette_ into a ball, pitches it into acorner of the room, grabs his Field-Service cap and the cane he carries inlieu of the carbine or rifle without which the male laity of Gueldersdorpand a good many of the women do not stir abroad, and makes a stride forthe door. He meets there Saxham, whose square face and powerful figure barhis flaming exit. 

"It is enough that I do know it. Kindly allow me to pass. "

"What are you going to do?"

The Chaplain is plainly uncertain, as he wrestles with the clericalguillotine of washable xylonite, and stammers something aboutunwarrantable liberty and a lady's reputation! And Saxham recognises thatSaxham is not the only sufferer from the festering smart of jealousy, andthat the vivid red-and-white carnation-tinted beauty of the delicate facein its setting of red-brown hair has grievously disturbed, if it has notaltogether dissipated, the pale young Anglican's views of the celibatelife. 

Agnostic and Churchman, denier and believer, have split on the sameamatory rock. The knowledge breathes no sympathy in the Dop Doctor. 

He observes the Chaplain's face, dispassionately and yet intently, as inthe old Hospital days he might have studied the expression of a monkey ora guinea-pig, or other organism upon which he was experimenting with somenew drug. And the Reverend Julius demands, with resentful acerbity:

"What are you staring at? Do you imagine that the colour of my clothdebars me from--from taking the part of a lady whose name has been draggedbefore the public? I shall call at the office where this rag is published, and insist upon a contradiction of this--this _canard_!"

"Don't you know who edits the rag?" asks Saxham raspingly. "Do you supposethat any unauthorised announcement, or statement that has not beenofficially corroborated would be allowed to pass? The paragraph comes froman authoritative source, you may be sure!"

"I am in a position to disprove it, from whatever source it comes!" criedthe Chaplain hotly. "He shall contradict it himself, if there isnecessity. He may be a prodigal and a rake--he bears that reputation--butat least he is not a liar and a scoundrel. "

"Who?" Saxham's heart is drubbing furiously. A cool, vivifying liquid likeether seems to have passed into his blood. His quiet, set, determined faceand masterful, observant eyes oppose the Chaplain's heat and indignation, as if these were waves of boiling lava beating on a cliff of granite. "Whois not a liar and a scoundrel?"

"I speak of Lord Beauvayse, " says the Reverend Julius Fraithorn in thehigh-pitched voice that shakes with rage. "He is a married man, Saxham; Ihave incontrovertible testimony to prove it. He gave his name to the womanwho was his mistress a week before he sailed for Cape Town. He----"

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, asimpotent and ridiculous as the anger of a child. If just before it hasseemed to him that he has heard the voice of mankind's arch-enemy speakingwith 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 andsimple-hearted clergyman, something of a weakling, he is shocked tosilence. 

XLVI

An instant, and Saxham's own face looks calmly at the dazed Chaplain, andthe curt, brusque voice demands:

"What is this incontrovertible testimony?"

"A letter, " says Julius breathlessly, "from a person who saw the entry ofthe marriage at the Registrar's office where it took place. "

"Is anyone else in possession of this information?"

"With the exception of the Registrar and the witnesses of the marriage, upto the middle of last September, when the letter was written, nothing hadleaked out. I received the communication by the last mail from Englandthat was delivered at the Hospital before I underwent the operation. "

"That was the last mail that got through. Who was your correspondent?"

"One of the senior officiating priests of St. Margaret's, Wendish Street, the London church where I did duty as junior curate. "

"Have you kept the letter?"

"It is in my desk at my hotel, with some other correspondence of FatherTatham's. You may see it if you wish. "

"I will see it. In the meanwhile, let me have the pith of it. Thisclergyman--happening to visit a Registrar's office---- Where was theoffice?"

"At Cookham-on-Thames, where Father Tatham has established a Holiday RestHome for the benefit of our London working lads"--the Chaplain begins. Heis sitting on the end of the bed, weak and worn and exhausted with theemotions that have torn him in the last half-hour. Beads of perspirationthickly stud the high temples, out of which the flushing colour has sunk;his cheeks are pallid and hollow. His eyes have lost their fire; hismuscles are flaccidly relaxed; his sloping shoulders stoop; his long, limphands hang nervelessly at his sides. 

"One moment. " Saxham glances at the gold chronometer that was apresentation from the students of St. Stephen's years ago. It is rathertypical of the man that, even when under stress of his heroic thirst hehas pawned the watch for money wherewith to buy whisky, he should haveonly borrowed upon it such small sums as are easily repaid. He has yetanother five minutes to bestow in listening to the Chaplain's story, yeteven as he returns the chronometer to its pocket, his quick ear catchesthe frou-frou of feminine petticoats outside the door. He opens it, frowning. A nurse is standing there with a summons in her face. Shedelivers her low-toned message, receives a brusque reply, and rustles downthe corridor between the long lines of pallets as Saxham draws back hishead and shuts the door, and, setting his great shoulders against it, andfacing Julius, orders:

"Go on!"

Julius goes on:

"At Roselawn Cottage--a pretty place of the toy-residence description, standing in charming gardens not far from the Holiday Rest Home, lived alady--an actress very popular in Musical Comedy--who was known to be themistress of Lord Beauvayse. I need hardly tell you the Father touched onthe unpleasant features of the story as delicately as possible----"

"Without doubt. But--get on a little quicker, " says Saxham grimly, jerkinghis head towards the door. "For I am wanted. And don't speak loud, forthere are people on the other side there. With regard to thiswoman--actress, or whatever she may be----?"

"With all her moral laxities, " goes on Julius, "Miss Lessie Lavigne----"

"Ah, I know the name, " says Saxham sharply. "On with you to the end. 'Withall her moral laxities----'"

"Miss Lessie Lavigne is a generous, kindly, charitable young woman, " goeson Julius. "And the Holiday Home has benefited largely by her purse. Sheis known to the Matron; and Father Tatham--having occasion to visit theRegistrar's office at Cookham on the 29th of last June, for the purpose oflooking up the books, with the Registrar's consent, and satisfying himselfof the existence of the entry regarding a marriage between one of ouryoung fellows then at the Home and a girl he very foolishly married whenon a hopping excursion in the autumn of the previous year--Father Tathamencountered Miss Lavigne--or Lady Beauvayse, to give her her propertitle----"

"In the Registrar's office?"

"In the act of quitting the Registrar's outer office, " says the burnt-outJulius in a weary voice, "in the company of Lord Beauvayse, and followedby his valet and a woman who probably were witnesses; for when the Fatherentered the inner office the register was lying open on the table, theentry of the marriage still wet upon the page. "

"And your religious correspondent pried first, " says Saxham, with savageirony, "and afterwards tattled?"

"And afterwards, seeing in the _Times_ that Lord Beauvayse was underorders for South Africa, mentioned his accidental discovery when writingto me, " says Julius Fraithorn wearily. 

"That will do. When can I see the letter at your hotel? The sooner thebetter, " says Saxham, with a curious smile, "for all purposes. Can youwalk there with me now? Very well"--as Julius assents--"that is arranged, then. "

"What is to be done, Saxham?" Julius stumbles up. The fires that burned inhim a few moments ago are quenched; his slack hand trembles irresolutelyat his beautiful weak mouth, and his deer-like eyes waver. 

"I advise you, " says Saxham, "to leave the doing of what is to be done tome. " His own blue eyes have so strange a flare in them, and his heavy formseems so alive and instinct with threatening and dangerous possibilities, that Julius falters:

"You believe Lord Beauvayse has been a party to--has wilfully compromisedMiss Mildare? You--you mean to remonstrate with him? Do you--do you thinkthat he will listen to a remonstrance?"

"He will find it best in this instance, " says Saxham dourly. 

"Do not--do not be tempted to use any violence, Saxham, " urges theChaplain nervously, looking at the tense muscles of the grim, square faceand the purposeful right hand that hovers near the butt of the Doctor'srevolver. "For your own sake as much as for his!"

Saxham's laugh is ugly to hear. 

"Do you think that Lord Beauvayse would wind up as top-dog if it came to astruggle between us?"

"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 HerMajesty's Army. ) "Remember, if Carslow--the man who killed Vickers, of the_Pittsburg Trumpeter_"--he refers to a grim tragedy of the beginning ofthe siege--"had not been medically certified insane, they would have takenhim out and shot him. "

Saxham shrugs his massive shoulders, and with the utter unmelodiousnessthat 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 anotherman, and the Doctor has picked it up unconsciously, with one or two othercharacteristic habits and phrases, and has fallen into the habit ofwhistling it as he goes doggedly, unwearyingly, upon his ever-wideninground of daily duties. It helps him, perhaps, though it gets upon thenerves of other people, making the younger nurses, not unmindful of hisarbitrary action in the matter of the violet powder, want to shriek. 

"The Military Executive would be perfectly welcome to take me out andshoot me, if first I might be permitted to look in at Staff Bomb proofSouth, and render Society the distinguished service of ridding it of LordBeauvayse. Who's there?"

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 theyhave telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that thepassword for the day is "Honour. "

"You are going to him now?" asks the Chaplain anxiously andapprehensively. 

"Oddly enough, I have been sent for to attend to a shell casualty, " saysSaxham, picking up and putting on his Service felt, and moving to takedown the canvas wallet that is his inseparable companion, from the hook onwhich it hangs. "Or, rather, Taggart was; and as he has thirty diphtheriacases for tracheotomy at the Children's Hospital, and McFadyen's hands arefull at the Refugees' Infirmary, the Major asks if I will take the duty. It's an order, I suppose, couched in a civil way. "

He swings the heavy wallet over his shoulders, and picks up his wornhunting-crop. 

"And so, let's be moving, " he says, his hand upon the door-knob. "Yourhotel is on my way. I may need that letter, or I may not. And in any caseI prefer to have seen it before I meet the man. "

"One moment. " The Chaplain speaks with a strained look of anxiety, squeezing a damp white handkerchief into a ball between his palms. "Youhave taken upon yourself the duty of bringing Lord Beauvayse to book overthis--very painful matter.... I should like ... I should wish you to leavethe task of enlightening Miss Mildare to me. "

"To you. And why?"

Saxham waits for the answer, a heavy figure filling up the doorway, withscowling brows, and sullen eyes that carefully avoid the Chaplain's face. 

"Because I--because in inflicting upon her what must necessarily be a--apainful humiliation"--the Rev. Julius clears his throat, and laboriouslyrolls the damp handkerchief-ball into a sausage--"I wish to convince MissMildare that my respect and my--esteem for her have--not diminished. "

"And how do you propose to drive this conviction home?"

The Reverend Julius flushes to the ear-tips. The coldness of thequestioning voice gives him a nervous shudder. He says with an effort, looking at the thick white, black-fringed lids that bide the Doctor'squeer blue eyes:

"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 beendeceived and played with by a person of Lord Beauvayse's lack ofprinciple----"

"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 headdresses that is positively savage. The raucous tones flay Julius'ssensitive ears, the terrible blue eyes blaze upon him, scorch him. Hefalters:

"I--I trust my purpose is pure from vulgar self-seeking? I hope myattitude towards Miss Mildare is not unchivalrous--or ungenerous?"

"In manipulating her disadvantage to serve your own interests, " saysSaxham's terrible voice, "you would undoubtedly be playing a very low-downgame. "

Julius laughs, shortly and huffily. 

"A low-down game!... Ha, ha, ha! You don't mince your words, Doctor!"

"I can phrase my opinion even more plainly, if you desire it, " returnsSaxham brutally. "To bespatter a rival for the gaining of an advantage bycontrast is a Yahoo's trick to which no decent gentleman would stoop. "

"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'sfair in Love and----'"

"Exactly. All _is_ fair, " returns Saxham, squaring his dogged jaws at theother, and folding his great arms upon his deep wide chest. "And all shallbe, please to understand it. It is, unfortunately, necessary that MissMildare should be undeceived as regards Lord Beauvayse. But the painfulduty of opening her eyes will be undertaken by that"--the break before thedesignation is scathingly contemptuous--"by that--distinguished noblemanhimself, and by no other. "

"How can you compel the man to give himself away?" demands the ReverendJulius incredulously. Saxham answers, mechanically opening and closing hissmall, muscular surgeon's hand, and watching the flexions and extensionsof the supple fingers with an ugly kind of interest:

"I shall compel him to. How doesn't concern you at the moment. Whatmatters is--your parole of honour that you will never by word, or deed, orsign disclose to Miss Mildare that Lord Beauvayse was not, when he engagedhimself to marry her, in a position to fulfil his matrimonial proposals. Short of betraying your rival, you are at liberty to further your ownviews as may seem good to you. The plan of campaign that I, in your place, should choose might not find favour in your eyes.... "

His look bears upon the younger man with intolerable weight, hisheavily-shouldered figure seems to swell and fill the room. Julius isclearly conscious of hating his saviour, and the consciousness is acid onhis palate as he asks, with a wry smile:

"What would your plan be if you were in my place?"

"To praise where a rival was worthy of praise; to be silent where it wouldbe easy to depreciate; to win her from him, not because of my own greaterworth, but in spite of the worst she could know of me. That would, in myopinion, be a conquest worthy of a man. "

The pupils of the speaker's flaming blue eyes have dwindled to merepin-points, a rush of blood has darkened the square pale face, to sinkaway again and leave it opaquely colourless, as Saxham says with cooldistinctness:

"And now, before we leave this room, I must trouble you for thatpromise--oath, if you feel it would be more in your line of business. Idon't possess a copy of the Scriptures, but I think that is a Crucifixyou wear upon your watch-chain?"

It is. And when the Reverend Julius has kissed the sacred symbol withshaking lips, and taken the oath as Saxham dictates, his heart tattooingfuriously under the baggy khâki jacket, and an angry pulse beating in histhin cheek, Saxham adds, with the flickering shadow of a smile, as heopens the door, and signs to the Chaplain to pass out before him:

"You observe, I have turned the weapons of your profession against you. Exactly as--replying to your question of a moment back with regard tocompelling--exactly as I intend to do in the case of Lord Beauvayse!"

He motions to the other to pass out before him, and locks the door uponhis stuffy little sanctum whose shelves are piled with a heterogeneousconfusion of tubes and bottles, books and instruments, specimens offoodstuffs under the process of analysis for values, and carefully-sealedwatch-glasses containing choice cultures of deadly microbes in bouillon, before he leads his way down the long corridor, where narrow pallets, uponwhich sick men and boys are stretched, range along the walls upon eitherhand, and the air is heavy with the taint of suppurating wounds, and thehot, sickly breath of fever and malaria. 

He walks quickly, his keen blue eyes glancing right and left with theeffect of carelessness, yet missing nothing. He stops, and loosens thebandage, and relieves the swollen limb. He delays to kneel a moment besideone low pillow, and turn gently to the light a face that is ghastly, withits bristly beard and glassy, staring eyes, and its pallor that is of thehue of old wax, and lay it gently back again as he beckons to the nurse tobring the screens, and hide the Dead from the sight of the living. 

He is in his element; salient and masterful and strong. But the haggardeyes that turn upon him do not shine with gratitude. He has not reachedthese hearts. They accuse him, quite unjustly, of a liking for cutting andcarving. They suspect him, quite correctly, of being in no hurry for theending of the siege. How should he be, when, these strenuous days onceover, he sees nothing before him but the murky blackness of the night outof which he came, from which he has emerged for one brief draught ofrenewed joy in living before the dark shall close over him again, andwrap him round for ever?

He has suffered horribly of late. But at the worst his work has neverfailed to bring relief and distraction. Pure loyalty to a man in whom hebelieves, has been the main-spring of his unflagging strength. He is notliked or popular in any way, though Surgeon-Major Taggart upholds himmanfully, and McFadyen is loyal to the old bond. His harshness repelsregard, his coldness blights confidence, and so, though he is admired forhis dazzling skill in surgery, for his dogged perseverance and unremittingpower of application, for his fine horsemanship and iron nerve; he is notregarded with affection. 

He is not in the least aware of it, to do him justice, when his roughironies and his brusque repartees give offence. In the heyday of hisLondon 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 tonguefrom Saxham that the uneasy limb or its fellow was privileged upon Stateoccasions to wear the Garter. He trod upon corns then, as he treads uponthem now, without being aware of it, as he goes upon his way. 

Julius goes with him, rent by apprehensions, stealing nervous side-glancesat the impassive, opaque-skinned face as Saxham swings along with hispowerful, rather lurching gait over the ploughed and littered waste thatdivides the Hospital from the town beyond it. He speaks once or twice, butSaxham seems not to hear. 

The Doctor is listening to a dialogue that is as yet unspoken. He iscrushing a resistance that has not yet been made. In imagination hissmall, strong, muscular hands are gripped about the throat of the man whohas lied to her and deceived her; and he is listening with joy to thegurgling, choking efforts to phrase a prayer for mercy, or utter a finaldefiance; and he sees with grim pleasure how the fine skin blackens underhis deadly hold, and how the lazy, beautiful, grey-green eyes, no longersleepy or defiant, but staring and horribly bloodshot, are already rollingupwards in the death-agony. The primitive savage that is in every manlusts at a juncture such as this, to kill with the bare hands rather thanto slay with any weapon known to civilisation. 

"Let him look to it how he deals with her! Let him look to it!"

How long it seems since Saxham muttered those words, turning sullenly awayto recross the stepping-stones, leaping from boulder to boulder as theriver wimpled and laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protectionand her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect andtriumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to recommence his wooinguntil the intruder should be gone, divining, as Saxham had instinctivelyknown, the hidden passion that rent and tortured him, glowing with theconsciousness of secret mastery.... 

If this meek, thin-blooded young clergyman who walks beside him might havewon her, it seems to Saxham that he could have borne it. But thatBeauvayse of all others should venture to approach her, presume to rear animage of himself in the shrine of her pure breast; win her from her highaims 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 asindifferently as a jewelled trinket, should dare to offer Lynette Mildaredishonour, is monstrous, hideous, unbearable.... 

How comes it that she of all women should be so easily allured, so lightlydrawn aside? Was there no baser conquest within reach that this white, virginal, slender saint should become _his_ prey? Shall she be made evenas those others of whom she spoke, when the veil of a girlish innocencewas drawn aside, and strange and terrible knowledge looked out of thoseclear eyes, and she said, in answer to his question:

"They are the most unhappy of all the souls that suffer upon earth. Forthey are the slaves, and the victims, and the martyrs of the unrelenting, merciless, dreadful pleasures of men.... "

Of men like Beauvayse. 

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 Greeksculptors; soft of skin, golden of hair, with sleepy eyes like greenjewels, soft persuasive voices with which to pour poisoned words intoinnocent and guileless ears, and the bold, brave blood of old-time heroesrunning in their veins, prompting them to the doing of dashing, reckless, gallant deeds, no less than sins of lust and luxury. 

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 hasdealt with her, who had no thought or dream but to save others from thefate he destines for her, until his cursed, beautiful face smiled downinto her own. For every lying oath he has sworn to her, for every falsepromise made to the wrecking of her maiden peace, for every kiss thoseinnocent lips have been despoiled of, for every touch of his that hassoiled her, for every breath of his that has scorched the white petals ofthe Convent-reared lily, he shall pay the price. 

Silently Saxham registers this oath upon that beloved red-brown head, since he denies its Maker His honour, and the whirling blackness that iswithin him is rent and cloven, for one blinding instant, by thelevin-fires of Hell. He knows thenceforward what he will do, as he walkswith the pale Chaplain between the shell-torn houses, and along thelittered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard andlistless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pass andrepass as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling fromthe low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-firewere the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental to a shamfight. 

They reach the Chaplain's hotel, and go to his room. Saxham waits silentlywhile Julius searches for and finds Father Tatham's letter, takes it andreads it attentively, puts it carefully away in a worn notecase, restoresthe notecase to the inner pocket of his jacket, and, without a nod or wordof farewell, is gone. 

XLVII

To the remarkably complete system of underground wires installed by theGarrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah Wrynche, on duty at the ConvalescentHospital that was once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday thatsaw the publication of the string of paragraphs previously quoted from the_Siege Gazette_, indebted for what she afterwards described withruefulness as a "heckled morning. "

Once a week the "Social Jottings, " bubbling from the effervescent GoldPen, descended like rain upon the parched soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. Tomake gossip where there is none is as difficult as making bricks withoutclay, or trimming a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds'Protection Society, and plumage is Fashion's latest cry. Under thecircumstances a genuine item of general and public interest was a pearl ofprice. And yet something had told the little lady that the ruthless BluePencil of Supreme Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy ofcasting it before the readers of the _Siege Gazette_. She seemed to hearhim saying, in the pleasant voice she knew so well:

"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control. "

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 thekind!

She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, and added theparagraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks, and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole personthe offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil. 

Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing-press driven by thelittle oil-engine that had sustained a shell-casualty at the beginning ofthe siege, adored Lady Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated partitionthat separated the office from the printing-room, and presently came backin 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, andfell to tinkering at his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. Whenshe had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten minutes SupremeAuthority would descend the ladder, wield the Blue Pencil, and depart. Would he have mercy and not sacrifice? The suspense was torturing. 

Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority mightbe--she dared not use the word "circumvented. " "Got round" was evenworse; "evaded" sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her ownfeminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force thanLady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, anddaintily cut off the three paragraphs from the bottom of the slip. 

The thing was done, and the snipped-off paragraphs concealed, as a pair ofbrown boots, with steel jack-spurs attached, came neatly down the ladder. The Chief gave her his cheery "Good-morning, " and congratulated her onlooking well. Her cheeks burned and her heart rat-tatted against thehidden paper, as he ran his keen eye down slip after slip, and initialledthem for the press. She almost shrieked as he took up the "SocialJottings. " The underground office whirled about her as the blue pencilsteadily travelled down. Then--he was gone--and the initialled proof laybefore her. She had nothing to do but neatly and delicately paste on thebit she had snipped off. This done, she gathered up her various smallbelongings, swept them into her bag, and went, leaving the passed proof ofthe "Social Jottings" column waiting for Young Evans with the rest. 

In the middle of the night she realised what she had done. But even in abeleaguered town under the sway of Martial Law you cannot hang a lady, ororder her out and shoot her for Mutiny and Treason combined. There wouldbe a reprimand; what Bingo pleasantly termed "an official wigging, " unlessthe Blue Pencil could, by any feminine art, be persuaded that it hadpassed those pars. 

But, of course, she would never stoop to such a deception. The ruse shehad employed was culpable. The other thing would be infamous. And--hewould be sure to see that the end of the proof-slip had been pasted on. 

She slept jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the ConvalescentHospital in that stage of penitence that immediately precedes hystericalbreakdown. She experienced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who, regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to be going on justthen, was walking along reading the _Siege Gazette_. Shirt-sleeved YoungEvans had worked until daylight getting the Thursday's issue out. Andthere was a tremendous run upon copies. Every other person Lady Hannahencountered upon the street seemed to have got one, and to find itunusually interesting. The women especially. None of them were dull, orlanguid, or dim-eyed this morning. The siege crawl was no longer inevidence. They walked upon springs. Upon the stoep of the Hospital, wherethe long rows of convalescents were airing, every patient appeared plungedin perusal. Those who had not the paper were waiting, with wateringmouths, until those who had would part. A reviving breath seemed to havepassed over them, and spots of colour showed in their yellow, haggardfaces. They talked and laughed.... 

Lady Hannah passed in, conscious of an agreeable tingling all down herspine. The hall-porter, a brawny, one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lostwhat he was wont to term his "flapper" at the outset of hostilities, wastoo deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the "Social Jottings"column to salute her. Inside you heard little beyond the crackling of theflimsy 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 wasgoing to happen, after months and months of eventless monotony. It warmedthe thin blood in their veins like comet champagne, and quickened theirfaded appetites like some salt breath from the far-distant sea. 

The flavour of success upon the palate may, like Imperial Tokay, be sensedbut once in a lifetime, but you can never forget that once. Out of hergold fountain-pen Lady Hannah had spurted a little ink upon the famishedGueldersdorpians, and their dry bones moved and lived. She knew a finemust be paid for this dizzying draught of popularity, even as she tied ona bibbed apron, and superintended the serving and distribution of thepatients' one-o'clock dinner. 

Horse-soup, with a few potato-sprouts, and one or two slivered carrots tothe gallon, formed the menu to-day. There was no more white bread, and avillainous bannock of crushed oats had to be soaked in your porringer ifyou had no strength to chew it. Sweetened bran-jelly followed, and uponthis the now apologetic but smiling porter, with the intelligence that herladyship was wanted at the wall-jigger in the Matron's room. 

The ring-up came from Hotchkiss Outpost North, where Captain Bingo wasthis day on duty, _vià_ the Staff Headquarter office in Market Square, andthe voice that filtered to the ear of Lady Hannah was unmistakably that ofher spouse, and tinged with a gruffness as unusual as ominous. 

"Hullo. Is that you?"

"Qu'il ne vous en déplaise!"

Bingo growled in a perfectly audible aside:

"And devil a doubt. What other woman would jabber French through atelephone?"

"A Frenchwoman would, possibly. "

"Don't catch what you're saying. Look here, what made you shove such awhacking bouncer into the _Siege Gazette_?"

"Please put that into English. " She underwent a quaking at the heart. 

"I say, that announcement about Toby and the Mildare filly is all my eye. "

"It isn't all your eye. It's first-hand, fully-authorised fact. "

"Rot!"

"Paix et peu! Say rot, if it pleases you!"

"You'll have to withdraw and apologise. "

"I can't make out what you're saying. "

"It will end in your eating humble-pie. Can you hear that?"

"I can hear that you are in a bearish temper. "

"I've reason to be. If a man had written what you have I should punch hishead. "

"Say that again!"

"I say, if a stranger of the kickable sex had told such a pack ofinfernal----"

_Click!_

Lady Hannah hung up the receiver, blew a contemptuous kiss into the gapeof the celluloid mouthpiece, and turned to go. There was another ring-upas she reached the door. 

"Hallo. Are you the Convalescent Hospital?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

"Staff Bombproof South. I want to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche. "

"I'm here, Lord Beauvayse. "

"I say, I'm going to rag you frightfully. Why on earth have you given usaway in that beastly paper?"

"Whom do you mean by 'us'?"

"Well, me and Miss Mildare. "

"Didn't you tell me on Sunday that you were engaged?" she demandedindignantly. 

"I did. " The answer came back haltingly. 

"And that you didn't care who knew it?"

"Fact. "

"And that you two were going to be married as soon as you could pull offthe event?"

"Yes. " The voice was palpably embarrassed. "But----"

"Well?"

"But--things you don't mind people knowing look beastly in cold print. "

"If I were in your shoes I should think they looked beautiful. "

Nothing but a faint buzz came back. Lady Hannah went on:

"If I were in your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and paragon asLynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I should want the whole worldto envy me my colossal good luck. I should go about in sandwich-boardsadvertising it. I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim it through that. Ishould----"

There was no response beyond the buzzing of the wire. Beauvayse hadevidently hung up the receiver. 

"Is there any creature upon earth more cowardly than a man engaged?" LadyHannah demanded of space. There was a futile struggle inside thetelephone-box. Somebody else was trying to ring up. She put the receiverback upon the crutches, and--

"_Ting--ting--ting!_" said the bell in a high, thin voice. 

"Who is it?" she asked. 

The answer came back with official clearness:

"Officer of the day, Staff Headquarters. If you're the ConvalescentHospital, the Colonel would like to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche. "

Her knees became as jelly, and her heart seemed to turn a somersault. Sheanswered in a would-be jaunty voice that wobbled horribly:

"Here--here--is Lady Hannah. "

"Hold on a minute, please!"

She held on. She had not shuddered at the end of the wire for more than aminute when the well-known, infinitely-dreaded voice said in her ear, soclearly that she jumped:

"Lady Hannah there? How d'you do?"

She gulped, and quavered:

"It--it depends on what you're going to say. "

"I see. " There was the vibration of a stifled laugh, and her heart jumpedto meet it. "So you anticipated a hauling over the coals?"

Revived, she shrugged her little shoulders. 

"Have I deserved one?"

The voice said, with unmistakable displeasure in it:

"Thoroughly. Why were not the last three paragraphs of the weekly 'SocialJottings' column submitted to me yesterday with the rest?"

She heard herself titter imbecilely. Then a voice, which she could hardlybelieve her own, said, with a pitiable effort to be gay and natural:

"Weren't they? Perhaps you overlooked them?"

"You know I did not overlook them. "

This was the cold, incisive, cutting, rasping voice which Bingo was wontto describe as razors and files. Her ears burned like fire, and herbright, birdlike eyes were round and scared. She gasped:

"Oh ... Do you really----"

"I want the truth, please, without quibbling. " The voice was harsh andcold, and inexorably compelling. "Why were those paragraphs not shown tome?"

She winked away her tears. 

"Because I was sure you'd blue-pencil them out of existence. And a genuinebit of news is such a roc's egg in these times of scarcity. "

"Genuine!"

There was incredulity in the tone. 

"Upon my honour as the wife of a British Dragoon. "

He said crisply:

"Precipitate publication, even of authentic information, is likely to beresented by the persons concerned. "

She remembered, with a sinking at the heart, that one person concerned hadalready objected. 

"Both of them authorised the insertion. "

"And the official consent to it was obtained by a trick. "

She whispered, her heart in the heels of her Louis Quinze shoes:

"Please--please don't call it that!"

"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, theFoltlebarres will be thrown into a state of volcanic eruption?"

"If the Foltlebarres aren't absolute beetles they'll jump for joy. Howcould their boy possibly do better?"

"I don't see how myself. "

"Ah, if you're going to back up Toby, the day is as good as won. "

"You're very kind to say so. "

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 bebuttered, she thought, if the emollient be dexterously applied. And abright spark of naughty triumph snapped in each of her birdlike blackeyes. 

"Thanks. " He was speaking again. "Apologies for keeping you. You're up toyour eyes in Hospital work, I don't doubt. "

"There is enough to keep one going. "

"Without the additional tax of literary labour. " She was conscious of apremonitory, apprehensive chill that travelled from the roots of her hairdown her spine, and apparently made its exit at the heels of her LouisQuinze shoes. "So the 'Social Jottings' column will not appear in the_Siege Gazette_ after to-day. Good-morning. "

"Is that my punishment for insubordination?"

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 beenput under arrest, even to have been ordered out and shot, would bepreferable to being figuratively spanked and put in the corner. " Shewinked away some more tears, and sniffed a little dejectedly. "And onlythe other day he seemed quite pleased with me, " she added pensively. Thenshe shrugged her shoulders, and rang up the Head Hospital, North VeldRoad. 

"Who you-e?"

It was the sing-song voice of the Barala hall-boy. 

"I'm Lady Hannah Wrynche. Is the Reverend Mother on duty in the wardsto-day?"

"I go see. You hang-e on. "

Lady Hannah hung on until her small remaining stock of patience desertedher. As she stamped her small feet, longing to accelerate the languidmovements of the hall-boy with a humanely-wielded hatpin, a whisper in thevelvet voice she knew stole across the distance. 

"Hannah. Is it you?"

"It's me, Biddy dear. "

There was a soft laugh that ended in a sigh. "It is so long since anybodycalled me that. "

"I wouldn't dare to with you looking at me. "

"Am I so formidable of aspect? But go on. "

"It's not so easy. But I've had an awful morning. Everybody I like bestdown on me like bricks and m----" The speaker gulped a sob. 

"You are crying, dear!"

"Not a drop. But if you join in the heckling I shall dribble away anddissolve in salt water. It's all about those wretched paragraphs of minein the _Siege Gazette_. But perhaps you haven't seen it?"

"I have seen it. "

"You were quite willing that the _fiançailles_ should be made public.... Indeed, you gave me to understand you desired it. "

"I was quite willing. I did wish it. "

"Yes.... Thank you, dear; that was what I wanted to hear from you. Iunderstand now what the one clapping pair of hands must mean to the actorwho is booed by all the rest of the audience. Good-bye, dear. "

"Stay.... Who are the persons who disapprove of the announcement?"

"My Bingo, for one. Not that anything the dear old stupid says matters inthe slightest. And--and Toby. "

"'Toby'?"

"I mean Lord Beauvayse. "

"Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this matter it was forme to decide. "

"Certainly, dear. "

"Whose is the other objecting voice?"

"The Chief thinks I ... We ... It ... I rather fancy that he used the word'precipitate' in expressing his opinion. "

"Refer him to me if he expresses it again. "

"Of course, dear, since you ... "

"Good-bye. "

"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 hadlong ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress. '_Refer him to me_, ' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say I'm rung upagain. "

But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, and her littleladyship went back. This last communication proved a puzzling one. 

"You there?"

"I am Lady Hannah Wrynche. Where are you?"

There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice said:

"I don't know as that matters. "

"Who are you?"

There was another hesitation. Then the stranger parried with a question:

"You write them weekly screeds in the _Siege Gazette_?"

"I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. Kindly say who isspeaking?"

"Nobody that matters much. Can you tell me where Miss Mildare lives?"

"Not without knowing who you are. "

"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 ofthe wire had heard ... Where?... 

"If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, how is it youdon't know her address?" she demanded. 

"Keep her address all you want to. Only next time you come alongside hergive her a message for me. Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotelon the veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was herfriend?"

Lady Hannah repeated:

"'And Bough, who was her friend. ' You are Bough----?"

"_Click!_" Somebody had hung up the receiver. 

Lady Hannah spent another bad night, not wholly due to the indigestiblenature of a dinner of mule colloped, and locusts fried in batter byNixey's chef. Staggering in the course of disturbed and changeful dreams, under the impact of sufficient bricks and mortar to rebuild toppledownGueldersdorp, being hauled over mountains of coals, and getting into wholeGulf Streams of hot water, she was slumberously conscious that thesenightmares were less harassing than one nasty, perplexing little visionthat kept cropping up among the others. It had no beginning and no end. Init the Matron's room at the Convalescent Hospital and Kink's Family Hotelat Tweipans were somehow mixed up, and the ingenuous Mr. Van Busch, thatAfrikander gentleman of British sympathies, whose chivalrous and patrioticsentiments had prompted and urged him to the imperilling of his own skinand the risking of his own liberty in the interests of an English ladymasquerading for political reasons as the refugee-widow of a Germandrummer, was oddly confused in identity with an uncomfortably mysteriousindividual who possessed neither features nor name. 

"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.. 

"You are Bough?" she would find herself asking. 

There would be a little guttural, horrible laugh, and nothing would answerbut the buzzing of the wire. 

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 thevoice. Van Busch was in Gueldersdorp ... And however he came, and whateverdisguise of person or of purpose sheltered him, his presence boded nogood. The merely logical masculine mind doffs hat respectfully before thesuperiority of feminine intuition. 

XLVIII

Saxham, shouldering out of Julius's hotel upon his way to Staff BombproofSouth, is made aware that the hundred-foot-high dust-storm that has ragedand swirled throughout the morning is in process of being beaten down intoa porridge of red mud by a downpour of February rain. 

Straight as Matabele spears it comes down, sending pedestrians who havegrown indifferent to shell-fire to huddle under cover, adding to thewretchedness of life in trench or bombproof as nothing else can. And theDoctor, biting hard upon the worn stem of the old briar-root, as he goesswinging along through the hissing deluge with his chin upon his breastand his fierce eyes sullenly fixed upon the goal ahead, recalls, even morevividly than upon Sunday, the angry buffalo of Lady Hannah's apt analogy. 

He is drenched to the skin, it goes without saying, in a minute or two. Sois the Railway Volunteer, who challenges him at the bridge that carriesthe single-gauge railway southward over the Olopo, in spite of his raggedwaterproof and an additional piece of tarpaulin. So is a mounted officerof the Staff, in whom Saxham mechanically recognises Captain BingoWrynche, as he goes by at a furious gallop, spurring, and jagging savagelyat the mouth of the handsome if attenuated brown charger, who sends stonesand mud and water flying from his furious iron-shod hoofs. So is theBarala on guard by the wattled palisade of the native village--amuddy-legged and goose-fleshy warrior, in a plumed, brimless bowler andleopard-skin kaross, whose teeth can be heard chattering as he stands toattention and brings his gaspipe rifle to the slope. The Chinamen workingin the patches of market-garden, where the scant supply of vegetables thatcommand such famine-prices are raised, are certainly sheltered from thewet by their colossal umbrella-hats, but the splashed-up red gruel hasimbrued them to the eyes. Yet they continue to labour cheerfully, hoeingscattered shell-fragments out of their potato-drills and removingincrusted masses of bullets that incommode the young kidney-beans, andarranging this ironmongery and metal-ware in tidy piles, possibly with aview to future commerce. And so, with another challenge from a picket, posted between the Barala village and the south trenches, where many ofthe loyal natives are doing duty, Saxham finds himself on the periloustongue of land that lies behind Maxim Kopje South, and where the StaffBombproof is situated. 

As the long, low mound comes into view, a dazzling white flash leaps froma fold of the misty grey hills beyond, and one of Meisje's great shellsgoes screaming and winnowing westwards. Then a sentry of the Irregulars, abattered, 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. 

"'Alt! I know you well enough, Doctor. " It is a man whose wounded arm wasdressed, one blazing day last January, outside the Convent bombproof. "Butyou'll 'ave to give the countersign. Pass Honour and all's well. But"--thesentry's nostrils twitch as the savour of Saxham's pipe reaches them, andhis whisper of appeal is as piercing as a yell--"if you left a pipefulbe'ind you, it wouldn't do no 'arm. Don't pull your pouch out, sir; thelookout officer 'as 'is eye on you. Open it by the feel, an' drop a pinchby the stone near your toe. I'll get it when they relieve me. "

Saxham complies, leaving the sentry to gloat distantly over the littlebrown lump of loose tangled fibres rapidly reducing to sponginess underthe downpour from the skies. The long mound of raw red earth, crusted withgreenish-yellow streaks of lyddite from the bursting-charges, rises nowimmediately before him. At its eastern end is a flagstaff displaying theUnion Jack. Under the roof of the little penthouse from which theflagstaff rises are sheltered the vari-coloured acetylene lamps that areused for signalling at night. 

Midway of the raw mound rises the rear elevation of an officer in drippingwaterproofs, who is looking steadily through a telescope out between thelong driving lances of the rain, beyond Maxim Kopje South to thosemysterious hills, swathed in grey-black folds of storm-cloud, that look sodesolate, and whose folds are yet as full of swarming, active, malignantlife as the blanket of an unwashed Kaffir. An N. C. O. Is posted a littlebelow the officer, whose narrow shoulders and dark hair, showing above theedge 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 theDestroyer sweeps over these two figures and about them in the customaryway. But even women and children have grown indifferent to these things, and the men have long ceased to be aware of them. 

A bullet sings past Saxham's ear, as the acrid exhalations of a stablerise gratefully to his nostrils, recently saluted by the fierce andclamorous smells of the native village. The ground slopes under his feet. He goes down the inclined way that ends in the horses' quarters, and theorderly, who is sitting on an empty ammunition-box outside the tarpaulinthat screens off the interior of the officer's shelter, stiffens to thesalute, receives a brief message, and disappears within. 

Before Saxham rise the bony brown and bay and chestnut hindquarters ofhalf a dozen lean horses, that are drowsing or fidgeting before theiremptied mangers. Against the division of a loose-box that holds a finebrown charger, still saddled and steaming, and heavily splashed with mud, there leans a stretcher, which, by the ominous red stains and splashesupon it, has been recently in use. 

Upon Saxham's left hand is the shelter for the rank and file. Here severalgaunt, hollow-eyed, and hairy troopers are sitting on rough benches at atrestle-table, playing dominoes and draughts, or poring over tatteredbooks by the light of the flickering oil-lamps, with tin reflectors, thathang against the earth walls. None of them are smoking, though several aresucking vigorously at empty pipes; and the rapacious light that glares inevery eye as Saxham mechanically knocks out the ashes from his smoked-outbriar-root against the side-post of the entrance is sufficient witness tothe pangs that they endure. 

Perhaps it is characteristic of the Doctor that, with a hell of revengefulfury seething in his heart, and a legion of devils unloosed and shrieking, prompting him to murder, he should have paused to relieve thetobacco-famine of the sentry, and be moved to a further sacrifice of hissole luxury by the sight of those empty pipes. The old rubber pouch, pitched by a cricketer's hand, flies in among the domino-players, andrebounds from a pondering head, as the orderly comes back, and lifts onecorner of the tarpaulin for the Doctor to pass in. A pack of raveningwolves tussling over an unusually small baby might distantly reproduce thescene Saxham leaves behind him. The trestle-table and benches are upset, and men and benches, draughts and dominoes, welter in horrible confusionover the earthen floor, when the scandalised orderly-corporal rushes in toquell the riot, and thenceforward joins the rioters. 

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 upperlip is split, divides the tobacco fairly to the last thread. They evenshare out the indiarubber pouch, and chew the pieces as long as theflavour lasts. When the thick, fragrant smoke curls up from the lightedpipes, it steals round the edges of the tarpaulin that has dropped behindSaxham, passing in to the wreaking of vengeance upon the thief whoseprofane and covetous hand has plucked the white lily of the Conventgarden. 

Now, with that deadly hate surging in his veins, with the lust to killtingling in every nerve and muscle, he will soon stand in the presence ofhis enemy, and hers. As he thinks of this, suddenly a bell rings. Thesound comes from the north, so it cannot be the bell of the CatholicChurch, or that of the Protestant Church, or the bell of the Wesleyanmeeting-house, or of the Dutch Kerk. 

"_Clang-clang! clang-clang! Clang----_"

The last clang is broken off suddenly, as though the rope has been jerkedfrom the ringer's hands, but Saxham is not diverted by it from hisoccupation. With that curious fatuity to which the most logical of us areprone, he has been conning over the brief, scorching sentences with whichhe means to strip the other man's deception bare to the light, and makeknown his own self-appointed mission to avenge her. 

"They telephoned for me, and I have come, but not in the interests ofyour sick or wounded man. Because it was imperative that I should say thisto you: Your engagement to Miss Mildare and your approaching marriage toher were announced in to-day's _Siege Gazette_. You have received manycongratulations. Now take mine--liar, and coward, and cheat!"

And with each epithet, delivered with all the force of Saxham's musculararm, shall fall a stinging blow of the heavy old hunting-crop. There willbe a shout, an angry oath from Beauvayse, staggering back under theunexpected, savage chastisement, red bars marring the insolent, high-bredbeauty of the face that has bewitched her. Saxham will continue:

"You approached this innocent, inexperienced girl as a lover. Yourepresented 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 stagebutterfly sleek with carrion-juices, whose wings are jewelled by the vicesof men; and who is worthy of you, as you are of her. I speak as I canprove. Here is the written testimony of a reliable witness to yourmarriage with Miss Lavigne. And now you will go to her and show yourselfto her in your true colours. You will undeceive her, or----"

There is a foggy uncertainty about what is to follow after that "or. " Butthe livid flames of the burning hell that is in Saxham throw upon thegreyness a leaping reflection that is red like blood. A fight to thedeath, either with weapons, or, best of all, with the bare hands, is whatSaxham secretly lusts for, and savours in anticipation as he goes. 

Let the humanitarian say what he pleases. Man is a manslayer by instinctand by will. 

And within the little area of this beleaguered town do not men kill, andare not men killed, every day? The conditions are mediæval, fast relapsinginto the primeval. The modern sanctity and inviolability attending andsurrounding human life are at a discount. Even for children, the grim Kingof Terrors had become a bugaboo to laugh at; red wounds and ghastly sightsare things of everyday experience; there is a slump in mortality. 

In those old, far-distant Chilworth Street days, two men who engaged in abattle to the death about a woman desired might have seemed merely savagesto Saxham. Here things are different. The elemental bed-rock of humannature has been laid bare, and the grim, naked scars upon it, testifyingto the combat of Ice and Fire for the round world's supremacy, will neverbe quite hidden under Civilisation's green mantle of vegetation, or hertoadstool-growths of bricks and mortar, any more. 

And the men are well matched. Saxham knows himself the more muscular, butBeauvayse has the advantage of him in years, and is lithe, and strong, andsupple as the Greek wrestler who served the sculptor Polycleitos as amodel for the Athlete with the Diadem. 

It will be a fight worth having. No quarter. And Saxham's breath comesheavily, and his blue eyes have in them a steely glitter, and, as thetarpaulin falls behind him, he shifts to a better grip on the strong oldhunting-crop. 

Overhead the rain drums deafeningly on the tarpaulins. The long bombproofis heterogeneously furnished with full and empty ammunition-boxes markedA. O. S. , a leathern sofa-divan, tattered by spurs and marked by muddyboots, several cane or canvas deck-chairs, and others of the Windsorpattern common to the barrack-room. Arms and accoutrements are in ruderacks against the corrugated-iron-panelled walls; a trestle-table coveredwith oilcloth runs down the middle. It is lighted by a couple of acetylenelamps hanging by their chains from iron bars that cross the trench above, and there is another lamp, green-shaded, upon a bare deal table thatstands, strewn with papers, against the farther wall. 

A man in shirt-sleeves sits there writing. Another man is busy at atelephone that is fixed against the wall beyond the writing-table. Thereis something fateful and ominous about the heavy silence in which they dotheir work. It is broken only by a strange sound that comes almostcontinuously from--where Saxham does not trouble to ask. It is thegroaning, undoubtedly, of the wounded man to whose aid he has beensummoned, with the added injunction, "Bring morphia, " showing that littlefurther can be done for him, whoever he may be, than to smooth hispassage into the Beyond by the aid of the Pain Slayer. 

Let him wait, however sore his need, until Saxham has dealt with hisenemy. He is resentfully impatient in the knowledge that neither of themen present is Beauvayse. 

Then, as he stands sullen and lowering, the man who has been writing getsup and comes to him. Saxham recognises the keen-featured face with therusty-brown moustache, and the grip of the lean, hard hand that hauled aDop Doctor out of the Slough of Despair is familiar. The pleasant voice helikes says something about somebody being very wet. It is Saxham, fromwhose soaked garments the water is running in streams, and whose bootssquelch as he crosses the carpet that has been spread above thefloor-tarpaulin. The friendly hand pours out and offers him a sparingmeasure of that rare stimulant, whisky. 

"As preventive medicine. We can't have our Medical Staff men on thesick-list. "

Some such commonplace words accompany the proffered hospitality. 

"I shall not suffer, thanks. You have a shell-casualty, you have 'phonedus, but before I see your man it is imperative that I should speak to LordBeauvayse. Where is he?"

"He is here. "

"My business with him is urgent, sir. "

The man at the telephone makes a sound indicative that a message is comingthrough. 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 somestrong, repressed emotion, and the Doctor's practised glance notes theunsteadiness of the uplifted hand. Then he is saying to the officer incharge at Maxim Kopje South:

"The ammunition comes up to-night. Tell Gaylord that we are short-handedhere, and shall want him to help on night duty.... Practically as soon ashe can join us. No, no better. All for the present ... Thanks! Saxham, please come this way. "

There is a sleeping-place at the end of the long, narrow, lamp-litperspective, curtained off from the rude bareness of the outer place. Light shows between the curtains, and they are of plush, in hue a rich, deep red. As that strong colour sinks into his brain, through his intentand glittering eyes, Saxham the man has a sudden furious impulse to tearthe deep folds back, with a clash of brazen rings on iron rods, and callto the betrayer who lurks behind them to come out and be dealt with. Butthat hollow, feeble moaning sounds continuously from the other side, andSaxham the surgeon stays his hand and follows the Colonel in. There aretwo camp-beds in the small sleeping-place, and a washstand and afolding-chair. A lamp hangs above, and its light falls full upon the faceof the man whom he is seeking. 

