He rose, and took from his pocket, and held out to Miss Forbis, a
flat metal spatula of Eastern make, attached to a silver chain. She
looked from the clumsy object in the big brown hand to the grave face
above it, whose dense black eyes had a reddish glow; and saw that his
temples and blue-shaven upper-lip and jaws glistened with points of
moisture, though the sun had but the tempered heat of these first
days of November, and a sea-breeze coming out of the West whispered
among the leaves.
"How am I of his race?" she asked, after a moment's hesitation.
"Please be good enough to keep the key.... One of these days I may
muster curiosity to visit the shrine in the chapel. Just now, to
tell the truth, I want more to talk to you. I've put it off, as one
does dodge sorrowful things, but now I've got to tell you...." Her
voice wavered and her lips were tremulous. "It has to do with the
letter you brought me from Palestine...."
"I am quite as anxious to hear as you are to tell me. But first,
Miss Forbis, you must visit the shrine in the chapel. You ought to
have gone there before, but you wished to see the garden, and your
wish is a command here,--I could only obey! But now--"
He offered her the clumsy key, coolly and imperturbably. There was
incredulity in her tone, as she inquired:
"You don't mean that I must go, whether I wish it or do not?"
"I am sorry to coerce you," he said with stern distinctness. "You
must understand that. But, before we hear the Sunset Call to Prayer
from the Mosque of Sidi Amr, it is necessary that you should visit
the shrine. Understand me--it is incumbent upon you as the
representative of your family. You have to!"
"'Have to! ...'"
She rose to her feet, and her angry eyes swept over him
contemptuously. To be ordered about by this man was
intolerable--absurd.... They faced each other, and the old gulf
opened and yawned between them--as it had in the drawing-room at
Kerr's Arbour, eight months before.
"'Have to!' ... You rather forget yourself, don't you, Mr. Hazel? ..."
"I do what is my duty in enforcing respect to _him_!"
He drew himself to his towering height, folded his great arms, and
looked at her calmly.
He spoke again, and the profound tones vibrated through her, like the
sound of a Buddhist temple-bell....
"_Through the centuries since he died for the Faith of the Nazarene,
Christian priests have blessed his ashes on one day in every year.
Not even when Alexandria lay in cinders and ruin, was there lacking a
son of the Hazaël to guard his relics here. But since Marcus Fabius
the Tribune came here on his way to Britain with the Tenth Legion of
Constantine,--and the son of Marcus, Florens Fabius--journeyed from
Rome twenty years later,--and the Crusaders Fulk and Hew came eleven
hundred and sixty years after, and Bishop Ralph in 1809, and Philip
in 1881, to kneel before his shrine; no heart filled with his blood
has beaten in the lonely chamber, no lips warm with his life have
touched the chilly stone._"
The clang of the great voice ceased to oppress her sense of hearing.
She bent her noble head in splendid humility, a great lady, rebuked
by the descendant of an Hebrew steward, and said:
"You have reproached me very justly. My only excuse is--that I did
not understand!"
He went with her across the lawn, and ushered her through the loggia
door into a passage, and up a wide staircase leading by one short
flight of steps to the single floor above. She took the curious
Eastern key he silently offered her, and put it in the lock of the
door he had stopped at. The lock yielded easily....
"Won't--won't you come too?" she whispered, oppressed with an
increasing sense of awe, and John Hazel's voice answered from behind
her:
"We are the Guardians of the Shrine, and yet we may not enter. It
would not be according to the Law!"
Thus Katharine went in alone, her heart-beats quickened by the
startled whirr of wings, as the busy swallows quitted their
nest-building in the upper corner of one of the three tall windows,
filled in with lattices of carved and painted marble, and looking on
the garden, now all golden in the rays of the westering sun.
The ceiling rose to a frescoed dome, with an opening at the apex.
