Part 26

And he passed on, to gladden the heart of the Battalion Commander with discriminating praise, and drop a few curt sentences;--pregnant with great issues--before he went away. Pausing beside the step of his car to ask with the smile that won the men and charmed the women:

"Who's the big tyke overtopping the little Terriers in F. Company's tent? Not an exotic in this climate, or I don't know what it is to command a Jewish Battalion."

"I think," said the C.O., "you refer to Private Hazel, Acting Sergeant to F. Company in place of Langston.... We call Hazel the 'Lightning Change Artist,' because he's always doing somebody's duty, and doing it uncommonly well too! Killed twelve Turks with the bayonet in the scrapping at Sheria.... Sings as he fights--a habit when he's butchering men...."

"Sings, does he? Curious...."

"Sings in Hebrew, the men'll swear to you. Some of them call him 'The Musical Maccabee.' We've two other Jews in the Battalion, both good men, but he's damned good! ... Peculiar in his refusal of stripes and so forth, else he'd have had his Commission long ago. Has the Distinguished Conduct Medal for something he did in France...."

"Glad to hear that. He seems a hefty kind of beggar. Have noticed that he's wounded.... Would you recommend him for the Military Medal when you're sending in the other names?"

The pleased Colonel reddened through dust and sun-tan:

"Certainly, Sir, with pleasure, if you'll permit me! ... But there are a great many names, and I was rather thinking--"

"My dear Sir, never under any circumstances think that there can be too many names!"

"Thank you, Sir. With regard to Acting Sergeant Hazel.... He has been very keen on leave for Alex., since Sheria--most unusual thing with a man of that sort to risk the loss of a scrap. Some family affair perhaps. Has big interests in Palestine--chiefly wine and olives and so forth. Kind of a millionaire, I am told, in his way...."

"I don't care a Syrian curse about the millionaire! but I'm ready to stretch a point to oblige the man who spits twelve Turks--and sings while he's doing it! He's got a knock from a German, too--and might have put in for a Red Cross bag--a ride in the White train--and a cane chair on the lawn at Montana on the strength of it! So send him down to railhead at Gamli with the wounded.... He can put in three weeks at the General Hospital at Alex, and attend to his business there...."

"Very good, Sir! But it occurs to me that an R.F.C. two-seater scouting-plane in difficulties came down in our lines about an hour ago,--Wing Major Essenian Pasha on board--an Egyptian officer from the Ismailia Air Station--"

"I know Essenian Pasha!" The tone was enigmatical. "Copt or Moslem,--nobody seems certain. Some people seem to think it's a case of being all things to all men. Though,--for my own part--if I had to place him--I'd rank him with the Advanced or Super-Jews. But the man's an incomparable scout, and flies like one of the Sons of Eblis.... Some of his reports have been damned useful! We sent for him to do some special reconnaissance over the enemy's rearguard in the hills. Have Djemal's sharpshooters potted the Pasha? Hope he'd made his observations first!"

"The Pasha's all right, Sir, but his observer was shot dead. Flying-Lieutenant Usborn--there was a regular ding-dong battle over Hebron with some Turkish fighting-planes.... And Essenian Pasha would like us to bury Lieutenant Usborn--and supply an observer to replace him for the home-flight to Ismailia!"

"Well, can you?"

"It appears, Sir, that the Pasha knows Hazel. They foregathered at Salonika a month or so ago. And there being a lot of dysentery among the men of the Pasha's Flying Squadron--and Hazel having dabbled in aviation--five-guinea flutters at Hendon, I suppose!--the Pasha took him on several reconnaissance-flights. By the way, Sir, he has brought in a bit of intelligence.... The Sherif of Mecca's tribesmen are at Diariyeh--among the hills to the N.E. with the Emir Feisal and a host of Bedwân cavalry. And they're waging guerilla warfare against the enemy's rearguards and flanks."

"Good for the Sherif Husain!" The keen blue eyes sparkled. "And news worth having. We shall be able to shift the --th Division outposts a good bit more to the N.E. Where's the Pasha? _Marhabâ_, Essenian Pasha!"

