His eyes were very kind.
"Bingo knows better!"
Her laugh did not jangle this time.
"Lady Grasby, that vitriol-tongued water-nymph, assomebody clever once called her, said that if Bingo got killed by any chance, I should sit down and write a gossipy descriptive article, dealing with his military career, married life, and last moments, before I ordered my widow's-weepers. Horrible things! They've come in again, too! Talking of gossip, which I know you only pretend to despise, I found the son of a mutual acquaintance dying in the Hospital here. You know the Bishop of H ...?"
"His eldest son, Major Fraithorn, was my senior when I was Assistant Military Secretary at Gibraltar in '90. And the Bishop is quite a dear crony of my mother's."
"The Bishop," she said, "was always a person of excellent good taste—except when he cut off his second son, Julius, with two hundred a year for turning Anglican, wearing a soft hat and Roman collars, and joining the staff at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street West as Junior Curate."
"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 be content with running at every red rag of Ritualism that flutters in his own diocese, but keeps up the character of belligerent Broad Churchman by writing pamphlets and asking questions in the House of Lords with reference to affairs which are the business of other people. According to him, the red cassocks of the acolytes at St. Margaret's are cut out of the very skirts of the Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and his curates—they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice—are wolves in wool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the liberties of the Church.Punchpublished a cartoon of the Bishop shutting his eyes and charging at a windmill in a cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string of Protestant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, Scotland, and Wales this season, with acetylene-lantern pictures from Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' and a lecturer to point the morals and adorn the tales.... But if he could see his Mary's boy to-day, he'd put up with any amount of felt-basin hats and Roman collars, and incense and altar-genuflections wouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh! it's been a sore with me this many a year, but when I saw him to-day I said,'Thank God I never had a child!' Because to have seen a boy or girl grow up and wither away as that beautiful young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must shudder to look back upon, even when she has found her lost one again in Heaven."
There was genuine feeling in her voice, usually loud, harsh, and tuneless. The bright black bird-eyes had a gleam as of tears. He turned to her with sympathetic interest.
"The Bishop will be obliged to you for finding this out. No hint of it had reached me. I am due at the Hospital in the morning, and we'll see if something can't be done for the boy."
She shook her head.
"It's a case of tuberculous lung-disease. He developed it in the Clergy House at St. Margaret's, and made light of it, supposing or pretending that the cough and wasting and difficulty of breathing meant bronchial trouble, the result of London fogs. These young people who don't value Life—glorious gift that it is! When he broke down utterly, at the end of a rampant campaign against Intemperance—he wouldn't be the Bishop's son if he didn't gall the withers of some hobby-horse or other—the doctors agreed there was nothing for him but South Africa."
He frowned, knowing how many sufferers had died of that deadly prescription. 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 until the end. And the end is coming—in Gueldersdorp Hospital—with giant strides." She blinked. "They've isolated him in a small detached ward. He has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart-nurse is in love with him, unless I'm mistaken in the symptoms of the complaint. And he looks like St. Francis of Assisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty—and coughs—fit to tear your heart. B'rrh!" she shuddered.
He repeated: "I'll see what can be done to-morrow. These cases are deceptive. There may be a gleam of hope."
"There is one doubt about the case which might infer a hope. I don't know what discoveries the London doctors made, but I wormed out of the chart-nurse, who plainly adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorp can't scare up a bacillus for the life of them."
His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his tone was jesting.
"You're thrown away on mere journalism. Criminal Investigation or Secret Intelligence would offer wider fields for your abilities."
"Wait!" she said, her beady eyes black diamonds. "I shall hope to prove one day that an English woman-journalist can be as useful as a Boer spy in the matter of useful information. Why, why am I not a man? You only don't trust me because I am a woman."
He had touched the rankling point in her ambition. He applied balm as he knew how.
"Your being a woman may have made all the difference—for Fraithorn. I shall set Taggart of the R.A.M.C. at him to-morrow; the Major's a bit of a crack at pulmonary cases. And he shall consult with Saxham, and——"
"Saxham." Her eyebrows were knitted. "I thought I knew the names of your Medical 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 lots more. 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 an innocent man would have stopped and faced the music, and not beaten a retreat with the Wedding March almost sounding in his ears. But—who knows? You have met his brother, Captain Saxham, of the —th Dragoons? It was he who stepped into the matrimonial breach, and married the young woman."
"The young woman?"
"His brother's fiancée—an heiress of the Dorsetshire Lee-Haileys, and rather a pretty-faced, silly person, with a penchant for French novels and sulphonal tabloids. I always shall believe that she liked the handsome Dragoon best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being—under the cloud of acquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the dear Irish call 'the back of her hand.'"
"The better luck for him!"
"It was mere instinct to let go when the man was dragging them both under water," 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 some of these ladies. One of them is an old friend."
"I know whom you mean. If I didn't, her glare of envy would have enlightened me. Did I tell you thatIencountered an old friend—or, at least, 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 framed in a starched whiteguimpeand floating black veil—belonged to my Past in 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 other High Church contraptions, the Matron had got him on the Hospital books as a Roman Catholic. And, consequently, when my friend looked in to visit a day-scholar who was to be operated on for adenoids—I've no idea what they are, but a thing with a name like that would naturally have to be cut out of one—she was told of this poor fellow, and has shed the light of her countenance on him occasionally since. Yesterday was one of the occasions, and Heavens! what a countenance it is even now! What a voice, what eyes, what a manner! I believed I gushed a bit.... She met me as though we'd only parted last week. Nuns are wonderful creatures:she'sunique, even as a nun."
He said: "I believe I had the honour of meeting the lady of whom you speak when I called at the Convent yesterday afternoon. A remarkable, noble, and most interesting personality."
