XXVI
The dull tramp of heavy Service boots, following the maid who was that day John Hazel's guide, over the carpeted stone flags of the corridor to the little panelled morning parlour, brought an unexpected, welcome sense of relief to Katharine's overstrained nerves. The door opened, and she moved swiftly to him—stopping him with both hands held out, when he would have made his strange, half-Eastern salutation—saying in her full, womanly tones:
"How can I thank you, Mr. Hazel?"
He answered, tritely and clumsily, but with very evident sincerity:
"By showing me straight off the reel, how I can be of use to you."
Some aching spot in her sore heart was touched by his genuine eagerness to serve her. For a moment she could not speak.... So they stood, her fine white hand engulfed by Hazel's great brown one, his strong black eyes, unrebuked, dwelling on his lady's face.
She looked older, with wide purplish shadows round about her beautiful eyes, and their clear golden-amber changed to sorrowful rust-colour. The clear cream and carnation of her skin was dulled to a pale olive.... The rich brown hair upon her temples, and above her brow, showed here and there a thread of silver. She began, speaking with a curious, hurried breathlessness:
"Mr. Hazel, I know you must have seen newspaper accounts of the inexplicable disappearance of—a friend who—I have no need to hide the fact!—is very, very dear to me.... You must know that I speak of Colonel Yaill. You saw him here the Saturday you came here first, and later at my father's funeral. You—Ah—! ..."
Her eyes were on John Hazel's when the memory leaped into them. They dilated, blazed with tawny fire.... John thought of a lioness.... She snatched her hand instantly away from his, crying:
"What am I thinking of? Why,—it was you who threatened him!—he told me so himself! You said you would save him the trouble if he did not tell me of his marriage. How could I have forgotten? Is my memory failing me? And you.... How could you have come by the knowledge with which you menaced him? ... In Hospital? ... No! Where and how, then? The whole thing is a horrible mystery to me! ..."
John Hazel told her, in a few bluntly-spoken sentences, just how the story of Yaill's marriage had been given him. She heard him to the end of it, and said, with the ghost of a smile:
"So you entered upon your hereditary office of champion, straightway. And Lady Wastwood got the story from her Headquarters—I understand the whole thing clearly! She is a dear, and I love her, but a terror of a talker.... The whole county must have rung with scandal, ages before I dreamed that anybody knew...." She shuddered. "Oh, me! what things they must have said about Edward!—must be saying about him at this moment when he—"
Her voice broke in a sob, and her full heart brimmed over. John Hazel said roughly, for he could not bear to see her tears:
"They may talk, but there's one thing nobody on earth—or elsewhere!—will ever be able to say of him. That he isn't a thundering brave man!"
The sudden, fierce carnation that had flooded the wide oval of her face a moment before, had given place to the olive paleness. Now a faint tinge of the banished red came creeping back again.
"You threatened Edward Yaill—yet you defend him?"
John Hazel answered simply enough:
"I had to see that you were undeceived. You were, first of all, my business. But knowing what shell-shock means—as men have learned to know the hellish thing in this damned War—how, in common justice, can I condemn Colonel Yaill?"
"Thank you! Oh, thank you! That does my heart good!"
The wide, sweet smile curved Katharine's mouth again, and her dimmed eyes found a sparkle to cheer their sombre rust-colour. She went on:
"To know that somebody besides myself pities him—you don't know—you can't know, what it means to me! For no one will have a kind thing to say for Edward. Beyond the newspaper flummery and flapdoodle, there won't be a word, nor a thought, that isn't—merciless to him! ..."
She was sitting now in her hearthside chair and John was standing on the other side of the fireplace. The antique mirror above the little Tudor clock, that had reflected Yaill's thin, handsome face and haunted grey eyes, gave back an image of the huge black head, the portentous hooked nose, and swarthy countenance of this new and strangely dominating force that had moved across the threshold of Kerr's Arbour, out of the veiled, mysterious Past, but a few days previously. His elbow rested on the mantelshelf, where the other man had leaned his: he clenched his great hand as he answered Katharine:
"'Merciless.' ... And why on this rotten little planet should people be merciless to the man?"
"Because"—she frowned and looked at John from between her narrowed eyelids—"because of the odd, clandestine fashion in which—after his strange marriage—Colonel Yaill has gone away.... I am not brilliant, it may be, nor very highly cultured. But I know, and very thoroughly—the world to which we belong. I speak, be it understood, of his world and mine." John felt himself an alien. "The world we choose to call Society. And Society will never pardon nor condone, nor exonerate this act of Colonel Yaill's."
"Do you think the pardon of Society particularly worth having? Do you think the good opinion of a Society as fat-headed, as thick-witted and as narrow-minded as you represent it—matters a tin of ration apple-jam? ... Now listen, Miss Forbis! If you think me rude, an offensive brute, say to yourself, 'This man can't help it! He isn't in Society—but he is out to work for me! The wag of a finger of my hand would bring him from the ends of the world to serve or fight for me!' Please don't interrupt, for time is time—and I have more to say—"
He drew a big breath that hurt his wounded lung, and went on speaking:
"When you sent for me, I believed you thought that Colonel Yaill had put an end to himself. When I saw you I knew you had never for a minute entertained the idea—"
She broke in now:
"Never! The suggestion of suicide has been spread by people who know nothing of the man they slander. In absolute confidence I will tell you now—for how could you be of any help to me unless I absolutely trust you!—Edward Yaill has gone to the East to find my lost Julian—my dear brother, whom I have since heard was killed on August 21st—"
John Hazel's black eyes flashed. He broke in:
"Miss Forbis, something of that sort is what I have suspected."
"Wait," she said. "He told me that he would not return to—to his wife—upon the old footing.... She had cruelly tricked and deceived him—he could not, once he knew the truth—endure to live with her! ... So he made up his mind to go secretly away. He might have applied to the War Office—he has powerful friends at Whitehall—for a transfer to the Eastern Front. Why didn't he? That's one of the things I can't understand! ..."
"Don't you know? ..."
John's big voice boomed out, drowning the little silvery chime of the Tudor timepiece.
"When questions like that crop up, the answer is, shell-shock. A man who is possessed of ordinary, healthy nerves, will act in an ordinary way. But the man who's been subject to the devilries of High Explosive, will pop up queer byways in his impatience of circumlocution—adopt unexpected measures; reach his objective by methods as destructively simple as—the rat's way of getting into a cheese. He might—supposin' he'd been a normal man—have engineered the thing at Whitehall. Being shell-shocked, he simply burns his boats and swims."
Katharine begged:
"Oh, go on! You're helping me!—you're helping me wonderfully. Things that seemed crazy—out of the comprehensible—are beginning to arrange themselves.... Now there's another point. You saw, perhaps, a newspaper reference to Sir Arthur Ely? Well, it has occurred to me as possible that Edward confided his plans to Sir Arthur—that impenetrable sarcophagus of Society secrets. You may have noticed that Sir Arthur's reply to Press inquiries showed a—a considerable degree of reserve?"
John had noticed it. He admired Katharine's cool, clear, masterful way of assembling her evidence, and making her points tellingly, each in its turn. He kept back his own solid piece of conviction until she finished—
"He has gone, I am convinced that I know where—though I can't make out how he managed going.... But one thing is clear. I must get word to him! ... He has gone to find Julian, whom he loved!—my Julian, who was killed by a Turkish shell, in the storming of Scimitar Hill on August 21st. That is where you come in!—that is where you can help me. In getting the news through to Colonel Yaill in case he does not know! ..."
