Fear—the acquired fear of encountering the glare of a Sergeant, or the chilly stare of the wearer of a Sam Browne, had hitherto arrested the hand of the Junior Partner in the thriving Cornhill firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance-brokers,—when it would fain have placed on the rubber pad of the Booking Office pigeon-hole, the fare for a First Class Return.
But now, the prospect of a run of some three hundred and fifty odd miles North in captivity so grim, chilly and unsavoury, prompted a young man with muscles still soft from confinement to a Hospital bed, and the kindly coddling of Hospital Sisters,—and with the warning of the C.M.O. with regard to avoidance of bronchitis still fresh in mind,—to extract a soiled ten-shilling note or "pinky" from a pigskin wallet; to project the upper half of his big body from the carriage-window, and endeavour, not unsuccessfully, to catch the eye of the guard.
"Na, na, nae Second Class. Ye'll have hearrd that ava' at the Booking Office!"
The silver-braided functionary, checked momentarily in his stride by the appeal of an agitated old lady, presented his highly-dried and sandily-bearded countenance upon a level with the buttons of John's front tunic-pockets, and inclined a freckled ear to the young man's appeal. The answer came in the droning chant of Berwick:
"Ye can pay the differ between the firr'st an' third-class—I'm no' for stopping ye. Though, ye ken, wi' ilka officer that gets in, ye'll rin the same risk!"
"Of being turned out with a flea in my ear, you mean," returned John Hazel, not unobservant of the mahogany reflet of certain Sam Brownes, isolated or in knots, upon the platform, in juxtaposition with open carriage-doors, or mingling with the scanty groups of would-be passengers under the arc-lights (camouflaged with blue paint) that cast false pallor on the freshest cheek, and made sickly faces masks of Death; and threw long purplish shadows of people and things (at angles suggestive of Futurist Art) upon the greasy asphalte of the Northern terminus....
"O, ay! If ye're willin' to tak the risk...."
The glitter of a certain medal on the Private's breast, and the shine of two parallel strips of gold braid upon his cuff, had caught the sharp grey eyes of the guard. He thrust back the offered note on the confounded John, leaped at his suitcase and tore it from the rack, and shepherded his huge charge through the clank and rattle and roll of luggage trucks, foot-warmer barrows, and lamp-trolleys, shouting:
"Come awa' wi' you, man!—there's a firr'st weel forward, wi' a twa—three women-bodies that would gie guid skelps to the officer that daured look crookit at ony Tommy—forbye a lang black lad wi' the D.C.M.!"
Thus John Hazel, suffering for once from an acute attack of bashfulness, found himself installed in a corner of a fairly-warmed if faintly-lighted first-class compartment, containing in addition to many cloaks, rugs, pillows, tea-baskets, and other cosy accompaniments of travel,—three ladies of uncertain ages, but very definite position in life,—also a Young Person of highly-coloured exotic charms, clamorously perfumed; whose crimson hair was surmounted by a French officer's tasselled képi, and who displayed, below marvellously abbreviated skirts, silk stockings of open trellis-work, ending in such boots of yellow leather with tinsel cross-laces as are commonly associated with Principal Boys in Pantomime....
Of the three ladies, two carried the dark blue uniform of a Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society and held officers' rank of sorts, for both were pipped. While the third, an incredibly tall, thin woman, with eyebrows arched and black as musical slurs, pale greenish-gold hair, a white, triangular face, and a V-shaped mouth as scarlet as a Pierrot's, wore upon her khaki sleeve the brassard of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion, with the lapel, shoulder and hat-badges distinctive of a Commandant.
All three displayed the roughened hands and damaged finger-nails characteristic of British womanhood at this strenuous period. Theirs was the unabashed and frank regard, born of the calm self-confidence which springs—not from the conviction, but from the established fact of being Somebody in Society. All three were loud of voice, long of limb, easy if abrupt of movement: prone to discuss their own and their friends' private affairs in the presence of strangers; as though the man or woman in the corner, palpably an alien from Their Set, must in consequence be deaf and dumb.
"Howling swells!" was John Hazel's pithy mental comment, recognising upon three of his fellow-travellers the unmistakable cachet of Good Society. "The Mums," he reflected, rather wistfully—one of the Nice Things about John was his belief in his mother—"the Mums would be in her element here!" And he leaned luxuriously back upon a plump cushion that one of the V.A.D. ladies had deftly thrust behind him, in the corner that had been unostentatiously vacated when the big young man, with hollow black eyes and prominent cheek-bones, and khaki baggily hanging upon a huge frame wasted by hæmorrhage and strict dietary, had heaved in sight. And the Commandant handed him the day's issue of an expensive Illustrated Society; saying, with a characteristic emphasis suggestive of large capitals:
"Of course, I really don't believe you'll Cotton Much to this, but it may get you over an hour! Pass it on to somebody else when you've done—I Don't want it back!"
She nodded smilingly in acknowledgment of Hazel's gratitude, and the young person in the gilt-tasselled French képi followed suit by giving John the current number of "Frillies," a purely feminine publication—devoted to the puffing of silk pyjamas and embroidered underwear, with Piffel Pearls (warranted to outshine real ones) and Face Creams guaranteed to remove Complexion Blemishes contracted at Munition Factories, or in Labour on the Land....
Then she suddenly saw a friend, seized her handbag and suit-case, and departed on the corridor-side of the compartment in a gale of violent perfume. John opened the sliding-door, shut the same on her departure; pulled up his rug and began to sip the honeyed sweetness of "Loveliness in Lingerie," and the three ladies, as the savage tang of verbena died upon the air, unleashed their loud, high voices apparently upon the trail of some subject mooted before.
"You have heard that Evelyn Graynger has consoled herself?" asked the startlingly thin woman in khaki, lifting her musical slurs of eyebrows towards the peak of her badged cap, from the back of which a short square veil depended, and momentarily glancing as she did this, at a three-inch band of black crape upon her left arm. "Though I am quite sure that the poor child really did care for my poor Wastwood and my poor Jerry—you know she became engaged to Jerry not long after Wastwood—" She blinked and broke off.
"Really! ..." the dark blue ladies chorused; and the elder exclaimed sympathetically.
"How awfully difficult it must have made their mother's position! Didn't it, Trixie dear?"
"Now Evelyn is going, I hear, to marry the popular Anglican preacher, Mr. Amice-Bellows," continued the khaki Commandant. "He likes to be called 'Father,' don't you know!—and has still a great many wealthy lady-penitents; never having felt any irresistible call to volunteer as a Chaplain accompanying Forces to the Front. He opens Soldiers' Refreshment Buffets with prayer, and figures on Red Cross Bazaar Committees, and visits wounded Tommies in Hospital and all that, and of course there must be people to do these things.... And they say he has a consoling manner with his clients—I should say Congregation—when they're knocked out by Bad News! Though I remember when the second bomb dropped,—I mean in the shape of another wire from the Casualty Department of the War Office—and I was rather off colour in consequence—he advised me to drink a pint of hot water regularly every morning with Bi—something-of-something-or-other stirred in."
The two V.A.D. ladies shrieked. The triangular-faced Commandant in khaki continued, all unconscious that the illustrated periodical bestowed on John Hazel displayed her photograph, with the appended description:
"Trixie, Lady Wastwood. Mother of the late, and aunt of the present Earl. Who has been doing splendid service as a Commandant of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion at one of our principal Bases in France, in adherence to the well-known motto of the Legion: Do Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick at Nothing, and Never Grouse!"
* * * * * * *
"Well-meant"—the elder of the two blue women was speaking through her laughter, "but hardly tactful of Mr. Amice Bellows—to suggest that biliousness and bereavement produce symptoms practically the same!"
