Katharine said to him next morning as they sat together at breakfast:
"I am glad to hear of a good night's sleep. I fancied that you would
rest better in your old bedroom, dear."
Yaill said, rejoicing in the clear sparkle of her eyes, the fresh,
sweet tinting of her cheeks, the gloss upon her springy hair, and the
dozen other charming signs that proved her an early-morning woman:
"You knew that I should prefer my langsyne nest of old-fashioned
rosebud-chintz to any other. When I went inside and shut the door,
all the old memories came crowding round me. The great carved
four-post bed, the big blaze in the bowed Queen Anne grate, the
General's arm-chair opposite mine--"
"Where he always sat, dear love! to smoke that last good-night-cigar,
that seemed to have no end." She blinked back a tear resolutely and
Yaill said, feeling in the side-pocket of his Field Service jacket:
"Here is something I found last night on the chintz-room
chimney-piece." He displayed a blackened briar-root pipe with the
initials E.A.Y. engraved on its tarnished silver mounting. "The
first birthday-present I ever had from you. And in the camphor-wood
William and Mary press"--
"Your dear, shabby old shooting-suit. Lying there ever since August,
1914."
Men know so little even of the women they love. He never dreamed of
the kisses and tears, the wild words whispered, the secrets told to
that belted Norfolk-jacket of rough tweed, smelling of cigars and
heather. Breakfast over, he filled the briar-root and went to smoke
it on the terrace, while after conference with the housekeeper, and a
brief visit to Mrs. Bell, who breakfasted in her bedroom, Katharine
tied on a vast apron of blue and white checked cotton, covered her
head with her black lace veil, and went to renew the Altar flowers,
replace the burnt-out brown-wax tapers--and sweep and dust the
Sanctuary.
Her doubly-sacred duties done, and the prayer that followed ended,
her heart flew back to Edward, and she went whither it tugged. He
was pacing, bareheaded, on the gravel of the lavender-walk below the
flagstoned terrace that ran before the drawing-room windows. His
pipe was gripped askew between his teeth,--his hands were driven deep
into his breeches-pockets. The frozen lavender-bushes were not
greyer or dourer than his face....
"_You dear! ... You dear! ... Come here! ..._"
She imitated the blackbird's challenging Spring call, a quaintly
pretty gift of hers; and he looked up and took his pipe out of his
mouth, and his wintry face was gone--and it was Spring. He smiled
and beckoned, and she hoisted her carnation flag,--unlatched the
French window and was stepping out to join him,--when Whishaw's voice
said behind her:
"Miss Forbis, mem, there is a gentleman--"
"A gentleman, Whishaw! But, of course, you mean Mr. Keller."
"I'm no!" Whishaw retorted. "I'm no' meaning the lawyer-body!"
"But I can receive no visitor! At a time like this..."
Miss Forbis' dismay rang in her tones. Her dark brows straightened.
Her mouth hardened a little as she turned to confront her servitor:
"I'm no' saying stric'ly a veesitor," Whishaw amended: "A caller I'se
ca' the body--gin need's be ca' him onything." As Whishaw showed a
card upon a Benares silversalver, his red-rimmed old eyes blinked,
and his frosty-apple visage assumed an expression of scandalised
dismay. "I'm sair loth to bring my mistress sic' a message, an' the
General's corp lying in the chap_ell_--an' the Funeral on
Monday,--and yoursel' an' the Colonel set mourning by a maisterless
hairth! But the big, black lad in khaki that rode oot on Alec
Govan's motor-cycle frae Cauldstanes the morn's morn, is deid set on
winnin' an answer from ye.... He says--an' Gude kens!--for a' his
medal an' his wound-stripes, the man may be lying!--that ye're
prepared to see him, an' hear what he has to say!" He added: "An'
I'm boun' to testify, gin he's nae respeckitable the dougs are
deceivit; for Bran an' Laddie an' Dawtie are fell freendly wi' the
man."
Yaill had approached the drawing-room window, by the steps leading up
to the terrace from the lavender-walk. He had heard, and his heart
contracted in a spasm of fierce suspicion, and his brows drew down
over narrowed, glittering eyes. He watched the face of Katharine as
she pondered over the card of the intruder. It at first occurred to
him that the stranger had ridden over from Whingates with a note from
Lady Wastwood, telling all. He had no sooner dismissed the idea than
another took the place of it. That woman, whom he had left at Coombe
Bay, had somehow discovered his destination. From her--and from no
other--this urgent stranger came....
"You will not think of seeing the fellow, Katharine? ... Under the
circumstances you might very well decline." ...
His voice, sounding strange in his own ears, brought Katharine's head
round, and called her absorbed eyes back to his beloved face. She
said, as Whishaw clacked his tongue noisily against his palate, and
fidgeted from one gouty foot to another:
"The name upon this card was familiar to my father. He told me some
weeks before his death, that he looked forward with great interest to
the coming of a Mr. Hazel--I suppose the Mr. John Benn Hazel of the
firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance Brokers, of
Cornhill--London--whose name is on this card.... I know it was his
intention to offer Mr. Hazel hospitality. His family--I am told they
are Jews of Palestine--has been for more years than I dare to
estimate--closely associated with our own.... He has a right--should
he wish to exercise it--to attend my father's funeral. Should he
even ask to see him--I should not venture to refuse."
Whishaw said, straightening his stooping back to soldierly erectness,
and holding the Benares tray against the seam of his trouser-leg:
"Vera' gude, Miss Forbis, mem. Will I bring Mr. Hazel here to ye, or
show him in the morning parlour? 'My business wi' the leddy,' says
he, 'is maist private, ye ken.'"
Katharine's order to show the visitor into the morning parlour was
forestalled by Yaill's saying:
"Receive Mr. Hazel here. While you talk to him I shall smoke another
pipe in the garden, if I may?" ...
He hardly gave back the smile that accompanied Katharine's assent.
She untied her blue apron and laid aside her veil. Yaill touched her
hand swiftly with his lips, and went out again into the frosty
morning sunshine, as Whishaw quitted the drawing-room, clacking
softly yet....
The door re-opened, showing his black, rook-like shape, bald brow,
sharp, little red-rimmed blue eyes, and withered-apple-visage,
plimmed into an expression of sour disapproval, behind the vast khaki
shoulders of a huge man who stooped low upon the room's threshold,
saluting its mistress with almost Oriental reverence....
If the accompanying words had been: "Hail to you, O lady!" instead of
"I'm glad to have the pleasure--" as John Hazel bent his gaunt
shoulders and lowered his square black head before the tall, womanly
shape that towered against its sunlit background of terrace and
garden, woodlands and snow-tipped hills, Miss Forbis would hardly
have been surprised. For his long right arm had shot out and
downwards, sweeping back with the fingers incurved, to touch breast
and lips and forehead. As he rose up to his great height of six feet
four inches, and some invisible, resistless hand--with the weight of
many centuries behind it--ceased to press down his head--the glamour
of his Eastern salutation fell from him like a discarded robe....
Katharine saw a big, raw-boned, brown-skinned man, of powerfully
Semitic type, probably a year or two over thirty; too gaunt to be
coarse, and too frankly middle-class in tone and manner to be
mistaken for a gentleman. And somewhere--somewhere--she had met the
man before....
To John as Whishaw closed the drawing-room door and its owner moved
forward with graceful, gracious greeting, the first sight of
Katharine brought its disappointing shock. For it was not the woman
he had unreasonably expected. Taller--he had only seen the Ideal
seated, remember! Older, with great, sad eyes, rust-coloured as the
withered leaves, surrounded with brownish circles. The rich
carnations that had bloomed in the other woman's cheeks, under the
peaked blue cloth storm-cap of Foreign Service, were missing. It was
not she, but a woman who was like her! Extremely like her,--John
conceded that. But older, paler, graver and more self-contained;
without the gay good-fellowship, the heartening smile--the
buoyancy--the atmosphere of youth....
