Part 13

"Howling swells!" was John Hazel's pithy mental comment, recognising upon three of his fellow-travellers the unmistakable cachet of Good Society. "The Mums," he reflected, rather wistfully--one of the Nice Things about John was his belief in his mother--"the Mums would be in her element here!" And he leaned luxuriously back upon a plump cushion that one of the V.A.D. ladies had deftly thrust behind him, in the corner that had been unostentatiously vacated when the big young man, with hollow black eyes and prominent cheek-bones, and khaki baggily hanging upon a huge frame wasted by hæmorrhage and strict dietary, had heaved in sight. And the Commandant handed him the day's issue of an expensive _Illustrated Society_; saying, with a characteristic emphasis suggestive of large capitals:

"Of course, I really don't believe you'll Cotton Much to this, but it may get you over an hour! Pass it on to somebody else when you've done--I Don't want it back!"

She nodded smilingly in acknowledgment of Hazel's gratitude, and the young person in the gilt-tasselled French _képi_ followed suit by giving John the current number of "_Frillies_," a purely feminine publication--devoted to the puffing of silk pyjamas and embroidered underwear, with Piffel Pearls (warranted to outshine real ones) and Face Creams guaranteed to remove Complexion Blemishes contracted at Munition Factories, or in Labour on the Land....

Then she suddenly saw a friend, seized her handbag and suit-case, and departed on the corridor-side of the compartment in a gale of violent perfume. John opened the sliding-door, shut the same on her departure; pulled up his rug and began to sip the honeyed sweetness of "Loveliness in Lingerie," and the three ladies, as the savage tang of verbena died upon the air, unleashed their loud, high voices apparently upon the trail of some subject mooted before.

"You have heard that Evelyn Graynger has consoled herself?" asked the startlingly thin woman in khaki, lifting her musical slurs of eyebrows towards the peak of her badged cap, from the back of which a short square veil depended, and momentarily glancing as she did this, at a three-inch band of black crape upon her left arm. "Though I am quite sure that the poor child _really_ did care for my poor Wastwood and my poor Jerry--you know she became engaged to Jerry not long after Wastwood--" She blinked and broke off.

"Really! ..." the dark blue ladies chorused; and the elder exclaimed sympathetically.

"How awfully difficult it must have made their mother's position! Didn't it, Trixie dear?"

"Now Evelyn is going, I hear, to marry the popular Anglican preacher, Mr. Amice-Bellows," continued the khaki Commandant. "He likes to be called 'Father,' don't you know!--and has still a great many wealthy lady-penitents; never having felt any irresistible call to volunteer as a Chaplain accompanying Forces to the Front. He opens Soldiers' Refreshment Buffets with prayer, and figures on Red Cross Bazaar Committees, and visits wounded Tommies in Hospital and all that, and of course there must be people to do these things.... And they say he has a consoling manner with his clients--I should say Congregation--when they're knocked out by Bad News! Though I remember when the second bomb dropped,--I mean in the shape of another wire from the Casualty Department of the War Office--and I was rather off colour in consequence--he advised me to drink a pint of hot water regularly every morning with Bi--something-of-something-or-other stirred in."

The two V.A.D. ladies shrieked. The triangular-faced Commandant in khaki continued, all unconscious that the illustrated periodical bestowed on John Hazel displayed her photograph, with the appended description:

"Trixie, Lady Wastwood. Mother of the late, and aunt of the present Earl. Who has been doing splendid service as a Commandant of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion at one of our principal Bases in France, in adherence to the well-known motto of the Legion: _Do Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick at Nothing, and Never Grouse_!"

* * * * * * *

"Well-meant"--the elder of the two blue women was speaking through her laughter, "but hardly tactful of Mr. Amice Bellows--to suggest that biliousness and bereavement produce symptoms practically the same!"

"Anyhow," the khaki woman's laugh rattled out as though a stick had been drawn over the keys of a piano, "I took the parson's counsel--vicariously. Went down every day to Waterloo Station and poured tea and coffee into thirsty Tommies at a Soldiers' Free Refreshment Buffet--instead of irrigating myself. Found it swamped the blue devils quite as effectually. And"--she touched her khaki lightly--"that's how this--began. Same with both of you--I rather fancy?" ...