"_Marhabtain Gananâr Saiyid!_" came the quick response to the greeting, as he turned to take the report from the dark hand of the Egyptian Flying Officer, looking back a moment later to say to the Colonel, with his parting handshake: "Well, so-long, Colonel! Remember, your next objective is Huj, the terminus of the Turkish branch-rail from Deir Sineid. The Desert Mounted Corps--3 Cavalry Divisions--pushed for there yesterday to cut off the garrison retreating from Gaza. So-and-so with such-and-such another force of mounted troops is working round by sea--to engage the enemy rear-guard at Beit Hannu. Dyemal's Eighth Army Corps on our right flankguard have rolled back towards Hebron." (Fifteen miles north-east from Beersheba, among the Judæan Hills.) "The only Turks now holding their ground are those facing the 53rd Division at Muweileh. They may not have heard of the fall of Gaza--as we have the cavalry between them and the rest of their Army--and Blank smashed the Gaza Wireless installation when he bombed their big mosque! You'll find the road to Huj nicely marked out with Turkish canteens, tin gas-mask-cases, stretchers and trenching-tools, and the terrain fairly continuous in its drop,--about forty feet to the mile.... Don't contemplate much trouble for you from well-posted Austrian batteries. The Warwicks and Worcesters and Australians have accounted for 'em all!"

And as the baking Earth rolled up, blotting out the huge red-hot sun; and the short twilight heralded the sudden swoop of Night on Syria, the Rolls-Royce box-cars carrying the Chief and his Staff moved smoothly on, following the four armoured scouters, and the other Fords swung out and dashed after them.... And the dust of Philistia--watered with the blood of brave men since Wars began on this sad earth--how many times? rolled up and blotted out the moving specks, on the safety of one of which hung the hopes of Christendom.

III

To Katharine Forbis, some seven weeks subsequently to her arrival at the Red Cross Hospital of Montana, an Egyptian Red Cross orderly brought a scrap of paper bearing a pencilled scrawl:

"_Am back from the Front Palestine for ten days leave. Can you see me? Important yours faithfully John Hazel._"

No more. But enough to call back the carnation bloom to cheeks paled by the sub-tropical heats of Egypt, and self-forgetful labours in the interests of wounded men....

Morning duty, consisting in the conveyance of a motor-car packed with convalescents on an expedition to Ramleh and back,--was over. Miss Forbis had just returned, and was free for the afternoon. In her well-cut white drill uniform-skirt and coat with its shoulder-titles, Special Service badges, and scraps of medal-ribbon, her white blouse with its polo collar and natty black silk tie; her brown silk stockings and tan brogue shoes bearing the unmistakable cachet of Bond Street, setting off the workmanlike ensemble, and her handsome head crowned by a soft white Panama hat of the uniform shape, with the Society's ribbon and badge,--she made a gallant, gracious figure, bringing a mist before the eyes of the big, battered-looking, sun-blackened man,--bristlier than ever about the cheeks and chin, and arrayed in battle-soiled and much-patched khaki drill,--who got out of his cane chair in the wide white marble hall with pleased alacrity, knocking over with a bandaged, sling-suspended left arm, the soiled and dusty regulation sun-helmet he had put down on a little table of inlaid Egyptian work.

And as he saluted her in his Eastern way, now familiar to Katharine, swift strangling emotion caught her by the throat. For a moment she could not find voice. For John Hazel brought the panelled parlour at Kerr's Arbour with him; and set it like a scene between the white marble pillars where whirred the electric fans, between the gilt and friezed and painted walls, and under the fretted ceilings of the Egyptian despot's palace, built on the rocky height at the foot of which break the milk-warm surges of the Mediterranean. And once again the old pain at her heart,--dulled by long months without news; by change of scene and change of work, to an aching sense of emptiness,--woke up and cried for all that she had lost.

She said with her wide heartening smile, as his huge hand swallowed hers, still wearing its tan gauntlet:

"You look wonderfully fit, though you're wearing a sling."

"Fit's the word!" He grinned the big toothy grin so well remembered.... "A walking testimony to the nutritive qualities of Maconochie, tinned salmon, Prynn's Baked Beans, Army brickbats, sticky flycatcher dates and chlorinated Nile water.... For we've travelled a long way since the imbecilities of the Crimea," he said, with his black eyes drinking her in.