The spice of incense and the perfume of flowers yet sweetened the
still air of this place of memories. It was a revelation of
wonderful art, its dome and walls covered with ancient frescoes,
representing in all the opulent symbolism of early Christianity, the
anchor, the palm, the Dove with the olive-branch; the Vine, the heavy
ear of Wheat, the Fish, the Chalice encircled with rays of
glory,--the Good Shepherd carrying His lamb. The carved and
inwrought and costly screens of cedar and ebony-wood were all inlaid
in mother o' pearl, silver and ivory. Nothing had been spared in
money or labour, to perfect this--the replica in miniature, of the
interior of a Coptic Christian Church. Save that seemly, exquisite
neatness, and scrupulous cleanliness reigned here instead of dust and
dirt, spider-webs, and bird and bat-droppings; and the disquieting
disorder which too often, in the East, prevails in such a sacred
place....
Katharine passed over the mosaic floor of red and green porphyry and
grey crystalline syenite, and through the central opening in the
latticed outer screen. The gates stood open, showing an altar,
wrought of black Egyptian basalt, standing under a baldaquin of
inlaid ebony-wood borne on four carved and inlaid columns, the rich
embroidered curtains of the baldaquin being drawn back. Four
man-high candlesticks of silver, holding great unlighted tapers, were
set one at each corner of the basalt altar. On the altar was an
upper covering of rich silk, embroidered with gold. On this were a
censer of silver open-work, a silver-gilt or golden incense-box, and
two golden candlesticks of magnificent workmanship flanked the usual
copy of the Four Gospels, sealed in a gold and jewelled case.
Three silver lamps hung before the altar. In the central lamp alone
burned a tiny votive flame. The altar was not raised above the
floor.... Its front was uncovered, and a small square opening in
this resembled a doorway.
In the cavity revealed by the opening stood an alabaster urn of
funerary type and evidently of great antiquity. Katharine, kneeling
on the upper step of the little sanctuary, could, despite the
tempering of the light by the screens and window-lattices, clearly
distinguish below the Greek monogram of the Sacred Name, in irregular
lines of incised Roman capitals,--still rusty-bright with antique
gilding,--the epitaph in faulty Latin:
"MARTYR CHRISTI, AMICVSPAVPERVM.
EGO PHILOREMUS FLORENS FABIVS. CLARISSIMVS. PRÆTOR VECTIGALIVM
ÆGVPTORVM. ALEXANDRIA. SEPTIMVS ANNO AVGVSTI MAXIMIANVS ÆGYPTI
IMPERATORIS. QUE VIXIT. ANN. XL. MENS. V.D. VII. MENSIS
OCTOBRIS IDIBUS. PORTA SPEI INTROGRESSVS SVM."
A rough translation of which might run:
"_The Martyr of Christ, the Friend of the Poor. I, Philoremus
Florens Fabius, of Senatorial Rank, Receiver-General at Alexandria of
the Taxes of Egypt. In the Seventh Year of the Reign of Cæsar
Maximianus, Emperor of Africa. Aged Forty Years, Five months and
Seven Days. On the Ides of October, Entered in at the Gate of Hope._"
X
Katharine Forbis came out of the chapel, noiselessly shutting the
door behind her, and stood, looking silently down at a man who knelt
there. He raised the head that had been bowed nearly to the floor,
and rose to his feet at the sound of her footstep, removed his cap,
and, standing aside made room for Miss Forbis to pass him before he
re-locked the door. Then he followed her downstairs, through the
passage and doorway leading to the loggia, and back into the garden
they had left....
Copts with tied-back sleeves and tucked-up _gelabiyehs_ were moving
among the flower-beds with wheeled tanks and syringes, setting water
running in the channels bordering the paths of the rose-alleys and
shrubberies. Already the perfume exhaled from wet rich soil and
dampened petals freshened the air, and the sultry heat had abated.
Coolness was coming with the short Eastern twilight, the sky above,
and to the west, was streaked with pomegranate and amber; the
elongated shadow of the house, with its dome and pediment and flat
loggiaed roofs, stretched dusky-blue over the grass to the foot of
the red granite seat under the moss-cup oak.
Katharine's heliotropes were lying on the seat, faded already but
still exhaling sweetness.... As she lifted them from the hot red
stone, the faint south breeze brought to her across the crowded
buildings, and the traffic of Khedive street, the mellow voice of a
muezzin from the minaret of the Mosque Sidi Amr, crying, as it cries
thrice a day, from thousands of minarets in four world-continents:
"_Allah is most great! I witness that there is no God but Allah!
And Mohammed is the apostle of Allah! Come to prayer! Prayer is
better than work! Come to salvation! God is most great! There is
no God but Allah!_"
When the voice from the mosque, and its myriad human echoes had
vibrated into silence, and the distant noise of the crowded streets
had rolled back into hearing again,--Katharine said to the man who
stood silently beside her, his khaki cap dangling from his big right
hand:
"Mr. Hazel, you have to forgive in me an indifference that may have
wounded you. But until I found myself in that chapel, in the
presence of the reliquary urn that speaks of his martyrdom, my
ancestor was no more to me than a legendary old Roman, who lived and
died in a remote Past, in a distant part of the world. But since I
said a prayer for him before that altar, it was--as though he had
only died a month or two ago! ... Now, it crushes me to realise that
through more than sixteen centuries, you and yours have guarded those
ashes in the urn! ..."
"It is true. Since the forefather of Ephraim--you have seen
Ephraim--it was he who attended you here from Montana--brought back
the ring to Alexandria, and the widow opened the sealed packet--the
wishes of the Founder of the House of Hazaël have scrupulously been
carried out. There has always been a Christian hand to clean the
lamp and feed it with oil daily, and place fresh flowers in the vases
on one day in the year.... Though I have heard that in the days of
the Great Earthquake--when fifty thousand people perished in the fire
or were buried beneath the ruins,--there was no oil for the famine
that then prevailed...."
The deep monotonous voice that spoke in somewhat archaic English--was
and was not the voice of John Hazel.... And suddenly, with a shudder
and a crisping of the nerves as she looked at and listened to
him,--Katharine doubted whether he realised that he was speaking at
all....
"Chosroes the Persian King," the deep voice went on, "laid siege to
the city,--and the Arab Amru, general of Omar's Saracen
armies,--wrested it from the Persians and held it:--but before the
urn,--hidden in a secret chamber of this dwelling, the votive lamp
burned still! And as a weaker hawk by suddenness snatches a quail
from a hawk that is by far the stronger--and as the stronger pursues
and wrests it from the first, even so the Greeks took Alexandria by
cunning from the Saracens--and the Saracens won her back again--yet
the lamp went on burning, for the hands that tended it were faithful,
and the children of Hazaël's children's children were sedulous to do
his will. Then in the Fourteenth Century of your Christian Era came
the Crusaders and sacked and spoiled the city. But the lamp was not
quenched even then! ... Nor when the French seized Alexandria--nor
when the British took and held it--nor when they ceded it to Mehmet
Ali--did the lamp cease to burn.... Jewish oil is very good, and
Jewish hearts remember! The Past is living as the Present in the
mind of the Jew. The negress whom you saw to-day, and her husband
Zaid, are Christians. It is they who are entrusted--like their
forerunners, with the keeping of the place...."
His tone changed. He spoke now in his own clipped and slangy
vernacular.
"By the way--I want to say--with reference to the apology you
were--so--gracious as to offer me, that I think it was awfully
ripping of you! But for a thing I said, a bit back, that rather
rattled you.... _I_ don't apologise at all! ..."
"Dear John Hazel, I haven't even asked you!" In her frank, womanly,
impulsive way, she stretched out a hand and lightly pressed his. "I
have learned from you the priceless worth of Jewish loyalty and
Jewish honour;--and a devotion for which I don't know even how to
begin to express my gratitude and esteem! Unless in some way like
this--"
He started, and his dark hand clenched; for carried away by an
irresistible impulse, Miss Forbis had bent aside and brushed it
lightly with her lips. The instant the impulse had had its way she
realised her mistake.... For the man's great frame quivered from
head to foot as though the ague fit of fever were upon him.... He
mastered the trembling with an effort that left him rigid; and
said,--his face yet stiffly averted and his black eyes bent upon the
ground:
"You asked me a good many months ago,--I don't mistake--for I
remember everything you've ever said to me!--if I thought that you
and I had ever lived on earth before now?" He went on as she bent
her head, sensing the movement rather than seeing it. "What I said
then, I say again! ... I don't believe either of us is by way of
making a second visit to this little old planet.... But somehow we
are influenced by those who have passed on! Not by the hanky-panky,
table-rapping, automatic pencil-scribbling Spooklets you summon up as
with your thumbs crossed,--points downwards--and your little fingers
jammed against those of your right-and-left hand neighbours,--you sit
round a rubber-covered table in a stuffy, darkened room.... Spirits
of dead poets who've forgotten how to turn a rhyme!--dead historians
who mix up Alexander the Great with Napoleon the Little--and
perpetrate howlers that would disgrace a Fourth Standard Board School
kid.... Dead Editors who can't spell for peanuts.... And dead
chemists who're knocked out by the formula of H2O!"
He moved behind the seat and sat on the other end of it, crossing his
long legs, slipping his left arm from the sling, and nursing a
big-boned knee in both powerful hands as he went on:
"Put it that those who carried in their blood the germs that you and
I have sprung from--living on the Other Side as conscious
Intelligences,--are permitted by the Divine Power Who rules things
visible and invisible,--to sway us, help us, prompt our actions,
check our impulses and desires--and you have what I believe,
concentrated down to tabloid form! On the whole, your Catholic faith
in Guardian Angels isn't much unlike it. Only, instead of a
bright-winged spirit hovering somewhere near me, I've felt as though
a big old man, dark and strong, like my father,--was keeping his eye
on me.... And the bias of the lead he gave,--quite definite when you
shut your eyes--and felt back in the dark of your mind along the
spider-thread that led to him,--was definitely for Right and clearly
opposed to Wrong! ..."
Hugging his knee, he looked for the first time directly at Katharine,
since that swift incautious touch of her lips had levelled the last
barrier, and turned his blood to flame. There was no shamed
consciousness in the pure eyes that met his.... She listened, and
his thoughts were mirrored in the swift changes of her face....
"I didn't shape out this theory of mine, till I was getting close on
thirty. I'd lived all my life amongst Christians and Jews who
faithfully believed in Nothing!--and what one saw, and touched and
tasted was quite enough for them and for me! That I ran anything but
straight, there's not the least earthly use denying...." His memory
went back to Birdie Bright, and others of her liberal sisterhood, and
a dusky flush burned under his tawny, sun-baked skin. "But when the
War broke out, and I joined the London Terriers--and saw men dying in
the mud of France and Flanders, as up to date I'm seeing 'em die in
the dirt of Palestine!--the advantage of living clean and being ready
to answer to one's number came home to me as it never had before....
And Life was sweet, because it was so damnably uncertain! ... Men
dealt Death every hour to the son of some mother, and no one could
have guessed when it mightn't be his turn! Fellows used to tell me I
killed men as if I liked doing it!--and I'm bound to admit I did! ...
They said I sang as I fought,--in Hebrew one learned bloke swore it
was! Though, as I hardly knew a word,--it couldn't have been the
truth. But this is true, that in the blinding thick of the scrap I'd
feel that big man near me.... I've seen him--or as good as!--signing
and waving me on.... And when I came back to Hospital, and got that
letter from Jaffa, and took over the Title Deeds, and the
Guardianship of the Ashes; and put on the onyx signet-ring--"
"Then?" Her clear eyes were intent upon him....
"Then, instead of one old man, big and dark and brawny, strangely
dressed--standing somewhere back of me, grimly willing me on; I
seemed to be--I seem now!--to be looking back through Time down an
interminable line of such men.... And the biggest of all the big old
men is right away at the end! ... That's all! ..." He put down the
knee he had nursed.
"We Catholics believe that the souls of our dead love us and pray for
us; and by Our Lord's permission--may sometimes help us in need. Do
you think--do not answer unless you wish!--that he--your Big Old
Man--ever suggests answers to you? ... Or prompts you with knowledge
having reference to bygone matters? ... Forgotten, old, long-buried
things, of which you could not otherwise know? ..."
"I think--" He turned his face to Katherine, and it was no longer
stern and grim, but wore the toothy, cheerful grin of Private
Abrahams--"that sometimes that Biggest Old Man of All is quite close
to me. Towering up over my head, and sticking out all around me!
And the thing he wants I've got to do, and the line he points I
follow. And have to until Kingdom Come, and All the Rest, Amen! ..."
"Is he huge and tawny-brown with coarse curls of jet-black hair--and
a great beard--and a fillet of white leather, set with green
stones--round his forehead? ... Has he a face much like yours, but
stern as Destiny? ... Is he wrapped in a great black mantle with a
hood like a Dominican's? Does he wear immense thigh-boots and carry
an iron-shod staff? ..."
The memory of her dream, months back at Kerr's Arbour, had prompted
Katharine's question. John Hazel turned and looked at her in utter
amaze.
"That's how _I_ see him, but how do _you_ come to know? ..."
"I don't know,--but I saw a man like that in a dream, once.... I
seemed to be in danger, threatened by evil beings, and he came to the
rescue. That's absolutely all! But, let me out of the depth of my
own ignorance, give you a word of warning. This strange gift of
yours ought to be held reverently. Kept a profound secret, and never
under any circumstance? whatever submitted to a stranger's control.
You understand?"
"All right! I'll be wide--O!" His black eyes snapped as he
answered, and she went on:
"Now to come back to usual things, look at this flower, and tell me
whether you know it?" She was holding out to him a withered spike of
multifold white blossoms, exhaling a faint and delicate smell:
"That lily-thing...." He took it carefully in his big fingers. "All
through October it was blooming in Palestine. Acres and acres of
it--all white and yellow--when I left the Front to come down here.
Smells nice!" He sniffed at it cautiously. "Something between a
West End church got up for a Society wedding,--and the hall of a
house blocked up with florist's boxes--where there's going to be a
first-class funeral.... Presently, when the Spring comes along,
there'll be scarlet tulips, and rose and purple anemones, and
pink-and-white turncap lilies, and flowers I couldn't as much as name
to you--miles and miles of 'em swarming over the plains, and covering
the knees of those old Judæan Hills. The name of this is asphodel.
I forget who told me! Where did you get it? ... I haven't seen it
here! ..."
"It came in the letter you brought me from Palestine...." She took
back the withered flower and slipped it back within her blouse. His
eyes followed it, and she went on: "It is of the letter I wanted
particularly to speak to you. For it tells me that Julian--my
brother--is alive! ..."
"And a prisoner! ..." He spoke with certainty....
"And a prisoner at a Turkish labour-camp!"
"What are you going to do? ..."
Her bosom heaved in a perplexed sigh. Her broad brows knitted, and
her clear eyes were clouded as she turned them upon John:
"Move Heaven and earth in any way possible to get my poor boy out of
that earthly hell! Meanwhile one must wait, I suppose--"
"Does it strike you as a case likely to benefit by waiting?"
"No!--and in spite of that there is nothing to do but wait.
Unless--unless you, who were so prompt to help in those troubled days
at Kerr's Arbour, could suggest any--definite plan of action to me
now? ..."
"I'll do my best, you may be sure!"
"I know you will," she responded gratefully. "But first I must put
you in possession of the facts. Julian--"
"Is at Shechem.... I know it already.... No!" For her eyes had
cried out to him "Edward! ..." "From another informant than Colonel
Yaill. The airman who brought me here,--an Egyptian
reconnaissance-officer I met at Salonika--happens to be on special
duty at the Palestine Front just now.... Wing-Major Essenian
Pasha.... Perhaps you've heard the name? ..."
She thought, and answered:
"Yes, I have often seen it mentioned in Despatches, in association
with feats of aviation; bombing-raids carried out single-handed for
the most part; dazzling reconnaissances over strongholds held by the
enemy...."
"That's my man. 'A vivid personality,' my mother'd have ticketed
him.... He was an officer of the Khedive's Artillery in prehistoric
ages--at the time of the Egyptian Army Revolt under Arabi Pasha.
That was about 1881. And he was with Hicks Pasha's Expedition in
1883--against the Mahdi--which got wiped out by the Baggara near El
Obeyd.... He had a command under Baker Pasha in 1884, and was with
the Dongola Relief Advance,--and with the Khartoum Column in 1897 ...
Emin Pasha was a pal of his--and Gordon thought no end of him....
When the South African War of 1900 broke out he'd retired--was living
at Ismailia--as a wealthy Egyptian ex-officer of Engineers.... Took
up aviation and started a Flying Club here in Alexandria about
1911.... Gave the Club an aërodrome--with hangars and
everything!--the big place you've seen near the Water Works,--and
another at Ismailia where he lives--and another on the Upper Nile!
... And as he flies like Satan, the Government snapped at him, when
he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps in 1914...."
"He must be a brave man! ..."
"Got nerve enough for anything! ... And to look at him you'd guess
him to be thirty-five as the limit.... Yet there are old men here in
Alexandria who've known him since they were gay young Johnnies,--and
they're ready to bet their wigs and false teeth that he's always been
the same! ..."
"Could Essenian Pasha be of use in this particular emergency? ..."
"You mean your brother's case? ... He had the facts from me at
Salonika.... I said the brother of a friend of mine--a Chaplain
serving with the Expeditionary--was missing since the storming of
Scimitar Hill and supposed to have been killed.... And I mentioned
his being a Catholic priest, and added his name, and a few
particulars. For instance, I'd heard from the landlady at the _Cross
Keys_, Cauldstanes, months ago, that Father Forbis was very handsome.
'As like oor Miss Forbis as gin they were twins'--I can't do her
Scotch for peanuts, 'but blue-eyed and wi' fair hair.'"
"It is true. Except about us being so much alike," she said, her
eyes now openly brimming over. "For Julian has almost the beauty of
an angel, and when he sings, the voice of one. My father worshipped
him.... So did Mark--and I for that matter! ... So did the priests
and the students at the Seminary, the Prior and the Fathers at the
Monastery, and the officers and men of the Brigade with which he
served.... You should see the letters they wrote me when his death
was reported. And now!--Don't be scared!--I'm not going to cry."
She brought out a little filmy handkerchief and dried the tears
bravely, and put it away again....
"Crying isn't of any use. Forget that I was stupid enough to shed
tears!--they are over and done with now. Tell me how your friend of
the R.F.C. could help us in this strait?"
John Hazel hugged his knee again, and said, with knitted eyebrows:
"You mean, how I think, and he believes, he could help us,--since he
dropped down in our lines the day after Sheria. He'd been doing a
lot of reconnaissance over Hebron and Shechem, and a shell from a
Turkish A.A. had burst near them--and Captain Usborn of the
Engineers, his observer--was lying over, stone-dead--behind his Lewis
gun.... Shot through the head. See--this is the bullet that did
it!" He slipped two fingers inside a front-pocket of his tunic, drew
out and showed her the dented cone of lead....
"Isn't that," her fine brows frowned, "rather a gruesome relic to
carry? ..."
"Well, you know!--that's as you happen to look at it. I wasn't out
for mascots--the thing came my way, and so I just froze on....
And"--he dropped the bullet back again, "then Major Essenian Pasha
sent for me, and asked me--I'd flown with him several times near
Salonika--"
John Hazel spoke in a low voice calculated just to reach her ear:
"He asked me whether I'd replace Usborn on the flight back to
Ismailia,--if permission could be wrested from the Powers that Be?
... Then he went on to tell me of something he'd got from an Arab,
with reference to a British prisoner in the labour-camp at Shechem.
A Catholic priest, a tall fair man, astonishingly handsome,--who was
suffering brutal ill-usage at the hands of Hamid Bey...."
"'Hamid Bey!'" She caught at the name. "Colonel Yaill speaks of
that man in my letter.... He is the Turkish Commandant of the
prison-camp at Shechem." ...
"He ought to be Commandant of a Division in Hell, going by what I've
heard of him! By the way, may I ask you not to mention his name in
the hearing of my aunt.... For we Hazaëls," said John with a bitter
sneer--"have a little family score of our own to settle with His
Excellency, Hamid Bey, Miralai of the Shechem Prison Camp...."
"I shall not forget. I will make a point of being careful! ... But
forgive me if I ask you again, how you think this officer--Major
Essenian Pasha--could help my brother now? ..."
"Well, for one thing, knowing the lie of the camp pretty well, the
Pasha could carry a passenger.... A man who'd be prepared for
risks--to some place in the neighbourhood of Shechem. At night, of
course I mean,--and drop him there quietly, and fly back at a stated
hour--and pick him up again! He could even--given a suitable
machine, made to carry more weight and bulk than a mere two-seat
scouter--pick up two men near Shechem--and take them to the British
lines!"
She drank in the words, her fascinated gaze fixed on the long
mahogany-hued hawk-face, which held her with the unwavering stare of
its glowing black eyes. She asked with a catch in her hurried breath:
"And the--the 'man prepared for risks,' who would undertake to
venture--?"
"Disguised as a Bedawi of a tribe on good terms with the Turks.... I
know enough Arabic to get on with. That takes the edge off the risk
... lessens the handicap! Call the chances seventy-five to one
against--" said John Hazel coolly,--"and I suppose you wouldn't be so
much over the estimate! ..."
"But"--she heard her voice coming from a long way off, out of a
breathless stillness: "where is the man who would undertake so
perilous a thing?" _Edward!_ her heart throbbed in her, _he is
thinking of Edward!_ ...
John Hazel answered quietly:
"You see the man here! ..."
"You? ..."
Her heart gave a great leap against Yaill's hidden letter,
stopped--and then went on beating again:
"You mean yourself?--and I thought--"
"I told you I estimated the chances against, at seventy-five to one.
So it isn't quite the sort of job you start another man on! It's the
kind of thing you calculate to carry through on your own hook. The
only thing that badgers me is the chance that your friend the
Colonel--"
Their eyes met. He went on, slowly syllabling the words:
"Might be--calculating to play his own game about when I start mine.
And for us to clash--"
The startled intake of her breath did not escape him. She finished:
"Would be fatal.... Yes--I can understand! ..."
"For us to clash would bally well upset the apple-cart. You've no
idea when Colonel Yaill--"
"He has not named a date! ..."
"But he is going to have a shot at getting your brother out of that
labour hell at Shechem...." He studied her face, with its clear eyes
and sweet determined mouth.... "And he's told you so in
confidence--and you're not going to give away the show! ... Of course
you're right! Still--you'll own--it's a bit of a handicap.... 'Too
many cooks....' But I'm forewarned, so we'll hope the broth won't be
spoiled! Wish we could send the Colonel the tip--but in that line
there's nothing doing! One thing I'm sure of. He'd know me again
wherever he happened to knock up against me!--and I'd know him if I
saw his skin nailed on a gate!" She shuddered, and he added, as a
short, slight, dark-skinned officer came out at the lower door
opening on the loggia, ushered with scrupulous respect by the
black-robed Ephraim. "Now,--may I present to you Major Essenian
Pasha? ... He has something to say to me on the quiet about
this--projected excursion, or he wouldn't have dropped in here! ...
Lives at Ismailia, as I've said.... And before him, better drop no
hint of knowing what I've told you.... I'll explain later, why I
think it best...."
She said, proudly rearing her beautiful head on her long white throat:
"You need fear no incautious betrayal of your confidence from me...."