"I entered as Probationer at St. Francis and St. Clara's after the Third Reserve Battalion of the Loyal North Linkshires got gassed at Ypres last Spring," said the younger of the V.A.D. women, who had also a mourning armlet, and could not have been older than twenty-two or three. "And I found scrubbing floors and carrying buckets better--oh!--miles better than all the veronal in all the chemists' shops."

"I agree with Cynthia," said the other blue lady, "I think the V.A.D. was meant to keep the women who have lost their all from lying down and dying--or running _amok_. Hark! Was that a Take Cover?" ...

A detonation in the distance had been followed by a wailing hoot of peculiar ugliness. Silence descended upon the Terminus. Most of the faces that turned to each other in inquiry, seemed to have suddenly been powdered white. The three women in John's carriage betrayed no emotion. They waited in silence, but no second detonation followed. And John Hazel said as his gaunt black eyes, met Lady Wastwood's, that were green and singularly brilliant:

"I think the tyre of a motor-'bus burst--just before they sounded the dinner-hooter at some near-by factory. I know Longmore's Locust Bean chocolate used to be turned out at a place close here."

All three women nodded and smiled in recognition of the soldier's civility. The hollows about his eyes, and under his cheek-bones, the bagginess of his khaki--in favour of which he had gratefully abandoned the suit of Reckitt's Blue flannel with white lapels, and the scarlet cotton necktie of Hospital wear, had--in combination with the medal and the wound-stripes, won him favour in their eyes....

Lady Wastwood gave him another paper, a _Morning Post_, and the younger of the V.A.D.'s was following suit with a packet of chocolate, when the first starting-gong clangalanged,--the carriage-door was wrenched open, and a tall thin officer, followed by a porter carrying a Gladstone bag and tartan rug, was in the very act of entering when he encountered Lady Wastwood's glance....

VIII

Private Hazel had fainted in spirit at the sight of a Brass Hat, a double row of multi-coloured ribbons, and the badges of a Lieutenant-Colonel; and his ears had already begun to tingle with the expectation of official rebuke--when the officer, arrested in the stride of entrance on the brass-bound threshold of the Railway Company--reddened and paled as he saluted. His singularly unhappy grey eyes had met the eyes of Lady Wastwood. Freezing as green Arctic icicles, they held those of the victim in a hostile and repellent stare. Her mouth, devoid of its V-shaped Pierrot smile--straightened to a frigid line of sheerest disapproval. Her chin combined with the mouth and the eyes, in the admission that somewhere between sickened Earth and revolted Heaven a wretch like this dared to draw breath....

The situation lasted one intolerable moment, its poignancy even penetrating John Hazel's pachydermatous hide. He found himself wincing in sympathy with the sufferer, whose lashed blood rose darkly under his clear nut-brown skin. Still, not a muscle twitched to betray him. His deep-set eyes ranged from face to face of the occupants of the carriage, searching for one gleam of sympathy, possibly. His mouth opened as though he would have spoken, then shut; and his face became as a granite mask. He saluted again formally, backed out, lightly jumped from the step, carefully shut the carriage-door, and walked away down the platform, the laden porter at his heels, as the two V.A.D. women exclaimed in shocked accents:

"How _could_ you? ... Who is he?"

"What _rows_ of decorations!"

"And, _my dear_!--what can the man have done to deserve a cut like that?"

They of the High Caste paid no heed to John, ambushed behind the current issue of _Frillies_, with both ears cocked for the name of the protagonist....

"It is Edward Yaill," said Lady Wastwood, as though prefix and patronymic offended the palate, and blistered the reluctant organ of speech. "Colonel Edward Yaill. Of the --th Tweedburgh Regiment."

The younger of the V.A.D. ladies exclaimed, as though in pain for him:

"_The_ Colonel Yaill! ... That brave, unlucky man!"

"And your County neighbour!" This from the elder blue lady, to whom Lady Wastwood returned:

"Yes, when I happen to be in Scotland. But I so seldom am at Whingates now. However, since poor Jerry's successor made a point of my looking up his womanhood, I promised to run up there next time I felt washed out. Colonel Yaill was my fellow-passenger on the Boat for Boulogne one day last March.... Now again we encounter--rather unfortunately for him!"