Ah! where are they? His furious anger and his deadly hate, where are theynow? Like snow upon the desert they vanish away. How can one rage againstthis shattered thing, stretched on the pallet of the low cot-bed fromwhich the blankets have been stripped away? First Aid bandages have beennot ineffectually applied. Fragments of packing-case have been employed assplints for the broken arm and shattered hand, but, in spite of all thathas been done, the beautiful young life is sinking, waning, flowing outwith that ruddy tide that will not be stayed. 

The greenish pallor and the sweat of mortal agony are upon the face ofBeauvayse, thrown back upon the pillow, and looking upwards to where thedeluging rain makes thunder on the tarpaulined roof. The atmosphere isheavy with the sour-sickly smell of blood, and lamp-fumes; he draws eachbreath laboriously, and exhales it with a whistling sound. Through hisclenched teeth, revealed by the lips that are dragged back in thesemi-grin of desperate agony, that dumb, ceaseless moaning makes its waydespite the gallant effort to restrain it. The one uninjured arm hangsdownwards, its restless fingers picking at the bloodstained matting thatcovers the loose boards of the floor. A sheet has been lightly laid overhim. It is dabbled with the prevailing hue, and sinks in an ominous hollowbelow the breast. And beyond the bottom of it splashed leggings and muddyboots with spurs on them stick out with helpless stiffness. 

A flask of brandy--a precious restorative treasured for use in suchdesperate need as this--stands with a tumbler and a jug of water on thecamp washstand that is between the two cot-beds. Upon the second bed sitsa big and stoutish man, whose large face, not pink just now, is hidden inhis thick, quivering hands. It is Captain Bingo Wrynche, heavy Dragoon, and honest, single-hearted gentleman, to whom belongs the blown and muddycharger drooping in the loose-box outside. The telephone has summoned himin haste from Hotchkiss Outpost North, to see the last of a friend. 

XLIX

"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, andsome of the laagers seem to be shifting, so we have kept an extra eye openof late, by night as well as by day. He was very keen always.... "

Already he is spoken of by those who have known and loved him as one whowas and has been. 

"He had relieved me at 10 a. M. He might have been up over an hour when ithappened. The orderly-sergeant had got his mouth at the speaking-tube, inthe act of sending down a message; he did not see him hit. It was a shellfrom their Maxim-Nordenfelt. And when we got to him, the first glance toldus there was little hope. "

"There is none at all, " says Saxham curtly, as is his wont. "A splinterhas shattered the lower portion of the spine. The agony can be deadenedwith an opiate, and the ruptured arteries ligatured. Beyond that there isnothing else to do, though he may live till morning. "

"He managed to ask for Wrynche before he swooned, so we 'phoned him atHotchkiss Outpost North. He got here ten minutes ago, badly cut up, butthere has been no recognition of him. Do what you can, Saxham, in thecase. Every moment may bring Wrynche's recall. There is another person Ishould 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 aboutnightfall, when it will be safe for her to venture. I ought to send anescort for Miss Mildare?"

The slow, dusky colour rises in Saxham's set, pale face, and as slowlysinks out again. He has been standing in low-toned colloquy with the Chiefoutside the heavy plush curtains. He turns silently upon his heel andvanishes behind them. 

"_Ting--ting--ting!_"

The telephone-bell heralds an urgent recall from Hotchkiss Outpost North. And a beckoning hand summons Captain Bingo from the bedside of his dyingfriend ere ever the word of parting has been spoken. 

"It is for you, Wrynche, as I expected. "

"I am ready, sir. Orderly, get my damned brute out!"

The sorrow and love that swell the big man's heart to bursting find ratherabsurd 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 heavilystriding out of the death-chamber with his bulldog jowl well down upon hischest; and a moment later when he is seen bucketing the lean brown chargerthrough the thrashing hailstorm that is jagged across by the white-greenfires of bursting shell, is rather a tragic figure, or so it seems to me. 

Meanwhile, what of the man who lies upon the bed? Since Bingo's face camebetween and receded into, those thick grey mists that gather about thedying, he has lost consciousness of present things. Fever is rising inthose wellnigh empty veins of his, his skin is drawing and creeping; itseems as though innumerable ants were running over him. The hand that isnot powerless tries to brush them away. Sometimes he thinks he is inHospital, and that the man in the next bed is groaning, and then he isaware that the groans are his own. He is conscious that a needle-prick inthe sound wrist has been followed by sensible relief. The unspeakablegrinding agonies subside; he is able to murmur, "Thanks, Nurse, " as hegulps some liquid from the glass a strange hand holds to his lips.... 

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, to wander over all the past. Could Saxham, sitting motionless and vigilant on the folding-chair, hiskeen eyes quick to note each change, his deft hand prompt to do all thatcan be done--could Saxham hear, he would behold, anatomised before hismental vision, the soul of this his fellow-man. 

"Coming straight for me--five round black spots punched in the grey. Ifthey go by, luck's on my side, and I marry her. If not ... Hit--and donefor!"

Exactly thus has Saxham made of the unconscious Father Noah, of the Boersharp shooters behind their breastwork, the arbiters of Fate. 

"Send for Bingo!" flashes across the dying brain "Something to say toBingo. Don't bring _her_. Who'd want a woman who loved him to remember himlike this? What was it the Mahometan _syce_ the _musth_ elephant killed atBhurtpore said about his wife? '_Let her cool my grave with tears. _' Untilshe finds out ... Until someone tells her. Ah--'h!" There is a groan, anda convulsive shudder, and the beautiful dim eyes roll up in agony, and theblue, swollen lips are wrung as the feeble voice whispers: "Nurse, thishurts like--hell! Some more--that stuff!"

Saxham gives another subcutaneous injection of morphia. The curtains part, and the Colonel, in waterproof and a dreadnought cap, comes noiselesslyin. "No change, " Saxham answers to the mute inquiry. "I anticipate nonebefore midnight. Of course, the weakness is progressive. "

"Of course. " The Chief touches the cold, flaccid wrist. There are hollowsin his lean cheeks, and deep crow's-feet at the corners of the kindlyhazel eyes, and the brown moustache is ominously straight and curveless. "Tell him, if he recovers consciousness, that I thought it best to sendfor her. Chagrave has gone with a couple of the men. It's a desperatenight for a woman to be out in, but they took an Ambulance sling-chairwith them. They'll wrap her in tarpaulins, and carry her in that. "

He nods and goes up on the lookout with a night-glass, and the weariedofficer he relieves comes down. As he has said, it is a desperate night ofdriving sleet and swirling blackness, illuminated only with the malignantcoruscations of lyddite bursting-charges. But the tempest without isnothing to the tempest that rages in the soul of the quiet man in soddenkhâki who watches by the dying. 

She has been sent for.... She is coming.... To kneel by the low cot andweep over him who lies there; kiss the tortured lips and the beautiful dimeyes, and hold the unwounded head upon her breast.... How shall Saxhambear it without crying out to tell her? He clenches his hands, and setshis 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 menupon one who very soon shall be numbered with the dead. 

"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 carriedaway 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!"

He pleads unconsciously, with his most merciless judge, in his utterincapacity to plead at all.... 

And so the time goes by. There has been coming and going in the placeoutside. The guard has relieved the double sentries, the official lampburns redly under the little penthouse. A reconnoitring-patrol ride out, the horses' hoofs sounding hollow on the earth-covered boards of thesloping way. The business of War goes on in its accustomed grooves, andthe business of Life will soon be over for Beauvayse. Yet she has notcome. And Saxham looks at his watch. 

Nine o'clock. He has not eaten since early morning. He is wet to the skinand stiff with long sitting. But when the savoury odours of hot horse-soupand hot bean-coffee, accompanied by the clinking of crockery and tinpannikins, announce a meal in readiness, and would-be hosts come to thecurtains and anxiously beg him to take food, he merely shakes his squareblack head and falls again to watching the unconscious face of Beauvayse. The conscious brain behind its blankly-staring eyes is thinking:

"Those paragraphs.... In black and white the thing looked damnable. Andthink 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!"

He has uttered these last words audibly; they pierce to the heart's coreof the mute, impassive watcher. Strong antipathy is as clairvoyant asstrong sympathy, and with a leap of understanding, and a fresh surge offierce resentment, Saxham acknowledges the deadly truth contained in thosefew halting words. She will be the one to suffer. Beside the martyrdominevitably to be endured by the white saint, the agony of the sinner'sdeath-bed pales and dwindles. There is a savage struggle once againbetween Saxham the man and Saxham the surgeon beside the bed of death. 

His sudden irrepressible movement has knocked the tumbler from the littleiron washstand at his elbow. It falls and shivers into fragments at hisfeet. And then--the upturned face slants a little, and the eyes that havebeen blankly staring at the roof-tarpaulins come down to the level of hisown. He and her fallen enemy regard each other silently for a moment. ThenBeauvayse says weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice thatwooed and won her:

"Thought it was Wrynche. Where is----"

The question ends in a groan. 

Saxham the man shrinks from him with unutterable loathing. But Saxham thesurgeon stoops over him, saying, in distinct, even tones:

"Captain Wrynche was here. He has been recalled to Hotchkiss OutpostNorth. Drink this. " This is a little measure of brandy-and-water, in whichsome tabloids of morphia have been dissolved. And Beauvayse obeys, panting:

"All right. But ... More a job for the Chaplain than the Doctor, isn'tit?"

"Do you wish the Chaplain sent for?"

There is a glimmer of the old lazy, defiant humour in the beautiful dimeyes. 

"What could he do?"

Saxham answers--how strangely for him, the Denier:

"He would probably pray beside you, and talk to you of God. "

There is a pause. The faint, almost breathless whisper asks:

"It's night, isn't it?"

"It is dark and stormy night. "

Beauvayse says, in the whispering voice interrupted by long, gasping sighsthat are beginning to have a jarring rattle in them:

"Before to-morrow.... I shall know more of God ... Than the whole Bench ofBishops. "

There is silence. And she does not come. The man on the bed makes apainful effort, gathering his nearly-spent forces for something he wantsto say:

"Doctor!"

"Let me wipe your forehead. Yes?"

"I ... Insulted you frightfully the other day. "

"You need not recall that. I have forgotten it. "

"I ... Beg your pardon! Will you ... Shake hands?... My left, if you don'tmind. The other one's ... No good. "

He tries to lift the heavy arm that lies beside him. There is only a faintmovement of the finger-tips, and he gives up the effort with a flutteringsob. And the square white face with the burning eyes under the loweringbrows opposes itself to his. Words are crowding to Saxham's lips:

"_I would gladly shake the hand of the man who insulted me and who hasapologised. 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'shusband who proposed himself as mate for Lynette Mildare, I have nothingbut contempt and abhorrence. He is to me a leper. Worse, for the leper Iwould touch to cure!_"

He does not utter the words, nor does his rugged, unconquerable sincerityadmit of his taking the hand. He fights with his hatred in silence. Andshe has not come. What is _he_ saying in that weak voice with the rattlingbreaths between?

"Listen, Saxham.... There's ... Something I want you ... Say to MissMildare. "

The grey mists that gather about him shut out a clear view of Saxham'sterrible face. The feeble whisper struggles on, broken by those rattlinggasps. 

"Tell her forget me. Say when I ... Asked her ... To marry me.... "

Silence. He is falling, falling into an abyss of vast uncertainties. Theblue lips dabbled with foam can frame no more coherent words. Only thebrain behind the dying eyes is alive to understand when Saxham approacheshis own livid face and blazing eyes to the face upon the pillow, and says:

"Do not try to speak. Close your eyes when you mean 'Yes. ' I know what youwish 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?"

The affirmative signal comes. 

"You were married to Miss Lavigne at the Registrar's office, Cookham-on-Thames, last June, before you sailed. The witnesses were yourvalet and a female servant at Roselawn Cottage. And knowing that you werenot free, you deceived and cheated her. That is what I am to tell MissMildare? Signal if I am right. "

The dying eyes are brimming with tears. When the lids shut, signifying"Yes, " slow, heavy drops are forced between them. 

"Very well. Now hear. I will not tell her!"

The eyes open wide with surprise. 

"I will never tell her, " says Saxham again. "I will not blacken any man'sreputation to further my own interests. " The vital strength and thewhite-hot passion of him, contrasted with the spent and utter laxity ofthe dissolving thing of clay upon the bed, seem superhuman. "Do you hearme?" he demands again. "Listen once more. Knowing the truth of you, I camehere to force you to undeceive her. Had you refused, I would certainlyhave killed you. But I would never have betrayed you!"

That "never" of Saxham's carries conviction. The pale ghost of a laugh isin the dying eyes. The wraith of Beauvayse's old voice comes back again tosay:

"Doctor, you're a ... Damned good sort!" And then there is a long, longsilence, broken only by those painful rattling breaths, never by hercoming. 

The end comes, and she is not there. A pale blink in the wild sky eastwardhints to the night lookouts of hot drink, food, and welcome rest. TheChief stands beside the comfortless camp-bed, where the hope of a high oldHouse is flickering out. The Doctor holds the wet and icy wrist, where thepulse has ceased to be perceptible. The sheet above the labouring breastrises and falls with those panting, rattling gasps; the beautiful eyesare rolled up and inwards. The light is very nearly out, when, with a lasteffort, the flame leaps up. He thinks that what is the barely perceptiblewhisper of a tongue already clay is a loud and ringing cheer. He thinksthat he is shouting, his strong young voice topping a hundred othervoices. It seems to him who, for the bribe of all the beauty he hascoveted, and all the love that is yet unwon, could not speak one audibleword or move a finger, that he waves his hat again and again. Oh! gloriousmoment when the white moonbeams blink on the grey dust-wall rolling downfrom the North, and the horsemen of the Advance ride out of it, andclustering enemies that have rallied again to the attack waver, anddisperse, and scatter.... 

"Hurrah! They're running--running for their lives! Give it 'em withshrapnel! Oh, pepper 'em like hell! The Relief! The Relief! Hurrah!"

It is all over with the opening of the day-eye in the east. When theyleave him, beautiful, and stern, and calm in that deep slumber from whichonly the Angel with the Trumpet may awaken him, and pass out between thecurtains, the dark, short officer who was on the lookout when the Doctorcame, stands very pale and muddy, and steaming with damp, waiting toreport. And two troopers of the Irregulars, wet and muddy and steamingtoo, are waiting also, just inside the tarpaulins of the outer doorway. And she is not there. 

A few rapid words, an exclamation from the Chief, shaken for once out ofhis steely composure, and quivering from head to foot with mingled rageand grief:

"My God, how unutterably horrible!"

Saxham shoulders his way into the ring of white faces that have gatheredabout the dark little muddy officer. 

"What has happened to Miss Mildare----?"

The little officer answers, panting:

"The Sisters could not make her understand. She----"

The Chief speaks for him:

"She had been previously stunned by the shock of--a terrible calamity. "

"What calamity?"

"The Mother-Superior has been killed. Two of the Sisters and Miss Mildarefound her in the Convent chapel. They got there before evening. She musthave been dead some hours. She had been shot through the lungs. "

"By a stray bullet?"

"By a bullet from a revolver, fired close enough to scorch the clothes. Foul murder, and by God who saw it done----"

The lean clenched hand, thrown upwards in a savage gesture, the blazingeyes, the livid, furrowed face, the writhen mouth, the furious, jarringvoice, leave little doubt of the vengeance that will be wreaked when heshall track down the murderer. He wheels abruptly, and goes to thetelephone. The swift, imperative orders volt from fort to fort; thecircuit of vigilance is made complete, the human bloodhounds unleashedupon the trail, in a few instants, thanks to the buzzing wire that bringsthe mouth of a man to the ear of another across a void of miles. 

But Bough, primed with knowledge as to which are dummy rifle-pits andwhich are real, aided by acquaintance with the ground, and covered by thatwuthering night of storm, has already pierced the lines. Subsequently thatexcellent Afrikander, Mr. Van Busch, rejoins Brounckers' bright boy atTweipans, with information that decides the date of Schenk Eybel's Feintfrom the East. 

L

She had gone about her Master's business all Monday, calm and composed, and inexorably gentle. She did not meet Richard's daughter beforenightfall. "She will not suffer now, " she thought, even as she sent themessage that was to allay Lynette's anxiety, and give notice of herwhereabouts in case of need. Her mission led her to a half-wrecked shantyat the south end of the town, where some Lithuanian emigrants herdedtogether in indescribable filth and misery. A woman who had been recentlyconfined lay there raving in puerperal fever. Until nightfall, when shewas removed to the Isolation Hospital on the veld, near the Women'sLaager, the Mother-Superior remained with the patient. 

A burly, bushy-bearded man, with a peculiarly dark skin and strange steelyeyes, passing the broken window, caught sight of the noble profile and thestately shoulders stooping above the miserable bed. Going home at dark, the Mother heard a stealthy footstep following behind her. 

Since the Town Guard had been withdrawn to man the trenches, many people, revisiting their deserted dwellings, had found them plundered of movablepossessions, and, losing the fear of Eternity in wrath at the wholesaleevaporation of their worldly goods, had thenceforth remained to protectthem. Instances there had been of robbery from the person by thieves notall tracked down by Martial Justice and made examples of. 

The hovering human night-bird and the prowling human jackal, whose soleend is money and money's worth, have no terrors for Holy Poverty. Butthere are other creatures of prey more terrible than these. And thepadding footsteps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slackeningwhen she went more slowly, and stopping dead when she paused and lookedround, conveyed to her a haunting sense of something sinister, and at thesame time greedy and guileful, that bided its time to spring. 

She moved in long, swift, undulating rushes, her black robes sweepingnoiselessly as a great moth's wings over the well-known ground, her coursekept unfalteringly; but her heart shook her, and she gasped as the Conventbomb proof neared in sight. She had wrought much and suffered more oflate, and she knew herself less strong than she had been. When the bluelight that hung from a post by the ladder-hole blinked "Home" through themirk of a night of thin rain and mist-shrouded stars, she knew infiniterelief. Her great eyes were as wild and strained as a hunted deer's, andher bosom heaved with her panting breaths. She paused a moment to regainher composure before she went down. 

The nuns who were not on night-duty were gathered together about thetrestle-table sewing, while the lay-Sisters prepared the scanty eveningmeal. Lynette was there, sitting pale and quiet on her corner-stool. Richard's daughter had been watching and waiting for her Mother. Ah! tosee the relief and gladness leap into the dear face, and shine in thebeautiful wistful eyes that had shed such tears, dear God!--such tears ofanguish upon Sunday--and then had dried at the utterance of her decree--

"You are never to tell him!"

--And changed into radiant stars of joy, by whose light the darkness ofher own wickedness and misery seemed almost bearable. 

"It is the Mother. Mother----"

Lynette sprang up, and would have hurried to her, but the Mother lifted awarning hand, and calling Sister Tobias to her, passed aside into acurtained-off and precautionary cave that had been hollowed out behind theladder. This was the custom when the ladies of the Holy Way returned fromdoubtful or infectious cases. Lynette sighed, and went back to her stoolto wait. The busy needles had not ceased stitching. 

That humble saint, Sister Tobias, hurried to her diligent ministry ofpurification. When she came in with hot water and carbolic spray, shebrought a letter with her. It was directed to the Mother in a coarseround-hand. 

"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 aswide 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 theMother's beloved face, and trotted away to fetch clean towels, saying--afavourite saying with Sister Tobias--that her head would never save herheels. 

The Mother opened the letter. It was anonymous, and utterly vile. Had thepen been dipped in liquid ordure, the thing written could not have beenmore defiling to the touch than its meaning was to this pure woman'schaste eyes. Had a puff-adder writhed out of the envelope, and struck itsfangs 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 thedark. And the writer knew of all that had happened at the tavern on theveld, when a human brute had triumphed in his bestiality, and a girl-childhad been helpless, and the great white stars had looked down unmoved andchangeless upon Innocence destroyed. 

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 knewthe Ear Above must be averted from one who had lied and was in deadlysin.... When Sister Tobias came back she found her lying in a swoon. 

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 _guimpe_ and habit, andworked strenuously to revive her, dropping tears. 

"My beautiful, my poor lamb!" she crooned. "What's come to her? Whatwicked shadow's black on all of us? What's brooding near us--Mary be ourguardian!--that's struck at _her_ to-night!"

The letter lay upon the floor, where it had dropped from the unconscioushand. It lay there for Sister Tobias, and might lie. If the Mother willedto tell its contents, she would tell. If not, the little old nun, herfaithful daughter, would never ask or seek to know. 

She opened her great eyes at last, and smiled up at the tender, wrinkledugliness of the long, sheep-like face in the close white linen wimple. 

"Say nothing to anybody. I was overdone, " she said, and rose. SisterTobias picked up the letter, and gave it to her. There was a Boermutton-fat candle flaring draughtily in an iron sconce upon the wall. TheMother moved across the little room, and burned the letter to the lastblank corner, and trod the fallen ashes into impalpable powder. Then shehelped Sister Tobias to remove every trace left, and obviate every dangerthat might result from her late toil, and rejoined her quiet family ofdaughters as though nothing had happened. 

They recalled afterwards how cheerful and how placid she had seemed thatnight. Her smile had a heart-breaking sweetness, and her voice madewonderful melody even in their accustomed ears. 

They supped on the little that they had, and chatted, said thenight-prayers, and went, aching, all of them, with unsatisfied hunger, tobed. You may conjecture the orderly, modest method of retiring, eachSister vanishing in turn behind a curtained screen to disrobe, lave, andvest herself for sleep, emerging in due time in the loose, full conventualnight-garment of thick white twilled linen, high-throated, monkish-sleeved, and girdled with a thin cotton cord, her face, plain orpretty, young or elderly, framed in the close little white drawn cap ofmany tucks. 

Then, the ladder having been removed, and the tarpaulin pulled over itshole, the lights were extinguished, and only the subdued crimson glow ofthe tiny lamp that burned before the silver Crucifix that had stood abovethe Tabernacle on the altar of the Convent chapel burned ruby in thethick, hot dark, where, upon the little iron beds, each divided by anarrow, white-cotton-covered board into two constricted berths, the row ofquiet figures lay outstretched, her Breviary upon every Sister's pillow, and her beads about her wrist. 

The Mother lay very still, seeing the hideous sentences of the anonymousletter written in hellish characters of mocking flame on the background ofthe dark. She prayed as the wrecked may when the ship beneath their feetis going down. Beside her Lynette, not daring to disturb the silence, suddenly grown rigid and awful, lay aching with the loneliness of livingon the other side of the wide gulf of division that had suddenly yawnedbetween. 

She had spent the day at the Hospital with Sister Hilda-Antony and SisterCleophée. She had not seen Beauvayse. But a note had come from him, thathad warmed the heart she hid it near. His dearest, he called her--his ownbeautiful beloved. He could not snatch a minute from duty even to kiss hisdarling's sweetest eyes, but on Sunday they would be together all day. Andwould she not meet him at the Convent on Thursday, at twilight, when theshelling 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 playMrs. Grundy's part. And, with a thousand kisses, he was hers in life anddeath. 

Lynette's first love-letter, and it seemed to her so beautiful. It laid ahand upon her heart that thrilled, and was warm and strong. The hand said"Mine!"

His. She would be his one day--soon; and there would be no more mysteriesbetween the man and the woman welded by God's ordinance into husband andwife. 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 behidden before the priest and the clergyman made they twain One, it must beknown of both afterwards, or else be for ever threatening to start throughthe burying earth, crying, "I am here. How came you to forget?"

She had been cold in the sultry heat of that long noon, and deaf whenvoices spoke to her. She was thinking.... How if she might be mistaken inBeauvayse, even now? He was beautiful and brave and alluring to herwoman's sense in what she knew of him and what was yet to know. He calledher 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 herto 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 notbodiless spirits floating in pure ether, but an earth-made girl and boy, very much athirst for the common cup of human rapture, hungry for thebanquet of mortal bliss. 

It was sweet, but how if he were another, and not the one? How if herhasty gift of herself robbed both in the long end? How if his headlongpassion and tempestuous love should be torn from him like rags in thefirst instant of that discovery that must almost inevitably be made? Sheheard his boyish voice crying, "Hateful!... You have deceived me!" and wasstabbed with quick anguish, knowing him in the right. 

Men did not enter into marriage pure. By some unwritten code of thatstrange lawgiver, the World, they were absolved of the necessity ofspotlessness. They might slake their thirst at muddy sources unrebuked. And the more each wallowed, the more he demanded of the woman he weddedthat she should be immaculate in thought and deed--if in knowledge, thatwas all the better. 

What a cloud of doubts assailed her, swarming like bees, settling in everyblossomed branch of her mind, and blotting out the sweetness with angrybuzzing, furry bodies, armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge. She had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the red earthat its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She felt at this juncturevery 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 cameand shook the double swarm into a couple of hives, the little tree stayedcrooked. It did not regain its beautiful, healthful uprightness for a longtime. 

The Mother had commanded her never to tell Beauvayse. She realised that inthis one sorrowful instance she was wiser than her teacher. If unutterablemisery was not to result from their union, he must be told the truthbefore ... 

Once he knew it, would he love her any longer? Would he desire to make herhis wife? She knitted her brows and her fingers in anguish, and set herlittle teeth. Possibly not. Probably not. 

And supposing all went well and they were married. She had not realisedclearly, even when she talked of travelling abroad into the unknown, conjectured world, what it would mean to go out from this, the first homeshe had ever known, and leave the Mother. She caught her breath, and herheart stopped at the thought of waking up one morning in a new, strangecountry, and knowing that dear face thousands of miles away. 

The loneliness drove her to daring. She reached out a timid hand, and laidit upon the breast of the still, rigid, immovable figure beside her. Ah, what a leaping, striving, throbbing prisoner was caged there! A faint sobof surprise broke from her. Ah! what was it? what could it mean?

The faint sound she uttered plucked at the strings of that tortured heart. The Mother turned, rose upon her elbow, leaned over the low dividingbarrier, took the slight body in her arms, and gathered it closely to her, shielding it from the fangs of that coiled, formless Terror thatthreatened in the dark. She felt how thin and light it was, and how frailthe arms were that clung about her, and how wasted was the face thatpressed against the coarse, conventual linen, covering the broad, deepbosom whose chaste and hidden beauties Famine had not spared. 

She would be a real mother once--just once. God would not grudge her that. She bared her breast to the cheek with a sudden half-savage, whollymaternal gesture, and drew it close and pillowed it and rocked it. HadHeaven wrought a miracle and unsealed those white fountains of herspotless womanhood, she would have found it sweet to give of herself toRichard's starving child. But she had nothing but her great, indignantpity and her boundless agony of love. Long hours after the face lay hushedin sleep above her heart, and while the long, soft breaths of slumber wentand came, she lay staring out into the sinister blackness over thebeloved, menaced head. 

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 adesperate wound. That image rose, and the blackness seemed all red--redwith those lines of fiery writing on it, smoking and crawling, flickeringand blazing, climbing, and licking with thin, greenish tongues ofhell-begotten flame. 

Then the midnight hour struck, and it was time to rise for Matins. Longafter the Sisters had gone back to bed the Mother knelt on, a motionlessfigure wrestling in silent prayer before the silver Crucifix upon thewall. Dawn found her still kneeling. No ray of heavenly light had foundher soul, that weltered in darkness, crying to One Who seemed not to hear. 

LI

She did not venture to take Lynette with her to the Hospital next day, butsecretly charged Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony to carry herwhithersoever they went, and not once to let her out of sight. This done, she knew herself impotently helpless to do more. This strong and salientwoman, lapped in unseen, impalpable serpent-coils that tightened everyhour, was waxing weak. By her own deed she had barred out help and putcounsel far from her. She had known the punishment would not be long incoming, when, for the sake of Richard's daughter, she had lied toRichard's friend. 

Now she knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would have been wiserto have saved her spotless garment from the smirch by telling him thetruth. Then she could have fought this invisible tarantula Thing, with theconjectural hairy claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the paddingfeet that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid her. Godwas in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and trust, but the comfort of ahuman counsellor would have been unspeakable. 

In a purely spiritual difficulty she would have gone to Father Wix. Thekindly, fussy, feeble little old priest could hardly help her in thisextremity. She had never told _him_ what had happened at the tavern on theveld. Deep in her pitying woman's heart the child's cruel secret had beenburied, once learned. Sister Tobias was the only one who shared it. 

Meanwhile she was followed that night and the next night; and on themorning of the Thursday, when she rose from her sleepless bed, anotherletter weighted with a stone had been dropped down the ladder-hole. Shewas to give the anonymous writer a meeting and receive a message, unlessshe 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. 

She burned the second letter before she went to the Hospital. She foundthere the single sheet of the _Siege Gazette_ fluttering in every hand. Even her dignified reserve could not ward off the well-meantcongratulations, the eager questions, the interested comments on the newscontained in the three last paragraphs of the column that was signed "GoldPen. " Then came the telephone message from Lady Hannah. We know what wordsof 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 waterwithin her. For the Thing that coiled in the dark would surely strike now. 

Perhaps it was some premonition of approaching death that made her, alwaysgracious, always infinitely kind, untiring in helpful deeds, move aboutamong the sick that day, with such a sorrowful-sweet tenderness for themin her noble face and in her gentle touch, and in that wood-dove's voiceof hers, that they spoke of it long afterwards with bated breath. Aperfume as of rare incense was wafted from the folds of her veil, theysaid, 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?

It was before twilight when she left the Hospital and went to the Convent, a tall, upright, mantled and hooded figure, stepping through the heavyrain that had fallen since noon, under a quaint monster of a cottonumbrella with ribs of ancient whale, --Tragedy carrying Farce. 

It was not the custom to linger in the neighbourhood of the Convent, evenamong those who were most indifferent to shot and shell. No one wasvisible in its vicinity, except one burly, bushy-bearded, dark-skinned manin tan-cords and a moleskin jacket. He lounged against a bent and twistedlamp-post, near the broken entrance-gates, cutting up a lump of somethingthat might have been cake-tobacco upon his broad, thick palm with apenknife. 

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 thepurplish-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 ather. She knew it was the man who had written those two letters. Andsomething else she knew, but did not dare to admit her knowledge even toherself as yet. 

She mustered all her forces to meet what was coming as she went up thebroken stairs. The wind and the long, driving lances of the rain came ather through the gaps in the walls. The sky was a driving hurry of muddyvapours. The grey hills were blotted out by mist and fog. Long flashes ofwhite fire leaped from them, and the heavy boom of cannon followed. Thenall would be still again. She passed down the whitewashed, matted, soddencorridor, and drew out the heavy key of the chapel door from a deep pocketunder her black habit, and went in. 

Rain beat in here through jagged holes in the soft brickwork and pouredthrough the broken roof, whose rubbish littered the floor. Whiter squareson the whitewashed walls, sodden now with damp, and peeling, showed wherethe pictures of the Stations of the Cross had hung; with them alldraperies had been stripped away and hidden. The crimson-velvet-coveredropes that had done duty instead of altar-rails had been removed, theirbrass supports unscrewed from the floor. The naked altar-stone was coveredwith fragments of cheap stained-glass from the little east window of whichthe Sisters had been so proud. The Tabernacle gaped empty; sandy, reddish-grey dust filled the tiny piscina, and lay thick upon thealtar-stone and the shallow wooden altar-steps, and wherever else the rainhad not reached it to turn it into yellow mud. 

Why had she come here? Because she felt as though the Presence that hadhoused under the veil of the Consecrated Element were still guarding Itsdesecrated home. And near the door of the tiny sacristy dangled the ropecommunicating with the bell that hung, as yet uninjured, in the littlewooden cupola upon the roof. The bell could be rung, should need arise. She did not formulate in thought what need. But the recollection of thosepoisonous adder-eyes stirred even in that proud, dauntless woman's bosom acold and creeping fear. And when she heard the padding, stealthy footstepswhose sound seemed burned in upon her brain, traversing the soaked mattingof the corridor, she caught her breath, and an icy dew of anguishmoistened her shuddering flesh. 

Then slowly, cautiously, the door opened. He came in, shutting itnoiselessly after him. It was the man she had seen loafing by thelamp-post. And, standing tall and forbidding on the bare altar'scarpetless steps, she threw out her white hand in a quick, imperiousgesture, forbidding his nearer approach. 

For an instant the dignity and authority of the tall, black-robed figuregave pause even to Bough. Then he touched his wide-brimmed felt hat to herwith a civility that was the very essence of insolence, and took it offand shook the wet from it, and dropped it back upon his head again. Heleaned against the wall by the door where there was a little holy-waterfont, 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 remainedfor any bloke to teach Bough about the sex. You let her row a bit, andwhen she had done herself out, you put in what you had got to say. Thatwas Bough's way with them always. 

"You have written letters to me and followed me. "

His grinning red mouth and tobacco-stained teeth showed in the beard. Helooked at her and waited. 

"Why have you done this? And, now that you have brought yourself into mysight, quitting the safe shelter of darkness and anonymity, what is tohinder me from handing you over to those who administer and enforceMartial Law in this town, and will deal with you as you deserve?"

His light eyes glittered. His teeth showed again in the brown bush. Hespat upon the floor of the sacred place, and answered:

"That's all blow. How do I know what you mean about writing letters andfollowing? Who has seen me doing it? Not one of the mob. I'm just a manthat has come in off the road out of the rain. Maybe I have no business inthis crib? That's for you to say.... Maybe I have a message for somebodyyou know. So you don't choose to give it, then that's for her to hear. "

He swung about in pretended haste, and laid his hand upon the door. 

"Stop, " she said, with white lips. "You will not molest the person to whomyou refer. You will give your message--if it be one--to me, and to mealone. "

"High and mighty, " the ugly, wordless smile that faced round on her againseemed to say. "But in a little I'll bring you down off that.... " He spatagain upon the Chapel floor, and scratched his head under his hat, andbegan, like a simple, good-natured fellow, a rough miner with a heart ofgold:

"No offence is meant, lady, and why should it be taken?"

She seemed to grow in height as she folded her arms in their flowing blacksleeves, and looked down upon him silently. The boiling whirlpool in herbreast mounted as it spun, stifling her. But she was outwardly calm. Hewent smoothly on, with an occasional display of red mouth and grinningteeth in the big beard, and always that baleful glitter in his strangelight eyes:

"I'm a man that, in the goodness of his heart, is always doing jobs forother people, and never getting thanked for it. I started to push my wayup here, two hundred miles from Diamond Town, three weeks back, with aletter from a woman to her husband. She couldn't pay me nothing, poor oldgirl. Said she'd pray for me to her dying day. There was a pal of mine putup the grubstake. His name"--his evil eyes were glued upon her face--"wasBough. You've heard that name before!"

It was an assertion, not a question. The fierce rush of crimson to herbrow, and the flame that leaped into her eyes, had already spoken to herknowledge. She was deadly quiet, gathering all her superb forces for asudden lioness-spring. He went on:

"He's a widower now, Bough, and well-to-do. Getting on for rich. Gotreligion too, highly respected. Says Bough to me, 'There's a young womanat the Convent at Gueldersdorp that's not the sort for holy, prayingladies to have under their roof, for all the glib slack-jaw she may havegiven them. '"

Her great eyes burned on him. 

"Say what you have to say, and be brief. Go on. "

He shifted from one foot to the other, and licked his fleshy lips. 

"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 inrags. 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. '"

Still silent and watchful, and her eyes upon him, searching him. He wenton:

"'However the years have changed her, ' says Bough, 'you'll spot her by herlittle feet and hands, and her slender shape, and her big eyes, likeyellow diamonds, and her hair, the colour of dried tobacco-leaf in thesun.... '"

She quivered in every limb, and longed to shut her eyes and bar out theintolerable sight of him, leering and lying there. Had she notinterrupted, she must have cried out. She said:

"You tell me this man Bough is at Diamond Town?"

"I said he was there when I left. The young woman he talked of was broughtup at his place in Orange Free State, a nice respectable boarding-houseand hotel for travelling families on the veld between Driepoort andKroonfontein. Bough was good to the girl, and so was his wife, that's deadsince. Uncommon! Not that they had much of the dibs to spend in thosedays. But, being an honest Christian man, Bough treated the girl like hisown. And right down bad she served him. "

He licked his thick lips again, and the flattish, light-hued adder-eyesglittered. 

"There was a bloke that used to hang around the place--kind of colouredloafer, with Dutch blood, overgiven to Squareface and whisky. He got goinggay with the girl----"

She stood like a statue of ebony and ivory. Only by the deep breaths thatheaved her broad bosom could you tell she lived--by that, and by theunswerving watchfulness of those burning eyes. 

"And Bough, when he caught them together, got mad, being a respectableman, and let her taste the sjambok. Then she ran away. "

He coughed, and shifted again from one foot to the other. He would havepreferred a woman who had loaded him with invectives, and told him that helied like hell. 

"The man that had left her to Bough's guardianship was a sort ofbroken-down English officer by the name of Mildare----"

Her bosom heaved more stormily, but her intense and scorching regard ofhim never wavered. 

"--Mildare. He left a hundred pounds with Bough, to be kept for her tillshe 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 driverwaltzed with them--took 'em up Johannesburg way, and melted 'em intodollars. Bough got nothing for all his kindness--not a tikkie. But he'sready to hand over the hundred, her being so nigh come to age. There's alocket with a picture in it, and brilliants round, that may be worthseventy pounds more. All Bough wants is to do the square thing. This isthe message he sends her now. The money and the jewels will be handedover, as in duty bound; and, since she's turned respectable and goteducation, I was to say there's an honest man--widower now, and welloff--that's ready to hang up his hat for her, and wipe all old scores offthe slate in the regular proper way.... "

She said in tones that were of ice:

"Bough is the honest man?... "

"Just Bough.... 'Maybe, in my decent anger at her goings on, ' he says, 'Iwent a bit too far. Well! I'm ready to make amends by making her mywife. '"

The lioness crouched and leapt. 

"You are Bough! You are the evil man, the servant of Satan, who wroughtabomination upon a helpless child!"

The onslaught came so suddenly that he was staggered. Then he swore. 

"Not me, by G----!"

She pointed her long arm at him, and some strange force seemed to bewielded by that unweaponed woman-hand that struck him and pierced himthrough flesh, and bone and marrow.... 

"You are the man!" She stretched her arms to the wild, hurrying cloudsthat looked in upon her through the yawning rifts in the roof, and calledupon her Maker for vengeance. "How long wilt Thou delay, O Lord, righteousin judgment? Fulfil Thy promise! Bind Thou Thy millstone about the neck ofthis wretch, hated and accursed of Thee, and let it drag him down to theuttermost depths of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow andhowl throughout Eternity!----"

She was infinitely more terrible than the lioness who has licked hermurdered cubs. No Pythoness at the dizziest height of the sacred frenzy, no Demeter wrought to delirium by maternal bereavement, was ever imaginedby poet or painter as half so grand, and terrible, and awe-inspiring, asthis furious cursing nun. 

"--Delay not Thou, O Lord!" she prayed.... 

Rain fell in a curtain of gleaming crystal rods between them. Seen throughit, she appeared supernaturally tall, her garments streaming like blackflames, her face a white-hot furnace, her eyes intolerable, merciless, grey lightnings, her voice a fiery sword that cleft the guilty to thesoul. 

The voice of Conscience was dumb in him. He knew no remorse, and made ajest of God. But his callous heart had been filled from the veins ofgenerations of Irish Catholic peasants, and, in spite of himself, theblood in his veins ran cold with superstitious fear. 

Yet, when no palpable answer came from that Heaven to which she cried, herallied, remembering that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with himin the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Hereyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as thoughabout to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was theprelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, hereyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held him. He snarled:

"You'll not take the girl my message, then?"

She reared up her tall form, and laughed awfully. 

"Did you dream I would defile her ears with it? Now that I know you, youwill be wise to leave this place; for it is a spot where your sins mayfind you out!"

He jeered:

"That flash bounce doesn't go down with me. The trouble'll be at your endof 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'swheedled into asking her to marry him? What's to hinder me from standingup 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?"

The whirling waters of bitterness in her breast were rising, drowningher.... He realised her momentary weakness, and moved a step or twonearer, keeping well between the woman and the door. 

"What's to hinder me, I say?"

Her rapier of keen womanly intuition flashed out at him again, and drewthe blood. 

"Your fear will hinder you. You are here in an assumed character, andunder a false name. " The long arm shot out, the white hand pointed at himagain. "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 spy, if you weretaken. Ah, I can see it written in your coward's face!"

The devil was at the woman's ear, prompting her. Or was it----? Bough'sdark, full-blooded face bleached to muddy-pale as her terrible voice rangthrough the desolate place, and echoed among the broken rafters. 

"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 tellhim all--all! And if he loves her, he will marry her. And you who havesecrets upon your soul even more perilous, if less vile andhideous"--again the terrible hand pointed, and that sense of asupernatural force that it wielded knocked his knees together and dried uphis mouth--"I see the millstone round your neck!... "

The clarion voice mounted on a great note of triumph. With her inspiredface, 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 todream you can hinder Me from doing what I have said?"

He was at the bottom of the altar-steps as the tall, imperious figure camesweeping down. The curtain of rain no longer fell between them, but behindhim. He must silence that railing voice that cried in the house-top--putout the light of those intolerable eyes.... 

He drew out his revolver with a blasphemous oath. At the gleam of steel inthe thickening twilight she dropped her upraised arms, and made a swiftrush to the rope of the bell, and set it clanging. Two double strokes rangout; 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 ofthe white wimple from which the veil streamed aside, and ran to the dooras 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. 

Then he was gone, and the walls were crowding in on her to crush her, andthen receding to immeasurable distances, and the blood and air from herpierced lungs bubbled through the bullet-holes in the serge stuff and thescorched linen. 

She stumbled a few steps blindly, then fell and lay choking, with thatstrange gurgling and whispering in her ears, the rushing blood minglingwith the water of the puddles that the rain had made upon the litteredfloor. She faltered out the name of her Master and Spouse, and commendedher pure soul to Him in utter humility. Death would have been a welcomeloosing of her bonds but for the Beloved left behind, at the mercy of themerciless. 

The stab of that remembrance lent her strength to struggle up upon herknees. 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 managainst herself, but not his crime against dead Richard's child. And shestretched out long black-sleeved arms gropingly in the thick, numbingdarkness that hemmed her in, and moaned to the Mother of the motherless tohave pity!... Pity!... 

She swayed forwards then, like a stately falling column, and lay withoutspread arms upon the altar-step. 

"Jesu.... Mary.... _The child!... _"

The sacred names were stifled in her blood. The last two words were nearlyher last sigh. Thenceforward there was no sound at all in the Conventchapel, save the dull splash of rain, falling through the holes in thebroken roof upon the sodden floor, where the dead woman lay, facedownwards. 

LII

No one had heeded the revolver-shot. The detonation of a cartridge or sowhen a bombardment is going on, what does it count for? And yet, when theburly figure of the runner from Diamond Town slipped out of the Conventdoorway and stole across the shrapnel-littered garden, and crossed theveld towards the native town, it had been barely twilight--a twilight ofheavy, drenching rain, to be sure. Still, in it he had encountered thosewho might have suspected afterwards.... 

Perhaps it would have been better had he stopped in Gueldersdorp andmugged it out. But that sharp, prompt, swift, unsparing thing calledMartial Law is not a power to play with with impunity, and of the man whowielded it in Gueldersdorp, Bough had conceived a wholesome dread. Bestthat he had fled, although his going tagged him with suspicion. Thatcursed stupid game of his with the telephone at the Headquarters of theBaraland Rides might cost him more than the bit of twist with which he hadbribed the orderly, left for a moment in sole charge, and demoralised bythe sight of tobacco. 

Opium played you tricks like that, when, for the gratification of asinister whim, a grotesque fancy, born and bred of the stuff, you wouldrisk everything. In excess it played hell with the nerves. That was whythose eyes of hers.... Damn them! Why couldn't a man put them out of mindand out of sight?

It was not to be done. The obsession held him. A black shadow on the floorwould be the long body, lying face downwards on the altar-steps, withoutspread, crucified arms. He heard her stifled crying upon the Name, andthe gurgling outrush of mingled air and blood that followed each deep sobfor breath.... 

And then he would be running through the lashing, bucketing wet, circumventing the sentry-posts, wriggling over the veld on his belly likea snake. He would be pushing through the dripping covert of the north bankof the river--for that, he had decided, was the safest way out orin--leaving fragments of his garments on the thorny cacti that grabbed athim with their green hands. And then he would find himself lying doggobetween two great stones, waiting for it to be quite dark before heessayed to pass the rifle-pits that angled across either shore. Two hourshe had lain so, and it had hailed, and sheet lightning had smittengreenish-blue glares from the hissing, clattering whiteness, and he hadremembered with a shudder those eyes.... 

Then it had been dark enough to risk passing between the angles of therifle-pits, where lay men who kept their eyes skinned and their weaponshandy by day and night. And again Bough had wriggled like a snake, butthrough shallow water instead of grass and red mud. He had swam the deeppools, and once got entangled in barbed-wire, and went under, gurgling anddrowning, three times before he wrenched himself loose. It had seemed asthough 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 Devilwas so obliging! And then, lest Brounckers' pickets should mistake afriend in the darkness, he waited for light in a little thorny kloofbeyond their advanced outposts; and the dawn came, with an awful gush ofcrimson dyeing all the eastern sky, so that the pools about his feet--eventhe drops of wet upon the stones and bushes--caught the ruddy reflection, and all the world seemed dripping with new-shed blood. 

Then up had rushed the sun, and smitten a glorious rainbow out of fog andvapour, and one end of it seemed to be in Gueldersdorp, resting in agolden mist upon the Convent's shattered roof, while the other vanished inmid-heaven. It had seemed to the murderer like a ladder by which the deadwoman's soul went climbing, up and up, to tell his crime to God.... 

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? Alioness 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 vengeancefor that deed of old, calling down the judgment of God upon its doer, hadbeen infinitely more terrible than the lioness. Lightning had flashed fromher great eyes, and subtle electric forces had darted from her outspreadfinger-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 Boughhad 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 someday 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. 

He ate more opium now than ever, because he could not forget that woman'sawful eyes. He would see them looking at him in the dark, when he couldnot sleep. Her voice haunted him, terrible in its clarion-note of wrath, its organ-roll of denunciation. The hand that had pointed to the millstoneabout his neck had conjured it there. He felt it dragging him down. 

Maar--that was the gold! You can carry a goodly amount of the preciousmetal upon your single person, if you are clever enough to stow it andmuscular enough to walk lightly under the weight. And a great deal of theyellow stuff, gathered and stored by the mining companies, leaked aboutthis time out of the hiding-places skilfully contrived for it into thepockets 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 agravedigger, and when you carry away a great deal of it at a time, confederates must aid you. 

