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.