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?"
The newspaper rustled in a pair of big bony hands, that were shaking
with rage as though with ague. There was a roaring in John Hazel's
ears.... Spots of red, ringed with paler colour, grew and dimmed and
faded out upon the page before him. If the harmless periodical had
slipped from his hold, the sight of the mask of murder it had
screened might have led to the pulling of the communication-cord and
the subsequent appearance of the guard. For the man was not the same
man who had shed the black frock coat and silk topper of Cornhill in
the September of 1914. He had spilled blood since then, for duty's
sake, and for revenge; and found sharp pleasure in the shedding. And
much, very much, he wanted to kill Edward Yaill. But Lady Wastwood
was answering the two blue ladies:
"That is what I ask myself. Why? and How Can he? ... Unless, indeed,
he were going up North to tell--to break the news to Katharine! Or
does he possess sufficient Nerve to attend the Funeral?" She added,
meeting the ladies' uncomprehending eyes: "Perhaps you have somehow
missed the advertisement in Wednesday's _Morning Wire_! Heading the
List of Deaths.... 'General Sir Philip Forbis, K.C.B.' and so on....
'Result of accident.... No Flowers, By Request.' (He hated
paraphernalia!) ... 'R.I.P.'" ...
Under cover of the ladies' sympathetic exclamations, John secured the
front page of the _Morning Wire_ without any results. But the
"Obituary Notices" in the _Illustrated Society_ of that morning's
issue supplied him in full with the intelligence he desired....
At Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, N.B., had died on the previous
Saturday, the man John was going up North to meet.
"A notable figure in Society and oldest living representative of one
of the most ancient Catholic families upon the Border," stated the
chronicler, "has now passed away in the person of Major-General Sir
Philip Forbis, K.C.B., C.M.G., etc. Born at Kerr's Arbour,
Tweedburgh, 1834, the seat of his family for sixteen generations.
Married Muriel Helen (d. 1910), dau. of C. Colleston, Esq., J. P., of
Wyond Hall, Norfolk. Edu. R.M.A. Woolwich. Entered Royal Horse
Artillery 1852. Col. 1882, retired as Hon. Maj. Gen. 1884. Served
in Crimean Campaign 1854-7. Wounded eight times. Medal, clasp and
Turkish Medal. Prepared five contingents for the War in South
Africa. Upon the outbreak of War with Germany in 1914 Major-General
Forbis, having kept abreast of modern military progress, raised and
trained a Yeomanry Regiment of Light Cavalry for Kitchener's New
Army, three squadrons of which are now serving with distinction in
France. The deceased officer met his death, as perhaps he would have
chosen,--while leading a charge of the Fourth and Fifth Squadrons, on
the Cauldstanes Muirlees Racecourse, ceded by the Local Racing
Committee to Government as a Military Exercise Ground."
John thought the Major General deceased must have been a jolly fine
old fellow. Mentally picturing him as lightly-built, active, wiry
and upright, with a keen light blue eye, crisp white hair and
close-clipped white moustache, giving the brusque touch of soldierly
decision to an aquiline-featured face of many criss-cross wrinkles.
He added a peppery temper when put out, and a light hand on a bridle,
before he proceeded to the paragraph below:
"General Forbis' elder son, Captain Mark Forbis of the 'Gray
Hussars,' went out with the First British Expeditionary Army in
August, 1914, and was killed before Mons, while rendering a service
for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The second
son, the Rev. Father Julian Forbis, of the Order of St. Gerard (now
head of the family), has served with distinction as a Chaplain with
the Mediterranean Forces recently withdrawn from Gallipoli. Miss
Forbis, V.A.D., has rendered excellent service in France as an
Ambulance Driver for the Red Cross Society. She has fortunately
recovered from the muscular strain, for the treatment of which she
was invalided home some months previously; and pending her return to
more active duties, has been assisting the overworked Nursing Staff
at Cauldstanes County Hospital."
A paragraph below continued:
"The origin of the name of 'Kerr's Arbour,' which has always
distinguished the ancient mansion dignified by the massive peel-tower
(built by a certain Sir Hew Forbis in 1147 and which has been for
nearly nine hundred years the seat of the Forbis' family), is lost in
the mists of antiquity. Owing to the loss of some ancient documents,
the Scottish Herald's College and collateral authorities can throw
but little light upon the question, when broached. The Forbis coat
of arms consists of a shield with three escallops _argent_ on a
_fesse_ between two chevrons _sable_ and _gules_, with the crest of a
wolf's head and the motto: 'FORBYS FOES FA.' But that the original
founder of the Forbis family was a Roman tribune named Marcus Fabius,
who, reared in Egypt by a Community of Coptic monks, brought his
Christian faith with his sword to Britain, in the service of the
Emperor Constantius, seems to be generally agreed."
John wondered how the bigwigs at the Scottish Herald's College would
like a dip into the contents of that calfskin bag of Old Mendel's.
Stowed well within touch of elbow, beside him on the seat, it struck
him as wearing a consciously-secretive air. For the bag knew all
about the antecedents of the Forbis's (going back a whole generation
before Marcus F.). It could have told how the Crusader Sir Hew
Forbis (whom John would have liked to kick for a family
reason)--built the Tower:--and where the bags of French gold came
from that paid the architect and the workmen, and quarried the stone,
and "bocht ye lyme an ye clypins of a troop of ye Scots Kyng's Horsys
ye betyr for to bynd ye same." ... And why Sir Hew called the place
Kir Saba,--transmogrified in the course of centuries to quite another
name.
But on these points Scottish Herald's College must perforce remain in
ignorance, unless Katharine Forbis--of Kerr's Arbour--who had driven
a Car for the Red Cross in France, and had got somehow hurt in
lifting wounded Tommies,--and had eyes of "gold and
bramble-dew"--John Hazel was mightily taken with that simile of
Stevenson's--unless Katharine Forbis should consent to share the
secrets of the calfskin bag....
Katharine Forbis, the Ideal Woman.... Devoid as John was of any
knowledge of her personality, the vague outlines supplied by the
gossip of his fellow passengers adapted themselves quite wonderfully
to the image stamped upon his mental retina one April day in Flanders
on the grim road that led from the British Reserve Trenches to the
Firing Line. Had he received that post-card--and it must have been
sent, for She had promised--would it have been signed with the
initials K.F.?
Katharine Forbis.... Katharine Forbis. What luck if this Katharine
were She? He leaned back and shut his tired eyes, and fell to
dreaming of this Katharine: a Princess of the North with cairngorm
eyes; to whose court was momentarily drawing nearer--out of the
Orient from whence all Mystery springs--a swarthy legate,--bringing
neither apes nor parrots, embroideries or spices,--but the rare jewel
of an ancient oath of fealty, unbroken by the use and wear of more
than sixteen hundred years.