Oom Paul, when, like some elderly black humble-bee, with crooked thighsdeep laden with the metallic yellow pollen, he buzzed heavily off forLorenço Marques, deplored the deceitfulness of riches less bitterly thantheir non-portableness. 

Van Busch, by a series of clever expedients, overcame that difficulty. Thecartridges that weighed down his bandolier were of cast gold, cleverlypainted; 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 hewould disburden himself, and one of the women who were his confederateswould take the stuff to England, and sell it in London, and bank the moneyin the name of Van Busch. He so managed that there was always a womancoming and a woman going. Women had been his tools, and his slaves, andhis victims, ever since he had been born. When the old were worn out anduseless, he shook them off, and fresh instruments rose up to take theirplaces. 

He never trusted men in money matters. He knew too much of the power ofthat yellow pollen that breeds madness in the male. But there is one thingthat most women desire more than the possession of much money, and that isabsolute possession of one man. 

Bough understood women of a certain class. He had moulded them to hiswill, and bent them to his whim, all his life long. He was a man ofmanifold experience as regards the sex. 

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 afaroff--a woman whose slight, vivid beauty had roused in him a desire thatwas torture. 

It was as though the Minotaur were in love with Ariadne; it was Calibanthirsting for the beauty of Miranda. Prospero had not come in time; thesatyr had surfeited upon the unripe grapes, and now was ahungered for thepurple cluster, tied up out of reach of those gross, greedy, wicked hands. 

The locket with a picture in it and brilliants round, "that might be worthseventy, " the dainty, pearly miniature on ivory by Daudin, of the deadwoman who lay buried under the Little Kopje, and which Bough had takenfrom the body of the English traveller, together with the signet-ring andeverything else of value that Richard Mildare had owned, possessed astrange fascination for the thief. It was extraordinarily like.... He hungit by its slender gold chain about his thick neck, and gloated over andgrudged the beauty that it recalled. 

It is horrible to speak of love in connection with the man Bough, but ifever he had known it, it was now. His victim of old time had become histyrant. Replete with vile pleasures, he longed for her the more. 

He even became sentimental at times, telling himself that all he hadsought was to repair the wrong, and make an honest woman of the Kid. Sheshould have been lapped in luxury, worn jewels equalling any Duchess's. Hewas a man of money now. A little delay, to become yet more rich, andarrange 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; ownfour-in-hands, and motor-cars, and opera-boxes, and see all Societyfluttering to his feet to pick up scattered crumbs of the golden pudding. 

It really seemed as though the dream would be realised. 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 hadspilt life upon the pavement of the Convent chapel. The tarantula-pouncenever missed a prey. Every knavish venture brought in money or money'sworth, every base plot was carried through triumphantly. Bough, _alias_Van Busch, was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but his run of luckmade him almost afraid at times. 

He scented the Relief before the besiegers, undertook to scout for YoungEybel in the direction of Diamond Town, and ingeniously warned ColonelCullings of a Boer plan for cutting off the Flying Column on the scorchingwestern plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads ofburghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers--a most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the British Force intercepted telegramswhich 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 anofficially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot torender some further services to British arms, and a great many more to VanBusch, of Johannesburg. 

He had his knavish headquarters still at the Border homestead known asHaargrond Plaats. Something drew him back to the place, and kept ondrawing him. From thence he could observe and conduct his operations, andgather news of the besieged in Gueldersdorp. He was there at the time whenthe Division--Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, with a half battalionof Town Guards, converted into mounted infantry by the simple process ofputting beasts underneath men who could ride them--marched out ofGueldersdorp _en route_ for Frostenberg. 

The slatternly Dutchwoman and the coloured man who had charge of thePlaats were too surely his creatures to betray Bough Van Busch. "Let thedogs smell around the place, " he thought, when by the sounds that reachedhim in his hiding-place he knew the Advance had halted. "They'll tire ofthe game before they smell out me!"

His hiding-place was a safe retreat and storehouse for stuff that it wasnecessary to conceal. No one knew of it save Bough Van Busch and thedraggle-tailed woman. It was in the great stone-built chimney of thedisused, half-ruined farmhouse kitchen, a solid cube of masonry reared bythe stout hands of the old voortrekkers of 1836, its walls, three feet inthickness, embracing the wide hearth about which the family life of thehomestead had concentrated itself in the past. 

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 haddragged the two huge stones into the wilderness, and then abandoned theirplan. The lower millstone paved the hearth, the upper, the diameter of itsshaft-hole increased by chipping to the size of a musk-melon, had been setby some freak of the farmer-architect's heavy fancy as a coping on the topof the big stone shaft. From thence, as Lady Hannah Wrynche had said inone of her descriptive letters, dated from "My Headquarters at the Seat ofWar, " it dominated the landscape as a Brobdingnagian stone mushroom mighthave done. 

The wide black throat of the chimney half-way up was choked by a platformof beams and masonry, reaching not quite across, so that even a bulky manwho had climbed up--divers rusty iron stanchions driven in between thestones, and certain chinks affording secure foothold--might wrigglebetween the platform and the chimney-wall, and so lie hid securely. Through the hole in the round stone above came air and light. Crevicescunningly enlarged afforded opportunities for viewing the surroundingcountry, as for seeing without being seen, and hearing also all that tookplace in the low-walled courtyard that was used as a cattle-kraal. You hadalso a bird's-eye view of the lower end of the farm kitchen, where thewall had cracked, and bulged, and spit out some of its stones. 

To this eyrie Bough Van Busch retreated when the wall of dust to thesouth-west gave up the dim shapes of the Advance, and the beat of manyiron-shod hoofs, and the roll of many iron-shod wheels made distantthunder, coming nearer, always nearer.... 

Maar! How the trot of the squadron-columns, the roll of the oncomingbatteries, shook the crazy building. The Advance rode into the yard, dismounted, and began to ask questions of the coloured man and theslipshod woman. Neither knew anything. The woman cursed the Englishmenfreely, at which they laughed, and lighted fresh cigarettes. The man wasdumb as stone. 

The Division snaked out of the dust presently, a huge brown centipede thathad been chopped in bits, and moved with intervals between its travellingsections. There was no halt; it rolled on, a vision of innumerable movinglegs and tanned, wearied faces, over the greening veld to the north-east. The dust grew hotter and thicker, and more stifling, as it rolled. 

It drifted in through every chink and cranny in the great chimney, withthe smell of hot human flesh and sweating horsehide, and Bough Van Buschlonged to, but dared not sneeze. Bits of mortar fell about him, anddislodged tarantulas galloped over his boots. He shook the loathsome, hairy, bright-eyed insects off, shuddering at them with a horror somewhatmisplaced, considering the affinity between his own methods and theirs. 

Roll, roll, roll! The English voices of the chatting men crouched upontheir beasts' withers or sprawling on the limbers, the trampling andsnorting of the horses, the sharp signal-whistles of the leaders, the curtutterances of command, mingled with the stream of thought that racedthrough the busy brain of Bough Van Busch. It had struck him when theColonel and his Staff rode up and halted by the gateway of the litteredcourtyard, that here would be a chance for a nervy man, with a setpurpose, to venture back, cleverly disguised, to Gueldersdorp. He knew hewould be risking his neck, but the sting of desire galled him tohardihood. She was there. Red mist gathered in his brain, red sparkssnapped before his eyes, the thick red blood surged fiercely through hisveins--drummed deafeningly in his gross ears at the thought of seeing heragain.... 

And the tail of the Division was going by. A Field Telegraph Company, asearchlight company, the Ambulances, and a train of transport-waggons, with the mounted infantry, brought up the rear. The Advance had gallopedforwards in haste, the group at the gate lingered. A voice rang outclearly, giving some order. It said:

"And if abandoned, carry out instructions, previously warning the inmatesof the farm to retire out of----"

The lean, eagle-eyed, keen-faced Colonel bent lower in the saddle to reachthe ear of the dismounted officer of Royal Engineers, who stood with onedogskin gloved hand resting on the sweating withers of the brown Waler. Heanswered, saluted, and drew away. Then the Staff rode on, into the gingeryellow dust-cloud, leaving the officer of Engineers standing in the beatentracks of many iron-shod hoofs and many iron-shod wheels. 

He was not left alone. A little cluster of mounted Cape Police haddetached itself from the rear of the Division. They were deeply-burned, hard-bitten men, emaciated to a curious uniformity, mounted on horses asgaunt as their riders. A sergeant was in command of the party, and adrab-painted wooden cart drawn by a high-rumped, goose-necked chestnutmare, pitifully lame on the near fore, had an Engineer for driver. Hismate sat on the rear locker, and a mounted comrade rode by the mare's lameside. The rider's stirrup-leather was lashed about the cart-shaft, andthus the mare was helped along. 

Obeying some order unheard of the man who was hiding in the old stonechimney, the party of Cape Police divided into two. One half patrolled theoutward precincts of the homestead. The rest, dismounting in thecourtyard, thoroughly searched the place. The Engineer officer took nopart in the search. He stood by the stone-coloured cart, busy at thelocker, the sapper who had sat upon it being his aid. Very soon hereturned to the yard, and stood in the middle of the litter motionless asa little figure of pale, dusty bronze, holding a cigar-box carefully inboth his dogskin-gloved hands. In spite of his patched khâki and raggedputtees there was something dandified about him. His red moustache, waxedto a fine point, jutted like the whiskers of a watchful cat, the whites ofhis eyes gleamed like silver as he turned them this way and that, following the movements of the men who went in and out of thefarm-buildings as directed by their sergeant. The sergeant was an expertin his business, and yet, after a hasty glance up the black yawning gulletof the chimney where Bough Van Busch lay perdu, he had gone out of thedismantled kitchen whistling a tune. Two of his men remained loungingnear the threshold. Like the sergeant they had stooped, hands on spreadknees, necks twisted awry in the effort to pierce the thick mirk beneaththe ragged arch of masonry that spanned the wide hearth where the ashes oflong-dead fires lay in powdery grey drifts, and, like the sergeant, theyhad seen nothing. When you covered the man-hole between the platform-edgeand the chimney-wall with the sooty board and the old sack, it wasimpossible for anyone below to see anything. The inside of the old chimneywas as black as hell. 

The inquisition ended. The khâki-clad figures came hurrying out of thehouse, pursued by the Dutchwoman's shrill recriminations. Thenon-commissioned officer made a report to the officer of Engineers. Themen who had been deputed to search mounted at an order, and fell in withthe patrol, and sat upon their saddles outside the courtyard wallexchanging furtive winks as the mevrouw devoted their souls and bodies toeverlasting perdition. 

A quiet utterance from the little red-haired officer checked the torrentof the woman's anger. She screeched in dismay, raising thick hands toheaven. The coloured man's stolid silence was suddenly swept away in aspate of oaths and protestations. Suddenly, looking in the officer'sunmoved face, they realised the uselessness of words, turned and ranbetween the gateless posts, out upon, away over, the dusty, hoof-tracked, wheel-scored veld. And their ungainly hurry and awkward gestures of terrorsomehow reminded the peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seenby chance in a Dopper Bible, in which Lot and his two daughters, fearfullyforeshortened by the artist, scuttled in as grotesque an insect hurry fromthe doomed vicinity of Sodom, Queen City of the Plain. 

The officer of Engineers hardly glanced after the retreating couple. Hestepped across the threshold of the disused farm-kitchen, holding thelittle wooden box carefully in both his dogskin-gloved hands. He crossedto the hearth, stubbing his toe against a jutting floor-brick, and as hedid so he caught his breath. Then he stepped down under the yawning gapeof 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:

"Wie is daar?"

The man's voice dropped back dead out of the choked-up chimney-throat. Alittle sooty dust fell. There was no other answer. The voice was liftedagain, speaking this time in English:

"Is anyone hiding here?"

No one replied, and the little officer seemed to give up. He lingered amoment longer, struck a match as though to light a cigarette, then wentquickly out of the kitchen. An orderly waited with his horse outside thegateway. Bough Van Busch, listening with strained ears, heard the clink ofspur 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 thenorth-east. The unwelcome intruders had gone. Bough Van Busch, after acautious interval, deemed it safe to descend. 

He was red-smeared with veld dust and white-smeared with mortar, and blackwith old soot. His bulky body oscillated as he let himself down from beamto stanchion, finding sure foothold in the crevices, and hand-grip in thestout iron hooks from which plump mutton-hams and beef sausages had hungripening in the pungent smoke of burning wood and dried dung. There was asmell in his nostrils like charring wool and saltpetre. He hung over thewide hearth now. A short drop of not more than a foot or two would bringhim safely to the ground. 

Van Busch did not drop. He dangled by the hands and sweated. He blasphemedin an agony of terror, though it seemed to him that he prayed. 

For the dandy little Engineer officer had left the cigar-box lying emptyamong the powdery ashes in the wide, old-world hearthplace. Aninnocent-looking parcel it had contained, wrapped in a bit of old canvas, and, further secured with copper wire and string, was wedged in a chinkbetween the blackened stones at the back of the hearth. From it a fusehung down; a short length nearly consumed by the crepitating fiery sparkat its loose end. It burned with a little purring sound, as though itliked the business it was engaged upon. Bough Van Busch knew that inanother moment the detonation would take place.... 

He heard nothing of it when it came.... Nor did he know it when the wallsof Cyclopean masonry bulged and opened about him like the petals of aflowering lily. He was beyond all that. His gross body, headless, rent andtorn as though the devils it had housed had wreaked their fury on theirdwelling, lay sandwiched between the wreckage of the great chimney and themillstone that had paved its hearth, now a yawning cavity, some six feetdeep. Leaning on its side in a trench its own weight had dug in the stonyearth 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 tolet out the smoke. And the murderer's soul, light as a dried leaffluttering through the illimitable spaces of Eternity, went wandering onits way to the Balances of God. 

 * * * * *

The party of Cape Police who had searched Haargrond Plaats, with thedrab-painted cart, the three Engineers, and the dandified little officer, had only ridden to a safe distance. They halted, and, concealed fromobservation by a fold of the grassy veld, waited for the explosion of thedynamite cartridge. When it came, the Engineer officer shut hisbinoculars, and gave the signal to return. 

LIII

There were two funerals in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, upon a night thatno one will forget who stood in the packed throng of shadowy mournersabout each of those open graves. The wind blew soft from the west, and thevault of heaven might have been hollowed out of the darkling depths of anamethyst of inconceivable splendour and planetary size. Myriads of stars, dazzlingly white, swung under this, the Mother's fitting canopy, sharedwith another, not like her holy, not noble or unselfish or devoted, butlike her in that he was brave and much beloved. 

Beloved undoubtedly. You could not look at the crowding faces about thenarrow open trench where the Reverend Julius Fraithorn read the BurialService by lantern-light without being sure of that. Men's eyes were wet, and women sobbed unrestrainedly. He had been so beautiful and so merryand cheerful always, said the wet-eyed women; the men praised him forhaving been such a swordsman, horseman, shot. Everyone spoke of him as thelife and soul of the garrison, the idol of his brother-officers, andworshipped by the men under his command. Everyone had something to tell ofdead Beauvayse that was pleasant to hear. 

But the great bulk of the crowd was massed behind the black-robed, white-coiffed figures of the Sisters, kneeling rigid and immovable aboutthe second open grave, where the Mother-Superior lay in her snow-whitecoffin, fully habited and mantled, her Rosary in the marble hand on whichthe plain gold ring of her Divine espousals shone, the parchment formulaof 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 Religionhad draped and decked for her, keeping their loving vigils about her fromtwilight to dawn, from dawn to twilight, until this hour when they mustyield all that was mortal of her to Earth's guardianship and theunsleeping watchfulness of God. 

Suffocatingly dense the throng about this grave, and strangely quiet. Thewomen's faces white and haggard and tearless, the men's drawn and deeplylined. Not even muffled groans or sighs of pity broke the profound silenceas the solemn rite drew to its singularly simple and impressive close. Asthe fragrant incense rose from the censer and the holy water sprinkled thesnow-white pall that bore the Red Cross, one dreadful word lurked sinisterin every thought:

Murdered!... 

Their friend, helper, nurse, consoler, the woman whose hands had staunchedthe bleeding wounds of many present, whose arm had lifted and pillowed thedying heads of others dear to them; who had stood through long nights offever and delirium beside their Hospital pallets, ministering as a veryAngel from Heaven to tortured bodies and suffering souls--murdered!

The tender Mother, the wise virgin, who watched continually with her lampprepared, that at the first summons of the Heavenly Bridegroom she mightenter with Him into the marriage chamber, could it be that His signal hadcome to her by the bloodstained hand of an assassin? It was so. And--ah!the horror of it!

The aged priest sobbed as, followed by the server, he moved round thegrave within the enclosing wall of kneeling Sisters. But no answering sobcame from the vast assemblage. They were as dumb--stricken to stone. Theycould not yet contemplate the felicity of the pure soul of the martyredsaint, carried by God's Angels into the Land of the ever-living, admittedto the unspeakable reward of the Beatific Vision. They could only realisethat somebody had killed her. 

But when the solemn strophes of the Litany for the Dead broke in upon aprofound silence, the responses of the multitude surged upwards like giantbillows shattering their forces in hollow thunder upon Arctic heights. Andwhen, in due pursuance of the symbolic rite of Rome, the vested priest andher whole Sisterhood suddenly withdrew from the grave, and left herearthly body, how wonderful in its marble, hushed, close-folded, mysterious beauty none who had looked upon it ever could forget, waitingfor the second coming of her Master and her Lord, a great sob mounted, andbroke 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. Andthen the bugle sounded "Last Post" over both the open graves, softly forfear of Brounckers' German gunners, and the great crowd melted away, andall was done and over. 

I have said that all the people wept. There was a girl in white, for shewould not let the Sisters put black garments on her, kneeling betweenSister 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 notget away, and that the Reverend Mother was vexed with her, and was hidingat the Convent, pretending that she had gone somewhere, and would nevercome back. 

She was especially clear of mind when she thought all this. At othertimes she was not Lynette, and knew no one, and had never known anybody ofthe name. She was the ragged Kid, crouching on the Little Kopje in thegathering twilight or on the long mound that its eastward shadow covered. Or she was lying under the tattered horse-blanket on the foul straw palletin the outhouse, waiting for the Lady to come with the great, kind, covering dark. 

Or she was sitting in the bar-parlour on an upturned cube-sugar box besidethe green rep sofa where Bough lolled on wet days or stormy nights, hergreat eyes wild with apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained withterror of the master in his condescending moods, when he would makepretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks and hangers on thegreasy slate that usually hung below the glass-and-bottle shelf. Or--andat these times the Sisters found her difficult to manage--she wascrouching upon one side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feelingits way into the keyhole on the other side, and the man who manipulated itlaughed as the agile pliers nipped the end of the key and turned it in thewards of the lock.... 

And then she would be running through the night, anywhere, nowhere, andBough would be riding after. She could hear the short wheezing gallop ofthe 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 fleshof the child, and she would shriek for mercy, and presently fall upon theground and lie there like one dead--acting that old tragedy over and overagain. 

God was very kind to you, Reverend Mother, if He hid that sight from oneto whom she was so dear. But if His Blessed in Heaven have cognisance ofwhat takes place in this dull, distant speck of Earth, I think some salttears must needs have fallen from the starry eyes of one of Christ'ssaintly maiden-spouses, glorious under the dual crown of Virginity andMartyrdom, and yet a mother as truly as His Own. 

That swift unerring judgment of Saxham's had pointed, months ago, to somesuch mental and physical collapse, as the result of shock, crowninglong-continued nervous overstrain. He had said to the Mother that such aresult would be easier to avert than to deal with. 

There was not an ounce of energy the man possessed that he did not employin dealing with it now. 

Let Sister Tobias tell us, as she told Saxham then, the story of theFinding. She was always a plain woman of few words. 

"The last charge the Mother laid on us--Sister Hilda-Antony and me--was tokeep our eyes upon the child. The very day _it_ was done she told us, andI saw that something had made her anxious by the look that was in hereyes. " She dried her own with a coarse blue cotton handkerchief before shetook up her tale. "She went alone to the Head Hospital that day. None ofus were to be surprised, she said, if she came home extra late. SisterHilda-Antony and me were on duty at the Railway Institute. We took Lynettewith us. --There!... Didn't she look up, just for the one second, as if sheremembered her name?"

She had not done so at all. She was sitting on her stool in her old cornerof the Convent bombproof, but she did not heed the shattering crashes ofthe bombardment any more. She had only moved to push out of her eyes thedulled and faded hair that the Sisters could not keep pinned up, and bentover her little slate again. Before that, and a pencil had been given hershe had been restless and uneasy. Now she would be occupied for longhours, making rude attempts at drawing houses and figures such as a childrepresents, with round "O's" of different sizes for heads and bodies, andpitchforks for legs and arms.... 

Sister Tobias went on: "The _Siege Gazette_ had come out that day, withthe news of"--she dropped her voice to a whisper--"of her being likely tobe 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 herblue-checked apron, making the Sign. "And Sister Hilda-Antony and me hadthe world's work with all the people who stopped us in the street and cameround us at the Institute to say how glad they were. Talk of a stoneplopped in a duckpond! You'd have thought by the crazy way folks carriedon that two pretty young people had never went and got engaged before. "Sister Tobias was never coldly grammatical in speech. "But the child washappy, poor dear, in hearing even strangers praise him; and when thefiring stopped and we were on our way home, she begged us to turn out ofit and call in at the Convent, where he'd begged her to meet him, if onlyfor a minute, not having seen her since the Sunday when----"

"Yes--yes!"

Saxham, who writhed inwardly, remembering that Sunday, nodded, bending hisheavy brows. His ears were given to Sister Tobias, his eyes to the slightfigure that somehow, in the skirt some impatient movement had wrenchedfrom the gathers and the shirt-bodice that was buttoned awry, had the airof a ragged, neglected child. And she held up her scrawled slate to wardoff his look, and peeped at him round the side of it. 

Big strong men like that could be cruel when they were angry. The Kid knewthat so well. 

"We went to the Convent with the child, " Sister Tobias continued: "Wehadn't the heart to deny her, though we thought the Mother might be vexedthat we hadn't come straight home. A queer thing happened as we crossedthe road and went up along the fence towards the gates with the childbetween us.... A big, heavy man, dressed as the miners dress, with a greatblack beard and his hat pulled down over his eyes, came along in such ahurry that he knocked Sister Hilda-Antony off the kerb into the road, andbrushed close up against _her_----"

"Against Miss Mildare? Did it occur to you that the man had come out ofthe Convent enclosure?" Saxham asked quickly. 

Sister Tobias shook her head. 

"No; but I did think he meant stopping and speaking to the child, and thenchanged 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'tknow.... ' And 'Was it anyone you knew?' I puts to her again, and 'I can'ttell, ' says she, like as if she was answering in her sleep. Do you thinksshe understands we're talking about her, poor lamb?"

They both looked at her, and she, having been taught by painful experiencethat to be the object of simultaneous observation on the part of the manand woman meant punishment involving stripes, began to tremble, and hungher 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 thecorner. She had forgotten to sweep out the house-place and the bar. Whenthe dreaded eyes turned from her, she got up and went softly to the cornerwhere Sister Tobias's besom stood, and took it and began to sweep, castingterrified glances through her hair at her two Fates. 

Something gripped Saxham by the heart and wrung it. The scalding tearswere bitter in his throat. Do what he would to keep them free, his eyeswere dimmed and blinded, and Sister Tobias wiped her own openly with theblue cotton handkerchief. 

"We thought the young gentleman would be waiting near the Convent, " saidSister 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 younggirl's sweetheart to be late at the meeting-place!' says SisterHilda-Antony's eyes to me, and mine said back, 'The Lord grant no harm'scome to him!' We waited five minutes by the school clock, that's neverbeen let run down, and then another five, and still he didn't come. He hadgot his death-wound, though we didn't know it, hours before. "

"The Angel of Death had spread his wings over the Convent. Both me andSister Hilda-Antony felt there was a strange and awful stillness andsolemnness about the place. At last me and her told the child that go wemust. We'd wait no longer. But _she_, knowing we'd never leave withouther, ran upstairs. We heard her light feet going over the wet matting anddown the long passage to the chapel door. Then----"

Sister Tobias sobbed for another moment in the blue handkerchief. Thechild, who had been diligently sweeping, looked at the woman and at thebig man who had made her cry, with great dilated eyes of fear. She put thebroom back noiselessly in its corner, and stole back to her stool. Whoknew what might happen next?

"Then, " said Sister Tobias, "we heard the dreadfullest 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 raisethem up. That dear Saint--may the Peace of God and the Bliss of His Visionbe 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, justwhere she had dropped in trying to lift her. And the strength of me andthe Sister, and the strength of them that came after, wasn't equal tounloose those slender little hands you're watching. "

The slender little hands were busy with the slate and pencil as Saxhamlooked at them. 

"Those that came and helped us had been sent on from the Conventbombproof, where they'd been to look for _her_"--Sister Tobias glancedsorrowfully at the owner of those little busy hands--"with an Ambulancechair 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 cansoak up trouble till it won't hold a drop more. But she was quiet andhappy kneeling by that blessed Saint, waiting till the Lady should wakeup, she said.... And, 'deed and 'deed, but it looked like the blessedestsleep----"

Sister Tobias broke down and cried outright. The child eyed her halfsuspiciously, half wonderingly. Her great terrified eyes had not seen theman strike, but he must have hurt the woman. Therefore, she looked sharplyat the man between the tangled masses of the hair that could not be keptpinned up, and saw two great slow tears ooze over his thick underlids, andglitter as they hung there, and then fall. Others followed them, tumblingdown the square white face, and the stern mouth was wrenched with astrange spasm, and the grim chin trembled curiously.... 

Somebody had hurt the man.... It is not possible to follow up the workingsof the disordered intelligence, and spell out the blurred letters of theconfused mind. It is enough that her terror of him abated. She slippedfrom her stool to the floor, under the pretence of picking up herslate-pencil, threw back the hair that prevented her seeing clearly, andpeered up in that working face of Saxham's with curiosity, crouching near. She did not recoil violently when the strange, sorrowful face benttowards her; she only shrank back as Saxham asked:

"You remember me? You know my name?"

She nodded, eyeing him warily. If his hand had moved, she would havesprung backwards. But it did not stir. 

"Tell me who I am, then?"

"Man. "

Her lips shaped the word. Her voice was barely audible. His heart beatthickly as he went on:

"Quite right, but something else besides a man. A man with a name. Tell methe name, or shall I tell it you?"

She nodded, and her eyes were great and timorous, but there was no terrorof him in them now. 

"My name is Saxham--Owen Saxham. Say the name after me. "

For a wonder she obeyed. Sister Tobias caught a breath of surprise, buther subdued exclamation was silenced in mid-utterance by Saxham's look. 

"Dr. Owen Saxham--Doctor because I try to cure sick people. You have seenme trying at the hospitals. You have helped me many times----"

She puckered her delicate, bewildered brows, and held her head on oneside. To be made to think, and recall, and remember, hurt. 

"--Many times, and the sick people were grateful. They often ask me now, How is Miss Mildare?"

Her attention had wandered to the bronzed buttons on the Doctor's khâkicoat. She was trying to count them, it seemed, by the movement of herlips. Saxham went on with inexorable patience:

"Never mind the buttons. Look at me. Think of the patients at the Hospitalwho are asking when Lynette Mildare is coming back again. Tell me what Iam to say to them, Lynette?"

His voice shook over the beloved name. In spite of his grim effort tofight down the overmastering emotion, his eyes brimmed over, and a dropsplashed, hot and heavy, upon the wandering hand that crept out to fingerthe buttons that would not let themselves be counted right. She looked upat the eyes that wept for her, and their mingled love and anguish touchedeven her dulled mind to pity. She held her slender hand up against thelight, and looked at the splash of wet upon it. 

"You--cry?"

There was a glimmer of something in the eyes that redeemed theirvagueness. A rushlight seen shining through a night of mist upon adesolate mountain-side might have meant as little or as much to eyes thatsaw it. Saxham saw it, and it meant much to him. His great chest lifted ona wave of hope as he answered her:

"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 thosewho love her to cry again for joy, for she will be given back to them.... "

"Lord grant it!" breathed Sister Tobias behind them. But Saxham hadforgotten her. The fountains of his deep were broken up and words camerushing from him. 

"I think that day will come, Lynette. I believe that day will come, " hesaid, holding the beautiful vague gaze with his. "If every drop in theseveins of mine, poured out, could bring it more quickly, it should behastened so; if every faculty of my body, every cell in my brain, bent tothe achievement of one end, expended to the last unit of energy, in therestoration of what is infinitely dearer to me than life--than a hundredlives, if I had them to devote!--could insure its dawning, and bring thelight of Reason and Memory and Hope into these beloved eyes again----"

A sob tore its way through the Doctor's great frame. He rose up abruptlyand hurried away. 

LIV

A deadly lassitude, both physical and mental, had settled down upon themen and women of the garrison. They knew that Brounckers had gone south, leaving General Huysmans in command of the investing forces. They knewthat the rainy season brought them fever, for they shivered and burnedwith it, and they knew that the scanty rations of coarse and unpalatablefood were getting smaller every day. 

But they were conscious of these things in a dull way, and as though theyaffected people who were a long distance off. One day, when for thethousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was insight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested apoked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a briefflicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out in force, guns were limberedup and galloped out north and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention, and give Grumer, conjectured to be waiting for it, the opportunity for aneagle-like swoop down upon the harassed tortoise sprawling on hersand-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 allieshad really been beaten back; and if there was any doubt of that, it wasdissipated at the day's end when one of the Red Cross waggons camerumbling back out of the sloppy twilight, bringing Three Messengers toconfirm the tale. 

They were eloquent enough, even in their speechlessness, those three deadtroopers, whose boots and coats were missing, and whose pockets had beenturned inside out. Not a man of them was known to any member of thebeleaguered garrison. Yet every man and woman there was the poorer bythree friends and one more hope. 

We know what was happening while Gueldersdorp ate her patient heart out. It has been written in the History of Successful Strategy how LordWilliams of Afghanistan, landing at Cape Town in January, found Muller onhis way from Port Christmas, Whittaker at Bergstorm, Parris at Kooisberg, Ruthven on the Brodder, and everybody and everything at a deadlock. Andbeing too old and wise to disdain the wisdom of others, the keen old brainunder the frosty thatch recalled to mind the story of Stonewall Jackson, collected what forces he could muster, slipped in between two of thecolumns held immovable, and having established his lines of communicationto the south, launched himself on Groenfontein, and created the necessarydiversion. A mighty wave rolled back to protect the menaced Free Statecapital, the paralysed columns moved again, Diamond Town was relieved bySir George Parris, and Commandant Selig Brounckers was captured atPijlberg. 

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 inthe face, and the brain behind them could conceive and plan stratagems andtactics that were masterly, and devise works that were marvels ofDefensive Art. And the heavy hand that patted Mevrouw Brounckers' head, asthat devoted woman sat disconsolate in the river-bed, surrounded by herchildren, and pots, and bundles, and the roaring voice that softened tospeak words of consolation, even as the trap so ingeniously set to catch aTartar closed in--North, South, East, West--belonged to a man who knew notonly how to fight and win and how to fight and lose, but how to love andpity. 

There came the faint dawn of a day in May when the plan of that brightyoung man Schenk Eybel was tried, and tried successfully.... The linebetween two forts that lay far apart on the south and south-west waspierced, while the incessant roll of rifles made a mile-long fringe ofjagged yellowish flame along the enemy's eastern trenches. Even before thefeint sputtered out the rush had been made, the stratagem had developed, and at the bidding of twenty incendiary torches, the daub-and-wattle hutsof the Barala town leaped skyward in one roaring conflagration. 

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 ofGueldersdorp, and the chapter is headed "The Turning of the Tables. " Itgives a spirited description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans, the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and winds up with apen-and-ink sketch of Brounckers' bright boy breaking the chaff-bread ofcaptivity in the quarters of that slim duyvel, the Engelsch Commandant. 

But while the Boer was yet top-dog in the scuffle, and held the Baralastad, and the fort that had lately done duty as headquarters for theIrregulars, holding captive their commanding officer, several of hisjuniors, and some fifteen troopers, with a handful of Town Guards; and allthe fighting men who could be spared from the trenches were being postedbetween the menacing danger and the town, and a couple of field-guns werebeing hurried into position, and it had not yet occurred to CommandantSchenk Eybel that the cautious Huysmans might leave him in the lurch, things looked very bad indeed for the doughty defenders of littleGueldersdorp--certainly up to afternoon-tea time, when a couple of Scotchgirls crossed the two hundred yards of veld that lay between the Fort andthe town, carrying cans of steaming tea for the parching Britons penned upthere. 

You are to see those calm, unconscious heroines start, fixing theirhairpinned braids with quick, deft touches, pinning up their skirts as forthe crossing of a wimpling burn rather than for the fording of Death'sblack river. They measured the distance with cool, keen eyes, took up acan in each hand, exchanged a word, and started. The remaining can theyleft behind, saying they would come back for it. And they meant to, andwould have, but for a pale young woman in curling-pins, crowned by thedeplorable wreck of a large and flowery hat, and wearing a pink cottongown of deplorable limpness, through the washed-out material of which hersharpened collar-bones and thin shoulders threatened to pierce. For 'oware you to take to call a proper pride in yourself when you 'aven't got no'art for anythink any more?

You are to understand that Emigration Jane 'ad bin 'in 'Orspital along ofwhat the doctors called the Triphoid Fever, months an' months; and 'ad binorful bad, an' sent back again after being discharged, on accounts of anElapse, and kep' a dreadful time at the Women's Combalescent, through herblood being nothink but water--and now you may guess the reason of thatfruitless search on the part of W. Keyse. 

She tried to run at first, but the can was full and heavy, and her kneesshook under her at the screaming of the bullets over that cross-sweptfield. Her pore 'art beat somethink crooil, and there was a horrible kindof swishing in her years, but to give up, and chuck away the can, andscuttle back to cover, with Them Two stepping along in front as cool--andmore than halfway over, was what Emigration Jane could not demean herselfto do. And at last they passed her coming back, and the Fort loomed upbefore her, as suddenly as though it had sprouted up mushroom-fashionunder her dazzled eyes. And grimy men were leaning over thesandbag-parapet applauding her, and blackened hands attached to hairy armsreached down and grabbed the can, and it was taken up into the air andvanished, 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 wasswathed in a bloody bandage, and in all the world there was only Her andHim. 

"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 andrelief took on the aspect of horrified consternation. 

"Watto!" he was beginning weakly, but she tore her gaze from his, and witha rending sob, covered her face with her hands, and ran blindly. Heremained petrified and staring. And then a bullet struck him full in theface, and he screamed like a shot rock-rabbit, and threw up his arms andfell back, smothering in his own blood, behind the breastwork. And shenever knew the cruel trick that Fate had played her, as she ran.... 

She learned it later, when Young Eybel and his party were marchedprisoners into town, and cheer upon cheer went up from British throats, and bells were ringing joyfully, and "God Save the Queen!" bellowed inevery imaginable key, was heard from every possible quarter. 

It was while the Barala were wailing over their suffocated women andpiccaninns, and the acrid fumes of burning yet hung heavy in thepowder-tainted air, and the R. A. M. C. Men and their volunteer helpers werebringing in the wounded and the dead, that Emigration Jane saw a face upona stretcher that was being carried through the rejoicing crowd, andscreamed at the sight, and fell tooth and nail upon the human barrier thatinterposed between herself and it, and got through--how, she never could'a' told you. 

Rather a dreadful face it was, with wide-open, staring eyes protrudingthrough a stiffening mask of gore. The teeth grinned, revealed by thelivid, drawn-back lips, and how she knew him again in such a orful styteshe couldn't tell you--not if you offered her pounds and pounds to say----

She was only Emigration Jane, but when the bearers halted with thestretcher, it was in obedience to the gesture and the look of a youngwoman who had risen above herself into the keen and piercing atmosphere ofHigh Tragedy. 

"Put that down, you two blokes. Wot for?" Her thin throat swelled visiblybefore 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'!"

The bearers interchanged a look as they laid their burden down. It was notheavy, for Corporal W. Keyse, even when not living under conditions ofsemi-starvation, was a short man and a spare. _Had been_, one was temptedto say, in regard to his condition: "For, " said one of the R. A. M. C. Men toa sympathetic bystander, "the chap has had a tremendous wipe over the headwith a revolver-butt or a gun-stock, and he has been shot in the facebesides. There's the hole plain where the bullet went in under his nearnostril, and came out at the left-hand corner of his off eye. And unless akind o' miracle happens, I should say, myself, that it would be a savingof time to carry him straight to the Cemetery. "

"Don't let the poor girl hear you!" said the sympathetic bystander. ButEmigration Jane was past hearing or seeing anything but the damaged headupon the canvas pad, as she beat her breast and cried out to it wildly, dropping on her knees beside it:

"O my own, own, try an' know me! Come back for long enough to s'y oneword! O Gawd, if You let 'im, I'll pray to You all my days. O pore, poredarlin' 'ead that wicked men 'ave 'urt so crooil----"

It was a lover's bosom that she drew it to, panting under the limp andshabby cotton print gown. And the voice that called W. Keyse to come backfrom the very threshold of the Otherwhere was the voice of true, truelove. 

It worked the kind o' miracle, for one of the Corporal's stiffened eyelidsquivered and came down halfway, and the martial spirit of its ownerflickered up long enough for W. Keyse to sputter out:

"Cripps, it's 'Er! Am I dead an' got to 'Eaven--on somebody else's pass?"

"Born to be hung, I should say, " commented the R. A. M. C. Man aside to hismate. "Chuck some water over the young woman, one of you, " he added, asthe stretcher was lifted. "And tell her, when she comes to, that we'vetaken her sweetheart to Hospital instead of to the other place. "

"Rum critters, women, " commented another bystander, not untender in hismanner of sprinkling the dubious liquid known in Gueldersdorp as water outof a cracked tin dipper over the face of the young woman who sat upon theground 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 believesher chap a corpse, and does a solid flop as soon as she finds out he has akick in him. Help her up, you on the other side. Do you think you couldwalk now, miss, if you tried to?"

She made a faltering attempt, but her knees shook under her. Her claspedhands shook, too, as she held them out, beseeching those about her to bepitiful, 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 theHospital, and volunteered to nurse him. 

Saxham stitched up the split scalp of W. Keyse, and grimly congratulatedhim upon the thickness of the skull beneath it. The bullet had, as hasalready been indicated, gone in under the left nostril, and emerged belowthe inner corner of the right eye, gaining the recipient of the woundnotoriety as well as a strong temporary snuffle and a slight permanentcast.... 

"You shall git well, deer, " Emigration Jane would tell her patient twentytimes a day. "You carn't 'elp it, becos I means to myke you. "

"A' right, " her hero would snuffle. One day he added, with a weakly swoopof 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?"

She crimsoned, gasping:

"You don't never mean it?"

"Stryte I mean it, " declared W. Keyse. "Wot d'you tyke me for?"

His bed was in a corner, and a screen baffled prying eyes. She hung overhim, trembling, ardent, doubting, joyful, faltering:

"S'y it agyne, darlin'! Upon yer solemn natural----"

He said it with the lean arm round her. 

"An' it's me--me wot you wants--an' not that Other One?----"

He swore it. 

"You and not that Other One. So help me Jiminy Cripps!"

"An' you've forgiven me--abart them letters?" Her face was comingclose.... 

"Every time I blooming well kissed 'em, arter I bin an' picked 'em up, " hedeclared. 

"You did--that?" she quavered, marvelling at the greatness of his nature. 

"Look in me jacket pocket if you think I'm spinnin' you fairy ones. " Hisclose arm slackened a little. "Now there's somethin' I got to up an' tell, if you never tips me the 'Ow Do no more. "

"Wot is it, deer?" Her heart beat painfully. Was this something the reasonwhy he had not yet kissed her?

"It's got to do with the Dutchy wot landed me this slip over thecokernut"--he indicated some plaster strappings that decorated the seat ofintelligence--"with a revolver-butt, when they rushed the Fort. After 'e'dplugged at me wiv' 'is last cartridge an' missed. " The Adam's apple in histhin throat worked up above the collar of the grey flannel Hospitaljacket. "I--I outed 'im!" said W. Keyse. 

"O' course you did, deer. " Her heart thrilled with pride in her hero. "An'serve 'im glad--the narsty, blood-thirsty, murderin'----"

He interrupted:

"'Old 'ard! Wait till you knows 'oo it was. " He gulped, and the Adam'sapple jerked in the old way. "That 'ulkin' big Dopper you was walkin' outalong of, when I----"

"Walt! It was--Walt?"

She shuddered and grew pale. 

"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'sLift. Right in the middle of 'is dirty weskit. F'ff!" He blew a sigh. "Nowit's out, an' I suppose you 'ates me?"

She panted. 

"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!"

"I'll 'ave my kiss now, " said the lordly W. Keyse. And took it from herwilling lips. 

LV

There was no perceptible change in Lynette, either at the time of youngEybel's frustrated coup, or for long after. She was to live as much aspossible in the open air, Saxham had insisted, and so you would find thegirl, with a Sister in charge of her, sitting in the Cemetery, where thecrop of little white crosses thickened every day. The little blue andwhite irises had bloomed upon those two graves where her adopted motherand her brave young lover lay, before the dawning of that day the nunsprayed and Saxham hoped for. 

It was his bitter-sweet joy to be with her constantly, striving with allhis splendid powers of brain and body to brace the shattered nerves, andrestore the exhausted strength, and lead the darkened mind back gently andby degrees towards the light. 

She did not shrink from him now, but would answer his questionssubmissively, and give him her hand mechanically at meeting and parting. Saxham had not the magnetic influence over shy and backward children thatanother man possessed. She would smile and brighten when she saw theColonel coming, upright and alert as ever, though bearing heavy traces nowin the haggard lines and deep hollows of his face, to the greying hairsabove his temples and to the close-clipped brown moustache, as in theQuixote-like gauntness of the figure that had never carried much flesh, ofthe long struggle of close on seven months' duration. 

The pleasant little whistle would die upon his lips when he saw hersitting by the Mother's grave, plaiting grasses while the Sister sewed, ormaking clumsy babyish attempts at drawing on her little slate. From thisshe disliked to be parted, so her gentle nurses fastened it to one end ofa long ribbon, and its pencil to the other, and tied the ribbon about herwaist. 

One day, as the Colonel stooped to speak to her, his keen glance notedthat the wavering outline of a house stood upon the little slate. Theliving descendant of the primitive savage who had outlined the forms ofmen and beasts upon the flank of the great boulder when this old world wasyoung, would have scorned the drawing, and with good reason. It was sofeeble and wavering an attempt to convey, in outline, the idea of a whiteman's dwelling. 

The roof sagged wonderfully, and the chimneys were at frenzied angles withthe sides of the irregular cube, with its four windows of impossiblyvarying size, and the oblong patch that meant a door between them. Abovethe door was another oblong, set transversely, and rather suggesting atavern-sign. 

There were some clumsily indicated buildings, possibly sheds and stablesof daub and wattle, eking out the ramshackle house. Behind it and to theleft of it were scrawls that might have been meant for trees. An enclosureof spiky lines might have indicated an orchard-hedge. And there werethings in the middle distance, also to the left, that you might accept asbeehives or as native kraals. The man who looked at them knew they werenative kraals. He drew in his breath sharply, and the fold between hiseyebrows deepened, as he scanned the clumsy drawing on the slate. Withoutthose rude lines in the foreground to the right of the house, enclosing alittle kopje of boulders and a low, irregular grave-mound, the drawingwould 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 littlekopje located the spot. 

"A veld hotel in the Orange Free State--a wretched shanty of the usualcorrugated-iron and mud-wall type, in the grass country between Driepoortand Kroonfontein. "

He heard the wraith of his own voice speaking to the dead woman who layunder the blossoming irises at his feet. He saw her with the mental visionquite clearly. Her great purple-grey eyes were bent on his from theirsuperior level, and they were inscrutable in their strange, secretdefiance, and indomitable in the determination of their regard. 

Why had she been so bent upon hiding the trail? Why had she distrustedhim?

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:

"Did you draw this?"

She nodded, with great wistful eyes, looking shyly up at him from undertheir sweeping black lashes. He went on, pointing with a slendergrass-blade to each object as he named it:

"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?"

She whispered, with a look of secret fear:

"The man lives there. And the woman. "

"Tell me the man's name. "

She breathed, after a hesitation that was full of troubled apprehension:

"Bough. "

A red flush mounted in his thin cheek, and he drew his breath in sharply. He asked:

"Does anyone else live in the house?"

She reflected with a knitted brow. He helped her. 

"I do not mean the travellers--the men and women who come driving up inCape-carts and transport-waggons, and drive away again, but someone wholives with Bough and the woman. She has been at the tavern a long, longtime, though she is so young and so little. Try to remember her name. "

The knitted brow relaxed, and the beautiful dim eyes had almost a smile inthem. 

"It is 'the Kid. '"

"Try and think. Has she no other name?"

She shook her head. He gave up that trail as lost, and moved thegrass-blade to another part of the drawing on the slate. 

"Tell me what this is?"

She answered at once:

"It is the Little Kopje. The English traveller made it when he put thedead woman in the ground. "

His heart beat heavily, and the hand that pointed with the grass-bladeshook a little. 

"Where is the man who buried the dead woman and built the Little Kopje?"

She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a grave. 

"There. " The slender finger climbed the heap of boulders. "And there iswhere the Kid sits when she is a bad girl and runs away. " She peeped up inhis face almost slyly. "Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirtylittle 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 acunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. "But though they scold and callbad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beather when she comes in, and serve her right, the impudent little scum! Butnever come near the Little Kopje, because of the spook the Barala boy sawthere one night when the moon was big and shining. "

He said, with infinite pity in his tone, and a compassionate mist risingin those keen bright eyes of his:

"They are cruel to the Kid, both Bough and the woman?"

She began to shake. The guardian Sister, who sat sewing a little waybehind her, looked up anxiously at her charge. He pacified her with aglance, and, taking one of the slender trembling hands in a firm, kindclasp, repeated his question:

"Always cruel, cruel! But Bough----"

A spasm contracted her face. At the base of the slender throat somethingthrobbed and throbbed. She whispered brokenly:

"When the woman went away----"

Her slender fingers closed desperately upon his. Her heart shook her, andFear was in her eyes. Her voice vibrated and shuddered at her white lipsas a caught moth vibrates and shudders in a spider-web. She began again:

"When the woman went away, Bough----"

Her eyes quailed and flickered; her pale and quivering face was convulsedby a sudden spasm of awful fear. The muscles of her whole body stiffenedin 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 crushingfolds or crunching fangs. And he comprehended all; and understood all, inone lightning leap of intuition, as he saw. 

"Hush!" He stopped her with his authoritative eyes and the firm, reassuring pressure of his hand. "Forget that--speak of it no more. Tryand tell me who lies here, under these grasses and flowers that you waterevery day?"

