The just steward

XIII

Drifting down a sluggish stream of drowsy after-dinner reflections; brooding between a bellyful of varied meats, and a brain addled with wine;—lost to the guiding, dominant idea of the Big Old Men, ranged one behind the other like a sculptured procession of Assyrian planet-gods, reaching back to the Beginning of Actualities whence looked down the Biggest Old Man of All—John Hazel had been recalled as suddenly as though a 5.9 shell had exploded in the Club courtyard, and starting to his feet, upset the chair he had sat on; its fall—with the crash of a breaking glass—making the men at other tables look round.

"In peril such as this, and you sit here drowsing!"

It rang in Hazel's singing ears—the voice of the worshipped woman. And in a moment the gorged Sybarite was gone. With a curt apology he resumed the chair the Club attendant had picked up and now replaced for him. A cool, resourceful man, instinct with force and energy, sat looking at Essenian across the rose-filled bowl.

"If things are as desperate as you've said, why not have told me? Let's thrash this out, Essenian Pasha, please!"

"With pleasure, but I must first know how Miss Forbis discovered that her brother was living. For that she knows, in spite of her very remarkable reticence,—was plain to me to-day. Was it you who broke that news to her? ..."

"No ... She told me! ..."

"When? ..."

"This afternoon! ..."

"That is curious! ..." The tone was incredulous.... "Through whom did she learn the fact?"

"Couldn't enlighten you! ..."

"How long has she known? ..."

"I'm unable to say! ..."

Scrutinising his guest between narrowed eyelids, sifting the unwilling replies with inquisitorial care, it was patent to Essenian that John knew, but would not tell. He tried again with no better result.

"Has Miss Forbis by any unlucky chance, embarked—any other person—in an effort to rescue her brother from the prison at Shechem?"

This time John flatly lied:

"No! ..."

"That is well. I should certainly withdraw from the attempt if its success were to be so handicapped."

"Handicap or none, whether you withdraw or not, I'm entered for the running!"

"I did not say that I withdrew. On the contrary!"

"Good egg you! Now—"

John poured out a brimming glass of iced mineral water, emptied it, and finished as he set down the empty glass:

"How far is Shechem from Ismailia?"

"Following the old Pilgrim's route overland—a distance of about 232 English miles. As the crow flies—or as I shall fly"—Essenian smiled—"about 195 miles...."

"Thanks. When can we start? ..."

"For Shechem? ..."

"For Shechem! ..."

"That depends!" said Essenian with his titter, as John glanced at his wrist-watch, and then at the elaborate clock,—mounted in captured German gun-metal—that occupied a bracket over the door of the dining-room: "That depends on your readiness to accept my conditions! ..."

"'Conditions'? You wait till now to talk of conditions!"

The black eyes were full on Essenian, and they had an angry stare.

"I have purposely waited until now! ..."

The cool, sinister strength that lay behind Essenian's veneer of finical affectation, came home to Hazel as it had not previously. This was the Essenian of his French observer-mechanic, the man who had flown with a broken wing-stay, and a leaking petrol-tank, through the hellish Austro-German fire in the battle of the Vulkan Pass.

"To push an advantage, consolidate a position and advance to a point beyond is the science of warfare, and the secret of social influence. Shall we discuss these conditions in my private room upstairs—or would you prefer to stay here?"

John, looking round, saw no occupied table in their near vicinity, and grunted surlily:

"Here's good enough for me! ..."

"My own experience supports your view.... Here is quite good enough.... For the arrangement of the details of a plot, for the carrying-out of a delicate and dangerous discussion, the ideal place is—under the electric lights in the middle of a drawing-room, in the stalls at a theatre—in the dining-room of a Club or restaurant, or in the Throne Room at a Royal Levée...."

"Then let us get to biz. You've sprung a surprise on me—at the last minute...." John added, fixing his heavy black stare on the gleaming green eyes of the tiger-snake ambushed behind the roses; "Still,—trot out your conditions! ... How much do you want in cash? ..."

"You are rude, Mr. Hazel.... But the young are always insolent!" Essenian gave the little bleating laugh. "I want no money of you.... Rather I am what the British merchant would call a warmer man than you are, in spite of the fact that you inherited from your grandfather more than three hundred and eighty thousand pounds...."

"Upon conditions, Pasha! upon conditions!" jeered John, grinning over the table; and roused to sudden venomous wrath, Essenian hissed at him—leaning over the crimson flower-hedge until his fierce breath beat on the other's face:

"Do I not know you have accepted those conditions? ... Are you not living—in some degree—in your grandfather's house as a Jew? ... Have you not the letter 'J' instead of 'Nil' on your identification-disc? ... Do you not wear upon a chain about your neck an enamelled Shield of David? If you die, or are killed—will they not bury you, if anything be left of you to bury—under the Mogen David as they bury a Jew?"

The sudden transformation of the languid, smiling oval into a face of bitter fury evoked a sudden flash of intuition that made Hazel say:

"You seem to know something about it.... Do you happen to be Hebrew yourself by any chance? ..."

"You are perspicuous." The face was bland again. "I am in fact descended from an ancient Israelitish family of Elephantis. Not all the sons of the Tribes followed the Law-giver out of Egypt. Many had grown to love the land and—its many gods were good to them.... So they stayed and prayed to the many, instead of following the One...."

"I know. Lots of shirkers stopped behind to make bricks for Pharaoh, and to-day their descendants are laying sleepers, or digging trenches, or piling shells for the good old British Government."

"You have perfectly mastered the shibboleth of loyalty, Mr. Hazel...." The dark lips curled contemptuously. "I congratulate you! But it is hardly necessary to maintain the pose. There is no third person present, and I speak as an Asiatic to an Asiatic, as a Hebrew to a Jew.... For many years I have served the British Government in our East. These," he touched the rows of ribbons on his tunic, "testify to the truth of what I say. While Britain's aims and my own interests are synonymous, I shall continue to serve her...."

"I should jolly well hope so! It's a cleaner job than plotting for the Kaiser's dirty pay."

"And a more profitable—for Germany is finished. A burst bladder, like her sister State with whom she hoped to dominate the world. The sun of Russia sets in a morass of blood and mire and filth unutterable.... Britain and France have reached their apogee of greatness, and must now inevitably decline. The Ottoman Empire fights to her fall. From the Farther East the Power will arise that will sweep armies like straws before it—and entangle the necks of the Northern nations within its weighted throwing-net! But of this another time. Let us come to my conditions.... Do not interrupt me until I have said my say! ... I am no Spiritualist—I laugh at those who bear the name as babes, who try to peep behind the curtain when the showman is admitted to the courtyard of the harîm to amuse them with his Shadow Play of the puppet Kharaguz. But in Spiritism I believe.... Is it not the corner-stone of all revealed religions, that deep conviction of the existence of a World Unseen! ... I have myself made efforts—and not all unrewarded! to lift the border of the Veil that hides the Future—to pierce through the thick mists that screen the terrors of the Abyss Beyond...."

Artificial as were ordinarily the speaker's tone and bearing, he spoke now, and looked like a man stirred to the very depths. His hands vibrated, Hazel thought, like the limbs of a weaving spider. He breathed quickly,—and a hundred lines, furrows and crowsfeet previously unnoticed, appeared crossing, re-crossing and puckering the dark skin of his agitated face....