"Do, do forgive him, next time you tumble against him!" begged Yaill's previous champion.

"Edward Yaill has had a sample," said Lady Wastwood icily, "of what he may expect from me in the near as in the distant future. Let us hope he will be wiser than to rush upon his doom. What wouldn't I have given to possess the Early Victorian stare of my old great-aunt, the Duchess of Strome. _She_ could cut--until you saw the blood!"

"My dear, it was quite bad enough!" the elder V.A.D. assured her. "Mercy! I can't forget his wretched, _wretched_ eyes! I do hope I'm not going to dream of them! There must be something to be said for a man who looks like that!"

The drab-grey terminus was sliding away.... The clank of milk-churns and trolley-wheels grew fainter.... A signal jerked down, with a wink of a red-green eye, the points clicked over, and the Express was launched upon her shining way across a tangle of intersecting metals terminated by grim black signal boxes, and gathering speed,--shot out of the jaws of a Goods Station into the foggy day. And stations were flying past, and the crowded drab streets of mean houses were flowing under the belly of the rushing Express like a river of dirty bricks and mortar,--and the ladies were moving and settling down, amongst rugs, cloaks, pillows, tea-baskets and other accompaniments of feminine travel; hugely amused by the temporary return to the prehistoric joggliness and stuffy safety of trains. And Lady Wastwood had mentioned that she had had two cars crumped by German H.E. in France--and it had transpired that the elder V.A.D. had had hers badly biffed in September outside a Theatre in the Strand when a Zepp dropped a bomb quite near,--and that the younger had hers temporarily put out of action through tyre wear, taking convalescent Tommies for drives--when Lady Wastwood suddenly betrayed the tenor of her thoughts by remarking with emphasis:

"After all, if there IS anything to be said for Edward Yaill, Katharine Forbis will be the first to say it!"

The uttered name plucked at some fibre in John Hazel's brain. He dropped _Frillies_, and one of the blue ladies reached down a long arm, and picked the paper up, and gave it back to him, with the manner of one well-used to doing these things for sick men. But she looked at Lady Wastwood, not at John, as she did this, saying:

"'Katharine Forbis.' ... You must mean the handsome Miss Forbis who went out to the Front to drive ambulance-cars for her Detachment, some time in last March,--and was afterwards invalided home. Miss Forbis of Kerr's Something--?"

"Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh. A quite modern house built against a dear old Border Peel Tower. Twenty miles from us at Whingates. Not as the crow flies, but as the woodcock.... That was my poor Jerry's annual joke. He hadn't a shadow of humour, bless his heart!"

With which pronouncement John perfectly agreed. He had been electrified into attention by a sentence of the previous speaker's, and was tinglingly alert for another reference to a name by now uncannily familiar.... "Forbis of Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh" seemed to have plucked at a fibre in his brain. He was made to gnash metaphorical teeth by one or two divagations from the main point, before Forbis cropped up once more. Then came another mental jerk with an utterance from Lady Wastwood:

"As a matter of fact, Edward Yaill and Kathy Forbis had been engaged quite for ages. You understand, I was a County Neighbour then, and saw what was going on. Edward Yaill's Infantry Regiment--'The Tweedburgh Foot-Sloggers' they call themselves--there aren't many of the poor dears left to answer to the old name!--Edward's Regiment distinguished itself equally in the Boer War of 1900. And Edward--with his Majority and a D.S.O.--came back after the War to be made a great deal of--and Kathy--then a quite beautiful girl of seventeen--vows that she fell in love with him then and there. But the engagement didn't come off until years later--and has been dragging on since in a most annoying way. Kathy--one of those Fine People who make sacrifices for others--didn't want to leave her father, a courtly old dear with a beautiful manner! after her mother--a Sweet Creature!--died. So the wedding was continually postponed. The last date arranged being the October of 1914."

Both the V.A.D. ladies uttered sounds of sympathy; and Lady Wastwood went on, while, thanks to the oil-smooth running of the Express,--and perceptions sharpened by War's savage exigencies--John Hazel, ambushed behind the ample pages of the feminine periodical--followed the trend of the high-voiced narrative as easily as though he had been sitting in the stalls at a new play....