John thought a moment and said:
"We might—in case he has gone out to the East believing your brother to be living—get the news to him per advertisement in sundry foreign rags. Personals, discreetly worded, might do the trick—inserted in French and British papers, published in the Levant,—in Egypt,—and at Salonika, and in such others as are printed and disseminated by the Germans in the Near East."
She caught her breath.
"Can you manage that last stroke? ..."
"I'll not swear I can, but there's a chance I may engineer it. Write out the ads. and let me have them at once! In English, French and German. Worded so that he'll understand.... Some ought to be in Turkish,—and others in Arabic, and some in Egyptian Arabic. For—your man's a bit of a linguist, unless I judge him wrong!"
Katharine's eyes brightened with pride in her man as she answered:
"He speaks most of the languages of the Orient, and Nearer East."
"Good! Now, are you quite sure your brother has been killed?" He went on, meeting her startled look.... "Because the War Office isn't infallible.... A pal of mine—reported dead over eleven months ago—has spent about three in trying to convince the authorities that he's very much alive! Last week he heard from them, asking him to reconsider the matter! and send in another detailed statement; and now that he's convinced 'em of his existence—they've docked his pay for the eleven months he's been officially dead! ... And I know another man, a virtuous unmarried one-pipper,—who gets paid an allowance, monthly, for a missus and three kids.... They don't exist—and never did, but the Pay Department says they do,—and returns him the money when he tries to pay it back! One day they'll say he's robbed 'em—and call a Court Martial—but till then he spends the cash in cigars, and other forms of crime. Not as applicable as the first illustration, but still a case in point." He grinned.... "And hasn't it struck you, that Colonel Yaill, knowing the dudheads at Whitehall—would be likely to go on looking for Father Forbis as long as a chance remained? Now, what about those ads. you were going to write for me? I'm quite certain they ought to go in.... But mind you make it clear to Colonel Yaill that you've no private, first-hand information.... Put it 'Julian reported killed' and then he'll understand!"
She levelled her fine brows and thought a moment, then rose from her chair, saying:
"Would this do? 'Edward ... Julian reported killed Gallipoli, August 21st. Seek no further' or 'Search useless. Send address for communication. K." Then as he nodded his approval, "Very well, I'll write the advertisements at once," she said. "Of course I don't know any Arabic, and my Italian is simply rocky—it always sent Father into fits of laughter.... But my German is passable, and my French is—quite decent.... I was educated at the Sacré Cœur Convent, Chalkcliff—where most of the nuns are Parisian ladies.... Smoke if you care to, while I'm writing.... And do find yourself a comfortable chair...."
She crossed the room to a well-used escritoire, inlaid ebony of Indian workmanship, glancing back to smile at John Hazel as she drew up her writing-chair. Her Persian cat leaped purring on her shoulder, and she rubbed her cheek against his warm silver-grey coat, giving the caress craved by his cattish little soul, before she gently set him down.... Then she began to write, and John sat watching her, revelling in her vigorous, healthful uprightness, and the grace with which her long limbs disposed themselves in the seated pose....
"Don't rush it.... Take your time!" ... He was speaking from behind her. "I'll see that the others are cautiously worded.... A man in disguise as an Arab or a Turk might betray himself unconsciously, if his eye happened to drop on a line that was meant for him, you know."
"'A man in disguise.' ..." She caught her breath. "Oh!—you are wonderful!"
"Not even my mother ever thought that," said Hazel, with his gleaming grin. "But I'm ready to put money on my theory that the Colonel—to get out of England in the quietest way possible—has enlisted in some unit of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force."
"As a common soldier—an ordinary Tommy! ... You think so meanly of him? ..."
For a moment her broad front of displeasure was turned upon John Hazel. Then the anger died out of her as he said quietly:
"I've learned to think a lot of ordinary Tommies, since I've been in this beastly War. And I stick to my opinion—for a reason!"
He got up. His big hand had been in his bulging tunic-pocket. He pulled out a Brass Hat, ignominiously squashed, and with the peak broken—and said as he offered it to Katharine:
"Here's my reason! Good enough, I think!"
"Oh!" she cried, "where did you get that? ... It is Edward's!" ... And snatched it almost fiercely, and crushed it against her breast....
"This too!" ... John thrust on her the silver whistle.... "A child was playing with it near the plantation below your Private Road.... That put me on the scent.... I annexed the whistle—here it is for you!—you'll see his name is on it!—and went in and poked about.... To discover the complete uniform of a British C.O., Field jacket, badges, Bedford cords, and the whole posh kit, wrapped up in a trencher, strapped with a Sam Browne, and stuffed into a fox's hole. Presently when it's dark enough, I'll lug the rest of the kit up to you.... Now, do you think I've grounds for my belief? ..."
Katharine was trembling.
"You frighten me!" she said to him. "The police and their helpers have searched and found nothing.... You come—and these hidden things are uncovered at your feet.... What does it mean? Do you believe that you and I have lived on earth before now? ... Are we taking up old threads that were broken ages ago? ..."
"Not for a second do I believe that!" answered John Hazel. "But that we are influenced and guided by others who have walked this earth before us,—yes!—I certainly think we are! While they were about it they might have shown me where the Colonel got the suit of civvies he changed into when he gave his swank rags to Brother Fox for keeps. Plain clothes!" ... He answered Katharine's inquiring look as though she had spoken. "And pretty well worn.... Don't stop to ask me how I know!" ...
"'Plain clothes'! ... A shabby shooting-suit...." Katharine repeated. "Wait one minute—I must look! ..."
And she was gone.... The sixty seconds were barely ticked off by the gilded arrow of the Tudor timepiece before the door opened to admit her, minus the finds of the plantation,—panting a little, with flushed cheeks and radiant eyes of joy....
"I have been to his room," she told John Hazel, breathlessly. "There is a camphor-wood press there where—since August, 1914,—I have kept the suit Edward was wearing when the War call came to him. Rough grey homespun—with a Norfolk jacket. And the things have gone out of the press. He must have taken them—"
"I'm dead sure he took them! Now another question crops up, Miss Forbis. In these days of Compulsory Service—though the Act's not a fortnight old—how's an able-bodied man in plain clothes to avoid being captured by the Government's Fine Tooth Comb? Tapped on the shoulder by a Recruiting Officer or a policeman—and challenged to cough up his Conscription papers, or produce his Exemption Sheet? What would the Colonel's age be? Anything over the Limit?"
The coarseness of his tone offended delicacy.... Her brows contracted as she answered with chilly dignity:
"He was thirty-nine in May. (Thirty-nine. And he might have married me when he was thirty-one!)" her heart cried rebelliously. What had Edward thought to gain by those continued delays? She had been at her loveliest, she knew, when they had first loved each other.... Twenty-three—and between twenty-three and thirty-one—eight worse than wasted years!
Years lost—foregone—wilfully forfeited.... Her heart wailed like a plover over its rifled nest.... And yet not lost.... Five of them at least had been glorious with happiness. There had been rare glimpses of sweetness even in these last three years of War....
"Forgive me!" she said, wakened from sad memories by John Hazel's taking leave of her. "I was thinking.... I did not hear you.... Must you absolutely go?"
"I must not stay, Miss Forbis. The other things that are hidden in the plantation I shall leave you to find for yourself. The fox-hole is at the bottom of the bank facing south beside a big stone—you can hardly miss it! You will hear from me, when there is anything you should know—until there is, good-bye!"
She said, with her characteristic, cordial imperiousness: "Good-bye comes after luncheon! ... You must not leave this house again without breaking bread! ..."
He yielded, and soon they were seated at a long, well-covered table in a room whose sombre panelling was relieved by inset portraits of dead-and-gone Forbises, glittering trophies of Indian weapons, horns and heads of big game; some fine pieces of Oriental porcelain and a noble buffet of silver plate. That sense of strangeness still remained. Strongly as the good things of the palate appealed to John Hazel's sensuous nature, he found himself swallowing hot savoury Scotch broth—demolishing cold game-pie and salad with the barest appreciation of their excellence—and gulping down the Chateau Margaux of the Kerr's Arbour cellars, as indifferently as though it had been the beer of the canteen....
"Good-bye, Mr. Hazel," Katharine said at parting, "and God bless you! I shall never forget what you have done. Should I hear from Colonel Yaill, I shall communicate to the address you have given me. Should you hear of him—you will write to me here at Kerr's."
She gave him both her white hands, returning his big strong grasp with warm, sisterly friendliness, sending a strange and wonderful thrill through the giant frame of the man.
"May I—" he asked, almost humbly, with his black eyes entreating hers, in the way that a woman who has been wooed can never misunderstand....
"If you wish!" she answered, cordially, and he stooped and touched with his fleshy lips the beautiful hands he held. Then he released them.... He was at the door, looking back at Katharine.... As he turned the handle she spoke impulsively:
"Where are you going?—you haven't yet told me!"
"I suppose because I thought you would guess," John Hazel returned. "The fact is, I got orders yesterday to join my old crowd—the 'Fenchurch Streets'—at Salonika. So I'm going out to the Near East—to look for your friend!"
"Not to fight?" Katharine asked, smiling, though touched by his rugged simplicity.
He answered:
"To do that, and the other job too...."
"It is almost certain that I, myself, shall be going out to Egypt shortly," she told him, "to work at the Hospital of Montana near Alexandria—with my friends of the Red Cross."
He nodded gravely.
"Good luck to you and them! There's a thing I'd like to hear you say, Miss Forbis. Do you mind just telling me to carry on?"
"Carry on, John Hazel!" said Katharine royally.
He waved a hand to her, and was gone. And the great lonely, empty House of Kerr's Arbour was tenfold emptier and lonelier without that vital, powerful embodiment of faith and loyalty....
Book the Third: THE FINDING
I
Weeks after John Hazel had sailed with a draft of leave-expired "Fenchurch Streets,"—to join the Division to which that gallant London regiment was attached—with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces at Salonika—and while brave British men in Palestine were cracking their teeth on that hard nut of Gaza—H.M. Transport Loyalty, (an ex-Austrian Lloyd Liner captured at the beginning of the War, and converted into a Mediterranean Hospital ship), sailed for Egypt,—and in the Photographic Puff of the week's issue appeared—under an enlarged snapshot of the pre-War departure of the ex-Austrian Lloyd from Southampton Docks—this announcement:
"POPULAR SOCIETY PEERESS, COMMANDANT OF L.L.W.S.L.,
SAILS FOR EASTERN THEATRE OF WAR."
Another periodical of the type that daily caters for readers of another order, published, under a portrait of Lady Wastwood in exiguous dinner dress:
"TRIXIE MAKES TRACKS FOR EGYPT TO FIND OUT WHY
SPHINX SMILES."
While in the Daily Wire of a few days' later issue was published a brief paragraph to the effect that H.M. Transport Loyalty had been torpedoed on the fifth day of her voyage out to Alexandria; carrying some officers and men of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force returning from sick-leave; a detachment of Military Nurses and fourteen brand-new ambulance-cars; many War Hospital stores and comforts destined for our wounded, together with a complete unit of the British Red Cross.
"Miss Forbis, V.A.D., of Kerr's Arbour, N.B., is included in the list of the rescued, as also Trixie, Lady Wastwood, O.B.E., Commandant L.L.W.S.L., who was on her way to the East to employ her well-known powers of organisation in the establishment of a Hostel for Convalescent Officers (Auxiliary) in the neighbourhood of Alexandria." The famous motto of the Legion is, doubtless, familiar to our readers: "Do Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick At Nothing, and Never Grouse."
The usual boat-drill had not been neglected, and when the alarm had once been sounded, everybody had dutifully turned up at his or her allotted station in overcoat and cork lifebelt, to be not at all astonished by the intelligence that the scare was simply a dud.... No attack upon the part of enemy submarines had been anticipated.... The Loyalty, with her three vast squares of green paint bounding a white-edged Red Cross (outlined at night by brilliant electric lights)—amidships on each side, ought to be regarded as sacrosanct by German submarines.... But of course people understood there were loose mines in the Mediterranean, though the minefields were all known.
Lady Wastwood had rather ruffled the good-humour of the Captain by constantly asking him how he could be Certain of this? But after he had personally conducted the Commandant, life-belt and all—for from this practical insurance Trixie never separated—to his chart-house on the Lower Bridge, and displayed before her green eyes a chart of the Mediterranean, ornamented with designs in coloured inks by the Navigating; Lieutenant—indicating areas strewn with floating mines by the Kaiser and the Sublime Porte, "G.M. at such-and-such a depth, and T.M. at such-and-such another," and illustrated the uses of the telephones between the Wireless Room and the chart-house, and the telegraphs linking the officer on the bridge with the engine-room, and the speaking-tubes communicating with the batteries of quick-firing guns fore and aft,—Trixie's anxieties were completely laid to rest. She thanked the Captain effusively, and with a gracious smile and bow to the Navigating Lieutenant, descended to the saloon-deck cabin,—which she shared with Miss Forbis—to renew her complexion for the 12.30 lunch.
To wash your hands, arrange your hair and refresh your complexion while arrayed in a life-belt being impossible, Trixie removed her practical insurance, hanging it on the cabin sofa-end while she monopolised the looking-glass.
"Of course I am a grouse—and a disgrace to the Legion, I know it too well!" she owned to Katharine, as she intensified her V-shaped Pierrot smile with a stick of scarlet paste, "and instead of playing rounders and quoits and clock-golf—which is exactly the same kind of thing as playing water polo in a wash-hand basin—what I really long to do is to huddle in a deck-chair, and look out for oily streaks and white breaks in the water. But I am the victim of a morbid imagination—that keeps telling me what happens to you when you get wrecked at sea. You go down and come up three times—and see all the events of your past life processioning before you. That must be horrible! And they say it always happens—the people, I mean, who have nearly been drowned—and were only just saved in time!"
"But nobody who has been quite drowned has ever given an account of it," said Katharine, with her wholesome, heartening laugh.
Sea and sunshine had done much for Miss Forbis. Private Abrahams would have recognised her for the bright-eyed, smiling woman he had met that day on the Menin Road.... We cannot always mourn the dead, or bewail the lost that are living; though often her heart cried out in anguish for her dear ones; and waking of nights upon the shallow pillow of the upper bunk in the suffocating cabin, she would feel for a silver whistle she carried in her bosom—and kiss it—and cry herself to sleep again.... Or lie sleepless amidst the creakings, the overhead tramplings and shoutings; the snorting of electrically-driven ventilators; the occasional thump! of a bigger sea than usual upon the bows of the Loyalty, and the dismal sounds emitted by sufferers from the malady of the sea....
"How sensibly you look at things, Kathy dear," said Lady Wastwood, putting the final touch to her Pierrot smile....
Friendly and even affectionate as were the relations between these two women,—no reference had ever been made by one or the other to that February day of Trixie's encounter with Edward Yaill on board the Scotch Express. But the subject was in the air, and both felt it,—and possibly because of this, their conversation was elaborately casual....