"Mediums and clairvoyants in the European capitals—have I not seen and heard them? With what result? This, that a few threads of truth, undeniable and genuine,—were woven into a tissue of lies! Seers and Descryers here in our East—with them I have fared better. They only practise for the Initiate—they scorn to prostitute their mystic gifts to the uses of the common herd. But by the greatest—one day you shall meet them!—never have I known done what you did to-day in my presence.... I mean—when you so marvellously supplied the context of that cuneiform letter, filling up with a bridge of Truth the gap between the Known and the Unknown.... How strange that Eli Hazaël never dreamed of your astonishing faculty! How wonderful, the combination in your person of the temperament of the clairvoyant with the physique of the athlete! ..."

"Why keep on calling me a medium and clairvoyant when I'm nothing of the sort! When I tell you I've never dabbled in that sort of thing. And what is it—about the letter? Do you mean your translation of the wedge-writing on the tile in the cabinet, that you reeled off this afternoon? ..."

The Egyptian's eyes stabbed at John's face out of deep caves that had suddenly hollowed about them. But he could not doubt the look and tone of absolute sincerity. He blinked and muttered:

"You do not deceive.... You are speaking truth! ... By the Fire that burns without Heat or Smoke!—you are an extraordinary young man! ..."

The room had gradually emptied about them: they sat in a desert of unoccupied tables, from whose cloths soft-footed Levantine and native waiters were clearing wineglasses, coffee-cups and empty liqueur-bottles,—decanters, fruit-dishes, plates, and ash-trays full of burned matches, and the stubs of cigars and cigarettes....

"You have not sought the terrible Gift—yet it has come to you. You are not of the Baal Obh, who evoke the voices of departed spirits from corpses and mummies—or of the Yideoni, who utter oracles and prophesy, by putting into their mouths a dead man's bone. You are a Teraph—a living Teraph—not the head of a first-born of a first-born—prepared with salt and spices, having under the tongue a gold plate on which magical formulas have been engraven.... And it is she, the handsome Englishwoman, who controls the Man and the Power! Who says to your mind, as the Chinese fisherman says to the tamed cormorant: 'Dive!' ... And at the command you vanish into the Unguessable!—you return, carrying in your pouch a fish from the Sea on which swims the Serpent that bears up the Throne...."

He drew towards him an unused plate, reached with a shaking hand for the part-emptied port-bottle, poured a little into a glass, and dipping in a finger, rapidly traced in thick red wine upon the shining white porcelain a square, divided into nine smaller by horizontal and perpendicular lines....

"Dastûr. By your Permission, ye Blessed Ones!" John heard him mutter, as he scattered a drop or two of wine at each corner of the figure and filled in the squares with numerals.

"What are you up to, Essenian Pasha?" John leaned across interestedly. "Looks to me like hanky-panky of the Egyptian Hall kind."

"It is the Budûh of el Gazzali, a figure much used in our East. Only instead of letters I am using numerals. Tell me, my friend—for of course you are acquainted with it—what is the month, and the day, and the hour, of the English lady's birth? ..."

"Damned if I know! ..."

"How can I believe you do not know, when she is so intimate a friend that she wears a facsimile of the onyx gem that is on your hand now? ..."

"Why she has it I couldn't say.... It's an heirloom in her family.... Now cough up your conditions, for I've waited long enough. What do you want me to do in return for taking me somewhere near the Prison Camp at Shechem, dropping me and picking me up—at a given hour—with another man in tow? ..."

"Consent to be again—for me—as you were in the Rue el Farad." The Egyptian obliterated the figure on the plate with a sweep of three fingers, pushed the plate contemptuously from him and sat erect in his chair. "Use your power—pass behind the Veil as you did this afternoon. Here as you sit at this table—it can easily be managed. For one half-hour!—" He pointed to the round-faced gun-metal timepiece solemnly ticking over the dining-room door. "A quarter even—calculated by that clock...."

"But haven't I already told you that's all tosh about my being clairvoyant? ... Can't—"

"Muakkad! Yes, you have told me, but I have eyes and ears.... Think, O man! ..." Both supple hands darted at John over the roses.... "Lord of the Daystar! cannot you understand? Would it be no help to the success of this expedition if I were able to send you in advance to the Camp at Shechem? A spy no sentry can arrest—no walls keep out, no bullet silence.... Who hears—sees all and remains invisible as the Afrit who flies by noonday, or the Angel who witnesses sin!"

"But you.... Where do you come in? What's your particular little stunt, Essenian Pasha?" The voice was heavily, oppressively surcharged with suspicion and doubt....

"I will tell you, you who suspect one who has served you and eaten and drunk with you. This is the year of Fate for me, this of the Hejira 1335—by the Kalendars of the Ifranjis 1917. This coming First of Safar—their November Sixteenth—is the beginning of the month of my dread.... All may yet be well with me—for who knows his danger is armed against it. And to have lived as I have is to have learned to value Life! Only a few years more to wait until great chemists have grown wiser.... A little, little span of years,—and Man, created but to perish, will have done away with Sickness and abolished Old Age,—and finally conquered the Enemy, Death.... Listen! ... I cannot be killed whilst flying—the Signs are all against it. But in a year that has its birth in el Dali and el Jadi—in a month that has the signs Akrab, and of the planets Mirih,—I am in danger from a man and a woman. Peril had threatened me the other day, when I dropped down in the midst of your lines—and its source had been removed and my breast was broadened.... But the Shadow still broods—the Finger points—and I must know who these Two are—the people who menace me!"

"What happened before you landed in our lines, Essenian Pasha?" John's interest had been prodded into life by the previous reference. "Three days ago—or about—when the Turkish Anti-Aircraft guns peppered you over—Hebron, wasn't it?—and Captain Usborn was killed.... You see, I've been wanting to ask you about that poor bloke. How did he get his gruel? ..."

"How?" The crouching khaki figure sat erect and the snaky eyes glittered angrily. "You saw the corpse.... You handled it. A shrapnel bullet killed him. And it was not at Hebron it happened,—but at Shechem."

"That's odd! ... You said Shechem at first.... And—it wasn't a shrapper! ..."

"What do you mean? ..." The voice was a snarl.

"Well, you see, I've got the bullet...."

"Where? ..."

"Here.... In my pocket.... And—the queer thing is—it's a revolver-bullet. Not a German—it isn't nickel-coated. Might have come from an English Webley of ordinary Army size."

"Show it me!"

John produced and handed over the little blunted cone of metal. The deadly cold of the dry finger-tips that touched his in taking it reminded him uncomfortably of the contact of a snake. He watched as they turned the bullet about, and then held out his hand for it.

"You want this back again?" the harsh voice asked.

"Rather, if you don't mind!—" John grinned. "It's my latest mascot." He took back the bullet, avoiding the other's touch, and dropped it in his pocket again.

"How did you get it?" Avidly the sharp glance had followed the action. "How can you be certain—that it is the bullet that killed the man?"

"I helped to lift—the body—out of the observer's cockpit, and mine was the head end...."

"Th' h h! ..."

It was a sound like the hiss of a snake, betraying desperate interest.

"He—Usborn—had been shot through the head.... There was a scorch on the left temple. On the right—a clot of brains and blood. And—when I took hold of his head the bullet came away with that, and dropped into my hand. That's curious, now I come to think of it ..."

"What is curious?"

"That burn on his left temple...."

"Perhaps the bullet was incendiary. The Germans use such things."

"You forget! I've got it—and it isn't!"

"Ah!" The voice had recovered its suavity. "I am now able to account for its being a revolver-bullet. There were German officers on the defence-works at Shechem—that they have strengthened since the evacuation of Beersheba. And as they directed the gunners—we circling the while and reconnoitring—Usborn also photographing—they potted at us with their revolvers now and then...."

"How high were you flying?"

"A mile. I remember I looked at the indicator the moment before—it happened."

"You're kidding, Essenian Pasha.... You know lots better than I do that the range of a revolver taking a bullet of this calibre would be barely 1,550 yards...."

"Wannebi!" Foam stood on the writhing lips, and the veins on the back of the clenched hand that shook at John across the roses stood out against the bronze skin like knotted blue cords. "By the Prophet! though I am no son of his,—you, Hazel, tax my patience.... Usborn is dead, and buried two marches from Sheria. Let us discuss the cause of his death when we have time to lose. Aid me to gain enlightenment as only you can aid me!—and I help you to rescue this Christian priest—this tonsured Franghi dervish—from the barbed-wire cage at the Prison Camp of Shechem. Is it agreed? Speak, for suspense devours my liver!"

"All right." John glanced round at the clock over the door of the dining-room. "Nine-fifteen. I'm at your disposal till the long hand marks the half-past."

"Give me time to get something I shall need from my room, and swallow a draught of stimulant." Essenian beckoned one of the Levantine waiters, gave a rapid order in his fluent French and clapped his hands for his own man.

"Saiyad, I am here!" The Mohammedan body-servant who had waited, erect and immovable in the background appeared at his master's elbow. "What does my lord command?"

"Go to the room where I sleep, and bring me the velvet case from the table at my bedside."

"My lord has said," the man quavered, paling under his coffee-coloured skin, "that the low-born may not lay a hand upon the Eye of Radiance, but at peril of blasting as by fire from the skies!"

"Unless thou art commanded. Go, and return in safety!"

The servant vanished and Essenian commented, with his little contemptuous shrug:

"Even as the beasts are the rough and unlettered. What says Shaikh Saadi in The Garden of Roses? I would quote the original,—but it may be you do not know Arabic sufficiently well to appreciate the pun."

"Some play upon wahish and wahsh, I suppose?" Hazel suggested, unexpectedly, as the servants stripped the table and fenced it round with screens. "What's your poison this time? Something extra special?" he inquired, as Essenian, with a shaking hand, drew his little case of medicines again from his pocket and half-filled a liqueur-glass from another of the vials it held.

"Something I seldom need to take, my King of Damascus. Unless after severe physical exertion,—or unusual mental strain. To your health! Sirrak!"

He swallowed the colourless, scentless contents of the liqueur-glass; drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders,—and under the surprised stare of John, became the man he had been....

"That is good! Now we get to what you call 'biz.' ..." He was smiling again suavely as he took a shabby green velvet case from the willing hands of his servant, banished the man beyond the enclosure of the screens with a look and a brief order couched in the vernacular,—and placed the case carefully on the cleared table-cloth before his guest.

"Fine stone! What is it?" John asked curiously.

"A beryl, merely. Do not touch it with your finger lest the contact dim its brightness."

Essenian had opened the case out flat upon the smooth white linen surface, disclosing a sphere of radiance, resting on the slender base of a little metal stand.

"Sit easily in your chair," he went on; "rest your hands on either side of it.... Ah, I had forgotten! Where are those mallâhe?" He took a pile of common native glass salt-cellars from a corner of the table, where a demure-faced Levantine waiter had just placed them. "Raise yourself on the chair a little. So! Now sit down again." John complied, finding the seat rather higher than it had been before. "Now I place one of the mallâhe under each leg of the table...." The table kicked four times gently. "Now the Earth-currents cannot deviate astral—or Other Influences—and the table is not too low. You are comfortable?"

"Fairly cushy, thanks! ..."

Dentists had asked John a similar question.

"You are not nervous, Mr. Hazel? ..."

"Why on earth should I be? ..."

"There is no reason. Look at the beryl, and do not remove your eyes."

"All right, I'm on! ... Mind! From the word 'Go!' fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes.... Look steadily in the beryl. Now give the word!"

"Go! ..."

* * * * * * *

Resting a hand lightly on the table, on each side of the little cup-topped pedestal supporting the gleaming, spherical stone, John leaned forwards, steadily looking in it,—and the fold between his beetling eyebrows smoothed, and the spark of excitement that had kindled in his black eyes slowly smouldered out....

He had gone much further than he meant to have done, but there had been no help for it. Katharine's desperate need of help, the more desperate need of Julian, had thrust him over the edge of this pit the astute Egyptian had dug. But whether Essenian were a wizard or a charlatan—and at moments John was inclined to the wizard idea—he had struck a bargain with the man, and he meant to stick to it. So he held himself motionless, breathing easily, letting his mind range whither it would, as he stared in the depths of the stone....

He had thought it shallow, and it was unfathomably deep; clear, and it was opaquely green as sea-water.... And yet translucent as sea-water can be,—with smooth swirls and rounded folds below the jewelled surface—suggesting veils wrapped on veils, hiding some mystery....

He checked an inclination to yawn. He was feeling sleepy and stoggy. To keep awake he clung to the details of a certain September evening in 1914. News had come that day to the office of the death of young Dannahill,—and he, John, had returned by taxi to the family roof-tree, to break to his mother and his brother Maurice—Maurice who was now piloting a Handley-Page bomb-carrier 'plane on the Western Front—the news that he, J.B.H.,—the John of the "Tubs" Club in Werkeley Street, the John who was a votary of "Tango" and Progressive Bridge; who talked knowingly of Russian Ballet, Musical Comedy and smart Revues; the John whose cherished ambition was to make a pile big enough to buy Covent Garden and turn it into a Pleasure City to be run on American lines—was going to the Front.

He—the said J.B.H., had dined, and was comfortably full, after the lean weeks of bully beef and rubber-tough Palestine mutton.... And he had had a deuce of a lot of hock, of Heidseick Dry Monopole, and three, or was it five Benedictines with coffee, to take away the bitterness of that over-lauded Arab stuff....

Enough, perhaps, to make an ordinary man squiffy, but J.B. Hazel was no ordinary man.... In fact, going by what Essenian Pasha said,—was that Essenian Pasha talking? ... Or whose was that voice, mumbling, mumbling.... Not in Arabic, of which John had a smattering, or in Hebrew—he knew a little Hebrew—

In whatever language the voice was talking it was trying to push John over the brink of Things Normal, into the abyss of Things that are Not.

The launch of a battleship at Portsmouth Dockyard, witnessed years previously, now came vividly back to the protagonist; a picture thrown by the passing moment upon the screen of Memory. As Royalty with mallet and chisel had severed the cord supporting the bow—weights, whose fall knocked away the last dog-shores propping the Dreadnaught, her vast steel hull had shuddered visibly.... The thin wind keening through her glassless upper port holes and along her vast unfitted decks—gaily beflagged, and speckled with adventurous human pigmies—had sounded as though she wept.... Then a hand had touched an electric stud—a bottle in a ribboned net had crashed against the cliff-like bows of grey-painted steel, figured with Roman numerals—and the giant, vibrating from stem to stern, had begun to slide down the well-greased slipway,—towards the oily-looking expanse of chill green water, speckled with floating chips and orange-peel—smoking with little drab-white curls of clammy Solent fog....

And John Hazel was the ship ... the sinister, relentless will that thrust him down must be resisted.... He would not go! ... Had he not promised somebody called Katharine...

Who was Katharine? ... He was rushing to the dreadful brink.... Without the anticipated shock or jar, he glided smoothly over....

* * * * * * *

"The big Inglizi soldier is very drunk," a Levantine waiter—one of a silent group gathered near the dining-room door, whispered to a comrade behind the shoulder of Essenian's Mohammedan body-servant. "Hark, how he snores behind the screens!"

"I do not think the tomi drunk," whispered a countryman of the Levantine's, speaking the same bastard Turkish-Egyptian dialect. "For when the Effendim called for sealing-wax I peeped between the screens, slily, and the Inglizi seemed to me more like one drugged with the smoke of henbane sprinkled on the embers of a charcoal fire.... Thus did he sit, with open eyes, staring into that thing that shines so.... And—and the eyes were empty as the eyes of a dead man—it was not good to look in them!"

"O son of a Maghribi dog! What is that to thee?" Essenian's Mohammedan body-servant, who had overheard, hissed fiercely at the offender. "Since when hast thou found it good for thee or thy like to speak of the doings in this house! My lord and his guest confer together upon matters too high for thee. What has it to do with thee if they practise the es Semiya? Do not persons of known probity work magic both White and Black—and cast nativities! Cudgel thy stupid wits and tell me how long since thou didst stop the clock there? ... 'An hour-and-a-half....' Watch now for the signal! ... When my lord's hand flickers between the screens, the weight is to be set a-wagging.... Have the ôtomôbilyâ ready at the door—the Effendim travels with the Englishman this night to Ismailia—I, Yakub Ali, sitting in front with the wûgâkgi who drives,—running on the solid earth made by Allah for the sons of Adam—instead of flying in the air like a Jinni of the Jann."

Book the Fourth: THE PASSING

I

In the Central Range of Western Palestine is an ancient Samaritan township, the Shechem of the Patriarchs. High set above shore-level, sheltered by mighty mountains on the North, East and South, looking down a wady beaten in by-gone days by the hoofs of the cavalry of Omri,—rutted by the silver and ivory chariot-wheels of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel,—across low, undulant hill-ranges, to the twenty-mile distant sea.

High set above sea-level, it lies on the floor of a long, fish-shaped valley, between two towering limestone mountains. Distant a mile-and-a-half at their summits, their bases nearly meet. One is Ebal, the other Gerizim. They are the mounts by which the Chosen stood to receive blessings and cursings.

The Samaritan Temple, that place of sinister mysteries, once stood where are now great terebinth-trees, shading the ruins of an ancient fortress upon Mount Gerizim. The rock of their Place of Sacrifice shows its channelled surface above ground. To-day, a man standing with the wind at his back, upon the crown of Ebal or Gerizim and speaking loudly, would be heard at the summit of the opposite Mount, and in the streets of the town....

The town, upon which the towering limestone heads of Ebal and Gerizim and their fellows look down sternly, was in its heyday a place of wealth, where luxury and lust ran riot, and men and women walked in purple robes, or were carried in ivory litters; crowned with high jewelled head-dresses, dust of gold powder lying thick in the spiral curls of their jet black beards, and the frizzled waves or towering coils of richly-luxuriant hair. Now their ancient place of abiding is set about with ruinous stone mansions, girt with groves of waving palms, fig-trees, olives and mulberries. Mean dwellings crowd on narrow vaulted streets, under whose pavement you can hear the water rushing. For there is no lack of water in Shechem. The crowded mud Barracks behind the bazar has a well of pure water in its courtyard. So cheap is the element that no one grudges this solace to the prisoners of War.

Before the War the chief seat of the Turkish administration in Palestine, the old town boasted a population of some 25,000 souls. Thinned by conscription of the younger Jews, Samaritans, Arabs and native Syrian Christians, it might have contained some fifteen thousand, counting the garrison of Turkish infantry officered by monocled and braceleted Germans,—when the fortified area of Beersheba fell to the strategy of Allenby, and the routed left wing of the Fourth Army Corps of Djemal Pasha, with the formidable motor-driven siege-guns from the boasted stronghold fell back in rout and confusion upon the area of Shechem.

Some directing Teutonic mind ordained, weeks previous to the evacuation, that the Allied prisoners from the camps of Beersheba and its vicinity, packed on Railway cattle-trucks or Army motor-lorries,—should be transferred by railway to the town of Shechem. It was to be converted by German gold, forced labour and modern resources, into a stronghold of Ottoman power, against which the expeditionary army of Britain should expend itself in vain....

There are already British War prisoners in the mud-walled Barracks at Shechem, built round the courtyard containing the well. When on these hunger-gnawed, vermin-ridden men rolls the flood of human wretchedness from the camps of Beersheba and its neighbourhood,—they are to learn the bitter truth that there are grades in Misery.

For a squat, sandy, pale-eyed Lieutenant-General of Turkish gendarmerie, who acted as Commandant of the Beersheba prison-camps, now supersedes the tyrant who has ruled at Shechem. The inmates of the prisons there have been robbed, stripped, and beaten. They have slept in tattered blankets upon mud or stone floors,—lived on a daily quarter of a coarse brown loaf per soul—and a handful of beans in oil.... They have undergone insult, and occasionally kicks and blows, but Home parcels have occasionally reached them, and though pinched, they were not famished.... Now the parcels are looted or their contents rendered uneatable.... A loaf is shared amongst twenty men, the pannikin of boiled beans yields each a bare spoonful. Driven out at dawn by Turks with loaded hide-whips, to dig trenches south and east of the old fortifications,—make emplacements for Austro-German artillery, and lay down a system of interchangeable rails for the Krupp motor-guns,—they are herded back at night to the filthy pens where they are packed so closely that they cannot lie down to sleep without lying on each other. Whence in the mornings men suffocated by the press of the bodies of their comrades are taken out dead....

These victims belong to the rank and file. Some officers are quartered in the old stone-built prison. Yet others live in Turkish Army tents in a barbed-wire enclosure at the eastern end of the town. A ramshackle hut serves as their mess, when they have anything to mess on. But they are not too crowded for decency, and sickness spares them. Presently the officers are drafted away, four only remaining,—and the congestion at the mud-built Barracks is somewhat relieved. But Hunger, Overcrowding and Dirt have bred Dysentery, septic skin-eruptions and Typhus Fever, and these claim their victims by the score.

The Hospital near the new Turkish Barracks by the Arsenal, staffed by the German Red Cross and the nurses and orderlies of the Red Crescent,—being crowded with Turkish and German wounded—cannot admit more than a few of the gravest cases of dysentery. The typhus patients are removed to the Hospital under the auspices of the Established Church of England Missionary Society, and another,—devotedly tended by the Catholic Sisters of the Cross. Helpers come from the Mission House of the Latin Patriarchate, who unweariedly give their services wherever there is need.... But desperate indeed would be the plight of the War prisoners—save that through the blizzard of misery raging through the mud Barracks—the courage and charity of one man shine like a steadfast star....

The man is a Catholic chaplain who has served with the Expeditionary Forces at Gallipoli; has been taken prisoner and kept for awhile in Hospital at Constantinople; has been drafted to Smyrna, and later, by such haphazard chance as governs the lives of prisoners, has been shifted to Beersheba, and thence to Shechem.

Unweariedly he alleviates, whilst sharing, the common misery. Shaking with fever, hunger-bitten to the bone, ragged as any scarecrow, red-eyed with sleeplessness, he moves from room to room distributing such poor comforts as are obtainable. Helping the convalescent, ministering to the sick, dispensing the Sacraments of the Mother Church to the Catholic dying—cheering those of other creeds with the words that are of God....

On a day in November, half-an-hour later than the morning prayer-call from the minaret of the Great Mosque that was once a Church of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre—you are to see Father Julian Forbis going his daily round.... The mud-walled courtyard is closed in on three sides by the mud-built Barracks, and on the fourth by a high wall topped by rusty iron spikes—a wall in which there is an archway closed by a double gate, flanked on either side by guard-rooms. Over the gateway is the office of the Turkish Commandant.

To-day the courtyard of the mud-built Barracks is full of sunshine and packed with prisoners. Lying, squatting or standing, the majority are squalid spectres on whose gaunt frames their foul and tattered clothing hangs baggily, though some are bloated like the corpses of men who have been long drowned. Though the assemblage is sprinkled with Roumanians, Syrians, Jews, Armenians and Arabs,—these last having a dungeon to themselves, of unutterable filthiness, the bulk are of the rank and file of Britain's Crusading Forces. Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, and British Territorials.... Actors, clerks, printers, shopwalkers and jockeys; farm-labourers, electricians, gardeners, photographers, bakers, University students,—representatives of every class and calling. One and all strung to endurance by the spirit that makes heroes of ordinary men....

The shadows of Ebal and Gerizim as yet fall westward. Their towering summits and those of the lesser mountains, and the minarets of the Great and the two smaller mosques look down into the dirty mud-walled court, baking in the rays of the early sun, though the November nights are chilly. Every stench the prison fosters seems intensified by the heat. The loud buzzing of millions of flies mingles in a bagpipe-drone with the noise of many voices, Eastern and European,—talking in half-a-dozen languages and a hundred dialects—and the hubbub has for its accompaniment the thudding of distant guns. From the southwest, where the 54th British Division is engaged with the enemy between the sea and Gaza. Nearer South, where a bitter struggle is being waged by British Cavalry, armoured cars, and the bombers and machine-gunners of the Royal Flying Corps, for the possession of Junction Station—the next point after the fall of Gaza, of tactical importance in Palestine. From the hills towards Hebron those enemy forces, who have previously retreated to this vantage, have descended into the Coastal Plain, to relieve the pressure and stiffen the resistance of their comrades by demonstrating a counter-attack. For if Junction Station, the key of the northern railway-system, with its vast dumps of rolling-stock, supplies, War-material and its camps of prisoners, shall fall into the hands of the British—Jerusalem will be cut off from communication save by Wireless with Turkey and Germany....

Day wears apace.... The winged hordes of Baal Zebub, like the humans whom they feast on, are making the most of the sunshine. Fat white maggots that will be flies presently,—and vermin still more loathsome—crawl in the dirty straw on which the prisoners are squatting or lying. Deep in the well the clear water shines like a huge blue eye, reflecting the shadowless heavens above.

A man hanging over, seems to stare in the water, apparently sheltering his eyes with both hands from the glare. He has the crowned wings of the R.F.C. on the shoulder of his ragged shirt of khaki flannel, and the clear water of the brimming well reflects the three chevrons and crown of a Flight Sergeant, tacked upon its tattered sleeve. Also the glittering lenses of a small pair of folding binoculars, cunningly concealed by the curve of their owner's hands.

"What be 'ee lookin' vor, Tom?" cautiously whispers a freckled trooper of Devon Yeomanry, digging a painfully sharp elbow in the airman's lean ribs.

Barney Mossam takes it on himself to answer,—being the accredited wit and jester of the knot gathered about the well. He is a little, broad-shouldered, bow-legged London Territorial, with a nose that has suffered in bouts of fisticuffs; a carroty head, a broad humorous grin, and a squint that points a joke. He speaks with the thick catarrhal snuffle of the East End. Even in khaki his type proclaims him of the Race of Costermongers.... Covent Garden Market is thick with Barneys, all alike as peas from the pod....

"Ticklebats, my flash top," says Barney winking, "kind you used to ketch a while back, wiv' a bottle tied on a string." He adds in a thick whisper directed at the ear of the absorbed Flight Sergeant, "Wot d'yer pipe, old Sky-gazer? Thinkin' it's abaht time we 'ad another look-in from ours affectionately the Two-Faced Nightingale?"

"Ay. Unless he happened to come in the night!" The cautious whisper of the reply only just reaches the ears for which it is intended....

"I 'eard a 'plane go singin' over 'ere 'bout twelve-thirty by my gold ticker," says Barney. "But she was one of them there seaplanes wiv' little canoes instid o' wheels. There ain't so many 'Un 'planes abaht as there used to!—an' Turkey 'planes is gittin' as rare as—as glass in the Strand an' Covent Garden Market—after the bloomin' Zepps and Super Goths 'as paid the usual mornin' call...." His thick whisper is barely audible even to the other: "Reckon that's why it pays Old Two-Face to play the double game. Wiv' a patent trick lever-switch—Gorblime 'im!—but 'e's clever! to cover the Union Jacks on 'is under-wings with Red Crescents when 'e tips the stud.... 'Wish I 'ad a Turk face to pull over my reel one! Wouldn't take me long to 'op out of 'ere! Wonder if 'e 'as the syme dodge fitted on 'is top wings? Give one o' my last three fags—I would!—to find out 'oo 'e is!"

"He's not an Englishman, thank God! He's pretty nearly a black one. Dark as a Gyppo—or a Hindu. The other was white. Inside as well as out. That's why he was murdered!" returns the Flight Sergeant in his wary whisper, without lowering his hands....

"Some blokes gits all the fun. 'Ow come you to see it, Sergeant?"

For once the Cockney's jest provokes no appreciative smile. The thin hands sheltering the prized binoculars shake.... The whispering voice shakes also—and its hurried sentences are punctuated by the thudding of those distant guns....

"I've told you.... It's just a week since.... I was up in our room there," the speaker contemptuously jerks his ear towards an upper window of one of the Barrack buildings—"looking through this little Zeiss glass that magnifies by 20. (I've told you how I took it off a dead German airman at Huy.) ... And the Two-Faced Nightingale—hovering not more than four hundred feet above the Square in front of the big Khan,—was picking the place, damn him! where he'd settled to drop his despatch-bag. He switched his Red Crescents on over the Union Jacks—and the stunt brought the usual roar of laughter from the people. Every one was out to stare,—the streets as far as I could see, were packed, as well as the roofs.... Then he dropped his bag, plumb for the square,—swung round and steered Southward. And,—keeping the glasses focussed on them, I saw his white observer stand up, lean forward and touch him on the back. He looked round and his white teeth flashed in his face sort of spitefully.... The other fellow was handing him out cold truth in ladlefuls, shaking his fist and raving like mad. Then—it happened before you could wipe an eye! He—the pilot—cut out his engine—turned round, and I caught the glitter of a revolver in his hand. Then came the flash and the crack. And the white man buckled up in the bottom of his cockpit—and the Two-Faced Nightingale switched on and flew away South. And nothing was left on the blue sky but a puff of brown cordite."

"The murderin' dawg!" Barney carefully moves from the coping-stone of the well a burnt match, and a wisp of straw, that some eddying draught of the hot breeze might carry into the water. "No fear of 'im gittin' copped. This 'ere queer go wot we calls Life's more on the lines of a Drury Lyne Autumn Show than I twigged when I rallied up 'long o' my pals on Fust Nights outside the good old Gallery Entrance. On'y it's turned the wrong w'y raound. Vice gits all the limes from both wings, an' all the clappin' from the Pit an' Gallery. An' Virtue kips on the bare boards of a stinkin' Turkish barrack-room, or 'unkers in the stinkin' mud, and 'unts things wot 'ops and crawls." He goes on, talking to himself, for the airman, staring in the reflected patch of sky is suddenly absorbed to deafness. "S'trewth! Wherever it does pay—off of the boards of a Theayter—the 'Eroic Line don't go for nuts—not 'ere in Palestine!"

"Ye are richt! It pays nae better than it paid twa thousan' years agone. But which is it better to be on—the de'il's side—or the Lord's? I wuss to Him some voice frae Heaven wad speyk an' answer me! ..."

The utterance—unmistakably Scotch—breaks in several feet above the level of Barney's monologue. He looks up at a tall, gaunt, red-haired Scot in the Border bonnet and ragged khaki kilt, and badges of the Tweedburgh Regiment, and says with his characteristic wink:

"'Ullo, Corp'ral Govan! Thet you? ..."

"Nae ither that I ken...." He is quite young, but he moves like an old man, as he lets his long length slowly down on the mud beside the Cockney, unheeding the invitation to take a straw, and hugs his hairy knees. "Man! I wad gie the twa dirrty Turkish notes in ma pooch, an' a guid British florin to the back o' them, to be anither chap than Alec Govan the day. For I have seen what a man may scarce see, an' keep his brain frae madness—ay! an' his tongue from cryin' oot on God!" He rocks himself in silence, then says with a stifled groan: "Man! dinna gawp at me. Do ye no' ken I hae been wi' Ullathorne? ..."

"Ullathorne. That's your chum, ain't 'e? Wot abaht 'im?"

"Hae ye no' heird?" The long Scot stares at the Cockney wonderingly.

"Nuffin' but that 'e didn't come back last night wiv the workin'-party. 'As 'e turned up?"

"Ay. They pitched him back intil oor room last nicht—a' the green rods had left o' him. Weel I kenned they would do their warst once they got their chance." There is foam on the livid lips. "They drove him oot wi' the rest o' us to the Defence Warks yesterday mornin', though he had the fever on him sair, an' couldna' stand alane.... Weel, weel I wat why!" He is shaking as though with ague. "An' he staggered an' reeled, an' knocked up against ane o' the sentries—an' Hamid Bey was standing by wi' some of his gang o' police.... By the grin on the pasty face of him, ye could tell he was oot for murder. An' he ordered Ullathorne a hundred strokes for brutally attackin' the man. They held us up an' made us watch whiles they laid on to him. O Christ Jesus! ... First on the feet, twenty-five strokes—then the back an' belly an' breist.... An' when he fainted an' lay for dead, they drove us oot wi' their whips an' left him lyin'; an' when we came back for the nicht-shift he was gane awa' from there.... In the mirk o' the nicht, as I hae said, they flung him in amang us,—nakit as a new-born wean—an' his raw flesh hangin' in strips. As though the butcher had stairted to collop him—an' changed his min' aboot it. A braw sicht for the mither that bore him, an' the lass he should hae wed!"

"Gorblime the bloody beasts!" says Barney, gulping. His coarse hand touches the thin arm in the tattered sleeve with the Corporal's stripes, and does it gently too. "Will Ullathorne live? They don't often live—our own chaps—do 'em?—though Turks seems some'ow diff'rent."

"He was deein' when they broucht him back, puir lad! I hae left him barely breathin'.... Father Forbis is wi' him noo.... Ullathorne is nae no Catholic, but the Father has the Gift o' the Word. Sune—sune he will be dead, my chum that I made at Gallipoli, the last o' the auld company left aiblins mysel'!"

No tears come to the burning grey eyes that stare into vacancy.

"A' nicht I held him i' my airms! His bluid is wet upo' me. An' I made a sang to sooth to him—we Govans aye had the bard's gift, they say, in the braw auld days. And when he is dead—for I promised him!—the haill Barracks shall hear't. The bonny sang o' the Christian men killed by the Turkish hound!"

"Look wide O! One o' them Mo'ammedan guards 'as got 'is ugly eye on you," urges Barney, apprehensive that the recklessness of grief may bring Govan the fate of his friend. "While there's life there's 'ope! ... Pre'aps Ullathorne might git round yit!"

But Govan shakes his haggard head:

"I doot—I doot it sairly. But what can be done Father Forbis will dae. He promised me he wouldna leave him as lang as there was breith i' him. An' Forbis aye keeps his word. Here he comes! Luik at's face..... Ullathorne has passed to his Maker!"

The Scot starts to his naked feet, and Barney Mossam sits up and salutes, as through an archway on the ground-floor of the sordid block of buildings opposite comes the figure of a tall, emaciated man, followed by a burly, slovenly Turkish soldier and a grotesque, hunchbacked shape,—recognisable only by the voluminous folds of the coarse biscuit-coloured veil that covers its head, and falls to the hem of its soiled blue cotton robe—as a Syrian peasant woman.

"Good morning, Mossam!" The intonations of the priest's voice, and the smile that curves the mouth hidden by the reddish-golden beard, and lights the sunken blue eyes, are very like Katharine's.... "You are up and about again! ..."

"Couldn't lay up in the lap o' luxury no longer, Father!" drolls the indomitable jester. "A man in my condition 'as to 'ave exercise to sweat the suet off 'is bones."

The bones show as though the tattered uniform hung on clothes-props. The priest glances at them compassionately, and then with gentle friendliness at the haggard faces that turn to him, as he picks his way delicately between the prone and squatting men.

"Move!" says the Turkish military guard in the greenish-yellow khaki served out to the Ottoman forces in the War with Serbia, a huge posta whose fez sits on the extreme summit of his pointed head like the red-paper-cap on a bottle of liquorice-powder,—who wears good boots stripped from a British prisoner: and who speaks a bastard mixture of bad Turkish and worse Arabic: "Haide git! Make way for the kassis and the woman! Imshi! Must ye be as the beasts?"

For a hyæna-like yell of joy has greeted the discovery that there are oranges in one, and almonds and walnuts in the other, of two heavy palm-fibre baskets carried by the misshapen, limping being who follows behind the priest. The wretched creature is one of those nondescript hangers-on that in the negligent East haunt such places of misery as the mud Barrack-prison,—gaining a meagre subsistence by washing the prisoners' tattered linen, running errands to the bâzâr,—boiling broth or carrying water for the sick and convalescent, and, when the guards can be bribed into acquiescence—washing and laying out the bodies of the dead.

Bundled in her soiled rags—shrouded in the voluminous veil that hides a face so disfigured by accident or disease, that no European who has glimpsed can think of it without a shudder, and Orientals express their abhorrence by spitting on the ground—the Mother of Ugliness—thus nicknamed by some coarse wit among her countrymen—passes without insult, ill-usage or outrage, where no other of her sex, unprotected by deformity and hideousness, could have escaped....

"Orangees. Glory be to God!—an' where did yer Reverence git thim?" asks the owner of the unmistakably Irish voice, stretching gaunt hands, shaking with fever, for one of the luscious golden globes.

"A friend brought them," briefly answers the priest, as he distributes the fruit and nuts generously on all sides.

"God bless the friend! ... An' that's yourself, I'm thinkin'," grunts the Irishman, driving his teeth deep into the juicy fruit.

"No, Sullivan, it was not I. You see the giver...."

"The Mother av' Ugliness, bedad! More power to her!" splutters Sullivan, as the priest points to the crooked shape swathed in its sordid veils.

"She has earned a prettier name here among us," says Father Forbis, looking round at the faces,—pinched and white, or livid, or fever-flushed, that crowd about him, and speaking with mild authority. "She shall be called henceforth The Mother of Kindness...."

He turns to the shrinking creature at his heels and repeats it in Arabic.

"Sidi!" the woman implores in muffled tones, trembling so that the folds of her coarse veils wave as though some vagrant breeze were stirring amongst them:

"I have spoken! By you and other British in this place—" He looks round sternly at the men, "the old name is forgotten. She is the Mother of Kindness.... Let all of you remember that!"

"We'll not forgit, yer Reverence! ..."

"Verra weel, Sirr! ..."

"Sure we'll remember, Boss! ..."

"A' right, Sir! ..."

"Han, Hâzrât! ..."

"Right O Father! ..."

"A'ay, Zur, for sure! ..."

"Yea, verily, it shall be as the Sahib orders!"

They answer him in a hundred voices, resonant bass, or cheery tenor, coarse and refined, illiterate or educated,—flavoured with the accent and in the dialect of every shire or county in the United Kingdom—every country of the Dominions Overseas. And standing in his ragged clothes, with a battered enamelled can of broth and another of barley-water dangling from one lean hand, while the other eases the heavy weight of a wallet of canvas, broad, slung about his thin shoulders, and containing such medicines and dressings as may be had—the Father surveys them smilingly—but with the spark in his blue eyes that they know can leap to flame....

You are to see him as a tall, emaciated man of twenty-nine or thirty, chalky-pale with famine and worn with lack of sleep. Eagle-featured, broad-browed, blue-eyed; with long, untrimmed hair and tangled beard of ruddy yellow-brown. Without the eight-pointed black metal star on the lapel of his tattered khaki jacket, or the wisp of Roman collar that still hangs about his neck, or the bartered Breviary and Office book that bulges a front tunic-pocket—a ragged strip of purple stole between its well-thumbed pages—you could not fail to recognise the Religious by vocation; the cultured priest, the man born to dominate, sway and rule.

"Haide! Let us go!" growls the Turkish guard, thrusting two oranges and a handful of nuts in a pocket of his soiled tunic, and kicking a man squatting in his path less viciously than as a matter of form.

And the little procession of the tall priest, the red-fezzed guard, and the bundle of soiled feminine clothing—brought up in the rear by Corporal Alec Govan, moves towards the ground-floor archway on the other side of the courtyard.

II

"Sirr!"

"You, Govan? ..." The priest glances back as he passes out of the sunshine and smells of the courtyard into the squalor and reek of the fetid passage, and the guard, kicking out a palm-wood stool from behind the heavy wooden-locked door, squats down upon it to crack and eat nuts....

"Ay, Sirr.... It is a' ower? ..."

The priest gravely bends his head, and the red light in Govan's eyes is momentarily quenched in bitter waters, as he goes on, gulping his agony down:

"I weel kent that was sae, or ye wad no' have left him. Did he no' speyk ane worr'd o' his mither, puir cratur!—or o' the lass he bude to marry—or o' me, his frien'—before he passed?"

"He spoke of one Friend—just at the last—even a better one than you were," says Father Forbis, gently touching the man's clenched hand. "He Who was scourged by Roman rods for poor Ullathorne and you, and all of us. Who died that we might live with Him for all eternity. Where Death cannot come—or cruelty—or suffering...."

"Ay, Sirr.... Ye are verra gude. We a' ken that o' ye!"

"And God is good," says the priest, "though Man may make men doubt it. Where are you going? ..."

"I am ganging back to Ullathorne. He maun be washed an' straikit an' berrit dacently. He maunna be pitched intil a hole like a doug!"

The priest shudders and his face contracts painfully.

"Very well. You shall have what little linen I can find, and all the help I can spare.... I must finish my rounds among the sick men now.... But, Govan! ..."

"Ay! ..."

"In the name of the old friendly days—" The thin but powerful white hand goes out and rests on the other's shoulder,—"when you and I—two long-legged lads—tickled trout in the Rushet and went rabbiting on the high moors—and made toffee over the stove in the harness-room at Kerr's Arbour—and for your own sake and the sakes of all here!—let me beg you not to provoke the evil man who has us in his power, by a rash display of the wrath and scorn that can do no good—to him!"

"Meanin' Ullathorne! I hear ye, Sirr." A strange smile shows on the grimly-set mouth, and the dour grey eyes sullenly shun the appeal of the blue ones. "Wi' your leave I will be ganging back to him the now.... He aye likit me to make queer sangs to sooth to him in the lang hoors when we lay in the trenches at Gallipoli. An' I hae a sang—the queerest ane o' a'—he wad fell like to hear! Guid day to ye, Sirr!"

He salutes, with the strange smile fixed upon his face, wheels about, and strides out of the fetid passage-way back into the sunshine, and the priest's heart sinks within him as he goes. Fresh furrows line his high, white brow, and anxiety deepens the caves about his eyes, as he says—speaking in Arabic to the bowed figure waiting humbly as a dog at the bottom of the broken staircase:

"He is mad with grief. God pity him! ... Follow, and give what aid thou canst, O Mother of Kindness!"

"If the Sidi would graciously—not call me by that name...."

The timid whisper barely reaches the ear it was meant for. They have moved farther down the murky, fetid passage-way, blocked at its entrance by the burly body of the nut-cracking Turkish guard. Father Forbis asks in surprise:

"Why not, when thou dost merit it? ..." And she answers:

"Sidi, in ugliness there is Protection! Could a woman—with two eyes and a whole face—instead of a half-one—dwell in this evil place one hour—and fare forth unharmed? ..." She makes as though to pull aside her veil with her dusky, slender fingers, but does not, and goes on in the same swift cautious undertone:

"True, there are British soldiers here, and nearly all that I have met were respecters of decent women! But when even the British soldiers are beaten and tortured—made the sport of devils in forms of men!—what can avail a woman better than to be hideous? Sidi,—if a Turk thrust forth a hand to pluck aside my veil, he—he!" she chuckles with a dry, clacking, mirthlessness, "see you—he retches and spits and curses—and does not do it again! Shâf—Shâf! ... See, O see!"

She pulls the veil ruthlessly from the left side of her hidden face and shows to the priest's pitying eyes the ruin it has concealed. The scar of an old burn puckers the olive-tinted temple and cheek that have caved where the bone has been shattered—the blinded eye has vanished under ridged folds of skin. The bridge of the nose—enough left of it to show that the feature has been of the curved Semitic type—has been ruthlessly shattered;—the upper lip, torn partly away, has healed into shapelessness.... He does not see the other side of the face—and the woman evinces no desire to show it. But the little ear, daintily formed and shaded by hair that is yet jet-black and silken—shows that the Mother of Ugliness may once have been beautiful....

"A gunshot wound—and a terrible one." He says it to himself ponderingly.

"Nay, Sidi. The weapon was a revolver."

"What say you? ..."

The priest starts. He has spoken his thought in his English tongue, and this Syrian woman has answered in her own. And it is the Arabic of the cultured classes, not the peasants' primitive speech. He looks at her, and she draws her veil over the poor ruined face that may once have been lovely and goes on speaking in her cultured Arabic:

"Verily, Sidi! A revolver-shot, fired so near that the muzzle touched the skin. There was little time—" She gives her dry, rustling chuckle. "Little time, and he wished to make sure. He did not mean to miss! ..."

"A heartless crime, O woman! But thou dost forgive the doer?"

"He was not mine enemy!" she says with her mirthless laugh.

"Thy lover.... And jealous.... Forgive him all the more for that having loved—he hurt thee in his frenzy. This was" (of course, the woman is old) "done many years ago?"

"Ay, Sidi! When I was young." Her laugh is like the crackling of burning brush.... "Three years ago—no longer! And he who did the thing was my brother, not my lover," says the flat, toneless voice from within the folds of the veil. "And jealous truly—but for his sister's honour. He dared not slay mine enemy—a Zabit of the Osmanli,—for that would have brought sword and fire and destruction upon our house. My lord understands? ..."

"Surely!"

"Therefore he gave me the wound thou seest—and thinking he had killed me,—he shot himself to escape death by torture and degradation. May God reward him a thousand-fold in the bosom of Abraham! ..."

The priest starts slightly:

"Thou art a Jewess?"

She is silent....

"Or perhaps a Samaritaness, like that woman of this city, who near two thousand years ago held drink to the parched lips of a Traveller beside Jacob's Well?"

"What I once was does not matter, but I am no Samaritaness!" There is something like resentment in the faded, toneless voice.

"Thou art Charity's very daughter to the sick ones in this prison. For one para that they give thee, they get ten piastres back. Dost thou think that I am blind?" Smiling, he shakes his finger at the Mother of Ugliness. She bows her head and answers, trembling like a reed in the wind:

"Nay, Sidi.... I have feared not! ... But for the love of Him Whom thou dost serve—seem to be blind a little longer! There is" (another spasm of trembling passes through her)—"There is no medicine for the wretched like helping Wretchedness! Here I am somewhat.... They do not shrink from me. Me whom the children in the streets hoot and run from!—at whose hidden face the women in the doorways spit and point their amulets, lest its influence blight before birth the unborn babe in the womb! And—were I driven from this place—" The faint voice is silent:

"Be it so, O Mother of Ugliness! Henceforth I am dumb as to thy virtues, and blind to the beauty of—thy deeds! Come—and I will give thee some linen for the swathing of that poor broken body that was a live man yesterday. What ails Thee, O woman? What dost thou fear? ..."

For the bowed figure crouches down, shaking as though with ague, a mere heap of sordid clothes on the filthy floor at his feet. A stifled voice falters out:

"Didst thou not hear the bugle? ... The gates—the gates are opening! ..."

They are, indeed, with a clanking of rusty iron bolts in stone groovings; with a turning out of the slovenly guard from the bare rooms flanking the high archway of the gate. With a stiff uprising of the lolling, nut-cracking posta at the doorway—a susurrous of fierce whispers—a nameless commotion of hate and fear and loathing unutterable—amongst the packed bodies of the prisoners squatting, standing, or lying on the beaten mud pavement of the prison courtyard....

"The Bey!" The thick whisper reaches the priest and the woman, flung over the shoulder of the Turk as he stands at attention in the doorway: "Hamid Bey Mutasarrif comes, bringing a Mushir of the Almanis to inspect the prisoners...." He adds, under his hurried breath: "Allah and the Prophet of Allah be with me, Hasan Ali—and deliver me from smitings this unpropitious day!"

The guard have turned out. They raggedly present arms, and Hasan Ali, and such others of his fellows as are on duty in the courtyard—or posted at the portals of the mud Barrack-buildings—shoulder their Sniders or more modern Remingtons with the smartness engendered of fear; as a squat, sandy officer of Turkish gendarmerie—topped with the ugly khaki compromise between the turban and the helmet—patented by Envey Bey in 1912—and adorned as to the epaulettes with the two stars, and as to the cuffs with the four longitudinal gold lace bands and the three diagonal gold bars of a Turkish Lieutenant General—walks with a tall, brick-faced—very much decorated German Staff officer, in amongst the stenches of the crowded prison-yard.

Several persons succeed these. Two German Staff officers of inferior rank to the first, evidently his aide, and a secretary, come swaggering and chatting behind their Chief. A bearded Turkish Surgeon Major, fat and apoplectic, in black gauze spectacles, waddles after—with a nondescript Greek person, evidently of the interpreter-class. And a half-company of Turkish mounted gendarmerie troop after, rather stragglingly. The big bushy-bearded, red-fezzed men, uniformed in old-time dark blue Hussar tunics, with orange and black facings, braided pantaloons and long shiny thigh-boots, are all well-armed with Winchester repeating-rifles, and carry big German Service revolvers in holsters at their belts.

There is a dull shuffling sound, mingled with thuds and stifled swearing, as the Turkish guards, with assiduous kicks, and blows of the rifle-butt, assist sitting or lying War prisoners to assume a perpendicular position; and herd their charges into rank right and left, leaving a central avenue down which the Bey and the visitors may pass. Holding his breath in an agony of suspense as he peers into the crowded courtyard over the broad shoulder of the soldier blocking the passage, the priest scans the faces that he knows for signs of coming storm. As the squat, pale-eyed, bow-legged Asiatic, uniformed in greenish khaki-drill, wearing with clownish awkwardness the wide-thighed riding-breeches, the belts, pouches, and gauntlets of russet leather, and the polished riding boots with silver spurs, that set off the tall soldierly figures of the Germans, steps with them across the threshold of the prison courtyard it seems to every prisoner that the very sunshine fails of its warmth, and the faint hot breeze blows cold....

The Bey looks about him with a pale oblique slyness, his cigarette elaborately poised between his thick gloved fingers, and says, speaking in Turkish, (which language the priest, held for months in durance vile at Constantinople and at Smyrna, has relieved the tedium of prison-life by studying, and fairly understands):

"Good-morning, my children!"

"Good-morning, O Bey! ... May Allah favour your Excellency," lustily chorus the postas. But at the sound of the hated voice the faces of the prisoners have darkened threateningly, and the silence that falls on the tainted enclosure is heavy as a pall.

"Your Excellency wished to inspect the British men before seeing the British officers. These guests of our Empire"—Hamid's leering smile and the glitter in his pale flat eyes show the Bey's enjoyment of his own sarcasm, and the stiff faces of the German general and his aides-de-camp and secretary exhibit a faint grin as he continues: "—these guests of our Empire are not at work to-day.... It is a holiday for them. They sit and chat and eat fruit," (his sharp glance has lighted on the scattered nutshells and orange-peel), "and smoke tobacco about the well in their courtyard. Your Excellency sees!—a capital well! ... Praise be to Allah for the blessing of pure water! Show the well to his Excellency.... Make room, O you there! ..."

A gap being made in the ragged ranks by postas with the rifle-butt, the brick-faced German general stalks to the low parapet of the sky-reflecting eye of clear water, and pronounces it in Turkish of the Prussian brand, to be an exceedingly good well. The Bey, pretending to look at it too, enriches the water with his chewed cigarette-end; and spits in it slyly behind the back of the German general—to the chuckling delight of his immediate following—and the more controlled amusement of the German aide-de-camp and secretary. As for the Greek interpreter and the fat be-goggled Surgeon Major, whose pharmacopæia is limited to Epsom Salts, pills of a rending nature, sulphur and iodine; who knows no disinfectant beyond chloride of lime, and never heard of sterilisation; whose surgical equipment is limited to a saw or two, some needles, a scalpel—all beyond words unclean!—lint made by Turkish ladies in secluded harems; sticking-plaster of the most adhesive kind, splints and First Aid bandages, these two parasites fairly wallow in enjoyment.