For Katharine Forbis those two days of suspense, so fraught with fate
for the two she held dearest, were ordeals of anguish only made
bearable by the work that filled the daylight hours and the sleep,
begotten of the work--that came to her at night. On the morning
following the bomb-fight on the Shechem-Jaffa Road, the Base was
ringing with the seizure of Junction Station; the sensational escape
of Von Kressenstein's train, and the taking, by cavalry charges from
the north, of the strong place of Mughar--a mud village on a hill,
converted into a veritable wasp's nest by Turkish mountain-howitzers,
Turkish machine gunners and Turkish riflemen.
The temper of the enemy stiffened. Resistance still was
stubborn--difficulties of transport still held up the Expeditionary
Army in full sight of the Jerusalem-Shechem Road. Yet it was the Day
of the White Arm.... Three Captains' Crusaders of the Bucks Hussars
and Dorset Yeomanry led the dazzling charges that cleared the way for
the 52nd Division, and made of Mughar "not a sweet place to look at,"
as an English War Correspondent put it pithily--for many Turkish
heads being cleft in twain after the approved mediæval method--the
place wanted a lot of cleaning up. One of the glorious Three--son of
a great English Statesman, himself an Under Secretary for Foreign
Affairs and one of the Chief Whips of the 1915 Ministry--was shot
barely twelve hours after the victory. And before sunset on this
day, a distinguished Jew; financier, soldier, sportsman,
philanthropist--met death almost within sight of the Colonies founded
by his family on the Plains of Sharon, and south of Jaffa the
Beautiful....
On this same date Maurice Hazel, piloting a Handley-Page bomber on a
raid over the Hindenburg Line, was killed by a hit from German
shrapnel.... And Lady Wastwood, reading the War News in the late
edition of the _Alexandrian Courier_ and crying over men who had been
ancient flames, and boys who had been her dead boy's
School-chums--came on this undistinguished item among the casualties,
and recognised the name.
"'Maurice Benn Hazel' ... Kathy's huge Jew friend mentioned having a
brother Maurice in the R.F.C. As I really want an excuse for a word
with Kathy, I'll look her up and mention the thing. Though it seems
rather like making use of the poor dear boy! How callous we're all
getting. But I suppose we have to be, to carry on at all!"
With which conclusion, the day's work being over, Trixie removed the
traces of emotion with powder, and betook herself in search of
Katharine.
She found Miss Forbis in the rose-garden pavilion, reading letters
from England that had come by the afternoon's mail. Time had not
served until now to open them, and the first envelope had contained a
type-written enclosure within, a communication from Sir Arthur Ely,
appended here below:
HOLBORN COURT,
_November_ 3_rd_, 1917.
"MY DEAR MISS FORBIS,
Knowing you to be working with the Red Cross at Montana Convalescent
Hospital near Alexandria, and in the hope that Colonel Yaill--from
whom I have not heard since he left England last February, may have
communicated to you his present address--I have thought it best to
send you the enclosed copy of a letter recently delivered at his
Club, and opened by me as his solicitor--having authority from him,
in his absence, to deal with his correspondence, and administer his
business affairs. I am sufficiently old a friend of his and yours
also, to add my heartiest congratulations to you both.
"Very sincerely yours,
"ARTHUR CAMERON ELY."
Here is the enclosure:
"PARK AUXILIARY MILITARY HOSPITAL,
"HOODING,
"SUSSEX.
"_November_ 2, 1917
"DEAR SIR:
"A friend of mine who you met under the name of Nurse Lucy Burtonshaw
at the Convalescent Officers Camp, B---- Base in November 1915 has
asked me to write you her hands being full at present and feeling
herself unequal to the task.
"The fact is that while finishing her three years service as a
Probationer at the County General Hospital Leam Somerset in 1913 she
was married on the strict Q.T. at the Registrar's Office Leam to
Private J. Didlick of the 5th Lancers a young man known from
childhood and objected to by Lucy's parents on the grounds of his
being the son of the local baker and too much given to drink. In
August 1914 Private Didlick went to the Front with the First
Expeditionary Army and his name duly appeared upon the list of Killed
after the Battle of Mons. Nurse Burtonshaw regrets that she omitted
to mention this at the time of your marriage her hands being so full
just then.
"I will not detain you further except by saying that in April last on
the eve of the Battle of Arras Private now Lance-Corporal Didlick
with several other British prisoners escaped from the zone of fire
where they had been kept by the Germans at forced work and very badly
used Corporal Didlick particularly being covered with boils and
weighing only 8st. 31bs. when drafted Home and later on sent to this
Hospital I could hardly recognise him. Later I communicated with his
wife and advised her to break the news to you her proper place
undoubtedly being by her poor husband's side. Her hands being full
she has put off writing up to the present. Now at her request us
being old friends I have taken up the pen.
"Mrs. Didlick earnestly hopes you will regard bygones as bygones and
requests me herewith to enclose your cheque received for her last
quarter's allowance regularly forwarded since February by your
Solicitor, Sir Arthur Ely to whose care this communication is
addressed. In case of loss in the post things being so uncertain in
War Time I have sent another letter similarly worded care of Miss
Forbis, Kerr's Arbour, Nr Cauldstanes Tweedshire, N.B.
"I remain, Dear Sir,
"Truly yours
"DOROTHY PIDGE,
"_Certified Nurse ----th Nursing Unit R.R.C._"
"P.S. Excuse the liberty but I do hope you won't be hard on Lucy!
She means well but hasn't a particle of moral backbone."
If Katharine perused this queer letter with mingled sensations,
amazed joy and unutterable relief ruled predominant above all.
For it was over, the haunting day and nightmare of loss and
separation. Her bosom rose upon a long breath of relief, as the
burden passed away. The barrier dividing Katharine from all she held
dearest, had vanished at the wholesome touch of loyal Nurse Dorothy
Pidge.
"Thank God! and thank you--you honest-hearted woman! Now to tell
Edward--if I knew where to reach him!" was her thought. And the
claws of suspense fastened in her soul anew, and that moment's joyful
lightening of her heart made the weight that burdened it even more
intolerable to bear.
Not the cool sea-breeze that stole through the fretted sides of the
Khedive's marble pavilion, the beloved haunt of her leisure, nor the
fragrance of the November-blooming roses that climbed its walls, and
wreathed the balustrade of its terrace with trails of pink and
orange, cream and white and crimson; not the nightingales that sang
in the moss-cup oaks, nor the orioles that built amongst the
vine-trellises--where the fireflies would twinkle and gleam at dusk
when the nightingales sang their sweetest--could bring soothing to
her tortured mind, or rest to her overwrought nerves.
"I can't--stand--much more!" she said slowly, speaking aloud of
purpose, for the sheer relief of speech. "We have all got a point
beyond which we break, and this is my breaking-point. Oh! for some
news of those three men of mine!"
Edward Yaill, Julian and John Hazel.... She saw them individually,
each reduced to the size of a gnat, at the end of a long vista,
striving, and striving desperately, yet unable to meet and touch.
She saw them in the midst of a cloud of other human gnats, buzzing
and stinging.... She saw them borne down by numbers--she saw them
emerge triumphant. She saw--
"Darling Kathy, do unclench your hands and iron out your forehead,"
said the welcome voice of Trixie at this juncture: "Even a woman with
your appearance cannot afford to go on, looking like Lady Macbeth,
Clytemnestra and Antigone, rolled into one, for long!"
"Did I ... Do I?" Katharine asked absently....
"You both did and do," Trixie returned. She came and sat on the
balcony near Katharine and touched her lightly on the shoulder with a
long, thin but sympathetic hand. "You're rather a terrifying person
when you look like this, but I have a reason for being venturesome.
May I broach a subject I've avoided for ages? I need hardly explain,
I fancy, that the subject is Edward Yaill?"
Such burning colour flooded the face now turned to hers, that Trixie
experienced relief from forebodings that had haunted her. The
colossal coffee-coloured Jew with the coarse black hair, Cockney
accent and huge nose was nothing to Kathy! She always had had that
wonderful look when you mentioned Edward Yaill. She was unchanged...
It upset you to imagine that women like Kathy altered. It did you
good to find out that she stuck to the old love....
The subject broached, Trixie told her tale. Faithful to the motto of
the Liberal Ladies War Service League, "Do Anything, Go Anywhere,
Stick at Nothing and Never Grouse!" she had, pending her return to
active usefulness, been "rummaging out" cases in the General
Hospitals who wanted extra visiting, letter-writing and bucking. And
at No. 11 she had come across a Nice Man, newly convalescent from a
collection of intestinal symptoms prevalent among the Expeditionary
Forces,--assembled by the C.M.O. under the heading "Bilharziosis,"
and simplified to "Bill Harris," in the mouths of sufferers
therefrom....
"A Sergeant of the 'Tweedburgh Regiment' transferred-- Don't ask me
how! to a Lowland Territorial Battalion, and perfectly devoted to
Colonel Yaill. Nearly cried when he talked of him. Desperately keen
to get a letter written and smuggled Home--for of course the Censor
wouldn't dream of passing it!--to Yaill's sisters at his place in
Cumberland, and another to Miss Forbis, 'her that the Colonel ought
to have been married on--saying the Colonel is alive and serving with
the Secret Intelligence Corps in the Front in Palestine.'"
"Dear Lady Wastwood--"
"My child, don't put me off with interruptions! Of course I
explained to my poor sick man that the letter couldn't be properly
engineered, and might do Colonel Yaill harm if the contents got out.
But I told him you were out here, and should have his information.
The man swears Edward to be an intrepid Scout, famous for making his
way through the Turkish Lines, on foot or mounted on a swift horse,
sometimes alone!--sometimes with two companions.... He has been seen
in Cairo dressed as a French Staff Officer--we know he speaks the
language perfectly!--and in Constantinople as a Greek Interpreter to
one of the Embassies. And here in Alex, he has gone about disguised
as an Arab--or a Gippy of the Labour Corps--"
"I know it, dear Lady Wastwood, I was almost sure of it before!--I
have been certain since John Hazel came back from the Front four days
ago, to tell me--"
Trixie's green eyes enlarged under their arched black eyebrows, that
so much resembled musical slurs.
"Of course! I might have known. Do go on, like a Precious Person!
If a sieve about my own affairs, I'm a tomb for the secrets of
others!"
So Katharine, knowing this to be true, told Trixie the reason of her
anxiety. Characteristically the long thin finger pointed to the
doubtful spot:
"It's thrilling in the extreme. No wonder you're in tatters with
anxiety. But I can't help seeing that it's rather fatal to have two
different people plotting to save one man. Almost like a brace of
dentists tugging at a single tooth, isn't it? Why couldn't they have
Joined forces and worked it as a Syndicate? That's what your John
Hazel will try for, I feel it in my bones. One thing I must say! I
do wish the Basilisk hadn't anything to do with it! That
oily-tongued little Egyptian Flying Pasha gives me the creeps! But
the main thing just now is to buck up, and believe that everything
will come off rippingly. And I have a feeling in my bones it will!"
"And if it doesn't--if the news is the worst that can be told, I hope
that I shall be brave enough to bear it!" said Katharine. "I hope
that I shall never swerve from the belief that Love--as it exists
between clean-souled men and women--isn't only for this world! And
that the pain of frustrated earthly passion may be so mingled with
the Faith that looks forward,--forward and Heavenward!--that parting
for this little life may be robbed of its bitterest sting!"
"My dear, I can't climb up to your level," said Trixie, blinking her
green eyes and pursing her V-shaped, Pierrot mouth. "This
world--when my husband and boys were in it--was good enough, I'm
ashamed to say! And if they were back, I'm not going to pretend I
should bother much about Heaven, and I do hope you've too much sense
to believe that I should! But this business of yours will be pulled
off all right. I feel it in my bones, and they never deceive me.
Your brother Julian and your friend the Jew, and poor Edward
Yaill--whom I treated so frightfully out of pure championship for you
when he fell over my feet into the Express for Carlisle--that he fell
out again!--All three will get safe out of the place with the name
that reminds me of Sunday School examinations. And you and I will be
standing here, like the heroine and her bosom-friend in the scene
that comes just before the return of the hero in what American people
call a four-mile-reel-scream, when a letter or a wire will bring the
glad news. And you will read out the letter to me as they say the
film people do it, keeping your features intelligently in play, and
saying anything that comes into your head. Like this: 'Pepper,
mustard, Cerebos, olive-oil and salad dressing! Piccalilli and
catsup. O, Harrods! ... After all these months of beastly
eating--tinned brawn for lunch again!'"
Trixie's well-meant nonsense served its end, for Katharine could
resist no more and burst out laughing.
"You dear!" Miss Forbis's laughing eyes were soft as she passed an
arm round the long narrow waist and warmly kissed the thin white
cheek. She added, as Trixie returned the caress: "You're priceless
to me, Commandant! When I feel down, or get the blues--with reason
or without them--you're a better pick-me-up than all the Worcester
sauce in the world."
"Horrible stuff!" Trixie made a grimace, "I've always loathed it.
Once I had a dear old friend who drank herself to death on that. Her
husband--lucky man! never suspected until she died--and they found
the chimney in her dressing-room simply blocked with empty shilling
bottles. Who's that? _Di ê di_? Have you a message there? ..."
A cautious footstep on the gravel path, badly neglected since the
War, and overgrown with patches of rafia, had first reached Lady
Wastwood's ears. Now a man--recognised by Katharine and her friend
as the dapper French-speaking Italian chauffeur who had driven them
from Alexandria three days previously, in the Daimler car belonging
to Essenian, stepped from the trellised shade of a path into the
light of the rose-wreathed doorway, and saluting the ladies without
speaking, held out a letter to Katharine.
News....
Something in Katharine's bosom leaped.... She felt stifled, as
though the fretted, sun-flecked walls of the Khedive's rose-pavilion
were those of a brick-built prison, impervious to light and air. But
with an effort she mastered herself, and took the offered
letter--hoping the Italian did not note the trembling of her hand.
It was a square heliotrope envelope, violently scented with some
clinging Eastern perfume that revolted Katharine. The address to
"Miss Forbis, Convalescent Hospital, The Palace, Montana," was typed
in vivid violet ink. Unwilling to open the letter in the presence of
a stranger, Katharine hesitated, looking at the Italian:
"Is there any reply to this? ..."
Lady Wastwood had spoken. The Italian answered in his nasal French,
looking at Katharine:
"The car is waiting.... If Mademoiselle would read!"
Katharine, conscious of the unsteadiness of her hands, opened the
type-addressed envelope. The sheet of paper it contained bore this
message:
"Come at once. Urgent! J. H."
The four-word message and the initials beneath were typed in violet
ink. Underneath was an impression in coarse green sealing-wax of the
onyx signet-ring....
Katharine was silent, mastering her deep excitement. That green seal
seemed to burn through her eyes and sear her brain as she stared at
it. Again she heard John Hazel saying:
"Suppose I were ever to send a line saying '_Come at once!_' ...
Well, don't come!--unless the paper bears an impression of this, in
sealing-wax, or clay, or bread or mud.... And test it by the ring
you wear, before you accept it...."
The test could be made at once. She glanced at the signet on her
left hand and then at the Italian chauffeur. His round, black eyes
were fixed on her, watching her eagerly. She spoke to the man in
quiet, level tones:
"I will come in a few minutes. Be good enough to wait for me...."
"As Mademoiselle desires." The Italian's bird-bright eyes snapped
excitedly. "I will go back and wait for her. But--" he shrugged and
spread his olive hands, "we have a long way to go. Mademoiselle
understands that, naturally...."
"I understand, and I will come in five minutes," Katharine said, with
her tone of calm authority.
"My dear--" Lady Wastwood asked anxiously, as the Italian saluted,
wheeled and went out of the pavilion: "You've had news!--I see it in
your face."
"No news!" Katharine said. "But a summons, most certainly." Days
previously, she had taken a careful impression in scarlet sealing-wax
of the relievo head of Hercules upon her black onyx signet. Now she
took from her cigarette-case the card bearing the impression, and
laying the letter on the marble table the pavilion contained, placed
the card face downwards over the green seal on the heliotrope paper.
The surfaces of paper and card met and wedded, as the green relievo
sank into the scarlet intaglio, and the two Hercules' heads became
one.
"I'm fearfully impressed." Trixie's eyes were circular with interest
and curiosity. "But what on earth is that for? ..."
"Just to make sure," Katharine said, turning away, "that the message
that says, '_Come At Once. Urgent!_' is really from John Hazel. Now
I must go. I've a suit-case ready packed in our sleeping-tent, and
the Commandant has been prepared against my being called suddenly
away. As for the duty, Molly Lyne-Soames carries on instead of me.
She's prepared--a regular brick of a girl!--and so--this until you
next hear from me!" She caught the astonished Trixie in a warm
embrace, kissed her thin cheeks and left a tear on one of them. "God
bless you, you kindest of women!" she called, turning on the
threshold of the rose-pavilion to wave her hand. "And so good-bye,
until we meet again!"
And flushed and radiant, Katharine was gone, taking with her in her
haste a trail of a thorny climbing rose that had clung to her as
though to keep her, and leaving its crimson petals scattered on the
stone. As her light hurried footsteps died away--a little puff of
the westerly breeze swept the card and the heliotrope letter, with
their green and red seals, off the marble table to the floor--and
hurried them into a corner as though their work were done.