Chapter 25

"To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! You were going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say as I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrong with the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can't get anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two of the languages I haven't studied." The dry, humorous smile curved the reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass, waited outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They were fastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender white figure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey across the patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and ploughed by shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day by day.

"There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without," commented his companion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler.

"It is the Mother-Superior," Saxham said, "with her ward, Miss Mildare."

"Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse--you know my junior A.D.C., who daily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare--is, that I have not yet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered the young lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she showed plenty of pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on the Recreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, and some Dutch loafers mobbed them--threatened to lay hands on the Sisters--and Miss Mildare stood up in defence--head up, eyes blazing, a slim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with me, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance."

Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, and his tone was not pleasant: "Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a few minutes ago."

"Did he? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome of realisation. Up to the present"--the humorous, keen eyes were wrinkled at the corners--"all the boy's swans have been geese, some of 'em the sable kind."

Saxham answered stiffly: "I should say that in this case the swan decidedly predominates."

The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune before he spoke again. "It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, being shut up here, out of the way of women."

"Are there no women in Gueldersdorp?"

"None of the kind Beauvayse's canoe is given to capsizing on." The line in his senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. "None of the kind that run after him, lie in wait for him, buzz round him like wasps about a honey-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory scrapes, with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with the professional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, most inexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman in the world. Queer world!"

"A damned queer world!" agreed Saxham.

"I'd prefer to call it a blessed queer one, because, with all its chaotic, weltering incongruities--there's a Carlyleism for you--I love it! I couldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more than Beauvayse could get on _minus_ an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess--quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the Jollity in June--is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the exact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a Principal Boy, and a Chorus in long skirts."

Saxham admitted with a cynical twitch of the mouth:

"There's nothing so short as a long skirt--properly managed."

"You're right. And Lessie Lavigne and the rest of the nimble sisterhood devote their gifts--Thespian and Terpsichorean--to demonstrating the fact. Oh, damned cowardly hounds!" The voice jarred and clanged with irrepressible anger. "Saxham, can't you see? Brouncker's sharpshooters are sniping at the women--the Sister of Mercy and the girl!"

His glance, as well as Saxham's, had followed the tall black figure and the slender white figure on their journey through Death's harvest-field. But his trained eye had been first to see the little jets and puffs of sickly hot, reddish dust rising about their perilous path. They walked quickly, but without hurry, keeping a pace apart, and holding one another by the hand. Saxham, watching them, said, with dry lips and a deadly sickness at the heart:

"And we can do nothing?"

"Nothing! It's one of those things a man has got to look on at, and wonder why the Almighty doesn't interfere? Oh, to have the fellows triced up for three dozen of the best apiece--good old-fashioned measure. See, they're getting near the laager now. They'll soon be under cover. But--I wonder the Convent cares to risk its ewe lamb on that infernal patch of veld?"

"It is my doing." Saxham's eyes were glued on the black figure and the white figure nearing, nearing the embrasure in the earthwork redoubt, and his face was of an ugly blue-white, and dabbled with sweat.

"Your doing?"

"Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking down from suspense, and the overstrain of inaction. And--to avert even worse evils, I prescribed the tonic of danger. There was no choice---- In at last!"

The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind the dumpy earth-bag walls. He thought the white figure had glanced back, and waved its hand, and then a question from his companion startled him beyond his ordinary stolid self-control.

"By the way ... with reference to Miss Mildare, have you any idea whether she proposes taking the veil?"

"How should I have ideas upon the possibility?" The opaque, smooth skin of the square, pale face was dyed with a sudden rush of dark blood. The Colonel did not look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone near his boot, and flattened into a shiny star of lead:

"I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, Saxham. You're too much in earnest, my dear fellow. Burnt Njal himself could hardly have been more grim."

Saxham answered:

"That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed then, I remember."

"And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and again," said the kindly voice, "at the man who took it for granted that everything was over, and did not set to work by dawn of the next day building up the hall greater than before. Those old Vikings did, 'and each time the high seat was dight more splendidly, and the hangings of the closed beds woven more fair.' They never knew when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, and so it came about that they never were. By the way, I have something here that concerns you."