"In that August--Edward was then staying at Kerr's Arbour,--came the Bolt from the Blue! ... With the --th Brigade of the --th Division of our First British Expeditionary, goes Yaill, then Senior Major of the First Battalion of 'The Tweedburghs' ... Katharine's pride in him was touching. She said very little, I remember, but her eyes--do you remember her wonderful eyes?"

One of the V.A.D.'s agreed:

"Yes, oh, yes! Quite wonderfully beautiful eyes!"

"'Gold and bramble-dew,' to quote Robert Louis Stevenson's celebrated simile. His wife, to whom reference was made, I believe--was a Scotswoman though American-bred. But to go back to Edward--then Major Yaill,--you will remember--who does not? that at Le Cateau-Cambresis that August his Battalion underwent an Ordeal of Fire. So terrible, that Major Yaill and two junior officers, with a handful of men alone remained. Wounded, his uniform burned to rags--they say he fought like a god or a devil!--he escaped being taken by the Boches. But all the world knows the splendid story. I'm making myself a Perfect Bore!"

The V.A.D.'s assured her she wasn't in the least; and she went on volubly talking, above the oily purring of the Kelso Express.

"Escaped, and wandered, starving, wounded and in tatters; hiding in farmyards and amongst ruins by day,--and tramping, guided only by his luminous compass--at night-time. Fed by Walloon and Belgian peasants who were too scared--poor Things! one well knows why!--to give him even a few hours' shelter. Five days and nights, and he reached the Belgian frontier--passed the guard unnoticed--and got upon the Flushing Boat. And if you suppose that Kathy Forbis fainted when she had his wire, or even Cried for Joy all over everybody, you'd be Wrong. Absolutely!"

John knew you would have been wrong. Under cover of _Tailor-Made Talks_ he nodded his head, with a kind of proprietorial pride in Katharine Forbis.

"What did she do?" asked one of the blue women.

"She simply said 'Thank God!' and went on with her First Aid bandaging. Then--after some delay because of Dutch Neutrality--Edward Yaill managed to get out of Holland and came back home."

"Rather a wreck, one supposes?" hazarded a V.A.D.

"Haggard and worn," admitted Lady Wastwood. "With those hollows in the temples one knows so well, and that queer tense, sleepless look they can't get rid of. One would naturally have expected that He and Katharine would have been Married Instantly. But I have absolute knowledge, that the subject was Never Broached!"

"Rough on Miss Forbis, rather!" hazarded one of the hearers. To whom Lady Wastwood retorted:

"Fortunately for Miss Forbis--as things have now developed! But that she would have jumped with Joy had Edward breathed a hint of marriage--Nobody could doubt who saw her look at him.... Sweetheart and wife and mother, mingled in her expression. 'She makes me want to cry!' said that Old Rip Delaguett. And he meant the thing.... It's odd how those Bad Men adore Pure Women. Let us do Delaguett justice--he _swore_ she was too good for Yaill!"

"Did _he_ agree with Lord Delaguett?" asked one of the blue ladies.

"If he had," returned Lady Wastwood, "Kathy would have disagreed. And one task absorbed him, body and soul. Assisting the Authorities to reconstitute the Battalion that had been wiped out. This was done, and he was offered the post of Second Military Secretary to Sir Charles Carberry at Gibraltar. Wouldn't you have expected him to take the goods the gods provided, marry his Nice Katharine, and sail for the Rock? Kathy would have risked tin fish in shoals!--and a nuptial couch at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. But--"

"But--?"

"But Edward Yaill wouldn't hear of such a thing! Took the post--went out--absolutely fed--simply hated it! Groused away at G.H.Q. until they gave him what he wanted most."

"One can guess what that was!"

"Naturally. Command of the new old Tweedburgh Regiment, and Active Service in France again. 'To get back just a bit on account from those blighters!' he told me: 'I'd take over a Territorial Regiment from Hell. And to lead one's own Border men again is too--'"

"Absolutely topping!" suggested Yaill's original champion.

"You have the expression. Well, one perished to _trancher le mot_, but in view of Katharine's splendid attitude--"

"Backed him for all she was worth, I'll bet!" said John Hazel internally.

Lady Wastwood's high voice went on, through the Express's oily running:

"Calm, hopeful and encouraging beyond all--one couldn't have ventured to say a Thing! On one point she was adamant--She would do her bit like others. Home Service wasn't enough--you comprehend!--for Kathy Forbis. She had got her First Class Certificate and Qualifications--and went to the Front, dear sweet thing! early in March, 1915, to drive cars for the Red Cross."

"And so Colonel Yaill--"

"Went out again to take over command of his Regiment, Colonel Muir-Rosyll, an old friend of mine--having gone West. And just as though Fate had been lying in wait for Edward!--in September--somewhere South of Loos--the Horror Happened Again!"

"The 'Tweedburghs' were wiped out in the assault upon the village! ... Oh! one remembers...."

The elder of the blue ladies shuddered, the younger bit her lip.

"Swept away.... 'Exterminated'--that's what the newspapers called it. And Edward Yaill's name was on the early list of killed. It seems that he had gone out from Battalion Staff Headquarters--all his officers but two being dead--to take over Telephone-Communication at their Forward Station Dug-out, and got there in time for a terrific bombardment of High Velocity Shell."

"What unutterably Awful luck! Was he very badly wounded?"

"Hardly a scratch on him, when they found him--one has heard so much of the queer fantastic tricks that High Explosive plays. Nearly naked and covered with yellow powder. Quite Dazed--not a notion of his own identity! Which of course was established by a gold curb wrist-chain with an Identification Disc, and an officer's silver whistle with his name upon it still hanging round his Neck--when they took him to a General Casualty Hospital on the Communication Lines. Where the Poor Thing was treated with scores of other Shell Shock cases, until he came round enough to remember his rank and name."

"Didn't Miss Forbis wring out leave and rush from the Front to comfort him?"

"Well, Katharine was badly wanted just then, where she was, at her Receiving Hospital. And personal interests must give place when Duty is in question. I imagine that we're all of us pretty clear on that!"

Lady Wastwood added, as confirmatory sounds came from both her feminine hearers:

"There's no question but her going to him would have saved Yaill. But unhappily, it was not to be. Nice Katharine--poor dear!--was invalided home from the Western Front a month later. Muscular strain, lifting wounded Tommies under Fire. Had to come back for Massage and Electrical Treatment. While Edward Yaill, who had been transferred to a Convalescent British Officers Canvas Camp at the B---- Base (up-to-date place under Red Cross Management, with pines and heather and bracken, and little streams gurgling down steep sandy cliffs)--Edward had been making steady progress towards complete recovery. Until--not quite a fortnight back--he Socially Cut His Throat!"

The ladies exclaimed. The narrator continued:

"Cut his throat by suddenly marrying a Trained Nurse belonging to a Unit of the Red Cross, doing duty at the B---- Base C.O.C.... Having obtained the necessary permit from his Brigadier. Whether the young woman got leave from the Matron-in-Chief on the West Front, or did without it, I couldn't tell you! I think the latter, as she had previously sent in her papers asking leave to retire for reasons of health. At any rate, the ceremony was performed by the Church-of-England Chaplain attached to the C.O.C."

The narrator added, raising her arched eyebrows: "Quite legal, of course, but one Would have expected the thing to have been clinched by a Roman Catholic Priest. Yaill being R.C. like Poor Dear Katherine--to whom, one hopes, her Religion,--always so Much to her--may bring True Courage to Bear the Blow!"

Lady Wastwood added, through her listeners' horrified exclamations:

"Subsequently to the wedding the couple sailed for England, all arrangements having been Cleverly Camouflaged.... Nobody seems to have realised what had happened.... My own enlightenment was to come from Our London Headquarters, where I reported myself yesterday. A Wireless Message had been Received by Our Deputy Assistant Director-General from the Matron-in-chief on the Western Front in France. Our D.A.D.G. happens to be Colonel Yaill's cousin. That's how the item of news got dropped in. And subsequently she 'phoned me in Code at my Mayfair diggings--to say that her Sister-in-law, Lady Ridgely,--Red Cross Commandant of a Tommies' Convalescent Hospital at Coombe Bay, Devon--had encountered Colonel and Mrs. Yaill, upon their honeymoon."

The elder V.A.D. lady moaned despairingly:

"And now he tumbles in on us here--a passenger going North.... How can he? Why, why set foot in Scotland, of all places on the globe?"