Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

XX

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

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

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

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

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

"_Libera me Domine, de morte æterna._"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"_Eco sum resurréctio et vita, qui credit in Me etiam--si mórtuus fuerit vivet...._"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over that windfall of £8000, rosy Mr. Kellar chuckled, or would have, had the solemnity of the occasion allowed. It would apply at this juncture to pay outstanding debts of Captain Mark's,--who had been something of a spendthrift--patch up yawning holes in the rent-roll, where the master of Kerr's Arbour had foregone the rents of such tenants as had volunteered for military service--pay the expenses of the funeral,--and swell with the balance remaining the tale of odd thousands, that, with her mother's little fortune,--would, if invested in four per cent War Bonds--provide Miss Forbis with an income approximating to £700 a year.

"This is a sad day, Colonel Yaill--a sad black day for a' of us!" said the lawyer, as Whishaw helped him into his shaggy overcoat. "But Gude be thanked! the warst o't is ower. We're looking to yoursel' now, an' to Miss Forbis, to bring back life and happiness to Kerr's. Ye'll be blessed in your pairtner--" the good man was sorely henpecked--"a sonsy, sweet body that can be relied on neither to stick nor fling! Not but housekeeping in these times is a trial an' a hertbreik. Mrs. Kellar is sore put to it by the scarceness o' sugar an' fat. She made ninety-eight punds of blackberry-an'-apple jam for the Expeditionary Arrmy last September--an' some clever billie put her up to the eking out the sugar wi' saut. I fand mysel' sadly the warse for having tasted it by accident, an' Toch!--if the lads at the Front get muckle o' that stuff intil them, I tell her she'll be fechtin' on the side o' the Huns. Here comes the meir an' cairt. Is there no one wanting a cast to Cauldstanes? ... Put in the black bag, Erchie Whishaw, no' in the well to be overlooked, but juist between my feet. And Gude-bye again to ye, Colonel Yaill, and an auld freend's love to Miss Forbis! This has been a black sair day for a' of us ... but thanks be to Providence! we're at the end o't!" ...

Yaill thought as the gravel of the courtyard shirred under the wheels of the retreating dog-cart, "More black, more sore than the good man dreams! And my part in it is not yet finished. Old Webster never conjured up a grimmer tragedy. For at ten o'clock I lend a hand to bury Katharine's father. Upon the stroke of three I stab the daughter to the heart. And having killed her love for me--at four--possibly earlier--I say Farewell to God's Forget--unlucky Edward Yaill!"

XXI

He went to Katharine, before three o'clock, in the little oak parlour, a panelled, chintz-hung, feminine nest that her dead mother had loved--looking over the South garden, across the now frozen expanse of a curlew-haunted lake.

She rose up out of her low chair by the hearthside at the welcome sight of Edward, and at her dear look his fetters seemed to fall from him and for one blessed minute he forgot--in the bliss of their embrace....

Attar of roses is composed of two essential oils, both scentless. When these meet and mingle, a divine perfume is born. So from the meeting of two pure and noble souls an ideal passion is engendered. Love that is founded on the rock of Reality,--yet capped with the cloud-domes of Imagination, cloaked with the glamour--exhaling the sweetness of Poetry and Romance.

It may be that these two had loved each other too purely for their earthly welfare. But as they settled into talk, fond, intimate, personal--tinged with Katharine's sacred sorrow, and yet illuminated with their joy--it seemed to Yaill that he had never yet tasted such happiness, as in this long-delayed, long-desired exchange of touch and thought and feeling--this perfect comradeship between woman and man.

Three o'clock sounded from the clock upon the mantelshelf, a Tudor toy in enamel openwork, whose tiny chime had rung for many a lover's meeting--and hastened many a lover's parting--but never heralded one more tragic than was coming now. He raised his head from its sweet rest on her beloved shoulder, and slowly loosed the yearning arms that had girdled her supple waist. Now,--now let the revelation come--the sooner the better. But how to bring it about? ...

Unwitting Katharine assisted here, by telling him how that morning Dawtie, the General's old pointer-bitch, had been found dead and already stiffened at her post outside the chapel door. Yaill said, scarce knowing what he uttered:

"You will be even--lonelier--without her. You must let me find you another dog to fill her empty place."

"Edward?"

Her sweet eyes lifted to his face. She saw him changed--changing. Deep lines graven on the broad brow that had smoothed under her kisses. Folds of bitterness from either wing of the large sensitive nostrils to the corners of the lips.

"Dear Edward, Dawtie was very old, and very seldom with me. And there are Bran and Laddie--if I should need the companionship of dogs. But soon now, very soon--there is nothing to prevent it"--She looked calmly in his face as he knelt on the rug beside her, stiffly upright, not touching her, both hands gripping the arm of her chair--"in a very few weeks--we shall be married, shall we not?"

He did not speak, and her eyes wavered from his, and a blush burned over her whole fair body: for was it not the man's part to speak such words as these? She said again: "Shall we not?" ... There was a terrible pause.... The clock chimed the quarter-hour....

"Shall we not, Edward, loving as we do--after these cruel years of delay?" ...

Unable to credit her own vision, she saw creeping into his grey eyes--was it reluctance, distaste or dismay? ... A shock went through her.... Rushing sounds filled her ears and through them she heard her own voice crying to him:

"Edward! ... For God's sake, don't look at me so! Something is wrong.... My dearest, tell me!" ...

Her arms went out to draw him close, and came back empty. He had drawn back, avoiding them, and risen to his feet. A quiver passed over his thin brown face, such as in windless weather will ripple the sleeping surface of some quiet forest pool. And the question came from her that she had never dreamed of asking:

"Is it that you do not love me--in the marriage sense--any more? Am I nothing but a friend? ... Answer.... I command you--answer!"

Yaill's face was drawn and grey. He said,--keeping stiff control upon the muscles of his lips:

"You are the one woman I worship.... I have never known another whose person so charms me, whose nature so appeals to me,--whose mind is so clear and full,--whose sympathy is so warm, so sweet, whose soul so answers to mine--"

"Edward!" ...

All reassured, she breathed the name in a tone of exquisite tenderness. He made her a sign that he had not done, and went slowly on:

"I have desired--desire you now as man desires the woman he worships. When our marriage was postponed by the death of your mother--when the Regiment was ordered to India and you could not leave your father--when this thrice-accursed War burst on the world in a blizzard of fire and steel, and I had to leave you almost at the church-door--God is my witness that I suffered! Far more than I could tell you, Katharine!"

"Love of my heart, I know it! ..."

He signed to her again for silence:

"Do not interrupt me! All this is hard to say.... But though my heart often cried out to you in those mad years of filthy fighting--living, eating and sleeping--did we ever sleep?--in the company of the Dead--while the world one had known and lived in--the world of pretty women--decent clothes, pleasant week-ends, jolly shooting-parties, sport, play, good hunters and easily-running cars--seemed--except in short flashes of intervals--to have been dead for cycles of ages--I was buoyed up by my hopes of you, my thoughts of you--your letters and our short rare blessed meetings. Glimpses of Paradise to a soul in Purgatory! You will believe that, will you not, Katharine?" ...

One tear glittered on his hard cheek. Oh! to have dried it with her kisses, and whispered comfort to her dearest, wrought to this desperate mood by some unknown cause.... But she sat still as he had bidden, soothed by his words of tenderness, yet with a little shivering premonition beginning to quicken at the roots of her heart:

"Then came the Great Disaster.... Oh! why didn't I marry you, when I got back to England--"

"My love," she said, "my precious dear!--I asked you to, you know!"

He made a despairing gesture of assenting:

"And I would not accept the gift you offered in your generosity--dear love, sweet woman!--best friend an unlucky devil ever had or could have! ..."

"Why?"

That "Why?" came like a moan from her. He answered sadly:

"Because I wanted to go away alone somewhere. To look my new self in the face, or to recapture the lost me. Thousands of men have felt the same--feel like that even at this moment--coming back with raw nerves and jumbled brains out of the hell of War."

"Then God help the women who love them!" said Katharine Forbis.

"They will suffer," said Edward Yaill, "until they have learned to understand the men. As you, pearl of women!--understood me, and pitied me. Can I ever forget that!"

"Stop!" She held up her hand in warning. "Do not praise me. For I believed your heart had changed to me. For a long time I believed it, and suffered horribly.... And then thank God, I found out one day that it was not so." ...

"When I came Home to tell you I had got back the Regiment.... There was just time--we could have made the time--to have got married then.... What stepped in? ... Fate! Was it Fate, Katharine? ..."

She knew their chance of happiness had been baulked again as ever by the inconquerable vacillation of this brave man she loved. But unshaken in her loyalty, she looked back at Edward, repeating with unfaltering lips:

"Just Fate--I suppose. Let us leave it at that and look forward to the Future. And the years we may have to spend together if it be God's Will."

Her voice blurred with held-back tears;

"But--don't keep me waiting any longer, dear Edward! I never have--never could have dreamed the possibility of changing towards you.... But if I get more lonely--if I get much more lonely than I am now--"

Was it possible that cry of tortured womanhood could have come from Katharine? Must she, his proud one, stoop, and stoop to plead? With clasped hands and yearning eyes of pain entreating--

"O Edward! don't keep me waiting long! Think of the years--"

He said with forced deliberation:

"We may even yet have years to spend together--if you have courage to forgive a grievous wrong!"

"What do you mean? ... How have you wronged? ... Have you not told me--"

Her voice had the sharpness of the stab he had dealt her, as she rose up out of her fireside chair.

"I will tell you what I mean--what I meant to have spared you, had not the man who came here yesterday with the documents from Palestine--had not that man threatened to tell you if I did not."

"To tell me what? Let me hear it now! You look ill, Edward!"

"To tell you that I am married!" said Edward Yaill....

As she stood before him, straight and tall, he saw the life go out of her. For an instant he looked on a dead, bloodless thing. Then the banished blood rushed back from about her heart. Her lips and eyes retained the look of life, but the face was a stranger's, and not Katharine's. Nor was it Katharine's voice that said:

"To tell me that you are married? ... Who is she?"

He hardly recognised his own voice saying:

"She is a nurse.... She was attached to the Convalescent Camp at B---- Base."

"Ah! ... And her name?" ...

"Lucy Burtonshaw."

"Ah! ..."

The interjection dropped from her pale lips like an icicle. But her breeding wrapped her in an impregnable mantle of dignity. His sense of her new remoteness was desolating as she asked him:

"And why are you here with me and not with Lucy Burtonshaw? I beg her pardon!--I should have said, Mrs. Edward Yaill. Can you explain?"

"I can explain absolutely. Whether you would believe me--that is another thing!"

"Let--let me think! ..." She put her hand to her forehead, pushing back her hair with a gesture of bewilderment. All her world lay in ruins round her, since those few sentences had fallen from his lips....