Trixie added, as she intensified the eyebrows that resembled musical slurs, with a black pencil: "But really, my stupid nerves are quieting down! The skipper has cheered me wonderfully. There's something so refreshingly bluff and reassuring about a big smiling sailor man with white ducks and an Irish accent,—of the northern kind that one doesn't associate with dynamite and revolvers and masks. He has quite put my idiotic fears to bed. I shall never—AH!"—
A hot, violet-yellow light seemed to fill the cabin, as the terrible detonation shook the Loyalty. The air seemed flame.... Dust filled their lungs and nostrils, and the shattering crash of descending tons of water, mingled with the great cry blended of innumerable voices, that goes up to Heaven from a mined or torpedoed ship.... Then the shrieks and cries ceased, as Discipline asserted itself. Through the deafening roar of escaping steam—and the racket of shattered engines—the bugle sounded the alarm—in deadly earnest now....
"Come!" said Katharine Forbis. She wrenched open the cabin door, letting in a rush of water, seized both their life-belts and gripped hold of Lady Wastwood, who, half-swooning, wavered as though about to fall. Somehow Miss Forbis dragged her charge through a jam of white-faced men and women—along the broad gangway, oddly tilted forwards—ankle-deep in water—up the main companion—tilted too, at that queer forward angle—down which the sea was rushing in a heavy waterfall. Drenched and gasping, to reach the promenade-deck—emerging into the radiant beauty of a Mediterranean day with the shout:
"All passengers on deck with life-belts on! All passengers on deck with life-belts on!" ringing in her ears....
Sun and sea, sea and sun,—and Death at its ugliest—an uncanny combination.... There was no panic after the first outcry and the headlong scrimmage for the upper deck. The deafening boom of escaping steam made it necessary to shout so as to be heard by those who stood nearest.... The forward tilt of the smooth white planks increased momentarily. The Loyalty's bow-plates and forward compartments had been stove in by the explosion. She was settling down by the nose, into the mirror-clear water—while the Military Nurses in their grey cloaks,, and the men and women of the Red Cross stood to attention on her tilting decks—and her officers went to and fro....
There never had been panic, there was even a little laughter.... No fear of horrors of thirst and starvation attending on shipwreck in the crowded Mediterranean Sea.... The low grey hulls of the Loyalty's two attendant Destroyers were visible on her starboard a long way ahead.... They were getting steam up.... "Coming to look after us!" shouted somebody to somebody. Of course they had been apprised by Wireless of what had occurred....
"Great invention, Wireless!" shouted somebody else to Katharine....
Katharine nodded back. She hardly felt depressed.
"B'mm. Hm'm! Oom'm m! ..."
A seaplane came droning out of the bright distance from where the low grey hulls of Destroyers showed, shepherding a stately procession of camouflaged troopers and battleships,—and hovered in narrowing circles over the Loyalty. Her pilot shut off—and his observer shouted something through a megaphone. What he said could not be heard through the roar of the escaping steam. Then he dropped a weighted note and flew away southwards, and the Second Officer grabbed the note and hurried off to take it to the Captain on the bridge.... Katharine never saw him again.... But inside the space of twenty seconds every soul on board the doomed vessel was in possession of the ugly fact....
The Loyalty had got out of her course,—strayed miles from the guarded ocean highway, traversed in comparative safety by the shipping of the Allies, patrolled by British Fleet hydroplanes, submarines and Argus-eyed T.B.D.'s.... She was in the middle of a Turkish minefield, one of those fulminating enemy areas marked out on her charts with lines and letters in coloured inks, that had been displayed by her Captain to the anxious eyes of Lady Wastwood. The powerful magnetos of a German submarine,—hovering in her near vicinity, had caused deviation in the British transport's compasses. Or, there had been a blunder—the truth will never be known....
Of the boats that had got away from the ship,—the first were crowded with women only; the next were packed with women and a sprinkling of men.... They pulled away towards those grey shapes on the southern horizon—topped by columns of slanting smoke—and presently were mere specks upon the straining sight....
As Katharine and Lady Wastwood were helped over the rail into their boat, and it was lowered to the level of the water—something like a shudder went through the Loyalty.... Her stern-ports lifted at a greater angle, and her bows were submerged more deeply. Looking up at her huge grey bulk, it seemed to Katharine that some vast cetacean,—bombed and harpooned—lay dying in agony upon the smooth and glassy sea....
She saw the Captain on the bridge, binoculars in hand, speaking to one of the minor officers. Urged in some way, he shook his head as though in refusal, and as his subordinate quitted the bridge—resumed his interrupted scanning of the distant sea. Perhaps the binoculars had focussed the travelling top of a periscope, and the breaking of white water, miles away to the east....
When the double White Death Streak cleaved the blue sea, and one after another two torpedoes hit the Loyalty on her port side amidships—her bows plunged downwards, throwing most of the people remaining on her decks, into the water. Others clung to her rails and the roofs of her deck-structures, as with a thunderous rattle of scrapping iron, her bowels fell out of her mangled body,—and she dived and vanished in a whirlpool of her own. As her stern heaved up perpendicularly, lifting her huge triple screws sheer out of the swirling water, a Portuguese sailor scrambled up upon her counter, naked as in the hour of his birth,—and so stood poised; his rich brown body gleaming,—his wild eyes and bared teeth glittering in the sun:
"Mao riao parta o' diabo! ... (May the Thunderbolt split you, devil! ...")
He shook his dark clenched fist towards the east, shrieking out the imprecation—meant perhaps for the Kaiser or the Sultan or the Commander of the submarine,—and dived magnificently as the ship sank, dragging down with her the last boats....
And then, through suffocation, and roaring sounds of water in her ears—flashes of sunlight piercing her smarting eyes, wedges of blackness driving over mind and soul—lightning flashes of consciousness—gasped-out prayers to God, wild cries for help,—washed down her choking throat by volumes of bitter waters—Katharine Forbis came up out of the depths—to find herself floating in sunlight and strange silence, on a sea covered with a strange confusion of floating débris....
Not alone, for all the silence. In the company of a good many other people, pluckily bent on keeping their courage up, and other folks' as well. Military nurses and Red Cross V.A.D's, orderlies, officers, sailors, Tommies.... Some of the men on duty forward had been horribly injured by the explosion of the Turkish contact-mine. What could be done for them had been done before quitting the sinking Loyalty. But as the blood from their cruel wounds drained away into the waste of water.... It was not the first time that Katharine Forbis had seen brave men die.... Then a V.A.D. woman perched with two others on a gangway, called to her across a patch of water—a lagoon ringed-in with floating wreckage:
"Oh, do look at the Commandant!—I am afraid she is dying!"
Treading water, paddling with a wooden fruit-dish, horribly hampered by her cork panoply,—Katharine crossed the patch of sea. The thin bluish wedge of Trixie's face lay tilted upwards to the jeering sunshine, against the slab of cork outcropping at the back of her belt. Her green eyes, half-open, looked hard and glassy as enamel—the livid lips were parted, showing the set white teeth....
"Oh try to live!" begged Katharine. "See—there are ships in the distance!" She pointed to some grey shapes moving on the southern horizon under their slanting columns of grey smoke. "The boats that have left us will be picked up—they will be sent back for us! ..."
"No ship commanded by a sane man will stick her nose into the middle of a charted Turkish minefield!" came from a man who hung on to a deck-seat and a wooden hen-coop next them, and had overheard. "When the contact stove in our forward plates I sent out the S.O.S. and got through to the Commander of one of those Destroyers...." He jerked his chin angrily towards some slanting streaks of smoke to the southward. "All he could do was to send that hydro from the nearest Battle Cruiser to have a look at us; explain what kind of a mess we were in—in case we hadn't guessed it already!—and tell us to wait for the boats! ..."