Lady Hannah nodded. "All that. But you ought to have seen her at eighteen. We were at the High-School, Kensington, together, I a brat of ten in the Juniors' Division, she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carried everything before her there, and emerged with a B.A. Degree Certificate in the days when it was thought hardly proper for a woman to go about with such a thing tacked to her skirts. And all the students idolised her, and the male lecturers worshipped the ground she trod. And when she was presented—what a sensation! They called her the 'Irish Rose,' and 'Deirdre,' for her skin of cream and her grey eyes and billowing clouds of black hair. Society raved of her for three seasons, until the fools went even madder about that little Hawting woman—a stiff starched martinet's frisky half—who bolted with the man my glorious Biddy had given her beautiful hand to. And the result! She—who might have married an Ambassador and queened it in Petersburg with the best of 'em—she's in a whitewashed Convent, superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikander schoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathematics, calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, and the twiddle of the globes. He has something to answer for, that old crony of yours!"
Lady Hannah stopped for breath, giving the listener his opportunity.
"My dear lady, you have told me a great deal without enlightening me in the least. Who is my 'crony,' and who was your friend?"
Lady Hannah opened her round beady eyes in astonishment.
"Haven't I told you? She is—or was—Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, sister of that high-falutin' little donkey the present Earl of Castleclare, who came into the title and married at eighteen. His wife has means, I understand. The old Dowager Duchess of Strome, a bosom friend of my mother's, was Biddy's aunt, and Cardinal Voisey, handsome being! is an uncle on the distaff side. All the Catholic world and his wife were at her taking of the veil of profession nineteen years ago. The Pope's Nuncio, the Cardinal-Bishop of Mozella, officiated, and the Comtesse de Lutetia was there with the Duc d'O.... They didn't cut off her beautifulblack hair, though we outsiders were on tiptoe to see the thing done. I don't think I ever cried so much in my life. Had hysterics—real—when I got home, and mother scolded fearfully. The Duke of C—— came with his equerry, and after the cloister-gates had shut—crash—on beautiful Biddy in her bridal laces, and white satin, and ropes of pearls, and we were all waiting, breathless, for her to come back in the habit, I heard the Duke say, not that the dear old thing ever meant to be profane: 'By God! General, I'm damned if Captain Mildare hasn't made Heaven an uncommonly handsome present!' And the man he said that to was the husband of the very woman Dicky had run away with not quite twelve months before. Mercy on us!"
"Good Heavens!" the listener had cried and started to his feet, the dark blood rushing to his forehead. The ivory-pale, mutely-suffering face against the background of whitewashed wall flashed back upon his memory, in a circle of dazzling light. He saw her again, leaning against the door of the chapel as he told her the cruel news. He heard her saying:
"Are you at liberty to tell me the date of Captain Mildare's death? For I know—one who was also his friend—and would take an interest in the particulars."
The particulars! And he had bludgeoned the woman with them—stabbed her to the heart, poor soul, unknowing....
He was blameless, but he could not forgive himself.... He drove his teeth down savagely into his lower lip, and muttered an excuse, and went away abruptly, leaving Lady Hannah staring. He took leave soon after, and went to his own quarters with the D.A.A.G., while her ladyship, with infinite relief, getting rid of her feminine guests, repaired with Captain Bingham Wrynche, familiarly known to a wide circle of friends as "Bingo," and several chosen spirits to the billiard-room, for snooker-pool, and whisky-and-soda.
"The grey wolf is on the prowl to-night," said one of the chosen spirits, as he chalked Lady Hannah's cue with fastidious care. He winked across the table at Bingo, sunset-red with dinner, champagne, and stroke-play.
"S'st!" sibilated the Captain warningly, winking in the direction of his wife. Lady Hannah, her little thumb cocked in the air, her round, birdlike eyes scientifically calculating angles, paused before making a rapid stroke, to say:
"Don't be cheaply mysterious, my dear man. Of course, the Colonel visits the defences and outposts and so forth regularly after dark. It's part of the routine, surely?"
"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 Guard in red neckties, solar topees and bandoliers; with the Rifles' Band, and D Squadron of the Baraland Irregular Horse. Isn't that the routine, Beauvayse? You're more up in these things than me, and I fancy there was a change in the order for the evenin'."
"Rather!" assented Beauvayse, continuing, to the rapture of winking Bingo. "On reaching the earthworks where our obsoletes are mounted, the townies will now fire a salute of blank, without falling down; and the Band have instructions to play 'There's Death in the Old Guns Yet.' Those were the only material changes, except that sentries will for the future wear fly- and fever-belts outside instead of in."
"So that he can see at a glance," Lady Hannah said approvingly, "that all precautions are being taken. Very sensible, I call it."
"Ha, ha, haw!" Bingo's joyous explosion revealed to the outraged woman the fact that she had been "had." "Haw, haw! What a beggar you are to rot, Beauvayse! and that makes five to us."
Lady Hannah, vibrating with womanly indignation, had made her long-delayed stroke, missed the pyramid ball, and sent Pink spinning into the pocket. She threw aside her cue and rubbed her fingers angrily. She hated losing, and they were playing for shilling lives and half-a-crown on the game.
"You—schoolboys!" She threw them a glance ofdisdain, as Beauvayse, his seraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged over the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely to swallow such afeuille de chouwithout even oil and vinegar? For pity's sake, leave off winking, Bingo! It's a habit that dates back to the era when women wore ringlets and white book-muslin, and men sported shaggy white beaver hats and pegtop trousers, and all the world read the novels of Lever and Dickens."
"Have Lever and Boz gone out?" asked Beauvayse, pocketing his pyramid ball. "I play at Blue." He hit Blue scientifically off the cushion and went on. "Read 'em myself over and over again, and find 'em give points in the way of amusement to the piffle Mudie sends out. Not that I pretend to be a judge of literature. Only know when I'm not bored, you know. You to play, Lord Henry."
