Part 23

"They're weel kent for loose-tongued, claverin' bodies at Cauldstanes Post Office," owned Whishaw, adding bitterly: "Nor ye'll no' bind Discretion on Meggy Proodfoot, wi' the King's Croon on her airm." He took the salver with the two orange envelopes from a console table in the hall, and brought it to his mistress, entreating: "Gin' ye could see yer ain face ye wad be frichtit, Miss Katharine. Let me get ye a glass o' wine before ye'se open them, my lamb!"

But Katharine mingled no juice of the grape with this, her latest draught of the strong black wine of Sorrow. She opened the envelope that bore Yaill's name, and by the light of the great wood fire that blazed in the hall hearthplace, deciphered the message it contained.

"This must be re-telegraphed to Edward's London Club," flashed through her mind before the vile sense of the words upon the sheet drove clearly home to her; and then she started as though their concentrated venom had seared to the very bone.

"_Have discovered where you are. Return instantly or I shall follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill. Tor View, Coombe Bay._"

A moment Katharine staggered under the shock. Then with the fierce blood burning in her cheeks, she won her shaken composure back, saying as she encountered the Watery blue stare of her ancient servitor:

"There is nothing to trouble us in this. I know it to be not important." And she crumpled up the flimsy sheet and dropped it into the midmost of the fire, adding: "We will not trouble Colonel Yaill by forwarding it at all."

Then she opened the other orange envelope. It held a communication from the Casualty Department at the War Office, and told her with official brevity that her brother Julian was dead.

"_Regret to inform news received from eye-witness confirms report that Father Julian Forbis, O.S.G., R.C. Chaplain --th Brigade, 29th Division, Mediterranean Forces, Gallipoli, was killed on August 21st by direct hit Turkish shrapnel shell during storming of Scimitar Hill. No remains recoverable._"

She read out the withering message of disaster in a low clear voice devoid of a trace of expression. The butler and the servants who had gathered in the hall broke into sobs and lamentations. But what avail are tears and outcries? They are only of use to vent the sorrow that is neither poignant or profound. Miss Forbis went to the drawing-room and penned some telegrams; one to the Father Superior of Julian's Monastery at Clerport, one to Julian's dearest friend, in the trenches before Arras,--a brief note to the lawyer and notary, Mr. Kellar,--already (through that local Post Office leakage) in possession of the intelligence,--and a third telegram for Colonel Edward Yaill, addressed to his London Club.

And then, moving mechanically as an automaton, she went from the room, encountered Whishaw and gave the messages to be taken into Cauldstanes that night by a mounted groom. The wires to be left at the private house of the postmaster for despatch in the early morning; the note to be handed to Mr. Kellar, sitting with his old cronies over his toddy and his well-loved rubber of whist.

Mrs. Bell, Miss Forbis's elderly companion (worn out by the day's sorrowful ceremonial) had long retired to her room. Time enough to break the news to her upon the following morning. Katharine ordered the wearied servants to shut up the house and go to bed, and herself set the example. But when her tearful maid had quitted her for the night, reluctantly and wistfully,--she could not bear the notion of lying down in that now desolate house to rest. It stifled her. So she dressed again,--threw over all a hooded woollen mantle, took a small electric lantern and went out of the room....

To ascend above the level of ordinary daily existence, to climb a height and draw into the lungs long breaths of purer air, seems to be a craving shared by not only those whose bodies are racked and worn by chronic suffering, but by those others who in heart and soul are wrung by mental pain. The Lawgiver of Israel ascended into the fastnesses of Sinai--not only to receive the commands of the Most High--but to hide his anguish at the backslidings of his rebellious people--turning to unholy commerce with Egyptian god-devils and Canaanitish idols,--from the pure worship of the One God. And His Son was wont to climb the solitary heights of mountains, when He was weary with the healing of multitudes--and oppressed with His burden of human woe! And since His day, how many others have known the need, and sought the same alleviation:

"When on the heights I drink the air And watch the budding of each star Out of the dusk, this grief I bear Is somewhat soothed; my load of care Lightens, and Thou art not so far--"

Descending to the ground-floor, Katharine, barely of her own volition, passed through a small, heavy baize-covered door at the northern end of the hall. It led into the Tower, and she crossed a great stone-flagged, stone-vaulted room lighted by narrow window-slits high in the massive stone walls, unlocked another door with a key that was in the lock, huge and old-fashioned, but oiled and working smoothly, and came out at the foot of the narrow stone stairway that spiralled, storey by storey, to the top of the Tower.

She was weary, but the turmoil and anguish of her spirit set the claims of the body out of court. She moved on, tall and stern and beautiful, flashing her guiding light on a jutting stone in the wall here, or a broken step there,--just as though she were conducting some visitor to admire the famous view from the battlements.

The young moon of February rode high in the southern heavens. The Standard hung at half-mast from the flagstaff of the Tower. There was little wind to stir its heavy pendent folds, what there was came almost balmily in drifts from the west.

Some belated workman or field-labourer was going home across the policy,--or possibly some gamekeeper or shepherd may have been setting out upon his nightly rounds. The night being dark and still, he sang; perhaps because he was sorrowful, possibly because he was happy; it may have been to cheer his loneliness. But whoever he was, he had a voice; a sweet, if untutored baritone,--and the matchless beauty and poignant pathos of "The Land o' the Leal" beat in wave upon wave of anguish, and sorrow, and yearning, upon Katharine's tortured soul....

"O God!" she cried aloud in her anguish, "I cannot bear it. Desolate, desolate, stripped bare of everything! ... All of them taken!--Mark and my father, and to-day Edward! ... O Edward, my love! and Julian! ... Ah! ..."

And her own cry was flung back from the battlements, so thin, so weirdly eldritch that she shuddered at the sound....

Madness was near my Katharine in that hour of abandonment. But when the wild spirit of Marioun Forbis, whose tragic tale I have not time to tell here, cried to her: "Be bold! One leap will end it!" and the thin ghostly hands of proud, sinful Countess Edith plucked at her garments to drag her to the battlements; and Mistress Juliana, who starved herself to death for grief because her too-severely punished babe had died in a fit in the dark cupboard where it had been shut up after a whipping, lent her impalpable, invisible aid to urge her kinswoman to the desperate deed,--the saintly Mother St. Edward, Abbess of the Brigittine Convent of Syon (stripped of all and driven thence to exile with her Community by the edict of fierce Elizabeth), whispered of submission to the Divine Will. And heroic Madam Lucy--who nursed her smitten household back to life through the days when the Great Plague raged in England,--and only lay down to die at length when all she loved were safe,--leaned to her ear and whispered "Courage!" and countless other noble women of her ancient race gathered about her then....

And at last the memory of her own lost, beloved mother rose up to aid her, and the Mother of All Mothers--pitying her faithful daughter's anguish--interceded with Her Divine Son that the gift of prayer might be restored to ease the breaking heart....

It came like a spate among the hills after long drought, and Katharine fell upon her knees, and leaned her aching head against the rough-hewn stone, and told God all her trouble, and knew that He heard.... Then she rose up calmed and comforted, and so went down the Tower stair and back to her bedroom. And slept and dreamed of a gigantic man,--tawny-brown of skin, and with a vast black beard, fierce black eyes and a great hooked nose exactly like John Hazel's,--wrapped in a vast hooded mantle--carrying an iron-shod staff like St. Christopher's--and wearing immense boots such as are never seen now. He went before her over a desert which she needs must traverse, seeking for the lost Julian--a waved expanse of scorching yellow sand, peopled by ugly Things that lived in burrows, and kept popping up their diabolical horned heads to mock and gibe at Katharine.... Then the Bearded One stood in the midst of a raging torrent (which it seemed that Katharine must negotiate), and leaned on his immense staff to steady himself, stretching out the other hand to help her across.... There was a black onyx intaglio of Hercules in an antique setting of greenish gold on his huge forefinger.... And his vast hand, as it enfolded hers, felt warm and friendly and kind. And she asked, for the black eyes under the dense black brows were more like than ever:

"You're John Hazel, really, aren't you? ..."

And the huge man answered, in a booming bass, showing great white teeth in the thicket of his hirsuteness:

"Nay, daughter of the race of him I loved! But John Hazaël is of me!"

XXIV

Wonderful times, these of which I write, fruitful in world-shaking happenings, hecatombs of slaughtered men; sledge-hammer strokes of Fate and Destiny. Sudden descents of long-suspended swords upon anointed heads. Tragedies, calamities, dazzling adventures, murders and massacres, high deeds of patriotism, stirring deeds of heroism, wakening admiration, pity or terror. Who shall marvel that into this whirlpool of great events the Mysterious Disappearance of A Well Known British Commanding Officer (as recorded by the Press under the above and similar headings) dropped with as little sensation as the fall of a pair of binoculars from an aviator's hand.

"Staying at Kerr's Arbour, N.B."--I quote from one of the newspaper paragraphs, "the officer, a well-known personality in Society, possessing a great record of distinguished service with the famous Tweedburgh Regiment of Infantry, left the house at which he was an honoured guest, after the funeral of Sir Philip Forbis, which he had attended in the morning, and has not been since heard of. It transpires that Colonel Yaill had intended to walk to Cauldstanes Station, for the purpose of taking a late afternoon train to the junction of Carlisle. He had ordered his luggage to be forwarded to his London Club on the morning following, and carried with him nothing but a trench-coat and a walking-stick. The calamity which has again befallen the 'Tweedburghs' since the appointment of Colonel E. A. Yaill to command the regiment, will be fresh in the sympathetic memory of every reader. On September 1915, Colonel Yaill made his way to the front-line trenches through a blizzard of German H.E. and finding of the few living men left in them not one unwounded, took over and carried on the Telephone and Wireless Communications with Brigade and Divisional H.Q. until for the second time the dug-out containing the installations was blown in by a High Velocity shell. Severe shock was sustained by the gallant officer, who was discovered later, alive but quite dazed, and taken to Hospital. Since then he has successfully undergone treatment at the B---- Base Hospital Camp, which he quitted little more than a week ago, with a convalescent discharge. To add to the strange interest, and thicken the mystery of the case, it has transpired that on the morning he left the Hospital Camp at B---- the missing officer was married to a young and attractive lady, by name Miss Lucy Burtonshaw, serving with her Red Cross Unit at the B---- Base Convalescent Camp, as a certified nurse. Up to the present we can only record that whether the disappearance of Colonel Yaill may be ascribed to foul play, or a sudden loss of memory, no clue has been discovered up-to-date which throws any light upon his whereabouts. At his country home, 'The Grange,' Scraefell, N. Cumberland, his sisters, the Misses Olive and Isabella Yaill, are in the utmost distress and anxiety regarding his probable fate. At his Club _The Services_, in Pall Mall, no communication has been received from him, nor can his brother, Mr. Anthony Yaill, K.C., or Sir Arthur Ely, head of the eminent firm of Ely and Ely, for many years solicitors to the Yaill family, supply any information whatever concerning the missing officer."

Private John Hazel, returned to the bosom of his family at Campden Hill, read this, or a similar paragraph, in the morning Wire, and somewhere towards forenoon of the same day, received a telegram, the perusal of which gave him another unexpected thrill. It ran as follows:

"_Can you come? In great anxiety. Katharine Forbis Kerr's Arbour T.O. Cauldstanes Tweedburgh N.B._"

He had written a brief, business-like note from the _Cross Keys Hotel_ on the day of his return from her father's funeral, taking leave of Miss Forbis, repeating his offer of service, and enclosing an address from whence, in case of need, he might always be communicated with. Strangely soon the call had come. Strangely natural, as in the run of long-accustomed things it seemed to be responding to the appeal, to answer by the messenger waiting the reply:

"_Thank you. Coming by next train._"

He pitchforked a few necessaries into a battered suit-case, left a pencilled note upon the lid of Mrs. Hazel's large, responsible Red Cross work-basket--for his mother now invariably left home directly after breakfast, for the Work Rooms in Mayfair--where, in the delectable company of Duchesses--she spent the hours in the manufacture of Life-Saving Waistcoats for the Fleet, and felt Hospital slippers, until six-thirty. Consuming luncheon, carried in a plated box, and rigorously relegated to such forms of nourishment as may without reproach be assimilated by patriotic British digestive organs in War-time; taking a frugal tea on the scene of activity; and returning at seven to partake of a dinner of generous succulence. Having thus discharged his duty as a son, John departed by taxi for King's Cross, catching the very next express leaving for the North....

