With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll

not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and

God-bless-you!"

CHAPTER XXXI

THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER

It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of

destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no

moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so

near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their

nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide men

to a new Messiah.

In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for her.

All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and she saw

herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality that once

she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was answered by a

choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she started up from her

couch with poignant apprehension; but presently she realized that it

was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward not far from the room

where she lay.

It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been

excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide

the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it

soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists

presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she

was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on

her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon herself,

it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity.

Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires

dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of

the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust

and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling that

around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other scenes, or

wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last fight, and if

so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in the home of the

cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around their fires were

like a family, where men grow to serve each other as brother serves

brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving each other's

honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each other.

As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance

which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness,

she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs

upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take

up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was

like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her

mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim

lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw

the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the game was

won.

The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost

upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where

their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they

reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop

passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of

life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their

helpless comrades in this place of healing.

As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure

dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each

other--"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me,

Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!"

But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman somewhere

waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others still had

only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a woman looks at

them; and where women are few and most of them are angels,--the

battle-field has no shelter for any other--such looks have deep

significance.

The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone

past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one of

them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came towards

the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's window,

slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted its neck,

and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a moment Jasmine

stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew why, by this little

incident of the night, and then suddenly the starlight seemed to draw

round the patient animal standing at attention, as it were.

Then she saw it was a grey horse.

Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old Gunter,"

ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was Rudyard Byng.

That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had

passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the

night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she

stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she

would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could--

She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe closely

about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter her

room--she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not on the

chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against a table.

She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not there. Her

brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried to button the

night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned it to throw back

her head and gather her golden hair away from her shoulders and breast.

All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her own room.... Where was

her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why should she be at such a

disadvantage! She reached for the table again and found a match-box.

She would strike a light, and find her dressing-gown. Then she abruptly

remembered that she had no dressing-gown with her; that she had

travelled with one single bag--little more than a hand-bag--and it

contained only the emergency equipment of a nurse. She had brought no

dressing-gown; only the light outer rain-proof coat which should serve

a double purpose. She had forgotten for a moment that she was not in

her own house, that she was an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She

felt her way to the wall, found the rain-proof coat, and, with

trembling fingers, put it on. As she did so a wave of weakness passed

over her, and she swayed as though she would fall; but she put a hand

on herself and fought her growing agitation.

She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard

footsteps in the hall outside--footsteps she knew, footsteps which for

years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the

quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of

determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's

voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and

afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his hand

upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move forward as

though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no lock. With

strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the door,

expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she could

hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were throbbing.

The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could

bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the

sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes--the hold-all of the

odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, officers

waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of the

hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One light

was burning--a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind her

quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of relief.

Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened her eyes.

A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door.

It was her husband.

Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her

bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom

turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had

frightened her had followed his entrance here.

She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her night-dress

showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind the table, as

though to hide her bare ankles.

He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered himself.

"Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer place."

All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and still.

She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she could not

have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a haunting

sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but against

everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of the last

few months seemed suddenly undone--to go for nothing. Just as a

drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for a

period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for

drink, and plunges into a debauch,--the last maddening degradation

before his final triumph,--so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and

self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged

from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, and

her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven into

the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the unknown--into a

strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation.

Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny

and inquiry in his eyes which she saw--and saw nothing else there.

There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in their

last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, "What did

it mean--that letter from Adrian Fellowes?"

It was all there in his eyes now--that hateful inquiry, the piercing

scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into her

eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too.

"Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked.

She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the look

in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked the

same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man stood

between them, as he had never stood in life--of infinitely more

importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between

Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any

sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of

real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a

disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him!

It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway

over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted now.

"Why have you come here--to this room?" she asked coldly.

As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which

angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; but

the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her

steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and

forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in London.

There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, the panic

excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day when Adrian

Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none of the

barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the sjambok.

Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed older, his

thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep fissure between

the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, had freed him

from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had wholly gone from his

cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious life about him. He

was merely the business-like soldier with work to do. His khaki fitted

him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique without defect. He

carried in his hand a short whip of rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed

his hands upon his hips and looked at Jasmine meditatively, before he

answered her question, she recalled the scene with Krool. Her eyes were

fascinated by the whip in his hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as

though she was to be the victim of his wrath, and that the whip would

presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld.

But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to

her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his

voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her

shoulders.

"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," he

answered her.

"Old Gunter," she said mechanically.

"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?"

"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly.

"Well, I came to see Gunter."

"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream.

"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--"

"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with

a querulous ring to her voice.

"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp

were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come."

"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say.

"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is

obvious that I should visit you."

"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That must

come."

"I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We

don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we

cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to

the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing

you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing from

our friends. There's enough of that from our foes."

"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly.

"I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us

meet on this neutral ground."

"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely.

"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be

fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more

sarcasm than he intended.

Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into battle.

Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives together

came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms too

against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to this

was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium of

all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one five

months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, craving

for amusement and excitement and--she was going to say romance, but

there was no romance in those sordid hours of pleasure-making, when she

plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand--ah, if only Rudyard had not

gone to South Africa then! That five months held no romance. She had

never known but one romance, and it was over and done. The floods had

washed it away.

"You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It came

to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the night

as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now."

Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above

her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or

whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us

worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between us.

I never want to see you any more."

In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night-dress,

and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the linen.

Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him were too

vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, however, by a

cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a man's death thrust

itself between them. This war might have never been, had it not been

for the treachery of the man who had been false to everything and every

being that had come his way. Indirectly this vast struggle in which

thousands of lives were being lost had come through his wife's

disloyalty, however unintentional, or in whatever degree. Whenever he

thought of it, his pulses beat faster with indignation, and a deep

resentment possessed him.

It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him,

but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his

country. The map was dead--so much. He had paid a price--too small.

And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the

same shadow--the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she

said, "There is a black sea between us."

What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she

could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The

passion of the body was dead in her--atrophied. She was as one through

whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of

desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the

months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a

paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red

corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from

which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the

amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to

restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an

invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was

no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; where

the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing of the

flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, of

houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal life, of

domestic being--of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of no mental

protest which could be put into words: she was only conscious of

emotions which now shook her with their power, now left her starkly

cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering as intense as

that of Procrustes on his bed of iron.

This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared

breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an

indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by

herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she felt

he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of that.

That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though

he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret

of life--a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty,

contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was

the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She

was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being

exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it

was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of

anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the

rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit

of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling.

"Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have

you no consideration? It is past midnight."

His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said

with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always now. What

else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch at his

wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work begins--not an

eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here sometimes. This one

may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a one-hour day--or less."

Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear

wife--Jasmine--" he exclaimed.

Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a

moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact

that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him

the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world

seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy

stronger than Time.

She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable--that

old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her

past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she

scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was

bewildered, distraught.

"No, no--coward!" she cried.

He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned white.

Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened to the

floor and passed through it into the night.

An instant later he was on his horse.

A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness,

and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out.

She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her

awe-struck ears.

With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on the

floor, her face turned towards the stars.

"Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned.

At least here was no longer the cry of doom.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING

At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on

her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward a

figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar motion.

Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing her.

Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched the

nurse's arm.

"Al'mah--it is Al'mah?" she said.

Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she recovered

herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost dazedly.

After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place

for it to happen," she added.

Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched

the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of

paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a

look of aversion?

"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in

explanation.

Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and,

with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to

her, she smiled winningly.

"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined.

"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then to

gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings."

After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now

she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her

face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work for

in England."

"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added

suddenly, "I could not sing any longer."

"Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked.

"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the

voice."

They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah

caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said.

She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld

everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy

and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack.

"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily.

"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a

little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach,

Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I

sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks.

How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over

sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the

time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and that there's no

such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the

mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things,

and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things.

But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with

the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories here from men

before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many,

many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real at all, but

just phantasy."

"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused.

Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it

does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere

snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here;

and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too

sometimes."

"Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden remembrance.

"Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here."

"So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said to

me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing it

is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke of

you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite honest,

too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who you are?"

Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes

I'm the world's foundling."

Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical

features became drawn.

"I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most

to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my identity

altogether. Do you ever feel that?"

"No; I often wish I could."

Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she asked.

"You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in London.

Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it something you

wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help here?"

Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and wondered

what this woman had to say which could be of any import to herself; yet

she felt there was something drawing nearer which would make her shrink.

"No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and

remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to

the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to

one family, or to one's self. That's all."

Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do

not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have

had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet

it pursued me till yesterday--till yesterday evening. Now it's gone;

that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was."

She pointed to the door of another room.

There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her movements.

Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the look in the

woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine stepped

inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a moment nothing

was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two chairs.

"That was the first man I ever loved--my husband," Al'mah said quietly,

pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him from

me--you and others."

Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she

drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of

disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and indefinable

horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through her brain.

It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely calm, she

said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?"

Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You

took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and

painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at Glencader.

Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter from you. I

had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, when there was

no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little Jigger's sister, when

he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I killed him. Then--I

killed him."

Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not shrink.

She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as though to

read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was really

true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest horror of

memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose.

"You--are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know

what you have said?"

Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am

insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is the

place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness--the madness of war and

other madnesses."

"You had loved him, yet you killed him!"

"You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of

course--I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a

little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air--its flight was only a

little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed Adrian,

as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but I did it.

Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that day he died?

I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw your face

that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms and found

him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca killed Scarpia?

You remember how she felt? I felt so--just like that. I never

hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it."

"How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which

comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy.

"You remember the needle--Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had it. He

showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too weak. The

needle was in his pocket-book--to kill me with some day perhaps. He

certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went to see him. He

was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I said, he had

showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the needle. He talked

of his journey abroad. He lied--nothing but lies, about himself, about

everything. When he had said enough,--lying was easier to him than

anything else--I told him the truth. Then he went wild. He caught hold

of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize the needlepoint when

it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to him only the prick of

a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all over. He died quite

peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him on the sofa. He looked

sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would never lie any more to

women, to you or to me or any other. It is a good thing to stop a

plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was handsome, and his

music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its kind, and it was

part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two wicked men hurt

me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; and I went from

bad to worse. At least he"--she pointed to the other room--"he had some

courage at the very last. He fought, he braved death. The other--you

remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and Ian Stafford went down,

and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian would not go. Then it

was I began to hate him. That was the beginning. What happened had to

be. I was to kill him; and I did. It avenged me, and it avenged your

husband. I was glad of that, for Rudyard Byng had done so much for me:

not alone that he saved me at the opera, you remember, but other good

things. I did his work for him with Adrian."

"Have you no fear--of me?" Jasmine asked.

"Fear of--you? Why?"

"I might hate you--I might tell."

Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish things. You

would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to me. Some one had

to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or yourself. It fell

to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it would not matter if

you did. Nothing would happen--nothing at all. Think it out, and you

will see why."

Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice.

"Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?"

"Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the

war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!"

Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had

overpowered her; but now it was all gone.

"We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"--once

Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would

pay, and would pay here--here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a

woman who, like herself, had suffered.

"Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took

both of Almah's hands in her own.

Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all at

once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any human

being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine pity

which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had been

generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; but

it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning compassion

for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or estate."

But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went

from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her

far behind him,--since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had

sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her

heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the

Invisible--that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her

wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and

had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her

inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even then

been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life.

That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the

last few hours--why, she knew not--her heart had found a new sense. She

felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something that made

her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading power, a

brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away into the

mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to see,

however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether the

woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity of

her soul made no choice and sought no difference.

As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over

Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a

light which made them aglow with understanding.

"I always thought you selfish--almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said

presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real

suffering--only the surface, only disappointment at not having your own

happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I did

what I did?"

"I understand."

"I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison

and on the scaffold--if they knew--"

Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes

with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that

to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you

must put it behind you." ... Suddenly she pointed to the other room

where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked.

"In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood

looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man lay.

"I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was all so

many centuries ago, when I was young and glad."

Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away.

A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the wards.

At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the booming

of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies were at

work.

The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an

impassioned gesture.

"Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't,

that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow--a general assault--if Byng

pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His combination's

working all right--thanks to Byng's lot."

As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation.

"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But her

voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear.

She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he

could not know.

But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his fighting

at daybreak, as he had said.

CHAPTER XXXIII

"ALAMACHTIG!"

When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window at

the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his

heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and

defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it

with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of peace

in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black curtain

between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could be set a

soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not even said a

God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so near, so dear,

so cherished:

"For Time and Change estrange, estrange--

And, now they have looked and seen us,

Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near,

With the thick of the world between us!"

How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each

other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting

shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each other,

should come to a day when they would be less to each other than

strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot

bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's

assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have

gone, after hope is dead.

There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these

vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel

that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him;

not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she

had done him.

But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his

troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of feeling.

After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be treated so? Was

he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal concession? Why should he

be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? He did not know why. But

at the bottom of everything lay a something--a yearning--which would

not be overwhelmed. In spite of wrong and injury, it would live on and

on; and neither Time nor crime, nor anything mortal could obliterate it

from his heart's oracles.

The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the

sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled

his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His

head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the

stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not

felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so

stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas

beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the

salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie

or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but

yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the

others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets

into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a man

away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where lies

repose.

The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he galloped

gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once again, his

mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, as he left

Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was over and done.

How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over--unless,

unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should

settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands

of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a

primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was

no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was a

lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the product

of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in a

blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the friend

of his race and the lover of one woman.

Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far

off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if

they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill,

turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the

Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his

mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries of

artillery and three thousand infantry--Leary's brigade, which had not

been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift.

But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his hard-bitten

South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no doubt. War was part

chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil. He had

ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; he had always

possessed ballast even when the London life had enervated, had

depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a commonplace: it

belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong.

Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which

was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of

the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry

did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and

the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be

open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his

gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours

before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master

Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far.

The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in

command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles,

and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the

blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on

the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters,

either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep

basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld

people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they were

not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were prepared to

go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to get up early

in the morning if they want to catch us."

This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's

command had already reached the position from which they could do their

work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no sign of

life from the Boer trenches in the dusk--naught of what chanced at

Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would certainly

have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not allow the

Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be threatened

or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, there would be

fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for half a

continent.

"Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry Whalen drew up by him.

"Not a sound from them--not a sign."

"Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?"

"Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of

Hetmeyer's Kopje."

"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take

the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of

trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be

all right."

"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry.

"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje,

and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast."

Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As

it struck, he noted the time.

His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall have

the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before they

know it."

Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They

clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each

other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither

disaster nor death could destroy.

"My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said.

"You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I go

down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the day I

married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I said then

I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened out--and I'll

not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if things should

happen that way."

"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he recovered

himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?"

"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the

salute. "That is all," he added brusquely.

They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given

softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen,

moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer trenches.

Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey

glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly,

till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and kind.

Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the sun

shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active being,

and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first

delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above

the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes

flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat

sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon the

stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and

beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was

new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and

this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all

things living begin the world afresh.

But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the

sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the

aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter than

attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house or

fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any

mysterious thing may happen--a world of five thousand years ago--the

air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would seem

of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast colonies of

green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might belong. Something

frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his flight through the

grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful adventure; a bird hears the

sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves or the swaying shrubs, and

in disdain of such slight performance flings out a song which makes the

air drunken with sweetness.

A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with

flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known

no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is

still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest

beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common.

Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the

lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them

upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is

it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there to

the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not--

Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is

shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the

veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and

beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of

light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle of

vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering

bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with strange,

half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the

rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying

to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of their world;

useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of Boers and

British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in alarm; for they

knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered the madness of

battle, and they realized it at its native first value.

There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind

Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had

brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this flank

of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at work on

the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people from the

places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks.

Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer trenches.

These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose blood was in a

tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at hand-to-hand range,

men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in the days when the

only fighting was man to man, or one man to many men. Here every

"Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell back because he was

forced back by men who were men of the veld like himself; and the

Briton pressed forward because he would not be denied; because he was

sick of reverses; of going forward and falling back; of taking a

position with staggering loss and then abandoning it; of gaining a

victory and then not following it up; of having the foe in the hollow

of the hand and hesitating to close it with a death-grip; of promising

relief to besieged men, and marking time when you had gained a

foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on.

Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked

below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a

fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew

should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty

and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men the

status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters under

Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led nowhere

forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done a big

thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like

Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to be

the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from almost

perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory.

From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! But

here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his

heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the

bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his

fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only

bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and

muscle, though the will was iron.

Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by

step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward,

taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot;

never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat

above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and

might be caught by a lightning shot.

Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the

hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a

soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men

of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently

throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where

hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At

last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the

rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top,

mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit because of the

comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before them. As they

were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely as ever men

fought in the days of Rustum.

In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen

and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger

number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his

life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry

Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he

had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also passed

through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely conscious

of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall him; but, in

the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his men were waving

their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before him, ragged and

grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and race-hatred in their

eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he wounded, but the wounded

voortrekker--a giant of near seven feet clubbed his rifle, and drove at

him. Rudyard shot at close quarters again, but his pistol missed fire.

Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that

the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes

involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, but,

as he did so, he heard a cry--the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he knew

so well.

"Baas! Baas!" it called.

Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him

to the ground.

"Baas! Baas!"

The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness.

Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do

anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in the

instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of "Baas!

Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of the Boer

who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As Rudyard

fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" again,

and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own pistol

brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he realized who

it was had cried out, "Baas!"

The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, with

sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street.

It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's

body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas--Baas!"

Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own

fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed

that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger

than death.

Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his

unconscious friend with a great anxiety.

"No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's breast.

"The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the blow. Alamachtig,

it is good! The Baas--it is right with the Baas."

Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as

Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head.

Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and

machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and the

infantry--Humphrey's and Blagdon's men--were hurrying up the slope

which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position the

enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, because

they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high as their

own.

"A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still

unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor this

time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at

DeLancy Scovel's."

Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he

looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind

being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the

hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard

would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the

thing for him.

Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful

would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's

hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken

ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a

Westminster sawbones.

Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng

had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once

he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance

before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the

Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been

known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called

Little Jingo.

His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard,

but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek.

"He wants brandy," Jigger said.

"Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply.

"I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask.

"Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it

too!"

"A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently.

As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What

do you stay here as--deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the

other."

"Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See--the Baas."

Rudyard's eyes were open.

"Prisoner--who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly.

"Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him.

"He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen.

"I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"THE ALPINE FELLOW"

To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who

emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay

in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit,

were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree,

transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the

skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of

conflict.

The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before

him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of death

on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in his

young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and

desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of

those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated.

Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant

rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches

and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has

little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades

and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he has to do

so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has none of the

composure of those who have solace in thinking that what they leave

behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and there some

simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off the meaning

of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in their hands

for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment.

So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom

Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard

Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the

Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet grim

frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden and

masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of

Britain's manhood.

"From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as

fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he

heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he shoves

the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, sticks his

chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and treks across

the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave him and all his

that went before him the key to civilization, and how to be happy

though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, the

I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the best. He

was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and out of a

fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to say, 'I've

got the hang of this, and it's different from what I thought; but that

doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in style. It's the

has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, he fished out the

little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, to let it tell his

fellow-countrymen how he looked at it--that he was just a pawn in the

great game. The game had to be played, and won, and the winner had to

sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the sacrifices. Well, I'd like a

tombstone the same as that fella from New Zealand, if I could win it as

fair, and see as far."

Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the

ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An

Alexander, with not one world conquered."

"I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could put

such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want

to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay,

but he went against his will, and--and I wish that the grub-hunters,

and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get

hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in

Thamesfontein and the little green islands."

"You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier,"

said Stafford with a friendly nod.

"I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that

was hard enough."

Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough--a handful of guns and

fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put in

an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'"

"Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning

the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big shindy.

It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away like a fat

old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in his bones now.

I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, more that's worth

having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he wants what 'd make his

wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it."

"Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded

Stafford evenly.

Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when

we took Hetmeyer's Kopje."

"Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had

so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng."

Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm

for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at the

Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the smell of

disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a snigger little

place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of peaches and oranges,

and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of nice flowers in the

garden, and a stoep made for candidates for Stellenbosch--as

comfortable as the room of a Rand director."

"Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards

Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn,

the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or

cloud of green in the veld.

"No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply.

Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look of

sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to

Durban, then?"

"No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed

at the hospital."

Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked heavily. "Is

she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken.

"She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend

would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the

same, and took her some veld-roses."

"You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low.

"Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered,

"but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can

smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything gets

a turn of its own at the Front."

"She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, with

his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would have

died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, looking

into the bloom of the garden.

"Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he

should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend had

told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the name

of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's wife,

there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and

Jasmine were not the same as of yore.

"Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse

Byng."

"Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed

back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box

to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had

widened since then.

Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah was

nursing Jasmine's husband--surely life was merely farce and tragedy.

At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose

to go, but turned back to Stafford again.

"She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell

what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty frail.

We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No need to

say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and responsibility, and

in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more ill than the chill

makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my stupid way."

Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful

friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes.

"Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry

Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and a

fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips

very easily.

Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a

friend," he said aloud--"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not

betray a "--the waving of wings above him caught his eye--"he could not

betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the servitor

of carrion death, as it flew down the wind.

He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in

the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; and

it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his past,

towards his future.

What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New

Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had

purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was

immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated

himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe

was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this

obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price

which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol

or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying

to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not

do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge that

Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To pay

the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the

equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy all

hope for the future.

It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear

honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open to

him--to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take the

stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself and

soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those who

hoped for him the now unattainable things.

In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had

invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in

the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by.

The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had

opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the railway

station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul hitherto

hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new world--not like the

one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or tumultuous, but it

had the lure of that peace, not sterile or somnolent, which summons the

burdened life, or the soul with a vocation, to the hood of a monk--a

busy self-forgetfulness.

Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave

world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his

eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came

to him.

Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she once

wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she

can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything

gets a turn of its own at the Front."

Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To go

to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out for

it either in pity--or in love?

In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was

dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance,

that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves,

which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be dislodged.

It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom. Even

betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It continues. No

longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for

adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple,

and the portals ate closed forever.

For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was

behind the curtain still.

He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house

in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man

who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering would

carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or the

other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done that,

there could be no reunion.

He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had

cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead

from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's

Farm.

No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she was

dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen

suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take in

camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard by

her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital.

His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn

for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be

convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said.

He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any

change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her

know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or

secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course.

As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a

Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same engagement,

"Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the English of it.

Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for

Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah?

As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just

arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The

address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth.

He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had come

to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over so

many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded

by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had

written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply

would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future

restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the

wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world.

After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own

darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and opened

the envelope.

It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking

him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her

trouble:

".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to me

quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old

Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make

that light in his face! I never saw it there--did you? It is just

giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving

up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and

profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on.... Ian, I'm

not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's too

much of the Climbers in us all--not social climbing, I mean, but

wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big

material world. When I look at Tynie--he's lying there so peaceful--you

might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set free into a

world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of light that

never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the sight of his

eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that belongs to

Allah,--I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so friendly, so

gentler than the name by which we call the First One in our language

and our religion--and that world is inside ourselves.... Tynie is

always thinking of other people now, wondering what they are doing and

how they are doing it. He was talking about you a little while ago, and

so admiringly. It brought the tears to my eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian,

that our friendship has always been so much on the surface, so 'void of

offence'--is that the phrase? I can look at it without wincing; and I

am glad. It never was a thing of importance to you, for I am not

important, and there was no weight of life in it or in me. But even the

butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in

your big life. I like to think it was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a

little more interest from the drone of the locust or the glow of a

butterfly's wings. I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the

bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of

fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard

the lines--foolish they read, but they are not:

"'All summer long there was one little butterfly,

Flying ahead of me,

Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow,

Flying ahead of me.

One little butterfly, one little butterfly,

What can his message be?--

All summer long, there was one little butterfly

Flying ahead of me.'

"It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of

things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us

on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher

hills.

"Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment;

perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to do,

and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used always to

think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I first knew you

on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, would have

carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you have lost that

ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever told me. The thing

behind the words in your letter tells me plainer than words. The last

time I saw you in London--do you remember when it was? It was the day

that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with the sjambok. Well,

that last time, when I met you in the hall as we were both leaving a

house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you remember the day I went to

see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the truth then more. I often

wondered how I could ever help you in the old days. That was an

ambition of mine. But I had no brains--no brains like Jasmine's and

many another woman; and I was never able to do anything. But now I feel

as I never felt anything before in my life. I feel that my time and my

chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, like Miriam,--or was it

Deborah?--and that I must wind the horn of warning as you walk on the

edge of the precipice.

"Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to

Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's

hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful child

must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp corner

that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to do. Even

Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, as he

never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do anything if

you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man before the war

she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the pieces, and put

them all together again. He says that after we win, reconstruction in

South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given to a man, because,

if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial show'--that's

Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it here, or why

shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in England? You found

the key to England's isolation, to her foreign problem,--I'm quoting

Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep hands off in this fight;

well, why shouldn't you find another key, that to the future of this

Empire? You got European peace for England, and now the problem is how

to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie says this, not me. His command

of English is better than mine, but neither of us would make a good

private secretary, if we had to write letters with words of over two

syllables. I've told you what Tynie says, but he doesn't know at all

what I know; he doesn't see the danger I see, doesn't realize the mad

thing in your brain, the sad thing weighing down your heart--and hers.

"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your letter

has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it must not,

shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in this war. Is

not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go yet, and that

you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan now would be a

crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken memory--even mine,

Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all want you, to be the big

man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It is too small. If one

must be a slave, then let it be to something greater than one's self,

higher--toweringly unattainably higher. Believe me, neither the girl

you love nor any woman on earth is entitled to hold in slavery the

energies and the mind and hopes of a man who can do big things--or any

man at all.

"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them down.

At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it

through--blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them still;

but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you not

live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, and

He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own making.

"You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things

home to me--and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and

maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too

that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to

teach us our lesson--us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am

going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night--oh, how strange

that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me

say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were,

he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to

him a fortnight ago--Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at

these words:

"'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:

Wait ye the warning?

Our low life was the level's and the night's;

He's for the morning.'

"Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine

fellow!' ..."

A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage,

solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said:

"It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it,

not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so good....

We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth

of her share of Ian Stafford...."

Then there followed a postscript which ran:

"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or

that. Well, here is the ship--mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home

for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope."

Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the joy

of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were

silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its

fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt

that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; and

he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes.

"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian

Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said.

Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as

his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair

retreated before a woman's insight.

"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now.

CHAPTER XXXV

AT BRINKWORT'S FARM

"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown

more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at

Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the

mask of his outward self-control.

"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly.

"When--where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's.

"At Hetmeyer's Kopje."

"But what are you--a prisoner--doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?"

"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me."

"They let you come without a guard?"

"No--not. They are outside"--Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of

the house--"with the biltong and the dop."

"You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop."

"What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at

Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence:

Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute

certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with

the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when

the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool

believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas.

It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the

House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a reconstructed

life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe.

The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of him.

The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare

frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with

the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki hat

which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and

vengeful.

Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the

Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it

all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the best,

lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would break

her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament which alone

could make life tolerable to her or to others who might live with her

under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he swiftly devised

means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He was certain harm

was meant--there was a look of semi-insanity in Krool's eyes. Krool

must be put out of the way before he could speak with the Baas.... But

how?

With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid

of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept

there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would

move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently move

on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, to

which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of his

neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old

friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason why.

"You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently.

"Yes."

"To sjambok you again?"

Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's Kopje.

I kill Piet Graaf to do it."

There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a

wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety.

He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he

dreaded the inconsistency which such men show--forgiving and forgetting

when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of punishment

remain.

He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said presently

with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet Graaf--have you told

the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? The sjambok is the Baas'

cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills to cure. Do you think that

the Baas would want his life through the killing of Piet Graaf by his

friend Krool, the slim one from the slime?"