He moved the hand he held to touch the grave, and the spasm thatcontracted her features relaxed, and the terror died out of her eyes, asthough some soothing, healing virtue were conveyed to her by the merecontact with that sacred earth. He went on:

"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--inexpressiblydear to her. She used to call you her beloved daughter. Tell me who shewas?"

Her face quivered, and in the depths of her dim, vague eyes a beam of thegolden light of old was rekindled. 

"She was the Lady. When will she come again?"

He raised his hand and pointed to the sky. 

"When that is rolled away, and the Sign of the Cross shines from the eastto the west, and from the north to the south, and the King of Glory comeswith His Angels and His Saints, we shall see her again, Lynette----"

His voice broke. He laid the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon herknee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked longafter the girlish figure as it was led away. 

He understood everything now. He knew why the mother-plover had trailedher wing in the dust, striving to lead the footsteps of the stranger asidefrom the hidden nest. He stooped and gathered a blade or two of grass, anda few crumbs of red, sandy earth, from the grave at his feet, and kissedthem, and folded them reverently in an envelope, and hid the little packetin his breast before he went. 

That evening there were pillars and banks of dust on the north-westhorizon, and the flashes of lyddite and the booming of artillery toldpatient Gueldersdorp that the hour of deliverance was near. A few hourslater the Relief had lamp-signalled brief details of the battle withHuysmans, ending with "Good-night" and the promise to fight a way in nextmorning. Later still, eight troopers in khâki, jaunty ostrich-tips intheir smasher hats, rode into the little battered village town thathuddled on the low, sandy mound, and all the waiting world was gladdenedwith the news. And London called on a quiet elderly lady, to tell her whatthe man, her boy, had done. 

The name of that little hamlet town has, cruelly enough, passed into abyword--a synonym for everything that is rowdy, vulgar, apish in theEnglish character, with the dregs stirred up. But yet it will ring downthe silver grooves of Time as long as Time shall be. 

Do I wander from the thread of my story--I who have dressed my puppets inthe brave deeds of those who strove and endured and suffered, to what aglorious end?

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, shallnever call one laurel mine.... 

A wandering wind came sighing past my ears one night upon the Links atHerion, burdened with this story it had to tell. Before then it had onlyblown in fitful gusts. Then again it blew steadily. I had caught somewhispers 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 atWashington, when the red sunset-fires burned low behind the Capitol, itspoke to me in the wonderful, beloved voice I shall never hear on earthany more. Yet once more the wind came faintly sighing, in the giant blueshadow of Table Mountain; it blew at Johannesburg, six thousand feet abovesea-level, in a raging cyclone of red gritty dust. Again it came, stirringthe celadon-green carpet of veld that is spread at the feet of theMagaliesberg Ranges, that were turquoise-blue as the scillas growing inthe South Welsh garden that lies before the window where I write, thisvariable spring day. But it blew with a most insistent note on the dumpymound where they have rebuilt the ridiculous, glorious village that gavebirth to deeds worthy of the Age Heroic, about whose sand-bagged defencesnightly patrolled a Sentinel who never slept. 

Gueldersdorp tumbled out of bed at three-thirty, to see the troops marchin by the cold white morning moonlight that painted long indigo-blueshadows of marching horsemen and rolling guns, drawn by many horses, andhuge-teamed baggage-waggons, eastward over the bleached dust. 

I dare not attempt to describe the indescribable. Zulu and Barala, Celestial and Hindu, welcomed the Relief each after his own manner, andwere glad and rejoiced. But of these haggard men and emaciated women ofBritish race I can but say that in them human joy attained the climax of asacred frenzy--that human gratitude and enthusiasm, loyalty andpatriotism, reached the pitch at which the mercury in the thermometer ofhuman emotion ceases to record altitudes. 

At its height, when the last fort had fallen to England and the flag ofthe United Republics had fluttered down from the tree whence it had wavedso long, and the Union Jack went up to frantic cheering, and theretreating cloud of dust on the horizon told of the exit of the enemy fromthe Theatre of War, Saxham played his one trump card in the game thatmeant life and death to him, and life, and everything that made life worthliving, to one other. 

 * * * * *

You are to see the hulking Doctor with the square-cut face, his grimunder-jaw more squarely set than ever, his blue eyes smouldering anxietyunder their glooming brows, trying to coax a pale, bewildered girl to takea walk with him. She would at length, provided Sister Tobias walked on theother side and held her hand. So this party of three plunged into theboiling whirlpool of joyous Gueldersdorp. 

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, andplaying the tunes of them on mouth-organs and concertinas. They wereshaking hands with one another and everybody else, and shedding tears ofjoy, and borrowing the pocket-handkerchiefs of sympathetic strangers todry them, or leaving them undried. They were crowding the Governmentkitchens, drinking the healths of the officers and men of Great Britain'sUnion Brigade in hot soup and hot coffee. They were clustered like beesupon the most climbable house-tops, watching those retiring dust-clouds inthe distance, and the nearer movements of their friends and allies; theywere hearing the experiences of dust-stained and travel-worn Imperialists, and telling their own; and one and all, they were thanking God Who had ledthem, through bodily fear, and mental anguish, and bitter privations, tohail the dawn of this most blessed day. 

The electrical atmosphere, the surge of the multitude, the roar ofthousands of voices, the gaze of thousands of eyes, had its effect uponthe girl. She trembled and flushed and paled. Her breath came quick andshort. She threw back her head and gasped for air. But she did not wish tobe taken back to the Convent bombproof. She shook her head when SisterTobias suggested that they should return. 

And then some of the women whom she had helped to nurse in hospital sawher, and recognised her, and came about her with pitiful words andcompassionate looks--not only for her own sake, but for that dead woman'swhose adopted daughter they knew her to have been. 

"You poor, blessed, innocent lamb!" They crowded about her, kissing herhands and her dress, and Sister Tobias's shabby black habit. "Lord helpyou!" they mourned over her. "Christ pity you, and bring you to yourselfagain!"

"Why are you so sorry?" Lynette asked them, knitting her delicate brows, and peering curiously in their tearful smiling faces. "No!" she correctedherself; "I mean why are you so glad?"

"Glad is ut, honey!" screamed a huge Irishwoman, throwing a brawny red armabout the shrinking figure and hugging it. "Begob, wid the Holy Soulsdancin' jigs in Purgatory, an' the Blessed Saints clappin' their han's inHeaven, we have rayson to be glad! Whirroosh! Ould Erin for ever--an' Godsave the Cornel!"

She yelled with all the power of her Celtic lungs, plucked off herdowntrodden shoes, slapped their soles together smartly, and, with agesture of royal prodigality, tossed 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 surgeof the joyous crowd, vociferating. 

Saxham felt the slender hand of his charge tighten upon his arm, and hisheart leaped as he noted the working of the sensitive face and the heavingof the small, nymph-like bosom under the thin material of her dress. Hehoped, he believed that a change was taking place in her. He said tohimself that the delicate mechanism of her brain, clogged and paralysed bya great mental shock, was revitalising, storing energy, gaining power;that the lesion was healing; that she would recover--must recover. 

Then his quick eye saw fatigue in her. They took her back out of the dustand the clamour and the crowd, back to the quiet of the Cemetery. 

It happened there. For as she stood again beside the long, low moundbeneath which the heart that had cherished her lay mouldering, they sawthat the tears were running down her face, and that her whole body wasshaken with sobbing. And then, as a wild tornado of cheering, mingled withdrifts of martial music, swept northwards from Market Square, she fellupon her knees beside the grave, and cried as if to living ears:

"Mother;--oh! Mother, the Relief! They're here! Oh, my own darling--to beglad without you!... "

She lay there prone, and wept as though all the tears pent up in her sincethat numbing double stroke of the Death Angel's sword were flowing fromher now. And Sister Tobias, glancing doubtfully up at Saxham's face, sawit transfigured and irradiated with a great and speechless joy. For heknew that the light had come back to the beautiful eyes he loved, and thatthe Future might yield its harvest of joy yet, even yet, for the DopDoctor, he believed in his own blindness. 

LVI

They were standing together in the same place two months later when hetold her all, and asked her to be his wife in his own brusquecharacteristic way. 

"You have been so good, so kind, " she said, in rather formal phrase, butwith her sweet eyes shining through tears and her sensitive lipstrembling. "You have shown yourself to be so noble in your unselfish carefor others, in your unsparing efforts for the good and benefit ofeveryone----"

"Put that by, " said Saxham rather roughly, "and please to look at me, MissMildare. "

He had never called her Lynette since her recovery, or touched the prettyhand he coveted unless in formal greeting. 

"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, dischargingmy duty at the Hospital and elsewhere as well as any other man possessingthe special qualifications it demands. Pray understand that I am not aphilanthropist, and have never posed as one. For the sake, first of a manwho believed in me, and secondly of a woman whom I love--and you areshe--I have done what I have. "

He squared his great shoulders and stood up before her, and, though hisface had never had any charm for her, its power went home to her and itspassion thrilled. 

"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 theDop Doctor. "

He saw recollection waken in her eyes, and nerved himself to the sharpordeal of changing it to repulsion and disgust. 

"You have heard that name applied to me. It conveyed nothing loathsome toyour innocent mind. You once repeated it to me, and were about to ask itsmeaning. I had it in my mind then to enlighten you, and for the mean andcowardly baseness that shrank from the exposure I have to pay now inthe"--a muscle in his pale face twitched--"the exquisite pain it is to meto tell you to-day. "

"Then do not tell me. " She said it almost in a whisper. "Dr. Saxham, I begyou most earnestly to spare yourself. " She dropped her eyes under thefierce earnestness of his, and knitted her cold little hands in oneanother. "Please leave the rest unsaid, " she begged, without looking athim. 

"It cannot be, " said Saxham. "Miss Mildare, the Dop Doctor was onlyanother nickname for the Town Drunkard. And now you know what you shouldhave known before if I had not been a coward and a knave. "

She turned her eyes softly upon him, and they could not rest, it seemed toher, upon a man of braver and more lofty bearing. 

"I _was_ the Town Drunkard, " Saxham went on, in the cold, clear voice thatcut like a knife to the intelligence. "Known in every liquor-saloon, andfamiliar to every constable, and a standing butt for the clumsy jests thatthe 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 theStreet, for that matter--pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truthmust be told--were my godfather and my godmother, and they gave me thatname between them. You are trembling, Miss Mildare. Sit down upon thatbalk, and I will finish. "

There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been used in theconstruction of a gun-mounting. She moved to it and sat down, and theDoctor went on:

"I am not going to weary you with the story of how I came to be--what Ihave told you. But that I had lived a clean and honourable and temperatelife up to thirty years of age--when my world caved in with me--I swear isthe very truth!"

She said gently: "I can believe it, Dr. Saxham. "

"Even if you could not it would not alter the fact. And then, at theheight of my success, and on the brink of a marriage that I dreamed wouldbring me the fulfilment of every hope a man may cherish, one impulse ofpity and charity towards a wretched little woman brought me ruin, ruin, ruin!"

Pity for a wretched woman had brought it all about. She was glad to seethe Saxham of her knowledge in that Saxham whom she had not known. Hefolded his great arms upon his broad breast and went on:

"Nothing was left to me. Everything was gone. Rehabilitation in the eyesof the Law--for I gained that much--did not clear me in the eyes ofSociety--that hugs the guilt-stained criminal to its heart in the fullconsciousness of what his deeds are, and shudders at the innocent man uponwhom has once fallen the shadow of that grim and bloody Idol thatcivilisation misnames Justice. I was cast out. Even by the brother I hadtrusted and the woman I had loved. I had in a vague way believed in Goduntil then; I know I used to pray to Him to bless those I loved, and helpme to achieve great things for their sakes. But nothing at all was left ofthat except a dull aching desire to throw back in the face of the Deitythe little He had left to me. My health, and my intellectual powers, andmy self-respect.... "

Her voice came to his ears in the half-whispered words:

"Had He left you so little, after all?"

"Little enough, " said Saxham doggedly, "compared with what I had lost. Andas it is the privilege of the Christian to blame either the Almighty orthe devil for whatever ills are brought on him by his own blind, recklesschallenging of the Inevitable--termed Fate and Destiny by classicalPaganism, --so I found myself at odds with One I had been taught to call myMaker. "

In His own acre, close to her beloved dead, with all those little whitecrosses marking where other dust that had once praised Him with the humanvoice lay waiting for the summons of the Resurrection, it was incrediblyawful to her to hear Him thus denied. She grew pale and shuddered, andSaxham saw. 

"You see that I wish to be honest with you, and open and above-board. Iwould not ever have you say to yourself, 'This man deceived--this manmisled me, wishing me to think him better than he was. ' There is not muchmore to tell you--save that I took what money remained to me at the bankand from the sale of my last possessions--about a thousand pounds--andshook the dust off from my shoes, and came out here, drunk, to carry outmy purpose of self-degradation to the uttermost. And I became a foul beastamong beasts that were even fouler, but less vile and less shamefulbecause 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 of steelsmitten on steel. He drew himself up with a movement of almost savagepride, and the knotted veins swelled on his broad white forehead, and hisblue eyes blazed under his thunderous smudge of black eyebrows. 

"The name you know. It used to be called after me when I reeled thestreets--they whispered it afterwards as I rode by. To-day it isforgotten. " His nostrils quivered, and he threw out his hands as if withthat action he tossed something worthless to the winds. "Miss Mildare, Ihave not touched Drink--the stuff that was my nourishment and mysustenance, my comfort and my bane, my deadliest enemy and my onlyfriend--since that hour when with the last effort of my will I rallied allmy mental and bodily forces to resist its base allurement. "

"I know it, Dr. Saxham. I am sure of it. " She rose and held out her handsto him, but he folded his arms more closely over his starving, famishedheart, and would not see them yet. 

"You can be sure of it. Alcohol is no longer my master and my god. I standbefore you a free man, because I willed to be free. " There was a littleblob of foam at one corner of his mouth, but the square pale face wascomposed, even impassive. "Once, not so long ago, I filled a place ofstanding in the professions of Surgery and Medicine; I knew what it was tobe esteemed and respected by the world. For your dear sake I promise toregain what I have lost; be even more than I used to be, achieve greaterthings than are done by other men of equal powers with mine. I am not aman to pledge my word lightly, Miss Mildare.... " His voice shook now andhis blue eyes glistened. "If you would be so--so unutterably kind as tobecome my wife, I promise you a worthy husband. I swear to you upon what Ihold dearest and most sacred--your own life, your own honour, your ownhappiness, never to give you cause to regret marrying me! For I may die, indeed, but living I will never fail you!"

There was a lump in her throat choking her. Her eyes had gone to thatother grave some fifty paces distant from the Catholic portion of theCemetery. There were freshly-gathered flowers upon it, as upon the gravethat lay so near, and two gorgeous butterflies were hovering about theblooms, in mingled dalliance and greediness. 

"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 wasworthy of love from you. But give me the hope of one day gaining from yousome shadow of--of return for what I feel for you. Is it Passion? I hardlyknow. Whether it is Love, in the sense in which that word is employed bymany 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--youcannot look at me and doubt!"

She was not looking at him. Her eyes were on the little white cross abovethe Mother's grave; there was an anxious fold between the slender darkeyebrows. 

"You--you wish to marry a Catholic--you, who tell me that you were once aChristian and are now Agnostic?"

"If I have not what is called Faith, " said Saxham, "I may at least layclaim to the quality of reverence. And I honour the religion that has madeyou 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 yourSaints in Heaven, to give to a poor devil who needs it desperately!"

The sweet colour flushed her, and her face was more than beautiful in itscompassion. She said:

"I pray for you now, and I will always. And one day our Lord will give youback the faith that you have lost. "

"Thank you, dear!" said Saxham humbly. She was opening her lips to speakagain when he lifted his hand and stopped her. 

"There is one other thing I should like to make clear. I--am not rich. Butneither am I absolutely poor. Letters that I have received from a firm ofsolicitors acting for the trustees and executors of--a near relativedeceased, will prove to you that I am possessed of some small property, bringing in an annual income of something like two hundred pounds, andfunds sufficient to settle a few thousands upon my wife by way ofmarriage-jointure. Believe me, " he added, in answer to her look, "I knowyou to be incapable of a mercenary thought. But what I should haveexplained to"--he pointed to the grave that lay so near--"to _her_, I mustmake clear to you. It could not be otherwise. "

She went over to the grave and knelt beside it, and laid her pure cheekupon it, and spoke to the Dead in a low, murmuring tone. Saxham knew as hewatched her, breathing heavily, that the consent of the Mother would neverhave been given to the marriage he proposed. That other obstacle in theroad of his desire, the lover who had deceived, had been swept away, withthe stern and tender guardian, in one cataclysm of Fate. He went back inthought to the ending of his long shooting-match _à outrance_ with FatherNoah, and remembered how he had promised himself that all should go wellwith Saxham provided Saxham's bullet got home first. 

Were not things going better than he had hoped? She had not even recoiledfrom 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 hishungering eyes upon his heart's desire. What it cost him not to step overto her, snatch her from the ground, and crush her upon his heart with hotand passionate kisses and wild words of worship, he knew quite well. Butin that he was able to exercise such a mastery over himself and keep thatother Saxham down, Saxham gave praise to that strange god he had set up, and worshipped, and bowed down before, calling it The Omnipotent HumanWill. 

She rose by-and-by, and stood with clasped hands, thinking. It was verystill, and the air was sweet and balmy, and beyond the lines of thedefence-works miles upon miles of sunlit veld rolled away to the hillsthat were mantled in clear hyacinth-colour and hooded with pale rose. 

"If I married you, you would take me away from this country and thesepeople who have killed her?"

She had the thought of another in her heart and the name of another uponher lips. But only her eyes spoke, travelling to that more distant gravewhere the butterflies were hovering above the flowers, as Saxham answered:

"I would take you away, if you wished it. "

"To England?"

"Back to England. "

"I should see London, and the house where Mother lived.... " She seemed tohave forgotten Saxham, and to be uttering her thoughts aloud. "I mighteven see the green mountains of Connemara in Ireland--her own mountainsshe used to call them. I might one day meet people who are of her bloodand name----"

"And of _his_, " thought Saxham, following her eyes' wistful journey tothat other grave. 

"But, " she went on, "it would all depend"--she breathed with agitation andknitted her slim white fingers together, and looked round at him with thatanxious wrinkle between her fine eyebrows--"upon how much you asked of me!Suppose I----" His intent and burning eyes confused her, and she droppedher own beneath them. "If I were to marry you, would you leave meabsolutely free?"

"Absolutely, " said Saxham. "With the most complete freedom a wife couldpossibly desire. "

"I meant--a different kind of freedom from a wife's. " She knitted andunknitted her hands. "It is difficult to explain. Would you be willing toask nothing of me that a friend or a sister might not give? Would you becontent----"

Her transparent skin glowed crimson with the rush of blood. Her bosomlaboured 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 acry of terror and alarm. But he mastered the raging jealousy that torehim, and said, with a jarring note of savage irony in the voice that hadalways spoken to her gently until then:

"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriagethat should be practically no marriage at all--a formal contract that isnot wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and alter into theclose union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and womenwho love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"

She looked at him full and bent her head. And the man's heart, that hadthrobbed so wildly, stopped beating with a sudden jerk, and the divinefire that burned and tingled in his blood died out, and the cold sicknessof baffled hope weighed on him like a mantle of lead. And the voice thathad 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, andknow the bliss of being loved at last, sank into silence. His face wasset like granite, and as grey. His eyes burned darkly under his heavybrows. He waited, sombrely and hopelessly, for her to speak again. 

"There are such marriages----?"

The question was diffidently and timidly put. He answered:

"Assuredly there are. But not between those who are--physically andmentally, sane and healthy men and women, --at least, in my experience. Onecase, of three I am at liberty to quote, was that of an aged and wealthywoman of position and a young and rising public man. "

"Were--weren't they happy?"

The face of the inward, unseen Saxham was twisted in a miserable grin, butthe outward man preserved immobility. 

"He enjoyed life. She sat by, and saw, every day joining nearer, herdeath, that was to leave him free. "

"And the others?"

She asked it with an indrawn breath of anxiety. 

"The second case was that of a man, middle-aged and helplessly paralysedby an accident in the hunting-field, and of a beautiful and high-spiritedyoung woman--almost a girl. She took a romantic interest in him--talked ofhis ruined career and blighted life, and all that sort of thing. And--theymarried, and she found her bondage intolerable.... It ended in hisdivorcing her. The _decree nisi_ was made absolute a few days before Ileft London. The third case bears more analogy to yours and mine. "

"Please go on. "

"There was no great disparity of age between these two people. They weresympathetic, cultured, independent both. Their views upon manysubjects--including the sex question--were identical, " said Saxham slowly. "And they entered into a bond of union that had for its ultimate aim theculture of the intellect and the development of what they called the Soul. The Flesh had nothing in it; the Body, " said Saxham, with a gratingsarcasm, "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 sufferedmost!"

Her lips parted, her eyes were intent upon him. 

"You have lived with Sisters of Mercy in a Convent, " went on Saxham. "Youknow of their lives even more than I--greatly to my advantage--havelearned. Energetic, useful, stirring, active, never complaining, alwaysready to make the best of the world as they find it, and help others to dothe same; always regarding it as the preparatory school ortraining-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and moreglorious than anything the merely mundane imagination can conceive--youcan realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast betweenthem and the laywomen of Society, peevish, hysterical, neurotic, sensual, and bored. But before these chastened, temperate bodies, these serene andwell-balanced minds attained the state of self-control and crossed theRubicon of resignation, what struggles their owners must haveundergone!--what ordeals of anguish they must have endured! Did that neverstrike you?"

Her lips were pale, and there were shadows under her eyes. She bent herhead. 

"The woman, who was not a nun, did for the sake of a man what the nunfeels supernaturally called upon to do for her God, " said Saxham. "Shethrust her hand deep into her woman's bosom, and dragged out her woman'sheart, and wrung from it every natural human yearning, and purged it--orthought she purged it--of every earthly desire, before she laid thepulseless, emptied thing down before his feet for him to tread upon. Andthat is what he did!"

He heard her pant softly, and saw her hand move upward to her beatingheart. His deadly earnestness appalled her. Was he not fighting for whatwas more than life to him? He folded his arms over his great chest, andsaid:

"For ten years he and she lived together in a union called ideal byignorant enthusiasts and high-minded cranks. Then she drooped anddied--victim of the revolt of outraged Nature. A little before the endthey sent for me. I said to the man: 'A child would have saved her!' Andhe--I can hear him now, answering: 'Ah! but that would have nullified allthe use and purpose of our example for humanity. ' The idiot--the abortive, impossible, dreary idiot! And if ever there was a woman intended bywholesome Nature to bear and nurture babes, it was that woman, who diedto prove the possibility of carrying on the business of living accordingto his damned theories. "

His broad chest heaved; a mist came before his eyes; his deep vibratingvoice had in it a passionate appeal to her. 

"The nun would tell you that in the lofty, mystical sense marriage andmotherhood are hers, 'Christ being her Spouse. ' I echo this in no spiritof mockery. But this woman of whom I have told you knew no vocation andtook no vow. She merely tried to ignore the fundamental truth that everynormal woman of healthy instincts was meant to be a mother. "

He added:

"And every husband who loves his wife sees his manhood proved andperfected 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. "

Something like a sob broke from him. His heart cried:

"Lynette! have pity upon yourself and upon me!"

He stood and waited for her reply. She was so exquisite and so full ofwomanly allure, and yet so crystal-cold and passionless, that he knew hisarguments thrown away, his entreaties mere dust upon the wind. 

"Tell me, " he said at length, "do I inspire you with antipathy? Am Iphysically repulsive to you, or disagreeable? Answer me frankly, for inthat case I would--cease to urge my suit with you, and go upon my way, wherever it might lead me. "

She looked at him, and there was no shrinking in her regard--only a gentlefriendliness, as far removed from the feeling he would have roused in heras the North is from the South. 

"I will tell you exactly how I feel towards you. " He writhed under theknowledge that it was possible to her to analyse and to explain. "I likeyou, Dr. Saxham. I am deeply grateful to you----"

"Gratitude!" He shrugged his shoulders. "You owe me none; and even if youdid, what use is gratitude to a man who asks for love?"

"I trust you; I rely upon you, " she said. "It is--pleasant to me to knowthat you are near. " A line of perplexity came between the dark fineeyebrows; the sweet colour in her face wavered and sank. "But--if you wereto touch me--to take me in your arms--I----" She shivered. 

"You need not say more!" If she was pale, Saxham's stern, square face wasashen. His eyes glowered and fell under hers, and a purple vein swelled inthe middle of his broad white forehead. "I understand!"

"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, "Pleasecome!... "

Saxham followed her, hearing the harsh, jeering laughter of that otherSaxham above the faint rustle of her dress. His covetous, despairing eyesdwelt on her and clung about her. Ah! the exquisite poise of the littlehead, with its red-brown waves and coils; the upright, slender elegance ofshape, like a young palm-tree; the long, smooth, undulating step withwhich she moved between the graves, picking her way with sedulous, delicate care among the little crowding white-painted crosses; theatmosphere of girlish charm and womanly allurement that breathed from herand environed her!... 

His torpid pulses throbbed again. The voice began again its whispering athis ear. 

"You cannot live without her. Accept her conditions. Better to be unhappyin the sight and sound and touch of her, unpossessed, than to bedesperate, lacking her. Accept her conditions with a mental reservation. Trust to Time, the healer, to bring change and forgetfulness. Or, breakyour promise to that dead man, and tell her--as he would have had you tellher, remember!--as he would have had you tell her!--that when he asked herhand in marriage, he was the wedded husband of the dancer, LessieLavigne!"

He knew where she was leading him--to Beauvayse's grave. The voice keptwhispering, urging as they went. He saw and heard as a man sees and hearsin a dream the pair of butterflies that hovered yet about the freshflowers her hands had gathered and placed there. One jewel-winged, diamond-eyed insect rose languidly and wavered away as Lynette's lightfootsteps drew near. The other remained, poised upon the lip of a honeyed, waxen blossom, with closed, vertically-held wings and quivering antennæ, sucking its sweet juices as greedily as the dead man had drunk of the joyof life. 

Now she was speaking:

"Dr. Saxham, I have brought you here because I have something to tell youthat _he_"--her face quivered--"should have been told. When you spoke alittle while ago of openness and candour--when you said that you wouldnever mislead or deceive me for your own advantage, that I should know theworst of you together with the best--you held up before me, quiteunknowingly, an example that showed me--that proved to me"--her voicewavered and broke--"how much I am your inferior in honesty and truth!"

"_You_ my inferior!" Saxham almost laughed. "_I_ an example of light andleading, elevated for your guidance! If you were capable of irony----"

He broke off, for she went on as though he had not spoken:

"When first we met--I mean yourself and me--I remember telling you, upon asudden impulse of confidence and trust in you, what I had determined mylife-work was to be----"

"Dear, innocent-wise enthusiast, " thought Saxham, "dreaming over yourimpossible plan for regenerating the world! Beloved child-Quixote, tiltingat the Black Windmills, how dare I, who was once the Dop Doctor ofGueldersdorp, love you and seek you for my own? Madness--madness on theface of it!" But, madness or sanity, he could not choose but love her. 

"Your life-work!... It was to be carried out among _those others_ whosevoices 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!"

"You think too well of me, " she broke out, with sudden energy. 

"It is not possible to think too well of you!"

"You think so now, perhaps, but when you know----"

Her eyes brimmed and the tears welled over her white under-lids. She putup both her little hands, and rubbed the salt drops away with herknuckles, like a child. 

"When I have told you, you will alter--you cannot help but alter youropinion!"

"No!" denied Saxham; and the monosyllable seemed to drop from his grimlips like a stone. Her bosom heaved with short, quick sobs. 

"I meant to go out into the world, and meet those women who think and workfor women, and hear all they have to say, and learn all they have toteach. Then----"

She was Beatrice again, as she turned her face full on Saxham, and oncemore the virginal veil fell, and he was conscious of strange abysses ofknowledge opening in those eyes. 

"--Then I meant to seek out those women and girls and children of whom Ispoke to you, those who lie fettered with chains that wicked men haveriveted, in the dark dungeons that their tyrants and torturers havequarried out of the living rock, out of the reach of fresh air andsunshine, beyond the reach of those who would pity and help ... I meant togo down to them, and comfort them, and raise them up. I meant to havesaid: 'Trust me, believe me, listen to me, follow me! For my sorrow isyour sorrow, and my wrong your wrong, and my shame yours--O! my poor, poorunhappy sisters!... '"

There was a great drumming and surging of the blood in Saxham's ears. Hisheart beat in heavy laboured, measured strokes, like the tolling of adeath-bell. He saw her cover her face with her hands, and drop upon herknees amongst the grasses that greenly clothed the red soil. He saw thebutterfly, startled from its feast, rise and waver away. And he saw, too, his veiled nymph, his virginal white goddess, his chaste, veiled maidenArtemis, toppled from her pedestal and lying in the gutter. 

Her sorrow the sorrow of those spotted ones! her wrong theirs, and theirsher shame!... So this was the sordid secret that haunted the depths ofthose eyes--the eyes of Beatrice! He turned his head away, so as not tolook upon her, and his face grew dark with the rush of blood. But still heheard her speaking, as a man hears in a dream. 

"At school all the older girls thought and talked of nothing but Love, andmost 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 andworshipped--I who shuddered when a man's breath, and a man's voice, and aman's face came near--I said in my heart that Love should never find adupe and a slave and a tool in me. I meant to live for the Mother, and beto those poor sisters of mine what she was--oh, my darling! mydarling!--to me! And all the while Love was coming nearer and nearer, andat last----"

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 sobsbetween the gasped-out sentences:

"--At last it came. I never tried to struggle against it; it wrapped me ina net of exquisite sweet softness, that held me like a cage of steel. Igave myself up to the blissfulness and the joy of it. I was unfaithful tothose others--I forgot them for Beauvayse! Oh, why should Love make it soeasy to do unlovely things? to be unworthy, to break promises, and to befalse to vows? You are in earnest when you make them ... You are proud tobe so sure that nothing shall change or turn you.... Then eyes that arelike strange jewels look deep into yours. A voice that is like no othervoice whispers at your ear. It says strange, sweet, secret things--thingsthat come back and burn you--and his breath upon your cheek drowns outyour scruples in wave upon wave of magical, thrilling, wonderfulsensation!... " She shuddered. "And everything else is blotted out, and noone else matters! You are not even sorry that you have left off caring.... Love has made you indifferent as well as unkind!"

She looked up at Saxham from where she crouched down at his feet among thegrasses, and her distress melted some of the ice that was closing roundhis heart. 

"Love cannot be good. It brings no peace, no happiness--nothing butrestless misery and burning pain. It makes you even willing to deceive_him_. " Her lids fluttered and she caught her breath. "When another towhom I was dear, and who knew, said, 'Never tell him! I command you neverto tell him!' I pretended to myself that the words had not been spoken outof pity, because my darling loved me too well to see me suffer; and I toldmyself that it was right to obey. "

Saxham, following the yearning look that went back to that other's grave, heard the unforgettable voice uttering the command. 

"_He_ never dreamed of my miserable secret. He was so free, so frank, soopen himself. He had nothing to hide--he was incapable of deceit! It neveroccurred to him--oh, Beau! Beau!"

Saxham's face was set like a mask carved in granite, but that otherSaxham, within the man she saw through her tears, was wrung and twistedand wrenched in spasms and gusts of insane, uncontrollable, helplesslaughter. 

"_Nothing to hide--incapable of deceit!_" It seemed to him that the deadman, 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 speakout and end the farce for ever. 

Should he? Why not? But for what reason now, and to what end, since hisvirginal-pure, dew-pearled, Convent lily lay trodden in the mire? And yet, to look in those eyes.... 

They did not falter or droop under his again, as she told him in few andsimple words the story of what had happened in the tavern on the veld. 

"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 andgrew 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. Icannot give you any reason for this belief of mine in his knowledge of mystory. I only feel that it is no secret to the Colonel, whenever he looksat me with those wise, kind, pitying eyes. "

There was a look in Saxham's eyes that was not pity. The sunbeam thatshone through the loose plait of her coarse straw hat, and gilded theedges of the red-brown hair-waves, aureoled again for him the head ofBeatrice. 

"I have no faith left, but I am capable of reverence, " he had said to her. 

Now, as he knelt down in the grass before the little brown shoes, andlifted the hem of her linen gown and kissed it, the hulking-shoulderedDoctor proved his possession of the quality. Devouring desire, riotouspassion, were, if not killed in him, at least quelled and overthrown andbound. Pure pity and tenderness awakened in him. And Chivalry, all_cap-à-pie_ in silver mail, rose up to do battle for her against the worldand against that other Saxham. 

"I accept the trust you are willing should be mine. Take my name--take allI have to give! I make no reservations. I stipulate no conditions. I askfor nothing in return, except the right to be your brother and guardianand defender. Trust me! The life-work you have chosen shall be yours; asfar as lies in my power, I will help you in it. Your pure ends and nobleaims shall never be thwarted or hindered. And have no fear of me, my sweetsaint, my little sister. For I may die, " said Saxham once again, "but, living, I will never fail you!"

LVII

Saxham, of St. Stephen's, had long ago faded from the recollection ofLondon Society, but Saxham, M. D. , F. R. C. S. , Late Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and frequently mentioned in Despatches from that bit ofdebatable soil, while it was in process of debating, was distinctly aperson to cultivate. Not that it was in the least easy--the man was almostquite a bear, but his brevity of speech and brusqueness of manner gave hima cachet that Society found distinguished. He was married, too--soromantic! married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp allthrough the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't you know? andwith manners that really suggested the Faubourg St. Germain. Where she gother style--brought up among Boers and blacks--was to be wondered at, butthese problems made people all the more interesting. And one met her withher husband at all the best houses since the Castleclares had taken themup. Indeed, Mrs. Saxham was a relative--was it a cousin? No--now it allcame back! Adopted daughter, that was it, of an aunt--no, a step-sister ofLord Castleclare, that ineffable little prig of twenty-two, who as a Peerand Privy Councillor of Ireland, and a Lord-in-Waiting to boot, wasnevertheless a personage to be deferred to. 

One had heard, hadn't one, ages ago, of the famous beauty, LadyBridget-Mary Bawne? Well, that was the very person, who had been Abbess, or Prioress, or something-else-ess of a Roman Catholic Sisterhood atGueldersdorp, 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!

We may know that that belated letter of the Mother's--written to herkinswoman when the first mutterings of the storm were yet dulled bydistance, and the threatening clouds were beginning to build theirblue-black bastions and frowning ramparts on the horizon--had got throughat 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 tofulfil the dead woman's wishes in the settlement of a sum of money uponLynette. He had made such provision for her himself as his meanspermitted. His books had been selling steadily for the past six years, hispublishers had paid him a handsome sum in royalties, and a thousandguineas for the copyright of a new work. Plas Bendigaid was secured to hiswife; and Saxham's life was heavily insured, and the bulk of the sumremaining from the purchase of the furniture and fixtures of the house inHarley Street, with the practice of the physician who was giving uptenancy, had been invested in her name with the other funds. Why shouldstrangers interfere with his sole privilege of working for her?

"I should prefer that the decision should be left entirely to my wife, " hesaid, when the Head of the House of Bawne, with the pompous solemnitydistinctive of a young man who takes himself and his position seriously, formally broached the subject. 

"Lady Castleclare has--arah!--already approached Mrs. Saxham on thequestion, " said Lord Castleclare, tapping the shiny surface of theleather-covered writing-table near which he sat with the long, thin, ivory-hued fingers, ending in long, narrow, bluish-tinted nails, that haddescended to him--with the peculiar sniffing drawl that prolonged andpunctuated his verbal utterance--from his late father. "And I regret tohear from Lady Castleclare that Mrs. Saxham gave no encouragement to thesuggestion. I confess myself disappointed equally with my wife and myelder step-sister, the Duchess of Broads, to whom the letter waswritten--the letter that you will understand conveys to the family Irepresent, the last wishes of one whose memory we hold in the most sacredlove and reverence----"

The Right Honourable Privy Councillor had here to stop and dry his eyes, that were frankly overflowing. Though short, and not at all distinguishedof appearance, having derived from his mother, the Dowager Countess, néeMiss Nancy McIleevy, of McIleevystown, County Down, certain personaldisadvantages to counterbalance the immense fortune amassed by her uncle, the brewer, this little gentleman of great affairs possessed the kindlyheart, and the quick and sensitive nature of the paternal stock. Now hecontinued:

"--Under the circumstances you will permit me to renew the proposal with aslight modification. The sum we proposed to invest in Governmentsecurities for Mrs. Saxham's benefit, carrying out a charge that we regardit as a privilege to--to have received--is not large, merely five thousandpounds. " He coughed. "Well, now it has occurred to me that Mrs. Saxham'sobjection to receive what she seems to regard as a gift from people uponwhom she has no claim--that is how she expressed herself to LadyCastleclare--might be got over--if I may employ the expression, by oursettling the money upon your children?"

"Upon our children----"

They were sitting in Lord Castleclare's library at Bawne House, GrosvenorSquare. Great books in gilded bindings gleamed from their covered andlatticed shelves, and the perfume of Russia leather and cedar mingled withthe 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 tallplate-glass windows. The fire burned red behind bars of silvered steel, the ashes fell with a little clicking whisper. It seemed to Saxham that hecould hear his pierced heart bleeding, drip, drip, drip! But he sat like aman of stone, his white, firm, supple hand clenched upon the carved knobof the chair-arm. Then he said, looking the Right Honourable PrivyCouncillor full in the face with those gentian-blue eyes of his, now sunkin caves that grew deeper day by day:

"Let it be so, my lord. I am willing, if my wife consents, that the moneyshould be settled upon--her children. "

He prescribed, at Lord Castleclare's request, for a political dyspepsia, and took leave in his brusque, characteristic way, and sent away hiswaiting motor-brougham, and walked home, thinking, by that new light thathad flashed upon him. 

It was January, the London January of whirling dust clouds below, andracing, murky vapours above. They had been settled in the Harley Streethouse four months. It seemed to Saxham as though they had lived there foryears. The routine of professional life was closing in upon him onceagain. Patients thronged to his door; Hospitals, and Societies, andInstitutions were open to him as of old; Society courted and flatteredhim, and gushed about the beauty of Mrs. Saxham. It was as though thatcelebrated Criminal Case, The Crown _v. _ Saxham, had never developed intougly, sinister shape under the dirty skylight of the Old Bailey. 

He crossed Grosvenor Square, and turned down Brook Street, thinking as hewent. Pretty women in furs, their make-up subdued by silk-gauze veils, nodded to him from motor-broughams and victorias. 

Though the horse-drawn hansom yet plied for hire, petrol was drivingbrute-power off the streets. The hooting and clanking of the motor-omnibusmade Oxford Street hideous. And that St. Vitus's Dance of the Tube Railwayswept under the pavement beneath Saxham's tread as he had passed up NewBond Street. Certainly London was not more beautiful or pleasanter to livein for the six years that had gone by. 

The Tube Works were responsible for much. The Companies were linking upthe North with the West, and strings of trolleys, coupled together likerailway-trucks, and laden with yellow clay or great balks of timber, orgiant scales of bored armour-plating, or moleskin-clad, brawny navvies, progressed incessantly and at all hours through the thoroughfares of themetropolis behind huge, giraffe-necked, splay-wheeled, smoke-vomitingtraction-engines. Houses and other buildings were being pulled down tomake stations; great hoardings were up, enclosing spaces where work wenton all day, amidst clankings and groanings of machinery, and clouds ofoily-smelling steam, and where work went on all night, with more groaningsand more clankings, deplorable shrieks of steam-sirens and hellish flaresthat might have been reflections from a burning Tophet, cast upon yetbigger and denser clouds of the oily-smelling steam. 

Yes! the big black opulent city was greatly changed. But the change in thepeople, affecting all ranks and every class, was even greater. There werecompensations, if you could balance against the decay of good manners theimprovements in sanitation, or set against the crop of evil sown by thedissemination of the vilest literature in the cheapest printed forms, theattainability, by the poorest, of the noblest productions of literarygenius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress ofScientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you couldcondone the degradation of the English language in the mouths ofShakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slangphrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressionsculled from the vocabulary of the East End costermonger. 

Privacy and reticence had become unfashionable, impossible in this, theera of the guinea-hunting Press-Interviewer. The barriers of socialexclusiveness had given way before the push of the plutocrat. The Rubiconbetween good Society and bad Society had become invisible. Racial suicideand sexual licence most hideously prevailed, spreading like some viledisease from rank to rank, and class to class. Woman had become lesswomanly, man more effeminate. Home was a word that had no longer anymeaning. Religion had decayed; the fear of God had been forgotten. ButSocialism was springing up, a rank and lusty weed, in crude neglected soilthat might have been tilled to good purpose; and a cheap and rowdy form ofpatriotism was in a very healthy state, although the Union Jack had notyet replaced the Bible in the Board Schools. 

Yes, things had changed, and not for the better! There was a tang upon themoral atmosphere that made the material petrol-fumes of the motor-omnibusalmost acceptable by comparison. The air of Gueldersdorp had been cleaner, even with that taint from the crowded trenches heavy on it. Things hadchanged; and in the midst of all these changes, the last sands of theGreat Victorian Age were running out of the glass. 

That wonderful life was drawing to its simple, peaceful, noble, profoundlytouching close, this January of 1901. And its ending had been hastened bythe War. 

Truly of her it has been said, and shall be; even when scholars of anotherrace and another civilisation, springing from the ashes of this, wrestfrom the relics of a history of to-day the secrets of an ancient Past:

"She was not only the Sovereign, but the Mother of her people. "

 * * * * *

Saxham turned into Cavendish Square, and was in Harley Street. Thewhite-enamelled door of a prosperous-looking corner-house bore a solidbrass plate with his name. He thought, as he opened the door with his Yalekey, how strange it was that this, the very house he had planned to livein with Mildred, and had leased, and beautified, and decorated for her, should have been offered for his inspection by the first West Endhouse-agent he applied to upon returning to London, whose dust he hadshaken off the soles of his feet forever, barely six years before. 

The practitioner who occupied the house--not the same man who had takenover the lease and fittings from Saxham--was ready to give it up, with allits costly appurtenances and up-to-date appointments, together with thepractice, for quite a moderate slice of that legacy of thousands that hadcome to Saxham from Mildred's dead boy. Saxham, diagnosing the man's feverto realise and depart, wondered what secret, desperate motive lay at theback of his hurry? The reason was soon evident. Like thousands of othermen, professional and private, the physician had been a dabbler on theStock Exchange, and had gone in heavily for South African mining-stock, and had been ruined by the War. 

It was a year of ruin. Society, led by Messrs. Washington P. Jukes andThemistocles K. Mombasa, six-foot, full-blooded buck niggers, elegantlyscented, white-gloved, and arrayed in evening garments of Bond Street cut, danced the newly-imported Cake Walk through its ball-rooms andreception-saloons, with laughter on its reddened lips, and pasteimitations of its family jewels in its waved coiffure and on its powderedbosom, and Ruin in its heart. 

Great manufacturing enterprises, paralysed by lack of funds and lack ofhands, were ruined. Managers producing plays to empty houses were ruined. Publishers publishing books that nobody cared any longer to buy, wereruined. Painters expending time, and money, and toil, upon pictures thatno longer found purchasers were ruined. Millions of smaller folks wereruined by the ruin of their betters. Only the great Mourning Warehousesprospered exceedingly, like the Liquor Trade and the Drug Trade. And theRemount and Forage Trades, and the Army-Contractors, flourished as thegreen bay-tree. 

Saxham's motor-brougham had gone on in advance, twisting knowingly in andout of various corkscrew thoroughfares. It was waiting outside the housein Lower Harley Street as the Doctor reached the door. The chauffeur, aspare, short young man, punctiliously buttoned up in a long dark green, white-faced livery overcoat, a cap with a white-glazed peak shading alean, brickdust-coloured face, with ugly, honest eyes that are familiar tothe reader, cocked one of the eyes inquiringly at his employer, andreceiving a sign implying that his services would not be required for somespace of time to come, pulled up the lever, moved on, and turned down theside-street where were the entrance-gates of the stable-yard that had beenturned into a garage. He had been in Saxham's employment nearly twomonths. 

W. Keyse, late Corporal, Gueldersdorp Town Guards, had learned to clean, manage, and drive a motor-car belonging to an officer of the Garrison inspare hours during the Siege. This accomplishment, with some otherlearning gained in those strenuous and bracing times, had justified him inanswering a _Times_ advertisement for a sober, active, and intelligentyoung man, possessing the requisite knowledge of London--"Cripps!" said W. Keyse, "as if I couldn't pick my way about the Bally Old Dustbinblindfolded!"--to act in the capacity of chauffeur to a West End medicalpractitioner. 

An acquaintance who was a waiter at a Pall Mall Club gave him the tip, andthe chance came in the nick of time, for Mr. And Mrs. W. Keyse were upagainst it, and no gay old error. "If you was to offer to blooming-wellwork for people for nothing, " said Mrs. Keyse, "my belief is, theywouldn't 'ave you at the price!"

The Old Shop, as W. Keyse affectionately called his native island, haddrawn the exiles home. Good-bye to the bronzed, ungirdled vastness of veldand karroo, and the clear, dark, distant blue of level-topped mountainsbathed in the pure stimulating atmosphere that braces like champagne. OldEngland 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 thescarlet smoke-stacks, engulfed her mails and passengers, dipped the RedEnsign in farewell to Table Mountain, and sped homewards on even keel overthe heaving sapphire plain. 

Southampton Dock was a pure delight to Mr. And Mrs. W. Keyse. The WaterlooArrival platform sent thrills through their boot-soles to the roots oftheir hair. They sat in the Pit at the Oxford that night, and there was aSouth African sketch on with two of the chronic-est jossers you ever see, gassing away in khâki behind earthworks of sacks stuffed with straw, andstanding up to chuck sentimental and patriotic ballads off their chests, while the Enemy, who had kept up an intermittent rifle-practice at thewing, left off--presumably to listen. "After being used to the ReelThing, " W. Keyse said, "it was enough to make you up and blub!"

That was the first disillusion. Others followed. The aunt who hadinhabited one of the ginger-brick almshouses over aginst 'Ighgyte Cemeterywas dead when they took her a whole pound of tea and three-quarters ofbest cooked ham, and the delicacies had to be given to the old woman nextdoor, with whom the deceased had always had words. You couldn't 'aveexpected the old gal to last much longer, but still it was a blow. 

Lobster had long ago given 'Melia the go-by, they learned, in return forthe ham and the tea; and they got her address and hunted her up in aback-street behind the Queen's Crescent, and W. Keyse failed to recognisehis charmer of old in a red-nosed, frowsy slattern, married to a sweatedGerman in the baking-trade and mother of two of the dirtiest kids youever----! And Mrs. Keyse, to whom her William had expatiated upon thesubject of his family, maintained a portentous dumbness, punctuated withringing sniffs, during the visit, and was sarcastic on the bus, andtearfully penitent when they got back to the Waterloo Road lodging thatwas cheap at the weekly rent, she said, if you were paying for dirt andlive-stock. 

You couldn't spend your time enjoying yourself for ever, she added alittle later on, as their small joint purse of savings dwindled and thatpale 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 inthe High Street, Camden Town, but it had been swept away in favour of anestablishment where they mended your boots while you waited. So he soughtelsewhere. The War had drained away so many men, one would have thoughtemployment could be had by any chap who took the trouble to walk about andlook for it. But the soles of W. Keyse's boots were worn to their lastthickness of brown paper, and all his clothes and Emigration Jane's, withthe exception of the things him and her had on, had been pawned before itoccurred to the man that that kind of walking ended in the Workhouse. Thewoman had known it from the very beginning. The valorous deeds of W. Keysestood him in no good stead. London was stiff with liars who boasted ofhaving been through the Siege, and their lies were more ornamental andsparkling than his truths. 

Mrs. W. Keyse would have took a situation as General, and glad, but therewere family reasons against that. She had broke down and cried somethinkdreadful on her William's shabby tweed shoulder the morning he went out toanswer the West End Doctor's advertisement. He kissed her and told her tokeep her hair on, but she was so hysterical that he was fair afryde toleave 'er. So he took her along, and his good Angel must have suggestedthat. 

Cripps!--when the manservant in plain clothes said, "Step this way, upstairs please"--W. Keyse and wife having applied at the area-door--"andDr. Saxham will see you, " the name, not having been mentioned in theadvertisement, which gave only the address and an initial, imparted toboth an electrical shock of surprise. They had looked a very small andvery shabby and very lost and lonely little couple under thosehigh-moulded ceilings and upon the Turkey carpets that covered thepolished parquet of the handsomely-furnished and well-appointedconsulting-room that the practitioner who had caved in through SouthAfrican Gold-Mines had considered an adequate setting for his bald-browedand portly presence. Now both curved backbones assumed the perpendicular, and their wide Cockney mouths were wreathed in joyful smiles. 

The man sitting in the Sheraton armchair at the writing-table that matchedit, the man with the black head and square pale face and heavy muscularshoulders, who looked up from among his papers and notebooks with thereceiver of a telephone at his ear, rose to his feet, and came to themwith a kind, outstretched hand. Saxham never wasted a word or forgot aface. And here were two faces from Gueldersdorp. He shook the hands thatbelonged to them, and said in his curt way:

"How are you, Mrs. Keyse? And you, Keyse? You may guess when I heard thatsomebody had called to answer my advertisement I hardly imagined that twoold patients had dropped down on me from the skies!"

The young woman stared at Saxham with her mouth agape and the tearstrickling down her hollow cheeks. The young man swallowed something with aviolent effort, and blurted out:

"Lumme, Doctor! it's more by 'arf like bein' shot up out of the OtherShop--an' landin' in the middle of New Jerusalem! Weeks along"--he pickedup the shabby bowler that had dropped upon the Turkey carpet--"for weeksalong I've been tryin' to find out what was the matter wi' me! Now Iknows! I've bin 'omesick--fair old 'omesick for a sniffer of the veryplyce 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 pointed toMrs. Keyse with his elbow. "An' look at 'er! Doin' a blub on the strengthof it! That's wot it is to be a woman! Ain't it, sir?"

Saxham's keen glance took in the altered shape of the thin girl in themended jacket and the large and feathered hat that topped the colossalstructure of fair, frizzled hair, even as she dried her eyes with atwopenny handkerchief edged with cotton lace, and tried to laugh. He tookthe lean chin of W. Keyse between his white, strong, supple fingers, andturned the triangular, hollow-cheeked face to the light, and said, touching the little round blue scar left by the enemy's bullet at theangle of the wide left nostril and the other mark of its egress below theinner corner of the right eye:

"You found out what a woman can be, my man, when she helped to nurse youat the Hospital. "

"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 downas he looked at her. And the red flew up in her pale cheeks, and in hereyes, as she returned the look of him, her master and her mate, thereshone the answering light of love. And Saxham's face darkened with angryblood, and his strong, supple surgeon's hand clenched with the savageimpulse to dash itself in the face of this ragged, seedy, out-at-elbowsMillionaire who flaunted riches in the face of his own beggary. 

Never, never would a woman's eyes kindle with that sweet fire in answer tothe challenge of his own! Empty, empty the heart whose chambers were sweptand decked and garlanded for a guest who never came! Lonely, lonely, desolate this life lived within sound of her, sight of her, touch ofher--dearer inexpressibly than ever woman was yet to man!

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!"

He asked more in the lonely nights that would never be companioned, in thesilence that would never be broken by Love's whisper or Love's kiss. Hewas not content; his craving for her fretted the flesh from his bones andgnawed his heart like some voracious, sharp-fanged, predatory animal. Happy--was he? Happy as one who sits beside a stream of living water andyet must perish of drought. He could only imagine one greater misery, onemore excruciating torture, one more exquisite unhappiness than thishappiness she had conferred upon him--and that was to be without her. 

He drew a deep breath, and drove back his fierce, snarling misery, andkicked it into its kennel, and befriended the absurd little couple. W. Keyse was tested, proved capable of manipulating the steering-wheel, dulycertificated, and engaged. There were a couple of living-rooms over thecoach-house that was now a garage. Saxham sent in some plain furniture, and behold an Eden! Pots of ferns purchased from a street hawker showedgreenly behind the tidiest muslin blinds you ever sor! and Mrs. WilliamKeyse, expectant mother of a potential Briton, sat behind them, and as shepatched the shirts that had been taken out of pawn--and whether they'relet 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 ThemPlyces is something chronic!--she sang, sometimes "Come, Buy My Coloured'Erring, " which they learned you along of the Tonic Sofa at the BoardSchool in Kentish Town; and sometimes "The Land Where Dreams Come True!"

This was a fulfilled dream, this little, cheap home of two rooms--one ofthem opening upon nothing by a loft-door--over a garage that had been acoach-house, at the end of the paved yard looking towards the rear of thetall, drab-stuccoed house whose high double plate-glass windows wereshielded from plebeian eyes by softly-quilled screens of silk muslinrunning on polished brass rods. But when the electric lights were switchedon, before the inner blinds were drawn down, you could see quite plaininto the consulting-room, a little below your level, where the Doctor satat his big writing-table that was heaped with notebooks and papers and hada telephone on it, and all sorts of mysterious instruments in shiningbrass 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 whichall sorts of wicked-looking knives and forceps were boiled when they weretaken out of the black bag; or into Mrs. Saxham's bedroom, that was on thefloor above, and was done up in the loveliest style you ever! "Not thatMissis 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 'erMajesty the Queen 'erself. "

William stopped blowing at his smoking saucer. 

"They s'y She's dyin'!" His face lengthened. He put the saucer down. "They'ave it in the evenin' pypers!"

Mrs. Keyse had a flash of inspiration. 

"I reckon it don't seem dyin' to 'Er!"

"Wot are you gettin' at?" asked the man in bewilderment. 

"I'm gettin' at it like this, " said the lighter brain. "All 'er long lifeshe's 'ad to be a queen first, an' a wife after. Now she lays there she'sno more than a wife--a wife wots goin' to meet 'er 'usband agin afteryeers an' yeers o' waitin'. For 'er Crown she leaves be'ind 'er for 'erson, but 'er weddin' ring goes wiv' 'er in 'er coffin! See?"

"I pipe. Wonder wot 'Er an' 'Im 'll s'y to one another fust thing theymeet?"

"They won't s'y nothink, " said the visionary, soberly taking tea. "But Ishouldn't be surprised but wot they'd stand an' look in one another'sfyces wivout s'yin' a word, for a week or so by the Time Above, an' thetears a-runnin' down an' never stoppin'!"

"Garn! There ain't no cryin' in 'Eaven, " said W. Keyse, beginning on thebread-and-butter. "The Bible tells you so!"

"That's right enough. But I lay Gawd lets folks do a bit o' blub--justonce, " said Emigration Jane, "before 'E wipes their eyes, becos you don'tbegin to know wot 'appiness means until you've cried for joy!"

"I pretty near did when the Doctor give me this chauffeuring job, and so Itell 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 wotthe Doctor s'ys to me. Well, I 'ave shut it!" He closed his jaws upon aninch-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!"

"Wot do you mean by the third time, deer?" asked Mrs. Keyse, putting morehot water in the teapot. 

"The First, " said W. Keyse, with an air of mystery, "was in a saloon-barfull o' Transvaal an' Free State Dutchies at Gueldersdorp. "

"Lor'! You don't ever mean----" began his wife, and stopped short. Thescene of her first meeting with W. Keyse flashed back upon her mentalvision. She saw the big man waking up out of his drunken stupor andlurching to the rescue of the little one. "Was it 'im?" she panted, as theteapot ran over on the clean coarse cloth. "Was it Dr. Saxham?"

"You may tyke it from me it was. " W. Keyse rescued the kettle, restored itto 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 'edid----" He looked portentous warnings. 

"I never would. Oh, William!"

"Mind as you never do, that's all!... I tried to thank 'im then, " went onW. Keyse, "an' 'e wouldn't 'ave it. I tried to thank 'im agyne at theHospital--an' e' wouldn't 'ave it. I tried to thank 'im yesterday on 'isown 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 theThird Standard Class Reader, all about a Lion wot 'ad syved the life of aLouse, an' 'ow the Louse laid out to do somethin' to pay the Lionback.... "

"I remember the tyle, deer, " confirmed Mrs. Keyse, "But it was amouse"--she repressed a shudder--"an' not the--thing you said. "

"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 handand swore it. "So 'elp me, Jimmy Cripps!"

LVIII

Lynette Saxham came into the consulting-room that was on the ground-floorof the house in Harley Street, behind the room where patients waited theirturn. Her quick, light step and the silken rustling of the lining of hergown broke the spell that had bound the man who sat motionless in thearmchair before the Sheraton writing-table, staring with fixed eyes andgripping the arms of his chair with unconscious force ... 

A faint, pleasant odour of Russia leather and camphor-wood came from thedwarf bookcases that dadoed the walls. The room was quite dark; the twohigh windows, screened by clear muslin blinds running on gilded rods, showed pale parallelograms of cold twilight. The coachhouse and stablebuilding at the end of the paved yard showed as a cube of blackness. Onewindow in the centre of the wall was lighted up, and on its white cottonblind the shadows of a man and woman acted a Domestic Play. 

Perhaps Saxham had been watching this? The shadow-man seemed to sit at atable reading a newspaper by the light of the lamp behind him, the shadowwoman sat nearer the window, employed upon some homely kind of needlework. Her outline when she rose, showed that the woman's great, mysteriousordeal, the sacrament of keenest anguish by which her dearest and mostsacred joy is won, was very close upon her. She passed behind the man asif to fetch something, stopped behind his chair, and drew her arm abouthis neck, leaning her cheek down to his so that their two shadows becameone. 

The starving waif outside the window of the cook-shop knows no moreexcruciating aggravation of his pangs than to look at food, and yet keepson looking. It may have been like this with Saxham, empty of all love, andgnawed by the tooth of a sharper hunger than that which is merelyphysical. He started out of his lethargy when his wife's voice reachedhim. 

"Owen!... Why, you are sitting in the dark!"

Lynette heard someone moving among the shadows. The electric reading-lampupon the writing-table diffused a mellow radiance under its green silkshade. Two other globes sprang into shining life, and showed her, smiling, and shrinking a little from the sudden incursion of light, as Saxham, withthe quiet, unhurried, scrupulous courtesy he always showed towards hiswife, received the heavy driving-mantle of sables that she dropped fromher shoulders, and laid it over a chair. A frosty breath from the outeratmosphere clung to it, but the silken lining was penetratingly warm, andinstinct with the sweetness of the woman, so much so that it was agony tothe man.... 

She wore a white cloth gown of elegantly-simple cut, that revealed withunostentatious art the lovely lines of the slender shape. A knot of whiteand golden freesias, exhaling a clean, delicate perfume, was fastened ather breast; her wonderful red-brown hair was shaded by a broad-brimmedbrown felt hat of Vandyke shape, with creamy drooping plumes. The rarepromise of her beauty had fulfilled itself in the last six months. She wasbewilderingly lovely. 

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 atthe 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. 

"Do I interfere with your work? Are any patients waiting?"

"It is past my hour for seeing patients, " said Saxham, with a smile. "Andif anyone were waiting, you are an older client, and have the priorclaim. "

"We will have tea in here, then, " she said, and touched the bell, adding:"I am fond of this room. "

It was just now a place that was dear to Saxham. He came across to thehearth and stirred the fire to a ruddier blaze, and stood at the oppositeside of it, leaning an arm upon the mantelshelf. The shining mirror aboveit reflected a square black head that was getting grizzled, and theprofile of a face that was haggard and worn. 

The servant came with tea, and drew down the upper blinds, shutting outthat mocking shadow-play at which Saxham had been staring. As Lynettebusied herself with the shining silver and delicate Japanese porcelain, there was a chance of studying, unobserved, the beloved book of herface--a locked book to Saxham since that day in the Cemetery atGueldersdorp. 

Ah, what a face it was! It fascinated and held him. Such long, thick, shadowy eyelashes, sweeping the white cheeks! Such a low, wide, perfectlymodelled forehead above them, with fine arched eyebrows, much darker thanthe richly rippling, parted hair that was coiled and twisted and ropedinto a mass behind the small, delicate ears, as though its owner wereimpatient of its luxuriance. Such a close-folded, mysterious mouth, withdeep-cut curves, hiding the pure white, rather overlapping teeth. Anirregular 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 andmany others thought so beautiful. 

Only something was wanting to it. "Animation, " the physiognomist wouldhave said. "Vitality, mobility. " "Health, " might have thought the ordinaryobserver, mistaking the bluish shadows under the drooped eyelids and aboutthe mouth and nostrils for the usual signals of debility. 

But Saxham, when he looked into the golden-hazel eyes, so often hidden bythe thick white eyelids, with their deep fringe of black-brown lashes, said to himself with bitterness: "She is quite well. Nothing on earth iswrong with her, except that she is not happy! I can give her everythingelse on earth, it seems, but what she needs most of all!"

Let Joy, that radiant torch of the soul, illuminate those dim windows, letHappiness sink like sweet rain into the dry heart, and the whole womanwould awaken into vivid glowing beauty, like the parched South Africanveld after the spring rains. Red tulips would bloom between the boulders;exquisite glowing pelargoniums and snow-white or pale-blue iris wouldclothe the baked earth. The ice-plant would no longer be the only greenthing growing in the crannies of the rock. Delicate ferns and dew-gemmedpitcher-plants would quiver there, and the spikes of the many-colouredgladioli would thrust from the earth like spears; and the sweet-scentedclematis and the passion-vine would trail and blossom in rose and whiteand purple on the edges of the kloofs and gorges, every stem and leaf andbud and blossom growing and rejoicing in the balmy breeze and the gloriousJune sunshine; the cruel, lashing rains, the devastating floods, and theburning droughts forgotten as though they had never been. 

Meanwhile the heavy fringe of dark lashes drooped wearily on Lynette'swhite cheeks, and the long-limbed, slight, supple body leaned back in thefavourite chair by the fireside with a little air of languor that onlyadded to her allure. And Saxham, looking at her, said again in his heart:

"Her children--let them settle the money upon her children!"

She had learned to love, and thrilled at the touch of passion. Well, Beauvayse was dead, but Love would come again. He would read itsresurrection in the radiance of those eyes. Then, exit Saxham! Such amarriage as theirs could be easily dissolved, but he would not take theeasy road. He had decided. His should be the strait and narrow way ofdeath. His death was a debt he owed her. You are to learn why!

While he reviewed, for the thousandth time, this determination of his, andtold himself again how the thing should be done, his tea had grown quitecold. She leaned forwards and touched his sleeve in drawing his attentionto the neglected cup, and flushed because he started and looked at her sostrangely. 

He never, if it could be avoided, touched her. Her old shrinking from himhad worn away. His companionship, though he did not guess it, was to herdesirable--even dear. The light, firm tread of his small muscular feet, the curt, decided utterance, made welcome music in her ears. She wouldwatch him without his knowledge when they went abroad together. The esteemin which his peers and seniors held him, the deference with which hisopinions were solicited and listened to gave her strange delightful throbsof pride. 

She had felt the first stirring of that pride in him when the man who hadbeen the thinking brain and the beating heart of beleaguered Gueldersdorphad said, wringing her husband's hand:

"'_If_' you have been of any use to me.... 'If'.... You have been my righthand and my mainstay from first to last, Saxham, and while I live I shallremember it!"

Brave words--heartsome words for the hearing of a woman who had loved him. Lynette was almost sorry that she did not. 

He did not believe that he had won any hearts in Gueldersdorp. Hiscurtness, his roughness, his harshness had been unfavourably commentedupon many and many a time. Yet when he left them, how the people cheered!What volumes of roaring sound from lusty throats had bidden him good-byeand God-speed!

"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!"

A woman who had loved him would have wept for joy. A pity his wife didnot!

How strangely Owen had looked at her just now, when she had brushed hissleeve lightly with her finger-tip! How curious it was that he nevertouched her if he could help it! She had quite forgotten having told himthat, while she liked to know him near, she could not endure the thoughtof being taken by him, caressed by him, held in his embrace.... That hadbeen the frank, truthful expression of her feelings at the time. She didnot recoil so from his contact now. She had not realised how deeply herwords had wounded the man's great, suffering, patient heart. Spoken, theyhad passed from her memory. It is so natural for a fair, sweet woman toforget! It is so impossible for a man who has been stabbed to helpremembering, with the deep, bleeding wound unclosed!

There was another thing that Saxham did not know. Although, as time wenton, the beloved image of the Mother, cherished in the innermost shrine ofher adopted daughter's heart, suffered no change in the clear, firm beautyof its outlines or deterioration in the richness of its tender and austereand gracious colouring; and each new day supplied some fresher garland ofold imperishable memories to grace it with;--that Shape with thegrey-green jewel-eyes and the gay mouth that laughed had faded--faded! Shewould not own it even to herself, but the keen edge of her grief forBeauvayse was blunted. The anniversary of his death, occurring in thecoming month of February, was to be a solemn retreat of sacred prayer forher. But it was the Mother's death-day also, when to the palm of martyrdomhad been added the Saint's crown. She was going to spend three days at theKensington Convent, where the dead nun had taken the vows. She told Saxhamnow of the arrangement she had made through Lady Castleclare, who wasintimate with the Superior. 

"It will be a little like old times, " she said to Saxham, "living in aConvent again. And there are many Sisters there who knew Mother, and lovedher----"

Her eyes swam in sudden tears. And Saxham, as he looked at her, felt hisheart 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 havecried aloud:

"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 ashe really was!... "

But he did not yield to the temptation to enlighten her. A vision rose upbefore him of a dying man on a camp-bed, and he heard his own voicesaying:

"I will never tell her! I will not blacken any man's reputation to furthermy own interests!"

She was speaking, telling him something. He came back out of the fiercemental struggle to listen to the voice that was so sweet and clear, andyet so cold, so cold.... 

"Imagine it! I met an old friend to-day at my dressmaker's in ConduitStreet. Not a man. A girl who was a pupil at the Convent atGueldersdorp--or, rather, I should say a woman, for she is married. "

Saxham asked:

"Is she an Englishwoman or a Colonial?"

"She is of mingled French and Dutch blood. She was a Miss Du Taine. Herfather was a member of the Volksraad at Pretoria. He controls largeinterests on the Rand, and has an estate near Johannesburg. She is marriedto 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 withher.... " She hesitated. "I did not want to go, " she said. 

"Well, and what happened then?" Saxham asked. 

"I made some kind of excuse, and hailed a hansom, and drove to LadyCastleclare's. I lunched with her. She is always very kind. She thoughtthe pearls were beautiful. But--but surely they cost you a great deal ofmoney?"

She touched a string of the gleaming, milky things that encircled herwhite throat above the lace cravat. Saxham said, smiling:

"They did not cost more than I could afford to pay. I am glad you likedthem. I told Marie to put them on your dressing-table, where you would belikely to see them in the morning. "

"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 outto him. 

"It is not possible to be too good--to you!" said Saxham curtly. He wouldnot see the outstretched hand. She drew it back, and faltered:

"You give me everything----"

"You have given _me_ what I most wanted in the world!" he lied bravely. 

"But"--she rose and stood beside him on the hearthrug, tall, and fair, andslender, and oh! most seductively, maddeningly sweet to his adoringthought--"but you take nothing for yourself. That bedroom of yours at thetop of the house is wretchedly bare and comfortless; and then, thoseabsurd pictures!"

She laughed ruefully, recalling the row of pictorially-illustrated nurseryrhymes that adorned the brown-paper dado of Saxham's third-floor bedroom, the previous tenant having been a family man. 

"--Little Miss Muffet and Georgy Porgy; the Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, and the Cow that jumped over the Moon. How can you endure them?"

She looked at him, and was startled by the set grimness of his face andthe thunderous lowering of the black smudge of eyebrow. He said:

"You went to my room to-day. Why?"

She crimsoned, and stammered:

"It was this morning, after you had gone out. I--it struck me that yourlinen ought to be overlooked and put to rights from time to time. How didyou know?"

He did not explain that the perfume of her hair, of her breath, of herdress, 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 herbreast upon the floor, and he had found there. His heart beat against iteven then. He answered:

"You told me yourself. And, as for the linen, let it be. The housekeeperknows that she is expected to attend to it. "

"She isn't your wife!"

Her golden eyes flashed at him rebelliously. He was provoking her, in hisinnocence of all intention, as a subtle wooer might have planned to do. 

"I am extremely glad that she is not. " His mouth relaxed in a smile, andhis thunderous brows smoothed themselves. "And now, don't you think youought to go and dress? You are dining with Lady Hannah and Major Wryncheat The Carlton at seven, and going on to a theatre. " He held his watchout. "Six-thirty now, " he said, and restored the chronometer to hiswaistcoat pocket. 

"Very well. " She moved a step or two in the direction of the door, andturned 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. 

He shook his head. 

"It is impossible. I have several urgent cases to visit, and there is anarticle for the _Scientific Review_. " He moved his hand slightly in thedirection 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 havealready been telephoned to Lady Hannah. "

"Owen!"----

She spoke his name in a whisper. 

--"Owen!"

"Yes?"

"Couldn't I?--would you care to have me?--may I stay and dine at home withyou?"

"And disappoint your friends!... Most certainly not. Unless, indeed"--histone warmed to interest--"unless you are not feeling well?"

"I am perfectly well, thanks!" she said coldly. 

"Then go to your dinner and your play, child, " said Saxham, with the smilethat changed and softened his harsh features almost into beauty. "I willdrive with you to The Carlton, and fetch you from the play. Which of thetheatres have you decided to patronise?"

"Lady Hannah and the Major left the choice to me, " she said, with a littletouch of girlish importance, "so I telephoned to Nickalls in Bond Streetfor a box at The Leicester. He had not got one; he sent me three stallsfor 'The Chiffon Girl' at The Variety instead. It is a revival. I don'tquite know what that means, " she added, rather puzzled by Saxham's silenceand the grimness of his face. "You do not mind at all? You do not think itis the kind of play the Mother would not have liked me to see?"

"No!" said Saxham curtly, and with averted eyes. 

She bent her head to him as he opened the door, and went away to her ownrooms on the floor above, the drawing-room that was upholstered and hungwith delicate, green-and-white, rose-garlanded Pompadour brocade, andgraceful water-colours from famous hands, and furnished with every luxuryand 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 hadalways stood upon the Mother's writing-table hung above the dainty bed.... 

"I think he is a little hard on me at times, " she said, as she passedthrough the warm, firelit, perfumed rooms that were fragrant with thenarcissi and violets and lilies that were sent in by his orders, andstrewn with the costly, pretty trifles that she, who had been used to thebarrack-like bareness of the Convent, delighted in like a child, and thegleaming mirrors gave her back her loveliness. "He treats me as if I werea stranger. And, after all, I am his wife.... "

Saxham's patients found him even curter and more brusque in manner thanusual that evening, and the article for the _Scientific Review_ madelittle way. He threw down his pen at last, and leaned his head upon hishands and wondered, staring at the unfinished page of manuscript with eyesthat saw no meaning in the sentences, whether any man born of woman hadever been so great a fool as the man who had written them?

To have made that promise of secrecy to the dead traitor was an act ofsheer, quixotic folly. To have kept it was madness, nothing less. And yetSaxham knew that he would keep it always. That if she ever learned thetruth, it would be hinted by the chance remark of some stranger, gatheredfrom a paragraph in some newspaper. There was a small-print line at thebottom of the quarter-column devoted by the compilers of Whittinger's"Peerage" to the Marquisate of Foltlebarre, which might have enlightenedher. He turned to it now, and read:

 "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. "

At the Clubs, Service and Civil, Saxham had heard the impromptu marriageof the late John Basil Edward Tobart freely discussed. The story of hissubsequent entanglement "with some girl or other at Gueldersdorp" had beenmooted in his presence a dozen times by Society chatterers, whoseenjoyment of the scandal would have been pleasantly stimulated by theknowledge that "Saxham, M. D. , F. R. C. S. , late Attached Medical Staff, " wasmarried to the girl. But they did not know, and she ... 

What use--what use in her knowing? Of what avail could be the melting ofthe ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, thequickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for areason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burningforehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolatesoul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him. Far better that she should never know!

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 hishand to the telephone to ring up his motor-brougham from the garage, whenhe heard the click of her latchkey in the outer door and the silkenwhisper of her garments passing quickly through the hallway. Then came aknock at the consulting-room door--sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlikeLynette's soft tap.... At the summons Saxham made two strides across thecarpet and opened to her, a question on his lips. 

"Why have you come back so early? Has anything happened?"

Even as he asked, her look told why. She knew.... 

She knew.... Her face was rigid, a pure white mask of ivory; there was nota trace of colour even in the set lips. Her eyes burned upon him, twinflames of dark amber, steady under levelled brows. She was wrapped in along ermine-caped and bordered black brocade mantle, that gleamed with jet_passementerie_; a scarf of white lace covered her head. It hid thered-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 napeof the slender neck. Seen so, she was nunlike in her chaste severity, butfor those stern, resentful eyes. 

"I have come to tell you that I am no longer in ignorance. I have foundout what you have hidden from me so long--what the Wrynches knew and wouldnot tell me; what the world has known while I sat in the dark.... "

A spasm wrung her mouth. Saxham rolled a chair towards her. He saidguardedly, avoiding her eyes:

"Until you acquaint me in detail with what you have heard, I cannotexplain or defend myself. Will you not sit down? You are looking pale andoverwrought. "

She laid one slight gloved hand upon the chair-back, and leaned upon it. 

"I would rather stand, if you have no objection, whilst I tell you what Ihave learned to-night. I dined alone with Lady Hannah at the Carlton; wewent together to the theatre--Major Wrynche had had a summons to attend atMarlborough House. "

She untied the knot of lace beneath her chin, and stripped away the longgloves with nervous haste and impatience, and tossed them with the scarfupon the chair beside her, and went on:

"I had heard much of 'The Chiffon Girl. ' I wanted to see it. When theFirst 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 therewas no comedy--only slang expressions and stupid jokes. But the actresswho sang and danced in the principal part ... Miss Lavigne ... " She hadloosened her mantle; now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emergingfrom its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging, creamy-white draperies; her exquisite arms bare to the shoulder, andclasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets of barbaric gold, hernymph-like bosom swelling from the folded draperies of the low-cut bodicelike a twin-budded narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweetthroat clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls. 

"She could not sing, though the people applauded and encored her"--therewas a gleam of disdain in the golden eyes--"but she was very pretty ... She danced with wonderful grace and lightness ... It was like a swallowdipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore--like a branch ofred pomegranate-blossoms swayed and swung by a spring breeze.... I admiredher, and yet I was sorry for her.... To have to pose and bound and whirlbefore all those rows and rows of staring faces night after night!... "

Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his cheek as he said:

"She would hardly thank you for pitying her. "

"She would be right to resent my pity!" Lynette burst out with suddenvehemence. "She has been injured, and I was the cause! Oh! how could yoube so cruel as to let me go on loving him? Was it kind? Was it fair toyourself and me?"

Saxham's square, pale face was perfectly expressionless. He waited insilence to hear the rest. 

"You know of whom I speak ... " said Lynette. "He was gay and beautiful andwinning--not chivalrous, as I believed him; not honest, or sincere, ortrue. Months before we met at Gueldersdorp he was the husband of thisactress--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. Awoman I was introduced to here in London once tried to blacken it. Shesaid she wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I laughedin her face as I turned and left her. 'You thought to make me hate him, ' Isaid. 'You have failed miserably. If it were possible to love himbetter--if I could honour his memory more than I do now, I would, becauseof the evil you have spoken of my dead!'"

She heard Saxham draw breath heavily. She went on with increased passion, and gathering resentment:

"All my life long I might have gone on in my blindness, honouring thedishonourable, cherishing the base, but for the idle gossip of twostrangers in the theatre to-night--a man and a woman in the stalls behindus. 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, ofcourse, they said, 'the Foltlebarres would never stand that! They werenearly wild when that handsome scamp of theirs married her--poor BeautyBeauvayse, of the Grey Hussars. ' He and she had kept house together; therewas a kiddie coming; they said the little woman played her cardsuncommonly well!... The marriage was pulled off on the quiet at aRegistrar's a week or so before Beau got his appointment on the Staff. Straight of the fellow, but afterwards, at Gueldersdorp, didn't he kickover the matrimonial pole? Somebody had seen his engagement to a MissSomething-or-other announced in a Siege newspaper, published the very dayhe got killed.... Poor beggar! Rough on him, and rough on theFoltlebarres, and a facer for Lessie ... And what price the girl?' And Iwas the girl!... It was of me they were talking!... "

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 tothe bone?"

"Why did you remain, " said Saxham, wrung by pity, "to be tortured by suchprurient prattlers? Why did you not get up and leave the place?"

"I could not move, " she said.... "I could only sit and listen. Then theFirst Act ended, and the lights went up, and Lady Hannah touched my arm. Iknew when our eyes met that she had heard as I had. She got up, saying, 'Ithink we have had enough of this?' and then we came away. "

She caught her breath and bit her underlip, and he saw her eyes growmisty. 

"She sent a Commissionaire to call a hansom.... She took my hand as westood waiting in the empty vestibule. She said: 'Those chattering piesbehind us have saved me some bad half-hours! Your husband, for some reasonof his own, has never told you. And it has more than once occurred to methat if I were the true friend I want to be to both of you, I'd haveproved it before now by telling you myself. But I've learned to bedoubtful of my own inspirations!... ' I asked her then if all they had saidwas true? She shrugged her shoulders and nodded: '_Pour tout dire_, theylet Beau down rather gently.... But if he never could tell the truth to awoman, he never went back on a man; and, after all, these things run inthe blood. _Passons l'éponge là-dessus. _ Forget him, and thank your goodAngel you're married to an honourable man!'"

Saxham's eyes were on the carpet. He did not raise them or move a muscleof his face. 

"She told me to forget him. It is easier to forgive him; there are deceitsthat smirch the soul of the deceived no less than the deceiver. He lied tothe 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 youare 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 havereproached you to-night for keeping it, even while I honoured you in myheart!"

"Do not honour me, " said Saxham harshly, "for behaving with commondecency! Can a man tell tales on another who is dead? To commit murderwould be a crime less cowardly. I do myself mere justice when I say that Iam incapable of an act so vile! Nor would I blacken a living man to makemyself show whiter in any man's--or woman's eyes!"

She was no longer pale. A lovely colour flushed her, and her eyes werewistful and very kind. Her draperies rustled as she moved towards him. "Owen ... " she said, and her white hands were held out to him, and hersweet mouth quivered, and her voice was a sigh, "I am alive at last toyour infinite generosity. I beg you to forgive me for being blind before!"

"Generosity, " said Saxham, "does not enter into the question. My silencehas no merits whatever. What good could I have gained by telling you?" Helifted 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 anysense of the word. And--I have left off crying for the moon. Even were youwilling to give it me, I have ceased to wish for your love!"

She looked at him with piteous, incredulous wistfulness, as he told thehardy lie. His mask of a face revealed nothing, but he could not disguisethe rage of hunger for her that ravened in his famished eyes. They wereupon her lips, her throat, the lovely curves of her young bosom even as hespoke; she felt them as the kisses of a fierce, possessive mouth, andglowed with sudden shame, and something more. He saw her beauty changefrom the pale rose to the fire-hearted crimson, tore away his eyes, andmastered himself. He stepped back, and the still out-stretched, quiveringhands dropped nervelessly at her sides. 

"You have asked me to pardon you, " he said, "for some fancied lack ofperception. It is I who owe an apology to you. Try and forgive me forhaving married you.... I should have known from the first that no good orhappiness could ever come of a contract like ours. "

"Have I ever said I was unhappy?" she demanded. Her breath came quick andshort. 

"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 onthis night that sees you freed from an illusion, to have courage and notyield to depression. Your fetters may be broken sooner than you think!"

"Owen!... "

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 inher darkened, dilated eyes.... 

"Do you say this to prepare me? Have you any illness? Do you mean that youare going to die?"

"I meant nothing ... " answered Saxham, "except that men are mortal, sometimes fortunately for the women who are bound to them! Go to bed, mychild; to sleep will do you good. "

"Good-night, " she said, and dropped her head, and went away. He openedthe door for her, and locked it after her, and went back to thewriting-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 hadloved him would have laid her lips. 

He had repelled her, slighted her, wounded her.... He knew what it hadcost him not to take those offered hands.... He was tortured and wrung inbody and in soul as he took a key that hung upon his chain and unlocked adeep drawer, and took a flask from it that gurgled as if some mockingsprite had laughed aloud when he shook it close to his ear. He whom shehad praised as honourable was a traitor no less than the dead man. He hadsaid to her, months ago in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp:

"I may die, but I will never fail you!"

He had not died, and he had failed her. The Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp wasdrinking hard again. 

LIX

Before you turn away in loathing of the man whose experience of Life'sgame 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 sternself-repression and strenuous denial had been rendered useless. 

In the previous July, when Sir Danvers Muller was visiting Lord Williamsof Afghanistan at Pretoria, Owen Saxham, M. D. , F. R. C. S. , had been marriedto Lynette Bridget-Mary Mildare at the Registrar's Office, Gueldersdorp, and at the Catholic Church. One hour after the ceremony the happy pairleft by the mail for Cape Town. 

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 thewrecking of the line, and then the Alpine mountain-ranges sank anddwindled with the mercury in the thermometer. The little white townssucceeded each other like pearls on a green string. Humpy blue hills gaveway to the flats, and then in the shadow of Table Mountain--Babel'sconfusion of tongues--and the stalwart flower of many nations, arrayedand armed for battle, and the glory, and pomp, and power of War. 

The grey and white transports disgorged them, ants of sober, neutralcolours, marching in columns to attack other ants. They grew upon thevision and filled it, and the sound of their feet was louder than thebeating of the surf on Sea Point, and although martial music beat and blewthem on--a brazen whirlwind dominating the mind, blaring at the ears--thetrampling of men's feet and the hoofs of horses, and the rolling ofiron-shod wheels, triumphed in the long-run. 

Saxham engaged rooms at the Trafalgar Hotel, a handsome caravanseraistanding in its own gardens at the top of Imperial Avenue, for himself andhis wife, and the savage irony that can be conveyed in the term struckhim, not for the first time since he had laid gold and silver on the openbook, and endowed a woman with the gift of himself and all his worldlygoods. 

It was early in the forenoon. They were to sail next day. The big buildingwas crammed, not only with officers under orders for the Front, and theirwives, who had come to see them start. Society had descended like a flockof chattering, gaudily-plumaged paroquets upon the spot where new andexciting sensations were to be had. For the trampling feet and the rollingwheels that ceaselessly went North imparted one set of thrills, and thelong trains of wounded and dying that met and passed them, coming down asthey went up, gave another kind. Amongst the poor dears in the trucks, andwaggons, and Ambulance-carriages you might eventually find a man youknew.... The sporting odds were given and taken on these exciting chances;and the fluttering and screaming paroquets that crowded the RailwayStations, in spite of their gay feathers, bore no little resemblance tocarrion-feeding birds of prey. 

Saxham, Recently Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, suffered from thenotoriety inseparable from the name of a man who has been thrice mentionedin Despatches, and has been publicly thanked by the representatives of anImperial Government. The Interviewer yapped at his heels whithersoever hewent, and the Correspondent strove to lure him into confidences, andSociety fluttered at him with shrill squawkings, and wanted to know, don'tyou know? It must have been "devey" and "twee" to have gone through allthose experiences. It was the year when "devey, " and "twee, " and similarabbreviations first became fashionable. 

There were pleasanter episodes than these, when soldierly, bronzedwarriors and simple, unaffected men of great affairs, expressed to Saxhamin few words their belief that he had done his duty. The approval of thesewarmed him and helped to raise him higher. It was a little creature, ahuman insect no bigger than a bar-tender, that brought about the mischief. 

There was an American bar on the ground-floor of the Trafalgar. Saxhamstood upon the threshold of the place, replying to the questions of agroup of Colonial officers, New South Wales Mounted Engineers and CanadianRangers, when somebody suggested Drinks, and led the way in. Invited tomake his choice from a long list of alcoholic mixtures, beginning withWhisky Straight, and ending with Bosom Caresser and Gin Sour, Saxham saidthat he would take a glass of ice-water. 

"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 tothe man behind the bar. 

The barman had the misfortune to be a joker of the practical kind. SeeingSaxham held in conversation by one of the other men, he winkedportentously at the New South Waler, and whispered in his ear. 

The Australian understood. A reason for Saxham's abstinence had been givenhim. The new-made bridegroom as a rule shuns Alcohol. And in proportion tohis desire to avoid, grows the determination of other men to compel him todrink. The bridegroom is fair game all the world over for the Rabelaisianjest and the clown's horseplay. 

The bar-tender, hoisting his eyebrows to his scollops of gummed hair, winked at the New South Waler with infinite meaning, and pointed to acut-glass carafe that stood on the shining nickel-plated counter. Itappeared to contain pure sparkling water, but the liquor it held wasknock-out whisky, a tintless drink of exceeding potency, above proof. TheAustralian shook his head. But he laughed under his neat moustache as heturned away, and the bar-tender concluded to carry his joke through. Hedealt out the drinks to their respective owners, and with a dexteroussweep of a shirt-sleeved arm brought the innocent-seeming carafe and agleaming, polished tumbler immediately before the square-faced hulkingdoctor with the queer blue eyes, whose pretty bride of three days waswaiting for him in their room upon the third floor of the humming, overcrowded caravanserai. Saxham, absorbed by the thought of her, pouredout a tumblerful of the clear, sparkling stuff, and had half emptied itbefore he realised the trick. His eyes grew red with injected blood, andhis hair bristled on his head. He struck out once across the narrowcounter. The long wall-mirror behind the bar-tender cracked and starredwith the crashing impact of the joker's skull, and the man fell senseless, bleeding from the mouth and nostrils. 

Another attendant came running at the crash, and the exclamations of thosewho had seen the swift retaliation wreaked. Saxham, leaving a banknotelying on the counter, wheeled abruptly, and went out of the bar. 

His brain was on fire. His blood ran riot in his burning veins, and thevice he had deemed dead stirred in the depths of his being, lifted itsslender head, and hissed, quivered a forked tongue, and struck withpoisoned fangs. He went out into the purple night that wedded lovers wouldhave found so perfect. The great white stars winked down at him jeeringly, and a little mocking breeze sniggered among the mimosas and palms of thehotel gardens. He passed out of them into the many-tongued Babel of thestreets, packed with humanity, throbbing with virile life, and tramped themagnificent avenues and wide electric-lighted streets of Cape Town withthe thousands who had no beds at all, and the ten thousand who had, butpreferred not to occupy them. To his narrow couch in the dressing-roomadjoining Lynette's bedroom her husband dared not go. 

So he wore the night out, doggedly wrestling with the demon that boils theblood of strong fierce men to forgetfulness of compacts and breach ofoaths. Daybreak touched him with a chilly shivering finger, a hulkingfigure dozing on one of the white-painted iron seats near the AthleticGround on Greenpoint Common. The last lingering star throbbed itself out, a white moth dying in the marvellous rose and orange fires of dawn, andthe overwhelming, brooding bulk of Table Mountain gleamed, an emerald andsapphire splendour against the rising sun, and the two lesser peaks thatare the mountain's bodyguard shone glowing in golden mail as Saxham got tohis feet, and shook some order into the disorder of his dress, and facedhotelwards. 

Despair was in the heart of the Dop Doctor, and for him the wonder of thedawn, the marvel of the sunrise meant no more than if he had been bornblind. A menial's trick had wrought him confusion; his will, in the savingstrength 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 theliquor he had abjured. 

What was to be done? What was to happen in the future? He asked himself invain. As Mouille Point shut its fixed red eye in apparent derision, andthe Greenpoint Light winked a thirteen-mile wink and went out, unlike theHope that had burned in Saxham, and would be rekindled never more. 

LX

Pity the man now as he sat brooding alone in the consulting-room, consumedby the thirst he shuddered at, once more an unwilling slave to the habithe abhorred. 

He unscrewed the large flask and drank, and his lips curled back withloathing of the whisky, and his gorge rose at it as it went down. Then heput the flask back and locked the drawer, and laid his head down upon hisfolded arms in silence. No help anywhere! No hope, no joy, no love!

Death must come. Death should come, before the shadow of disgrace fellupon 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 hadnever even learned to care for him a little!

 * * * * *

A few days more, and the great Victorian Age had drawn its last breath. 

The people went about the London streets softly, as though their footstepsled them through the stately, grand, and solemn chamber where lay theaugust, illustrious Dead. 

A subdued, busy hum of preparation was perceptible to the ear. The eye sawthe thoroughfares being covered with sand, the draperies of purple risingat the bidding of the pulley and the rope, the carts laden with wreathsand garlands of laurel, passing from point to point, discharging theirloads, often renewed. 

A lady was ushered into Saxham's consulting-room as a long procession ofthose 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, andhuge diamonds scintillated in her tiny ears, and she wore a mantle ofroyal ermine, that reached to the high heels of her little shoes. Her hatwas of the toque description. Ermine and lace and artificial blooms fromParisian shop-window-gardens went to make up the delicious effect. Atitled name adorned her card, which bore a Mayfair address. She seemed inradiant health. As Saxham waited, leaning forward in his consulting-chair, to receive the would-be patient's confidence, you can imagine those blueeyes of his, once so hard and keen, looking out of their hollowing caveswith a sorrowful, clear sympathy that was very different from their oldregard. To his women-patients he was exquisitely considerate. Only to oneclass of patient was he merciless and unsparing. 

Upon the woman who desired to rid herself of her sex-privilege, upon thewedded wanton who sought to make of her body, designed by her Maker to bethe cradle of an unborn generation, its sepulchre, Saxham's glance felllike a sharp curved sword. He wasted few words upon her, but eachsentence, as it fell from his grim mouth, shrivelled and corroded, asvitriol dropped on naked human flesh. He listened now in silence that grewgrimmer and grimmer, and as in flute-like accents, their smooth coursehampered by the very slightest diffidence, the little lady explained, those heavy brows of his grew thunderous. 

Ah, the tragic errand, the snaky purpose, coiled behind those graceful, ambiguous forms of speech! Not new the tale to the man who sat and heard. She admired the black-haired, powerful head, and the square, pale facewith its short, aquiline, rather heavily-modelled features, and the broad, white forehead that the single smudge of eyebrow barred pleased her, as itdid most women. Only the man's vivid blue eyes were unpleasantly hard andfixed in their regard, and his mouth frightened her, it was so stern andset. 

She was not as robust as she appeared, she said. When she had beenmarried, the family physician had mentioned to her mother that it wouldhardly be advisable.... Delay for a year or two would be wise. And herhusband did not care for children. He was quite willing. He had sent herto Saxham, in fact. Of course, the Profession of Surgery had made suchhuge strides that risk need not enter into consideration for a moment.... And heaps of her women friends did the same. And expense was absolutely noobject, and would not Dr. Saxham----

Saxham struck a bell that was upon his table, and rose up with hispiercing eyes upon her and crossed the room in two strides. He flung thedoor wide. He bowed to her with cool, withering, ironical courtesy as hestood waiting for her to depart. 

She hesitated, laughed with the ring of hysteria, fluttered into speech. 

"You are not, of course, aware of it, but I happen to be an oldschoolfellow of your wife's. " Her pretty, inquisitive eyes went back tothe writing-table, where stood a photograph of Lynette, recently taken--anexquisite, 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 thebeginning of the siege. Later, we went to Cape Town. I met my husbandthere. He is Sir Philip Atherleigh, Baronet. " She italicised the word. "Hewas with his regiment, going to the Front. We were married almostdirectly. It was a case of love at first sight. Now we are staying at ourtown house in Werkeley Square. Mrs. Saxham must visit us--my husband isdying to know her. "

"I regret that the desire cannot be gratified, madam. " The angry blooddarkened his face. His tone, even more plainly than his words, told herthat the boasted friendship was at an end. 

Greta reddened too, and her turquoise-hued eyes dealt him a glance ofbitter hatred. 

"I did not stay long at the Convent at Gueldersdorp. Nuns are good, simplecreatures, and easily imposed upon. And--mother did not wish me to beeducated with strays and foundlings--dressed up like youngladies--actually allowed to mingle upon equal terms with them----"

It was Cornelius Agrippa, I think, who once materialised the Devil as anempty purse. The necromancer should have evoked the Spirit of Evil in theshape of a spiteful woman. Greta went on:

"--Such Society as there was, I should say. You were at Gueldersdorpthroughout the siege, and for some time before it, I think, Dr. Saxham?"

Two pairs of blue eyes met, the man's hard as shining stones, the woman'sdancing with malicious intention. Saxham stiffly bent his head. But herfear of him had evaporated in her triumph. Those inquisitive, turquoiseeyes had an excellent memory behind them. Something in the shape of thesquare black head and hulking shoulders quickened it now. 

"It's odd----" Her smile was a grin that showed sharp little white teethready to bite, and her speech was pointed with venomed meaning. "I used togo out a great deal in such Society as the place possessed. Yet I do notremember ever having met you!"

Saxham's cold eyes clashed with the malicious turquoises. 

"I did not mingle in Society at Gueldersdorp. "

He signed to the waiting manservant to open the hall-door. She drew hersnowy ermines about her and rustled over the threshold. But in the hallshe turned and dealt her thrust. 

"No? You were too busy attending cases. Police-Court Cases ... "

Her light laugh fluttered mockingly about his ears. 

"I remember the funny headings of some of the newspaper reports.... 'Another Rampant Drunk! The Town Painted Red Again by the Dop Doctor!'"

"Door!" said Saxham, shaping the word with stiff grey lips. His face wasthe face of Death, who had come close up and touched him. Her littleladyship went out to her waiting auto-brougham, and her light, malignantlaugh fluttered back as the servant shut the hall-door. 

Saxham went back into the consulting-room. The Spring sunshine poured inthrough the tall muslin-screened window. There was a cheerful play oflight and colour in the place. But to the man who sat there it was full ofshadows, dark and gloomy, threatening and grim. And not the leastformidable among them was the shadow of the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, looming portentously over that fair face within the silver-gilt frame uponthe writing-table, stretching out long octopus-arms to drag down shameupon 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. 

LXI

The Great Victorian Age was laid to rest. 

The great pageant of mortality had wound along the officially-appointedroute, under the cold grey sky, an apparently endless, slowly-marchingcolumn of Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry of the Line, progressing paceby pace between the immovable barriers of great-coated soldiers, and thesurging, restless sea of black-clad men and women pent up on either handbehind them. The long rolling of muffled drums, and the dull boom ofcannon; the baring of men's heads; the wail of the Funeral March, theflash of suddenly whitened faces turned one way to greet Her as Shepassed, borne to Her rest upon a gun-carriage, as fitting an aged warriorQueen; drawn to her wedded couch within the tomb by the willing, faithfulhands of her sons of the twin Services, who shall forget, that heard andwitnessed?

Who shall forget?

The Royal Standard draped across the satin-white, gold-fringed pall, whereon rich crimson cushions rested the Three Emblems of Sovereignty. Thedignified, kingly figure of a man, no longer young, bowed with sorrowunder the Imperial heritage, preceding the splendid sombre company ofcrowned heads; the blaze of uniforms and orders, the clank of sword andbridle, 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 ofwell-known faces. One most beloved, most lovely, and no less so in sorrowthan in joy. "_Did you see her?_" the women asked of one another, as thepageant passed and vanished, and one good soul, all breathless from thecrush, gasped as she straightened her battered bonnet and twitched hertrodden skirt: "There never was a better than the blessed soul that'sgone, but there couldn't be a sweeter nor a beautifuller Queen than theone she leaves behind her!"

The last wail of the Funeral March having died away into silence, the lastcannon-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 ofthe fluttering purple draperies at the close of the dismal day. The shopswere shut, and many of the restaurants, but the windows of the Clubsgleamed radiantly down Piccadilly, and every refreshment-bar andpublic-house was thronged to bursting. Noon changed to evening, andevening lengthened into night, and the pavements began to be crowded. TheFlesh Bazaar was being held in Piccadilly, and all up Regent Street andall down the Haymarket the chaffering went on for bodies and for souls. 

A deadly physical and mental lassitude weighed on Saxham. His soul wassick with the long, hopeless struggle. He would end it. He would die, andtake away the shadow from Lynette's pure life, and leave her free. Hiswill devised to her everything he possessed, leaving her untrammelled. Lether learn to love once more, let her marry a better man, and be happy inher husband and her children.... 

 * * * * *

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 withan assistant. Saxham spoke to the chemist, a grey-whiskered, fatherlyindividual, who listened, bending his sleek bald head. The chemist bowed, but as he had not the honour of knowing his customer, would the gentlemanoblige by signing the poison-book, in compliance with Schedule F of thePharmacy Act, 1868?

Saxham nodded. The chemist produced the register, and opened it on thecounter before Saxham, and supplied him with pen and ink. Then he foundthat he had business at the other end of the shop, and when he returned hesmartly closed the book, without even satisfying himself whether theclient had written down his name and address, or merely pretended to. Thenhe filled a two-ounce vial with the fragrant, deadly acid, and put on ayellow label that named the poison, but not the vendor, and stoppered andcapsuled, and sealed, and made it into a neat little parcel, and Saxhampaid, and put the parcel in his inner breast-pocket, and turned to leavethe shop. 

It was crowded now; the roaring business of the little hours was in fullswing. The three assistants ran about like busy ants; the chemist joinedhis merry men at the game of making money, serving alcoholic liquors, mixing pick-me-ups, dispensing little bottles of tabloids and little boxesof jujubes, taking cash and giving change. 

The crush was terrific. Saxham, his hat pulled low over his broad brows, his great chest stemming the tide of humanity that incessantly rolled overthe threshold, was slowly making his way to the door, when he felt thearresting touch of a hand upon his arm. 

The owner of the hand belonged, as ninety per cent. Of the women in theplace belonged, to François Villon's liberal sisterhood. Something in thepale square face and massive shoulders had attracted her vagrant fancy. She had quitted her companions--two gaily-dressed, be-rouged women and ablue-eyed, yellow-haired, moustached young German, whose stripy tweeds, vociferously-patterned linen, necktie of too obvious pattern, andhigh-crowned bowler hat, advertised the Berlin tailor and haberdasher andhatter at their customer's expense, as Saxham went by. Now she looked upinto the strange, sorrowful eyes that were shaded by his tilted hat-brim, and twined her thin hands caressingly about his arm, asking:

"Why do you look so queer, dear? Is anything wrong?--excuse me asking--oris it the Funeral has given you the blue hump? It did me! I've not feltso bad since mother----" She broke off. Then as a shrill peal of laughterfrom one of her female companions followed a comment made by theother--"One of those ... "--she jerked her chin contemptuously, tossing anunprintable epithet in the direction of her lady friends--"says you'reugly. I don't think so. I like your face!" Her own was cruelly, terriblyyoung, 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 ofher thin, feverish hands. 

"Yes, " said Saxham, with a curious smile that made no illumination in hissombre face. "For Death! There is no better friend than Death, my child, either for you or me!"

Gently he unloosed the burning hands that clutched him, and turned andpushed his way out through the noisy, raving, chaffering, patchouli-scented crowd, and was gone, swallowed up in the roaring torrentof humanity that foamed down Piccadilly, leaving her frozen and strickenand staring. 

LXII

Months went by. The slight overtures Lynette had made towards a morefamiliar friendship had ceased since that rebuff of Saxham's. She hadnever since set foot in his third-floor bedroom, where Little Miss Muffetand 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, andflourished on the fireplace-tiles. 

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 brimthe cup of her fair sweet womanhood to overflowing; before her sex shouldrise in desperate revolt against himself her gaoler, Death should unlockher prison-doors and strike the fetters from those slender wrists, andpoint to Hope beckoning her to cross the threshold of a new life. 

Soon, very soon now. The two-ounce vial that held the swift dismissingpang was in the locked drawer of the writing-table beside thewhisky-flask. When he was alone and undisturbed--for Lynette seldom cameto his consulting-room now--Saxham would take it out and dandle it, andhold it in his hands. 

He would put the vial back presently, and lock the drawer, and, it beingdark, perhaps would delay to light his lamp that he might torture himselfwith looking at that pitiless shadow-play, that humble comedy-drama ofsweet, common, unattainable things that was every night renewed in thosetwo rooms over the garage at the bottom of the yard. 

There was a third performer in the shadow-play now. You could hear himroaring lustily at morn and noon and milky eve. The Wonderfullest Baby youever!

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 leanthroat of the proud father jumped, and his ugly, honest eyes blinkedbehind 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!

A date, he hoped, would arrive when a chalk or two of that mounting scoremight be wiped off the board. He said so to Mrs. Keyse, the first time shewas allowed to sit up and play at doing a bit of needlework. Not that shedid a stitch, and charnce it! With her eyes--beautiful eyes, with that newlook of mother-love in them; proud eyes, with that inexhaustible store ofriches all her own, --worshipping the crinkly red snub nose and the funnymoving mouth, and the little downy head, and everything else that goes tomake up a properly-constituted Baby. 

"I think the time'll come, deer. Watch out, an' one d'y you'll see!"

"I'll watch it!" affirmed W. Keyse. "And wot are you cranin' your neckfor, tryin' to look out o' winder? Blessed if I ever see such a preciousold Dutch!----"

The song was in the mouths of the people that year. She laughed, andrubbed her pale cheek against his. 

"You be my eyes, deer. Peep and see if the Doctor is in 'is room. "

It was ten o'clock on a shining May morning, and the clouds that racedover great grimy London were white, and there were patches of bluebetween. The trees in the squares were dressed in new green leaves, andthe irises and ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen hadshed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths behind the glass therewere pots of tulips in bloom upon the window-sills of the two rooms overthe 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. 

"Like as if 'e was tired, deer, or un'appy? Or tired an un'appy both?"

"Stryte, you 'ave it!" admitted W. Keyse, after cautious inspection. 

"The Doctor--don't let 'im see you lookin' at 'im, darlin', or 'e mightthink, 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 flannelover the little downy head. "Wasted in 'is flesh, like--got 'oller roundthe eyes----"

"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. Woddyoupipe's the matter wiv 'im? Not ill? Lumme! if 'e was ill----" The eyes ofW. Keyse became circular with consternation. 

"No, no, deer!" She reassured him, in his ignorance that the maladies ofthe soul are more agonising far than those that afflict the body. "Down'arted, like, an' 'opeless an'--an' lonely----"

Downhearted, and hopeless, and lonely! The jaw of W. Keyse dropped, andhis ugly eyes became circular with sheer astonishment. 

"_Him!_ Wiv a beautiful 'ouse to live in--an' Carriage Toffs with Titlesfair beggin' 'im to come an' feel their pulses an' be pyde for it, an'Scientific Institooshuns an' 'Orspital Committees fightin' to git 'im ontheir staffs--an' all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done atGueldersdorp, an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do? an' thank you kindly, Mister!--an'----" W. Keyse could only suppose that Mrs. Keyse was playinga bit of gaff on hers truly--"and him with a wife, too! Married an''appy, an' goin' to be 'appier yet!" He pointed to the little red snubnose peeping between the folds of the flannel. "When a little nipper likethat comes----"

She reddened, paled, burst out crying. 

"O William! William----"

Her William kissed her, and dried her tears. He called it mopping herdial, but you have not forgotten that, as the upper house-and-parlour-maidhad at first said, both Her and Him were plainly descended from the LowestCircles. She had melted afterwards, on learning that Mrs. Keyse had beenactually mentioned in Despatches for carrying tea under fire to theprisoners at the Fort; had sought her society, lent paper-patterns, andimparted, in confidence, what she knew of the secret of Saxham's weddedlife. 

"Dear William! My good, kind Love! Best I should 'urt you, deer, if 'urtyou 'ave to be. You see them three large winders covered wiv lovely lace?"

"'Ers--Mrs. Saxham's!" He nodded, trying to look wise. 

"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' aFairy Princess in a Drury Lane Pantomime might 'ave a bigger place tosleep in--but not a beautifuller. When the Foreign Young Person come in ofevenin'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 waseverythink in that room on Gawd's good earth a 'usband could ask for tomake 'im 'appy, except the wife's 'art beatin' warm and lovin' in themiddle of it all!"

"Cripps!... You don't never mean ... ?" He gasped. "Wot? Don't the Doctormake no odds to 'er? A Man Like That?" ... 

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 hisshadow-play pitied him, the knowledge would have been as vitriol pouredinto an open wound. 

LXIII

The card of Major Bingham Wrynche, C. B. , was brought to Saxham onemorning, as, his early-calling patients seen and dismissed, the Doctor wasgoing out to his waiting motor-brougham. 

Bingo, following what he was prone to call his pasteboard, presentedhimself--a large, cool, well-bred, if rather stupid-looking, man, arrayedin excellently-fitting clothes, saying:

"You were goin' out? Don't let me keep you. Look in again!"--even as hedeposited a tightly-rolled silk umbrella in the waste-paper basket, andtenderly balanced his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, andchose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortable chair, as a man prepared toremain. Saxham, pushing a cigar-box across the consulting-room table, asked after Lady Hannah. 

"First-rate! Seems to agree with her, having a one-armed husband to fussover!"

"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 byan expanding bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in theshiny black sling. 

"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 yousay if they tucked a napkin under your chin at meals, and cut your meat upinto dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your newspaper with onehand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just nowoutside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-handtrouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought tohave put your money in the other one. "

"You're lookin' at my head, " pursued the Major, "and I don't wonder. She'sbeen 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 looka filthy bounder. Your wife does it--and you hardly know yourself in theglass, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weedsthese, 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 thatchap Levestre--never fit to brown his shoes--is wearing 'em; and 'll beMarquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is--whenyou come to think of it?"

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-hathad left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass thatassisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonholeof his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoatin shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen theheavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fashion. Nowhe had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always destitute of thesaving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son ofClubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of blackeyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for "poor old Toby!" hadbeen misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly beexpected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of hispredecessor. 

"Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if thedear old chap had lived, " reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knewabout--about Lessie? "Bound to, " he mentally decided, "if he keeps hisears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a brace ofbounders 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 othernight! Everybody _is_ discussin' it now that the Foltlebarres have leftoff payin' Lessie not to talk, and provided for her and the youngster outof the estate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat in the family.... That family, too!... Lord! what a rum thing Luck is!"

The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blondeface was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, remindinghimself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratchagainst him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling ofthe shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he--Wrynche--had letBeauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. Hewondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham had ever reallyearned the degrading nickname that he could not get quite right. The 'PegDoctor, ' was it?--or the 'Lush Doctor?' Something in that way.... Not thatSaxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with unduefrequency.... 

"--But you never know, " thought experienced Bingo sagely, even as, in hisheavy fashion, he went pounding on: "The Chief's continuin' the Work ofPacification, and acceptin' the surrender of arms--any date of manufactureyou like between the _chassepot_ of 1870 and the leather-breeched firelockof Oliver Cromwell's time. The modern kind, you find by employin' theDivinin' Rod"--the large narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added--"onthe backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails--used in thatway. And--as it chances--I have a communication to make to you. "

"A communication--a message--from the Chief to me?"

Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened curiously andpleasantly. 

Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He rebalanced his shiny hatupon the table corner, and said with his eyes engaged in this way:

"I was to remind you--from him--that--not long before the ending of theSiege, a lady who is now a near connection of yours sustained a terriblebereavement through the--infernally dastardly crime of a--person thenunknown!"

Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag out theknowledge he withheld. But Bingo was balancing the glossy triumph of aBond Street hatter, and looked at it and not at the Doctor, who said:

"You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the Convent of the HolyWay on February the --th, 1900. And you say a person _then_ unknown.... Has the murderer been arrested?"

Major Bingo shook his head. 

"He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You remember the runnerwho came in from Diamond Town with a letter for a man called Casey? Notlong after--after my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers'?"

"I did not see the man myself, " returned Saxham, "but I perfectlyrecollect his getting through. "

Major Bingo said:

"I thought you would. Well, the letter was a blind; the bearer an agent ofthe firm of Huysmans and Eybel, sent to make certain of our weakest pointsbefore they put in the attack on the Barala town; and--that's the man whocommitted the murder!"

"The man who committed the murder?"

Saxham's vivid eyes were intent upon the Major's face. The Major coughed, and went on:

"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 himbefore the Siege, travelling up from Cape Town. He scraped acquaintance, called himself a loyal Johannesburger, and an Agent of the British SouthAfrican War-Intelligence-Bureau. Not that there ever was such a Bureau. "Major Bingo blinked nervously, and ran a thick finger round the inside ofhis collar as he added: "The beggar spoofed Lady Hannah up hill and downdale with that, and she believed him. And when she subsequently flew thecoop--dash this cold of mine!... "

The Major drew out a very large pink cambric pocket-handkerchief, andperformed behind its shelter an elaborate but unconvincing sneeze:

"--When she shot the moon with Nixey's mare and spider, it was by privatearrangement with this oily, lying blackguard, who had given her anaddress--a farm on the Transvaal Border, known as Haargrond Plaats--whereshe might communicate with him through another scoundrel in the TransportAgency line, supposin' she chose to do a little business on her own inSecret Intelligence----"

Saxham interrupted:

"I shall say nothing to my wife of this, and I trust you will impress uponLady Hannah that it would be highly inadvisable for her to do so. "

"She won't, you may depend on it. " Major Bingo palpably grew warm, andmopped the dew from his large, kind, rather stupid countenance with thepink cambric handkerchief--"She's awfully afraid, as it is, that a word ortwo she dropped quite innocently, to that infernal liar and swindler, who'd bled her of a monkey, good English cash--paid for procurin' andforwardin' items of information that he took damned good care should reachus at Gueldersdorp too late to be of use, led up to--to the crime!... Bythe Living Tinker! it's out at last!"

The big man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himselfwith the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and wentred, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of hisflurried pulse. 

"--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 vastbreath of relief. "Tellin' tales on a woman--and her your wife--even whenshe's begged you to, isn't the sweetest job a man can tackle!"

"Let me have this story in detail once and for all, " said Saxham, turninga 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 tragedyin the Convent Chapel? Upon this point I must and shall be clear beforeyou leave me!"

"You shall have things as clearly as I can put 'em. This pretended SecretAgent of the War-Intelligence-Bureau that never existed, and who calledhimself Van Busch--a name that's as common among Boers as Murphy is amongIrishmen--arranged to pass off my wife as his sister, a refugee fromGueldersdorp, who'd married a German drummer, and buried him not longbefore. Women are so dashed fond of play-actin'! Kids, Saxham, --that'swhat they are in their weakness for dressin' up and makin'-believe! And mywife----"

The large Major was in a violent lather as he ran the thick finger roundinside his collar, and swallowed at the lump in his throat. 

"--My wife saw Van Busch at Kink's hotel at Tweipans from time to time. Hecame, 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 brutebecame downright insolent. "

"As might have been expected, " said Saxham, coldly. 

"--Kept his hat on in my wife's room, talked big, and twiddled asignet-ring he wore, " went on the Major. "And, bein' quick, you know, andsharp as they make 'em, you know, my wife recognised the crest of an oldacquaintance cut upon the stone. I knew the man myself"--declared MajorBingo--"and a better never stepped in leather. A brother-officer of theChiefs, too, and a rippin' good fellow!--Dicky Mildare, of the GreyHussars. "

"Mildare!" repeated Saxham. 

"You understand, Saxham, the name did it. My wife had seen the presentMrs. Saxham at Gueldersdorp, and, not knowin' that the surname of Mildarehad been taken by her at the wish of her adopted mother, supposed--got themaggot into her head that the Mother-Superior's ward might possibly bea--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 engagedto marry that"--the Major boggled horribly--"that uncommonly brave andnoble lady, and had, in fact, thrown her over, and made a bolt of it withthe wife of his Regimental C. O. , Colonel Sir George Hawting. "

The faint stain of colour that had showed through Saxham's dead-white skinfaded. He waited with strained attention for what was coming. 

"South Africa Lady Lucy and Mildare bolted to, " went on Bingo, "and nowyou 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 aCourt-Martial of Inquiry respectin' my conduct in the Field. For my wifehas a kind heart and a keen sense of honour, and rather than bring harmupon Miss Mildare that was, or anyone connected with her, she'd have stoodup to be shot! By G----!" trumpeted Bingo, "I know she would!"

Saxham's face was blue-white now, and looked oddly shrunken. His voicecame in a rasping croak from his ashen lips as he said:

"Lady Hannah mentioned my wife to this man, thinking that she might proveto be the daughter of the owner of the ring. What could possibly lead herto infer such a relationship?"

"You must understand that the blackguard had given my wife details ofMildare's death at a farm owned by a friend of his in Natal, and thatHannah--that my wife knew poor little Lucy Hawting had had a child byMildare, " Major Bingo spluttered. "That was why she asked Van Buschoutright whether the girl with the nuns at Gueldersdorp was--could be--thesame child, grown up? By the Living Tinker!--I never was in such a latherin my life! The better the light I try to put the thing in, the dirtier itlooks. And I'm not half through yet, that's the worst of it!"

He mopped and mopped, and took several violent turns about the room, andsubsided in a chair at length, and went on, waving the large pink cambrichandkerchief, now a damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it. 

"She says--Lady Hannah says--that the eagerness and curiosity with whichthe brute snapped up the hint she'd never meant to drop, warned her toshunt him off on another line, and give no more information. They got onmoney matters; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, my wife gave thewelsher a bit of her mind, and he showed his teeth in a way that meantMurder. Just in time--before he could wring her neck round--and he'dstarted in to do it, you understand--Brounckers came stormin' and bullyin'in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and would be sent down toGueldersdorp.... They packed her back that very day.... And not a weekafter, the pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the bogusletter from Mrs. Casey. "

Saxham had thought. He said now:

"This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy for Brounckers, wasdisguised as the runner? Is that what has been proved? Did Lady Hannah seethe man and recognise him?"

Bingo leaned forward to answer. 

"Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond Town. But the day the_Siege Gazette_ came out, with a blithering paragraph in it that neverought to have appeared, announcin'"--he coughed and crimsoned--"LordBeauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare;--my wife was rung up at theConvalescent Hospital by a caller who wouldn't say where he telephonedfrom. And the message that came through--couched in queer, ambiguouslanguage, and purportin' to come from an old friend--was a message for theyoung lady who is now Mrs. Saxham!"

Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a word. The Major wenton:

"My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with Van Busch's. Sheremembered the name given her as that of the owner of the farm at whichMildare died, a place which by rights was in what's now the Orange RiverColony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain: 'Are youSo-and-So?' There was no answer to the question. But seven hours later theMother-Superior was shot; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way tothe Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran into one ofthe Sisters in his hurry, and nearly knocked her down. "

"That, " said Saxham, "has always been regarded as a suspiciouscircumstance. But the man was never subsequently traced. "

"No! Because, " said Bingo, "the runner from Diamond Town evaporated thatnight. "

Saxham said, with his grim under-jaw thrust out:

"Surely that circumstance, when reported to the Officer commanding theGarrison, might then have awakened his suspicions?"

"Naturally, " agreed Bingo, "and therefore he kept 'em dark. As for mywife, the shock of the murder, accompanied with her own secret convictionthat, in some indirect way, she'd helped to set a malicious, lurking, watchful, dangerous Force of some kind working against your wife--whenshe dropped that hint I've told you of--bowled her over with a nervousfever. "

"I remember, " said Saxham, who had been called in. 

"Consequently, it wasn't until some days after the Relief--a bare hour ortwo before the Division--Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, and acompany or so of Civilian Johnnies that had made believe they were genuinefightin' Tommies till they couldn't get out of the notion--marched out ofGueldersdorp for Frostenberg, that her ladyship got a chance of makin' aclean breast to the Chief. Hold on a minute, Doctor----"

For Saxham would have spoken. 

"--The Chief had had his own private opinion, from the very first. Heheard what my wife had to say. As you may guess, she'd worked herself upinto a regular cooker of remorse and anxiety--told him she was ready to goanywhere and do anything--he'd only got to give her orders, and all thatsort of thing! He charged her with the simple but difficult rôle ofholdin' her tongue, and keepin' her oar out, and findin' him--if by goodluck she'd got it by her--a specimen of the handwritin' of the cleverscoundrel who'd played at bein' a War Intelligence Agent, and waltzed withher five hundred pounds, which sample, as it chanced, she was able tosupply. And the fist of the man who'd swindled her, and the writin' of theMrs. Casey who'd sent a letter per despatch-runner from Diamond Town to ahusband who didn't exist, tallied to an upstroke and the crossin' of a'_t_'!"

"Is it beyond doubt that the letter from the supposed Mrs. Casey was not agenuine communication?" Saxham asked. 

"Beyond doubt. As a fact, the neatly-directed envelope had simply got asheet of blank paper inside. Another odd fact brought to light was, thatthe person who communicated with my wife at the Convalescent Hospitalabout half-past twelve on the day of the murder, rang her up on thetelephone belongin' to the orderly-room at the Headquarters of theBaraland Rifles. We had up the orderly, and after some solid lyin', heowned that the man from Diamond Town had bribed him with 'baccy to let himput a message through. And that's another link in the evidence, I takeit?" said Major Bingo. 

"Undoubtedly!"

"There's not much more to tell, except, " said Bingo, "that the first marchof the Division on its route to Frostenberg led past the Border farmcalled Haargrond Plaats. It looked deserted and half-ruined, with only aslipshod woman and a coloured man in charge; but something was known ofwhat had gone on there, and might be going on still, and the Boers areclever stage-managers, and it don't do to trust to appearances! So theChief detached a party with dynamite cartridges and express orders to makethe ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly before they blew itup; and hidden in a disused chimney--solid bit of old Dutch masonry bigenough to accommodate a baker's dozen of sweeps--were a few thingscalculated to facilitate that search for the needle in the haystack--youunderstand? Disguises of various kinds--a suit of clothes lined withchamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'--a good deal of the raw stuffitself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up--and in a rusty cashboxa 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 identicalman my wife suspected and the Chief believed to be the murderer of MissMildare's adopted mother! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct, Saxham, I rather fancy?"

Major Bingo Wrynche leaned back with an air of some finality, and withsome little difficulty extracted a biggish square envelope from the leftinner pocket of the accurately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed theenvelope upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took the shinytop-hat off the writing-table, fitted it with peculiar care on hispinkish, sandy, close-cropped head, and said, looking at Saxham with apleasant smile. 

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind throwin' your eye over the contents of thatenvelope? There are three photographs of handwritin' inside, marked on thebacks respectively. " He waited for Saxham to take the enclosures from thebig envelope, examining the polish of his own varnished patent-leatherboots with a fastidious air of anxiety that was extremely well assumed, ifit was not strictly genuine. His large face was as bland andexpressionless as the face of the grandfather-clock in the Sheraton casethat ticked against the wainscot behind him, as he advised:

"Take 'em in numerical sequence. No. 1 is the photographed facsimile ofthe cover of the bogus letter to Mr. Casey. No. 2"--the speaker lightlytouched it with a large round finger-tip--"that's the replica--alsophotographed--of a card the man we're after wrote on and gave to LadyHannah, in case she found herself inclined to invest a hundred or so inthe kind of wares he professed to supply. Photo No. 3 is a reproduction ofan 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 HaargrondPlaats. " He waited, screwing painfully at the stiff, waxed ends of thescrubby moustache. 

Saxham took the photographs in their order. The envelope of the bogusletter brought by the supposed runner from Diamond Town had been addressedin a big bold black round hand with curiously malformed capitals, to

 "Mr. BARNEY CASEY, "Commercial Traveller, "Gueldersdorp. 

 "Care of the Officer Commanding H. M. Forces"

"--Don't put it back in the envelope, " said Major Bingo. "Compare thewritin' with No. 2. "

No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was written in ink, inthe same bold hand:

 "Mr. HENDRYK VAN BUSCH, "C/o Mr. W. Bough, "Transport Agent, "Haargrond Plaats, "Near Matambani, "Transvaal. "

LXIV

There was a silence in the consulting-room, only broken by street noisesfiltered thin by walls and curtains, and the ticking of the Sheratongrandfather clock, and the breathing of two people. Saxham glanced atMajor Bingo with eyes that seemed to have been bleached of colour, andlaid the second calligraphic specimen beside the first, and took up No. 3, and read in the same large nourishing round hand:

 "W. BOUGH, "Free State Hotel, "50 m. From Driepoort, "Orange Free State. "

After that the silence was intense. The clock ticked, and the faint, far-off street noises came through the intervening screens, but only oneof the men in the room seemed to be breathing. At last Saxham's grey lipsmoved. He said in a horrible clicking whisper:

"Van Busch and Bough are--one?"

Major Wrynche's large face nodded in the affirmative. But it was asexpressionless as the grandfather clock's. 

"One man!--and that's what I may call the pith of my verbal Despatch foryou!"

Saxham said with hard composure:

"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. Itwas, in fact, one of the many aliases used by the witness for Regina in anOld Bailey case in which I was concerned nearly seven years ago. "

The Major nodded once more, and said with brevity:

"Same man!"

Saxham seemed always to have known that the man was the same man. Thetense muscles of his face told nothing. Bingo added:

"--But the wrong and injury done to you by Bough amount to little comparedwith the wrong and injury inflicted upon Mrs. Saxham! That---- Good Lord!what's the matter?"

For Saxham, with a madman's face, had leapt to his feet, knocking over hischair, and stuttered with foam on his blue lips:

"What wrong? What injury? What--what are you hinting at?----"

"Hinting!" The astonishment in the Major's round light blue eyes was sopalpably genuine that the crazy flame died out of the Doctor's, and hisclenched hand dropped. "I didn't hint. I referred to the murder of yourwife's adopted mother by this Bough, or Van Busch, that's all!"

"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 givingtrouble of late. "

Going by the evidence of the haggard face and fever-bright eyes, theDoctor looked like that--uncommonly like that! And the big Major, remembering Alderman Brooker's revelation, wondered, as he screwed at thestiff, blunt ends of his sandy moustache, whether Saxham might not havereverted to the old vice? "Bad for the girl he's married if he has!" hethought, even as he said:

"Overworked. Get away for a bit. Nothin' like relievin' the tension, don'tyou know? Norway in June, or the Higher Austrian Tyrol. Make up your mindand go!"

"I have made up my mind, " Saxham answered, smiling bitterly, as heremembered the little phial with the yellow label that lay beside thewhisky-flask in the drawer beneath his hand. "I shall go very soon now!"

"But not immediately?"

"Not immediately. " There was something strange, almost exalted, in thelook that accompanied the words. Saxham added: "If you could give me anapproximate date as regards the finding of that--needle in the haystack ofSouth Africa, it would--facilitate my departure more than you can guess!"

"Would it, by George!" Bingo slipped the thumb and forefinger of theuseful hand into his waistcoat-pocket. Something sparkled in the big pinkpalm he extended to Saxham--something sparkled, and spurted white andgreen and scarlet points of fire from a myriad of facets. The somethingwas an oval miniature on ivory. A slender gold chain, broken, dangled fromits enamelled bow. From within a rim of brilliants the lovely, wistfulface of a young, refined, high-bred woman looked out, and with all hisiron self-control Saxham could not restrain a sudden movement and astifled exclamation of mingled anger and surprise. 

For at the first glance the face was Lynette's. 

With a dull roaring of the blood in his ears and an unspeakable rage andhorror seething in him, he took the portrait from the Major's palm, andheld it with a steady hand, in a favourable light. 

Marvellously like, but not Lynette's face!

The eyes were larger, rounder, and of gentle blue-grey, thesquirrel-coloured hair of a brighter shade, the sensitive mouth sensuousas well, the little chin pointed. She might have been a few years underthirty; the arrangement of the hair, the cut of the bodice, might haveindicated the height of the latest fashion--say, twenty-two or even threeyears back. Some delicately fine inscription was upon the dull gold of theinner rim of the miniature-frame, within the diamonds that surrounded it. Saxham deciphered: "Lucy, to Richard Mildare. For ever! 1879. "

 * * * * *

The dull, dark crimson that had stained the Dop Doctor's opaque skin hadgiven place to pallor. His face was sharp and thin, and of waxenwhiteness, like the face of one newly dead. His blue eyes burned ominouslyin their caves under the heavy bar of meeting black eyebrows. His voicewas very quiet as he asked: "How did you come by this?"

"It dropped down out of the sky, " said Major Bingo measuredly, "with thebits of evidence I've told you of, and a few others, when the big stonechimney at Haargrond Plaats blew up with a thunderin' roar. The other bitsof evidence were bits of a man--two men you might call him! And, by theLiving Tinker, considerin' how he was mixed up with the rest of therubbish, he might have been half a dozen instead of Bough Van Busch!"

"He had this upon him? He--wore it round his neck?" Saxham asked thequestion in a grating whisper, dropping the clenched hand that held thediamond-set miniature upon the arm of his chair. 

"I should think it probable he did, " said Bingo placidly, "when he had aneck to boast of. " He added, as he got up to take his leave: "The thinghas been carefully cleaned. The chain is broken, and the crystal crackedin one place, but otherwise it has come off wonderfully. Perhaps you'dhand it over to--anybody it belongs to? Hope I haven't mulled manyprofessional appointments. Remember me to Mrs. Saxham. Thanks frightfully!So long!"

LXV

In the days that followed Saxham had a letter, written by a man with whomhe had been fairly intimate at Gueldersdorp during the strenuous days ofthe Siege--a man who would undoubtedly not have lived to go through thosedays but for the Dop Doctor. It was rather an incoherent letter, writtenby an unsteady hand. 

Saxham tore it up and dropped it into the waste-paper basket with acontemptuous shrug. But he had made a mental note of the address, anddrove there that afternoon. 

The Doctor's motor-brougham stopped at the door of the grimy stuccoClergy-House that is attached to St. Margaret's in Wendish Street, West. Saxham rang a loud bell, that sent iron echoes pealing down flaggedpassages, and brought a little bonneted woman in rusty black to answer thedoor and the Doctor's query whether Mr. Julius Fraithorn was at home andable to receive a visitor?

The little woman, who had a nose like a preserved cherry, and wore oneeyebrow several inches higher than the other, shook her rustycrape-trimmed bonnet discouragingly, as she informed Saxham in a huskyvoice strongly flavoured with cloves that Father Julius 'ad been in theConfessional all the morning, it being the Eve of the Feast of theAscension, and was quite wore out. If there was anything she could do, sheinferred, with quite a third-hand air of clerical responsibility, shewould be happy to oblige the gentleman. 

"I shall be obliged by your conveying my card to Mr. Fraithorn. You seethat I am a doctor, " said Saxham, with unsmiling gravity, "and not anordinary caller on business connected with religion. "

The little cherry-nosed woman in rusty black snorted asscenting 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 aview of mews, and had a parquet-patterned linoleum on the floor, and awashable paper of a popular ecclesiastical design suggestive of aranunculus with its hands in its pockets. 

Stained deal bookcases contained Julius's Balliol library;chrome-lithographic reproductions of Saints and Madonnas by Old Mastershung above. The Philistine School of Art was represented by a Zoologicalhearthrug; three Windsor chairs offered accommodation to the visitor; atable of the kitchen pattern was covered by a square of green baize; and aslippery hair-cloth sofa, with a knobbly bolster and a patchwork cushion, supported the long, thin, black clad figure of the Reverend JuliusFraithorn, who was lying down. 

"I have come, " said Saxham, standing grimly over the prone figure, asingle stride having taken him to the side of the sofa, "to prescribe fora man whose nerves are playing him tricks. I have torn up your letter--theepistle in which you ask me to afford you an opportunity of making anavowal which will prove to what depths of infamy a man may descend at thebidding of his lower nature. Lower nature! If I am any judge of a man'sphysical condition, a lower nature is what you want!" He threw down hishat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsorchairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking bigbody on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, whomustered breath to stammer:

"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 Mayday was wet and chilly. "I shall be better, mentally, " he said, with aneffort, looking over his shoulder towards Saxham, "when you have heardwhat 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 hadimpatiently waved his hand. "Hear you shall, and must!"

He ground his boot-heel into the orange-yellow lion that couched on afield of aniline green hearthrug, and drove his hands down deep into hispockets, and the painful scarlet surged over the rim of his Roman collarand dyed his thin, sensitive, beautiful face and high, white forehead tothe roots of his dark, curling hair. 

"Perhaps you may recall an oath I swore at your instigation one day inyour room at the Hospital at Gueldersdorp?"

"Yes--no! What does it matter?" said Saxham thickly, with his angry, brooding eyes upon the floor. 

"It matters, " said Julius doggedly, "in the present case. I need hardlytell you that I have kept that oath. If the man had not been dead, I mighthave 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 isnow your wife was first made public, I, impelled and prompted by adespicable envy of the great good-fortune that had fallen--deservedlyfallen--to your lot, sought out Miss Mildare, and told her--something Ihad learned to your detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, worthless creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength of aseat upon the local Bench, claimed to be informed. "

Saxham's head turned stiffly. He looked at the wall now instead of thefloor, and breathed unevenly and quickly. His right hand, resting on thetable near which he sat, softly closed and opened, opened and closed itssupple muscular fingers, with a curious, rhythmical movement. He waited tohear more. And Julius groaned out, with his elbows on the parted woodenmantelshelf, and his shamed face hidden:

"I knew that the man lied--on my soul, I knew it! But the opportunity hehad given me of lowering your value in--in another's eyes was too temptingto resist. The man had told me----"

"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 Iam now. There is no change in me, though once I thought it!"

"Saxham!... For God's sake, Saxham!" stuttered Julius. But Saxham, hunching his great shoulders, and lowering his square, black head, not atall unlike the savage bull of Lady Hannah Wrynche's apt comparison, wenton:

"It is a drunken world we live in, Parson, for all our sham of abstinenceand sobriety. But there are nice degrees and various grades in ourdrunkenness, as in our other vices, and the man who is a druggard despisesthe common drunkard; and the sippers of ether look down with infinitecontempt--or, more ludicrous still, with tender, pitying sorrow, upon thetoper and the slave of morphia and cocaine, and take no shame in seeingthe oxygenated greyhound win the coursing-match and the oxygenatedracehorse run for the Cup! A year or so, and the Transatlanticoxygen-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 thatis born of it to aid them in their trial tests of strength. The man whoscales 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 theactor, delirious with oxygen, rushes on the stage; and the clergyman, drunk on oxygen, mounts the pulpit to preach a Temperance sermon. And theDop Doctor of Gueldersdorp prescribes palliatives for guinea-payingtipplers; and there is not an honest man to rise up and say: 'Physician, heal thyself!'"

The Windsor chair creaked under Saxham's heavy figure as he got up. Hisfierce blue eyes blazed in their sunken caves as he took his hat and stickfrom the table. 

"What more have you to 'confess'? You did not wrong me. Moralists wouldsay that you acted conscientiously--played the part of a true friend intelling--_her_--what you knew!"

"Of my benefactor--the man who had saved my life!" Julius moistened hisdry lips. "Your approving moralist would be the devil's advocate. But Ihave not forgotten what your own opinion is of the man who tries toenhance his own virtues in a woman's eyes by pointing out the vices of arival. And, if you will believe me, I was punished for the attempt. Herlook of surprise ... The tone in which she said, 'Did he not save yourlife?' that was enough!... Then I--I lost my head, and told her that Iloved her--entreated her to be my wife, only to learn that she neverhad--never could----" Julius's thin white fingers knotted themselvespainfully at the back of his stooped head, and his voice came in jerksbetween his gritted teeth: "It was revolting to her--a girl reared amongnuns in a Catholic Convent--that a man calling himself a priest shouldspeak to her of love. There was absolute horror in her look as she learnedthe truth. " He groaned. "I have never met her eyes since that day withoutseeing--or imagining I saw--some reflection of that horror in them!"

"Why torture yourself uselessly with imaginations?" said Saxham, notunkindly. 

He was at the door, upon the threshold of departure, when Julius stoppedhim. 

"One moment. Has--has Mrs. Saxham ever spoken to you of--this that I havetold you?"

"Never!" answered Saxham, pausing at the door. 

"One moment more! Saxham, is it hopeless? Could you not by a desperateeffort break this habit that may--that must--inevitably bring misery toyour wife? In the name of her love for you--in the names of the childrenthat may be born of it----"

--"Unless you want me to murder you, " advised Saxham, facing thepassionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose abreaking wave, "you had better be silent!"

"My right to speak, " Julius retorted fiercely, "is better than you know. When I endeavoured--unsuccessfully--to injure you, I robbed myself of mybelief in myself. But you--you who gave me back my earthly life, you haverobbed me of my faith in the Living and Eternal God. Do you know theeffect of Doubt, once planted in what was a faithful soul? It is a chokingfungus, a dry rot, a creeping palsy! Since that day at the Hospital atGueldersdorp, when you said to me, 'The Human Will is even more omnipotentthan the Deity, because it has created Him, out of its own need!' I havedone my daily duty as a priest to the numbing burden of that utterance--Ihave 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 tendedsouls as mechanically as a gardener might water pots in which there wasnothing but dead sticks and dry earth!"

"Try to credit me when I tell you, " said Saxham, wrung by the suffering inthe thin young face and in the beautiful haggard eyes, "that I nevermeant the harm that I appear to have done! Nor can I recall that I havehabitually attacked your faith, or for that matter any Christian man's. Iremember that I was suffering, physically and mentally, upon the day youparticularly refer to, when you came upon me at the Hospital. I had seenan announcement in the _Siege Gazette_ that ... I dare say youunderstand?" He laughed harshly. "As to my theory of the Omnipotence ofHuman Will, it is blown and exploded, and all the King's horses and allthe 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 howfar Will, in another man, may carry him, I dare not judge or calculate. Myown is a dead leaf, doomed to be the sport of any wind that blows!"

He took up the walking-stick he had leaned against a bookcase, and said, pulling his hat down over his sombre eyes:

"The best of us are bad in spots, Parson: the worst of us are good inpatches. You Churchmen don't recognise that fact sufficiently.... And Ithink no worse of you for what you have told me! If I have anything toforgive--why, it is forgiven! Do you try, on the other hand, to thinkleniently of a man who broke your staff of faith for you, and has nothingof his own to lean upon. As for my wife, in whose interests I know you tobe honestly solicitous, I will tell you this much: She will be spared the'inevitable misery' of which you spoke just now!"

"How? Have you decided to undergo a cure? I have heard, " hesitated Julius, "that these things are not always successful--that they sometimes fail!"

"Mine is the only cure that never fails, " returned Saxham. 

A vision of the little blue-glass, yellow-labelled vial that held theswift dismissing pang, floated before him. He shook hands with Julius, andwent upon his lonely way. 

LXVI

Even the saintly of this earth are prone to rare, occasional displays oftemper. Saxham's white saint had proved her descent from Eve by stampingher slender foot at her hulking Doctor; had, after a sudden outburst ofpassionate, unreasonable upbraiding, risen from the dinner-table and runout of the room, to hide a petulant, remorseful shower of tears. 

Such a trivial thing had provoked the outburst--merely an invitation fromCaptain and Mrs. Saxham, who were settled for the London summer season inEaton Square, for Owen and his wife to spend the scorching months ofAugust and September at the old home, perched on the South Dorset cliffs, among its thrush-haunted shrubberies of ilex and oleander androse--nothing more. 

But Mrs. Owen Saxham had passionately resented the idea. Why neveroccurred to Saxham. He had long ago forgiven and forgotten Mildred's oldtreachery. If David's betrayal had brought him shame and anguish, it hadborne 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, atleast, while he lived, it was his--to look at and long for. He owed thatcruel bliss to his brother and that brother's wife. And their meeting hadbeen, upon his side, free of constraint, unshadowed by the recollection ofwhat had once appeared to him a base betrayal--a gross, foul, unpardonablewrong. 

Suppose he had married Mildred, and been uneventfully happy andsuccessful. Then, Saxham told himself, he would never have seen and knownLynette. She would never have come to him and laid in his the slight handwhose touch thrilled him to such piercing agony of yearning for the littlemore that would have meant so much--so much.... 

Ah, yes! he was even grateful to Mildred. She had not worn well. She hadgrown thin and _passée_, and nervous and hysterical. But she was amiable, even demonstrative in her professions of admiration and enthusiasm forOwen's wife. Her regard for the Doctor was elaborate in the sisterlinessof its expression when he was present, if in his absence it was temperedby a regretful sigh--even by a reference to the time:

"_When poor dear Owen thought me the only woman worth looking at in thewhole world. _ Ah, well! that is all over, long ago!" Mildred would say, with an inflection that was meant to be tenderly reassuring. And shewould tilt her still pretty head on one side and smile with pensivekindness at her successor upon the throne of poor dear Owen's heart. 

These gentle, retrospective references were never made in the Doctor'shearing. With truly feminine tact they were reserved for Mrs. Owen'sdelectation. And possibly they might have rankled in those prettyshell-like ears, if their owner had loved Saxham. 

But Saxham knew that she did not;--had even ceased to wish that themiracle might be wrought. Brainy men can be very dense. When she stampedher foot and cried, "I decline to accept Mrs. Saxham's invitation, eitherwith 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, Icannot! I loathe treachery! I abominate ingratitude and deceit! And I hateher--and I shall not go!" Saxham opened his eyes, as well he might. He hadnever before seen his wife otherwise than gentle and submissive. He foundhis own bitter explanation of the sudden storm that had burst among thedébris of dessert on the Harley Street dinner-table. Her fetters weregalling her to agony, he knew! His square pale face grew moreRhadamanthine than ever, and the glass he had been filling with portoverflowed unnoticed on the cloth. But he kept the mask of set composurebefore his agony of remorse. Then the frou-frou of light silken draperiespassed over the soft carpet. The door opened and shut with a slam. Lynettehad 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, andthe serviette that made a white streak on the dark crimson carpet, markedthe haste and emotion of her departure, he said to himself that the WestEnd upholsterer who had the contract for refurnishing Plas Bendigaid mustbe warned to complete his work without delay. 

For Plas Bendigaid, the solid, stone-built grange that had been a Conventin the fifteenth century, and probably long before, the South Welsh homeof his mother's girlhood, perched in the shadow of Herion Castle upon awide shelf of the headland that commands the treacherous shoals and snowyshell-strewn sands and wild tumbling waters of Nantmadoc Bay ... PlasBendigaid, with that hoarded, invested money, was to be Saxham's bequestto his young widow. 

Everything that loving care and forethought could plan had already beendone to make the old home pleasant and charming. Nothing was needed butthe upholsterer's finishing touches. Saxham had planned that Lynetteshould be there when he wiped out the shame of failure by keeping thatpromise made in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, little more than a yearbefore. 

He had always meant to keep it, but not when the north-east gales ofwinter and spring should be sweeping over the mountain-passes and lashingthe waves to madness; not when the ceaseless scurry of hunted cloudsshould have piled the south-west horizon with scowling blue-blackramparts, topped by awful towers, themselves belittled by stupendousheights built of intangible vapours, and reproducing with added grandeurand terror the soaring peaks and awful vales and appalling precipices ofsnow-helmed Frore and her daughters. 

When the promise of Summer should have been fulfilled in sweetness, Saxhamwould keep his promise. When the swallows should hatch out their youngbroods between the huge stones that the hands of men who returned to dustcycles of centuries ago hauled up with the twisted hide-rope and thegroaning crane, to rear with them upon the jut of the rugged headland twohundred 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 goldenwallflower and the perfumed wild geranium, and starred with the delicateblossom of the lavender scabious and the wild marguerite, then the littleblue bottle that stood in the deep table-drawer near the big whisky-flaskshould come into use. 

When the vast pale sweep of the sandy dunes should be covered for leaguesby the perfumed cloth-of-gold spread by the broom and the furze; when theinnumerable little yellow dwarf-roses should blossom on their pricklybushes, thrusting pertly through the powdery white sand, and every hollowand hillock should be gay with the star convolvulus and the flauntingscarlet poppies--then Death should come, borne on winged feet, and bearingthe sword of keenness, to sever the iron bonds of Andromeda chained to therock. And here was Summer, knocking at the door!

Lynette did not reappear. He did not seek her out and ask the reason ofher strange display of emotion. Only a husband could do that who had theright to take her in his arms and kiss the last remaining traces of hertears away. Saxham went to his consulting-room, and while all the clocksof London made time, and the moon veered southward, and the stars rose andset, he toiled over his notes and case-books in the brilliant circle castby the shaded electric lamp upon his writing-table, and the tide in thebig whisky-flask in the table-drawer ebbed low. 

Hours hence he laid down his pen. The flask had long been emptied; thealcohol-flare was dying out in the grey chambers of his brain. Wearinessof life weighed on him like a leaden panoply. He had almost stretched hishand to take the little blue-glass vial that sat waiting, waiting in thedeep table-drawer aside the drained flask before sleep overcame him. Hishead sank against the chair-back. His was a sudden, heavy lapsing intoforgetfulness, unmarred by dreams. 

Time sped. The silver table-clock, the clock upon the mantelshelf, and thegrandfather clock in the corner, ran a race with the chronometer in thepocket of the sleeping man. The brilliant unwavering circle of electriclight did not reach the face of the Dop Doctor. It bathed his hands, thathung 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 glimmerof dawn began to outline the edges of the blinds and stretched at length abroad, pointing finger across the quiet room, the sleeping face showedgreyish pale and luminous as a drawing by Whistler in silver-point. 

The dawn had not rested on it long before there came a knock upon thepanel 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 slenderfigure in pale flowing draperies of creamy embroidered cashmere stole uponsmall, noiseless, slippered feet over the thick Turkey carpet. 

It was Lynette. She had risen from her bed, and looked out from thelanding into the hall below, and, seeing the light of the unextinguishedlamp shining under the lintel of the consulting-room door, had stolentimidly down to ask Owen's pardon. Why had she behaved so badly? She couldnot explain. Only she was sorry. She must tell him so. His name was uponher lips, when she saw the Dop Doctor sleeping in his chair. 

Breathlessly silent, she crossed the room to his side. And then--it was toher as though she looked upon her husband's face for the first time. 

There was no stain of his secret excess upon it--no bloating of thefeatures. You would have said this was a sane and strong and temperateman, upon whom the mighty brother of all-conquering Death had come, likeone armed, and overthrown in the heat and stress of the life-battle. Onlythe sorrow of a suffering soul was written as deeply on that pale mask ofhuman flesh as though the sculptor-slaves of a Pharao, dead seven thousandyears agone, had cut it with tools of unknown, resistless temper in thediamond-hard Egyptian granite. 

He breathed deeply and evenly, and not a muscle twitched as Lynette bentover and looked at him. A mass of her red-brown hair, heavy with theweight of its own glossy luxuriance, slipped from her half-bared bosom asshe leaned over him, and fell upon his breast. A sudden blush burned overher as it fell. He never stirred. But as though the rod of Moses hadtouched the rock in Horeb, one slow tear oozed from between Saxham's blackfringed, close-sealed eyelids, and hung there, a burnished, tremblingpoint of steely light. And the deep, still, manly anguish of his facecried out to the reawakening womanhood in Lynette, and a strange, new, overwhelming emotion seized and shook her as a stream of white and liquidfire seemed to pass into her veins and mingle with her blood. 

She began to understand, as she pored, with beating heart and batedbreath, upon the living page before her eyes. 

In its reticence and lonely strength of endurance, that face of Saxham'spleaded with her. In its stern acceptance of suffering and disappointmentfor Saxham, in its rugged confrontation of the inevitable; in its resolutelong-suffering and grim patience; in its silent abnegation of any claimupon her gratitude or any right to demand her tenderness, the face wasmore than eloquent to-night. In the pride that would never stoop to begfor pity--would rather die hungered than accept one crumb of grudged andmeasured love; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to thatpromise given to a dead man; in the nobility of its refusal to shinebrighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the revelation of thatother man's mean baseness; in its almost paternal solicitude; in its agonyof love for her, insensible and careless; in the sick despair that hadgiven up and left off hoping: even in the pride that had--or so it seemedto her--asserted itself at the last, and said, "I have left off crying forthe moon; I wish for your love no longer!"--it pleaded--pleaded.... Wordsstruggled for answering utterance in her, but none came.... She leanednearer, drawn by an irresistible fascination, and laid her lips lightlyupon the broad white forehead, with the bar of black meeting eyebrowsmudged across it, and then, with a sudden leap and thrill, she knew.... 

All that had been in the past went for nothing. Only this man mattered whosat sleeping in the chair. How easy to awaken him with a touch, and tellhim all! She dared not, though she longed to. 

He was her master as well as her mate. When he had said to her that he hadceased to care, his eyes had given his words the lie. He had looked ather.... She shivered deliciously at the recollection of that look. If hewere to open those stern, ardent eyes now, he would know her his. His--allhis, to deal with as he chose!... His alone!

If Saxham had awakened then.... But he slept on. She did not dare to kissthat broad white buckler of his forehead again. She kissed the sleeve ofhis coat instead, and, scared by a sudden sigh and movement of one of thehands that hung over the chair-arms, gathered her draperies around her, and stole as noiselessly as a pale sunbeam, out of the room. 

LXVII

It was barely five o'clock, and the balmiest summer day at Herion is wontto waken, like a spoilt child, in a bad temper of angry wind and lashingrain. Lynette, who had risen from her bed and thrown her dressing-gownabout her, to kneel on the broad window-seat and look out upon thisstrange new world, shivered, standing barefoot on the mossy carpet. Thenshe looked round the room, and smiled with delight. For she had found it, upon her arrival of the previous night, a reproduction, down to thesmallest detail, of her blue-and-white bedroom at Harley Street, with thisnotable difference--that on the wall facing the bed-head hung a fine copyof a Millais portrait that was one of the treasures of Bawne House. LadyBridget-Mary, in the glory of her beautiful youth, shone from the canvassplendid as a star. 

How kind, how kind of Owen!... Her eyes filled as she gazed, comparing theglowing, radiant face upon the canvas with the enlarged photograph of theMother in her habit that stood in an ebony and silver frame upon a littletable 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. TheBreviary and the Little Office of Our Lady had belonged to the dead. Lynette had brought these treasured possessions with her from HarleyStreet, leaving the ivory Crucifix hanging in its place above the vacantpillow. So many sleepless nights she had known of late upon that pillowthat there were faint bluish-shaded hollows under the beautiful eyes, andwistful lines about the mouth. 

Since the revelation made to her by her own heart, when the heavy tress ofhair dropped from her bosom upon the unconscious breast above which shebent, an insurmountable wall of diffidence and shyness upon her side, andof stern, self-concentrated isolation on her husband's, had risen upbetween them, dwarfing the barrier that was already there. 

His writing-table lamp had burned through the nights, but she had neverventured upon another stolen visit to Saxham's consulting-room. The memoryof that kiss she had put upon the velvety-smooth space above the broadmeeting eyebrows stung in her like a sense of guilt, and yet it had itssweetness. She had claimed her right. The man was hers, though she mightnever be his.... To know it was to realise at once her riches and herpoverty. 

Out of a vague yearning and a formless, nameless pain had come to her theknowledge of the true herb needed for her healing. The unsated hunger forsympathy and love and loveliness, the loneliness that gnawed him, shecomprehended now. And as she looked about her at the dainty, carefully-chosen furniture, and the exquisite old-world-patterned chintzdraperies, recognising what his care had been to please her, and how everylittle taste and preference of hers had been remembered and gratified, asense of her own ingratitude pierced her to the quick. 

She had parted from Owen without one tender word, without even one glanceof greater kindness than she would have bestowed upon a stranger. Sheached with futile remorse at the recollection of that frigid, distantgood-bye at Euston Station, when Lady Hannah's shrill laugh had jangledthrough Major Bingo's blustering admonitions to perspiring porters to putthe luggage in one compartment, to stow canvas bags of golf-clubs andfishing-rods in the racks, and to damage bicycles at their personal peril, since the company evaded liability. 

It had been Saxham's wish that Lady Hannah and Major Wrynche should be hiswife's guests at Plas Bendigaid. Looking from her bedroom casements overthe syringas and lilacs and larches, the laburnums and hawthorns andhollies of the low-walled garden that ended at the sheer cliff-edge, fromwhence you looked down upon the tops of the pines and chestnuts, whosegreen foliage hid the shining metals of the iron way, and made a sea ofverdure in place of the salt blue waves that once had lapped and sighedthere--gazing across the powdery sand-dunes that were prickly withsea-holly and gay with flaunting poppies and purple scabious, the pink andwhite convolvulus, and the thorny yellow dwarf rose, that somehow findsnourishment in the pale sand of Herion Links, to the line of whitebreakers that rose and fell more than a mile away. Lynette sighed a smallsigh of resignation at the prospect of long weeks to be spent in thesociety of these pleasant, well-bred, rather fidgety people Owen hadchosen to bear her company. 

Of course, Owen could not leave his patients! He had explained that, andLady Hannah and her big Major were old friends of hers and his. And thelittle woman with the jangling laugh and the snapping black eyes had knownthe Mother in her youth.... 

At that remembrance Lynette's eyes went lovingly to the copy of theMillais portrait, and as the sun burst through the streaming wind-chasedclouds, and smote bright diamond-rays from the dripping window-panes, thefirm lips seemed to curve in the rare, sudden smile, the great grey eyesto gleam with life and tenderness. 

Ah, to spend a long, sweet summer here, alone with that dearest of allcompanions! Lynette's white throat swelled at the thought, and a mistblotted out the noble face, crowned with its diadem of rich black tresses. She wiped the tears away, and beheld a world miraculously changed. Forland and sea were drenched in radiant sunshine. 

She unlatched the casements and threw them wide, and clean, salt, sweetair came streaming in, bringing the fragrance of mignonette and wallflowerand sweetbriar, and the aromatic smells of the larch and pine. She leanedher white arms upon the grey stone window-sill, and drank the freshnessand fragrance. And it seemed to her that this ancient grange, perched onthe cliff-ledge in the tremendous shadow of Herion Castle, looking acrossthe restless grey-blue waters of Nantmadoc Bay to St. Tirlan's Roads, wasan ideal place to spend a honeymoon in, supposing you loved the man youhad married, and were loved by him?

Her bosom heaved and her wild heart fell to throbbing. A blush burned overher, and she drove the thought away. It came back, whispering like a guestwho wishes not to be dismissed. It pleaded and urged and compelled. Something like a strong hand closed upon her heart and drew her, drewher.... A voice called to her in the silence that was only broken by thevoices of birds, and the rustling of wind-stirred leaves, and the cryingof the gulls above the white restless breakers. And the voice was Owen's. 

How strangely he had looked and spoken in that last moment of theirparting! It came back in every detail for the hundredth time, as sheleaned her white arms upon the window-sill and looked out with wistfuleyes upon the beauty of the blossoming world. 

"Good-bye, good-bye! Be happy--and forget!"

The train had begun to move as he uttered the words He had gripped herhand 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 thebutton as Saxham and the crowded, grimy platform receded from her view. And before she went back to her seat in the compartment that had beenreserved for herself and her fellow-travellers, she picked up the tinydisc of black horn, and secretly kissed it, and slipped it into her purse. She was silent and preoccupied during the eleven hours' journey, turningover and over in her mind, mentally repeating with every shade ofexpression that could vary their meaning, Saxham's strange words offarewell. 

She repeated them now aloud. They were tossed to and fro in her heart onwaves of wonder and regret and apprehension. Did Owen really believe thatto be happy she must forget him? Did he comprehend that she had longarrived at the conclusion that this loveless, joyless companionship, mocked by the name of marriage, was a miserable mistake?

He had never been under any illusion as concerned it. He had accepted theiron terms of the contract she offered him with open eyes and fullknowledge. She heard his voice again, as it had spoken in the Cemetery atGueldersdorp, saying:

"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriagethat should be practically no marriage at all--a formal contract that isnot wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and ripen into theclose union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and womenwho love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"

That was just what she had asked. He had accepted her iron conditions, andstipulated for nothing. He had given his all. What had she given him?Nothing but suffering, being rendered pitiless by the ache and sting inher own bosom--absorbed, swallowed up by her agony of grief for theMother, her passion of regret for dead Beauvayse. 

Beauvayse.... Suppose he and Owen Saxham stood side by side down there onthe green short grass beneath her windows, which of the two men wouldto-day be the dearer and the more desired? The tall, soldierly youngfigure, with the sunburnt, handsome face, the gay, amorous, challengingglance, the red mouth that laughed under the golden moustache, and theshallow brain under the close-clipped golden curls, or the black-haired, hulking Doctor, with the square-cut, powerful face and the stern blueeyes, the man of heart and intellect, whose indomitable, patienttenderness had led a stricken girl back from the borders of that strangeland where the brain-sick dwell, to wholesome consciousness of commonthings, and renewed healthfulness of body and of mind?

She had hardly thanked him. She realised, with tears of shame, that thisinestimable service she had accepted as matter of course. It was the wayof Saxham's world to take of him and render nothing; he who was worthy tobe a King among his fellow-men had been their servant as long as she hadknown him. 

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 ofcourse--that was the way of the world with grim-jawed, tender-hearted OwenSaxham. And she, who had done like the rest, knew him now, and valued himfor what he was, and--loved him!

For this was love that had come upon her like a strong man armed, not ashe had shown himself to her before--laughing and merry, playful andsweet.... This was no ephemeral, girlish passion, evoked by the beauty ofgay, wanton, grey-green jewel-eyes and a bold, smiling mouth. This was alove that drew you with irresistible strength, and knitted you to thesoul, and the heart, and the flesh of another, until his breath becameyour breath, and his life your life. It called you with a voice thatplucked at the secret chords of your being, and was stern and compellingrather than sweet to implore. It drew you to the beloved, not with ribbonsof silk, but with ropes of tempered steel. It was potent and resistlessas death, and infinitely deeper than the grave. It reached out aspiringhands beyond the grave, into Eternity. And, newly born as it rose in theheart of this woman, it was yet as old as Eden, where Heavenly Lovecreated the earthly love, that is more than half-divine. 

Why, why had he sent her away, bidding her be happy and forget him?... Thememory of his hollow eyes and haggard face pierced her to the quick. Hewas ill--he was in trouble; he had sent her away that he might bear theburden solely.... Or ... An iron hand closed upon her heart, and wrung ituntil points of moisture started upon her fair temples under the finetendrils of her hair ... Could the reason be--another woman?

Another woman?... She set her little teeth and drove the unworthy thoughtaway. But it came again and again--a persistent mental gadfly. Was Owennot worthy of love? Suppose another sweeter, gentler creature had found athrone in the heart that his wife had prized so lightly, would it be sovery strange, after all? Perhaps that was why he had asked her to forgivehim for having married her a little while ago!

She dropped her head upon her folded arms, and sobbed at the thought. Thenshe dried her tears and rang for her maid, and presently came down tobreakfast with Lady Hannah, smiling and composed, cheerful and attentiveas a hostess ought to be. But her reddened eyelids told tales. 

"Misses her Doctor, no doubt, " thought Lady Hannah, as she commended thecountry eggs and butter, and was enthusiastic over the thyme-scented Welshmountain-honey, and apologetic over the absence of her Bingo from theboard. 

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 housewas a small one. 

"But why?" asked Lynette. "There is Marie, my maid, and the red-cheekedparlourmaid, whose name I don't yet know, and Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper... "

"Who was Dr. Saxham's nurse when he was a little boy, and adores him. AndMrs. Pugh's husband, who is gardener, and handy-man, and coachman whenrequired. " Lady Hannah's laugh jangled out over the capacious tray, containing the comprehensive assortment of viands representing what theinvalid was wont to term his "brekker. " "But I'm not to be deprived of myprivilege, for all that. Do you suppose you young married creatures arethe only wives who enjoy cosseting their husbands? There! it's out, and Iought to be ashamed of myself, I suppose, but I'm not. Is that collaredbrawn 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 youregard the billing and cooing of a middle-aged couple as indecent, " shewent on, "to look the other way a great deal while we're here. For I wasfor the first time seriously smitten with my husband when he rode out tomeet me, returning from ignoble captivity in the tents of Brounckers, eighteen months ago. When I nursed him through enteric in the Hospital atFrostenberg--I won't disguise it--I fell in love! With a bag of bones, forhe was nothing else: but genuine passion is indifferent to the personalappearance of the beloved object, though I hadn't suspected it before. Thewound completed my conquest, and since then I'm madly jealous if anotherwoman looks at him!... I see red--green would be a better colour--becausehe prefers to have his valet brush his hair. I don't know that I didn'treduce the holding capacity of this house by a storey--there's a pun foryou!--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 quincemarmalade? No! I won't pamper Bingo, if he is the idol of my soul. Andplease don't wait for me. He likes me to take off the tops of his eggs forhim, and he usually eats three.... "

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, andis published at St. Tirlan's, twenty miles away. 

"I've made a discovery, " she announced. "No, don't look frightened. It'sonly that poor Biddy's _belle trouvaille_ has got a heart. She's not thetinted Canova-nymph, the piece of correct inanity, I honestly believedher.... She idolised Biddy--small credit, for who could help it? Shesubmitted to be adored by that poor foolish boy who's dead.... Now she'sher black-avised Doctor's humble worshipper and slave. "

"Can't understand a woman worshippin' a chap with a chin like the bows ofan armoured Destroyer, and eyebrows like another man's moustaches, " Bingoobjected. 

"Chin or no chin, eyebrows or not a hair, what does that count to a womanin love?" She placed the laden tray before him, and with a maternal airproceeded to tuck a napkin under his chin. He grumbled:

"There's no knowin' what will take the female fancy. But even if youhaven't harked away on a wrong scent, slave's a dash too strong. Struck methey parted uncommon chilly and off-hand at Euston yesterday mornin', considerin' they've not been married much above a year! Do take this thingfrom round my neck! Makes me feel like Little Willie!"

Lady Hannah unpinned the napkin that framed the bulldog jowl, and said, patting the sandy-pink bullet-head:

"That's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in amatory affairs. No Eyes seestwo people part, 'uncommon off-hand and chilly. '" She mimicked Bingo'stone. "Eyes sees that and something more! A man's coat-button dropped onthe floor of a railway carriage, for instance, and a young woman who slylypicks it up--silly little _gage d'amour_--and kisses it when a considerateobserver pretends not to be looking, and hides it away! Is that evidence, Major Mole?"

"By the Living Tinker!" he thundered, "I wouldn't have believed it ofher!"

"Of course you wouldn't!" She rummaged in an open suit-case. "What necktiedo you want to wear to-day?"

He mumbled ruefully, eyeing her over the coffee-cup:

"Any of 'em. It don't matter which. They're all alike when you've tied'em!"

She beamed at what seemed to her a gallant speech. 

"_Sans compliment?_ You really mean it? And you won't miss Grindlay sofrightfully, after all?"

He shook his head ambiguously. 

"I shan't begin really to suffer for Grindlay--not till it comes totubbin' with one fin. "

"Mercy upon us!" She gasped in consternation. He said, controlling hisfeatures from wreathing into triumphant smiles:

"You were so cast-iron certain you could fill his place, you know!"

Her bright black eyes were hidden under abashed and drooping eyelids. Blushes played hide-and-seek in the small cheeks that were usually pale. 

"In--in everything essential, " she stammered, avoiding his intolerablegaze. 

"Then that's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in ordinary, everydayaffairs!" The man pursued his advantage pitilessly. "Didn't you regard itas essential that I should wash?"

She winked tears away, though her laugh answered him. 

"Most certainly I did, and do. One of the reasons that decided me onmarrying you was that you were invariably _propre comme un sou neuf_. "

"I thought, on mature reflection, " said Bingo, lying down under thelightened tray with a replete and satisfied air, "that you would prefer aclean husband to a dirty one. Therefore I engaged a bedroom for Grindlayat the Herion Arms. That's his knock. Come in!"

The valet presented himself upon the threshold, backing respectfully atsight of her ladyship, who gave him a gracious good-morning, dissemblingthe intense relief experienced at sight of his smug, clean-shavencountenance. 

"Good-morning, Grindlay. I hope the Hotel people made you comfortable. Andnow you have arrived to take responsibility off my hands, " she announced, "I'll go and get some breakfast. "

"Haven't you ... You're joking!" The tray shot from the bed intoGrindlay's saving clutch as Bingo suddenly assumed the perpendicular. "Youdon't mean to say that you've been starving all the time I've been gorgingmyself like--like a boa-constrictor?" he demanded furiously. "Why on earthare women such blessed----"

"--Idiots?" she supplied, turning on the threshold to launch her Parthianshaft. "Because if they were intellectual, logical beings they would knowbetter than to lavish devotion upon stupid, selfish, unappreciative, heartless, dull dolts of men!"

The door slammed behind an injured woman. Grindlay's face was a study inimmobility. Bingo, after a little more meditation, ponderingly rose andsubmitted himself to the hands of the attendant. When the Major's toilethad reached the stage of hair-parting, he roused himself from hisreflections with a sigh. 

"Hold on. Put down that comb and go and ask her ladyship to be good enoughto step up here. Tell her that your style of hairdressin' don't suit me. Iwant a little more imagination thrown into the thing! Hurry up, will you!"

"O Lord! What a liar I am!" he murmured fervently, addressing hisreflection in the glass. His wife's face appeared over his shoulder, bright, alert, and pleased. She said, as she adroitly assumed the officevacated by the discarded Grindlay, who discreetly delayed his re-entranceon the scene:

"So you can't get on, it appears, without your blessed idiot?"

"Blessed angel, you mean!" said mendacious Bingo, blinking under a LittleLord Fauntleroy fringe. "You banged the door before I'd got out the word!"

"If I could believe that!" she sighed, and the ivory-backed hair-brushesplayed rather a tremulous fantasia upon her idol's head, "perhaps I mightbe induced to confide to you a piece of genuine Secret Intelligence. "

"Concernin'----?"

"Concerning your wife, Hannah Wrynche. "

"Well, what of her?"

She took him by the chin and began to part his hair. But her eyes weremisty, and her hand travelled unsteadily. 

"This of her. She owned to you, months and months back, that in your placeshe wouldn't have been one-millionth part as patient with a restless, ambitious woman cursed with an especial capacity for getting herself andother people into hot water. " She made a little affected grimace thatmasked a genuine smart. "Not hot water only--boiling lavasometimes--fizzling vitriol----"

He said, looking kindly up at the small mobile face and quivering chin:

"Restlessness and ambition are in the blood, y' know, like gout and therest of it. You can't eradicate 'em, however much you try. It's likeshavin' a Danish carriage-dog to change his colour. You can't for nuts;his spots are in his skin! See?"

"_Merci du compliment!_" Her jangling laugh rang out as if a stick hadbeen smartly rattled down the keys of a piano. But her eyes were wet. Hisown eyes reverted to his reflection in the toilet-glass. Now his suddenbellow made her drop the comb. 

"My Aunt Maria! See what you've been and done! Made a Loop Railway downthe middle of my head, unless my liver's making me see things curly. Don'tswot at it any more; let that ass Grindlay earn his pay for once.... Bythe Living Tinker! you're cryin'. Don't go and say I've been a brute!" hepleaded. 

"Darling!--dearest!--you haven't--you've never!... The boot's on the otherleg, though wild horses wouldn't get you to own as much!" His strong leftarm was round her slight waist, her wet cheek pressed against her Major'sbulldog jowl. Bingo cleared his throat in his ponderous, scraping way, admitting:

"Well, perhaps I may have dropped a briny or so--of nights in bed atNixey's, or on duty at Staff Bombproof South, between ring-ups on thetelephone when the off-duty men were snorin', and one had nothin' on theblessed earth to do but wonder whether one had a wife or not?"

"There were people ready to tell you--years before we sawGueldersdorp--that the one you'd got was as good as none.... "

"Lucky for 'em they refrained from expressin' their opinions!" She felthis 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 havegiven all I was worth to have you a bit more like other women----"

"Who weren't dying to dabble in Diplomacy and win distinction as WarCorrespondents. Who funk raw-head and bloody bones"--she shook with anervous giggle--"and all that sort of thing.... Would it please you toknow that the plumes of my panache of ambition have been cut to the lastquill--that henceforth my sole aim is to rival the domestic Partlet, clucking of barnyard matters in the discreet retirement of the coop?"

"You've said as much before!" he objected. 

"But now I mean it! Put me to the test. Let the house in WiltonPlace--we'll live at Wrynche Rodelands, if you think you won't be bored?"

He bellowed joyously!

"Me bored! With ten thousand acres arable and wood and moorland to farmand preserve and shoot over, two first-class packs meetin' within afifty-mile radius of my doorstep, the Committee of the local PoloAssociation shriekin' for a President, and the whole County beggin' mewith tears in its eyes to take the hint a Certain Person dropped when hegave me my C. B. , and accept the Crown Commission as Lord-Lieutenant!'Bored'--I like that!"

"If you would like it, be it!" she flashed. "Trust me to back you up. Ican and I will! I'll help you entertain the military authorities and theirwomen, keep the Rolls, sit on the Bench when you weigh in as ChiefMagistrate, and prompt you when you get into a hat. I'll be all things toone man--and you shall be the man! Only"--she laughed hysterically, herface hidden against his big shoulder--"I don't quite know how far thesethings are compatible with my new rôle!"

"Of domestic Henny-Penny cluckin' in the Home Coop. " His big hand pattedher almost paternally. "Leave cluckin' to hens with families. Do yousuppose I'm such a pachydermatous ass that I can't understand that home isa make-believe to a real woman, when--when there isn't even one chicken totuck under her wing! Worse luck for me and you!"

She laughed wildly, lifting her wet, flushed face up to him. Her blackeyes were shining through the tears that rose and brimmed over and fell. 

"If I told you that the luck had changed, would that make you happy?"

He cried out with a great oath:

"Yes, by G----!" and caught her to his leaping heart. 

LXVIII

In the weeks that followed, Lynette, in the course of many interviews heldwith Janellan Pugh on the subject of lunch and dinner, learned much anentthe difficulty of obtaining fresh fish in a sea-coast village, more asregards the Satanic duplicity with which even a Calvinistic Methodistbutcher will substitute New Zealand lamb for the native animal, and stillmore about Saxham. 

Janellan, who had been a rosy maid in the service of the Doctor'sgrandfather, 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 asausage-roll curl and diamond-patterned socks. She had a venerable andspotty photograph of him as a square-headed, blinking little boy in avelvet 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, tosend to Janellan, who had nursed him through a holiday scarlet-fever. Andregularly had her blessed boy remembered her and Tafydd, said Janellan, until the Cruel Time came, and he was lost sight of in Foreign Parts. ThenMrs. Saxham died, and the Captain--mentioned by Janellan with the ringingsniff that speaks volumes of disparagement--had turned her and her old manout of the Plas "without as much as that!"--here Janellan snapped herstrong thumb-nail against her remaining front tooth--in recognition oftheir forty years of faithful service. 

But Master Owen, coming to his own again, "and 'deed an' 'deed, but thePlas ought to have been his from the beginning!" had sought out the oldcouple, living in decent poverty at St. Tirlan's, and reinstated them intheir old home. And well might Tafydd, who was a better judge of thepoints of a pig than any man in Herion--or in all Wales for the matter ofthat--well might Tafydd declare that the Lord never made a better man thanDr. Owen Saxham! What grand things they had said of him in the papers! Nodoubt the young mistress would have plenty more to tell that had not gotinto print?

"I can tell you many things of the Doctor, " said Lynette, smiling in theblack-eyed, streaky-apple face "that you and Tafydd will be proud and gladto hear. "

She shunned the giving or receiving of caresses as a rule but this morningshe stooped and kissed the red-veined, wrinkled cheek within Janellan'swhite-quilled cap-border. Then, her household duties done, she pinned arough, shady straw-hat upon the red-brown hair, and drew loosechamois-leather gloves over the slim white exquisite hands that were, perhaps her greatest beauty, chose a walking-stick from the hall-rack, randown the steep cliff pathway, crossed the spidery, red-rusted ironfoot-bridge that spanned the railway-line, descended upon the farther sideof the wood of chestnut and larch that made green shadows at the base ofthe cliff, and was upon the sand-dunes, walking with the free, undulatinggait she had acquired from the Mother, towards the restless line of whitebreakers that rose and fell a mile away. 

She was happy. A glorious secret kept her bosom-company; a new hope gaveher strength. She drank in long draughts of the strong, salt, fragrantair, and as it filled her lungs, knew her soul brimmed with fresh delightin the beauty of the world. And a renewed and quickened sense of the joyof life made music of the beating of her pulses and the throbbing of herheart. 

She was a child of the wild veld, but none the less a daughter of thissea-girt Britain: the blue, restless waves beyond that line of whitefrothing breakers washed the shores of the Mother's beloved green island, Emerald Airinn, set in silver foam. A few miles, St. George's Channelspanned--then straight as the crow flies over Wicklow, Queen's County, King's County, taking Galway at the acute angle of the wild mallard'sflight; and there would be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers, the grey-green mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys andwild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare risingfrom its mossed lawns studded with immemorial oaks. And Loch Kilbawneamong the wild highlands, and Lochs Innsa and Barre, and BallybarronHarbour, with its Titanic breakwater, and three beacons, and the dun-brownislands bidden in their veil of surf-edged spindrift, shaken by the voicesof hidden waters roaring in their secret caves. 

A faint smile played about her sensitive lips. Her golden eyes dreamed asshe walked on swiftly, a slender figure dressed in a plain skirt of roughgrey-blue, and a loose-sleeved blouse of thick white silk, her slightwaist belted with a silver-mounted lizard-skin girdle, a pleasant tinkleof silver châtelaine appendages accompanying her steps. 

And those steps were to her no longer uncompanioned. It was as though theMother were living, so enfolding and close was the sense of her presenceto-day. God was in His Heaven, and the world, His footstool, bore thevisible impress of His Feet. And it seemed to Lynette, who had learned tosee the faces of Christ and of His Mother Mary through the lineaments ofthe earthly face that had first looked love upon herself in her terribleabandonment, that those Divine and glorious countenances looked down onher and smiled. And her chilled faith spread quivering wings, basking intheir ineffable mild radiance as the little blue and tortoiseshellbutterflies basked in the glorious sunshine that had followed themorning's storm. 

The tangible presence seemed to move beside her, through the white powderysand. Over the knotted grasses, between the tufts of poppies and theprickly little yellow roses that fringed the hollows, the garments ofanother seemed to sweep beside her own. The folds of a thin veil upborneon the elastic breeze fluttered beside her cheek, blew against her lips, bringing the rare delicate fragrance--the familiar perfume that clung toeverything the Mother habitually wore and used and touched. She did notlook round, or stretch out her hand. She walked along, drinking inblissfulness and companionship at every pore of her thirsty soul, joyfullyrealising that this would last; that by-and-by the great void ofloneliness would not close in on her again. 

Only the night before, upon the brink of the supreme discovery that thedead 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 shehad learned to doubt no more. 

 * * * * *

She had been restless and unhappy. Saxham had not written for a week. Shebitterly missed the short, cold, kind letters in the clear, small, firmhandwriting, that had reached her at intervals of three days, to beanswered by her constrained and timid notes, hoping that he was well andnot overworking, describing the place and her pleasure in it, withoutmention of her loneliness; giving details of Major Wrynche's progresstowards recovery, and left-handed attempts at golf, winding up withmessages from Lady Hannah and dutiful remembrances from Tafydd andJanellan, and signed, his affectionate wife, Lynette Saxham. 

Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles seemed to theirwriter. To Saxham they were drops of rain upon the parching soil of hisheart, 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. 

If he had known how his own letters to her were welcomed, how tenderlythey were read and re-read, how sweetly kept and cherished.... But he didnot know! He could only look ahead, and strain on to the nearing goal withthe great, dim, mysterious curtain hanging beyond it, hearing the thuddingof his wearied heart, and the whistling of those sharp breaths in hisstrained lungs, and the measured sound of his own footfalls bearing him onto 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. Huedwith the fiery rose of opals some, because in these he loved her; and thatshadowy woman, in whose existence she only half-believed, had no part inhim at all. But on the night preceding the revelation she had not dreamed. 

She awakened in the grey of dawn, when the thrushes were calling, and laystraight and still, listening to the glad bird-voices from the garden, hersoft, fringed eyelids closed, her white breasts gently heaving, her smallfeet crossed, her slender, bare arms pillowing the little Greek head; aheavy plait of the silken wealth that crowned it drawn down on either sideof the sweet, pale face and the pure throat, intensifying their virginalbeauty. The dull smart of loneliness, the famished ache of loss, were gonealtogether. She felt strangely peaceful and calm and glad. Then she knewshe was not at Herion; she was not even in London.... She was back at theConvent, in the little whitewashed room with the stained dealfurniture--the room with the pleasant outlook on the gardens that had beenhers from the first. Surely it was past the rising hour? Ah, yes! but shehad had a touch of fever. That was why she was lying here so quietly, withthe Mother sitting by the bed. 

There could be no doubt.... The light firm, pressure that she knew of oldwas upon her bosom, just above the beating of her heart.... That wasalways the Mother's way of waking you. She sat beside you, and looked atyou, and touched you, and presently your eyes opened, that was all!... Thinking this, a streak of gold glimmered between Lynette's thick duskylashes; her lips wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, andthere it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand. The loosesleeve of thin black serge flowed away from the strong, finely mouldedwrist; the white starched _guimpe_ showed snowy between the drooping foldsof the nun's veil.... These familiar things Lynette drank in with a senseof unspeakable content and pleasure. Then--her eyes opened widely, and sheknew. 

She was looking into eyes that had seen the Beatific Vision--great greyeyes that were unfathomable lakes of heavenly tenderness and love divine. And the face that framed them was a radiant pale splendour, indescribablein its glorious beauty, unfathomable in its fulfilled peace. Her own eyesdrank peace from them, deeply, insatiably, while the Herion thrushes sangtheir dewy matins, and the scent of mignonette and sweet-peas and earlyroses mingled with the smell of the sea, stole in at the open casementwhere the white blind swelled out like a breeze-filled sail. 

How long Lynette lay there storing up content and rapture she did notknow, or want to know. But at last the wonder of those eyes camenearer--nearer! She felt the dear pressure of the familiar lips upon herown. A fragrance enveloped her, an exquisite joy overbrimmed her, as avoice--the beloved, unforgotten voice of matchless music--spoke. It said:

"_Love your husband as I loved Richard! Be to a child of his what I havebeen to you!_"

 * * * * *

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 therising sun looked over the mountains eastward, and drew one hushing, golden finger over the lips of the cold, grey, whispering sea. 

LXIX

A thin, subterraneous screech, accompanied by a whiff of cinder-flavouredsteam, heralded the Down Express as it plunged out of the cliff-tunnel, flashed across an intervening space, and was lost among the chestnuts andlarches. A metallic rattle and scroop told that the official in the box onthe other side of the Castle bluff had opened the points. And hearing theclanking bustle of the train's arrival in the station, Lynette remindedherself with a sigh of relief that her maid was packing, that she wouldpresently make her excuses to Major Wrynche and Lady Hannah, and that themidnight up-mail should take her home to Owen. 

Her course lay clear now, pointed out by the beloved, lost hand. But forthis Heaven-sent light that had been cast upon her way, Lynette knew thatshe might have wandered on in doubt and darkness to the very end. 

She was not of the race of hero-women, who deserve the most of men, andare doomed to receive in grudging measure. A pliant, dependent, essentially feminine creature, she was made to lean and look up, to beswayed and influenced by the stronger nature, to be guided and ruled, andled, and to love the guide. 

Her nature had flowered: sun and breeze and dew had worked their miracleof form and fragrance and colour, the ripened carpels waited, conscious ofthe crown of tall golden-powdered anthers bending overhead. Instead of thehomely hive-bee a messenger had come from Heaven, the air vibrated yetwith the beating of celestial wings. 

She was going to Saxham to ask him to forgive her, to throw down thepitiless barrier she had reared between them in her ignorance of herselfand of him. She would humble herself to entreat for that rejected crown ofwifehood. Even though that conjectural other woman had won Owen from her, she said to herself that she would win him back again. 

She reached the wet, shining strip of creamy sand where the frothing lineof foam-horses reared and wallowed. The prints of her little brown shoeswere brimmed with sea-water, she lifted her skirt daintily, and wentforward still. Numberless delicate little winged shells were scatteredover the moist surface, tenantless homes of tiny bivalves, wonderfullytinted. Rose-pink, brilliant yellow, tawny-white, delicate lilac, it wasas 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 outwith pleasure at their beauty, stooped and gathered a palmful, thendropped them. She stood a moment longer drinking in the keen, stingingfreshness, then turned to retrace her steps, still with that unseencompanion at her side. 

The vast, undulating green and white expanse, save for a distantgolf-player with the inevitable ragged following, seemed bare of humanfigures. The veering breeze shepherded flocks of white clouds across theharebell-tinted meadows of the sky. It sang a thin, sweet song inLynette's little rose-tipped ears. And innumerable larks carolled, building spiral towers of melody on fields of buoyant air. And suddenly ahuman note mingled with their music and with the thick drone of thelittle, black-and-grey humble-bees that feasted on the corn-bottles. AndLynette's visionary companion was upon the instant gone. 

It was a baby's cooing chuckle that arrested the little brown shoes uponthe verge of a deep sand hollow. Lynette looked down. A pearly-pale cupfringed with blazing poppies held the lost treasure of some weepingmother--a flaxen-headed coquette of some eighteen months old, arrayed inexpensive, diaphanous, now sadly crumpled whiteness, the divine humanpeach 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 herisolation broke from Lynette, she looked up and laughed roguishly in thestranger's face, narrowing her eyes. 

Naughty, mischievous eyes of jewel-bright, grey-green, long-shaped andthick-lashed; bold red, laughing mouth--where had Lynette seen thembefore? With a strange sense of renewing an experience she ran down intothe hollow, and dropping on her knees beside the pretty thing, caught itup and kissed it soundly. 

"Where do you come from, sweet?" she asked, between the kisses. "Where aremother and nurse?"

"Ga!" said the baby. Then, with a sudden puckering of pearly-golden brows, and a little querulous cry of impatience, the Hon. Alyse Rosabel Tobartsquirmed out of the arms that held her, exhibiting in the process the mostcherubic of pink legs, and the loveliest silk socks and kid shoes, andwriggled back into her sandy nest. Once re-established there, she answeredno more questions, but with truly aristocratic composure resumed herinterrupted task of stuffing a costly bonnet of embroidered cambric andquilled lace with sand. When the bonnet would hold no more, she hadarranged to fill her shoe: she was perfectly clear upon the point ofhaving no other engagement so absorbing. 

Smiling, Lynette abandoned the attempt to question. Perhaps the missingguardians of this lost jewel were quite near after all, sitting with booksand work and other babies in the shelter of some neighbouring hollow, fromwhence this daring adventurer had escaped unseen.... She ran up the steepside where the frieze of poppies nodded against the sky, and the whitesand streamed back from under the little brown shoes that had trodden uponSaxham's heart so heavily. 

No one was near. Only in the distance, toiling over the dry waves of thesand-dunes towards the steep ascent by which the hilly main street ofHerion may be gained, went a white perambulator, canopied with white, andpropelled by a nurse in starched white skirts and flying whitebonnet-strings--a nurse who kept her head well down, and was evidentlyreading a novel as she went. Some yards in advance a red umbrella bobbedagainst the breeze like a giant poppy on a very short stem. The lady whocarried the flaming object was young; that much was plain, for thefluttering heliotrope chiffons of her gown were held at a high, perhaps atan unnecessarily lofty, altitude above the powdery sand, and herplumply-filled and gleaming stockings of scarlet, fantastically barredwith black, and her dainty little high-heeled shoes were very much inevidence as they topped a rising crest. Then they disappeared over thefarther edge, the red umbrella followed, and the nurse, in charging up thesteep after her mistress, discovered, perhaps by a glance of investigationunderneath the canopy, prompted by a too tardy realisation of thesuspicious lightness of the perambulator, that the shell was void of thepearl. 

Lynette heard the wretched woman's piercing shriek, glimpsed the redumbrella as it reappeared over the sand-crest, comprehended the horribleconsternation of mistress and maid. She must signal to them--cry out.... Involuntarily she gave the call of the Kaffir herd: the shrill, prolongedululation that carries from spitzkop to spitzkop across the miles ofkarroo or high-grass veld between. And she unpinned her hat and waved it, standing amongst the thickly-growing poppies and chamomile on the highcrest of the sand-wave, while her shadow--a squat, blue dwarf with armsout of all proportion--flourished and gesticulated at her feet. 

LXX

It is Fate who comes hurrying to Lynette under the becoming shadow of ared umbrella, on the starched and rustling skirts of the agitated nurse, whose mouth is seen to be shaping sentences long before she can be heardpanting:

"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!"

Lynette nods and laughs reassuringly, pointing down into the hollow. Thenurse, with a squawk of relief, leaves her perambulator bogged in thesand, 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 herattendant appear over the edge of her Paradise, throws herself backwards, strikes out with kicking, dimpled legs, and sets up an indignant roar. 

"There now--there! 'A was a pessus!" vociferates the owner of thestreaming ribbons and the scarlet countenance. "And did she tumble out ofher pram, the duck, and wicked Polly never see her? And thank GoodGracious, not a bruise on her blessed little body-woddy, nor nothing butthe very tiddiest scratch!"

"Which is not your fault, Watkins, I am compelled to say it, " pronouncesthe Red Umbrella, arriving breathless and decidedly indignant, on thescene. "The idea of a person of your class being so wrapped up in a rottenpenny novel that you can't even keep your eye upon the darling entrustedto your charge is too perfectly shameful for words. Baby, don't cry, " shecontinues, as the repentant Polly appears, bearing the retrieved treasure. "Come to mummy and kiss her, and tell her all about it, do!"

"I sa-t!" bellows Baby, now keenly alive to the pathos of the situation, and digging a sandy pink fist into either eye ... 

"Don't, then, you obstinate little pig!" returns Red Umbrella, withmaternal asperity. She looks up to the fair vision that stands on highamongst the poppies, and nods and smiles. "However I am to thank you!... Such a turn when we missed her!... " She utters these incoherences with agreat deal of eye-play, pressing a small, plump, jewelled hand, withshort, broad fingers, and squat, though elaborately rouged and polished, nails, upon the bountiful curve of a Parisian corsage. "My heart did adouble flip-flap ... Hasn't done thumping yet. Am I pale still, Watkins?"She appeals to the recreant Watkins, who is busily repacking Baby in herluxurious perambulator. "I felt to go as white as chalk!"

"Perfect gassly, my lady!" agrees Watkins, and it occurs to Lynette thatthe process of blanching must, taking into consideration the artificialblushes that bloom so thickly upon the pretty, piquante face under the redumbrella, have been attended with some difficulty. 

Everything is round in the coquettish face, shaded by a hat that is anexpensive triumph of Parisian millinery, trimmed with a whole branch ofwistaria in bloom. The big brown eyes are round, so is the cherry-stainedmouth, so is the pert, button nose. The thick, dark eyebrows are likeinky half-moons, in the middle of the little round chin a circular dimpleis cunningly set. Round, pinky-olive shoulders and rounded arms gleamtemptingly through the bodice of heliotrope chiffon. Other roundnesses, artfully exaggerated by the Parisian _modiste_, are liberally suggested, as Red Umbrella gathers her frothy draperies about her hips, lifting hermultitudinous frills to reveal black and scarlet openwork silk stockings, bedecking her plump legs and tiny feet, whose high-heeled silver-buckledshoes are sinking in the hot, white, powdery sand. 

"Please don't go on! I haven't half thanked you, " she pleads, stillpressing the podgy little bejewelled paw upon the heaving corsage. Thenshe sinks, with an air of graceful languor, down upon a long, prostratemonolith of granite, that is thickly crusted with velvety orange lichenand grey-green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers. AndLynette, habitually courteous and rather amused, and not at all unwillingto 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:

"Of course, it was a terrible shock to you when you missed her. She issuch a darling! Aren't you, Baby?"

Baby, her long, grey-green eyes melting and gleaming dangerously, hergolden head tilted coquettishly, and a gay, provoking laugh on the boldred mouth, makes another snatch, captures the hovering blue butterfly, opens the rosy hand, and with a wry face of disgust, drops the crushedmorsel over the edge of the perambulator. The superb, unconscious crueltyof the act gives Lynette a little pang even as she goes on:

"She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon be very greatfriends. May her nurse bring her to see me sometimes? Most babies loveflowers, and there is a garden full of them where I am staying. Do youlive here?"

"Live here? Gracious, no!" Red Umbrella opens the round, brown eyes thatBaby's are so unlike in shape and expression, and shrugs her prettyshoulders 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 two maidsfor a change at the Herion Arms--me having been recommended sea-air by thedoctors for tonsils in the throat. The house is advertised as anup-to-date hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more wretched Inever struck, and you do fetch up in some queer places on tour in theProvinces, let alone the States, " says Red Umbrella, tossing thewistaria-wreathed hat. "Which may be a surprise to people who think itmust be nothing but jam for those ladies and gentlemen that have madetheir mark in the Profession. "

"Yes?"

Lynette's golden eyes smile back into the laughing brown ones withpleasant friendliness, combined with an irritating lack of comprehension. And Red Umbrella, who derives a considerable income from percentages uponthe sale of her photographs, and is conscious that her celebrated featuresare figuring upon several of the postcards that hang up for sale in thewindow of the only stationer in Herion, is a little nettled. 

"I refer to the stage, of course. " She fingers a long neck-chain ofsapphires, and tinkles her innumerable bangles with their load of jinglingcharms. "But perhaps you're not a Londoner? Or you don't patronise thetheatre?"

"Oh yes. We have a house in Harley Street. And I am very fond of theOpera, " says Lynette, smiling still, "and of seeing plays too; and I oftengo to the theatre with Lord and Lady Castleclare, or Major Wrynche andLady Hannah, when my husband is too much engaged to take me. One of thelast pieces we saw before we left town was 'The Chiffon Girl' at TheVariety, " she adds. 

"Indeed! And how did you like 'The Chiffon Girl'?" asks the lady of thered umbrella, with a gracious and encouraging smile. Unconscious tributerendered to one's beauty and one's genius is ever well worth the having. And the editor of the _Keyhole_, a certain weekly journal of caterings forthe curious, will gladly publish any little anecdote which will serve thedual purpose of amusing his readers and keeping the name of Miss LessieLavigne before the public eye. "How did you enjoy the performance of thelady who played the part?"

Lynette ponders, and her fine brows knit. Vexed and indignant, RedUmbrella, scanning the thoughtful face, admits its youth, itshigh-breeding, its delicate, chiselled beauty, and the slender grace ofthe supple figure in the grey-blue serge skirt and white silk blouse; noris 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. 

"I think I felt rather sorry for her, " says the soft cultured voice withthe exquisite, precise inflections. The golden eyes look dreamily out overthe undulating sand-dunes beyond the crisp line of foam to the silkenshimmer of the smoothing water. The little wind has fallen. It is verystill. The nurse, sitting on a hillock of bents in dutiful nearness to theperambulator, has taken out her paper-covered volume, and is deep in astory of blood and woe. And Baby, a sleepy, pink rosebud, dozes among herwhite embroidered pillows, undisturbed by Red Umbrella's shrillexclamation:

"Sorry for her! Why on earth should you be?"

The shriek startles Lynette. She brings back her grave eyes from thedistance, flushing faint coral pink to the red-brown waves at her fairtemples. 

"She--she had on so few clothes!" she says. And there is a profoundsilence, broken by Lessie's saying with icy dignity:

"If the Lord Chamberlain opined I'd got enough on, I expect that ought todo for you!"

"I--don't quite understand. "

Lynette opens her golden eyes in sincere wonder at the marvellous changethat has been wrought in the little lady who sits beside her. 

"_I_ am Miss Lessie Lavigne, " says the little lady, with an angry toss ofthe pretty head, adorned with the wistaria-trimmed hat. "At least, that isthe name I am known by in the profession. "

"I beg your pardon, " Lynette falters. "I did not recognise you. I amafraid you must think me rather rude!"

"Oh, pray don't mention it!" cries the owner of the red umbrella. "Rude?--not in the least!"

Mere rudeness would be preferable, infinitely, to the outrage the littlelady has suffered. She, Lessie Lavigne, the original exponent of the rôleof "The Chiffon Girl, " the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant overthe hearts beating behind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, haslived to hear herself pitied--not envied, but commiserated--for thescantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joyto trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers. Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating withthe desire to scratch and rend. 

Then she reveals the chief arrow in her quiver. Not for nothing is she thewidow of an English nobleman. With all the hereditary dignities of theFoltlebarres she will arm herself, and reduce this presuming stranger tothe level of the dust. At the thought of the humiliation it is in herpower to inflict she smiles quite pleasantly, displaying a complete doublerow of beautifully stopped teeth. And she says, as she fumbles in achâtelaine bag of golden links, studded with turquoises, and withelaborately ostentatious dignity produces therefrom a card-case, asprecious as regards material, and emblazoned with a monogram and coronet, enriched with diamonds and pearls:

"I think you mentioned that you lived in the neighbourhood? May I know whoI have the a--pleasure of being indebted to for finding my daughterto-day?"

"I am Mrs. Owen Saxham. I live at that grey stone house up there on thecliff. 'Plas Bendigaid, ' they call it, " explains Lynette, a littlenervously, as her reluctant eyes scan the face and figure of the woman whoowns the legal right to bear Beauvayse's name. The encounter isdistasteful to her. She is painfully conscious of an acute sensation ofantagonism and dislike. "The house belongs to my husband, and this is myfirst visit to Herion, " she adds hurriedly, "because we--my husband andI--have not been very long married. But I like the place. And the house ischarming, and there is a hall that was once the chapel, when it was aConvent. It shall be a chapel again; that is"--the wild-rose colourdeepens on the lovely face--"if my husband agrees? To have it so restoredwould make the Plas seem more like a home, because I was brought up in aConvent, though not in England. "

Her eyes stray back to the sun-kissed beauty of Nantmadoc Bay and thedotted line of white spots that indicate the town of St. Tudwalls at thebase of the green promontory beyond the Roads. She forgets that thislittle overdressed person is Beauvayse's wife. She forgets in the momentthat she herself is Saxham's. She is back in the beloved past with theMother. 

"It was in South Africa, my Convent ... More than a thousand miles fromCape Town, in British Baraland, on the Transvaal Border--in a littlevillage-town, dumped down in the middle of the veld. "

"What on earth is the veld?" asks the lady of the red umbrella, withacerbity. "I'm sick of seeing the word in the papers, and nobody seems toknow what it means. "

Lynette's soft voice answers:

"You can never know what it means until you have lived its life, and ithas become part of yours. It spreads away farther than your eyes canfollow it, for miles and miles. It is jade colour in spring, blue-green inearly summer, desolate, scorching yellow-brown in winter, with dreadfulblack tracts of cinders, where it has been burned to let the young grassgrow up. There is hardly a tree; there is scarcely a bird, except avulture, a black speck high in the hot blue sky. There are flat-toppedmountains and cone-shaped kopjes, reddish, or pale pink, ormauve-coloured, as they are nearer or farther away. And that is all!"

"All?"

"All, except the sunshine, bathing everything, soaking you through andthrough. "

"But there is not always sunshine? It must be sometimes night?" arguesLessie, a little peevishly. 

"There are deep violet nights, full of great white stars, " Lynetteanswers. "There are storms of dust and rain, lightning and thunder, suchas are only read of here.... There are plots, conspiracies, raids, robberies, murders, slumps and losses, plagues and massacres. There arerebellions of white men, and native risings. There have been wars; thereis war to-day, and there will be war again in the days that are yet tocome!"

She has almost forgotten the little woman beside her, staring at her withbig, brown, rather animal eyes. Now she turns to her with her rare andlovely smile:

"The war that is going on now began at the little village-town where I wasa Convent schoolgirl. We were shut for months within the lines. But, ofcourse, you have read the newspaper accounts of the Siege of Gueldersdorp?I am only telling you what you know!"

Lessie laughs, and the laugh has the hard, unpleasant, mirthless littletinkle of a toy dog's collar-bell, or bits of crushed ice rattled in achampagne-glass. 

"What I have good reason to know!"

Her podgy, jewelled hands are clenching and unclenching in her heliotropechiffon lap; there is a well-defined scowl between the black archedeyebrows, and the murky light of battle gleams in the eyes that no longerlanguish between their bistred eyelids as she scans the pure pale faceunder the sweep of her heavily blackened lashes. She would almost give theruby buttons out of her ears to see it wince and quiver, and crimson intoangry blushes. And yet Lessie is rather amiable than otherwise in herattitude towards other women. True, she has never before met one who hadthe insolence to pity her to her face. 

"So quite too interesting!" she says, with an exaggerated affectation ofamiability, and in high, fashionable accents, "you having been atGueldersdorp through the Siege and all. Were you ever--I suppose you musthave been sometimes--shot at with a gun?"

The faintest quiver of a smile comes over the lovely face her grudgingeyes are trying to find a flaw in. 

"Often when I have been crossing the veld between the town and theHospital, the Mauser bullets have hummed past like bees, or raised littlespurts of dust close by my feet where they had hit the ground. And once ashell burst close to us, and a splinter knocked off my hat and tore acorner of her veil----"

"Weren't you in a petrified fright?" demands Lessie. 

"I was with her!"

"Who was she?"

A swift change of sudden, quickening, poignant emotion passes over thestill face. A sudden swelling of the white throat, a rising mist in thegolden eyes, suggests to Lessie that she has been fortunate enough totouch upon a painful subject, and that possibly this presumptuous youngwoman who has pitied a Viscountess may be going to cry! But Lynette drivesback the tears. 

"She was the Reverend Mother, the Mother-Superior of the Convent where Ilived at Gueldersdorp. "

"Where is she now?"

"She is with God. "

"With----"

Lessie is oddly nonplussed by the calm, direct answer. People who talk inthat strangely familiar way of--of subjects that properly belong toparsons are rare in her world. She hastens to put her next question. 

"Was yours the only Convent in Gueldersdorp where young ladies weretaught?"

"It is the only Convent there. "

"Did you know--among the pupils--a young person by the name of Mildare?"

There is such concentrated essence of spite in Lessie's utterance of thename, that Lynette winces a little, and the faint, sweet colour rises inher cheeks. 

"I--know her, certainly; as far as one can be said to know oneself. Myunmarried name was Mildare. "

"You--don't say so! Lord, how funny!"

The seagulls fishing in the shallows beyond the foam-line, rise upaffrighted by the shrill peal of triumphant laughter with which Lessiemakes her discovery. 

"Ha, ha, ha! Talk of a situation!... On the boards I've never seen one totouch it!" She jumps from the boulder, with more bounce than dignity, dropping the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case, and, extending inone pudgy ringed hand a highly-glazed and coroneted card, "Permit me tointroduce myself, " she says through set teeth, smiling rancorously. "Myprofessional name, as I have had the honour and pleasure of explaining toyou, is Lessie Lavigne, but in private"--the dignity of the speaker's toneis marred by its extreme huffiness--"in private I am Lady Beauvayse. "

As Lynette looks in the painted, angry, piquante face she is more thanever conscious of that feeling of antagonism. Then her eyes, turning fromit, encounter the cherub rosily sleeping on embroidered pillows, and arush of blood colours her to the hair. His child--his child by thedancer--this dimpled creature she has clasped and kissed! The icy, tinkling giggle of the mother breaks in upon the thought. 

"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 overBaby, too!... Lord! isn't it enough to make you die? Don't mind me being abit hysterical!" Lady Beauvayse dabs her tearful eyes with a cobwebbysquare of laced cambric. "It'll be over in a sec. And then, MissMildare--I beg pardon--Mrs. Saxham--you and me will have it out!"

"I am afraid I must be going. " Lynette rises, and stands beside Lessie, looking down in painful hesitation at the blinking, reddened eyelids andthe working mouth. "I have guests waiting for me at the Plas. And would itnot be wise of you to go home and lie down?"

The words, for some obscure reason or other, convey an intolerable sting. Lessie jumps in her buckled Louis Quinze shoes, wheels, and confronts hernewly-discovered enemy with glaring eyes. 

"Go home ... Lie down!" she shrieks, so shrilly that the sleeping cherubawakens, and adds her frightened roars to the clamour that scares thegulls. "If I _had_ lain down and gone to my long home eighteen months ago, when you were cooped up in Gueldersdorp with my husband, it would havesuited you both down to the ground!" She turns, with a stamp of herimperious little foot, upon the scared nurse, who is vainly endeavouringto still Baby. "Take her away! Carry her out of hearing! Do what you'retold, you silly fool!" she orders. "And you"--she wheels again uponLynette, her wistarias nodding, her chains and bangles clanking--"why doyou stand there, like a white deer in a park--like an image cut out ofivory? 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 clotheson'"--she savagely mimics the manner and tone--"I am the lawful wife ofthe man you tried to trap--the Right Honourable John Basil Edward Tobart!"The painted lips sneer savagely. "Beautiful Beau, who never went back on aman, or told the truth to a woman!--that's his character, and it prettywell sizes him up!"

Lessie stops, gasping and out of breath, the plump, jewelled handclutching at her heaving bosom. The theatrical instinct in the daughter ofthe footlights has led her to work up the scene; but her rage of woundedlove and jealousy is genuine enough, though not as real as the innocencein the eyes that meet hers, less poignant than the shame and indignationthat drive the blood from those ivory cheeks. 

"He married me on the strict QT at the Registrar's at Cookham, " goes onLessie, her painted mouth twisting, "a fortnight before he was ordered outon 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 theprostrate red umbrella and the jewelled card-case, possibly to conceal ablush; "and he swore he'd never look at another woman, and write by everymail. And so he did at first, and I used to cry over the blooming pifflehe put into his letters, and wish I'd been a straighter woman, for hissake. And then the Siege began, and the letters stopped coming, and Icried enough to spoil my voice, little thinking how my husband was playingthe giddy bachelor thousands of miles away. And then came the news of theRelief, and despatches, saying that he"--her pretty face is distorted bythe wry grimace of genuine anguish--"_he_ was killed! And a month later Igot a copy of a rotten Siege newspaper, sent me by I don't know who, andnever shall, with a flowery paragraph in it, announcing his lordship'sengagement to Miss Something Mildare. Oh! it was merry hell to know howhe'd done me--me that worshipped the very ground he trod!... Me that hadmade a Judy of myself in crape and weepers--widow's weepers for the manthat wished me dead!"

Her voice is thick with rage. Her face is convulsed. Her eyes are burningcoals. She has never been so nearly a great actress, this meretriciouslittle dancer and comedian, as in this moment when she forgets her art. 

"Picture it, you!... Don't you fancy me in 'em? Don't you see me in mybedroom tearing 'em off?" She rends her flimsy cobweb of a handkerchiefinto tatters and spurns them from her. "So!... So!... That's what I didto 'em!" She snarls with a sudden access of tigerishness. "And if thatwhite face of yours had been within reach of my ten fingers, I'd haveragged it into ribbons like the blooming fallals. Don't dare tell me you'dnot have done the same! Perhaps, though, you wouldn't. You're a lady, bornand bred, " owns Lessie grudgingly, "and I was a jobbing tailor's kid, thatworked to keep myself and other folks as a baby imp in Pantomime, whileyou were being coddled up and kept in cotton-wool!"

She ends with a husky laugh and a shrug of the shoulders. The swollen facewith the wet eyes is averted, or Lessie might be roused to freshresentment by the tenderness of pity that is dawning in Lynette's. 

"You have suffered cruelly, Lady Beauvayse; but I was not knowingly orwilfully to blame. Please try to believe it!"

Lessie blows her small nose with a toot of incredulity, and says throughan intervening wad of damp lace-edged cambric:

"Go on!"

"I met Lord Beauvayse out at Gueldersdorp. " The voice that comes fromLynette's pale lips is singularly level and quiet. "He was very handsomeand very brave; he was an officer of the Colonel's Staff. He asked me tomarry 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 hewas killed, and later--nearly a year after my marriage to Dr. Saxham--Ifound out the truth. "

Lessie shrugs her pretty shoulders, but the face and voice of the speakerhave brought conviction. She realises that if she has been injured, herrival has suffered equal wrong. 

"You were pretty quick in taking on another man, it strikes me. But that'snot my business. You say you found out?" She shows her admirably preservedteeth in a little grin of sardonic contempt--"nearly a year after yourmarriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go on burning joss-sticks toBeau's angelic memory when he might have made you spit on it by tellingyou the truth!"

Lynette's lip curls, and she lifts her little head proudly. 

"He never once hinted at the truth. Nor was it through him I learned it!"

"Ought to be kept under glass, then, " comments Lessie, "as a modelhusband. Now, my poor----"

Lynette interrupts, with angry emphasis:

"I will not hear Dr. Saxham mentioned in the same breath with LordBeauvayse!"

"He's dead--let him be!" Beau's widow snarls, her mouth twisting. Yet inthe same breath, with another of the mental pirouettes characteristic ofher 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. "

She gathers up the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case with revivingbriskness, and shakes out her crumpled chiffons in the bright hot sun. 

"Me and Baby are leaving to-morrow. I don't suppose we're likely ever tocome across you again. Good-bye! I forgive you for pitying me, " she saysfrankly, holding out the plump, over-jewelled hand. "As for the othergrudge.... What, are you going to kiss me?... Give Baby another before yougo, dear ... And ... Forgive _him_ when you can!"

LXXI

Lynette sat still upon the boulder, thinking, long after the red umbrellahad departed. While it was yet visible in the white-hot distance, hoveringlike some gaudy Brobdingnagian butterfly in advance of the whiteperambulator pushed by the white-clad nurse, the heads of two littleshabbyish, youngish people of the unmistakable Cockney tourist type roseover the edge of a pale sand-crest, fringed with wild chamomile andblazing poppies. And the female, a small draggled young woman in a largehat, trimmed with fatigued and dusty peonies, called out excitedly:

"Oh, William, it's 'er--it's 'er!"

"By Cripps, so it is!" came from the male companion of the batteredpeonies. He advanced with a swagger that was the unconvincing mask ofdiffidence assumed by an undersized, lean young man, in the chauffeur'sdoubtful-weather panoply of black waterproof jacket, breeches merginginto knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked cap, withabsurd brass ventilators, and powdered with many thicknesses and shades ofdust. His hair was dusty. The very eyelashes of the honest, ugly lighteyes, set wide apart in the thin wedge-shaped, tanned face that the absurdcap shaded, were dusty as a miller's; dust lay thick in all the chinks andcreases of his leading features, and a large black smudge of oily grimewas upon his wide upper lip, impinging upon his nose. Nor was hiscompanion much less dusty, though the checks of a travelling ulster ofgreen and yellow plaid, adorned with huge steel buttons, would haveadvertised the Kentish Town Ladies' Drapery Establishment whence theyemanated, through the medium of a Fleet Street fog. 

"Might we speak to you, ma'am?" The dusty young man respectfully touchedthe dusty peak of the cap with brass ventilators, and, with a shock ofsurprise, Lynette recognised Saxham's chauffeur. 

"Keyse!... It is Keyse!" She looked at him in surprise. 

"Keyse, ma'am. " He touched the cap again, and made a not ungracefulgesture, indicating the wearer of the weather-beaten peonies and thegreen-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', akind of Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to SouthWyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' the 'Ow Do. " He breathed hard, andrivulets of perspiration began to trickle down from under the preposterouscap, converting the dust that filled the haggard lines of his thin faceinto mud. "An' payin' our respects. " His eye slewed appealingly at hiscompanion, asking as plainly as an eye can, "What price that?" And theglance that shot back from the dusty shadow of the exhausted peoniesanswered, "Not bad by 'arf--for you!"

Lynette smiled at the little Cockney couple. The surprise that had checkedthe beating of her heart had passed. It was pleasant to see these facesfrom Harley Street. She answered:

"I understand. My husband has given you a holiday. Is he well?" Sheflushed, realising that it was pain to have to ask others for the news ofhim that he had denied her. "I mean because he has not written.... I havebeen feeling rather anxious. Was he quite well when you left?"

"'Was he----'? Yes, 'm!" W. Keyse shot out the affirmative with suchexplosive suddenness that the hand upon his arm must have nipped hard. 

"I am so glad!" Lynette turned to the young woman in the ulster, whoseface 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 thejourney, or some other cause. But they were honest and clear, and notunpretty 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 atGueldersdorp before the Siege. 

"Surely I know you? I must have known you at Gueldersdorp. " She added asMrs. 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 yourhusband.... I do not remember ever having seen him before he came to us atHarley Street. But his name comes back to me in connection with aletter"--she knitted her brows, chasing the vague, fleeting memory--"alove-letter that was sent to Miss Du Taine inside a chocolate-box, justwhen school was breaking up. It was you who smuggled the box in!"

"To oblige, bein' begged to by Keyse as a fyvour. 'E didn't know 'is ownmind--them d'ys!" explained Mrs. Keyse, sweeping her husband's scorchingcountenance with a glance of withering scorn. 

"Nor did you, " retorted W. Keyse, stung to defiance. "Walkin' out with aDopper you was--if it comes to that. " He spun round, mid-ankle deep insand, to finish. "An' you'd 'ave bin joined by a Dutch dodger and settleddown on a Vaal sheep-farm, if the order 'adn't come 'ummin' along the wirefrom 'Eadquarters that said, 'Jane 'Arris, you're to 'ave this bloke, andno other. Till Death do you part. Everlasting--Amen!'"

There was so strong a flavour of Church about the final sentence thatMrs. Keyse could not keep admiration out of her eyes. 

Her own eyes dancing with mirthful amusement, Lynette looked from one tothe other of the unexpected visitors, and, tactfully changing the subjectof the conversation, hoped that they were enjoying their trip?--a querywhich so obviously failed to evoke an expression of pleased assent ineither of the small, thin, wearied faces that she hastened to add:

"But perhaps this is the very beginning of your holiday? When did youleave London?"

"Yes'dy mornin' at 'arf-past six, " said W. Keyse, carefully avoiding hereyes. A spasm contracted the tired face under the dusty peonies. Theirwearer put her hand to the collar of the green-and-yellow ulster, andundid a button there. 

"'Yesterday morning at half-past six'!" Lynette repeated in wonder. 

"An' if the machine I 'ad on 'ire from a pal o' mine--chap what keeps asecond-hand shop for 'em in the Portland Road--'adn't 'ad everythink'appen to 'er wot _can_ 'appen to a three-an'-a-'arf 'orse-power BabyJunot wot 'ad seen 'er best d'ys before automobilin' 'ad cut its frontteeth, " said W. Keyse, with bitterness, "we would 'ave bin 'ere before! Asit is, we've left the car at a little 'Temperance Tavern' in S'rewsbury, kep' by a Methodist widder, 'oo thinks such new-fangled inventionssinful--an' only consented to take charge on account o' the Prophet Elijera-going up to 'Eaven in a fiery chariot--an' come on 'ere by tryne. "

Lynette looked at the man in silence. She even repeated after him, ratherdully:

"You came on here--by train?"

"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 youwalkin' 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, andgiving you the--the message what we've come 'ere to bring!"

"From my husband? From Dr. Saxham?"

W. Keyse shifted from one foot to the other, and coughed an embarrassedcough. 

"Not exac'ly from Dr. Saxham. "

Lynette looked at W. Keyse, and it seemed to her that the little sallowCockney face had Fate in it. A sudden terror whitened her to the lips. Shecried out in a voice that had lost all its sweetness:

"You have deceived me in saying he was well. Something has happened tohim! He is very ill, or----?"

She could not utter the word. Instinctively her eyes went past thestammering man to the woman who hung behind his elbow. And the wearer ofthe nodding peonies cried out:

"No, no! The Doctor isn't dead--or ill, to call ill!" She turned angrilyupon her husband. "See wot a turn you've give 'er, " she snapped. "Whycouldn't you up and speak out?"

W. Keyse was plainly nonplussed. He took off the giant cap with the brassventilators, and turned it round and round, looking carefully inside it. But he found no eloquence therein. 

"Why did I bring a skirt, I arsk, if I'm to do the patter?" He addressedhimself in an audible aside to Mrs. Keyse. "You might as well 'ave stoppedat 'ome with the nipper, " he added, complainingly, "if I ain't to 'ave nobetter 'elp than this!"

"You mean kindly, I know. " Lynette tried to smile in saying it. "There istrouble that you are here to break to me; I understand that very well. Please tell me without delay, plainly what has happened? I amvery--strong! I shall not faint--if that is what you are afraid of?"

She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into dry sobbing and criedout wildly:

"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'veseen him suffer, think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months!"

The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's emotion. Herhard-worked hands went out, entreating for him; her dowdy little figureseemed to grow tall, so impressive was the earnestness of her appeal. 

"Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common folks.... Flesh andblood's the syme, though, only covered wiv different skins. An' HumanNature's Human Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er! An' Lovemust 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to die! Burn a lampwivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It goes out!--You're left in thedark!"--Her homely gesture, illustrating the homely analogy, seemed tobring down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her fateful lips. 

"--Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 'Smashed!' you'llsay, '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 ofmy 'usband leanin' to kiss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' my babysmilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by.... Oh!--Oh!"--She choked and clutchedher bosom, and her voice rose in the throaty screech of incipienthysteria--"An' I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say thesewords to you!... An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with the bottle they'retryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is mam.... And my breasts as 'ard asstones, an' throbbin'!... Gawd 'elp me!" She panted and fought and choked, striving for speech. 

"Keep your hair on!" advised W. Keyse in a hoarse whisper. She turned onhim like a tigress, her eyes flaming under her straightened fringe. 

"Keep yours! I've come to speak, and speak I mean to--for the sake of thebest 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 Dutchsaloon-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 gitsingratitude--the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched!"

"Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken by this lofty flight of rhetoric. Ignoring him, she pursued her way. 

"You're a beautiful young lydy"--her tone softened from its strenuouspitch--"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 theDoctor--but it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, as thesayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 'art to bloody ragsagynst 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 youknow wot 'arm you're doing? You crooil byby! do you reckon Gawd gave youthe man to torture an' break an' spoil?"

A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. W. Keyse, stemmed thetorrent of her eloquence. 

"Dry up! You've said enough, " ordered her spouse. 

"Do not stop her!" Lynette said, without removing her fascinated eyes fromthe Pythoness. "Let her tell me everything that she has seen and knows. "

"I seen the Doctor--many, many times, " the woman went on, as W. Keysereluctantly ungagged her, "watchin' Keyse and me in our poor 'ome-lifetogether--with the eyes of a starvin' dog lookin' at a bone. You ought toknow 'ow starvin' 'urts.... " The strenuous voice soared and quivered. "Youlearned 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 thevery brutes He myde! Seems to you I talk low!... Well, there's nothinklower than Nature, _An' She Goes As 'Igh As 'Eaven_!" said EmigrationJane. 

The wide, sweeping gesture with which the shabby little woman took in landand sea and sky was quite noble and inspiring to witness. And now thetears were running down her face, and her voice lost its raucousshrillness, and became plaintive, and even soft. 

"I'm to tell you everythink I've seen, an' know about the Doctor.... I'veseen 'im age, age, a bit more every d'y. I've seen 'im waste, waste, withloneliness and trouble--never turnin' bitter on accounts of it--nevergrudgin' 'elp that 'e could give to man or woman or kid. Late on the nightyou 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. "

She sobbed, and dropped on her own knees in the sand among the pricklyyellow dwarf roses, weeping quite wildly, and wringing her hands. 

"The mornin' found 'im there. Six weeks ago that was; an' every nightsince then it's bin the syme gyme. Never the blinds left up since thatfirst time, but always light, and his shadow moves about. An' in my bed Iwake a-cryin' so, an' don't know which of 'em I'm cryin' for--the lonelyshadow or the lonely man----"

She could not go on, and W. Keyse took up the tale. 

"She's told you true. Maybe we'd never 'ave come but for the feelin' thatthings was workin' up to wot the pypers call a Domestic Tragedy. Or at thebest the break-up of a 'Ome. That's wot my wife she kep' on stuffin' intome, " said W. Keyse. "An'--strewth! when the Doctor sent for me an' pyde meorf ... Full wages right on up to the end o' the year, an' the syme toMorris an' the 'ouse'old staff, tellin' us e's goin' on a voyage, I s'ysto 'er, 'It's come!'"

"On a voyage! Where?"

"Oh, carn't you guess?" cried the woman on the ground, desperately lookingup with tragic eyes out of a swollen, tear-stained face. 

A mist came before Lynette's vision, and a sudden tremor shook her like areed. She swayed as though the ground had heaved beneath her, but shewould not fall. She choked back the cry that had risen in her throat. Thiswas the time to act, not the time to weep for him. She knelt an instant bythe woman on the ground, put her arms round her, kissed her wet cheek, andthen rose up, pale and calm and collected, saying to W. Keyse:

"Take her to the Plas. Ask for Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper. She is toprepare a room for you; you are to breakfast, and rest all day, and returnto London by the night mail. Good-bye! God bless you both! I was going tohim to-night at latest.... I am going to him now.... Pray that he is alivewhen I reach him! But he will be. God is good!"

Her face was transfigured by the new light that shone in it. She wasstrong, salient, resourceful--no longer the shy willowy girl. She wasmoving from them with her long swift step, when W. Keyse recoveredhimself. 

"'Old 'ard! Beg pardon, ma'am! but 'ave you the spondulics?" He blushedat her puzzled look, and amended: "'Ave you money enough upon you to paythe railway-fare?"

She lifted a little gold-netted purse attached to her neck-chain. 

"Five pounds. My maid is to follow. You know Marie? You will let hertravel with you?"

"Righto! But you'll want a wrap, coat or shawl, or somethink. Midnightbefore you gits in--if you catch this next up-Express.... Watto! Give us'old o' this 'ere, Missus! You can 'ave mine instead. "

"Please, no! I need nothing ... Nothing!" She stayed his savage attack onthe buttons of Mrs. Keyse's green-and-yellow ulster by holding out herwatch. "How much time have I left to catch the up-Express?"

"Eight minutes. By Cripps! you'll 'ave to run for it. "

She waved her white hand, and was gone, swiftly as a bird or a deer. 

"They've signalled!" W. Keyse announced after a breathless interval, during which the slender flying figure grew smaller upon the strainingsight. It vanished, and a thin, nearing screech announced the up-Express. His wife jumped up and clutched him. 

"William! Suppose she's lost it!"

"Garn! No fear!" scoffed W. Keyse. 

As he scoffed he was full of fear. They heard the clanking stoppage, theshrill whistle of departure. They looked breathlessly towards the greenwood that fringed the cliff-base under the Castle head. The iron way ranthrough the belt of trees. The Express rushed through, broke roaring upontheir unimpeded vision, devoured the gleaming line of metals that laybetween wood and tunnel, and left them with the taste of cindery steam intheir open mouths, and the memory of a white handkerchief waved at acarriage-window by a slender hand. 

"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!" Histriumphant face fell by the fraction of an inch. "What'll she do when shelands 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?"

"She'll do wot other young wimmen does under sim'lar circumstances, " saidMrs. Keyse enigmatically. She added: "If she 'as luck, she'll 'ave a manfor' er maid, an' if she 'as sense, she'll reckon the swop a good one!"

LXXII

Until the actual moment of their parting at Euston, Saxham had never fullyrealised the anguish of the last moment when Lynette's face should passfor ever out of his thirsting sight. 

It was going.... He quickened his long strides to keep up with it. He musthave called to her, for she came hurriedly to the corridor-window, hersweet cheeks suffused with lovely glowing colour, her sweet eyes shining, her small gloved hand held frankly out. He gripped it, uttered someincoherency--what, he could not remember--was shouted at by a porter witha greasy lamp-truck, cannoned heavily against a man with a basket ofpapers, awakened with a great pang to the knowledge that she was gone. Andthe great, bare, dirty, populous glass-hive of Euston, that has been theforcing-house of so many sorrowful partings, held another breaking heart. 

In the days that followed he saw his private patients as usual, andoperated upon a regular mid-week morning at St. Stephen's, whose seniorsurgeon had recently resigned. The rest of the time he spent in making hisarrangements. 

Sanely, logically, methodically, everything had been thought out. MajorWrynche was to be her guardian, co-trustee with Lord Castleclare, andexecutor of the Will. It left her, simply and unconditionally, everythingof which Saxham was possessed. She would live with the Wrynches until shemarried 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 clientalready found. Matters were progressing steadily. Very soon now thedesired end. 

His table-lamp burned through the nights as he made up his ledgers andsettled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable bookof the Past. Of all its sorrows and failures, its frantic follies and itsbesotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pageswas 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 keencrystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that isstretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently I will cutthe bow-string, and the bow shall have rest! Even if my once-boastedwill-power reasserted itself--even if I rose triumphant for the secondtime, cured of my vile craving, I do not the less owe my debt to the womanI have married. I promised her that I would die rather than fail her. Ifailed her! There is no excuse!"

LXXIII

The West End pavements were shining wet. Belated cabs spun homewards withsleepy revellers. Neat motor-broughams slid between the kerbs and roundedcorners at unrebuked excess-speeds, winking their blazing head-lights atdrowsy policemen muffled in oilskin capes. On all these accustomed thingsthe blue-white arc-lights shone. 

The most belated of all the hansom cabs in London stopped at the door ofthe 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. Afaint moon reeled northwards, hunted by sable shapes of screaming terror, pale Venus clinging to her tattered robe. The house was all black andsilent, a dead face with blinded windows. Did Saxham wake behind them? Ordid he sleep, not to wake again?

Lynette tried her latchkey. The unchained door swung backwards. She passedinto the house silently, a tall, slender shape. A light was shining underthe consulting-room door. Her heart leaped to greet it. She kissed herhand to it, and turned, moving noiselessly, and put up the chain of thehall-door. She felt for the switch of the electric light, and snapped iton. 

She was jarred and aching and weary with her journey; but it was a veryfair woman whom she saw reflected in the hall-mirror as she unpinned herhat and tossed it upon the hall-table, and passed on to theconsulting-room door--a woman whose face was strange to herself, with thatnew fire, and decision, and strength of purpose in it; a woman withglowing roses of colour in her cheeks, and eager, shining eyes. 

All through the long hours of the journey she had pictured him, herhusband, bending over his work, sleeping in his chair, or in his bed. Yetbehind these pictures was another image that started through their linesand colours dreadfully, persistently, and the image was that of a deadman. She thrust it from her for the hundredth time, as the door-handleyielded to her touch. She went into the room. Saxham was not there. 

The lamp shed its circle of light upon the consulting-room writing-table. The armchair stood aside, as though hastily pushed back.... Signs of hisrecent presence were visible. The fireplace was heaped high with the ashesof burned papers; the acrid smell of their burning hung still on the closeair. 

She glanced back at the table. All its drawers stood open. Ledgers andcase-books stood on it, neatly arrayed. A thick packet, heavily sealed, was addressed in Saxham's small, firm handwriting to Major BinghamWrynche, Plas Bendigaid, Herion, South Wales. There were other letters inan orderly pile. 

She glanced at the uppermost. It bore her own name. She took it and kissedit, and put it in her breast. There was an enclosure, heavy, and of ovalshape. She wondered what it might be? As she did so, she looked at theletter hers had covered, and read what was written on the cover in thesmall, firm hand:

"'To the Coroner. ' ... Merciful God!... "

The cry broke from her without her knowledge. The room rang with it as sheturned and ran. With the nightmare-feeling of running up dream-stairs, offeeling nothing tangible under her footsteps, with the dreadful certaintythat of all those crowding pictures of him seen through the long hours inthe racing Express, only the one that she had not dared to look at was thereal, true picture of Saxham now. 

Higher, higher, in a series of swift rushes, she mounted like thedream-woman in her dream. From solid cubes of darkness to greylanding-glimmers. To the third-story bedroom that had never been done up. In the company of Little Miss Muffet, the Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, andGeorgy Porgy, would he be lying, cold and ghastly, with a wound across histhroat?

But the room was unoccupied; the bed had not been slept in. Pale dawnpeeping in at the corners of the scanty blinds assured her of that. Wheremight she find him? Where seek him?

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? Bywhose vacant pillow has his broken heart sought vain relief in tears?

She passed downstairs, gliding noiselessly over the thick carpets, andwent into the room it had been his pleasure to furnish and decorate as hiswife's boudoir. Its seashell pinkness was merged in darkness, faintlystriped by the grey dawn-glimmer, but the door of the bedroom that openedfrom it was ajar. Light edged the heavy fold of the portière curtain andmade 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. Hisheavily-shouldered black figure made a blotch upon the dainty white andazure draperies; his arms were outflung upon the silken counterpane. 

A rush of thanks sprang from her full heart to Heaven as she heard theheavy sighing breaths that proved him living yet. 

She would have gone to him and touched him then, but the sound of hisvoice took courage from her, and drew her strength away. He spoke, liftinghis 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 wasfamiliar. She comprehended that a soul in mortal anguish was speakingaloud to God. 

"I cannot live!" groaned Saxham. "I am weary, body and spirit. What I haveborne I have borne in the hope of laying my burden down. Everything isready! I have cleared the way; my loins are girded for departure. All Iasked was to lie down in the earth and wake again no more. All Iasked--and what happens? My dead faith quickens again in me. I must bow myneck once more to the yoke of the Inconceivable! I must perforce believein 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, andsuffer also, and pass to the Life Eternal when thine hour comes!' OGod!--my God! have I not earned deliverance? Have I not borne anguishenough?"

His fierce, upbraiding voice died out in inarticulate mutterings. His headfell forwards upon his arms. Presently he lifted it, and cried out, as ifreplying to some unseen speaker:

"If a self-sought death entails eternal torment, am I not in hell hereupon earth? How else, when to live is to hold her in bondage, knowing thatshe longs and pines to be free? And yet, to go out into the dark and leaveher! never again to see her! never more to feel the light of her eyes flowinto me! Never to hear her voice--to be of my own deed separate from herthroughout Eternity--that were of all the Judgments that are Thine toscourge with the most terrible that Thou couldst lay upon my soul!"

A sob tore him. He moaned out brokenly:

"Give me a sign, if Thou art indeed merciful! Show me that there isrelenting in Thee! Grant me the hope, at least, that my great renunciationmay open a gate by which, after cycles of expiatory suffering, I may atlast pass through to where she dwells in Thy Brightness. Give me to seeher face with a smile on it--to touch her hand--after all--after all! Thelips I have never kissed, may they not be mine, O God--mine one day inHeaven? If Thou art Love, there should be love there. "

She glided over the deep carpet, stretched out a timid hand, and touchedhis shoulder. He lifted his great square head, and slowly looked round. The black hair, mingled with white, clung damp to the broad forehead. Hiseyes were bloodshot, strained, and haggard, and wild. Sorrow was charteddeep upon the haggard features. Amazement struck them into folly as hestarted up, stammering out her name, and clutching for support at thebrass rail that was at the foot of the bed. 

"Lynette! You.... It is you?... " He shook, staring at her with dilatedeyes. 

"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. 

"I am not ill. How is it that you are here?"

He lifted a hand to his strained and smarting eyes and moved it to and frobefore them. He was staring at her still, but with pupils that were lessdilated, and the veins upon his broad forehead were no longer purple now. 

"Have I talked nonsense? I had dozed, and you startled me coming uponme.... Why have you?... " He strove to speak and look as usual. "Hasanything happened, that you have come back?"

She pressed her hands together, wrestling for collected thought and clear, explicit utterance, though the room rocked about her, and the floor seemedto rise and fall beneath her feet. 

"Something happened. I have come back from Wales to tell you that I ... Icannot live upon your friendship any longer! I--I must have more, or Ishall die!"

He knew all. She had met the man whose look and breath and touch hadrevealed to her her own misery. Chained to her harsh yoke-fellow; deniedLove's bread and wine of life! He looked at her, and answered coldly:

"You shall not die. You shall be free! If you had waited untilto-morrow----"

"It is already day, " she told him, and, as though to confirm her, aneighbouring steeple-clock clanged twice. He moved uneasily as his eyesfell on the disordered coverlet, half dragged from the bed and trailing onthe floor. They shunned hers as he said, a dark flush rising through hishaggard pallor:

"I beg your pardon for the intrusion here. But you were away.... I couldnot sleep, and the house was lonely.... Is your maid with you? Surely youare not alone?"

She bent her head with a faint smile. 

"Quite alone. I did not wish for a companion. "

"It was not wise----" he began, and took a step door-wards. "I will callone of the servants, " he added, and was going, when he remembered, andstopped, saying hoarsely:

"I forgot. They are gone. I have sent them all away!"

She looked at him in silence. He continued:

"I have paid and dismissed them. You will think it curious--you will knowthe reason later--I have written to you to explain. "

"I found upon your table a letter addressed to me, " she said. He started, knitting his black brows. 

"You have not read it?" he asked, breathing quickly. 

"Not yet. " She touched her bosom, where the letter lay. "I have it here. "

"Please do not open it! Give me back the letter!" He stretched out hishand to take it, and breathed more freely when she drew it out and gave itto him. And a sweet wild pang shot through him; the paper was so warm andfragrant from the nest where it had lain so short a time. But he masteredthe 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 hethrust the letter in his coat-pocket:

"There is something that by right is yours. "

"Mine?... " She unrolled the tissue-paper, and the brilliants that were setabout the miniature sent spurts of white and green and rosy fire betweenthe slender, ivory-hued fingers that turned it about. She gave a littlegasping cry of recognition:

"It is--me! How could you have managed----?" Then, as the sweet grey eyesof fair dead Lucy smiled up into her own: "I do not know how I am sure ofit, " she said, with a catching in her breath, "but this must be mymother!"

Saxham bent his head in answer to her look. His eyes bade her question nofurther. She faltered:

"May I not know how it came into your hands?"

"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 Ican only surmise this. I cannot positively say. "

"You speak of my father. " Her face was quivering, her eyes entreated. "Tell me what you know of him, and of"--she kissed the miniature, andheld it to her cheek--"of my mother?"

"Your father, " said Saxham, "was an officer and a gentleman. The surnamethat you exchanged for mine, poor child! was really his. His Christianname is engraved there"--he pointed to the inner rim of the band ofbrilliants --"with that of the lady who was your mother. She wasbeautiful; she was tender and devoted; she loved your father well enoughto give up every social aim and every worldly advantage for his sake. Shedied loving him. He died--I should not wonder if he died of sorrow for herloss. For hearts can break, though the Faculty deny it!"

He swung about to leave the room. She was murmuring over her new-foundtreasure. 

"'Lucy to Richard' ... '_Richard_' ... " she repeated. A wave of roseatecolour broke over her with the memory of the hand that had touched and thevoice that had spoken to her in her Heaven-sent vision of the previousmorning, when the Beloved had come back from Paradise to lay a charge uponher child. 

"My father knew the Mother?" It was not a question, it was a statement ofthe fact. Saxham wondered at the assured tone, as he told her:

"It is true. They had been friends--in the world they both gave upafterwards--the man for the love that is of earth, the woman for the loveof Heaven. "

"She never told me then, but she must have known who I was from thebeginning, " Lynette ventured. "She gave me the surname of Mildare becauseit belonged to me! Do not you think so too?"

Saxham made no answer. He swung about to leave the room. She slipped theminiature into her bosom, where his letter had lain, and asked:

"Where are you going?"

He answered, with his eyes avoiding hers:

"You have been travelling all night; you must be tired and hungry. Go tobed and try to rest, while I forage for you downstairs. You shall notsuffer for lack of attendance. I am quite a good cook, as you shall findpresently. When you have eaten you must sleep, and then we will talk ofyour returning home to your friends. "

"Are not you my chief friend?" she asked. "Is not this my home?"

He avoided her look, replying awkwardly:

"Hardly, when there are no servants to wait upon you!"

"May I not know why you sent them away?"

He said, his haggard profile turned to her, a muscle of his pale cheektwitching:

"I am going away myself: that is the reason why. All debts are paid. Ihave completed all the arrangements, entailing the minimum of annoyanceupon you. "

"May I not come with you upon your voyage?"

His eyes were still averted as his grey lips answered:

"No! I am going where you cannot come!"

"Owen, tell me where you are going?"

Her tone of entreaty knocked at the door of his barred heart. He wincedpalpably. "Excuse me, " he said, and took another step towards the door. She stopped him with:

"You are not excused from answering my question!"

"I am going, first to get you some breakfast, " said Saxham curtly, "andthen to find a woman to attend upon you here. "

"I need no breakfast, thanks! I want no attendant!"

"You must have someone, " said Saxham brusquely. 

"I must have your answer, " she said in a tone quite new to him. "What isyour secret purpose? What are you hiding from me in that closed hand?"

He moved his left hand slightly, undoing the fingers and giving a glimpseof the empty palm. 

"Not that hand. The other!" She pointed to the clenched right. How tallshe had grown, and how womanly! "Love has done this!" was his achingthought. She seemed a princess of faëry, fresh from a bath of magicwaters. Her very gait was changed, her every gesture seemed new. Purposeand decision and quiet self-control breathed from her; her voice had tonesin it unheard of him before. Her eyes were radiant as he had never yetseen them, golden stars, centred and rimmed with night, shining in a paleglory that was her face.... 

"All that for the other man! Well, let him have it!" thought Saxham, andinvoluntarily glanced at his clenched right hand. 

"Please open it and show me what you have there!" she begged him. 

Her tones were full of pleading music. His face hardened grimly towithstand. His muscular fingers closed in a vice-like grip over what heheld. But she moved to him with a whisper of soft trailing garments, andtook the shut hand in both her own. She bent her exquisite head and kissedit, and Saxham's fingers of iron were no more than wax. Something clickedin 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 hisdeadly intention to her eyes. She cried out and snatched it, and flung itaway from her. It fell soundlessly on the soft carpet, and rolled under achair. 

"Owen! You would have ... Done that!... "

Divine reproach was to her face. He snarled:

"It would have been done by now if you had not come back!"

"I thank our Lord I came!... It is His doing! Once He had sent meknowledge, I could not stay away. For, Owen ... I have made adiscovery.... "

"Yes. " He laughed harshly. "As I knew you would one day! Never was I foolenough to doubt what would come!"

She put both her hands to her lips and kissed them, and held them out tohim. He cried:

"What is this? What interlude of folly are you playing? It was yourfreedom 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!"

"He is my choice!" Her bosom heaved to the measure of her quickenedbreathing. The splendid colour rose over the edge of the lace scarf thatwas loosely knotted about her sweet throat, and surged to the puretemples, and climbed to the line of the rich red-brown hair. 

"You will soon be free to tell the world so. Marry him, " said Saxham, "andforget the dreary months dragged out beside the sot! For I who promisedyou I would never fail you; I who told you so confidently that I wascured of the accursed liquor-crave; I--well, I reckoned without myhost----"

His laugh jarred her heartstrings. She cried out hotly:

"You did not deceive me wilfully! You believed what you said!"

"I believed ... And the first snare set for me tripped up my heels, " saidSaxham. "I paid the penalty of being cocksure. And I had not the commondecency to die then and release you. True, there were reasons--they areswept away now!... I sent you to Wales that I might be free of the sightof you, that I might end the sordid comedy and have done. You have cometoo soon! There's no more to be said than that!"

"There is this to be said. "

She came towards him, her tender eyes wooing his. Her lips were parted, her breath came in sighs. 

"What you have told me is sorrowful, but not hopeless. You were curedonce--you will be cured again! And I will help you--comfort you--sufferwith you and pray for you. You shall never be alone, my husband, anymore!"

He was melting. His hard blue eyes had the softening gleam of tears. Hestretched out his hands and took hers, holding them close. He stooped, andlet his burning lips rest on the cool, fragrant flesh, and said tenderly:

"Dear saint, sweet would-be martyr, you _shall_ not sacrifice your longlife's happiness to me. Rather than live on sane and sober, to see youfamishing 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, mychild!"

She winced as though he had stabbed her, and cried out:

"Why do you harp continually upon your death? I will not listen to you! IfI do not desire to be 'free, ' as you term it, what barrier is therebetween us now?"

He said, amazed:

"What barrier? Do you ask what barrier? Your love--for that other man!"

"There is no other man!" She looked him full in the eyes now, with alovely colour dyeing her sweet cheeks, and an exquisite quiveringwistfulness about her mouth. She moved so near that her fragrant breathfanned warm upon his eyelids. "There is no man but you--there will neverbe any other man!... Dearest"--her hands were on his shoulders; her bosomrose and fell close to his broad breast--"I have been very slow atlearning. But--Owen!--I love you as your wife should love!"

"You cannot!" He stepped back sharply, and her hands fell from him. "Youshall not! I am not worthy. I thought so once.... I know better now. Donot deceive yourself. Love cannot be compelled at will, and I have ceasedto wish--to desire yours! All I want now is rest and silence andforgetfulness--where alone they may be found!" He drew a breath ofweariness. 

"If you have ceased to wish for love from me, that is my punishment, " shesaid, very pale. "For without yours I cannot live! God hears me speak thetruth!"

"Lynette!... "

He swayed like a tree cut through and falling. She caught his hands, anddrew them to her heart. 

"I have been blind and deaf and senseless. I am changed, I am altered--Iam awake at last! I know how great and precious is the love you have givenme.... Do not tell me it is mine no longer! Owen, if you do that, it is Iwho shall die!"

A sob tore its way through him. His great frame quivered. His mask-likeimmobility broke up ... Was gone. Her own tears falling, she stretched herarms to him; yet while his eyes devoured her, his arms hungered for her, he delayed, knitting his brows. She caught a word or two, whisperedbrokenly. He asked himself: "Can this be Love?"

"It is Love! Owen, I kissed you one night when I found you sleeping! Whenwill you kiss me back again?"

He cried out wildly upon God, and fell down upon his knees before her. Hereached out groping, desperate arms, and snatched her close. His deep, shuddering breaths vibrated through her; her own knees were trembling, herbosom in storm. She swayed like a young palm. Nearer--nearer! he felt herhands about his neck, her tears upon his face.... 

"Dear love, dearest husband, I have a message for you! Owen, shall I tellyou what it is?"

"Tell me, my heart's beloved, " said Saxham in a whisper. 

Their looks united in azure fire and golden. Their breath mingled, theirlips were very near. She felt his strength about her; he drank in hersweetness. The kiss, the supreme boon, was as yet withheld. 

She whispered.... 

"I awakened in the light of the early morning--the morning of the day Icame to you. She sat beside me--the Mother, Owen! her dear hand on myheart, her dear eyes waiting for mine. She stooped and kissed me ... Itwas 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!'"

His arms wrapped round her, gathered her, enfolded her. His scalding tearswetted 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 itscoils, fell in a heavy silken rope upon his shoulder ... Their lips met inthe nuptial, sacramental kiss....