"Thank God, we have!" Katharine flushed a little under his strange scrutiny, painfully conscious of the unrelaxing grip of his huge, hard, blackened hand. For John Hazel stood, oblivious of its crushing pressure, drinking in the joy of her near presence, inhaling the rare sweetness of her fair, wholesome womanhood; the fragrance of her hair and breath, and garments, coming to him mingled with the perfume of the half-opened red rose--still dewy in the heart of it--that she had stuck in the buttonhole of her uniform jacket that morning, and forgotten to take out again.

And Katharine upon her side was conscious of a strange environing atmosphere; a virile, heady compound of exhalations from the desert, the march, the bivouac and the battlefield, emanating from the garments and the person of the man. The sun-baked blackness of his skin seemed its natural tinting. Whiffs of the wormwood of desolate places mingled with the aroma of thyme, clover and strong tobacco,--the smell of horses and tanned leather; the sharp tang of melinite, and the penetrating odour of sweating human flesh.

A moment more and he released the hand he held, giving a dismayed exclamation, and taking a long backward step.

"Hold on! What have I been thinking of!" Concern was in his voice. "I'm not fit to touch you! Do you know it's a fortnight since I washed last!" His fleshy mouth twisted in disgust, as he surveyed his martial griminess, continuing: "We've been short of water lately. Only allowed a pint _per diem_. Strictly for internal irrigation, nothing allowed for the outer man! And when Essenian Pasha dropped me at the Alex. Air Station--and thundering good of him too!--I'd only time to grab a bite of breakfast at the N.C.O.'s Mess Tent--swallow a mug of coffee--tumble into a car--borrowed from the R.F.C. men!--and just chuffle along. Why I was in such a cast-iron hurry--that's what I've got to explain to you. And when I saw you I clean forgot what a beastly sweep I am! I couldn't--" The deep, rough breath he drew added quite plainly, "I couldn't think of anything but you!"

"Don't you imagine, if you and other brave men can put up with Dirt for Duty's sake--that we women--even those of us who don't wear this uniform--can put up with you men? And you can have a hot bath here at any moment, Mr. Hazel." Katharine's full tones were tinged with laughter as she added: "And a second breakfast,--unless you don't mind waiting the half-hour, which will make it the official noonday meal. Now which will you do? Have that bath--or stay and talk to me on, the lawn or in here until the Staff lunch?--at which meal your picturesque battle-grime will make you the admired of all?"

"It's simply first-class here!--a kind of mix-up of the Alhambra at Granada and an Egypto-Grecian temple," he said to her, gratefully sensing the breezes from the whirring electric fans. "And that little fountain, splashing and gurgling--makes a man who was in the Syrian Desert east of Gaza, up to the evening of day before yesterday, marching and swotting Turks on a pint of doctored Nile water _per diem_--want to stick his blooming head in the basin and drink it all up."

"I--think I'm beginning to comprehend!" Miss Forbis's fine eyebrows relaxed their tension, and the puzzled expression left her face. "You fogged me rather, a minute back--about being in the Desert near Gaza up to the evening of the day before yesterday.... But now--"

"Now you're clear that it isn't a case of bats in the belfry. Haw--haw!" He broke out into the big noisy laugh that had once set Katharine's teeth on edge. "Of course it'd have taken three days if I'd come by the Woggler from Railhead. The Woggler, I ought to tell you, is the Desert Express. Trucks roofed with packing-cases nailed together--nail-ends up--to accommodate the troops. Pullmans,--seats faked with American cloth over a thin film of tibbin,--specially reserved for Officer Sahibs. Not that the Army ain't proud of the Woggler! In its way, it's an epoch-marking, eye-opening Thing. But I happened to be in a dithering hurry. And a chance turned up of getting here by the Air Route, do you see? ... Safe as houses, for we followed the coast and had no scraps--the Turks are very short of fliers!--and we only came down once, for petrol, at a seaplane station near the Rest Camp at El Arish."

