of Lady Norwater, and his look was rather grim. In his mind's ear he
heard again the sweet little voice saying in its fashionable slang
jargon:
"Oh no! I rather cotton to kiddies. It's the bother of having 'em
doesn't appeal. It puts everything in the cart for the Autumn Season."
Still, the recent remembrance of her piteousness softened the Doctor's
never very adamantine heart towards her, the humming-bird broken on the
wheel of implacable Fate. Not unnatural, after all. More of a woman
than one would have thought her. How she had clasped her tiny hands
together and entreated him, when the worst was feared for her, to save,
to save her child.
"Franky's child. Perhaps--the boy he hoped for. Oh! to have to say
_hoped_, hurts so dreadfully. Yes, yes! I will be brave and good and
quiet.... I will do everything that you say. Ah, now I know why all
these days I have felt Franky near me, and seen his eyes looking at me
out of every stranger's face."
Margot did not cry out in her pain and loneliness for her friend Patrine
to come to her, though she sent loving, grateful messages whenever Pat
called or 'phoned. But she had said to Saxham, only that morning:
"Doctor, I met your wife at the Club not long ago. She is more
beautiful, but so much sadder than the portrait you showed me. Ah, yes!
I remember why. When I am better, would she come and see me? Perhaps
it is inconsiderate that I should ask. But the world is so huge and
coarse and noisy and empty"--the little lip had quivered--"and there is
something in her face that is so sweet, I have been fancying that it
would"---she hesitated--"be good for me and for my baby if she would
sometimes visit me. Do you think she would mind?"
Saxham had answered:
"I will ask her." Now he gave the piteous message, and Lynette warmly
agreed:
"Of course I will go. Whenever you say I may!"
"Not for some days. She is to see no one yet, and your hands are full
with Madame van der Heuvel and Marienne and Simonne." The Doctor
referred to an exiled Belgian lady and her young daughters, who had been
received at Harley Street as guests. "And--there is the Hospital--and
to-night you have to address this Meeting of Suffragists at the Royal
Hall. It is the only decision of yours, let me tell you," said Saxham,
"that I ever felt tempted to dispute. My wife upon the same platform
with Mrs. Carrie Clash and Fanny Leaven! A triple force of Metropolitan
Police on duty, and detectives at all the exits and amongst the
audience. It's--" Words failed Saxham.
"It is unspeakably hateful in your eyes. Dear Owen, I know it. But I
should be hateful in my own sight if I were to break my word. On the
day I first met you we spoke of these views of mine. I hold them still.
Marriage has not altered them. It is not in me," said Lynette, "to
change!"
"You are the soul of faithfulness in all things!"
"Then do not be grieved that I keep to my given promise. Those who have
honoured me by asking me to address them are aware that my convictions
are opposed to theirs at points. But while I oppose I admire their
ruthless devotion and their magnificent, unswerving policy of
self-sacrifice----"
"But these felonies," he protested, "these incendiary attacks upon
property----"
"In nine cases out of ten, and I believe the authorities know it as well
as the W.S.S.S., such outrages have not been committed by Suffragists at
all."
"By whom, then?"
"Have we no enemies without our gates even now when we are at War?"
"Germans...." A light broke in upon Saxham. "It's not impossible. As
for scattered literature being evidence--that can be bought anywhere.
But granted the blackest sheep of the W.S.S.S. to be proved--piebald,
that will not make me less anxious for you to-night."
He touched a heavy plait of the red-brown hair with a tender hand and
said to her:
"I grudge that the pearls of my wife's eloquence should be thrown before
Suffragists."
"We disagree, dear love," she said to him, "but we do not love the less
for it. When the Franchise is accorded to Women, should I vote for one
Party and you for another, will that matter a whit to you?"
"Not a whit," he said, as he kissed her. "You may give your vote to
whom you choose, so long as the voter remains mine. Who was that?"
Saxham's quick ear had heard a footstep in the hall. "Madame van der
Heuvel coming back from Mass?"
"It is Patrine!"
"Patrine off and away at this hour?"
"I told her I would explain to you."
"She has explained to you," said Saxham, "and that should be enough."
"Dear Owen! ... I am sure she wished you to know of it.... She has gone
down to Seasheere, a little Naval Flying-station on the South-East
coast, to meet Alan Sherbrand on the home-flight from Somewhere in
France."
"I see in to-day's _Wire_ that he has been gazetted Lieutenant," said
Saxham. "One rather wonders, all things considered, that it has not
happened before."