"Anyhow," the khaki woman's laugh rattled out as though a stick had been drawn over the keys of a piano, "I took the parson's counsel—vicariously. Went down every day to Waterloo Station and poured tea and coffee into thirsty Tommies at a Soldiers' Free Refreshment Buffet—instead of irrigating myself. Found it swamped the blue devils quite as effectually. And"—she touched her khaki lightly—"that's how this—began. Same with both of you—I rather fancy?" ...
"I entered as Probationer at St. Francis and St. Clara's after the Third Reserve Battalion of the Loyal North Linkshires got gassed at Ypres last Spring," said the younger of the V.A.D. women, who had also a mourning armlet, and could not have been older than twenty-two or three. "And I found scrubbing floors and carrying buckets better—oh!—miles better than all the veronal in all the chemists' shops."
"I agree with Cynthia," said the other blue lady, "I think the V.A.D. was meant to keep the women who have lost their all from lying down and dying—or running amok. Hark! Was that a Take Cover?" ...
A detonation in the distance had been followed by a wailing hoot of peculiar ugliness. Silence descended upon the Terminus. Most of the faces that turned to each other in inquiry, seemed to have suddenly been powdered white. The three women in John's carriage betrayed no emotion. They waited in silence, but no second detonation followed. And John Hazel said as his gaunt black eyes, met Lady Wastwood's, that were green and singularly brilliant:
"I think the tyre of a motor-'bus burst—just before they sounded the dinner-hooter at some near-by factory. I know Longmore's Locust Bean chocolate used to be turned out at a place close here."
All three women nodded and smiled in recognition of the soldier's civility. The hollows about his eyes, and under his cheek-bones, the bagginess of his khaki—in favour of which he had gratefully abandoned the suit of Reckitt's Blue flannel with white lapels, and the scarlet cotton necktie of Hospital wear, had—in combination with the medal and the wound-stripes, won him favour in their eyes....
Lady Wastwood gave him another paper, a Morning Post, and the younger of the V.A.D.'s was following suit with a packet of chocolate, when the first starting-gong clangalanged,—the carriage-door was wrenched open, and a tall thin officer, followed by a porter carrying a Gladstone bag and tartan rug, was in the very act of entering when he encountered Lady Wastwood's glance....
VIII
Private Hazel had fainted in spirit at the sight of a Brass Hat, a double row of multi-coloured ribbons, and the badges of a Lieutenant-Colonel; and his ears had already begun to tingle with the expectation of official rebuke—when the officer, arrested in the stride of entrance on the brass-bound threshold of the Railway Company—reddened and paled as he saluted. His singularly unhappy grey eyes had met the eyes of Lady Wastwood. Freezing as green Arctic icicles, they held those of the victim in a hostile and repellent stare. Her mouth, devoid of its V-shaped Pierrot smile—straightened to a frigid line of sheerest disapproval. Her chin combined with the mouth and the eyes, in the admission that somewhere between sickened Earth and revolted Heaven a wretch like this dared to draw breath....
The situation lasted one intolerable moment, its poignancy even penetrating John Hazel's pachydermatous hide. He found himself wincing in sympathy with the sufferer, whose lashed blood rose darkly under his clear nut-brown skin. Still, not a muscle twitched to betray him. His deep-set eyes ranged from face to face of the occupants of the carriage, searching for one gleam of sympathy, possibly. His mouth opened as though he would have spoken, then shut; and his face became as a granite mask. He saluted again formally, backed out, lightly jumped from the step, carefully shut the carriage-door, and walked away down the platform, the laden porter at his heels, as the two V.A.D. women exclaimed in shocked accents:
"How could you? ... Who is he?"
"What rows of decorations!"
"And, my dear!—what can the man have done to deserve a cut like that?"
They of the High Caste paid no heed to John, ambushed behind the current issue of Frillies, with both ears cocked for the name of the protagonist....
"It is Edward Yaill," said Lady Wastwood, as though prefix and patronymic offended the palate, and blistered the reluctant organ of speech. "Colonel Edward Yaill. Of the —th Tweedburgh Regiment."
The younger of the V.A.D. ladies exclaimed, as though in pain for him:
"The Colonel Yaill! ... That brave, unlucky man!"
"And your County neighbour!" This from the elder blue lady, to whom Lady Wastwood returned:
"Yes, when I happen to be in Scotland. But I so seldom am at Whingates now. However, since poor Jerry's successor made a point of my looking up his womanhood, I promised to run up there next time I felt washed out. Colonel Yaill was my fellow-passenger on the Boat for Boulogne one day last March.... Now again we encounter—rather unfortunately for him!"
"Do, do forgive him, next time you tumble against him!" begged Yaill's previous champion.
"Edward Yaill has had a sample," said Lady Wastwood icily, "of what he may expect from me in the near as in the distant future. Let us hope he will be wiser than to rush upon his doom. What wouldn't I have given to possess the Early Victorian stare of my old great-aunt, the Duchess of Strome. She could cut—until you saw the blood!"
"My dear, it was quite bad enough!" the elder V.A.D. assured her. "Mercy! I can't forget his wretched, wretched eyes! I do hope I'm not going to dream of them! There must be something to be said for a man who looks like that!"
The drab-grey terminus was sliding away.... The clank of milk-churns and trolley-wheels grew fainter.... A signal jerked down, with a wink of a red-green eye, the points clicked over, and the Express was launched upon her shining way across a tangle of intersecting metals terminated by grim black signal boxes, and gathering speed,—shot out of the jaws of a Goods Station into the foggy day. And stations were flying past, and the crowded drab streets of mean houses were flowing under the belly of the rushing Express like a river of dirty bricks and mortar,—and the ladies were moving and settling down, amongst rugs, cloaks, pillows, tea-baskets and other accompaniments of feminine travel; hugely amused by the temporary return to the prehistoric joggliness and stuffy safety of trains. And Lady Wastwood had mentioned that she had had two cars crumped by German H.E. in France—and it had transpired that the elder V.A.D. had had hers badly biffed in September outside a Theatre in the Strand when a Zepp dropped a bomb quite near,—and that the younger had hers temporarily put out of action through tyre wear, taking convalescent Tommies for drives—when Lady Wastwood suddenly betrayed the tenor of her thoughts by remarking with emphasis:
"After all, if there IS anything to be said for Edward Yaill, Katharine Forbis will be the first to say it!"
The uttered name plucked at some fibre in John Hazel's brain. He dropped Frillies, and one of the blue ladies reached down a long arm, and picked the paper up, and gave it back to him, with the manner of one well-used to doing these things for sick men. But she looked at Lady Wastwood, not at John, as she did this, saying:
"'Katharine Forbis.' ... You must mean the handsome Miss Forbis who went out to the Front to drive ambulance-cars for her Detachment, some time in last March,—and was afterwards invalided home. Miss Forbis of Kerr's Something—?"
"Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh. A quite modern house built against a dear old Border Peel Tower. Twenty miles from us at Whingates. Not as the crow flies, but as the woodcock.... That was my poor Jerry's annual joke. He hadn't a shadow of humour, bless his heart!"
With which pronouncement John perfectly agreed. He had been electrified into attention by a sentence of the previous speaker's, and was tinglingly alert for another reference to a name by now uncannily familiar.... "Forbis of Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh" seemed to have plucked at a fibre in his brain. He was made to gnash metaphorical teeth by one or two divagations from the main point, before Forbis cropped up once more. Then came another mental jerk with an utterance from Lady Wastwood:
"As a matter of fact, Edward Yaill and Kathy Forbis had been engaged quite for ages. You understand, I was a County Neighbour then, and saw what was going on. Edward Yaill's Infantry Regiment—'The Tweedburgh Foot-Sloggers' they call themselves—there aren't many of the poor dears left to answer to the old name!—Edward's Regiment distinguished itself equally in the Boer War of 1900. And Edward—with his Majority and a D.S.O.—came back after the War to be made a great deal of—and Kathy—then a quite beautiful girl of seventeen—vows that she fell in love with him then and there. But the engagement didn't come off until years later—and has been dragging on since in a most annoying way. Kathy—one of those Fine People who make sacrifices for others—didn't want to leave her father, a courtly old dear with a beautiful manner! after her mother—a Sweet Creature!—died. So the wedding was continually postponed. The last date arranged being the October of 1914."
Both the V.A.D. ladies uttered sounds of sympathy; and Lady Wastwood went on, while, thanks to the oil-smooth running of the Express,—and perceptions sharpened by War's savage exigencies—John Hazel, ambushed behind the ample pages of the feminine periodical—followed the trend of the high-voiced narrative as easily as though he had been sitting in the stalls at a new play....
"In that August—Edward was then staying at Kerr's Arbour,—came the Bolt from the Blue! ... With the —th Brigade of the —th Division of our First British Expeditionary, goes Yaill, then Senior Major of the First Battalion of 'The Tweedburghs' ... Katharine's pride in him was touching. She said very little, I remember, but her eyes—do you remember her wonderful eyes?"
One of the V.A.D.'s agreed:
"Yes, oh, yes! Quite wonderfully beautiful eyes!"
"'Gold and bramble-dew,' to quote Robert Louis Stevenson's celebrated simile. His wife, to whom reference was made, I believe—was a Scotswoman though American-bred. But to go back to Edward—then Major Yaill,—you will remember—who does not? that at Le Cateau-Cambresis that August his Battalion underwent an Ordeal of Fire. So terrible, that Major Yaill and two junior officers, with a handful of men alone remained. Wounded, his uniform burned to rags—they say he fought like a god or a devil!—he escaped being taken by the Boches. But all the world knows the splendid story. I'm making myself a Perfect Bore!"
The V.A.D.'s assured her she wasn't in the least; and she went on volubly talking, above the oily purring of the Kelso Express.
"Escaped, and wandered, starving, wounded and in tatters; hiding in farmyards and amongst ruins by day,—and tramping, guided only by his luminous compass—at night-time. Fed by Walloon and Belgian peasants who were too scared—poor Things! one well knows why!—to give him even a few hours' shelter. Five days and nights, and he reached the Belgian frontier—passed the guard unnoticed—and got upon the Flushing Boat. And if you suppose that Kathy Forbis fainted when she had his wire, or even Cried for Joy all over everybody, you'd be Wrong. Absolutely!"
John knew you would have been wrong. Under cover of Tailor-Made Talks he nodded his head, with a kind of proprietorial pride in Katharine Forbis.
"What did she do?" asked one of the blue women.
"She simply said 'Thank God!' and went on with her First Aid bandaging. Then—after some delay because of Dutch Neutrality—Edward Yaill managed to get out of Holland and came back home."
"Rather a wreck, one supposes?" hazarded a V.A.D.
"Haggard and worn," admitted Lady Wastwood. "With those hollows in the temples one knows so well, and that queer tense, sleepless look they can't get rid of. One would naturally have expected that He and Katharine would have been Married Instantly. But I have absolute knowledge, that the subject was Never Broached!"
"Rough on Miss Forbis, rather!" hazarded one of the hearers. To whom Lady Wastwood retorted:
"Fortunately for Miss Forbis—as things have now developed! But that she would have jumped with Joy had Edward breathed a hint of marriage—Nobody could doubt who saw her look at him.... Sweetheart and wife and mother, mingled in her expression. 'She makes me want to cry!' said that Old Rip Delaguett. And he meant the thing.... It's odd how those Bad Men adore Pure Women. Let us do Delaguett justice—he swore she was too good for Yaill!"
"Did he agree with Lord Delaguett?" asked one of the blue ladies.
"If he had," returned Lady Wastwood, "Kathy would have disagreed. And one task absorbed him, body and soul. Assisting the Authorities to reconstitute the Battalion that had been wiped out. This was done, and he was offered the post of Second Military Secretary to Sir Charles Carberry at Gibraltar. Wouldn't you have expected him to take the goods the gods provided, marry his Nice Katharine, and sail for the Rock? Kathy would have risked tin fish in shoals!—and a nuptial couch at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. But—"
"But—?"
"But Edward Yaill wouldn't hear of such a thing! Took the post—went out—absolutely fed—simply hated it! Groused away at G.H.Q. until they gave him what he wanted most."
"One can guess what that was!"
"Naturally. Command of the new old Tweedburgh Regiment, and Active Service in France again. 'To get back just a bit on account from those blighters!' he told me: 'I'd take over a Territorial Regiment from Hell. And to lead one's own Border men again is too—'"
"Absolutely topping!" suggested Yaill's original champion.
"You have the expression. Well, one perished to trancher le mot, but in view of Katharine's splendid attitude—"
"Backed him for all she was worth, I'll bet!" said John Hazel internally.
Lady Wastwood's high voice went on, through the Express's oily running:
"Calm, hopeful and encouraging beyond all—one couldn't have ventured to say a Thing! On one point she was adamant—She would do her bit like others. Home Service wasn't enough—you comprehend!—for Kathy Forbis. She had got her First Class Certificate and Qualifications—and went to the Front, dear sweet thing! early in March, 1915, to drive cars for the Red Cross."
"And so Colonel Yaill—"
"Went out again to take over command of his Regiment, Colonel Muir-Rosyll, an old friend of mine—having gone West. And just as though Fate had been lying in wait for Edward!—in September—somewhere South of Loos—the Horror Happened Again!"
"The 'Tweedburghs' were wiped out in the assault upon the village! ... Oh! one remembers...."
The elder of the blue ladies shuddered, the younger bit her lip.
"Swept away.... 'Exterminated'—that's what the newspapers called it. And Edward Yaill's name was on the early list of killed. It seems that he had gone out from Battalion Staff Headquarters—all his officers but two being dead—to take over Telephone-Communication at their Forward Station Dug-out, and got there in time for a terrific bombardment of High Velocity Shell."
"What unutterably Awful luck! Was he very badly wounded?"
"Hardly a scratch on him, when they found him—one has heard so much of the queer fantastic tricks that High Explosive plays. Nearly naked and covered with yellow powder. Quite Dazed—not a notion of his own identity! Which of course was established by a gold curb wrist-chain with an Identification Disc, and an officer's silver whistle with his name upon it still hanging round his Neck—when they took him to a General Casualty Hospital on the Communication Lines. Where the Poor Thing was treated with scores of other Shell Shock cases, until he came round enough to remember his rank and name."
"Didn't Miss Forbis wring out leave and rush from the Front to comfort him?"
"Well, Katharine was badly wanted just then, where she was, at her Receiving Hospital. And personal interests must give place when Duty is in question. I imagine that we're all of us pretty clear on that!"
Lady Wastwood added, as confirmatory sounds came from both her feminine hearers:
"There's no question but her going to him would have saved Yaill. But unhappily, it was not to be. Nice Katharine—poor dear!—was invalided home from the Western Front a month later. Muscular strain, lifting wounded Tommies under Fire. Had to come back for Massage and Electrical Treatment. While Edward Yaill, who had been transferred to a Convalescent British Officers Canvas Camp at the B—— Base (up-to-date place under Red Cross Management, with pines and heather and bracken, and little streams gurgling down steep sandy cliffs)—Edward had been making steady progress towards complete recovery. Until—not quite a fortnight back—he Socially Cut His Throat!"
The ladies exclaimed. The narrator continued:
"Cut his throat by suddenly marrying a Trained Nurse belonging to a Unit of the Red Cross, doing duty at the B—— Base C.O.C.... Having obtained the necessary permit from his Brigadier. Whether the young woman got leave from the Matron-in-Chief on the West Front, or did without it, I couldn't tell you! I think the latter, as she had previously sent in her papers asking leave to retire for reasons of health. At any rate, the ceremony was performed by the Church-of-England Chaplain attached to the C.O.C."
The narrator added, raising her arched eyebrows: "Quite legal, of course, but one Would have expected the thing to have been clinched by a Roman Catholic Priest. Yaill being R.C. like Poor Dear Katherine—to whom, one hopes, her Religion,—always so Much to her—may bring True Courage to Bear the Blow!"
Lady Wastwood added, through her listeners' horrified exclamations:
"Subsequently to the wedding the couple sailed for England, all arrangements having been Cleverly Camouflaged.... Nobody seems to have realised what had happened.... My own enlightenment was to come from Our London Headquarters, where I reported myself yesterday. A Wireless Message had been Received by Our Deputy Assistant Director-General from the Matron-in-chief on the Western Front in France. Our D.A.D.G. happens to be Colonel Yaill's cousin. That's how the item of news got dropped in. And subsequently she 'phoned me in Code at my Mayfair diggings—to say that her Sister-in-law, Lady Ridgely,—Red Cross Commandant of a Tommies' Convalescent Hospital at Coombe Bay, Devon—had encountered Colonel and Mrs. Yaill, upon their honeymoon."
The elder V.A.D. lady moaned despairingly:
"And now he tumbles in on us here—a passenger going North.... How can he? Why, why set foot in Scotland, of all places on the globe?"
The newspaper rustled in a pair of big bony hands, that were shaking with rage as though with ague. There was a roaring in John Hazel's ears.... Spots of red, ringed with paler colour, grew and dimmed and faded out upon the page before him. If the harmless periodical had slipped from his hold, the sight of the mask of murder it had screened might have led to the pulling of the communication-cord and the subsequent appearance of the guard. For the man was not the same man who had shed the black frock coat and silk topper of Cornhill in the September of 1914. He had spilled blood since then, for duty's sake, and for revenge; and found sharp pleasure in the shedding. And much, very much, he wanted to kill Edward Yaill. But Lady Wastwood was answering the two blue ladies:
"That is what I ask myself. Why? and How Can he? ... Unless, indeed, he were going up North to tell—to break the news to Katharine! Or does he possess sufficient Nerve to attend the Funeral?" She added, meeting the ladies' uncomprehending eyes: "Perhaps you have somehow missed the advertisement in Wednesday's Morning Wire! Heading the List of Deaths.... 'General Sir Philip Forbis, K.C.B.' and so on.... 'Result of accident.... No Flowers, By Request.' (He hated paraphernalia!) ... 'R.I.P.'" ...
Under cover of the ladies' sympathetic exclamations, John secured the front page of the Morning Wire without any results. But the "Obituary Notices" in the Illustrated Society of that morning's issue supplied him in full with the intelligence he desired....
At Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, N.B., had died on the previous Saturday, the man John was going up North to meet.
"A notable figure in Society and oldest living representative of one of the most ancient Catholic families upon the Border," stated the chronicler, "has now passed away in the person of Major-General Sir Philip Forbis, K.C.B., C.M.G., etc. Born at Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, 1834, the seat of his family for sixteen generations. Married Muriel Helen (d. 1910), dau. of C. Colleston, Esq., J. P., of Wyond Hall, Norfolk. Edu. R.M.A. Woolwich. Entered Royal Horse Artillery 1852. Col. 1882, retired as Hon. Maj. Gen. 1884. Served in Crimean Campaign 1854-7. Wounded eight times. Medal, clasp and Turkish Medal. Prepared five contingents for the War in South Africa. Upon the outbreak of War with Germany in 1914 Major-General Forbis, having kept abreast of modern military progress, raised and trained a Yeomanry Regiment of Light Cavalry for Kitchener's New Army, three squadrons of which are now serving with distinction in France. The deceased officer met his death, as perhaps he would have chosen,—while leading a charge of the Fourth and Fifth Squadrons, on the Cauldstanes Muirlees Racecourse, ceded by the Local Racing Committee to Government as a Military Exercise Ground."
John thought the Major General deceased must have been a jolly fine old fellow. Mentally picturing him as lightly-built, active, wiry and upright, with a keen light blue eye, crisp white hair and close-clipped white moustache, giving the brusque touch of soldierly decision to an aquiline-featured face of many criss-cross wrinkles. He added a peppery temper when put out, and a light hand on a bridle, before he proceeded to the paragraph below:
"General Forbis' elder son, Captain Mark Forbis of the 'Gray Hussars,' went out with the First British Expeditionary Army in August, 1914, and was killed before Mons, while rendering a service for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The second son, the Rev. Father Julian Forbis, of the Order of St. Gerard (now head of the family), has served with distinction as a Chaplain with the Mediterranean Forces recently withdrawn from Gallipoli. Miss Forbis, V.A.D., has rendered excellent service in France as an Ambulance Driver for the Red Cross Society. She has fortunately recovered from the muscular strain, for the treatment of which she was invalided home some months previously; and pending her return to more active duties, has been assisting the overworked Nursing Staff at Cauldstanes County Hospital."
A paragraph below continued:
"The origin of the name of 'Kerr's Arbour,' which has always distinguished the ancient mansion dignified by the massive peel-tower (built by a certain Sir Hew Forbis in 1147 and which has been for nearly nine hundred years the seat of the Forbis' family), is lost in the mists of antiquity. Owing to the loss of some ancient documents, the Scottish Herald's College and collateral authorities can throw but little light upon the question, when broached. The Forbis coat of arms consists of a shield with three escallops argent on a fesse between two chevrons sable and gules, with the crest of a wolf's head and the motto: 'FORBYS FOES FA.' But that the original founder of the Forbis family was a Roman tribune named Marcus Fabius, who, reared in Egypt by a Community of Coptic monks, brought his Christian faith with his sword to Britain, in the service of the Emperor Constantius, seems to be generally agreed."
John wondered how the bigwigs at the Scottish Herald's College would like a dip into the contents of that calfskin bag of Old Mendel's. Stowed well within touch of elbow, beside him on the seat, it struck him as wearing a consciously-secretive air. For the bag knew all about the antecedents of the Forbis's (going back a whole generation before Marcus F.). It could have told how the Crusader Sir Hew Forbis (whom John would have liked to kick for a family reason)—built the Tower:—and where the bags of French gold came from that paid the architect and the workmen, and quarried the stone, and "bocht ye lyme an ye clypins of a troop of ye Scots Kyng's Horsys ye betyr for to bynd ye same." ... And why Sir Hew called the place Kir Saba,—transmogrified in the course of centuries to quite another name.
But on these points Scottish Herald's College must perforce remain in ignorance, unless Katharine Forbis—of Kerr's Arbour—who had driven a Car for the Red Cross in France, and had got somehow hurt in lifting wounded Tommies,—and had eyes of "gold and bramble-dew"—John Hazel was mightily taken with that simile of Stevenson's—unless Katharine Forbis should consent to share the secrets of the calfskin bag....
Katharine Forbis, the Ideal Woman.... Devoid as John was of any knowledge of her personality, the vague outlines supplied by the gossip of his fellow passengers adapted themselves quite wonderfully to the image stamped upon his mental retina one April day in Flanders on the grim road that led from the British Reserve Trenches to the Firing Line. Had he received that post-card—and it must have been sent, for She had promised—would it have been signed with the initials K.F.?
Katharine Forbis.... Katharine Forbis. What luck if this Katharine were She? He leaned back and shut his tired eyes, and fell to dreaming of this Katharine: a Princess of the North with cairngorm eyes; to whose court was momentarily drawing nearer—out of the Orient from whence all Mystery springs—a swarthy legate,—bringing neither apes nor parrots, embroideries or spices,—but the rare jewel of an ancient oath of fealty, unbroken by the use and wear of more than sixteen hundred years.
IX
Certain passengers travelling by the Kelso Express were presently switched off on a Branch Line, to rumble for a chilly hour in unwarmed and feebly-lighted carriages, between low-breasting heathery hills patched with larch and oak-woods, shagged with gorse and delicately topped with snow. Upon the left hand, beyond the blue-green riband of a river narrowing between its encroaching icy borders; lying between low sandstone cliffs hollowed by spates from the hills, the last embers of a fierce red sunset were smouldering away....
Signs of the Day were apparent, in the significant age or suggestive youth of the plaided shepherds who moved as isolated dots upon the cheerless landscape; their collies bounding at their heels, or harrying flocks of black-faced sheep back to the round, stone-built folds upon the hills. Or in the macintosh and shawl-enveloped women driving shaggy ponies in the farm-gigs; or kilted and breeched, wearing the green armlet with the red Crown and lettering,—carting mangolds or forking swedes, herding rough-coated milch-cows back to the byres—or wheeling red Post Office bicycles up steep brae-roads.
A fanged east wind spattering icy sleet, blew from the North Sea across the Cheviots, and lights began to twinkle from grey stone-built manses and slate-roofed farms. Dark had come down when the train stopped at Cauldstanes, the bleak little granite station of the Border market-town. The dazzling blue-white headlights of a big Rolls-Royce car blazed in the dark beyond the platform fence-rails. A one-armed, silver-badged male servant waited on the wet asphalte under the jumping gas. The Station Master, stout, white-bearded and important, passed towards the rear of the train, demanding a "ledda for Whingates." Presently to return, loaded with rugs, pillows and suit-cases, ushering the sought-for lady,—who said in her characteristically staccato accents as she bade her fellow-traveller adieu:
"Good-night and good-bye, if we never meet again! Though this is a small world, isn't it?—and most roads seem to cross at the Front. No! you are Not to help with the things! ... Mr. Smellie will be so obliging.... And here is Padsworth. Glad to see you so fit, Padsworth. I've not forgotten to bring the artificial arm!"
Thus Lady Wastwood, who vanished away into the conjectural regions beyond the platform fence-rails, tall, thin, triangular-faced, graciously smiling; attended by the laden station-master and followed by the one-armed groom....
A red-cheeked girl in a macintosh and scarlet Tam O' Shanter took the soldier's ticket at the gate in the platform-railing, and cried in a strident key, intended for some unseen ear:
"Mrs. Govan, mem! ... Is Mrs. Govan no' ootside wi' the doug-cairt frae the Cross Keys?"
A voice pleasanter, rounder and more womanly, came back out of the blackness of the station entrance-yard, crying:
"Ay, am I, Leezie! Is Cornel Yaill there?"
Leezie shrieked back as the headlights of the Rolls-Royce revolved, and the big car turning,—backed, snorted, forged ahead and sped away on soundless tyres into the chilly darkness:
"I kenna, but there's a sodger seekin' a nicht's lodgin'!"
"Tell him the Cross Keys wi' guid supper an' clean beddin' is inside the meenute's walk frae here!" called back the matronly voice. "Losh me! Whatna's that?"
As John Hazel stood outside the platform gate, in the wind-blown flare of its solitary gas-lamp, another tall figure in khaki had appeared from the velvety blur of blackness under the eaves of the preposterous little booking-office; and passing close to the head of the quiet beast between the shafts, had halted by the off-wheel and spoken to the driver....
"Eh, Cornel!" the womanly voice went on, "Gude guide us, but ye scairt me sair! Risin' up oot o' the dairk richt under auld Broonie's nose! ... But that the meir kens ye, the puir beast micht have boltit. An' wha' wad manage the Cross Keys then, I wad weel like to know!"
The answer came in a man's deep voice, with an inflection of melancholy underlying its pleasantness:
"I am sorry, Mrs. Govan. But how is it I find you here, on such a bitter night?"
"Huts! The nicht's no' waur than ither for the time o' year," Mrs. Govan retorted from her perch on the driver's seat. "An' the guidman being laid by wi' a sair hoast—forbye a lad we canna' trust wi' a guid beast on a mirk night—there's nane but mysel' to drive ye to Kerr's Arbour!" The speaker added, in the high keening tone which a Scotswoman of her class invariably assumes in speaking of things having reference to death and mourning; "An' haud ye back ae mair half-hoor from ane that's thinkin' lang until ye come to her—I wouldna'! Not to win my ain lad Alec back frae the Front the night!" She went on as the person addressed made a responsive sound of indeterminate meaning:
"But whatna's to hinder ye, Cornel Yaill, knowing the road's weel as yer pocket, frae driving yersel—as ye've done to my knowledge—mony an' mony a time before noo. Up wi' ye!" She relinquished the reins and jumped down, nimbly enough considering her years and matronly proportions, adding as the man she addressed promptly assumed her vacated seat.... "Bid them gie Broonie a het mesh, puir thing, she's nane sae yoong as has been!—and mind ye send her back wi' the cairt early in the morn's morn. She'll be wantit to bring Mr. Kellar, the lawyer, oot on business conneckit wi' the Will! Na, na! I'll no' be needing a lift to the Cross Keys! Here's a soger-man from Lunnon that's bound for the inn, and needin' a wise body to guide him. Gang yer ways wi' guid luck! Gie my love to Miss Forbis!"
The woman added as Yaill tightened the reins, and the mare, answering a whip-touch with an indignant snort, trotted away with the dog-cart into the sleety darkness:
"Your road's lang and ower rough. But, O, Man! there's a braw, braw leddy waiting to greet ye at the ither end!"
X
She was so braw a lady,—not only in the physical meaning of splendid height and just bodily proportion; noble outlines and sweet, healthful hues; hair as richly black-brown as the bracken of her wintry braes, and eyes as tawny-golden as the crystals of her Scottish mountains,—that the heart of the man who loved and had lost her, seemed to shrivel and blister in his bosom, as though some fierce corrosive acid had been poured upon the throbbing flesh....
Again and again he said what he was coming to say, as the willing mare, urged by no sparing hand, made good her journey towards Kerr's Arbour. Straining up steep bare brae-roads; picking her way down slippery descents; plashing through muddy bottoms walled with high cliff-banks clad with funereal firs and shadowy larches, revealed by passing gleams from the dog-cart's lamps. As the high-road changed to a hilly private road bordered by a plantation of conifers backed by a wire park-fence, the beast, which had given signs of distress unheeded by the man—checked at the steep with almost a woman's sob....
Something in the sound wakened a dull pity in Edward Yaill. He got down, and walked beside Brownie, as she slipped and stumbled on stones washed loose by the rain-scour; and as a soldier will, he cursed the badness of the road. It was in a rotten state, compared to what it had been before the War came to take its super-toll of human energy. Sweeping into its huge and bloody maw gentle and simple, noble and infamous, ignorant and learned, penniless and rich. Nothing was the same. Nothing would, could, ever be the same again. Life had been transmuted, not into gold—but from honest silver into a strange, new ugly metal—in this vast, comprehensive crucible of War....
Most hopelessly, irremediably changed of all human beings was Edward Yaill. Once a man meant by his Maker to inhabit an earthly Paradise, by the warm, fragrant side of the tenderest of mates. To that sick-hearted wretch, dogged by a pitiless Fate: outcast, or it seemed so to him—from decent Society: traitor to the woman unswervingly worshipped through the long years of a drawn-out engagement, it was meagrest comfort to know himself blamelessly loyal. Even as a Saint who in the delirium of fever has heard his own crazed voice blaspheming God....
In the horrible wreck and wastage of Yaill's plans, one thought was clear. He must get to Katharine first, and tell her himself before others carried the tale. He looked up at the thin, pale face of the new moon coldly staring down at him between overshadowing branches, and thought it judged and condemned and repulsed him; like the face of the woman in the train. The woman knew Katharine Forbis—might even have written to her. He might find Kerr's Arbour mined, when he got there. A hundred things might have happened to ruin his chances.... What chances he meant he did not clearly know.
Sometimes his mood was cold as he tramped by Brownie, and sometimes hot,—but always he tramped in Hell. He was going—going unless another had been before him, to break the heart of the dearest of living women with five words of his mouth.
"Listen! I have married another!" Afterwards adding: "Even with my soul and body worshipping none but you!" Then—would she die with her great wide eyes reproaching him? Or would she drive him from her with words of scorn? Scornful words would be unlike Katharine Forbis—Katharine who rarely judged and seldom blamed. But the silence in which she would hear him out to an ending, would be infinitely more tragic, unspeakably more terrible than wrath....
Insensibly beneath his feet the steepness levelled. Another mile and Kerr's Arbour would be in sight. But Yaill walked on, now obsessed and held by visions. In mental flashes Katharine came and went.
A hundred times they had climbed this hill together. He felt as though she moved beside him now. He could see the sleet-drops glistening on her smooth cheek, whipped to a sweet carnation by the chilly wind. The scent of camphor from her furs came back to him, with the light pressure of her gloved hand upon his arm. In his ears were the tones of her nice voice,—the frank glance of her fair eyes seemed to meet his, for him were her gay words and her tender ones—like the sweet smile upon her rather large mouth. A smile that expressed its owner's innate conviction—shared by the majority of her acquaintances—that never under any imaginable circumstances could Miss Forbis be unwelcome or undesirable in the estimation of any being she chose to bless. No wonder her wretched Edward was wrung and tortured. In vision after vision she came and vanished, as he tramped beside the now exhausted Brownie under the thin new February moon.
The iron-hard ringing ground, slippery with cat-ice; whitened with powdery hoar-frost; flowed on unheeded under the footfalls of brute and human, who marched together to a worsting Fate. All Nature seemed to reproduce Yaill's mood—the desolate, wintry hills, the eerie scream of the whaups—frozen out of their feeding-grounds in marsh and bogland,—the wailing cry of the hunting-owls, were in tune with him. The skirl of the north-east wind, honed to a razor-edge on the Jutland coast—tanged with the freezing salt of the wild North Sea; mined, patrolled, netted, guarded,—watched from bleak shore to shore, and from the oozy depths, and from the immeasurable heights of Air, by friends and foes, indomitable in hatred,—echoed through the chambers of his desolate heart....
In the Spring of 1910 they had become engaged, and were to have been married in the Winter of that year,—but her mother had died—and Katharine had been unwilling to leave her father, and there had been delays and delays.... And then the wedding had been arranged to take place in the Autumn of 1914, and the War had prevented it—the damnable War!
He ground his teeth, thinking of what the War had done for him and for many another man as wretched—and the distant hooting of the owls, freezing as they hunted freezing rick-mice—and the shriek of the north-east wind—sounded like Irish Banshees wailing the coming death of beautiful love....
For Katharine's love had always been perfectly beautiful. She had been the ideal mate—the sweetheart who never palls. She had fed her lover's heart with the wholesome bread of tenderness, and never let his soul lack nourishment. She had met him full at every turn and exigency of Life—even as they had moved to meet it side by side. In the purest, most spiritual sense these betrothed lovers were wedded—though their ancient Church had not yet made them one.
And now he was hastening to meet her and pull down his tower of love about his ears. Why hurry? whooped the owls and skirled the curlew. If you are going to tell her as you purpose, will you not reach Kerr's Arbour far too soon? But if you have the wisdom that men boast of—take what Life yet may give ere you lose all....
He topped the crest of the final steep, and halted to let his dumb companion breathe awhile.... Now the sharp tuff-tuff of a motor-cycle came out of the distance behind him, and he wondered who was having so cold a ride upon that road to-night. Even from this point he looked on his journey's ending, with the sensation that a man may have in meeting with a dying friend....
Nothing of beauty characterised Kerr's Arbour, an irregular mass of masonry rising from a walled garden-courtyard shut in by high yew-hedges: a stone wall and a porte-cochère of ancient wrought-iron, beyond a bridged dry moat at the bottom of the private road. It showed as a rambling house of Early Jacobean architecture tacked on to the peel-tower reared by Sir Hew Forbis the Crusader, somewhere about 1147. The ancient battlemented tower was squat and clumsy, the rooms with rare exceptions were low-pitched, the ancient casements small, the stairways narrow, and the stone-flagged passages anything but level to the tread. But set in a fold of the snow-tipped hills and shielded on North and East with plantations of oak and evergreen, with the snow-veiled mirror of a little lake, burn-fed, trouty, haunted with heron and other waterfowl,—lying beyond the wintry gardens to the southward; with chilly moonlight on its frosty battlements and lying in pools upon its stone-flagged terrace; and smoke curling from its clustered chimneys; with mingled firelight and lamplight winking from well known windows—it caught at the wanderer's heart as a vision of Home.
He looked up at the black-white sky, and it seemed to his misery, that beyond that inky wrack and livid cumulus—hurrying south like a curse rushing to fulfil itself—dwelt One who in His high austere remoteness looked coldly on the pigmy woes of men. To Whom his pangs were the struggle of the fly in the milk-jug,—the writhings of the worm severed by the gardener's mattock,—the pain of the snail being beaten by the thrush on the stone....
What, O what was it to Him that Katharine's love had always been perfectly beautiful! And that to live beggared of all that wealth of sweetness—perhaps through all the years of life to follow—would be sheer Hell to her lover, Edward Yaill.
Yaill shrieked at the thought, as a man at the stab of the bayonet—and the sweat broke out upon him, despite the cold. His hand went out and gripped the shaft of the dog-cart, so fiercely that the dogskin glove split.... Baulked passion, thwarted desire rent and tore him. Oh, what were Honour and Truth but pithless meanings! He would go down to Kerr's Arbour where she waited, and love and be loved before the ending came. He would drink one draught of the wine his soul and body craved for—before Fate dashed the cup out of his hands.
So said, so it should be done. He took the reins from the hame-spike, and the flare of the wind-blown candle-lamp showed his smile. He sprang to his seat and snatched the whip from the socket, and lashed the mare—who broke into a furious gallop—the cart swinging and lurching perilously behind her as she pounded madly down the steep descent. At the bottom lay the curve of the dry moat, crossed by what had been a wooden drawbridge, converted in the reign of the last Stuart monarch, into an arch of rough-cut granite blocks. Beyond the bridge and a short avenue of beeches rose the rust-red iron gates of Kerr's Arbour, with the arms of the house wrought into their ancient tracery: a wolf's head crest with the motto "FORBYS FOES FA" above a shield with the plain device of three escallops argent on a fesse between two chevrons sable and gules.
The gates stood open for the guest of honour. On their cracked stone pillars, topped with grotesque lead effigies of wolves, each supporting the sword of a Crusader, oil lanterns burned, dangling by chains from iron cressets (meant to hold flares of greased or tarry tow). A dog barked within, and the cracked familiar voice of Whishaw, the butler, snapped out angrily:
"Down, Dawtie! Quiet, bitch! Gin ye dinna ken the Colonel, ye daumned eediot, canna ye haud yer tongue like Laddie an' Bran?"
The dog-cart's worn tyres shirred on the gravel of the courtyard. Yaill leaped down. The heavy nailed hall-door stood wide open. Warmth and light rushed together on the exile, and the scent of flowers, the pretty smells of burning peat and apple-wood, lavender, camphor and sandal from the great Japan cabinets ranged in the hall, came to him in a satisfyingly, fragrant whiff. This was home.... Katharine's home.... And Katharine.... He trembled and a mist blurred his vision—and then his sick heart leaped—because she came.
XI
Came with a rush, and a whisper of silken draperies, straight as an arrow to his starving heart. The chastened passion of her embrace of welcome—the guarded flame of ardour in her kisses—the rapture in her pure eyes told her lover that he was loved as dearly as of old. Unchanged, O God! She who must learn to-morrow, perhaps to-night, to loathe the name of Yaill....
She led him in, moving with the elastic step and upright carriage that gave her, amongst other women, the air of an uncrowned queen. As they passed the chapel door he saw through the stained glass that more lights burned there than the ruby star of the Sanctuary Lamp. She caught his puzzled look, and whispered to him:
"Because my father lies there until his Funeral. Presently you shall see him, dearest Edward. He always loved you like another son."
Her father.... So he was dead, the fine old General. It was true that Yaill had been fond of the dear old fellow, in some remote and shadowy long ago.... Now Katharine was saying, in that blessed voice of hers:
"I was quite sure that when you got my cable, you would come to me, if the surgeons said you were fit. Not unless! ... I made that clear! You understood that, Edward? You would not have been so cruel as to come if it hurt you, dear?"
He moved his head after a non-committing fashion. He had to hide his ignorance of this cable, sent to the Convalescent Camp at the B—— Base, announcing the death of which he now first learned. He realised that he brought with him into this honourable dwelling, subterfuge, pretence, concealment and evasion.... By use of these he must make his way, warily, as over duckboards laid on quaking mud. Presently one would be lying.... Lying to Katharine, the crystal soul of candour and honesty....
Now he was sitting upon her right at the dinner-table, wondering at the keen appetite provoked in him by the savour and sight of well-prepared, well-cooked food. A pink-eyed, silver-haired, Shetland-shawl-enveloped elderly lady, a Mrs. Bell—once nursery governess to the Forbis children, and now occupying an indefinable position in the household,—opposed him upon Katharine's left hand; the carved oak arm-chair usually occupied by the master of the house, remaining in its place at the head of the table; a Persian cat, the dead man's favourite, curled up asleep upon its faded seat.... Nor did the dogs,—a collie, an old pointer-bitch, and a Scotch deer-hound—desert their accustomed posts upon the threadbare patches of the Turkey carpet; though uneasy whimpers testified to their sense of strangeness, and their wistful eyes were always on the door.... Once their tails drubbed and their jaws slavered a welcome, when a thin elderly priest came in, and bowing with the formal grace of the seminary—as Miss Forbis introduced Colonel Yaill to Father Inghame—made a remark about the bitter weather, and took the cover evidently laid for him—upon the right of the master's empty chair.
He was fasting, for a dish of spinach with eggs was brought to him, though Friday's dishes figured on the board. He looked fagged and ate with evident lack of appetite; admitting in reply to Katharine's inquiries that the road to Peelston Bridge was uncommonly trying—even for a cyclist inured to conditions in France. It transpired presently—for the priestly reserve yielded to the charm of Yaill's voice, his courtesy and soldierly frankness—that Father Inghame was not a Secular priest but a Religious of the Order of St. Gerard; who had served as chaplain attached to a Division of the First British Expeditionary Force; received a shrapnel-wound in the First Battle of the Aisne, and had come home in charge of a Hospital convoy. Further, that he was discharging the easy duties incumbent on the resident chaplain at Kerr's Arbour, until his health should be sufficiently re-established, in the opinion of his Superior—to warrant his return to the Front.
"Which I hope may be soon, very soon!" he ended. "For I think that Miss Forbis will not misunderstand me, when I say that I want to get back to real work. To eat the bread of idleness in comfort and safety while brave men are dying hourly in muddy trenches, is not—for a priest who is able-bodied and hardy enough—"
"To subsist upon the rocky biscuit, and munch the iron ration of War!" said Yaill's deep, soft voice with the under-note of melancholy; "Men who have done far less than yourself, Father," he went on, "are content with ordinary War-conditions at home. Would not the charge of a crowded Mission in the East or West End of London—or possibly in a Hertfordshire village, with the certainty of—say two bomb-raids per week, be sufficient to satisfy your thirst for risks?"
Father Inghame returned with a queer hot light burning in each of his hollow eyes, and a flush rising under his sallow skin:
"Indeed, Colonel, you overrate the small part that I have been permitted to play in the opening acts of this unfinished drama of Armageddon." He went on, prompted to pay a genuine tribute of admiration to the distinguished soldier whose heroism was as proverbial in the mouths of men as the record of his misfortunes: "Compared with the experiences that you have passed through, such as have fallen to my lot are, to say the least of them, trivial. Except with regard to the conduct of those Catholic soldiers whom it has been my privilege to confess and communicate. How often when I have passed through the trenches under heavy shell-fire, carrying the Blessed Sacrament,—I have seen them take off their shrapnel-helmets—though shell-splinters were flying about, and machine-gun bullets whistling overhead. And with what childlike simplicity and faith they would kneel in the stinking mud to receive their Saviour! And with what sublime endurance and resignation they have rendered up their souls to God.... All my life long, I shall be rich in such memories: bequeathed to me, not only by Catholics, but by Protestants, Presbyterians, Dissenters, and members of the Church of England,—whom I have seen die with the light of Faith upon their blackened faces—whispering the prayer that was made by God for men!"
"The splendid men!" said Katharine's full warm voice. "Oh! how can we ever be proud enough of these men of ours! Haven't I hugged myself whenever I remembered—'I am your countrywoman, you great dears!'"
Yaill's eyes met hers, and an exquisite thrill was interchanged between them. When they were once more conscious of the outer world, the Father was saying—with some lack of tactful prevision:
"It is said there were a good many Catholics in the rank and file of your regiment. In the First and Second Battalions of 'The Tweedburghs,' in 1914—as in those battalions reconstituted," he hesitated, "after the disasters of Le Cateau-Cambrésis and Loos—I have heard the percentage estimated at twenty-five."
"The estimate is correct," Yaill answered, speaking with admirable composure, though a tell-tale muscle fluttered in his lean brown cheek, and Katharine drew a quick breath of painful sympathy. He added, with a curious intonation: "Yet, despite scapulars, medals, rosaries, badges and other practical life-assurances—the Catholic men you speak of lie under stinking mud with other fellows now. Ha, ha, ha!"
And he laughed with such unnaturally loud and mirthless violence, that Whishaw at the sideboard jumped and dropped a dish-cover, and Katharine's sweet eyes went to him in grave surprise.
Those eyes of Katharine's, "of gold and bramble-dew," never strayed long from the face of her dear one. She was nurse as well as lover, and that strange laughter had filled her with dismay. She wished that the Father had been wise enough to shun the agonising subject. Why had it not occurred to her to warn him not to refer to Edward's terrible experiences, she asked herself, aching in sympathy with Edward's pain. But thin ice is a lure to some skaters,—these not the most brilliant performers. Father Inghame pursued, in a tone that was not untinged with rebuke:
"You would not suggest, I feel sure, Colonel, that the Catholic men of your own or any other regiment regarded rosaries, scapulars and medals as charms and mascots—and not as legitimate aids to faith?"
Yaill's face hardened to a mask of pale brown granite. His fine dark brows drew sternly into line. His grey eyes gleamed, and below the clipped moustache a faint smile hovered. He played with the stem of an antique wine-glass of cut green crystal; twirling it in the long sensitive fingers of a hand as beautifully shaped as strong. And he returned, while feigning to admire the delicate workmanship of the long-dead engraver:
"You are right. I intended to convey no such suggestion." He changed the trend of the conversation by asking the little pink-eyed Mrs. Bell when she had last heard from her son in India. And his agreeable, well-bred tones gave no hint of the frenzy of impotent resentment raging within him against the Supreme Power Who set the pellet Earth with her sister planets, to follow their orbits round the white-hot Sun—and modelled the lord of the world—Man, in the form of the Creator; and set in his breast a spark of Divine Intelligence; and bade him live, and love, and be loved again—O anguish!—a finite being with immortal yearnings—condemned to dwell in the upas-shadow of Death.
To house an immortal Soul in the breast of a pigmy, in the blood of whose veins armies of microbes make War. Whose tiny gullet can be blocked by a swallowed fish-bone; whose seeing eye, that miracle of miracles, by a thorn-prick or a blow can be rendered blind! Whose brain, that has solved the secrets of Creation; reduced the Universe to its chemical constituents; made an ally of the once tameless lightning; abolished Time, and annihilated Distance; set bounds which Plague and Pestilence may not overpass; made ships to fly in Air and sail below water—may by a blow be mashed in its eggshell skull. Or by the detonation of a shell packed with High Explosive, be churned to merest pap of grey matter, dead to sensation, incapable of Thought. Or be so thrown out of gear as to order the body to speech, impulses, acts, in opposition to the Will. Seemingly sane, O horrible, horrible mockery! until the awakening from trance or stupor, or whatever the vile bedevilment may be. From the condition of No. 40, Shell Shock Ward 8, General Casualty Hospital 70—and the state of No. 80, Convalescent British Officers Camp, B—— Base—to the present plight of the complainant; captive within the enclosure of a sacramental vow!
This was the rankling grievance nursed by Edward Yaill against his Maker. The son of a Catholic house, reared in the Faith, loyal to the Church, scrupulous in the discharge of religious duties, he had never for one instant imagined himself at variance with his God. That he could quit the fold of Catholic Christianity on the grounds of intellectual doubt, he knew to be impossible. Like the devils, he believed—even while he revolted. His was the pain of the child who, loving the father, has discovered him to be unjust. The muscle twitched in his lean cheek, and a quiver passed over his stern features as a ripple will traverse the surface of still water. And to Katharine's tender, watching eyes, it seemed that all was not well with Edward. She breathed a little silent prayer to Our Lady for him, and unconsciously her large white hands folded together on the tablecloth. They were beautifully-modelled hands, with tapering fingers, and nails that had been exquisite in pre-War days. The damaged nails that gallant British women were not at all ashamed to show.
Yaill knew that those fair hands had done distasteful, rough, laborious tasks with glorious goodwill and cheerfulness. He loved them and admired them all the more. He could picture them holding up the drooping head of a wounded man—or offering cool drink to the parching lips of the dying. He had sipped sparkling burn-water from their cupped palms many a time on a hot day up yonder on the moors. He had seen them folded in prayer, he had covered them with kisses by her sweet permission. When he had bidden her good-bye upon leaving for the Front—she had taken his head between those hands, and kissed him solemnly upon the forehead—and traced the sign of the Cross there—as his mother might have done, had she been alive. And God, Whom he had served and trusted—had for no fault of his, taken from Yaill who worshipped her—this pearl and paragon among women. And upon this count he held himself betrayed.
There would never be "Nil" upon Yaill's disc, but he had finished with prayer, and the Sacraments, and Mass-going for ever.... Unless—by some marvellous—miraculous happening, the Great Wrong should be set right.
XII
Dinner ended. Little, pink-eyed Mrs. Bell enveloped herself in her Shetland shawls and discreetly vanished, with a plaintive murmur of good-night. Yaill, with set, formal courtesy, giving precedence to the Church—followed Father Inghame and Katharine through a curtained archway communicating with the adjoining drawing-room.
"Thank you, Miss Forbis, but I will not stay for coffee. I have to make a visit to the chapel—and write some letters, and after night-prayers I shall go to bed, for I am beat out. I only wanted to say that Father Haildon, the priest in charge of your Parish Church at Birkleas, will celebrate the Requiem Mass on Monday; and that the Father Superior of the Monastery at Scraeside," he named a place some miles distant from Birkleas,—"will esteem it an honour to be permitted to assist. He will bring a Jesuit priest from London who is staying at the Monastery (Father Bevan, of Farm Place, Grosvenor Crescent)—and all are agreed that ten o'clock will be the most suitable hour. The boys of the Birkleas choir will drive over in the break with Father Haildon; and the lady who acts as organist will take the place of Mrs. Bell. That is all, except to wish you a very good night!" He shook hands with Miss Forbis and moved in the direction of the door opening on the hall, adding: "Mass will be at half-past seven as usual to-morrow. Perhaps—" his eyes went doubtfully to the tall khaki figure and downward-bent, thoughtful face of Yaill, who stood upon the worn tiger-skin hearthrug with a hand gripping the ledge of the mantelshelf: "perhaps as Whishaw's grandson has influenza, Colonel Yaill would like to serve Mass?"
There was an instant's pause before Yaill answered. He stared into the wood and peat fire blazing in the antique bowed steel grate, and seemed as though he had not heard. A log hissed; spurted brilliant flame; broke and fell—scattering sparks upon the old Dutch hearth-tiles. Two or three lodged upon the tiger-skin, mingling the fragrance of the charring apple-wood with the ugly acrid tang of frizzling hair. Then Yaill said, punctuating the sentence with stamps of his boot-heel:
"I fear I must—ask—to be excused, sir."
The priest's response was the gentle opening and closing of the door. Then with her long light step and a whisper of silken draperies, Katharine crossed over and stood on the hearth at her lover's side. He did not move or lift his head, but his starved heart answered the call of her nearness with a leap of fierce delight. His arm went out and round her, and she leaned lightly against him, and whispered against his cheek, close to his ear:
"If you knew what joy it is to me, to have you! ... Dear Edward! I am not much good at words—but you understand?"
He said, stiffening his lips against his teeth to check their trembling:
"No words have yet been made to express what you are to me—Dearest of all women!—and have been always, since the blessed hour when I saw you first!"
She was not a woman from whom to exact caresses. You waited the moment when she was pleased to give. Now she swayed nearer and her bosom brushed his—and the world went dim as they exchanged a kiss....
Last time they had met she had worn a Regulation tunic and short uniform skirt of blue serge, thick high Service boots and a plain blue felt hat with an enamelled Red Cross badge, and had been no less beautiful in his eyes. Now her tall lithe shapeliness was in silken raiment, like the beautiful arched feet in their buckled shoes. The rigorous plainness of her mourning dress added to her beauty, with its pure strong outlines and rich creamy skin. Her high-bred simplicity was the dominant note of her—or was it her generosity, her sympathy, or her piety? ...
A man had once said to Yaill in the early stages of the friendship that had changed so quickly into passionate love:
"She would be enchanting if she were not so holy!"
And Yaill had answered, with his grave eyes following her:
"Holiness is the bloom upon the nectarine."
Well, it was true. She was all the more attractive for the piety that graced her beauty, the devotion that exhaled from her, unconsciously as the fragrance from the rose.... Like Yaill's dead mother, she had no use for a man who was not religious. She had a standard and expected her beloveds to live up to it. And Yaill had done so, according to his lights.
She leaned closer, and her long, beautiful arm curved across his tunic, and her fond hand stroked the ribbons on his breast. Lingering over them, enumerating with silently moving lips the list of her man's distinctions, from the orange-centred blue and red of the Queen's medal of the South African War of 1899-1901, to the red ribbon of the Victoria Cross; the rainbow of the Star of Mons: the blue-edged red of the D.S.O. the white-mauve-white of the Military Cross; and the green, red-lined ribbon of Belgium's Croix de Guerre—with the sweet colour coming and going in her cheeks, and her dark lashes lowered over the shining cairngorm eyes. His sick heart ached anew, she was so wifely; and so womanly in her insistence on her point. For she went on urging:
"Then, I may tell Father Inghame that you will serve Mass on my father's last day in the old home, and in his place? ... He would yield the privilege to no one—unless it were my brother Julian—so gladly as to you. Say that I may say 'Yes!'"