But the senior officer of the Staff, Lady Hannah's partner, had vanished. Somebody passing the open window of the billiard-room had whistled a bar or so of a particularly pleasant little tune. Another man took Lord Henry's place, and the game went on, but never finished, for one by one, after the same quiet, unobtrusive fashion, the male players melted away.... Left alone, Lady Hannah, feeling uncommonly like the idle boy in the nursery-story who asked the beasts and birds and insects to play with him, betook herself to bed.
The arrogance of men! she thought as she hung her transformation Pompadour coiffure on the looking-glass. How cool, how unshaken in their conviction of superiority, in spite of all deference, courtesy, pretence of consideration for Queen Dolt.... But she would show them all one of these days, what could be achieved by a unit of the despised majority....
"I should like to see him at night-work," she said afterwards, when, very late, her Bingo appeared in the shadow of the conjugal mosquito-curtains.
"You wouldn't," was her martial lord's reply.
"Wouldn't what?" asked Lady Hannah, sitting up in tropical sleeping attire.
Bingo, applying her cold cream to a sun-cracked nose, replied to her reflection in the looking-glass:
"You wouldn't see him. Like the flea in the American story, when you've got your finger on him is the time he isn't there."
"But he is there for you?"
Bingo shook his head, holding the candle near the glass and regarding his leading 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 at the British Museum. Piff, what a smell of burning! It's the hair-thing hangin' on the lookin'-glass."
Male Society began to practise the shedding of its final g's, you will remember, about the time that Female Society took to wearing transformation coiffures. Lady Hannah, her active little figure rustling in the thinnest of silk drapery, jumped nimbly out of bed, and rushed to save her property.
"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 howhemanages—to attain invisibility?"
Bingo struck an attitude and began to declaim:
"As the sable shades of Night were broodin' over the beleaguered town of Gueldersdorp, the manly form of a mysterious bearded stranger in grey reach-me-downs and a felt slouch might have been observed directin' its steps from one to the other of the various outlyin' pickets posted on the veld ..."
"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 eye concealed by the pillow winked; for he had told her the absolute truth; and woman-like, that was just what she wouldn't swallow, as he said to Beauvayse next morning.
"The Town Guard," according to W. Keyse, Esquire, who kept a Betts' Journal, one shilling net, including Rail and Ocean Accident Insurance, was "a kind of amachoor copper, swore in to look after the dorp, stand guard, and do sentry-go, and tumble to arms, just as the town dogs leave off barkin', an' the old gal in the room next yours is startin' to snore like a Kaffir sow."
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 swing looking-glass that graced the chest of drawers, the most commanding article of furniture in his room at Filliter's Boarding-House. It was Mrs. Filliter who snored in the room on the other side of the thin partition. Like the immortal Mrs. Todgers, she was harassed by the demands of her resident gentlemen in connection with gravy; but, unlike Mrs. Todgers, she never supplied even browned and heated water as an equivalent. And the mutton was wonderfully lean, and the fowls, but for difference in size, might have been ostriches, they were so wiry of muscle, especially as regarded the legs. A time was to come when Mrs. Filliter was to cook shrapnel-killed mule and exhausted cavalry charger for her gentlemen, and when they were to bear up better than most sufferers from this tough and lasting form of diet, because of not having previously been pampered, as Mrs. Filliter expressed it, with delicacies and kickshaws.
The bandolier was heavy upon the thin shoulders and hollow chest of a pale young Cockney, who had drifted down from Southampton in the steerage, and roared and rattled up from Cape Town by the three foot six inch gauge railway, eight hundred and seventy miles, to Gueldersdorp, that he might find his crown of manhood waiting there. The second-hand Sam Browne belt was distinctly good; the yellow puttees, worn with his own brown lace-up boots, took trouble to adjust. And it was barely possible, even by standing the small swing looking-glass on the floor,and tilting it excessively, to see how one's legs looked. W. Keyse suffered from the conviction that these limbs were over-thin. Behind the counter of a fried-fish shop in High Street, Camden Town, serving slabs of browned hake, and skate, and penn'orths of fried eels and chips to the hungry customers who surge in tempestuously to be fed on their homeward way from the Oxford or the Camden Hall of Varieties, or the theatre at the junction of Gower Street and the Hampstead Road—one develops acuteness of observation, one gains experience, there being always the bloke who cuts and runs without paying, or eats and shows reversed trouser-pockets in default of settlement, to deal with.... But one does not develop muscle, the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to possess. When he went into the printing-business and bent all day over the formes of type in the composing-room, hand-setting up the columns of the North LondonHalf-penny Herald, to the tune of three-and-eightpence a day, the hollow chest grew hollower, and he developed a "corf." The physician in charge of the out-patients' department at University College Hospital said there was lung-trouble, and a man at the printing-office who had never been there, said South Africa was the cure for that. And W. Keyse had thirty pounds in the Post-Office Savings Bank, earned by the sweat of a brow which was his best feature, and the steamships were advertising ten-pound third-class single fares to Cape Town. One of the Societies for the Aid of Emigrants would have helped him, but while W. Keyse 'ad a bit of 'is own, no Blooming Paupery, said he, for him! His sole living relative, an aunt who inhabited one of a row of ginger-brick Virginia-creeper-clad almshouses "over aginst 'Ighgyte Cimitery," sniffled a little when he called to say good-bye, bringing in a parting present of a half-pound of Liphook's Luscious Tea and a screw of snuff.
"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, bestowing an amorous ogle upon Lobster, who sat well forward upon a backless Windsor chair, sucking the silver top of hisswagger cane,—Lobster, who was six foot high and in the Grenadier Guards, and had supplanted William in 'Melia's affections, for they 'ad used to walk out regularly on Sundays and holidays before Lobster came along.... How William loved Lobster now! Why, but for him he might have been married to 'Melia to-day;—doomed to tread in the ways of commonplace, ordinary married life, fated to live and die without once having peeped into Paradise, without ever having looked upon the 'only woman in the world!' Greta, of the glorious golden pigtail, the entrancing figure and the bewitching, twinkling, teasing eyes of blue!
Suppose—only suppose—the silent threatening Thing across the border, jewelled with the glowing Argus-eyes of many camp-fires, conjecturable in dark masses flecked with the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes giving out the dull gleam of iron or the sparkle of steel, were to choose this, W. Keyse's first night on guard, for an attack! Even to the inexperience of W. K. the sand-bagged earthworks built about Gueldersdorp, the barricades of trek-waggons and railway-trucks blocking up the roads debouching on the veld, the extending lines of trenches, the watchdog forts, the sentinelled pickets, the noiseless, continually moving patrols, all the various parts of the marvellous machinery of defence, controlled by one master-hand upon the levers, would count for nothing against that overwhelming onrush of armed thousands, that flood of men dammed up above the town, and waiting the signal to roll down and overwhelm her, and—— Cripps! what a chance to make a glorious, heroic splash in Greta's sight! Die, perhaps, in saving her from them Dutchies. To be sure, she, divine creature, was a Dutchy too. But no matter—a time would come ...
Confident in the coming of that time, W. Keyse took the brown rifle tenderly from the corner, and replaced the meagre little looking-glass upon the yellow chest of drawers. In the act of bestowing a final glance of scrutiny upon his upper lip, whose manly crop had unaccountably delayed, he caught sight of a cheap paper-covered book lying beside the tin candlestick whose tallow dip had aided perusal of the volume o' nights. The red surged up in his thin cheeks as he picked up the thing. There were horrible woodcutsin it, coloured with liberal splashes of red and blue and yellow, and the print contained matter more lurid still. Vice mopped and mowed and slavered, obscene and hideous, within those gaudy covers.
He looked round the mean, poor, ugly room, the volume in his hand; a photograph of the dubious sort leered from the wall beside the bed....
"If they rushed us to-night, an' I got shot in the scrap, an' they brought me back 'ere, dyin', and She came ... an' sawthat...!" His ears were scarlet as he dashed at the leering photograph and tore it down. Oh, W. Keyse, it is pitiful to think you had to blush, but good to know you had not forgotten how to. There was a little rusty fireplace in the room. W. Keyse burned something in it that left nothing but a feathery pile of ashes, and a little shameful heap of mud in the corner of a boy's memory, before he hurried to the Town Guardhouse, where other bandoliers were mustering, and fell in. As though the Powers deigned to reward an act of virtue on the very night of its performance, he was posted by his picket in the shadow of the high corrugated iron fence of the tree-bordered tennis-ground behind the Convent, as "Lights Out" sounded from the camp of the Irregulars, beyond the Railway-sheds and storehouses.
It was glorious to be there, taking care of Her, though it would have been nicer if one had been allowed to smoke. The moon of William's passion-inspired verse was not shining o'er South Africa's plain upon this the very night for her. It was dark and close and stiflingly hot. A dust-wind had blown that day, and the suspended particles thickened the atmosphere, to the oppression of the lungs and the hiding of the stars. He knew his picket posted a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the Cemetery; his fellow-sentry was on the opposite flank of the Convent. He was a stout, middle-aged tradesman, with a large wife and a corresponding family, and it wrung the heart of W. Keyse to think that a tricky fate might have placed that insensible man on the side where Her window was! Through the boughs of the peach and orange trees, heavily burdened with unripe fruit, you could get an occasional glimpse of whitewashed brick walls, darkened by the outline of shutteredoblongs here and there. And Imagination could blow her cloud of fragrant vapour, though tobacco were denied you.
"They're all Her windows while she's there behind them walls," was the reflection in which W. Keyse found comfort.
She was not there. She was at that moment being kissed on the stoep of the Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg, by a young officer of Staats Artillery, to whom she had agreed to be clandestinely engaged, though Papa Du Taine had other views.
W. Keyse was spared this tragic knowledge. But if the moon, shining beautifully over the Du Taine gardens and orange-groves, had chosen to tell tales!
It was still—still and quiet; a blue radiance of electric light burned here and there; at the Staff Office on the Market Square, and at other centres of purposeful activity. Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloons gave out a yellow glare of gas-jets; the red lamp of an apothecary showed a wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp sprawled in the outline of a sleeping turtle on her squat hillock of gravelly earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds, closely matching the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding overhead, the prairie spread about her, deepening to a basined valley in the middle distances, sweeping to a rise beyond, so that the edges of the basin looked down upon the town. High on the hill-ranges in the South more chains of red sparks burned ... he knew them for the watch-fires of the Boer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and West were set thickly with similar twinkling jewels where the laagers were; while smaller groups shone nearer, marking the situation of isolated vedettes. The sickly taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clustered humanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes! He hoped there was enough of 'em, lying doggo up there, waiting the word to roll down and swallow the blooming dorp! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon his temples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the palms of his hands were moist and clammy. Also, under the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was a sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhapsits wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body jarring from the shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk.
Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, he gritted his teeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a blooming coward inside the other who was not. He told the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what he thought of him. He only wished—that is, one of him only wished—that a gang of the Dutchies would come along now!
He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and when the young soldier had fired into the brown of them and seen the whites of their eyes, and fallen, pierced by a hundred wounds, in the successful defence of the Convent, he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobody could recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, with her white little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy nightgown, and her unbraided pigtail swamping the white with gold, and knew that it was her lover, and knelt by the hero's side. Soft music from the Orchestra, please! as with his final breath W. Keyse implores a last, first kiss. Even as William No. 1 thrilled to the rapture of that imagined osculation, Billy No. 2 experienced a ghastly fright.
For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, and looking towards those firefly sparks shining on the heights, came the sound of stealthy measured footsteps and muffled voices talking Dutch. The enemy had made a sortie. The defences had been rushed, the town surrounded! Yet there were only two of them—a big, slouching villain and a short thin one, who wore a giant hat. The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fierce martial ardour of William, and greatly reassured Billy. It was only a townsman taking a night walk with his girl!
Crushed and discouraged, W. Keyse relaxed his grip upon the trusty rifle, and slunk back into the shadow, as the tall and the short figures halted at the angle of the fence.
"'Ain't it a 'eavenly night?" came from the short figure, who leaned against the tall one affectionately. "An' me got to go in. A crooil shyme, I call it. 'Ain't it, deer?Leggo me wyste, there's a love. You've no notion '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 the way 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 youcantalk English a bit—give you a charnce?"
"Ja, a little now and then when it is useful. But when we are to be married, you shall only to me talk in my own moder Taal."
"Shan't I myke a gay old 'ash of it!" Recklessly she crushed the large hat against the unwieldy shoulder. "There, good-night agyne, deer! Sister Tobias—that's what they call the one that 'ousekeeps and manages the kitchen—Sister Tobias 'll be sittin' up for me, thinkin' I've got meself lost or bin run away with." She gurgled enjoyingly.
"Tell me again, before you shall go, about the Engelsch Commandant who came 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't that a rummy name for a nun?—Sister Tobias, she showed 'im to the gyte, an' 'e says to 'er as wot 'e's goin' to 'ave the flagstaff rigged up in the gardin fust thing to-morrow mornin', an' 'e'll undertake that the workin'-party detached for the purpose will know 'ow to be'ayve theirselves respectful. An' then 'e touches 'is 'at an' gets on 'is 'orse an' ..."
"Listen to me." The Slabbertian command of that barbaric language of the Englanders evoked her surprise, but the painful squeeze he gave her arm compelled attention. "Next time the English Commandant to the house shall come, you to listen at the keyhole is."
"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 in fust—see? Then you can say to the lydy at the Registry Office—and don't they give theirselves hairs!—as wot you're leaving because the place don't suit. Twiggy?"
"You for yourself did listen, then. Goed. Now it is for me you listen will, if you a true Boer's vrouw wish to become by-and-by."
She rose to the immemorial allure that is never out of season in angling for her simple kind.
"That word you said means—wife, don't it, deer?" Her voice trembled; the joyous, longed-for haven of marriage—was it possible that it might be in sight?
"It shall mean wife, if you obey me—ja!—otherwise it will be that I shall marry the daughter of a good countryman of mine, who many sheep has, and much land, and plenty of money to give his daughter when she a husband gets!"
Her underlip dropped pitifully, and the tears welled up. It was too dark to see her crying, but he heard her sob, and grinned, himself unseen.
"I'll do anything for you, deer! Only don't tyke an' 'ave the other One. She may be a Dutchy, but she won't never care for you like wot I do. Don't you know it, Walt?"
"I shall it know when I hear what you have found out," proclaimed the Slabberts grimly.
There was a boiling W. Keyse in the deep shadow of the tall corrugated-iron fence, who restrained with difficulty a snort of indignation.
"On'y tell me, deer. I'll find out anythink you want me to." Before her spread a lovely vista of floors—her own floors—to scrub, and a kitchen range—hers, too—which should cook dinners nice enough to make any husband adore you.
"You shall for me find out what that Commandant of the rooineks is up to under 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 will cover more than a parcel of nuns and schoolgirls. That Commandant is so verdoemte slim! Tell me, do you cartridges well know when you shall see them? Little brown rolls with at one end a copper cap—and at the other a bullet. And gunpowder—you have that seen also?"
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. A true Boer's daughter would know how to load a gun, look you, and shoot a man—many men—if for the help of the Republic it should be! But you will learn. Watch out, I tell you, for stores that Commandant will be sending into the Convent. Square boxes and long boxes, and cases—some of them heavy as if lined with iron; painted black with white letters, and others stone-colour with black letters, and yet others grey with red letters; the letters remember—'A.O.S.'"
"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, you would see, but you will not be able. What in them? Cakes! Black, square cakes, with in them holes; and grey, square cakes, and red cakes, light and crumbly, that dog-biscuits resemble; and long brown sticks, like peppermint-candy, in bundles tied together with string and paper. Boxes of stuff like the hair of horse, and packets of evil little electric detonators in tubes of copper. Alamachtig! who knows what he has not got—that Engelsch Commandant—both in the dorp and hidden in those thrice-accursed mines that he has laid on the veld about her. Prismatic powder and gun-cotton, dynamite and cordite enough to blow a dozen commandos of honest Booren into dust—a small, fine dust of bones and flesh that shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood. For I tell you that man has the wickedness of the duyvel in him, and the cunning of an old baboon!"
She babbled:
"'Ow pretty you talk English when you want to, Waltydeer! 'Aven't you bin gittin' at me all along, makin' out ..."
He swore at her savagely, and she held her tongue, worshipping this new development of masterful brutality in a man whom she had regarded as a "big softy."
He went on:
"Now you shall know what to look for, and when the verdoemte explosives come, you will know them by the boxes and the letters 'A.O.S.'—and you will tell me—and the guns of our Staats Artillery will not shoot that way, for the sake of the little woman who is going to be a true Boer's vrouw by-and-by."
She threw her arms about his rascally neck, and laid her head upon his hulking shoulder, regardless of the hat she wrecked, and cried in ecstasy:
"I'll do it, deer! I'll do it, Walty! But why should there be any shootin', lovey? At 'Ome I never could abear to see them theayter plays what 'ad guns an' firin' in 'em; it made me 'art beat so crooil bad."
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 hear them, and they will not perhaps shoot at all. But you will look out for the boxes with the dynamite, and send me the message when it comes?"
"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 void and 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 not have 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? I don't 'arf fancy wot you calls the gyme, not if I 'ave to play it with a strynge 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 the familiar abbreviation of "stinkers."
"Voor den donder! Have I not told you I shall be there with him—after to-night!"
Her womanly tenderness quickened at the hint of coming separation. She clung fondly to his arm, and the match went out, extinguished by a maiden's sigh. He shook her roughly off, and struck another.
"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 of him, counting silently up to ten, then blew it out, and set his heavy boot upon the faintly-glowing spark, and did the thing again.
Endeavouring not to breathe so as to be heard, W. Keyse flattened himself against the corrugated fence, and waited, looking ahead into the thick velvet darkness, sensing the faint human taint upon the tell-tale breeze, and counting with the Slabberts; and then, out in the blackness that concealed so much that was sinister, sprang into sudden life an answering bluish glimmer, and lasted for ten beats of the pulse, and went out as suddenly as though a human breath had blown upon it.
"Is that your pal?" she whispered.
"That is my pal now." He struck another match, and flared it, and screened it with his big hand, and showed the light again, and repeated the manœuvre three times. "That is my pal now—and I have said to him 'No news to-night'; but to-morrow night and the night after, and so on for many nights to come, I shall be out there where he is, and after you have called me and I have answered, just as he has done, you will tell me what there is to tell. Can you spell your language?"
"Pretty middlin', Walty deer, though not as I could wish, owin' to me 'avin' to leave Board School in the Fif' Stannard when father sold up the 'ome in drink after mother went orf wiv the young man lodger. Some'ow, try all I could, I never ..."
"Hou jou smoel! With our Boer people, when men speak, the women listen; but you English ones chatter and chatter! Remember that this match-talk goes thus:For the letter A one flare, and hide the light as you saw me do just now. For B, two flares, and hide the light; for C, three, and hide; for D, four, and hide; and so on ... It is slow, of course, and matches will blow out when you do not want them to, and a cycle-lamp or a candle-lantern would be easier to deal with, but for the verdoemte patrols. Do you understand? Say now what I say, after me. For the letter A one flare and hide. For B ..."
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 listen and watch, and tell me what you hear and see. If you are obedient, I will marry 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 her shoulder through the thin, flowery "blowse"—"I will punish you—yes, by the Lord! I will marry a fine Boer maiden who is the daughter of a landrost, and who has got much money and plenty of sheep. And you can give yourself to any dirty verdoemte schelm of an Engelschman you please, for I will have none of you! To-morrow you shall have a paper showing you how to tell me very many things in match-talk, and earn much money to buy presents for my nice little Boer vrouw. Alamachtig! what is this?"
"This" was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a condemned Martini poked violently out of the blackness into the Slabbertian thorax.
"Not in such a 'urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper," spluttered the ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the weapon. "Put up them dirty big 'ands o' yours, or, by Cripps! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin', match-talkin' spy!"
The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts wagged in explanation.
"This is assault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful burgher. You shall answer to your officer for it, I tell you slap. Voor den donder! Is not a young man to light his pipe as he talks to a young woman without being called spy by a verdoemte sentry! Tell him, Jannje, that is all I did do!"
W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncommonly heavy. The Slabberts felt it tremble, and thought about taking his hands down and reaching for that Colts six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But though the finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, and Walt was not fond of risks.
"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 the wilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with ruffled plumage, blazing, defiant eyes, and shrill objurgations, couched in the vernacular most familiar to their object, hurled herself upon the enemy.
"You narsty little brute, you! To up and try an' murder my young man. With your jor about spies! Sauce! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Off the fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun, you silly little imitation sojer—d' you 'eer?"
The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully. Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He felt damp and small, and desperately at a loss. And—as though in malice—the moon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim vapour, as he said with a lordly air:
"You be off, young woman, and don't interfere!"
Gawd! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her rage burst the flood-gates. She screeched:
"You!... It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to—an' this is 'ow I gits it back?" She gasped. "Because you're arter one young woman wot wouldn't be seen dead in the syme street wi' you ..."
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 other side, can't you hear?"
In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. Keyse, comfortably propped in an angle of the opposite fence, the bulk of the Convent and the width of its garden and tennis-ground being between them, continued to sleep and snore peacefully and undisturbed.
Emigration Jane continued:
"Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear o' you, you try to git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke pinched! Yah, greedy! Boo! You plate-faced, erring-backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with your love-letters an' messages! Wait till I give 'er another o' your screevin'—that's all!"
"Patrol!" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper.
She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself as she came, to frenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it outside the big gaudy pubs in the Tottenham Court Road, and the Britannia, Camden Town! Perhaps the recollection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes of the little perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal memory, and provoked the act. Who can tell? We may only know that she plucked the weapon of lower-class London from her hat, and jabbed at the pale face viciously, and heard the victim say "Owch!" as he winced, and knew herself, as her Slabberts gripped the rifle-barrel, and wrested it with iron strength from the failing hands of W. Keyse, the equal of those dauntless Boer women who killed men when it was necessary. But, oh! the 'orrible, 'ideous feeling of 'aving stuck something into live flesh! Sick and giddy, the heroine shut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous phantasmagoria of coloured pyrotechny, rivalling the most marvellous triumphs of the magician Brock....
W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of striving men:
"Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your picket. Don't fire; blow your whistle instead!"
"Pip-ip-ip-'r'r! Pip-ip-r'r!"
The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of the darkness on the other side of the Cemetery, and considerably quickened the arrival of the visiting patrol.
"Communicating with persons outside the defences by flashlight signals. We can't shoot him for it just yet, butwecangaol him on suspicion," said the Commander of the picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of B.S.A. troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of the guard-house.
"Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer who had ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picket came up, you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of the story. "A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark wideawake and short pointed beard! H'm!"
"Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from town," said the picket Commander. "Must have known the countersign, or the sentries out there would have stopped him. I—see!"
He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The moonlight was quite bright enough for the exchange of a wink. Then:
"Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old Naval Brigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?"
W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. His fingers 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 inch higher, 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!" he declared stoutly.
"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her—or she will you," said the patrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggering into the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey, Johnny, where's your gun?"
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' own it if you've bin asleep on guard."
The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest and comment, not at all sympathetic or polite, was a stout, respectable tradesman, with a large, round, ghastly face, who saluted his officer with a trembling hand.
"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 put on 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 a state of insensibility, sir—upon my honour as an Alderman and Magistrate of this borough! Swear me, sir, if you have any doubt of my veracity!" He flapped his hands like fins, and his bandolier heaved above a labouring bosom.
The Commander of the picket looked preternaturally grave.
"Very sorry, Private Brooker, but unless the Sergeant has brought his Testament along, you'll have to give your information in the ordinary way. So they drugged you or hypnotised you—or both, was it?—and took away your rifle. Of course you saw it done?"
"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. The patrol-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 hypnotic subject before me in the morning. Make this man Brooker a prisoner at large 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 ... an Alderman, the President of the Gas Committee ..."
"I should 'ave guessed you to be that if I 'adn't 'eard it, sonny," said the Sergeant dryly, the implied sarcasm provoking a subdued guffaw. He added, as the visiting patrol rode on and the picket marched back to the Cemetery: "Can't relieve you of your rifle, because you 'aven't got 'er. What in 'Eaven's name are they goin' to do to you? Well, you'll find out to-morrow. Left face; quick march!"
Counting left-right, and keeping elbow-touch with the next man, W. Keyse got in a whisper:
"I say, Sergeant, am I in for it as well as Ole Bulgy Weskit? You might as well 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 Boer spy pris'ner—that's wot for!"
"Cripps!" said W. Keyse, enlightened, illuminated and glowing in the darkness. He added a moment later, in rather a depressed tone: "But it was 'im, the civilian bloke with the beard, 'oo downed the Dutchy, an' sat on 'im till the guard come up."
The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking to the officer in charge. It was the Corporal who answered, across the man who marched upon the left of W. Keyse:
"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.
You are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the interminable plain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, and before threatened, now isolated like some undaunted coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested with screaming sea-birds, girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst of waters haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent menace, she squatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting the event.
It was known that on the previous day the telegraph wires north of Beaton had been cut, and this day was to sever the last link with Cape Town at Maripo, some forty miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the Olopo River might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy there overnight. Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, that the armoured train that had been sent up from the Cape with two light guns of superseded pattern—a generous contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines now bristling from the sand-bagged ramparts—had been seized by a commando, with the officer and the men in charge. This was to be confirmed later by the arrival of an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in the omnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of this chapter he was hiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud of his experiences, in default of other pabulum, and did not get in before dark of the long blazing day.
Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the northern end of the town to see the Military Executive take over the Hospital. But that the streets were barricaded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizen carried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion of national rejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the pepper-trees fringing the thoroughfares and clumped in the Market Square rustled in the faint hot breeze. By-and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked under the iron hail that beat in blizzards upon them, and die in the noxious lyddite fumes dispersed by bursting shells.
The variegated crowd cheered as the Staff dismountedat the white-painted iron gates of the railed-in Hospital grounds. It was not the acclamation of admiration, it was the cheer expectant. They wanted to know what the Officer in Command was going to do? Intolerable suspense racked them. Wherever it was known that he would be, there they followed at this juncture—solid masses of humanity, bored with innumerable ear-holes, and enamelled with patient, glittering, expectant eyes. His own keen, kindly glance swept over them as he touched his grey felt hat in acknowledgment of their dubious greeting, that half-hearted but well-meant cheer. He read the mute question written upon all the faces. Part of his answer to the interrogation was standing in the Railway-yard, but they would have to wait a little while longer yet—just a little longer. He whistled his pleasant melodious little tune as the porter hurried to open the gates.
One pair of pale, rather ugly eyes in the crowd were illumined with pure hero-worship. "That's 'im," explained their owner, nudging a big man in shabby white drill, who was shouldering a deliberate way through the press.
"The Colonel—and ain't 'e a Regular Oner! Them along of 'im—with the red shoulder-straps and brown leather leggin's, they're cav'l'ry Orficers o' the Staff, they are. An' them others in khâki with puttees—syme as wot I've got on—they're the Medical Swells. Military Saw-boneses—twig? You can tell 'em, when you're near enough, by the bronze badges with a serpint climbin' up a stick inside a wreath, wot they 'ave on the fronts o' their caps an' on their jacket-collars, an' the instrument-cases wot they carries in their bres' pockets. I'm a bit in the know about these things, being a sort of Service man meself."
Thus delicately did W. Keyse invite comment. Splendid additions had certainly been made to the martial outfit of the previous day. The tweed Norfolk had been replaced by a khâki jacket, evidently second-hand, and obligingly taken in by the lady of the boarding-house. A Corporal's stripe, purchased from a trooper of the B.S.A., who, as the consequence of over-indulgence in liquor and language, had one to sell, had been sewn upon the sleeve. The original owner had charged an extra tikkie for doing it, and it burnedthe arm that bore it like a vaccination-pustule on the fifth day.
"Being a sort of Service man meself," repeated W. Keyse. He twitched the stripe carelessly into sight. "C'manding orficer marked me down for this to-day," he continued, with elaborate indifference, "along of a Favourable Mention in the Cap'n's Guard Report. Nothin' much—little turn-up with a 'ulking big Dutch bloke, 'oo turned out to be a spy."
In the act of feeling for the invisible moustache, he recognised the face under the Panama hat worn by the big neighbour in white drill, and blushes swamped his yellow freckles. The owner of that square, powerful face, no longer bloated and crimson, but pale and drawn, was the man who had stepped in to the rescue at the Dutchman's saloon-bar on the previous day, where Fate had stage-managed effects so badly that the heroic leading attitude of W. Keyse had perforce given place to the minor rôle of the juvenile walking-gentleman. "Watto!" he began. "It's you, Mister! I bin wantin' to say thank——" But a surge of the crowd flattened W. Keyse against the green-painted iron railings surrounding a municipal gum-tree, and the big man was lost to view. Perhaps it was as well that the acquaintance made under conditions remote from respectability should not be renewed. But W. Keyse would have preferred to thank the rescuer.
The taking over of the Hospital was accomplished in a moment, to the disappointment of the ceremony-loving Briton and the Colonial of British race, to say nothing of the Kaffirs and the Barala, who anticipated a big indaba. The little party of officers in khâki walked up the gravel-drive between the carefully-tended grass plats to the stoep where the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, with the matron, house-surgeon, secretary, and several prominent members of the Committee—including Alderman Brooker, puffy-cheeked and yellow-eyed for lack of a night's rest—waited. Military Authority saluted Civic Dignity, shook hands, and the thing was done. Inspection followed.
"The warr'ds, said ye?" The Chief Medical Officer, a tall raw-boned personage, very evidently hailed from North of the Tweed. "I'm obliged to ye, ma'am," he addressedthe flustered matron, "but the warr'ds an' the contents o' the beds in them are no' to say of the firr'st importance—at least, whaur I'm concerr'ned. With your permeesion we'll tak' a look at the Operating Theatre, and overhaul the sterileezing plant, and the sanitary arrangements, and maybe, after a gliff at the kitchens, there would be a moment to spend in ganging through the warr'ds. Unless the Colonel would prefer to begin wi' them?" He turned a small, twinkling pair of blue eyes set in dry wrinkles upon his Chief.
"Not I, Major. This is your department. But I shall ask five minutes more grace in the interests of the friend I spoke of, Dr. Saxham; with whom I made an appointment at the half-hour."
"You're no' by any chance meaning the Saxham that wrote 'The Diseases of Civilisation,' are ye, Colonel? I mind a sentence in it that must have been a douse of cauld watter—toch! vitriol would be the better worr'd—in the faces o' some o' the dandy operators. 'Young men,' he ca'ed them, as if he was a greybeard himsel', 'young men who, led to take up Surgery by the houp o' gains an' notoriety, have given themselves nae time to learn its scienteefic principles—showy operators, who diagnose wi' the knife an' endeavour to dictate to Nature and no' to assist her.' And yet Saxham could daur! 'I shall prove that the gastric ulcer can be cured wi'out exceesion,' he said, or they say he said in theLancetreport o' the operation on the Grand Duke Waldimir—I cam' across a reprint o' it no' lang ago—when Sir Henry McGavell sent for him, wi' the sweat o' mortal terror soakin' his Gladstone collar. He cut a hole in the Duke's stomach, ye will understand, in front o' the ulcer, clipped off the smaller intesteene, spliced the twa together wi' a Collins button, and by a successful deveece o' plumbing—naething less—earned the eterr'nal gratitude o' the autocrat an' the everlastin' currses o' the Nihilists. All that, seven years ago, an' the thing is dune the day wi'oot a hair's-breadth difference. For why? Ye canna paint the lily, or improve upon perfection. Toch!... Colonel, that man would be worth the waitin' for, if he stood in your friend's shoes the day!"
"Rejoice then, Major, and be exceeding glad, for Ibelieve this is the man who wrote the book and plugged—or was it plumbed—the potentate."
The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. "I promise myself a crack or twa wi' him, then.... But how is it a busy chiel like that can get awa' from his private patients and his Hospital warr'ds in the London Winter Season Ahem! ahem!"
By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing the conversation, it was plain that he had recalled the circumstances under which the "busy chiel" had turned his back upon the private patients and the Hospital wards. "Colonel," he went on, "I could be wishing this varry creeditable-appearing institution—judging from the ootside o't—were twice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe or so to the back of that."
"My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and happy but once, and that was when we had fifty men down with dysentery and fever in a tin-roofed Railway goods-shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leaky canvas, and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could get no milk."
"That goes to prove the eleementary difference between the male an' the female character. A man will no' keep on dithering for what he kens he canna' get. A woman, especially a young an' pretty——" He broke off to say: "Toch! will ye hark to Beauvayse! The very name of the sex sets that lad rampaging."
"Beautiful! I tell you, sir," the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-camp was emphatically assuring that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, "the loveliest girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see—bar none! I saw her first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang of Boer blackguards insulted some nuns who were in charge of a ladies' school, and to-day she passed with two other Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as the Staff dismounted at the gate."
"Anotherrara avis, Beau?" the Colonel called across the intervening group of talkers. The group of khâki-clad figures separated, and turned first to the Chief, then to the bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast. White teeth flashed in tanned faces, chaff began:
"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 the Cape Town Hotel verandah!"
"Sheturned out to be a Hottentot lady, didn't she?"
"Cavalry Problem No. 1. Put yourself in Lieutenant the Right Hon. the Lord Viscount Beauvayse's place, and give in detail the precautions you would have taken to insure the transport of your heart uninjured from the Staff Headquarters to the Hospital Gate. Show on the map the disposition of the enemy, whether desirous to enslave, or likely to be mashed...."
"She was neither," the crimson boy declared. "She was simply a lady, quiet and high-bred and simple enough to have been a Princess of the blood, or to look a fellow in the face and pass him by without the slightest idea—I'd swear to it—that she'd fairly taken his breath away."
"My dear Lord!" The Mayor took a great deal of comfort out of a title. "Attractive the young lady is, I certainly admit, and my wife is—I may say the word—in her praise. But you go one, or half a dozen, better than Mrs. Greening, who will be perfectly willing, I don't doubt, to introduce you, unless the Colonel entertains objections ..."
"To Staff flirtations? Regard 'em as inevitable, Mr. Mayor, like Indian prickly-heat, or fever here. And probably the best cure for the complaint in the present instance would be to meet the cause of it."
"Judge for yourself, Colonel; you've first-class long-distance eyesight." There was a ring of defiance in the boy's fresh voice. "You've seen her before, and it isn't the kind of face one forgets. Here they are ... here she is now, coming back, with the other ladies. The railing spoils one's view, but the gates are open, and in another moment you'll see her pass them."