And yet, as he stood by the chair to which she had pointed, waiting
impassively until she should have chosen and taken her own seat, he
knew that he stood in the presence of his very liege lady, whom by
virtue of an ancient oath one John Hazel was bound to serve, honour,
reverence, defend and obey....
He said to himself that he was glad the real Katharine Forbis was
older than _that other_. More dignified, more reserved, and all that
sort of thing. He was saying it again when the tall shape of a man
in khaki passed the open window on his left hand,--there were four of
these opening like doors on a level with the terrace--and a red spark
kindled in John's gaunt black eyes,--because he knew the man again.
He would deal with him presently. Meanwhile--he looked back at Miss
Forbis, and roughly caught his breath. Who had deemed her less than
young, with such eyes of gold and bramble-dew, and such roses
blooming in her cheeks, as her wide, beautiful mouth curved in a
happy smile. And that she WAS the Woman of the muddy road that had
led in April, 1915, to the Fighting Line east of Ypres--there could
be no doubt....
"Then it _is_ you!"--broke from him.... "I give you my word that
hundreds of times since that day on the Menin road, I've said to
myself I'd know you again anywhere--even if they'd shown me your skin
on a gate! But--up to this minute I've not been sure. Now I'm
certain!"
In the same breath she found him again:
"Private John Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion,
448th City of London (Fenchurch Street) Fusiliers! .... Well, I sent
the postcard to tell you about your friend.... Wallis--you see I
remember his name--shot in the shoulder with shrapnel. He wasn't
very badly hurt. What!--you never got my message?"
John grinned, showing his mouthful of big, white teeth.
"No such gay luck! Fritz handed me a Blighty one that same
afternoon, and I went down to the dressing-station dug-outs by the
Meat-Tray Express--the Wheeled Stretcher Line, I mean!--and then back
to the Base by the Gingerbread Chuff. Sucking your toffee.... My
word! that was some toffee. I kept the wrapper a long time--till the
nurses said it was germy, and pitched it in the fire."
Her heart warmed to the familiar soldier-slang. She gave back his
smile frankly.
"I think," she said, "I knew you from the first. But how wonderful
that you should be _the_ Hazel. The man my father"--She was graver
and older now, with that shadow of grief upon her face "--the man of
whose coming my dear father spoke, so often, and with such interest.
And now you will never meet on earth. Why, I wonder why?"
"Give it up. Altogether, this is a jolly queer stunt. So queer that
I've left off being astonished. Wasn't it one of those old
Shakespearian Johnnies who said: '_There are more things in Heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy._' Not that I'm by
way of cooling my heels outside Pit doors to see the Bard
played--give me a tuney Musical Comedy or a rattling Revue! But all
the same, old W.S. has got a knack of putting his finger on the
spot,--now hasn't he, Miss Forbis? ... But you ... I heard of your
being invalided Home. A strain, they called it. Did you get it that
day near Ypres?"
Katharine smiled. He remembered the smile, breaking over the face
like sunshine....
"Oh no! but in the September following, when the German airmen bombed
our Hospital. You see, they'd set on fire, and--"
"And you carried a man out. Hulking brute! Ought to have died
before he let a woman lift him. And--where were the orderlies, I
should like to know?"
The blustering tone angered Katharine. "What business is it of
yours?" was written on her stiffened face.
"The man had no choice because he was unconscious, and the orderlies'
hands were full. There were precious few of them anyhow.... Army
Nurses and V.A.D. girls evacuated the wards before you could turn
round. Lifting is nothing really--once you get the knack of it.
And--in those days I was as strong as a man. A really hefty man, I
mean!" She stretched out a long arm with slow, powerful grace,
looking down its fair rounded length with critical approbation, and
then rose up, impressing John not only by her splendid height, but by
her air of authority, and supple grace of movement. She said, moving
to an ancient rosewood writing-bureau, unlocking one drawer of many
in its upper part, and taking a letter out:
"Forgive me, if in view of the business in hand I remind you that
we're side-tracking. This letter my father received on December
21st. He gave it me to read--it is signed with the name upon your
card--'John Benn Hazel.' Do I understand that it was written by you?"
He explained, keeping his big, black eyes upon her:
"From Colthill War Hospital, Middlesex. I was there when Old
Mendel--when a confidential clerk in a relative's counting-house
brought me--just as he'd received 'em from the East--a copy of my
late grandfather's Will, and the documents and other things concerned
in this business.... There has been delay.... I ought to have
explained that a little keepsake here--a love-token from Brother
Boche--" he tapped his big chest, somewhere above the left clavicular
region--"kept me from getting on to the job before.... I'm really
frightfully sorry!"
"Of course. How could I forget your wound!" Her eyes softened as
they took in the two gold stripes that graced his cuff, the bagginess
of his khaki on the giant frame, and the brand-new ribbon of the
D.C.M. "You have been only recently discharged from Hospital and are
hardly quite strong yet. Are you?"
"First-class. It only touches me up in the puff now and then, like
hell--I beg your pardon!"
John flushed darkly under his tough mahogany hide, and amended:
"I meant to say that I lose my breath and can't get it back again.
But this is side-tracking." It was Katharine's turn to flush.
"About--about that letter.... You see, I regularly got the wind up
when I sat down to write to your father.... And so--I naturally fell
back upon the translated draft of the letter of instructions written
by my grandfather before his death and sent me with his Will."
Her doubtful face grew clear.
"At last I begin to understand.... The original letter and the Will
were written in Hebrew?"
"Well, naturally, since Hebrew was the old man's native tongue, when
he wasn't talking French or Modern Greek, or Arabic or Syriac...."
There was a spark of humour in the visitor's cavernous black eyes,
and Miss Forbis' wide, beautiful mouth began to curl a little at the
corners.
"This clears the air. Will you think me--I hope you will not think
me offensively personal, Mr. Hazel, if I say that I found between
your language and the phraseology of your letter, shall I say--a
discrepancy that rather mystified me."
"Sure that!"
He pounded his knee as he used the Colonial word that the War has
grafted upon our English speech for ever--and broke into his big
coarse laugh, stopping short to glance at her mourning dress, and
redden to his beetling eyebrows, and the cap of coarsely curling hair
that capped his high-domed head, as naïvely as a schoolboy.
But Katharine had forgotten to be critical. In glancing over the
letter in the big black handwriting of this big-nosed, black-avised
young man, its sentences had once more cast their curious glamour
over her. Her lips moved soundlessly as she whispered to herself:
"_To the present lord of the Towers of Kir Saba in North Britain, and
in Palestine, be it known by the word of Eli Ben Hazaël, present Head
of the House of Hazaël of Alexandria in Egypt, and Jaffa in
Palestine._
"_The sum of moneys lent by Issachar Ben Hazaël, Merchant, in the
Year 1146 of the Christian Era to Sir Hew Forbys, Knight, upon the
fields, streams, vineyards and groves with the Tower of Kir Saba in
Palestine hath been recovered with the interest thereupon due. The
Tower of Kir Saba with the groves, vineyards, streams and fields
appertaining, stand free from debt. Therefore are the sealed
writings returned, with the moneys that are over the sum of the
indebtedness: by the hand of a son of the House of Hazaël, who will
receive writings of acknowledgment for the same._
"_Let the present lord of the Tower of Kir Saba in Palestine and in
North Britain duly apprise the writer of this as to when it will be
convenient to him, to receive the representative of Eli Ben Hazaël._
_Kindly address:_
PRIVATE JOHN BENN HAZEL,
CITY OF LONDON (FENCHURCH ST.) FUSILIERS,
WARD NO. 8.,
COLTHILL WAR HOSPITAL,
MIDDLESEX."