The room he had previously occupied at the _Cross Keys_ was vacant. He stepped into its queer conglomeration of ancient smells, and the glass-eyed society of the birds and beasts and fishes in their musty cases, and it might have been that he had never gone away, but that Mrs. Govan in person served his supper in the clammy coffee-room, a part-knitted khaki-coloured sock, bristling with steel knitting-needles, tucked under a stout arm, and the ball bulging the pocket of her apron of black silk.

"Eh, dear!" Mrs. Govan had ceased to address John as "Private" since she had realised his somewhat indeterminate yet undeniable connection with "the family" at Kerr's. "Eh, Mr. Hazel! but this is grievous! ... And to think that I met Cornel Yaill wi' the meir an' cart the vera' nicht he cam' down to atten' the Funeral. Gin' auld Sir Philip cud have kent! But Providence was mercifu'. And sair it has irkit me to think o' Miss Forbis a' alane there at Kerr's, like the last aipple on the strippit tree, as I hae said to Govan, an' telegrams rattlin' ower the wires wi' 'Reply Paid' to the lave o' them--from a' the warld and's wife, beggin' an' prayin' till her: 'Darling Katharine, let us come to you, or if not, winna you come to us,' and gettin' answer: 'A thousand thanks, but no. Lovingly, Katharine.' An' sae, when I e'en kent she had sent for ye, I juist drew a free sough."

Evidently there had been a serious leakage from the Cauldstanes Telegraph Office. John mentally registered the evidence as Mrs. Govan continued:

"Ye'll have haird the latest news o' Cornel Yaill, dootless?"

"Has he been found?" her guest inquired, eliciting the shrill disclaimer:

"Na, na! We'se hae the Police traipsin' in an' out the bar makin' their inquiries--an' the wee laddies in the short breeks--the Boy Scouts I suld say! scoorin' ower the face o' the lan', but neither bone nor feather o' the man hae they fand for a' their pains! And mair nor me an' Govan thinks," she pursed her lips mysteriously, "that it'll be no' for's ain guid when they rin the Cornel doon--wherever's his hidie-hole! Weel free o' siccan a mislaird rogue Miss Forbis may coont hersel! Marriet on a stranger wumman--faugh!--an' the bauld, traipsin' craitur huntin' him doon, un' telegrams to the verra door o' Kerr's Arbour. 'Have knowledge whaur ye are. Return instantly, or I will follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill.' Set her up for a shameless hussy!--an' the brawest leddy in Tweedshire--ay', an' the haill o' Scotland--wi' grand, gentlemen many a ane etchin' to pit a ring on the white hand o' her--"

Mrs. Govan broke off in the midst of her tirade with a sense of genuine alarm. For the blazing black eyes under the heavy brows of John Hazel were sternly set upon her; and the great hooked nose--"siccan glowering e'en, an' siccan a hawk's neb!--eneuch to fricht a body!" seemed fraught with threatenings of doom to come. He said in his deep voice:

"Miss Forbis will hardly thank you for your praise of herself personally, if you couple with it such confoundedly libellous abuse of her nearest and dearest friend."

"Guidsake! ... I'm sure I never thocht.... To be sure naething is kenned for certain.... Ye'll keip it frae Miss Forbis, sir, if I said onything to offend! ..." and the flurried woman bumped down the dish upon the cloth and vanished, leaving John Hazel wondering why on earth he had stuck up for the man.

He slept with the stuffed birds and beasts that night, and next morning, after breakfast, the mare Brownie being under the veterinary for a chill, the old black horse, her stable-companion, having been sent to the blacksmith's for roughing, and Alec Govan's motor-cycle having been requisitioned for the postman's uses--John set out on foot for Kerr's Arbour.

It was piercing cold; the east wind carried the bitter tang of the North Sea, the country lay under a fresh cloak of new-fallen snow, and the chilled thrushes and blackbirds and robins huddled disconsolately in the cropped hedges, and the low bushes and plumps of ivy swaddling old tree-stumps in the plantations by the roadside. As John Hazel's long active legs left the miles behind--what was a road ankle-deep in snow to a Territorial who had wintered in Flemish trenches!--he wondered somewhat as to the nature of the service Katharine Forbis would require at his willing hands.