The gesture of his blackened hand made light of fatigue, risks, perils and privations attending the long flight from Palestine.... Katharine admired the simplicity with which he spoke, as she said with a touch of reproachfulness:

"It seems very long since you came to me at Kerr's Arbour, Mr. Hazel. And all these months you have never once written--although you promised!"

"I said I would not fail to write--if I had any news for you!"

That deep voice, and the simple words that meant so much to Katharine.... The white marble pillars of the hall appeared to sway and totter. The jewelled plume of a fountain playing in a fretted basin seemed to leap to the patterned roof and then shrink small again....

"Have you news--at last?"

"Some!" he said briefly.

"What?--"

The sudden dilation and darkening of her lovely eyes betrayed the desperate hunger gnawing in her. The eyes fastened avidly on Hazel's blackened face. She held her breath for his answer. It came as he slewed his head,--looking through the triple arch of the Palace vestibule to the green, carefully nurtured lawn, the glory of Montana--whence the smack of racquet upon tennis-ball came, and the sound of cheerful voices, telling of relaxations on the part of the Medical Staff, the Nurses and V.A.D's.

"This--that Colonel Yaill is alive and well. I have seen him!"

"Thank God!" Katharine said, "O--thank God! ..."

She put out her hand to the back of a chair and gripped it to steady herself. When her leaping heart had quieted she addressed herself to a colossal back-view, so shorn of martial dignity by patches of Army sacking, that Katharine's voice wavered between laughter and tears:

"And God bless you, John Hazel, for bringing word to me!"

"I have better than a word!" He wheeled about and faced her. "I have a letter from him for you! ..."

As he drew it from a baggy front pocket of his tunic, the radiance that broke over her was fairly dazzling to the man's eyes.... He trembled as she stretched out both her hands to him, entreating:

"Give me his letter, dear John Hazel! ... Let me hold it while you tell me where you met with him! ..."

The object that caused such turmoil in Miss Forbis's bosom was a single sheet of coarse yellow Levantine paper, folded to oblong shape, stuck in three places along the edge and at either end, with a mixture of white clay and beeswax, and sealed with a ring given to Yaill eight years previously. How well the giver of the old love-token remembered that hexagonal sard, deeply cut in old Roman capitals with the name: "KATHARINE." How dear and familiar the small neat handwriting of the pencilled address: 'Miss K. M. Forbis, Kerr's Arbour, Near Cauldstanes, Tweedshire, N.B.' ...

"The morning after Sheria--before it was daylight"--how she hung upon John Hazel's utterance, watching the movements of his fleshy lips, drinking in every word--"we were cleaning out enemy trenches, and blowing up ammunition-dumps and testing wells for poison, and burying dead Turks--and so forth!--I was passing the Intelligence Officer's tent--quite a toney fit-up on the top of a mound--with a native string-bed, and a camp chair, and a sugar-box table, and lighted candles on that,--for the thermometer was climbing up into the seventies and the front fly was up--for the sake of fresh air.... When I tell you that the I.O. was questioning Turkish prisoners--under a guard of Military Police,--and putting Syrian and Arab scouts through their paces, and interviewing village patriarchs--you'll understand that the atmosphere was--well!--"

"I can imagine! ... But, do please go on!" All unconsciously she cuddled the precious letter to her bosom, holding it with both hands and smiling over it at John....

"Well--as I was passing by and happened to glance in--an Arab dressed much the same as the others--a thin, tallish, sinewy Bedawi in a flowing black camel-cloth mantle, and silk head-veil trimmed with tufts of coloured gimp--and topped by the usual ring of twisted camel's hair,--rose up and made obeisance to the Intelligence Officer sitting at the sugar-box table,--and came out, followed by a brace of others--not quite so well got up. Walking as Arabs have the knack of doing--as if the round world and all that therein is--including the Desert--was hardly good enough to be trampled under the notched iron heels that they wear for killing snakes."

She drank in the words that were heavenly music, bending her high head the better to concentrate her gaze upon the speaker's face.

"And--?"