For not once nor twice in the past weeks the big smudgy contents-bills
hung upon railings and worn as a chest-protector by newspaper-vendors,
since paper became too scarce an article to line street-gutters with,
had trumpeted the name of Sherbrand; and the big black-capitalled
headings had set forth his deeds of daring. Only to-day they had
announced:
"SHERBRAND OF THE R.F.C. STRAFES ANOTHER HUN-BIRD. BAG BROUGHT UP TO
NINE, AND TWO ENEMY KITE-BALLOONS. POPULAR YOUNG AVIATOR NOW VISCOUNT
NORWATER, HEIR-PRESUMPTIVE TO BRITISH EARL."
"He may be sent back to the Front at any moment--it is natural that they
should wish to be together, don't you think?" The speaker added, as
Saxham made no immediate rejoinder: "As they are engaged to be married,
and what is more, engaged with your consent."
"She has told you so?"
"No!" A shadow of the old smile hovered upon the sensitive mouth. "I
told her, and she could not deny it.... Oh, Owen! Do you really believe
I have been blind all this time?"
"I should have known that women have clairvoyance in these matters. But
Patrine feared that you would think her unfeeling or inconsiderate----"
"And why? Because when God sent me a great grief He gave my poor girl a
great happiness? The best earthly happiness, save one, that He holds in
His gift."
"I thank Him that you still think so, after thirteen years of marriage!"
"I shall always think so, Owen. And it is a great thing that Patrine
has chosen so well. He is true and brave, and loves my dear sincerely.
And her love is beautiful and disinterested. There is no taint of
baseness in her----"
"She has nothing of Mildred or of David, then," flashed through the
Doctor's mind. Lynette went on:
"No one will ever be able to charge her with venality or mercenariness.
The succession that they _will_ talk of in the newspapers was not
dreamed of when she and Alan fell in love."
"The succession! Ah, of course!" the Doctor said; "There is a possible
succession to a Viscounty now that Lord Norwater's death is proved fact,
but only in case Lady Norwater bears no male child. But a title would
not spoil Sherbrand, and I agree with you that it has never influenced
Patrine."
"How tired you look!" Lynette said, noting the look of heavy care and
the deep lines of weariness traced on the stern visage.
"I have several critical private cases, and a long list of operations
for this morning at SS. Stanislaus and Theresa's. Now go and dress, my
sweet, for I have work to do."
And Lynette went with a happier look than she had worn since the
crushing blow fell. And Saxham shot the bolt of his consulting-room
door and went back to his chair at the big writing-table, and leaned his
head upon his hands.
An Atlas burden of care cracked the sinews of the Doctor's huge
shoulders. It had not occurred to Saxham when Patrine had gulped out
her pitiful story, and he had heartened her by bidding her forget, that
forgetfulness would speedily be accomplished at the cost of an honest
man.
Now, what to do? Must Sherbrand take the stranger's leavings or David's
girl be twice the loser by the stranger's lustful theft? It was a
problem to thrash the brain to jelly of grey matter, thought the Dop
Doctor, drilling his fingertips into his aching temples--were there no
cause for anxiety elsewhere.
Ah! how much more stuffed the pack that burdened the big shoulders. The
boy had been taken and the mother would die of grief. You could see her
withering like a white rose held near the blast of a smelting-furnace.
Yet there was nothing to do but look on and play the game. A bitter
spasm gripped the man by the throat, and slow tears, wrung from the
depths of him by mortal anguish, splashed on the paper between his
elbows and raised great blisters there. Truly, when the spark of Hope
burns dimmest, when the grain of Faith is a thousand times smaller than
the mustard-seed--when God seems most far away, He is nearest. We have
learned this with other truths, in the War. Blood and tears mingle in
the collyrium with which our eyes have been bathed, that we might see.
Saxham battled down his weakness, and rose up and went to duty. None
might guess, looking at the Dop Doctor, that those hard, bright eyes had
wept an hour ago. Later on, a moment serving, he went to the telephone.
"Halloa! Is this New Scotland Yard? M.P.O.? Halloa! ... I am Dr.
Saxham, speaking from SS. Stanislaus and Theresa's Hospital, N.W. Can I
get word with Superintendent-on-the-Executive, Donald Kirwall? Halloa!
... Thanks, I'll hold the line."
He waited a minute, and the Superintendent answered:
"Halloa! Dr. Saxham? Anything we can do for you, sir?"
"Yes. Put me on six good plain-clothes men at this Mass Meeting of
Suffragists at the Royal Hall to-night. Can you? ... Halloa! ... I could
do with eight or ten!"
"Halloa! ... Well, sir, we'll do what we can. We'll be pretty strong in
force there, as it happens, Marylebone and Holborn and St. James's
Divisions...." Something like an official chuckle came over the line.
"Mrs. Petrell in the chair, and the Clash and Fanny Higgins. We've
learned to look for trouble when they get up to speak. Halloa! Beg
pardon! I didn't quite hear! ..."
Saxham had cursed the popular leaders.
"Yes, I was aware they'd prevailed on Mrs. Saxham to address 'em....
Indeed, they're advertising her all over the shop.... Halloa? ...
Certainly we'll put you on the plain-clothes men you ask for. But even
without Police to protect her, Mrs. Saxham don't run much risk. Halloa!
... Why! ... Oh! because an uncommon big percentage of the audience on
these packed nights are out-and-out loose women. Soho and Leicester
Square, and all that lot.... Others come up from Poplar and Stepney and
Bethnal Green and Deptford to hear Fanny Higgins. Halloa? Do they want
the Vote? Well, naturally these gay women like the idea of being
Represented in Parliament. If respectable females are going to get good
of it, naturally the prostitutes want the Franchise. They hold that
Woman Suffrage 'ud improve their conditions. Halloa! ... You don't know
but what the gay women have as good a right to vote as the gay men who
employ 'em? No more don't I! But whatever they are, they appreciate
those who spend their lives in trying to help the unfortunate. And,
West or East-Enders--the most chronic cases among 'em wouldn't suffer a
finger to be laid on your wife. All the same, I'll attend to your
instructions. Doors at 7. The men shall be there. Don't worry
yourself! Four ready back of the Platform and four more posted right
and left of the proscenium. Don't mention it! Very proud to....
Good-afternoon!"
"Good-afternoon and thanks, Superintendent!"
And Saxham rang off, more relieved in mind than he would have cared to
own. Then the horn of a motor sounded below in the Hospital courtyard,
and another and another followed. Tyres crackled on gravel. The
running feet of men pattered on pavement. The hall-porter whistled up
the speaking-tube into the Medical Officer's Room, and Saxham went down,
meeting the black-robed Mother Prioress and the Sister Superintendent on
their way to the great vestibule.
*CHAPTER LXII*
*WOUNDED FROM THE FRONT*
The wide-leaved front doors stood open. Doctors and surgeons,
theatre-assistants, students, white-habited Sisters,
blue-and-white-uniformed nurses and probationers, were swarming in the
great vestibule. Already a double stream of canvas stretchers, laden
with still figures swathed in iodined gauze and cotton-wool padding,
were being carried up the wide steps, from the big grey-painted Red
Cross motor-ambulances, by R.A.M.C., and blue-uniformed bearers of St.
Theresa's Association, while omnibuses, private cars, taxis from Charing
Cross and Victoria were hauled up behind, waiting to disgorge their
loads. And cheer upon cheer went up from the packed sidewalks and
roadway; handkerchiefs waved from the windows of the nearest houses, and
the passengers on the roofs of the omnibuses passing up and down
Wellington Road, Edgware Road, and Praed Street, stood up and craned
their necks in the fruitless endeavour to glimpse the reason of those
frantic cheers.
For the first convoy of wounded from the Front had reached the Hospital.
These unwashed, begrimed, hairy brigands, these limping tramps in
tattered khaki, these bandaged cripples leading blind comrades, were our
Guards, our Gunners, our Highlanders, Kents, Middlesex men and Munsters,
our Rifles and Northamptons, our Welsh and Gloucesters, our Scots Greys
and Lancers, our immortals of those red-hot days of August, and their
compeers, the terrible fighters of the Marne and the Aisne....
They were back, full of cross-nicked, nickel-coated Mauser bullets, bits
of shell and lumps of shrapnel, cheap jokes, music-hall choruses,
vermin, and spunk. The reek of lysol and carbolic, the sickly whiff of
dysentery and the ghastly stench of gangrene, brought back to Saxham the
Hospital at Gueldersdorp, as he passed back and forth between the
stretchers, issuing swift orders, briefly wording directions,
marshalling his trained forces with the generalship that had
distinguished him of old.
"Doctor!"
"What is it, Ironside?" Saxham turned to speak to the Resident Medical
Officer. "You look off-colour, man!"
"I feel off, sir. They're so damned full of grit, and cheerful! Not
only the cases from the Base Hospitals, but those casualties they've
sent us direct from the trenches.... Two days in the train getting to
Calais--and Lord! the straw and filthiness in their wounds! And we've
been told our next War'd be carried out on an absolutely Aseptic Basis,
and here we are back in 1900!"
"Not quite," said Saxham. "Wounds like these were never made by Boer
shrapnel. Human bodies shattered beyond imagination by High Explosive,
rank among the triumphs of Modern Science. After the Stone Age and the
Iron Age, the Golden Age and the Age of Shoddy has come the Age of
Militant Chemistry. Martianism, in a word."
"It's an ugly word.... Doctor, that man over there," the speaker
indicated a pair of hollow eyes staring hungrily over a huge
iodine-smeared gauze muffler, "wants to know if we can save his lower
jaw? Not that there's much left of it. His pal, who interprets for
him, says a wounded German officer shot him in the face with his
revolver, 'cos he went to give the blankety blank a drink out of his
water-bottle. One of the Gunners--and not long married, according to
the pal."
"All right, tell him! Name him for one of my beds," Saxham said
brusquely, and nodded to the owner of the desperate eyes, saying, as
they flared back their gratitude: "Even if it had been 1821 in the
cattle-truck, we're in the Twentieth Century here. Warn Burland," he
named the anaesthetist, "for duty at once. Gaynor Gaynes and Frost to
be ready with the X Ray on Flat I. Mr. Whitchett and Mr. Pridd to act
as Assistant Surgeons. We'll take the worst cases straight away----"
"But, my God, sir! most of these men are beyond Surgery," groaned
Ironside, cracking his finger-joints. "Broken and mashed and rent as
they are, what they need is to be re-created! ... If Christ were to look
in here just now," the Medical Resident cried in his bitterness,
"there'd be plenty of work in His line. New tissues to make, bony
structures to re-build. Organs to replace where organs have been
destroyed. He'd have done it by mixing earth with His saliva and
anointing. We might as well spit on twenty per cent. of these
fellows--for all the good we can do!"
"Give them liquid nourishment--brandy where necessary, and send those
I've tagged up to the theatre. No waiting to wash--in their cases. And
remember my Gunner gets the first look-in!"
Saxham turned and ran at speed, making for the nearest elevator, found
it just going up full of stretcher-cases lying close packed as sardines,
turned and shot up the stone staircase three steps at a time to the
first floor, glittering with white enamel, polished oak, brass fittings
and cleanliness, under the discreet radiance of shaded electric lights.
The centre space was occupied by the tribune engirdling the domed
Sanctuary of the Chapel. Short corridors tastefully adorned with
red-enamelled buckets, blue glass bombs of chemical fire-extinguisher,
and snaky coils of brass-fitted hose, led to long wards running east,
west, north, and south.
"Eh, Doctor!"
A fair-faced, gentle-eyed Sister of Mercy, in the wide-winged starched
linen cap and guimpe, and white twill nursing-habit with the black
Cross, stood near the lift, talking to a tall, raw-boned, white-haired
Surgeon-General of the R.A.M.C. She greeted Saxham's appearance with a
little womanly cry:
"Eh, Doctor! Never it rains buddit pours." There was a hint of
Lancashire in her dialect. "The R.A.M.C. have sent us ten more cases.
Dear, dear!--but we'll have our hands full."
"Then you'll be happy, Sister-Superintendent. I've never known you so
beamingly contented as when you were regularly run off your feet, and
hadn't a minute to say your Rosary. Anything specially interesting, Sir
Duncan?"
"Aweel!" The broad Scots tongue of Taggart droned the bagpipe-note as
of old. "Aweel! There's an abdawminal or twa I'd like ye to throw your
'ee over--an' a G.P. that ye will find in your line. Fracture o' the
lumbar vairtebra from shrapnel--received ten o'clock yesterday
morr'ning!--an' some cases o' shellitis, wi' intermittent accesses o'
raging mania an' intervals o' mild delusions--an' ane will gar you draw
on the Medical Officer's Emergency List o' Abbreviated Observations I
supplied ye wi' a guid few years agone."
"I've not forgotten."
"I'm no' dootin' but ye have found it unco' useful." Taggart's frosty
eyelashes twinkled. "It has saved my ain face from shame mair times
than I daur tell." He quoted, relishingly: "M.B.A.--Might Be Anything!
G.O.K.--Guid Only Knows! L.F.A.--Luik for Alcohol. A.D.T.--Any Damned
Thing! 'Toch, Sister, I beg your parr-don! The word slipped oot--I
have nae other excuse! But my case o' shell-shock, Saxham. What say ye
to an involuntary simuleetion o' _rigor mortis_? A man sane an' sound
an' hale--clampit by his relentless imagination into the shape o' a
Polwheal Air-Course Finder, or a pair o' dividers. Half open, ye ken.
Ye may stand him on the ground upo' his feet, an' his neb is pointing at
the daisies--or ye may lie him o' his back in bed--an' his taes are
tickling the stars. Am thinking it long till I'm bringing ye thegither!
But ye are busied. I'll no' keep ye the noo."
Racing for the second lift, just emptied of its sorrowful burden, the
big shirt-sleeved Doctor checked in his stride and touched the handle of
a sliding door. The door shot back noiselessly in its grooving. Saxham
was in a cushioned tribune high above the level of the chapel Altar.
The scent of flowers and the perfume of incense hung like a benison on
the still air of the sacred place.
In one of the carved stalls of the nave the figure of a priest in
cassock and biretta sat reading from a breviary. It was the Chaplain,
waiting in readiness to be called to administer Holy Unction and
Viaticum to some Catholic soul about to depart. In the choir behind the
high Altar a slight girl, in the frilled cap and prim black gown of the
Novitiate, knelt on a rush-bottomed prie-dieu absorbed in meditation,
her black Rosary twisted round her clasped hands. Prayers that are most
earnest are frequently incoherent. Saxham formulated no petition as he
knelt there in the tribune, but the cry of his heart to the Divine
Hearer might have been construed into words like these:
"_If Thou wert here in the visible Body as when of old Thou didst walk
on earth with Thy Disciples, Thou wouldst heal these broken sons of
Thine with Thy look. Thy Touch, Thy Word! Yet art Thou here--for Thou
hast said it, ever present for Thy Faithful in Spirit, Flesh, and Blood.
Help O Helper! Heal O Healer! Lord Jesus, present in the Blessed
Sacrament of the Altar, give power and wisdom to Thy servant. Aid me,
working in the dark by my little flame of hard-won knowledge, to
preserve life, Thou Giver of Life! Amen._"
So having prayed, the Dop Doctor went up to the theatre and wrought
mightily, doing wonderful things in the way of patching and botching the
broken bodies of men. Later, as he sat in the Harley Street dining-room
playing the courteous, attentive host to sad-eyed, wistful Madame van
der Heuvel and her two pretty daughters--for Lynette had dined earlier
on account of the Suffrage Meeting--he heard a latch-key in the
front-door and Patrine's well-known step in the hall.
He excused himself, rose and went out, and spoke to his niece. She made
a croaking sound in answer, as unlike the voice of Patrine as the
pinched and sunken face revealed by the hall electroliers, resembled the
face of dead David's handsome girl. The mouth hung lax. The cheeks had
fallen. The eyes stared blank and tearless, from hollow caves under the
broad black eyebrows. He said with a pricking of foreboding:
"You have had a long day! ..."
"Not long enough to tire me. I am made of india-rubber, I think, and
steel."
He considered her a moment with grave, keen eyes that had no gleam of
curiosity.
"Sherbrand is well? He returned from France in safety?"
"He was quite in the pink when he arrived--and ditto when he left. Not
that he had much time. A wireless came, ordering him to replace an
aviator of the Royal Flying Corps, killed on observation-duty--or
whatever it is they call it--with our fellows on the new Front. Rough
on him, but he took it smiling. No, thanks! I'm not keen on dinner....
You won't mind if I go to my room?"
"One moment. Have you had food to-day?" he asked her.
"I forget.... Yes, of course! There was luncheon at one o'clock. The
people at the Air Station did us tremendously well." Her mouth twisted.
"I think it better to tell you and Lynette that Alan Sherbrand and I
have said ta-ta!" She tried to smile. "I'm back on your hands like a
bad penny!" Her eyes seemed all black between their narrowed lids.
They were quite alone, no servant within hearing, and the dining-room
door was shut. Came the Doctor's low-toned question:
"Has any--third person made mischief between you two?"
"No, nobody has blabbed to him about anything. But--he's wise enough
now, as regards this child. Particularly wide-O!" The black,
glittering eyes looked dry and hard as enamel. Her teeth again showed
in that mirthless grin. "I don't suppose he has the ghost of an illusion
left.... Women--most women would say I was a howling fool to make a
clean breast of it. I never meant to--I can swear!--when first we got
engaged. I used to call his goodness stodgy. I think I despised him
for it in certain moods of mine. You've never realised the kind of
beast I can be. But more and more, I got to respect him! And
suddenly--I knew that if I married him under false colours--letting him
believe me to be what I amn't--even though he never found me
out--I'd--never have been able to shake hands with myself again!"
She moved to the stairs, the sleeve of her coat brushing the Doctor's
great shoulder.