Help, it might prove, in some further efforts to gain intelligence of the man who had vanished so suddenly.... Who could not be traced, nor ever would be, until the body should be found.... For Edward Yaill was dead, most certainly. Once Katharine Forbis had showed you plainly she despised you, how could you bear to live any more? Yaill had had that much of manhood left in him. So he had gone out with a definite purpose,--and in some dense plantation, or lonely granite quarry, thick-draped with curtains of bramble, had shot himself; creeping well in under the growths to be securely hidden, and died--and there an end of him....

Odd how those miserable grey eyes, with their haunting stare of agony, kept rising up before John Hazel, as he tramped over the hog-backed Roman road over which how many old dead-and-gone Forbis of Kerr's had led their bow and spearmen against the Picts, or Viking pirates from the wild North Sea; or pricked forth to the Wars of Balliol or Bruce--or set out in state and pageantry, with fair ladies in painted litters, or on gaily-caparisoned palfreys--to the Court of the Scots' King at Stirling or Edinburgh. And he wondered at the strange, impersonal love he felt for them, so brave, so bold, so tender, so gallant and gracious--from the Roman Prætor of Alexandria--who had given the black onyx ring to his (John Hazel's) ancestor--down to Sir Rupert the Cavalier, and the fine old General and the lost Julian, and Katharine....

Ah, Katharine! ... Again he saw her noble face irradiated by the glow and glamour, the mysterious beauty that transfigure even a plain woman when she loves with all her soul.

And then the face of Yaill, with its anguish and despair, rose up before him clearer than ever. He heard the compassionate voice of the V.A.D. woman saying:

"His wretched, _wretched_ eyes! ... I _hope_ I'm not going to dream of them! Oh! there _must_ be something to be said for a man who looks like that! ..."

Suppose the man were innocent--the luckless sport of horrible circumstances! ... Had John Hazel been of Scottish blood, he would have said, "I'm fey." Being what he was, he said vigorously, "I'm a bally idiot!" and continued tramping along the snowy road.

Past the hollow way, crossed by a strip of ice, where the snow on the overhanging trees was thawing in long drips and splashes, and the benumbed birds showed more active signs of life. Out of the hollow way, on the left a dense plantation, on the opposite side to, and about a quarter of a mile below the iron gate of the entrance to the Kerr's Arbour private road.

XXV

A whistle shrilled near by, keen, sharp and silvery. John Hazel stiffened at the sound, as a seasoned soldier will. But nothing was in sight but a wee tow-headed laddie, "a kid" John would have called him--in a ragged suit of moleskins, cut down from adult-sized garments, who perched on the topmost round of the hog-backed stile leading into the plantation, and blew a shining whistle, from which a lanyard hung.

The small boy saw John start, and thrilled with secret exultation. To own a silver whistle and have no one to admire you is really little better than having none at all. So he blew again, lustily, with one eye on the big black "soger," and John Hazel pulled up steaming, and passed the time of day....

"Who are you, you queer little beggar, and where did you get that whistle?" he began.

At this the small boy scrambled down from the gate, and came to the roadside. He was a freckled child of eight or so, with wide gaps where first teeth had retired from the conflict, and a nose that sadly needed wiping, and broken festering chilblains on his swollen ears and hands. But his sharp blue eyes were bright on the stranger's as he answered:

"I am nae no beggar ava, but Meggy Proodfoot's wee laddie. An' I fand the bonny whistle in yonner woodie the morn."

By the jerk of the cracked and swollen thumb John guessed "woodie" meant plantation. He said, blowing out his long brown cheeks, and scowling with mock ferocity:

"That's a real soldier's whistle, not a thing for a kid to play with. You should give it to your daddy. He's a soldier, I suppose?"

The small boy returned, grinning:

"I dinna ken--for my daddie is no' a kirk daddie. Some say he maun be Keeper Todd, but my mother says it's no'! She's thinkin' he's the engineer that cam' wi' the steam-thrasher,--an' she ca's me a puir come-by-chance when she has a drappy on. I'm no mindin'!" The freckled face turned up to John's grinned hardily:

"Give me hold of that whistle a minute, you infantile philosopher," said John Hazel, and took it in his hand. It bore the silver hall-mark,--was an officer's signal-whistle. On the butt was engraved in clear fine letters:

"E. A. Yaill (R.C.) Lieut. Col. R. Tweedburgh Infantry Regt."