And the speaker, who had been the Wireless Operator on board the Loyalty, whose head was swathed in a bloody towel and whose right arm hung broken by his side,—grinned a forlorn grin, and tightened with his teeth the buckle of the leather waist-strap that supported him on his improvised raft, as Trixie's head fell limply back, and a faint moan fluttered from her lips, that were getting ashen grey....
"Please, please, don't give up!" said Katharine, mustering all her forces. She splashed water on the grey, peaked face and shook the thin shoulder. "Listen to me.... Do you hear? Don't you dare to die! ..."
But not Katharine's utmost efforts could have kept the dwindling life in Trixie, as the hours dragged on, and the blazing sun beat on their misery.... But that her good Angel, or Trixie's, reminded her that the little courier-bag slung about her shoulders, containing her money and papers, accommodated a tiny brandy-flask.
A sickness of sheer despair came over her as she realised that, environed by the unwieldy cork slabs of her life-belt, she could not possibly get at the bag.... Then she remembered, when there had been a moment or two of delay in readying the ship's boat—she had taken the flask out of the bag, and thrust it in the breast-pocket of her serge jacket. With a rush of thankfulness she felt for it, and found it there still.
It seemed long to Katharine before she could unscrew the flask-cap, and force a few drops of Cognac between the other's tightly-clenched teeth. When Trixie sighed, and opened her green eyes,—between her dazed vision and the marvel of a Mediterranean sunset, leaned the even greater wonder of a compassionate human face....
The glory of the sunset culminated to its utmost splendour. Floods of blazing wine of rubies poured into the sapphire bowl of the sea.... The water was calm as a mill-pond,—the air was balmy sweetness—as the evening star kindled, under the round breast of Asia's radiant moon.... And of all the innumerable ships that passed and repassed along the crowded sea-road on the southern horizon, not one altered her course for the castaway passengers of the luckless Loyalty....
They had been so brave, talking and cracking jokes—singing even,—asking riddles, and attempting recitations, "being British" some of them would have called it—up to the last volt of strength.... Towards morning they began to die,—the Wireless Operator leading the way, slipping off quite easily.... A baby went next, the only child on shipboard, and its desperate mother,—the English wife of a native official at Malta—shrieking—cast loose the rope that lashed her to some floating deck-fittings and, clutching the tiny body to her—leaped into the sea. And others died of exhaustion, and yet others; until quavering voices bravely raised in familiar strains of well-loved hymns, were dumb for sheer despair.... But, after all, though not until Dawn had risen over the unseen Desert of Syria—the boats that had pulled away, came back for yet another freight....
"Are we dead, you and I?" asked Lady Wastwood dreamily, waking out of an exhausted sleep, in a cabin of the trooper that had taken the rescued ones on board....
"Not yet," said Katharine Forbis gently, stooping over her. "It seems that God has yet some work in this world for you and me to do!"
"It is a lonely world," said Trixie faintly, and turned her peaked face to the bulkhead, "I had done with it! And—though it sounds horribly ungrateful, dear! I am sorry that you have brought me back!"
"But I am glad you aren't dead," said Katharine, kissing her, "because I love you, and you know that you are fond of me!"
"You saved my life.... I can never forget that," said Lady Wastwood. "My dear! there ought to have been somebody to photograph you doing it! What a success it would have made on the screens! ..." She returned Katharine's kiss with warmth. "It's quite true," she said. "I always have been fond of you,—you dear thing! That is why I was so frightfully down on poor Edward Yaill!"
"Do not—do not let us go back to that!" begged the other, wincing.
"I remember cutting him," continued Lady Wastwood reminiscently, "enough to have drawn blood. My Jerry always said—you remember how keen he was on golf? 'Mums carries too many clubs for one game, and always uses a niblick when it ought to be a putter!' But, believe me,—I really meant well!"
And that was the sealing of a compact of sisterhood between Katharine and Trixie.... For that we have striven for we love as part of us.... And Friendship forged on the anvil of Endurance is a metal that will stand strain.
II
Fresh from great triumphs in France, a Man came to Egypt in June, 1917—burly and square-jawed, clear-eyed, vigorous and outspoken; startlingly young in looks for his fifty-six years,—until he removed his cap and you saw his bald, domed brow. The successes at Romani and Magdhaba and Rafa had whiskers. Plans for the taking of Gaza, that stoutly resisting stronghold of the Turk—long since evacuated by all civilians—had fizzled out; there was a hang-up somewhere, things had to be set going again. He moved G.H.Q. from Cairo to Kelat, in Southern Palestine—a huge wire-enclosed area on the grass-covered slopes within sight of the Mediterranean—and took things in hand. Two Rolls-Royce box-cars carried him and his Staff,—three armoured Fords preceded him as Scouts—and two others followed with Wireless and life's necessaries. So he would appear unexpectedly in various quarters, causing confusion it may be, to commanding officers—and huge contentment to the rank and file.
He looked, upon a certain day in July,—on the positions of the forces attacking Gaza—from an observation-point affording room for three.... The day was misty, the Turkish 5.9 inch guns were silent; no warning drone of propellers counselled care as his binoculars swept the enemy trenches towards Beersheba, noting the railway-system for the shifting of big guns; the defence-works—enormously strong, and a tangle of barbed wire—running from Beersheba down to the sea.
He came down, and went through the trenches asking questions: sat on a gun-limber eating bully out of a tin with a jackknife and commended the Engineers and the Egyptian Labour Corps for the pace at which the railway had followed on the heels of our Advance. Then he went away—and the rations increased in quantity, and later certain trucks came up by railway—containing barrels of a malty liquor much welcome to the thirsty throats of British soldier-men....
Later in October, when the Irish Division, and the Indian Cavalry and the entire strength of the Camel Transport Corps, and the London Division which had fought with the assistance of one John Benn Hazel in France and Macedonia—had been added to the army of strange nations now mustered upon the soil of Palestine,—and the capture of Beersheba, with the well-springs of Sheria and the huge Turkish dumps that lay to the rear of them—combined with a bombardment from the hill tops round about her—from the sea to the West of her and the hot sky above her—had brought the gates of Gaza toppling down,—he swung into the camp of the battle-weary 'Fenchurch Streets,' a stalwart stranger in a battered pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, shorts and canvas shoes; and stooped under the door-fly of a tent full of dusty undersized Cockneys; unwashed, unshaven, bone-weary and just lying down to snatch an eyeful of sleep.
"How's things going, Londoners?" he asked with cheery brevity; and a gaunt brown giant of six feet four with a bristling two-inch beard, and a portentously hooked nose, Acting Company Sergeant pro So and so, sick or wounded—I forget which—recognised him, and said in a big bass voice, displaying a mouthful of large white teeth:
"All the better, Sir, because you've come! We fellows said all along you'd be the man for the job!"
"And, by G—" he said in his deep strong voice, "if you go on doing as you've done at Sheria, it won't be long before we carry through.... See you're wounded.... Anything much?" He laid a finger on a naked brown left arm, knotty with muscle, and decorated above the elbow with a bandage of iodine-smeared gauze....
"Nothing, Sir, thank you, but a bit of a flesh-cut. A German officer slashed at me with his sword, as he tried to shoot me left-handed with his revolver."
"Moral," he said, with his big schoolboy's chuckle, "don't try to do two things at once! And a scratch may turn septic, in this fly-cursed country, so don't neglect it, man! ..."