"Concerns me?"

"I think I may say, nearly concerns you. A paragraph in this copy of the _Cape Town Mercury_, which, by the way, is three weeks old."

A rubbed and shabby newspaper, folded small, came out of the baggy breast-pocket of the khaki jacket. Saxham received it with visible annoyance.

"Some belated notice of one of my books." The scowl with which he surveyed the paper testified to a strong desire to pitch it to the winds.

"Not a bit of it. It's an advertisement inserted by a London firm of solicitors--Donkin, Donkin, and Judd, Lincoln's Inn. Possibly you are acquainted with Donkin, if not with Judd?"

"They are the solicitors for the trustees of my mother's property, sir. I heard from them three years ago, when I was at Diamond Town. They returned my last letter to her, and told me of her death."

"They state in the usual formula that it will be to your advantage to communicate with them. May I, as a friend, urge on you the necessity of doing so?"

Saxham's grim mouth shut close. His eyes brooded sullenly.

"I will think it over, sir."

"You haven't much time. A despatch-runner from Koodoosvaal got through the enemy's lines last night with some letters and this paper. No, no word of the Relief. His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at midnight with some cipher messages. And, if you will let me have your reply to the advertisement with the returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see that it is sent." The rather peremptory tone softened--became persuasive; "You must build up the great hall again, Saxham, and building can't be done without money. And--it occurs to me that this may be some question of a legacy."

"My father was not a wealthy man," Saxham said. "He gave me a costly education, and later advanced four thousand pounds for the purchase of a West End practice, upon the understanding that I was to expect no more from him, and that the bulk of his property, with the exception of a sum left as provision for my mother, should be strictly entailed upon my brother and his heirs, if he should marry. The arrangement was most just, as I was then in receipt of a considerable income from my profession, and my father died before my circumstances altered for the worse. Independently of the provision he made for her, my mother possessed a small jointure, a freehold estate in South Wales, bringing in, when the house is let, about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. That was to have been left to me as the younger son. But her trustees informed me, through these solicitors, that she had changed her mind, as she had a perfect right to do, and bequeathed everything she possessed to my brother's son, a child who"--Saxham's voice was deadly cold--"may be about four years old."

"A later will may have been found. If I have any influence with you, Saxham, I would use it in urging you to reply to the advertisement."

Saxham agreed unwillingly: "Very well."

The other knew the point gained, and adroitly changed the conversation. It grew severely technical, bristling with scientific terms, dealing chiefly with food-values. The black cloud cleared from Saxham's forehead as he lectured on the energy-fuels, and settled the minimum of protein, fat, starch, and sugar necessary to keep the furnace of Life burning in the human body.

Milk, that precious fluid, could henceforth only be given to invalids and children. Margarine and jam were severely relegated to the list of luxuries. Sardines, tinned salmon, and American canned goods had entirely given out. And flour, the staff of life, was vanishing.

The joy of battle lightened in their faces as they talked, forging weapons that should make men enduring, and Saxham warmed. His icy armour of habitual silence melted and broke up. He became eloquent, pouring out his treasured projects, suggesting substitutes for this, and makeshifts for that and the other. He was in his element--he knew the ground he trod. He thrust out his grim under-jaw, and hulked with his heavy shoulders as he talked to this man who understood; and every supple movement of his surgeon's hand pointed out some fresh expedient, as the singing bullets went by or whit-whitted about them in the dust, and now and then a shell burst over patient Gueldersdorp.

They parted at the Women's Laager, and as the khaki bicycle grew small in the distance, Saxham realised with a shock that he was happy, that life had suddenly become sweet, and opened out anew before him in a vista, not of shining promise, but with one golden gleam of hope in it, to a man freed by the force of Will from the bondage of the accursed liquor-thirst. Freed! If freed in truth, why should the sight and smell even of Brooker's sticky loquat-brandy have set the long-denied palate craving? Saxham put that question from him with both hands.

And then he frowned, thinking of that adaptable instrument that had thrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to the Society drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who liked nice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, and the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now must serenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the whitest of maiden lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed, in a raging tempest of fire and steel and lead.

XXXI

Pray give a thought to the spy, Walt Slabberts, languishing in durance vile under the yellow flag. Several times the first-class, up-to-date, effective artillery of his countrymen, being brought to bear upon the gaol, had caused the captive to bound like the proverbial parched pea, and to curse with curses not only loud but fervent the indiscriminating zeal of his brother patriots.

He was, though lost to sight behind the walls of what Emigration Jane designated the jug, still fondly dear to one whose pliant affections, rudely disentangled by the hand of perfidy from the person of That There Green, had twined vigorously about the slouching person of the young Boer. Letters were received, but not forwarded to suspects enjoying the hospitality of the Government, so communication with the object of her dreams was painfully impossible. Stratagems were not successful. A passionate missive concealed in a plum-pudding--before it was put on to boil--had become incorporated with the individuality of a prison official, who objected on principle to waste.

On Sundays, when you could go out without your 'art in your mouth an account of them 'orful shellses, a fair female form in a large and flamboyant hat, whose imitation ostridge tips were now mere bundles of quill shavings, and whose flowers were as wilted as the other blossoms of her heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place of bondage, waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen and recognised. Tactics productive of nothing but blown kisses on the part of extra-susceptible warders, and one or two troopers of the B.S.A., who ought to have known better. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected with ringing sniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements is the feminine heart composed, found them strangely solacing.

She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon the morning following the night of the tragedy, another score to the account of the traitor Keyse. Arriving unseemly late, and in an agitated state of mind--and could you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and took away?--she had mechanically accounted for her late return in the well-worn formula of Kentish Town, explaining to the surprised Sisters that there 'ad bin a haccident on the Underground between the Edgeware Road and 'Ammersmiff, an' that her sister Hemmaline had bin took bad in consequence, the second being looked for at the month's end; and to leave that pore dear in that state--her 'usband being at his Social Club--was more than Emigration Jane 'ad 'ad the 'art to do. She received her dismissal to bed, and the advice to examine her conscience carefully before retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whooping hysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated by the knowledge that nobody had slept in the Convent that night, until she had run down. The character supplied by Sister Tobias to her next employer specified terminological inexactitude among her failings, combined with lack of emotional self-control; but laid stress on an affectionate disposition, and a tendency to intermittent attacks of hard work.

She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging--you couldn't call it nothink else, not to be truthful you couldn't--at the Women's Laager, along of them there dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from too candid criticism of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard all the same not to call crock and muck by their right names!

Languishing in seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of the Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W. Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the jogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not one to 'ave the world's 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and Chance it! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and-elevenpenny peek-a-boo "blowse" as she registered her vow. That there Keyse--the conduct of the faithless Mr. Green appeared almost blonde in complexion beside the sable villainy of the other--That There Keyse should Rue the Day!

How to make him?--that was the question. Then came the dazzling flash of inspiration--but not until they had met again.

She was circulating hungry-hearted about the brick-built case that held her jewel--the man who had held out that vista of a home, and called her his good little Boer-wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed to allure and dazzle--the Boer spy had caught many women with it before. Do you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter little downy heads.

She encountered the traitor, I say, and her eyes darted fire beneath a bristling palisade of iron curling-pins. She had not the heart in these days to free her imprisoned tresses. The villain had the perishing nerve to accost her, jauntily touching the smasher hat.

"'Day, Miss! 'Aven't seen you since when I can't think."

She replied with a ringing sniff and a glance of infinite scorn that she would trouble him not to think; and that she regarded low, interfering, vulgar fellows as the dirt under her feet. So there!

"Cripps!" He was took aback, but not to the extent of taking hisself off, which he ought to. "You're fair mad with me, an' no mistyke." His pale eyes were unmistakably good-natured; the loss of the yellow freckles, swamped in a fine, uniform, brick-dust colour, was an improvement, she could not help thinking. "But I only did my duty, Miss, same as another chap would 'ave 'ad to. Look 'ere! Come and 'ave a split gingerade."

The delicious beverage was three shillings the bottle. She frowned, but hesitated. He persisted; she ended by giving in. Weeks and weeks since she had walked with a young man! The Dutchman's saloon was closed and barricaded; its owner had made tracks to his Transvaal friends at the beginning of the siege. But the aromatic-beer cellar was one of the places open. They went in there. Oh! the deliciousness of that first sip of the stinging, fizzling beverage! He lifted his glass in the way that she remembered, and drank a toast.

"'Er 'ealth! If you knew how I bin wantin' to git word of 'er! She's well, isn't she, Miss? Lumme! the Fair Old Knock-out I got when I see the Convent standin' empty.... Gone into laager near the railway works now, you 'ave, I know. Safe, if not stric'ly luxurious. But--I git the Regular Hump when I think of--of a Angel like 'Er 'avin' to live an' eat an' sleep in a--a--in a bloomin' rabbit-'ole." He sighed as he wiped the pungent froth from his upper lip.

"Pity you can't tell 'er so!" The sarcasm would have its way, but it failed of his great simplicity.

"That's why I bin lookin' out for you." He blushed through the brick-dust hue as he extracted a fatigued-looking letter from a baggy left breast-pocket in which it had sojourned in company with a tobacco-pouch, a pipe which must not be smoked in the trenches if a man would prefer to do without a bullet through his brain, a handful of screws not innocent of lubricating medium, a clasp-knife, a flat tin box of carbolised vaseline, a First-Aid bandage, and a ration of bread and cheese wrapped in old newspaper. The bread was getting deplorable, for even the dusty seconds flour was fast dribbling out.

"You'll give 'er this, won't you, Miss, and tell her I bin thinkin' of 'er night and d'y? Fair live in the trenches now; and when I do git strollin' round the stad, blimme if I ever see 'er. But she's there--an 'ere's a ticker beatin' true to 'er." He rapped a little awkwardly upon the bulging left breast-pocket, "To the bloomin' end, wotever it may be!"

"Oh, you--silly, you!"

She found him ridiculous and tragic, and so touching all at once that the gibe ended in a sob. It was not the stinging effervescence of the gingerade that made her choke and brought the smarting tears to her eyes. It was envy of that other girl. And then she noticed, under his left eye, a tiny scar, and she knew how he came by it, and remembered what she owed him, and saw that the chance had come for her revenge. She could pierce the heart beating under the khaki breast-pocket to its very core with three words as easily as she had jabbed his face with her hat pin on that never-to-be-forgotten night. She would tell him that the lady of his love had gone up to Johannesburg weeks and weeks ago. Oh, but it would be sweet to see the duped lover's face! She would give him a bit of her mind, too--perhaps tear up the letter.

Then flashed across the murky-black night of her stormy mind the forked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To take his letter--write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top of his bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets. "And serve you glad--and no more than your deservings! Who put away my Walt?"

She accepted the letter, only permitting herself one scornful sniff, and put the missive in her pocket. Next day John Tow, the Chinaman, serenely fatalistic, smilingly perpendicular in felt-soled shoes, amidst zipping bullets, brought to the trench a reply, signed "Fare Air."

The writer Toke the Libberty of Hopeing W. Keyse was as it Left her at preasent. She was Mutch obblig for his Dear Leter Witch it 'ad made her Hapey to Know a Brave Man fiteing for her Saik.

"Cr'r----!" ejaculated W. Keyse, below his breath. His face was radiant as he read. Her spelling was a bit off, it was impossible to deny. But--Cripps!--to be called a brave man by the owner of the maddening blue eyes, and that great thick golden pigtail. The letter went on:

"Dear mr. Keyse yu will be Plese to Kno Jane is Sutch a Cumfut to me in Trubel. As it is Selldom Fathful Frends are To be Fownd But Jane is trew as Stele & Cold be Trustid with lbs & lbs. no More at Preasent from yr afexn Swetart.

"X X X X

"FARE AIR."

His senses reeled, as under pretence of masking a sneeze he pressed his burning lips to those osculatory crosses. He wrote her a flaming answer, begging a Sunday rendezvous. She appointed a place and an hour. He went there on the wings of love, but nobody turned up except the Jane who could be trusted with pounds and pounds.