As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its

branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of

Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage

possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on Wotan

in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could not. His

body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of hatred,

then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and again

opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty.

At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban was

off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant.

"Ah, you speak of traitor--you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The

sjambok--fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes--a t'ousand! Krool--Krool is

a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool do?

He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek--against the Philistine. He help

the chosen against the children of Hell.

"What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in

the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves

would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the

voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps

and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things

good for him to hear."

Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through

the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his

eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him

and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in the

broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over the

boulders of a rapid.

"Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland from

the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The Baas an'

I, we understand--on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the Baas, and

I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people of the Baas'

country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he will it. So it

was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas strike, he strike;

if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set down. All else go.

Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, Cronje, Botha, they all

go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On the Limpopo it is written.

All must go, if the Baas speak--one, two, three, a t'ousand. Else the

bond is water, and the spirits come in the night, and take you to the

million years of torment. It is nothing to die--pain! But only the Baas

is kill me. It is written so. Only the Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor

all the verdomde Rooineks out there"--he pointed to the vast camp out

on the veld--"nor the Baas' vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas'

vrouw! She cannot hurt me..." He spat on the ground. "Who is the

traitor? Is it Krool? Did Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas'

slave; it is only the friend of the Baas that steal from him--only him

is traitor. I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to

save the Baas! I saw you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go

tell the Baas all. If he kill me--it is the Baas. It is written."

He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion

glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle.

Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly

to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent this

abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he would

have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the Baas'

vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that the end

was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice Tynemouth's letter

a new spirit had been working in him. He must do nothing rash. There

was enough stain on his hands now without the added stain of blood. But

he must act; he must prevent Krool from telling the Baas. Yonder at the

hospital was Jasmine, and she and her man must come together here in

this peaceful covert before Rudyard went forward with the army. It must

be so.

Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep

and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first,

did not understand.

Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at

once march him back to the prisoners' camp."

Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a

pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would

not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a

soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no

resistance.

But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry--"Baas!"

In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty

neckcloth provided a gag.

The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of

superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries.

Stafford's move was regular from a military point of view. He was

justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner. He

could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged.

As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had

disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during

the incident.

A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much in

common--the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against.

"I heard his last words about you and--her," she said in a low voice.

"Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously.

"In the kloof near by. He will be back presently."

"Thank God!"

Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to

him, or why you have come," she said, "but--"

"I have come to congratulate him on his recovery."

"I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them

before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes."

"What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his

heart give a bound and his brain throb.

"Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were--concerned."

"I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily.

He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare friendliness.

There came over him again the feeling he had at the hospital when they

talked together last, that whatever might come of all the tragedy and

sorrow around them they two must face irretrievable loss.

She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she

said, "Yes, I will take it while I can."

Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for

something--some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe,

then they steadied to his firmly.

"You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death--I saw that at

the inquest."

"Yes, I knew."

"It was a poisoned needle."

"I know. I found the needle."

"Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it."

Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation

broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was

buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices--voices of old

thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering

on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed

to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him.

"He had hurt me more than any other--than my husband or her. I did it.

I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, I

wanted something for all I had lost, and he was ..."

Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am

not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself for

it--only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to pay, in

my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands that

carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This one

man died because ..."

He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying

now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The

gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So

long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting for

Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there would

always have been a black shadow between--the shadow that hangs over the

scaffold.

"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily.

"They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On the

day I saw you at the hospital, I told her."

There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here

before he joins his regiment."

"I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was

better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she was

coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, I

sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what a

woman like me does."

"What did you say to her?"

"I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She

will think he is dying."

"If she resents the subterfuge?"

"Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting--who can tell!

Now is the time--now. I want to see it. It must be."

He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes

had a strange childishly frightened look.

"You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said.

A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her

eyes were suffused.

"The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a voice

which told how deep was the well of misery in her being.

"It is as old as Allah," he replied.

"Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is

coming."

An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and

Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left.

As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her

fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she

heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the

house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's Farm.

Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the neckcloth was

still binding his mouth.

As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like

flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to

the frock-coat and the huge top-boots.

The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way.

"What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing

Krool.

"A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the guard.

"He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a lump o'

lead in 'is baskit 'e does."

"'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it

hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"--he jerked

his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's voices

talking earnestly.

"Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on

that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, this

half-caste Boojer is."

The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the next

push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's done a

lot o' bitin' in 'is time--let 'im bite the dust now, I sez. I'm fair

sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square fighters. Why, 'e'd

fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke would."

"There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was

jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this

time--goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes

and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're

goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over

the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the

howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening

their bouquets to-morrow--"

"Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second.

"I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear

let 'im 'ear--that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the

off side of a vicarage."

He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade followed

up with a sharp challenge.

"I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's--not about wot

the next move is, and w'en it is."

The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard

Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night--w'en you was sleepin' at your

post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit at it.

You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the hills--that's

shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' thing in the air

wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' to 'it. That's

shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being shook--that's mausers and

others. You'll see regiments marching out o' step, an' every man on his

own, which is not how we started this war, not much. And where there's

a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, and you get behind it like a

man. And w'en there's nothing to get behind, you get in front, and take

your chances, and you get there--right there, over the trenches, over

the bloomin' Amalakites, over the hills and far away, where they want

the relief they're goin' to get, or I'm a pansy blossom."

"Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the Second.

He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front of him

with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics of the

fight to come.

"We'll all be in it--even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah

with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done a

bit o' nursin'--there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell in

'is 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me where

I squeak that kind o' thing do."

Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep sounded

smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house.

He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the

distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a

pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the

lightness of a boy, and galloped away.

He had not seen Al'mah as he passed.

In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh

broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw

Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where

Jasmine was.

"Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the

stain of the blossoms from her fingers.

CHAPTER XXXVI

SPRINGS OF HEALING

Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm,

the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it

was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone

should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of

her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all

was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at

Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the chance

to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been hers. She

herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all to which

she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of it. She was

of those who get their happiness first in making others happy--as she

would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; as even she

tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account with the

firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the protective

sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her life. It had

sent her to South Africa--to protect the wretch who had done his best

to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she did her nurse's

work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source of her revolt at

Jasmine's conduct and character.

But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was,

after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she

really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's

rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, have

become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that also in

part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp disapproval

of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter at what cost

to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which would make a

woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order that he might

be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her which would make a

thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she herself set above

all others?

But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think

and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and

they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins.

She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly waned.

Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, up and

down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. At

length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat down in a great

arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid down the law for

his people.

Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm?

A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate

Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would

link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on to

the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived

while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he left.

It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for three

hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was made

of the delay.

When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was

one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and

he, like Stafford, though in another sphere--that of the Secret

Intelligence Department--had travelled far and wide in the world.

Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near

that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman

beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because

he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly

classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful.

But there was something in her face that haunted him--a wistful,

appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant readiness

of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of organization.

And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown those who hadn't

life-belts," as he said.

In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said

that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one

family was unusual.

"Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest

officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's Farm,

in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a fellow

well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the Stay

Awhile with a staff-officer."

The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any

officers' mess.

"I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll

muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you,

Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of

impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have

traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at

Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think

so."

"If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major,

"the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time for

teaching the rudiments of human intercourse."

Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly

self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't

met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that--"

The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what

Nancy would tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook--and then Rigby

would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw his

wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't tell

what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's pegnoir,

for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby."

With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side

pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the

hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's

own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a

match.

"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin

precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table.

A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the

technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any

number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions,

is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports.

"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the

tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the

relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did

not exist.

When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly

over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was

the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock.

It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she

must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to

him?

If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he

was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into the

night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her voice

faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the last time

before he rode away again forever, on that white horse called Death? A

shudder passed through her.

"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those were

the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford dined

with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the life

they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and yet--"

Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the thought

of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun strands of

hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its great coiled

abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust the simple

linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the soft simplicity

of her dark-blue gown.

She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the

messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been gone

three hours or more.

Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without

hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired

reconciliation and peace.

She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to Brinkwort's

Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have orders. She

hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and explained. His

sympathy translated itself into instant action. Fortunately there was a

cart at the door. In a moment she was ready, and the cart sped away

into the night across the veld.

She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver nor

the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar voice

saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it brown. First

Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be over the

hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of the

hold-me-backs."

She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her

husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told her

of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter."

She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low

tone.

"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you

should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one

else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and

'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's

well as ends well, and you're together at the finish."

She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt

her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that pain

now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she found

Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man she

had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head drooped. "At

the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! The world stood

still for her.

"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's

voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly it

came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the

siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not

said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was

closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She

seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream.

She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only

answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was

distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her

anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to

which he belonged.

What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if Rudyard

was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him understand

that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the flood"--before

that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her life except the

old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the power which swept her

into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, deaf to her voice and to

any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her vision the figure of Ian

Stafford, but she put that from her with a trembling determination.

That was done forever. She was as sure of it as she was sure of

anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, would never forgive

her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred her. Ian had saved her

from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation and fury, and had then

repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him with a magnanimity and a

chivalry which had humiliated her. He had protected her from the shame

of an open tragedy, and then had shut the door in her face. Rudyard,

with the same evidence as Ian held,--the same letter as proof--he,

whatever he believed or thought, he had forgiven her. Only a few nights

ago, that night before the fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his

arms to her and called her his wife. In Rudyard was some great good

thing, something which could not die, which must live on. She sat up

straight in the seat of the cart, her hands clinched.

No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered

not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove herself;

his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must not be cut

off at the moment when so much had been done; when there was so much to

do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little burst of eloquence,"

as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he thought her; but a

woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the poppy-fields of

pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue in her to avoid

the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, and to have

learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have been wholly

destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might be turned to

good account.

She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright

lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of

her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a

hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng."

He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights

seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came

the sharp voice of a soldier saying:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"A friend," was the Corporal's reply.

"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned.

A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the

lights of the house were flaring out upon her.

She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal

Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that at

the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity.

All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she

knew it was Al'mah.

"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a

whisper.

The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it might

almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp.

"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps.

Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which

seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by

Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and the

morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The butterfly

had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat.

She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never

would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since all

was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had been

dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had been of

the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no harm, but

only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the result of

her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She

had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the

possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine

should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant

egotism once more! Suppose--no, she would suppose nothing. She must

believe that all she had done was for the best.

She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm

fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes,

and all at once realized the cause of that agitation--the fear that

death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever

shut against the answering voices.

"You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened

the grasp of her hands.

As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are suddenly

withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so Jasmine's

hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though she must

fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained her balance,

withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah.

"He is alive--he is alive--he is alive," she kept repeating to herself

like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear

herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me."

Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense of

something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, old

room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias

Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a

picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome

of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they

were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer army

in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot his

house or ravage his belongings.

To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at

once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost

mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision,

her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the

corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no

more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint

smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside

another room--not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the

Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something

English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man

standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was

a figure which had no affinity with death.

As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found

herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes.

Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really

was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and sun.

The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self were not

yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and intensity.

This had been too daring an experiment with one of her nature, which

had within the last few months become as strangely, insistently, even

fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the past. In spite of a

tremulous effort to govern herself and see the situation as it really

was--an effort of one who desired her good to bring her and Rudyard

together, the ruse itself became magnified to monstrous proportions,

and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that she had been inveigled;

that what should have been her own voluntary act of expiation and

submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, ever her most secret

enemy, took possession of her.

"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body

trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation

in her voice.

He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently

held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more

fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the

beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly leaped

at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the primitive

thing of which he had had enough.

"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The

letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she

was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should

not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to

get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not

let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that

midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you

would not really wish it to end."

Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women,

as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the

anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being

alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament

had flooded it for the moment.

He would have gone to her--that was what he had said. In spite of her

conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he

would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or

how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was!

How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face grown

hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his

temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the

centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making

for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It

had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable reproach. Could she

face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to

live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would

not empty, on and on, than to live with that look in his eyes.

She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a sjambok

lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and in the

minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the street

under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide.

Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of all. Idiosyncrasy

may not be cauterized, temperament must assert itself, or the

personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the end of it all?

She had placed herself so completely in his power by her wilful

waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have been ruler over

him; now she must be his slave!

"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a

cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now?

Don't you want to?"

"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A

twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!"

Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had

in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for

that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But

why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there

was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with

herself--and with him. She was in chaos again.

"You treat me like a child, you condescend--"

"Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden

storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the

will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared.

"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You

haven't got over your illness yet."

He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of

it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far

greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two

people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was

this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with

Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind--a talk which, in its

brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a

promise to one of the best friends that man--or woman--ever had, as he

thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford

understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived

by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of

her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble

she had caused. So he said to himself.

As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him.

"Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You have

not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at

Al'mah and the doctor!"

She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed

him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the

chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act

was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she felt

his pulse with the gravity of a doctor.

Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed

there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the

whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the

table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it

to his lips.

"Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You

shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming."

As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour

of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before.

There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even

wounds and illness had not faced--only humour, only a hovering joy,

only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of

the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not fantastically

to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other room where were

the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was no offending

magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, but a human

something which took no account of the years that the locust had eaten,

the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of them. There was only

the look she had seen the day he first visited her in her own home,

when he had played with words she had used in the way she adored, and

would adore till she died; when he had said, in reply to her remark

that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make any difference to

his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly it was all as if

that day had come back, although his then giant physical strength had

gone; although he had been mangled in the power-house of which they had

spoken that day. Come to think of it, she too had been working in the

"power-house" and had been mangled also; for she was but a thread of

what she was then, but a wisp of golden straw to the sheaf of the then

young golden wheat.

All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright

look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her old self

like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back

again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle

wind.

Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the

thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling

as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and

buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly.

With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew

her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders.

"Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace."

They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not make

her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew

her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and

each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means!

All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little

spasmodic grasp.

"I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be

absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, bravely.

"Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not

change. She noted that.

"I know. It was--"

She paused. What right had she to tell!

"Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me."

She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely

waiting and watching.

Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his.

They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they

dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said:

"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master

me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my

wrists."

She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used

them concerning herself the night before the tragedy.

"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I

was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You

took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest."

"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so beautiful."

She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a

dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had

been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or

did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and

words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any

real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself."

"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It

takes all that ever was and makes it new."

She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to

have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all

that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond

endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught

the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what

he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, for this

one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place

on the road.

He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and

held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great

sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre

of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of

spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart.

"It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to

have her chance, and she has got it."

Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She

knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the

night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's

surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went

back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent Garden.

The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some phrases of

the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no resonance or

vibration. It trailed away into a whisper.

"I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it

that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to herself.... Again

reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. "No, I

am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a long time, "If a

price must be paid, I will pay it."

Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near by.

At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of

sentries off duty--the two who had talked to her earlier in the

evening, after Ian Stafford had left.

"This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o'

space in a night out here."

"I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath,"

rejoined the other.

"I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously.

"I got kids--somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a flourish

of pride and self-assertion.

"Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First.

"You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," declared

his friend in a voice of fatality.

"You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I

like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in the

morning 'ere."

"Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son,"

challenged the Second.

"I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet

reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you

when we're in Lordkop."

"I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was

the railing reply.

"She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then they

struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, and said

good-night in the vernacular.

CHAPTER XXXVII

UNDER THE GUN

They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who

had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it

seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a

waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far

away in front--that front which must be taken--there hung over the

ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured

the air--crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of

animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when,

on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which

quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and

the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery,

showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead.

"Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, fell

into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with a

sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in the

millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The

lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a

verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin

this day."

Alamachtig!

At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air

was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the

ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that

human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike

were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no

apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly,

coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a

comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds

his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too--puddles

of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from

the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense

concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony of

those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and

voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men

around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained

with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were not

the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and making

bets as to where the attack would begin to-day.

Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had

been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever

done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking was

indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his

battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result to

the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders

accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the new

position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against this

fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe at

advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and the

clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an

enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall

back into a smother--as though, in falling, blankets were drawn roughly

over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air around him.

And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets flapping in

the air were the machine guns of the foe following his battery into a

zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that smothered him were

wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the direst agonies of

body and mind.

The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power,

sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks

flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the struggle

of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, plunging here

and there in flight and futile motion. As unconsciousness enwrapped him

the vision of these distraught denizens of the veld was before his

eyes. Somehow, in a lightning transformation, he became one with them

and was mingled with them.

Time passed.

When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was before

him--the negative left on the film of his sight by his last conscious

glance at the world.

He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The

springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the army

to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the hill

lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious of

this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone forward.

There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a kind of

valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a world in

which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many years--or

centuries--was it since he had been in that harvest of death? There was

no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was that his soul had

made so far a journey.

In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had

gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of

the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that

confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of

the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it

waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own

blood, in the swath which the battle had cut.

His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the

mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him

on the shoulder, had summoned him.

When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to

live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and Rudyard

had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken

roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It had

seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and that

the way was open to peace, if not to happiness.

When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I

will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time

and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way of

the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death.

To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and

absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when

he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by

the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not

for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had

reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink it.

Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it."

He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a

vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the

everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he smiled

too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant that the

army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would soon be the

Relief for which England prayed.

There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His

battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its

work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great

day's work.

He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable day.

He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery had

suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not

hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the

battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant

withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and renewed

activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and his slain

men and fellow-officers.

But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant

to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It

was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was

small, distant, and subordinate.

If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the

battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from

that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid,

and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed

for darkness.

He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind

the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping

down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he

gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the

spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his

parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness

swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed his

temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had ever

known.

"Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed eyes.

"Jasmine--water," he pleaded, and sank away again into that dream from

which he had but just wakened.

It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head

was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead.

But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held

the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips.

Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their way

from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to this

corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the

enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they first

fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of fire. No

heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, nurse, or

surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here were two

races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give and take for

the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was closed.

The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no

right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the

battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and

in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and

had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where

wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of war.

When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow her to

remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her way to

where the wounded and dead lay.

A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured

gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of

Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come

whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the

man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like

herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose

hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that

as a brother loves so he loved her.

Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the

lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are

commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser

nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the

abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached

Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The

surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care for

a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a

courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With

both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light his

cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it was

with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it!

"Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over

him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me

pipe, glory be!"

With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun,

left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that

nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was

made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the

young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, some

with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the gunner,

who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood at

attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his credit

for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she threw

over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained jackets

lying near--jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had tried

hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down.

There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was

spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were

dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations.

Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was

ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that

the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until

she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to

tell--all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday.

She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that

look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and

peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came

to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going:

his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from

the lever that lifted things.

She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards

the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome

birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they

could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she

drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from

the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little more water.

"God make it easy!" she said.

A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through

the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing

them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all

her own problems--like Stafford--like Stafford? Stooping, she

reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed

her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need her

on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who

could help him now. Who else was there beside herself--and Jigger?

Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been

with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like Jigger

to be absent when Stafford needed him.

She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him

coming--to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she

saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner,

stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and

head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though

there was a goal which must be reached.

An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat

at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was

the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so

flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who

had fallen. Now he also was in dire need.

She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an

angular assertion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log,

ungainly and rigid.

"They got me! I'm hit--twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that

stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an

abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he

added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found him.

His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure seemed

to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if not

resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out

querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis.

"They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I wasn't

fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, accent,

and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips moved

once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor," he said

mechanically, and said no more.

As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last words.

"Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly.

They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and

died. She shuddered.

"So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the

lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay.

Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took

no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being

killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of Ian

Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea.

He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her

vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept

ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi

Terrace--first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had

sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes had

died--"More was lost at Mohacksfield."

The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim

of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie

unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face

of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the

armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or

struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over the

hills.

In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept

Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been justified. He

would have died had it not been for the water and brandy she had forced

between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath the gun. In the

end they would come and gather the dead and wounded. When the battle

was over they would come, or, maybe, before it was over.

But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of

artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar

of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her

senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew

thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a dream.

She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than all the

noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her very body

seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers hurting

her brain.

At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs.

So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and

bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded!

The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder

almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was

ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to know

that friends were with him at the last, and also what had happened at

Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday.

She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one

man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and

swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so.

The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare frock-coat,

huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's Farm. The last

time she had seen that malevolent face was when its owner was marched

away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday.

It was Krool.

An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, for

it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it.

When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces

with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The

superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes;

then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of

savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with

sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was

upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he

saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry.

With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A

sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained

horses sprang forward.

"The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder.

Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins,

but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for

him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach

Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after

his escape--if he was caught--he would do something to gall the pride

of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to issue

forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy loss

while the battle was at its height--he would ride it over the hills

into the Boers' camp.

There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with

his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a

wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the

staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses,

and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow

the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire

upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it rose

again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It

swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills,

Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that

dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and understood

that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer lines.

At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had also

fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British gun was

not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, and their

fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was doing the thing

with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval as the gun came

nearer and nearer.

Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of

one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses

were behaving so gallantly,--horses of one of their own batteries

daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force--that there was

scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden

turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving

behind it a little cloud of dust.

Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man

who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry

Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way,

and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still

unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much

the same as those of Barry Whalen.

With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's vigil.

The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by the Red

Cross wagons.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"PHEIDIPPIDES"

At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and

fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and friend,

the end came to the man who had lain under the gun.

"Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the

humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner who

brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it.

It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth,

he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle,

to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died

for England before they knew that victory was hers.

"Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much

upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his

hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had

to go before they knew."

"I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look in

his face.

His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and

Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah

took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick,

noiseless steps, left the room.

What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come.

Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time.

"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written

self-control.

"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It

will help him."

He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of

pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another room.

There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips.

She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white and

still upon the coverlet.

At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would

reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from

the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half

raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A light

transfigured his face.

"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly down.

"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"THE ROAD IS CLEAR"

The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and

glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an

emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from

Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the

petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its

improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain,

where she guarded the jewels of her honour.

The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and

drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills

from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup

of trembling, the wine of loss.

As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of

brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets

of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to

bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the

Day Path and took the Night Road.

Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with

bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the resurrection

and the life"--the volleys of honour, the proud salut of the brave to

the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few who turn away

from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging behind--all had

been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the veld with a golden

radiance which soothed like prayer.

By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a

woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed

to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the

attitude of the figure.

A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away

from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes.

"What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see

that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was

properly in its place.

"'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how

I'll git along now."

There was great hopelessness in the tone.

"He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, Jigger. He

thought of all that."

"'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of

protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money,

when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for

'im--that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im."

"You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago

that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard--good for all the

time."

The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that--did 'e?" he asked,

and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, ain't 'e?"

His look questioned her eagerly.

For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took on

a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from

strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered

steadily:

"Yes, he is happy now."

"How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed

in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is

it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep

sometimes--singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time I

ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?"

"Yes, it is like that--just like that," she answered, taking his hand,

and holding it with a motherly tenderness.

"Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added.

She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly.

"This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all

have to go back to work."

"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it something

of her old whimsical self.

"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of

intellectual effort. "It's a cut above 'em both--that's my fancy."

"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do

when you get back to England?" she inquired.

"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a

scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?"

"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked.

"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly.

"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little,

"and we'll have to find a way of being busy together."

"His gryce'd like that," he responded.

She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds became

silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a long

time.

"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a

whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to

shut out something that pained her sight.

"I wish you'd sing somethin'--same as you did that night at Glencader,

about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from the

bed.

She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and

turned again to the light in the evening sky.

"P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself.

On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to

sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go

down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence

between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which

the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the

disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared

to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence

would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to

look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should

force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had

talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been nothing.

Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time

the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the

grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs

of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other,

that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should

be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its

own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same

light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which

exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things any

more.

There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the valley.

With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the land

where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land where

he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped to

make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it from

disaster.

But there had come another victory--the victory of Home. The

coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one

hour.

Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman beside

him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him with an

understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a colour

came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days than he

could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a sadness

which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen those eyes

he had thought them the most honest he had ever known. Looking at them

now, with confidence restored, he thought again as he did that night at

the opera the year of the Raid.

"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose and

a great gentleness in his tone.

Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination

gathered at her lips.

Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself.

"But I cannot--I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then you

may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour went

from her lips. "I must be honest now--at last, about everything. I want

to tell you--"

He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely in

the eyes.

"Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of

finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in

one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips.

"A fresh start for a long race--the road is clear," he said firmly.

Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that in

his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she

was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast.

A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed

and echoed away among the hills.

He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his eyes.

"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again.

Her fingers tightened on his.

THE END

GLOSSARY:

AASVOGEL Vulture.

ALFALFA Lucerne.

BILTONG Strips of dried meat.

DISSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon.

DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil.

DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally

applied to Dutchmen in South Africa.

DORP Settlement or town.

KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa.

KOPJE A rounded hillock.

KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains.

KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle.

KRANZES Rocky precipices.

MEERKAT A species of ichneumon.

ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the

Boers.

SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills).

SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide.

SPRUIT A small stream.

STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house.

TAAL South African Dutch.

TREK To move from place to place with belongings.

VELD An open grassy plain.

VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes.

VERDOMDE Damned.

VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African

Republics.

VOORTREKKER Pioneer.

VROUW Wife.