And he passed on, to gladden the heart of the Battalion Commander with discriminating praise, and drop a few curt sentences;—pregnant with great issues—before he went away. Pausing beside the step of his car to ask with the smile that won the men and charmed the women:
"Who's the big tyke overtopping the little Terriers in F. Company's tent? Not an exotic in this climate, or I don't know what it is to command a Jewish Battalion."
"I think," said the C.O., "you refer to Private Hazel, Acting Sergeant to F. Company in place of Langston.... We call Hazel the 'Lightning Change Artist,' because he's always doing somebody's duty, and doing it uncommonly well too! Killed twelve Turks with the bayonet in the scrapping at Sheria.... Sings as he fights—a habit when he's butchering men...."
"Sings, does he? Curious...."
"Sings in Hebrew, the men'll swear to you. Some of them call him 'The Musical Maccabee.' We've two other Jews in the Battalion, both good men, but he's damned good! ... Peculiar in his refusal of stripes and so forth, else he'd have had his Commission long ago. Has the Distinguished Conduct Medal for something he did in France...."
"Glad to hear that. He seems a hefty kind of beggar. Have noticed that he's wounded.... Would you recommend him for the Military Medal when you're sending in the other names?"
The pleased Colonel reddened through dust and sun-tan:
"Certainly, Sir, with pleasure, if you'll permit me! ... But there are a great many names, and I was rather thinking—"
"My dear Sir, never under any circumstances think that there can be too many names!"
"Thank you, Sir. With regard to Acting Sergeant Hazel.... He has been very keen on leave for Alex., since Sheria—most unusual thing with a man of that sort to risk the loss of a scrap. Some family affair perhaps. Has big interests in Palestine—chiefly wine and olives and so forth. Kind of a millionaire, I am told, in his way...."
"I don't care a Syrian curse about the millionaire! but I'm ready to stretch a point to oblige the man who spits twelve Turks—and sings while he's doing it! He's got a knock from a German, too—and might have put in for a Red Cross bag—a ride in the White train—and a cane chair on the lawn at Montana on the strength of it! So send him down to railhead at Gamli with the wounded.... He can put in three weeks at the General Hospital at Alex, and attend to his business there...."
"Very good, Sir! But it occurs to me that an R.F.C. two-seater scouting-plane in difficulties came down in our lines about an hour ago,—Wing Major Essenian Pasha on board—an Egyptian officer from the Ismailia Air Station—"
"I know Essenian Pasha!" The tone was enigmatical. "Copt or Moslem,—nobody seems certain. Some people seem to think it's a case of being all things to all men. Though,—for my own part—if I had to place him—I'd rank him with the Advanced or Super-Jews. But the man's an incomparable scout, and flies like one of the Sons of Eblis.... Some of his reports have been damned useful! We sent for him to do some special reconnaissance over the enemy's rearguard in the hills. Have Djemal's sharpshooters potted the Pasha? Hope he'd made his observations first!"
"The Pasha's all right, Sir, but his observer was shot dead. Flying-Lieutenant Usborn—there was a regular ding-dong battle over Hebron with some Turkish fighting-planes.... And Essenian Pasha would like us to bury Lieutenant Usborn—and supply an observer to replace him for the home-flight to Ismailia!"
"Well, can you?"
"It appears, Sir, that the Pasha knows Hazel. They foregathered at Salonika a month or so ago. And there being a lot of dysentery among the men of the Pasha's Flying Squadron—and Hazel having dabbled in aviation—five-guinea flutters at Hendon, I suppose!—the Pasha took him on several reconnaissance-flights. By the way, Sir, he has brought in a bit of intelligence.... The Sherif of Mecca's tribesmen are at Diariyeh—among the hills to the N.E. with the Emir Feisal and a host of Bedwân cavalry. And they're waging guerilla warfare against the enemy's rearguards and flanks."
"Good for the Sherif Husain!" The keen blue eyes sparkled. "And news worth having. We shall be able to shift the —th Division outposts a good bit more to the N.E. Where's the Pasha? Marhabâ, Essenian Pasha!"
"Marhabtain Gananâr Saiyid!" came the quick response to the greeting, as he turned to take the report from the dark hand of the Egyptian Flying Officer, looking back a moment later to say to the Colonel, with his parting handshake: "Well, so-long, Colonel! Remember, your next objective is Huj, the terminus of the Turkish branch-rail from Deir Sineid. The Desert Mounted Corps—3 Cavalry Divisions—pushed for there yesterday to cut off the garrison retreating from Gaza. So-and-so with such-and-such another force of mounted troops is working round by sea—to engage the enemy rear-guard at Beit Hannu. Dyemal's Eighth Army Corps on our right flankguard have rolled back towards Hebron." (Fifteen miles north-east from Beersheba, among the Judæan Hills.) "The only Turks now holding their ground are those facing the 53rd Division at Muweileh. They may not have heard of the fall of Gaza—as we have the cavalry between them and the rest of their Army—and Blank smashed the Gaza Wireless installation when he bombed their big mosque! You'll find the road to Huj nicely marked out with Turkish canteens, tin gas-mask-cases, stretchers and trenching-tools, and the terrain fairly continuous in its drop,—about forty feet to the mile.... Don't contemplate much trouble for you from well-posted Austrian batteries. The Warwicks and Worcesters and Australians have accounted for 'em all!"
And as the baking Earth rolled up, blotting out the huge red-hot sun; and the short twilight heralded the sudden swoop of Night on Syria, the Rolls-Royce box-cars carrying the Chief and his Staff moved smoothly on, following the four armoured scouters, and the other Fords swung out and dashed after them.... And the dust of Philistia—watered with the blood of brave men since Wars began on this sad earth—how many times? rolled up and blotted out the moving specks, on the safety of one of which hung the hopes of Christendom.
III
To Katharine Forbis, some seven weeks subsequently to her arrival at the Red Cross Hospital of Montana, an Egyptian Red Cross orderly brought a scrap of paper bearing a pencilled scrawl:
"Am back from the Front Palestine for ten days leave. Can you see me? Important yours faithfully John Hazel."
No more. But enough to call back the carnation bloom to cheeks paled by the sub-tropical heats of Egypt, and self-forgetful labours in the interests of wounded men....
Morning duty, consisting in the conveyance of a motor-car packed with convalescents on an expedition to Ramleh and back,—was over. Miss Forbis had just returned, and was free for the afternoon. In her well-cut white drill uniform-skirt and coat with its shoulder-titles, Special Service badges, and scraps of medal-ribbon, her white blouse with its polo collar and natty black silk tie; her brown silk stockings and tan brogue shoes bearing the unmistakable cachet of Bond Street, setting off the workmanlike ensemble, and her handsome head crowned by a soft white Panama hat of the uniform shape, with the Society's ribbon and badge,—she made a gallant, gracious figure, bringing a mist before the eyes of the big, battered-looking, sun-blackened man,—bristlier than ever about the cheeks and chin, and arrayed in battle-soiled and much-patched khaki drill,—who got out of his cane chair in the wide white marble hall with pleased alacrity, knocking over with a bandaged, sling-suspended left arm, the soiled and dusty regulation sun-helmet he had put down on a little table of inlaid Egyptian work.
And as he saluted her in his Eastern way, now familiar to Katharine, swift strangling emotion caught her by the throat. For a moment she could not find voice. For John Hazel brought the panelled parlour at Kerr's Arbour with him; and set it like a scene between the white marble pillars where whirred the electric fans, between the gilt and friezed and painted walls, and under the fretted ceilings of the Egyptian despot's palace, built on the rocky height at the foot of which break the milk-warm surges of the Mediterranean. And once again the old pain at her heart,—dulled by long months without news; by change of scene and change of work, to an aching sense of emptiness,—woke up and cried for all that she had lost.