"Well, the three Arabs--two of 'em not particularly interesting, and the one who'd been talking to the Intelligence Officer--no end posh in a necklace of gold-mounted lion's-teeth, and with strings of blue and red seed-pearls twined in his long side-locks,--the three Arabs were going to where their hairies were picketed--munching tibbin and sesame off a spread saddle-cloth--ragged looking yellowish-grey brutes with ewe-necks, and queerly-sloped cruppers; and high-peaked wooden saddles and big-bitted bridles, jingling with silver amulets and jewellery of sorts.... One Arab had a kind of cage-basket strapped on behind the saddle, with live birds stirring about in it--I thought falcons trained for sport--until they started cooing.... Well then!--in the sudden way it happens in this East of ours,--Day jumped over the Hills of Judea--and the Arabs got their prayer-rugs from behind their saddles, and made ready to say their prayers...."

His black eyes seemed to look past Katharine into the scene that he described. He drew breath:

"I was sitting on a sack of Turkish ration-biscuits--not half bad if you've nothing else to eat!--smoking an Army Issue Woodbine--and though the place was stiff with praying Moslems, I watched these--or rather this one! He washed in the sand--laid his praying-rug diagonally in the line for Mecca, knelt down, and went through the whole programme--praying with his forehead to the ground--praying with his hands to the sides of his head--praying with his body straight, resting on the knees, in the regular Mohammedan way. An uncommonly swanky Arab too!--the stock of his long-barrelled gun inlaid with bits of turquoise and mother o' pearl, a curved nine-inch dagger in a gilded sheath stuck in the front of his girdle--and a long silver-plated ivory-stocked revolver--about 44 calibre I judge--on the other side. I was to left of him: so when he slewed his head over his right shoulder to smile at his Good Angel, I saw the back of it--and when he twirled it back again to scowl at the Counsellor of Evil, I found him staring full into my face and scowling at me!"

"And you knew him!--it was Edward!" Her voice was a song of joy!

IV

"I'd seen that scowl on the terrace at Kerr's Arbour, last February," said John Hazel. "And though he gave no other sign to tell that he recognised me, his eyes flickered for the tenth of a second--and I saw they weren't black, but grey. He took no more notice of me.... He'd finished his prayer, and was squatting down cross-legged--running his beads between his fingers--so I pitched away my fag-end, and began to hum the tune of a song, sitting on the sack of Turkish Army biscuits. It might have been an English hymn--for all the genuine Arabs knew--"

"What was the song?"

"'Loch Lomond'--only the words were altered; to fit the situation--see? Something like this:

'So I took the high-road And you took the low, And you got to Asia before me! And Katharine Forbis sat waiting for news At the bonny, bonny house of Kerr's Arbour!'"

Muted down to the softness of a mother's cradle-song, the full mellow baritone breathed out the familiar refrain. Bringing tears brimming over Katharine's under-lids,--for by strangest chance the song was one of Edward's favourites, often sung by her to him in the twilight--in the dear familiar drawing-room of the old, distant home....

"So you.... It was wonderful of you to speak to him in that way! ..."

"Not original." He grinned at her. "A variation on the historic Blondel Stunt. Only Blondel was a London Tommy,--and Cœur de Lion a British Brass Hat, camouflaged as a Son of Islam. He took it like a rock, only I saw his eyelid quiver. Yes'm!--that descendant of the Prophet winked at the infidel with the eye that was next me.... Then I did a bit more of the Blondel dodge...."

The smile ceased to quirk the corners of his fleshy red mouth, as he sang under his breath in the full sweet baritone:

"O Julian her brother was killed long ago! So seek you no further to find him! And give me a letter to take to her now Where she's working for the Red Cross at Alex.!"

"And what then? ..." Her colour came and went.... "Didn't Edward--didn't Colonel Yaill manage somehow to speak to you privately? ..."

John Hazel shook his head.

"Nix a word! He's far too old a hand at the risky business of walking about in another man's skin, to give himself away in that style. He got up and shook off the dust,--stepped into his loose gazelle-leather boots,--rolled up his carpet, mounted and rode off with his two Arabs--leaving me chewin' the rag! And yet I knew it was Yaill--and that he'd got my message!"

"What did you do then? ..."

"What did I do! ..."

Forgetful in the excitement of his story, of his damaged left arm, he had released it from the sling, and used it freely, in the supple illustrative gesticulations that bespoke his Eastern blood: