The just steward

XVII

Katharine looked up from the queer, absorbing letter, four pages of big plain note with the printed address of the Hospital, to meet the intent black stare of the representative of the House of Hazaël....

She said, returning the letter to the envelope, and keeping it in her hand as she went back to her chair opposite him:

"Your grandfather—was an old man?"

"He was nearly a hundred years of age, and mentally in topping condition when the War happened and swept away all his sons and grandsons too, except my brother and myself. And that broke his heart. Peace be upon him!" added John without intending it.

"Peace be upon him!" echoed Katharine Forbis. "I think that is a beautiful thing to say. He would have said it for my dear father had he known!" she added. "But they have met by now, in that good place where all good men foregather. Do you not think they have?"

"My grandfather was a devout Jew," said the big fleshy-lipped mouth opposite her.

"And my father was a faithful Catholic," said Miss Forbis. "And Catholics and Jews who have served God according to the light He gave them, are equal in His sight. Do you not believe so?"

"I've never given much time to theological and—ar—ar—dogmatic questions. But at Lloyds it stands that all ships are good ships if the insurance has been paid. Now as to these documents and things—" John reached down a long arm and hauled out from under his chair a business-like bag of shabby cowskin. "Here in this bag you see, I've got the whole caboodle!" (Really this was a very objectionable young man.) "But first, if you don't mind, the rings have got to be verified. That black agate you're wearing—and this of mine...."

He wagged a huge third finger. Katharine repressed a sense of this big, florid, hook-nosed young City insurance-broker's having taken a liberty, when she admitted, glancing at one of the large, beautiful hands lying lightly clasped together on her black lap:

"It is odd. This ring—which is a family heirloom worn up to the day of his death by my dear father—and that you have on, are practically identical...."

"With this difference, that mine is the original intaglio, and yours a facsimile of the design in relief. The 'mate to the gem' I rather think they'd call it." He looked at the black agate with the head of Hercules shouldering the club, and crowned with the lion-mask, once the signet of Philoremus Fabius, given by his patron to Hazaël the Jew.

"Would they? ... Oh, well, it's possible!" Katharine admitted. He went on:

"I was given to understand that this is no end of an heirloom. Been handed down in my grandfather's branch of the family—the trunk, I suppose I ought to call it—since the year 308...." He rubbed the antique greenish-gold setting on his sleeve, and looked at it closely, then drew it from his big third finger, and rose up from his chair.

It seemed to Katharine Forbis as though he would never have finished getting up. With a strange sensation she also realised that she was up against Antiquity and Tradition, in the person of this Territorial Tommy grafted upon a Cornhill insurance-broker; who spoke the colloquial English of the City, mingled with the slang of the camp and the trenches,—as a foreign language painstakingly acquired. Great as was her sense of race, it was belittled by Hazel's, with that history behind him that was written by the Eternal Finger on the living rock of Sinai....

And he was towering over her as she sat there—salient, masterful—endued with an authority ancient as the hills. Saying in his deep bass tones as he bent over her:

"It need not take a moment, Miss Forbis, but the form is absolutely necessary. It proves beyond doubt that you are you, and that I am—whom I say I am! ... May I ask you to hold out your left hand!"

She obeyed him, lightly resting the downward-turned palm of the hand that wore the black onyx upon the upturned palm of Hazel's. Now he brought the faces of the rings together, carefully adjusting them until the intaglio of his own ring covered the relievo of its counterpart, and the gems wedded into one chipped and shabby black onyx square....

"Good!" The young London business man was once more merged in the Jew of Syria. "There could be no proof more convincing than the marriage of these gems." He lifted his hand, and the rings were two again—and Katharine saw him return to his chair and become once more a large young London Territorial grafted on an insurance-broker, of Cornhill, E.C.

"Now I must hand you over these...." He was opening the cowskin bag, dipping in his big hands and bringing out—were these shrivelled things parchments? Wrapped in squares of faded yellowish silk, tanging the homely-sweet atmosphere of the room with myrrh and benzoin and other Eastern odours, spicy, pervasive, suggestive and queer. "First of all—" he handed the surprised Katharine the flat wallet of mouldy parchment sewn with antique silkworm gut—"this contains the original Title Deed of the Tower of Kir Saba, with the fields, streams, wells, vineyards and groves appertaining, granted to the Tribune Justus Martius of the Tenth Roman Legion by the divine Emperor Vespasian, on the tenth day of August in the second year of his reign...."

He paused to explain that the year was A.D. 70, when the old Roman Johnnies under Titus took the temple at Jerusalem, and then dealt with the remainder of the documents from the deed of mortgage between Sir Hew Forbis, and Issachar Ben Hazaël in the year 1146, down through the lengthy list of accounts and vouchers, the latest cleanly typed in purple ink on yellowish Levantine foolscap in the Jaffa offices of Messrs. Abel Manasseh, Ephraim and Co. Winding up:

"And I think you'll agree with me, Miss Forbis,—what with Wars, earthquakes, locusts and dry seasons; the raids of the Saracens and the Third and Fourth Crusades—not forgetting the Fifth in 1197 when Pope Innocent III issued a Bull dooming the people of the Ten Tribes to perpetual servitude,—that during what we Jews have got some excuse for calling the Dark Ages—there was nothing doing to any extent in the wine- and olive-trade."

"You talk," Katharine murmured, "as though all this happened yesterday."

"Speaking in my sense," said John Hazel, "it happened in December last...."

He went on,—seeming to feel his way,—garnishing his sentences less and less with the argot of the City and the slang of the trenches,—falling unconsciously more and more into the dignified archaic English of the translated typescript:

"Christianity had a grudge to work off on us Hebrews. When one of those jolly old mediæval jossers wanted to cleanse his crime-stained soul, he had it rubbed into him at G.H.Q. that the best Sapolio was the blood of a Jew. If kings or nobles wanted to raise an extra bit of pocket-money, they'd only to squeeze a Jew between a brace of paving-stones"—Katharine shuddered—"and drain away the gold. Between imposts and confiscations, spoliations, expulsions and massacres, not only in Syria but in West, North and Central Europe,—we Hazaëls had hardly a fighting-chance to develop our own, or another's property! The lands of Kir Saba had long lain desert round the ruins of the Tower,—when my ancestors were driven into Spain, to join the Sephardim there.... In Spain we struck root and prospered, they tell me. Near the end of the fourteenth century Spain became too hot for us. With luck at low-water-mark and all the hounds of Torquemada's Inquisition baying at our blistered heels, we flew the coop into Mohammedan Turkey—and under the protection of the Infidel we spat upon—Sultan Bayazet the Second—settled on friendly soil and held up our heads again. By the middle of the Eighteenth Century things began to pick up. An astonishing discovery, originally touched upon by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice blazed like a meteor—I've seen meteors blaze in France, but they were nothing to the German star-shell!—across the mentality of intellectual Christendom. 'The Jew pays better as a citizen than as a pariah. Pen him in the Ghetto and he cuts no ice—because Gentile laws cripple his energies. Let him out—he will be more useful still! His money is the golden manure of successful speculation. His Jewish brains are the pith and marrow of every progressive plan. In Law, Literature, Science, Poetry, Music and Art the alien leads—only God knows the reason!'"

The great clenched fist struck the mantelshelf heavily, making its vases of ancient Persian pottery tremble on their ebony pedestals:

"Fools! When He showered these flaming gifts upon the leaders of His Chosen People—did He not know that the Jew of all men would use to most advantage what he had received. So, from the kick-ball of the Dark Ages he has become the hub of Civilisation. The golden grease that oils the World's axles as it spins between the Poles!"

He pulled up and looked at his listener like a man suddenly awakened. His big black eyes burned with a dull red glow in their gaunt caves, and his bluish-shaded temples and prominent forehead shone with little beads of wet.

"These things were nothing to me once," he explained with a rather embarrassed shrug of his shoulders, "and now they pretty well run the show. Awfully sorry if I've talked too much about ourselves, Miss Forbis. But an explanation's necessary, especially after"—his big white teeth showed as he smiled—"our failure to hand in our accounts for nearly nine hundred years. Of course we have kept a base in Alexandria since the beginning of the Fourth Century, and later we established branches in Smyrna, Constantinople, Malta and so on.... But it wasn't until 1833 that we got foothold in Palestine and the vineyards of Kir Saba began to bear again...."

"You make wine there?" Katharine asked with interest.

"We used to, on rather a big scale. We have, or rather, we had vaults on the property, on an area of about 5 hectares—(we use the French method of mensuration)—with cellars and fermentation-rooms for use in vintage time, and an ice-machine and dynamo for running the machinery.... The Turks have smashed all that by now, and blown up the vaults I daresay,—as they did our vaults at Rehon and Zicron-Reuben. But I don't expect they let much of the wine run to waste. There are too many German officers with the Sultan's Army Corps—and our Medocs and Sauternes—sweet wines—to say nothing of our special Tokay—would be likely to appeal to 'em! Now may I trouble you with this cheque for a balance due to you."

He handed Miss Forbis a pale green-and-blue slip, representing a draft Payable to Order upon a London Branch of the Crédit Lyonnais for £8,149.16.10, and requested her acknowledgment for the same.

"Please to write 'Received by cheque—'" (Did he guess what a wonderful windfall that eight thousand dropped into her lap at this pinched juncture, seemed to Miss Forbis of Kerr's Arbour, with an income reduced to microscopic proportions by the War-slump in Home and Foreign Securities.) "That's the best way to word it." He took the acknowledgment from her, adding: "That's posh!—I mean, correct! Perhaps you would kindly keep my card, in case you needed help of any kind—that I could possibly give."

Something in the tone made Miss Forbis look round from the Chippendale writing-chair in front of the old rosewood bureau to whose drawer she had transferred the papers, and the pale green and blue cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais.

"You are most kind, Mr. Hazel, but there can be no legitimate reason why I should trouble you...."

"There's a reason, if it comes to that, and a thundering good one!"

She laid down her pen and turned to him in smiling inquiry:

"We of the House of Hazaël are bound to serve you and yours.... It follows that we do so."

"You do not mean that you are bound by any provision or clause in that old mortgage of the Tower?"

He returned in the calm authoritative tone that alternated so oddly with his modern slanginess:

"I speak of a great debt of gratitude incurred by a remote ancestor of mine to an early founder of your House—Philoremus Florens Fabius, Prætor of the Egyptian taxes at Alexandria—at the close of the Third Century, in my ancestor's early youth."

"'Philoremus Florens Fabius, Prætor of Egyptian taxes at Alexandria.' ..."

She leaned her cheek upon her hand, thoughtfully repeating the name. And all that was noble, patrician and austere in her proud, frank, healthful, vigorous beauty irresistibly appealed to the man who looked on her. Not at all in the sexual sense, though his was a sensuous nature. But once and for all he throned her in his heart as the noblest, dearest, most worship-worthy of living women; and knew that she would reign there as long as life should last....

She seemed to have forgotten John, so unrebuked he feasted, revelling in the grace of the long limbs, the fair hands lying folded together in her lap, the exquisite bend of the musing head upon the long white throat. No beauty she owned but went home to him with a sudden poignant joy of recognition, such as a man might experience, if, after years of hopeless separation, he were to find himself face to face with a beloved friend:—"As if a chap with a bayonet had jabbed me in the ribs!" he thought,—puzzled by the bliss that hurt,—reverting to Private Hazel.... And then he caught his breath, for her eyes had come back to his again. And they were kind as she asked:

"This money—this eight thousand pounds odd, you have just paid me. Can your firm afford to part with so much, when you have suffered such losses since the Turks joined the War?"

"We've got a bit put by against a rainy day." His face was mask-like in imperturbability as he recalled that trifling balance of three-hundred-and-eighty-thousand. Noting the smoothing of the slight, anxious line between Miss Forbis' handsome eyebrows, John guessed that the family were not over-flush. Who knew but that the eight thousand hadn't dropped into the lap of Katharine in the very nick of time. Proving his acumen, for indeed those unexpected thousands were a Godsend. But she was saying with a rather bewildered smile:

"I shall take a little time to get quite used to the idea of having property in the Holy Land.... And how odd that there should be one Kerr's Arbour here—and another over in Palestine—and that my father should never have heard of the existence of such a place!"

"The papers will make all that clear to you.... And—'Kerr's Arbour' is merely a corruption of 'Kir Saba,' as Kir Saba is a contraction of Kirjath Saba. The Tower of Kir Saba in Palestine has given this place its name.... 'The Walled Place of Saba' is the English translation from the Hebrew."

"Good Heavens! ..." murmured Katharine.

The huge dark man got up from his chair and leaned an elbow on the mantelshelf, and went on speaking in a deep slow tone that seemed the very voice of Time....

"The Philistines built the stronghold in the Year of the World 1160—when they came from the nor'west in their bird-beaked galleys, with shields set round the carven bulwarks, and scarlet lug-sails.... They set their ships on waggons drawn by great teams of oxen, and pushed up from the southward into Northern Syria and took the Coastal Plain.... Ashdod was Aasgaard then, and the Sons of Odin held revel there—with deer and hogs roasted whole, and barley-loaves baked in the ashes, and wine and beer and mead. Making sacrifices and libations to the stone image of their bearded long-staffed god, with the high hat and travelling mantle—just as blue-painted Teutons with long yellow hair, worshipped the wooden effigy in the clay, wattle and tree-trunk temples of Alemannia—and under the tall hanging-stones of Britain's Holy Rings.... But it was razed to the ground—I speak of the stronghold later known as Kir Saba—in the time of Solomon the King. And when King Solomon,—peace be upon him!—gave the City of Gaza to Balkis, Queen of Sheba,—woman-like she coveted, and asked, and got for her asking, the new Tower built by the King among the vineyards north of Joppa—that were famous for the greatness and sweetness of their grapes."

He removed a great brown hand from the marble to rub his forehead, and went on in the deep slow tone:

"Long after the glory of the King, like the beauty of the Queen—had passed into a dusty legend,—the Philistines possessed the land once more. And Kir Saba was destroyed again,—and again rebuilt—and burned, as I have said, by the Kharezmian Tartars in the year of the Christian Era, 1244."

He coughed, stuck a thumb in his belt and continued in quite a different tone:

"As for the building as it stands now—supposing the Turks have left any of it,—it dates from somewhere in the Tenth Century, rather more than a hundred and seventy years before the time of Sir Hew."

XVIII

"Ah, yes, Sir Hew! ..." Katharine responded. "Naturally as the builder of Kerr's Arbour, Sir Hew's name is more familiar to us than that of many a later ancestor. I will except Sir Mark, at whose portrait you are looking now...."

Her glance followed her visitor's to a noble Vandyke canvas set in the panelling above the mantelshelf.

"'Sir Mark Forbys,'" John read out from the rusty-gilt lettering beneath, "'Captain-General In The Royal Forces, 1645. Killed At The Battle of Naseby.'"

Below the lettering was the coat-of-arms whose faded gilding shone on the courtyard-gates. The jut of the hooded hearth, below the narrow mantelshelf, showed the coat again, sculptured in bold relief: and wrought in enamel on the guard of Sir Mark's sword—embroidered on the crimson scarf that crossed his breast, and on the corner of the velvet saddle-cloth of the Arab charger held in the background by a handsome waiting page; the three silver scallop-shells on a fesse between two chevrons black and gold, were topped by the crest of the wolf's head, scrolled with its legend, indecipherably minute, or clear and plain to read:

"FORBYS FOES FA"

John's eyes softened as they rested on the brilliant, clear-cut face, of which Katharine's was a softer feminine replica. For all the laces, velvets and silks of his splendid figure in its damascened steel-plate, with the rich brown curls hanging in heavy masses on the rose-point of its Stuart collar, Sir Mark bore the cachet of a dominating race. A proven blade in a velvet sheath, a fighter for all his frippery....

Bringing his glance back from the portrait to Sir Mark's living descendant, John Hazel, with a queer thrill of proprietary pride, promised himself that the foes of this Forbis should not for want of a champion, remain standing upright!

Had she an enemy? If so, let him look out for himself if ever John Hazel had the chance to get at him. And then, with a sudden blinding flare of recollection—as though a searchlight had found at last a thing that had been hovering in the dark of semi-forgetfulness—beyond the range of active consciousness—came the memory of the story heard in the train—the incredible tale of Katharine's betrayal—the dreadful news that soon would have to be broken, that might come crashing down upon her any moment now....

Treacherous hound.... Damnable, lying, sneaking—No! The face of the man seen upon the day before, rose up in Hazel's memory. Not a face easily forgotten. Thin, brown, handsome, refined,—with straight, clear-cut features, and-grey, miserable, desperate eyes....

Again Katharine addressed John Hazel, and he started. His heavy Army boot ground on the kerb of the fireplace as he turned to answer her. In the same instant, beyond and behind her as she sat before him in her chair,—framed in the open glass-doors of the more distant of the terrace-windows,—he saw the tall khaki figure and the haunted face of Yaill.

Their looks met. Something in the nature of an appeal and a reply passed between the gaunt black eyes and the miserable grey ones. Then the tall khaki figure moved on. Not so swiftly but that the sound of his booted footsteps on the terrace tiles reached the keen ear of Katharine. Her head turned the fraction of an inch towards the window ... a wonderful light broke over her, transfiguring, irradiating.... Marvel of marvels.... John Hazel found himself looking for the first time in the face of Beautiful Love.

Love.... Not at all the kind of love familiar to John Hazel. Not the cocktail-kindled emotion of the restaurant or supper-club. Not the love of a Birdie Bright or any of her venal sisters,—but the love of a clean-souled, pure-hearted Katharine for her chosen lover, her one "Man of all men."

Submerged for a moment in a great wave of emotion, John Hazel caught his breath, reddened and gulped. Such facial characteristics as a prominent forehead, tanned and tough-skinned as the knee of a Highlander, and capped with wiry closely-curling hair of inky blackness,—the heavy smudge of eyebrows thatching those glowing eye-caverns—the great salient hooked nose, coarse fleshily-lipped mouth and portentously lengthy chin with a cleft in it—could not be said to constitute a sympathetic visage. And yet, Katharine found herself seized with a sudden, irresistible conviction that this strange young man was sorry for her....

Just as she had caught a passing glimpse of Edward, her man of men, her precious dear one!—pacing the terrace up and down in the nipping sunshine, threading the frosty garden-walks with no better companion than his pipe to cheer him, until his Kathy should bestow her company on him again....

Sorry. Why should the grandson of Eli Hazaël be so sorry for Katharine Forbis? For the man had pitied her—it had been written in his face. Ah, now Katharine understood, and understanding, blushed a little. Mark had been killed.... Julian was Missing, and—when to-morrow's solemn rites should be concluded—and that dear sleeper be carried from the chapel to rest in the Forbis' vault under the shadow of the Tower—Katharine would be alone....

Utterly alone, had it not been for Edward. Oh, thanks to God! for that gift of his faithful love. And what was the deep bass voice of this extraordinary John Hazel saying? She roused herself to attention with a little, secret sigh:

Edward was waiting for her in the garden after long years of separation, but Father would have wished her to be particularly gracious to this queer young man from Cornhill. Father had looked forward to his coming with extraordinary interest.... He would have towed him off to his den; and they would have been boxed up hours together, questioning and answering.... And you would have heard the Jew's big voice booming down the gallery in spite of the thickness of the old oak door....

She broke a silence that grew awkward, saying in her mellow tones:

"About the borrowing of the money for the building of the Tower, here on our Scottish Border, there must be some story.... He—my dearest—" her thought went tenderly to the sleeper lying not far off in the sacred silence of the chapel—"he always said there must be one, and that we should light on it some day. We have our legend about the Roman tribune Marcus Fabius (who must have been a son of Philoremus Florens Fabius). He was bred by a community of Coptic monks in Egypt, and came over to Britain in the service of the Emperor Constantine. But beyond his signature appended to a queer lead-sealed parchment covered with crabbed brown Gothic handwriting—a kind of Twelfth century builder's estimate—kept with other family papers in our strong-room—where the wonderful crumbly Title Deed of Kir Saba and all the rest shall join it presently!—of Sir Hew, hardly anything is known."

"I'll tell you what I've crammed of Hew." The speaker went on, feeling for his sentences, sometimes using the excellent if archaic English of the translated letter, other times reverting to modern slang: "He was a Crusader who had served Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem"—(the thick mouth under the cropped black moustache sneered a little)—"first as page and cupbearer, afterwards as body-squire, and later on as a Knight, in Baldwin's last campaign of 1118. He got what one might call a Blighty wound—an arrow through the fleshy part of the thigh—in 1145—driving the Egyptians under Nureddin, their Sultan, out of the castles and coast-towns of Palestine; and the fever of the country—malaria, we'd call it!—seems to have given him beans. But being recovered of his wound under the care of Issachar Ben Hazaël, who tended him as his own son in his house near Joppa, he rebuilt and adorned the Tower of Kir Saba, which had been held as a fortress by the invading Paynims—that means the Egyptians under the Abbasside—and then 'wearying of Palestine'—this was in 1146—'bethought him of quitting the Holy Land and returning to Britain straightway.' ..."

Katharine was listening, fair cheek on white hand, as some twelfth-century lady of the Forbis race might have listened to the tale of Hew....

"But want of boodle intervened, according to Hew's chronicler. Restoring castles even in those days, sometimes spelt bankruptcy, and 'being impoverished'—I'm quoting from a contemporaneous document—'firstly by the great cost of hewn stone and timber; and secondly by his excessive love of good wine, feasting and prodigality; the shows of jugglers, the songs of minstrels—and the company of the daughters of Delilah, this Knight cast about to raise money upon loan.'"

The narrator broke off to comment:

"A sporty boy, Hew, evidently,—and not the first Brass Hat who's enlivened his H.Q. on a War Front—with imported talent and beauty—of the Musical Comedy kind. So being short of cash to settle his accounts, and charter ships to carry him home, and incidentally rebuild the Tower of Kir Saba in North Britain 'so as to make the dwelling seemly for a lord of his estate,' Sir Hew engineered a loan from the Jew, Issachar Ben Hazaël of Joppa—the Joppa of those days is Jaffa to-day,—and the facts I'm giving are taken from a letter, written in the Twelfth Century lingua Franca, and the usual Gothic hand. I've a translation as well as the original, which of course is our property.... Means nothing to me but brown scratches on mouldy sheepskin, though to my pal Harding, ex-Curator of the Mediæval Manuscript Dep. at the British Museum—it would have been toffee and peppermint-rock. First-class man, my pal Harding—killed last March at Richebourg St. V." He answered Katharine's look of interrogation. "A German prisoner shot him from the rear, in our trenches.... And I went balmy and laid out the Hun! ..."

"You mean that you—killed the prisoner who did it?" Miss Forbis' cairngorm eyes were cold and judicial in their regard.

"Exactly." John nodded, and Katharine told herself that the man was a brute as well as a bounder. "But I seem to have been getting away from Sir Hew...."

"Perhaps you have!" Sarcasm was lost upon this pachydermatous person, who murdered prisoners in calm defiance of the Geneva Convention. "Why did he want to build another Kir Saba here on the Border?"

"Because—though he'd got a Tower here already, he didn't consider it seemly for a lord of his swagger, being only 'of great stones unmortared and unbevelled, standing inside a paled enclosure of wattle and posts and earth.'"

"Then that is why the old chronicles call it a pale-tower?" Katharine's interest was eager and vivid now....

"A pale-tower. I expect so. And the bags of French gold were wanted to pay the architect's fee and the wages of the stone-quarriers; and 'the lime and sand wherewith to mortar the stone, and the cost of the clippings of a troop of the Scots King's horse, the better to bind the same.' So the mortgage of Kir Saba was drawn up, signed and sealed—you've got it there with the rest—and you ought to have a duplicate somewhere! And the bags of French gold were packed in boxes and sent down to Sir Hew's ship. He had three of 'em, high-sterned three-banked galleys with scarlet-lug-sails, to take him and his servants, and his Arab horses, and the rest of his baggage home to Britain—and the one he chose for his own use was called The Scottish Crown...."

"Oh—do go on!" Katharine began to see Sir Hew, healed of his arrow-wound by the Jew's skill, with the brown of Syrian suns on his fair skin, and their bleach on his yellow hair—going home to rebuild his Tower and rear his long-legged, broad-shouldered race of Forbis. "This part of the story is wonderfully interesting. If only Father had been alive to hear it to-day!"

"There's not so much to tell. Hew got ready to sail. Old Issachar Ben Hazaël loaded him with gifts; myrrh and spices, incense and dried raisins,—Egyptian hangings and silk embroideries, mother-of-pearl and turquoises; ivory and rare woods—fresh fruit for the voyage and so on.... And Hew took all that he could get—not that I'm inclined to blame him! But at the last minute he wanted a thing with which my ancestor wasn't inclined to part.... Issachar Hazaël had a daughter.... It seems—" The tone changed.... The sentences came dropping from the heavy mouth like strings of cold, weighty, slippery, polished beads of jade—or so it seemed to Katharine: "It seems that my ancestress and Sir Hew had met at our house—it is our house still!—if the Turks have left it standing amongst the orange and olive-groves to the nor'east of Jaffa. And—the girl was beautiful, and Hew—was a Crusader...."

"He—wished to marry her?" The tone was enigmatical.

"He broached the subject of marrying her—an hour before he sailed."

"With what success?"

"With the—result that might have been expected."

Their looks crossed like swords. And resentment burned in Katharine. She stiffened and drew more upright in her chair.

"The Jew—refused to entertain my ancestor's proposal?"

"Just that. He said to him"—the voice of the speaker changed and deepened:

"'Thou hast the gold and the goods. Depart with that which is thine to the country of thine adoption. When the money is recovered in the fulness of time, the title-deeds concerning Kir Saba will be given back again.... For'"—

The big voice echoed among the rafters of the heavily-beamed room, making a brass Chinese gong hung upon a stand at the further end, vibrate with a faint tenor humming....

"'For by a great oath sworn by a forefather of our race in ancient times, we of the Hazaël are bound to succour the children of thy House unto the final generation. That oath we have kept, and will keep, Sir Knight. But we do not defile the pure stream of Jewish lineage with the blood of Gentile veins. I have spoken!' ..."

Fierce scarlet leaped to the roots of Katharine's hair. As though the speaker had struck or insulted her, she rose from her seat with one swift supple movement,—and so stood facing him, quivering with wrath. He too had risen—and thus the woman and the man opposed each other in a silence that both knew hostile; pregnant with hatred, racial, religious—sprung green and poisonous from the dust of nearly two thousand years....

"He dared to speak so to a Scottish gentleman! A Jew!" ...

The great black eyes beneath Hazel's heavy eyebrows burned like live coals. His deep voice echoed:

"A Jew, Miss Forbis. A representative of the People who received the Law from Sinai. Who possessed, besides the Torah, Literature, Poetry, Arts and Sciences—even when a rabble of Aryan nations, swept North by the besom of some Assyrian conqueror—rolled into the Caucasus through the Pass of Dariel. Verily, verily!—and peopled Russia and Germany,—crossing lakes and seas and rivers on log-rafts and in boats of osiers and skins. And paddling across the North Sea—and building forts of tree-trunks at the mouth of an estuary—laid the foundations of the British Nation of which you boast to-day!"

XIX

So they stood face to face, the Occident and the Orient, until the tact of the woman, the subtlety of the man—suggested the compromise of an exchanged smile.

"After all it is very Ancient History.... I think," said Katharine with a gleam of mirth in her eyes of gold and bramble-dew, "that your ancestor was discourteous, and mine—"

"A little bit premature. Or tardy from another point of view,—in asking for what he'd got already. For Sir Hew and my ancestress had been married a week or so back—by a Catholic friar who had baptised Judith—after having received her abjuration of her Jewish faith. Between them they broke the news to Issachar Hazaël, 'who at first made naught of the Lady Judith's entreaties, but after many tears, embraces and cajoleries, suffered himself to be persuaded to sit with them at meat.'"

"Did he? ... I should have suspected—"

"Rats—if I'd been in the sandals of the Lady Judith—and I'd have made an inner bull if I had! 'He would taste of no dish'—according to my Twelfth Century scribe—but he 'filled an ancient silver cup with the best wine of Kir Saba, and touched it with his lips once: seeming to drink while dropping into the goblet under cover of his beard, which was white as the snow of Herman, and fully an ell long—a ring of black onyx incarven very curiously, having a head of the Greek Hercules-with his club and lion-mask.'"

"The ring you wear. The fellow to my ring! And it was poisoned?"

"This ring I wear—the signet from his hand. There's a little compartment with a spring-lid, back of the setting, so I suppose it held poison—as you say, when he 'did hand the goblet to the Lady Judith, bidding her pledge him. But Sir Hew, stretching forth his hand in sport, laid hold of the goblet, whereupon said Hazaël: "Drink first, my Lady Forbis!" and she answered: "That will I right gladly, O my father! but thou and mine husband must kiss me first!" So she took the kisses and gave them back, and quaffed off the cup right merrily—and died as though she had been struck by lightning, not falling down, but sitting stiff and smiling in her chair....'"

There was a silence in the room. Then Katharine murmured, still vibrating:

"Women knew how to love in those days!" ...

"And men knew how to hate!" ...

"And is that all?"

"All, except that Sir Hew leaped up, and cried, when the corpse fell down out of the chair upon the daïs strewn with lion-skins: 'We were wed by a priest! I dealt honourably by her!' And Issachar said,—and I think he comes out of it pretty well on the whole: 'What is honour in thine esteem is dishonour in mine! For the girl, she was begotten of these my loins.... Take what is thine, Sir Knight, and depart an' thou will to thine own adopted country. I deal as I choose with that which is mine own!' Straight off the ice, I call that. Fine old fellow!"

Katharine said, a little breathlessly, for the thrill of a great tragic happening seemed to be in the air:

"Yes, it was great, and terrible and merciless...."

"Hardly to Judith. When he'd once got her over in Britain, Hew would have gone back to the Beauty Chorus. For I'm not over struck on Hew," said John Hazel with a queer quirk of his fleshy underlip. "He appears to have anticipated the Profiteer's motto of the present date. Perhaps you've heard it? 'Self first, me next, and I'll take whatever's left over!' Now I've gone and made you wild with me all over again!"

His huge size, and his genuine ruefulness, contrasted so queerly that Katharine, still tingling to the finger-tips at the insult to Sir Hew, was forced to smile.

"It is a mercy we are not likely to meet often, Mr. Hazel. We should quarrel inevitably. And yet—" There was sweetness in the smile of her eyes of cairngorm brown as she stretched out her long arm and offered her hand to him, saying: "And yet, in a tight place, I would trust you before most men!"

"Give me the chance, Miss Forbis!" His black eyes flashed in their deep caves as her white hand was engulfed in his huge brown one.

"If there is need," she said, "I will not fail to!"

"It's a bargain then!" said John Hazel, and released the hand. "Now I must be going. I have trespassed on your time most frightfully." He turned and reached down to the floor and picked up the cowskin bag....

"One moment, Mr. Hazel!" For he was striding towards the door, and urgently as she desired to be quit of her strange untimely visitor, the sacred bond of old fidelity, exerted its strong invisible influence between these two, so utterly dissimilar—making her add, even as she laid her hand on Whishaw's summoning bell: "You would—would you not wish to attend my father's funeral?"

"I meant to, whether you were willing or not! ..."

The tone robbed the assertive words of all offence. She answered:

"Thank you. He will be laid to rest in the vault in our little private burying-ground the day after to-morrow. Monday morning, immediately after the Requiem Mass at ten. If it will be difficult or bad for you,"—her glance was kind for the hollow cheeks and the bagginess of the khaki on the great wasted body—"to drive over from Cauldstanes in this sharp weather at so early an hour—I know my father would have been glad to—to have you stay...." She added as Whishaw opened the door: "Perhaps you would dine with us to-morrow and sleep the night here?"

"It would put you out." His vast shoulders filled the open doorway, the lintel of which just cleared his towering head. He added as Whishaw faintly clacked behind him: "It's awfully good of you to suggest finding me a bivvy, but the motor-bike that brought me over here to-day—it belongs to the son of the landlady at the Cross Keys—will hold together long enough—at least I hope so!—to carry me over the distance again. But there's one thing I'll ask you. Not, as a favour, mind you!—but as a right, to let me—see him!"

Whishaw again forgot himself so far as to clack, this time distinctly. Miss Forbis' momentary hesitation was dissipated by the sound. She bent her head in grave assent, took her black lace veil and blue-check apron from the writing-table, saying to John Hazel:

"Wait here one instant!" and quitted the room, closely followed by her ancient serving-man.

As the door shut behind them John Hazel's expression altered. His beetling eyebrows drew into a savage line over his great hooked nose, and his swarthy colour faded to ashen brown. His coarse mouth hardened grimly as he crossed with long, noiseless strides to the open terrace-window, and stood there for a moment, quietly looking out. At the first glimpse the sunshiny terrace showed deserted of the pacing khaki figure.... Then the crack of a kindled match broke the silence. Yaill stepped from behind the buttress that had sheltered him as he had paused to light another pipe. The fragrance of the good weed came to Hazel's nostrils, as their eyes met for the second time that day....

"Did you wish to speak to me, by any chance?"

The great menacing figure blocking the window-frame slewed its head in the customary quarter-turn, and raised ar hand in the usual salute.

"As man to man—not as private to field-officer—I have something urgent to say to you, Colonel Yaill."

A pale light flickered in the sorrowful grey eyes he looked at. Was it irresolution, anger, apprehension? The actual truth he utterly failed to guess. Relief.... The die cast, the doubt resolved, the tangle straightened.... The path clear for the lonely feet till death....

"Have you? Well, carry on! We have no hearers. Will you come outside, or shall I come in? ..."

John stepped back. Yaill entered. The men confronted each other. There was one instant's pause before Hazel said:

"This is Saturday forenoon—"

"Twelve pip emma precisely." Yaill glanced at the cheap new watch upon his wrist. A flush burned his thin brown cheeks as he remembered that the bauble had been Lucy's wedding-gift.

"Twelve Saturday.... The Funeral is to be on Monday at ten o'clock...."

"You are incorrect. Monday at ten-thirty...."

"I aim at being plain and short with you, sir. If by three o'clock on Monday afternoon you have not told Miss Forbis of your marriage, I am going to save you the trouble, Colonel Yaill."

"Indeed?" ... Yaill's face was deathly under its sun-tan. "Perhaps you'll tell me who the Hell you are?" ...

John answered with a grim inexpressive visage:

"You can see for yourself. A London Territorial.... Ranker as long as this blasted old War goes on.... And a kind of—family friend of this house of Forbis.... If you're taking any further explanation—I'm bound to tell you you won't get it here...."

"Very well. Your name? ..." It was the crisp, curt tone that marks the caste of the officer, making the other stiffen against his will:

"Private John Benn Hazel, No. 000. X Platoon—Company F. 4th Battalion, 448th City of London Fusiliers, sir."

"I shall remember. Good-day to you, Private Hazel. And carry on!"

"You may be sure I will!"

The door-handle turned as the short, stern colloquy ended. Both men looked round and saw Katharine standing near the door. Her black lace veil draped her head with mystery. In her hand was a little bunch of purple violets, whose perfume made rich sweetness in the air.... She made a sign to Hazel that he should follow her, gave one swift glance of tenderness to Edward, and left the room, followed by his enemy....

"I was going to give him these. Perhaps you would like to?" she said, putting the flowers in John's great hand. He mumbled something she did not catch, but she understood that he would like to, as she led the way down the vaulted corridor—pausing before opening the chapel door to stroke the decrepit pointer-bitch Dawtie, who lay with her muzzle between her forepaws, keeping guard over the sleeper who would wake in Time no more....

Then she passed into the sacred place; bent in reverence before the Presence in the Tabernacle, and led the way up the little aisle closely followed by John. He heard her say in a low, clear voice, as he stood near the feet of the old man who lay in the long oak coffin:

"Father dear, here is a friend of ours whom you have wished to see! ..."

Just as though the old man lying there had not been dead at all.... He—Sir Philip—must have been a tall man, rather narrow than broad-chested; and in youth his fine aquiline-featured face, now set in the sternness of death, might have belonged to his ancestor Marcus Fabius—that Tribune of Constantine,—who superintended the building of fortified camps on the Scottish Border—and planted millions of barbed iron prongs on the brae-sides and in the moss-hags for the bedevilment of naked Celtic feet.

So John laid the bunch of violets below the stiff grey hands that were clasped over a Crucifix and had a Rosary threaded between their rigid fingers,—and rode back on his borrowed motor-bike to the Cross Keys at Cauldstanes—an ancient stone box full of prehistoric smells (stale beer and boiled cabbage predominating)—and slept in a bedroom with an uphill floor, crowded with glass-fronted cases of stuffed salmon and trout, owls, heron, and moth-eaten brocks and foxes.

XX

On Monday John attended the Funeral, driving out to Kerr's Arbour in the dog-cart, in company of Mr. Kellar, the Cauldstanes solicitor and notary, who had heard, possibly through Mrs. Govan, that the big black sojer-man from London was "somehow conneckit wi' the family at Kerr's."

Khaki predominated, for the General commanding at the P—— Depot attended with his aide-de-camp, and the officers of the Fourth and Fifth Squadrons of the Tweedburgh Light Horse officiated as pall-bearers at the burial of their Chief.... In the company of the handful of troopers detailed to act as escort, John Hazel remained near the door of the chapel throughout the Requiem Mass. Declining with obstinate shakes of the head Whishaw's hoarse-whispered invitations that he should "tak' a move up and sit wi' the family" in the parallel rows of benches close-packed by County friends and tenants, and a relative here and there.... Red Cross uniforms were worn by many among the women,—nor was wanting the khaki of the L.L.W.S.L. If the green eyes of Trixie Lady Wastwood picked out among the troopers on the benches near the west door, her fellow-traveller of two days previously—John remained ignorant of the fact.

Bolt upright against the plastered wall left of the chapel door, his great height lifting him above the heads of the congregation, his hawk-vision showed him through an unfamiliar, glittering haziness—the long coffin covered with the Union Jack, on its black-draped trestles, with its single wreath of violets, gathered and placed there that morning by the daughter's loving hand....

An old-type long brass-scabbarded R.H.A. sword with the heavy-fringed sash of faded crimson, rested on the Red, White and Blue, with the soldier's medals and decorations.... The Burmese War Medal of 1826, the four-barred Crimean medal with its faded blue yellow-edged ribbon, the medal of the Indian Mutiny, ribbon white and scarlet; the Turkish Order of the Medjidie with its star and crimson circle, the Maltese Cross of the C.B., the K.C.V.O., the Belgian Order of Leopold; and the eight-pointed, red-enamelled gold Cross of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory....

Two figures kneeling on prie-dieux on the right of the coffin nearest the gate in the Communion-rail, drew and held the black hawk-eyes from the beginning of the Rite to its close. A tall brown-haired man in khaki, and a woman in deepest mourning, tall also, and bending like a palm in tempest under her shrouding black crape veil. When the fragrant incense rose at the chant of the Responsory:

"Libera me Domine, de morte æterna."

When the Kyrie Eleison wailed out, and the Paternoster filled the silence; when the priest circled the bier, asperging the feet, the middle and the head of the corpse with the consecrated Water; when the prayer of Hope and Faith ended with the intoned "Amen" and Yaill rose to his feet and stepped to the head of the coffin—John Hazel got up too from the back-bench, where he was sitting: glowering, reluctant but driven on by a Force he could not but obey....

That unseen hand that had thrust down his head when he entered the presence of Katharine had him again in its resistless grip.... He went up the little aisle between the packed benches, moving with long, noiseless strides, and took his place opposite Yaill. Had he been asked why he did this, he would have mumbled that it had seemed only the decent thing to lend a hand, and yet the impulse, rendered into words, would have been capable of a nobler interpretation:

"Thou hast here no son to bear thee to thy tomb. Therefore, let me render thee this service, whom, never having heard thy voice or touched thy living hand,—I, by the oath of my forefather, nevertheless am bound to serve. And after thee those that are thine, as long as life remains to me!"

The muttered word of command was drowned by the harmonium. The troopers detailed as bearers clanked up the aisle, Yaill's hand steadying the coffin as they lifted it—John Hazel taking upon his shoulders his full share of its weight. Seeing the words, "Because thou hast no son," written in letters of golden fire upon the frescoed stone walls, in violet and orange and fiery crimson across the face of the rose-window in the ogive over the West door, as the escort formed in file at the head of the procession and passed out by a side-exit, heralding the bearer of the Crucifix with its child-borne lights, the chanting choir, the tall young officer with the black-craped regimental Standard, and—carried by five tall Light Horsemen and one taller infantryman—its pall borne by officers of the Fourth and Fifth Squadrons—the coffin of their dead Chief....

So they bore him to the little private burial-place at the foot of the wood-shagged hill that rose behind Kerr's Arbour, touched by the long shadow of its Tower when the sun moved towards the south....

Before the steps leading to the gate of the open vault, the escort of troopers halted and turned inwards, making a lane for the dead man to pass through, as they rested on arms reversed. The coffin was lowered, again asperged by the celebrating priest and incensed with the words:

"Eco sum resurréctio et vita, qui credit in Me etiam—si mórtuus fuerit vivet...."

During the singing of the Canticle Edward Yaill led forward Katharine Forbis. John Hazel, standing in rank with the bearers, caught full view of her death-white, tear-drenched face. Something wrenched at his heart as the priest assisting offered her a silver shell of sacred earth, and she scattered some upon the lid of the coffin—from which the Union Jack with the sword and decorations were now removed. Yaill followed suit: some old friends and Mrs. Bell and the lawyer, Mr. Kellar, pressed forward to take part in this significant act. But Katharine's eyes beckoned and Hazel's answered. He held his palm; she poured from the silver shell—and the soil from the Mount of Olives streamed between his fingers in a thin brown stream, dulling the purple petals of the violets....

And then, moving slowly under the weight of the burden, came the slow descent of the steps leading into the vault, where—to the solemn company of the departed—ranged upon rock-hewn shelves in their modern oak or old-world lead, or antique granite coffins,—Philip, last Forbis of the male line save Julian,—supposing Julian yet to be numbered amongst the living,—was joined with the solemn blessing of his Church.

John Hazel's stern black eyes met Yaill's grey ones, as in unison with others they lent their strength to place the heavy coffin on the stone shelf appointed for its repose. When it slid to its place, their glances again encountered. Yaill was livid and spent and panting, for the effort had taxed him. But he gave back the other's look with cold composure, brushing a little dust from his ringed sleeve. Then, only delaying to replace upon the coffin its wreath of violets—he mounted the moss-grown steps—following the celebrant—and drew Katharine's cold hand once more within his arm.

"Attention! Present! ... Slope arms!"

As the ponderous door of the vault was shut and locked, the sharp voice of the commander of the escort broke the awed silence. The trumpeter sounded the Last Post—and three times the ringing crash of the volley startled to flight the rooks of the home-wood and the jackdaws of the Tower. As the small procession of friends, mourners and clergy returned from the burial-ground to the slow recital of the De Profundis, Yaill thought bitterly:

"Out of the depths I have cried, and no One has heard me. Yet, what had I done amiss?"

The County, with genuine regret tinging its discreetly-conventional condolences, rolled away in its landau-limousines or open cars. The officiating priests,—Father Haddon of the parish church at Birkleas,—the Father Superior of the Benedictine Monastery,—his guest the Jesuit from Farm Place, and Father Inghame,—pleaded an engagement to early dinner at Scraeside. The cars that had brought the General and his aide, and one or two elderly County magnates, remained outside the courtyard railings; their owners having stayed to lunch, as did the officers of the Tweedburgh Light Horse. At the board, Yaill did the honours, aided by Mr. Kellar, the Mistress of Kerr's not being present. A strange, ungenial banquet, crowning a strange, sorrowful day, that,—like how many others that had preceded it,—seemed to the host to be woven of the stuff of dreams. Only the rosy Kellar and one or two of the juniors grew merry over the Forbis port, while John Hazel,—who had shortly declined all hospitable offers of refreshment, rode back to Cauldstanes on Alec Govan's rickety "Sunray,"—thinking of the eyes that had silently bidden him participate in the final rite that only the nearest share.

The reading of the Will in the dead man's library followed the departure of the guests. There were a few personal legacies to friends and pensioners. Kerr's Arbour, with its eleven-hundred acres of moss-hag and moorland, its few productive farms and its neglected coverts, would, did Julian live, be Julian's, with reversion to Katharine and her heirs.