She said with her wide heartening smile, as his huge hand swallowed hers, still wearing its tan gauntlet:
"You look wonderfully fit, though you're wearing a sling."
"Fit's the word!" He grinned the big toothy grin so well remembered.... "A walking testimony to the nutritive qualities of Maconochie, tinned salmon, Prynn's Baked Beans, Army brickbats, sticky flycatcher dates and chlorinated Nile water.... For we've travelled a long way since the imbecilities of the Crimea," he said, with his black eyes drinking her in.
"Thank God, we have!" Katharine flushed a little under his strange scrutiny, painfully conscious of the unrelaxing grip of his huge, hard, blackened hand. For John Hazel stood, oblivious of its crushing pressure, drinking in the joy of her near presence, inhaling the rare sweetness of her fair, wholesome womanhood; the fragrance of her hair and breath, and garments, coming to him mingled with the perfume of the half-opened red rose—still dewy in the heart of it—that she had stuck in the buttonhole of her uniform jacket that morning, and forgotten to take out again.
And Katharine upon her side was conscious of a strange environing atmosphere; a virile, heady compound of exhalations from the desert, the march, the bivouac and the battlefield, emanating from the garments and the person of the man. The sun-baked blackness of his skin seemed its natural tinting. Whiffs of the wormwood of desolate places mingled with the aroma of thyme, clover and strong tobacco,—the smell of horses and tanned leather; the sharp tang of melinite, and the penetrating odour of sweating human flesh.
A moment more and he released the hand he held, giving a dismayed exclamation, and taking a long backward step.
"Hold on! What have I been thinking of!" Concern was in his voice. "I'm not fit to touch you! Do you know it's a fortnight since I washed last!" His fleshy mouth twisted in disgust, as he surveyed his martial griminess, continuing: "We've been short of water lately. Only allowed a pint per diem. Strictly for internal irrigation, nothing allowed for the outer man! And when Essenian Pasha dropped me at the Alex. Air Station—and thundering good of him too!—I'd only time to grab a bite of breakfast at the N.C.O.'s Mess Tent—swallow a mug of coffee—tumble into a car—borrowed from the R.F.C. men!—and just chuffle along. Why I was in such a cast-iron hurry—that's what I've got to explain to you. And when I saw you I clean forgot what a beastly sweep I am! I couldn't—" The deep, rough breath he drew added quite plainly, "I couldn't think of anything but you!"
"Don't you imagine, if you and other brave men can put up with Dirt for Duty's sake—that we women—even those of us who don't wear this uniform—can put up with you men? And you can have a hot bath here at any moment, Mr. Hazel." Katharine's full tones were tinged with laughter as she added: "And a second breakfast,—unless you don't mind waiting the half-hour, which will make it the official noonday meal. Now which will you do? Have that bath—or stay and talk to me on, the lawn or in here until the Staff lunch?—at which meal your picturesque battle-grime will make you the admired of all?"
"It's simply first-class here!—a kind of mix-up of the Alhambra at Granada and an Egypto-Grecian temple," he said to her, gratefully sensing the breezes from the whirring electric fans. "And that little fountain, splashing and gurgling—makes a man who was in the Syrian Desert east of Gaza, up to the evening of day before yesterday, marching and swotting Turks on a pint of doctored Nile water per diem—want to stick his blooming head in the basin and drink it all up."
"I—think I'm beginning to comprehend!" Miss Forbis's fine eyebrows relaxed their tension, and the puzzled expression left her face. "You fogged me rather, a minute back—about being in the Desert near Gaza up to the evening of the day before yesterday.... But now—"
"Now you're clear that it isn't a case of bats in the belfry. Haw—haw!" He broke out into the big noisy laugh that had once set Katharine's teeth on edge. "Of course it'd have taken three days if I'd come by the Woggler from Railhead. The Woggler, I ought to tell you, is the Desert Express. Trucks roofed with packing-cases nailed together—nail-ends up—to accommodate the troops. Pullmans,—seats faked with American cloth over a thin film of tibbin,—specially reserved for Officer Sahibs. Not that the Army ain't proud of the Woggler! In its way, it's an epoch-marking, eye-opening Thing. But I happened to be in a dithering hurry. And a chance turned up of getting here by the Air Route, do you see? ... Safe as houses, for we followed the coast and had no scraps—the Turks are very short of fliers!—and we only came down once, for petrol, at a seaplane station near the Rest Camp at El Arish."
The gesture of his blackened hand made light of fatigue, risks, perils and privations attending the long flight from Palestine.... Katharine admired the simplicity with which he spoke, as she said with a touch of reproachfulness:
"It seems very long since you came to me at Kerr's Arbour, Mr. Hazel. And all these months you have never once written—although you promised!"
"I said I would not fail to write—if I had any news for you!"
That deep voice, and the simple words that meant so much to Katharine.... The white marble pillars of the hall appeared to sway and totter. The jewelled plume of a fountain playing in a fretted basin seemed to leap to the patterned roof and then shrink small again....
"Have you news—at last?"
"Some!" he said briefly.
"What?—"
The sudden dilation and darkening of her lovely eyes betrayed the desperate hunger gnawing in her. The eyes fastened avidly on Hazel's blackened face. She held her breath for his answer. It came as he slewed his head,—looking through the triple arch of the Palace vestibule to the green, carefully nurtured lawn, the glory of Montana—whence the smack of racquet upon tennis-ball came, and the sound of cheerful voices, telling of relaxations on the part of the Medical Staff, the Nurses and V.A.D's.
"This—that Colonel Yaill is alive and well. I have seen him!"
"Thank God!" Katharine said, "O—thank God! ..."
She put out her hand to the back of a chair and gripped it to steady herself. When her leaping heart had quieted she addressed herself to a colossal back-view, so shorn of martial dignity by patches of Army sacking, that Katharine's voice wavered between laughter and tears:
"And God bless you, John Hazel, for bringing word to me!"
"I have better than a word!" He wheeled about and faced her. "I have a letter from him for you! ..."
As he drew it from a baggy front pocket of his tunic, the radiance that broke over her was fairly dazzling to the man's eyes.... He trembled as she stretched out both her hands to him, entreating:
"Give me his letter, dear John Hazel! ... Let me hold it while you tell me where you met with him! ..."
The object that caused such turmoil in Miss Forbis's bosom was a single sheet of coarse yellow Levantine paper, folded to oblong shape, stuck in three places along the edge and at either end, with a mixture of white clay and beeswax, and sealed with a ring given to Yaill eight years previously. How well the giver of the old love-token remembered that hexagonal sard, deeply cut in old Roman capitals with the name: "KATHARINE." How dear and familiar the small neat handwriting of the pencilled address: 'Miss K. M. Forbis, Kerr's Arbour, Near Cauldstanes, Tweedshire, N.B.' ...
"The morning after Sheria—before it was daylight"—how she hung upon John Hazel's utterance, watching the movements of his fleshy lips, drinking in every word—"we were cleaning out enemy trenches, and blowing up ammunition-dumps and testing wells for poison, and burying dead Turks—and so forth!—I was passing the Intelligence Officer's tent—quite a toney fit-up on the top of a mound—with a native string-bed, and a camp chair, and a sugar-box table, and lighted candles on that,—for the thermometer was climbing up into the seventies and the front fly was up—for the sake of fresh air.... When I tell you that the I.O. was questioning Turkish prisoners—under a guard of Military Police,—and putting Syrian and Arab scouts through their paces, and interviewing village patriarchs—you'll understand that the atmosphere was—well!—"
"I can imagine! ... But, do please go on!" All unconsciously she cuddled the precious letter to her bosom, holding it with both hands and smiling over it at John....
"Well—as I was passing by and happened to glance in—an Arab dressed much the same as the others—a thin, tallish, sinewy Bedawi in a flowing black camel-cloth mantle, and silk head-veil trimmed with tufts of coloured gimp—and topped by the usual ring of twisted camel's hair,—rose up and made obeisance to the Intelligence Officer sitting at the sugar-box table,—and came out, followed by a brace of others—not quite so well got up. Walking as Arabs have the knack of doing—as if the round world and all that therein is—including the Desert—was hardly good enough to be trampled under the notched iron heels that they wear for killing snakes."
She drank in the words that were heavenly music, bending her high head the better to concentrate her gaze upon the speaker's face.
"And—?"
"Well, the three Arabs—two of 'em not particularly interesting, and the one who'd been talking to the Intelligence Officer—no end posh in a necklace of gold-mounted lion's-teeth, and with strings of blue and red seed-pearls twined in his long side-locks,—the three Arabs were going to where their hairies were picketed—munching tibbin and sesame off a spread saddle-cloth—ragged looking yellowish-grey brutes with ewe-necks, and queerly-sloped cruppers; and high-peaked wooden saddles and big-bitted bridles, jingling with silver amulets and jewellery of sorts.... One Arab had a kind of cage-basket strapped on behind the saddle, with live birds stirring about in it—I thought falcons trained for sport—until they started cooing.... Well then!—in the sudden way it happens in this East of ours,—Day jumped over the Hills of Judea—and the Arabs got their prayer-rugs from behind their saddles, and made ready to say their prayers...."
His black eyes seemed to look past Katharine into the scene that he described. He drew breath:
"I was sitting on a sack of Turkish ration-biscuits—not half bad if you've nothing else to eat!—smoking an Army Issue Woodbine—and though the place was stiff with praying Moslems, I watched these—or rather this one! He washed in the sand—laid his praying-rug diagonally in the line for Mecca, knelt down, and went through the whole programme—praying with his forehead to the ground—praying with his hands to the sides of his head—praying with his body straight, resting on the knees, in the regular Mohammedan way. An uncommonly swanky Arab too!—the stock of his long-barrelled gun inlaid with bits of turquoise and mother o' pearl, a curved nine-inch dagger in a gilded sheath stuck in the front of his girdle—and a long silver-plated ivory-stocked revolver—about 44 calibre I judge—on the other side. I was to left of him: so when he slewed his head over his right shoulder to smile at his Good Angel, I saw the back of it—and when he twirled it back again to scowl at the Counsellor of Evil, I found him staring full into my face and scowling at me!"
"And you knew him!—it was Edward!" Her voice was a song of joy!
IV
"I'd seen that scowl on the terrace at Kerr's Arbour, last February," said John Hazel. "And though he gave no other sign to tell that he recognised me, his eyes flickered for the tenth of a second—and I saw they weren't black, but grey. He took no more notice of me.... He'd finished his prayer, and was squatting down cross-legged—running his beads between his fingers—so I pitched away my fag-end, and began to hum the tune of a song, sitting on the sack of Turkish Army biscuits. It might have been an English hymn—for all the genuine Arabs knew—"
"What was the song?"
"'Loch Lomond'—only the words were altered; to fit the situation—see? Something like this:
'So I took the high-road
And you took the low,
And you got to Asia before me!
And Katharine Forbis sat waiting for news
At the bonny, bonny house of Kerr's Arbour!'"
Muted down to the softness of a mother's cradle-song, the full mellow baritone breathed out the familiar refrain. Bringing tears brimming over Katharine's under-lids,—for by strangest chance the song was one of Edward's favourites, often sung by her to him in the twilight—in the dear familiar drawing-room of the old, distant home....
"So you.... It was wonderful of you to speak to him in that way! ..."
"Not original." He grinned at her. "A variation on the historic Blondel Stunt. Only Blondel was a London Tommy,—and Cœur de Lion a British Brass Hat, camouflaged as a Son of Islam. He took it like a rock, only I saw his eyelid quiver. Yes'm!—that descendant of the Prophet winked at the infidel with the eye that was next me.... Then I did a bit more of the Blondel dodge...."
The smile ceased to quirk the corners of his fleshy red mouth, as he sang under his breath in the full sweet baritone:
"O Julian her brother was killed long ago!
So seek you no further to find him!
And give me a letter to take to her now
Where she's working for the Red Cross at Alex.!"
"And what then? ..." Her colour came and went.... "Didn't Edward—didn't Colonel Yaill manage somehow to speak to you privately? ..."
John Hazel shook his head.
"Nix a word! He's far too old a hand at the risky business of walking about in another man's skin, to give himself away in that style. He got up and shook off the dust,—stepped into his loose gazelle-leather boots,—rolled up his carpet, mounted and rode off with his two Arabs—leaving me chewin' the rag! And yet I knew it was Yaill—and that he'd got my message!"
"What did you do then? ..."
"What did I do! ..."
Forgetful in the excitement of his story, of his damaged left arm, he had released it from the sling, and used it freely, in the supple illustrative gesticulations that bespoke his Eastern blood:
"What? O, I sat tight on the sack of rooty, and smoked another fag, until the sun got too hot even for me! Then I got up and stretched myself, and caught my chameleon—who'd been trying to desert—and put him back on my sola topi. We all wear chameleons on our helmets, khaki drill or the tin basin variety—the beasts are champion fly-destructors!—and I believe that's how dragons, and wyverns, and other metal wild-fowl of that kind came to be worn on Crusaders' helms as crests.... Then I hied me back to my bivvy—it was in a cave of the Wady Sheria, and had been used by the natives for keeping goats—and other lively skippers!—and breakfasted with some mates of mine—chaps belonging to my Platoon. I think the menu consisted of rissoles, made of bully-beef with onion, biscuit-crumbs and sand-flies; the bottom of a tin of Dundee marmalade,—more sand-flies!—burned-bean coffee, and dates—with sand-flies again. Barely finished when we got the route. Our Division were to follow up Djemal Pasha's Eighth Army Corps—what was left of 'em—over the hills towards Hebron, and before my company marched off, a message came for me. The Intelligence Officer wanted to speak to Acting Company-Sergeant Hazel—"
Her eyes flashed comprehension:
"Edward! ... My letter! ... Ah! I understand! ..."
He nodded:
"It was the one way to get the thing to me without drawing suspicion.... And it was given me in a similarly—unobtrusive style. It lay before the I.O. on the packing-box table with a lump of mica schist on top of it for a paper-weight. Says Intelligence: 'Acting-Sergeant Hazel, I believe you have undertaken to forward this? ... The writer is much obliged!' So I saluted, and stuffed it in my pocket, and—"
"Oh—what?" cried Katharine Forbis, for the brown face had changed to an ugly livid colour, as John Hazel swayed giddily and caught at a column near.
"Nothing much! ... Got the sun on my head a bit yesterday. Right as rain in a minute—if—if I may sit down? But ... don't wait.... You haven't read your letter! And you must hate me for keeping you from that!"
He sat down heavily in the chair she drew to him, feeling her cool firm hand touch his wrist and her long womanly fingers encircle it, hearing her worshipped voice speaking close by: