XI

The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two

recognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, she

had thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timely

interference of the previous day.

"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is official

in character," he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladies

in charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in those

parts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely even

there. It would be wise of you under existing circumstances, which I shall

explain as fully and as briefly as I may, to send your pupils without

delay to their homes."

"All that have not already left," she assured him, "with the exception of

those whose parents reside in the town, or who have no living relatives,

and therefore do not leave us, go North and South by early trains

to-morrow."

"Ma'am," he said, "I am heartily glad to hear it." He added, as she

invited him to be seated: "Thank you, but I have been in the saddle since

five this morning, and if you have no objection I should prefer to stand.

And for another reason, I explain things better on my legs. But you will

allow me to find you a seat, if--any of these may be moved?" His glance,

with some perturbation in it, reviewed the stiff ranks of chairs severely

marshalled in Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board.

"They are not fixtures," she said, with quiet amusement at his evident

relief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the room

offered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, with

one hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of a

spurred riding-boot on the plain brick kerb.

"I may as well say ..."--he ran a finger round the inside of the collar

that showed above the khaki jacket--"that, though I have often had the

pleasure, and I will add, the great advantage, of meeting ladies of--of

your religious profession before, this is the first time that I ever was

inside a Convent."

"Or a boarding-school?" she asked, and her rare, sudden smile irradiated

her. His hand dropped from his collar. He looked at her with a sudden

warmth of admiration there was no mistaking. But her beauty went as

suddenly as it had come, and her arched, black brows frowned slightly as

she said, in tones that were very cold and very clear, and rather

ironical:

"Sir, you are good enough to waste valuable time in trying to break, with

due consideration for the nerves of a large household of unprotected

women, the news we have expected daily for months. You have come here to

announce to us the bursting of the cloud of War. Is it not so?"

He was taken aback, but hid it like a diplomat.

"Ma'am, it is so. The public notice was posted in the town this morning.

Forces of Boers are massed on the West Natal and East Baraland borders,

waiting until the British fire a shot. Their secret orders are to wait

that signal, but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipate

these.... And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself,

having been despatched by the British Government on special service to

report to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North--it is an

open secret now--I have been sent down here to put the town into a

condition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessary

and inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditions

is--that the women and children should be got out of it."

The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did not

invade the pale olive of her cheeks.

He added:

"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I am

not naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather the

contrary. Quite the contrary."

She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom she

had danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. That

boy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could not

keep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant.

But she went under directly, and left nothing but a spark of laughter in

the beautiful grave eyes.

"I understand," she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certain

welcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helpless

incubus."

"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses a

capacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male,

without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, she

eats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keep

alive the combatant members of the community."

"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most

rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break."

His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache.

Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the

Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted

it.

"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2

platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Government

at the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wish

to follow the example of those who left to-day, and go down to Cape Town.

Those who prefer to go North are advised to leave for Malamye Siding or

Johnstown, places at a certain distance from the Transvaal Border, where

they will be almost certain to find safety. Those who insist upon

remaining in the town I cannot, of course, remove by force. I will make

all possible arrangements to laager them safely, but this will entail

heavy extra labour upon the forces at my command, and inevitable

discomfort--possibly severe suffering and privation--upon themselves. To

you, madam, I appeal to set a high example. Your Community numbers, unless

I am incorrectly informed, twelve religious. Consent to take the step I

urge upon you, retreat with your nuns to Cape Town while the opportunity

is yours."

He folded his arms, having spoken this curtly and crisply. The

Mother-Superior rose up out of her chair. It seemed to him as though she

would never have done rising, but at last she stood before him, very

straight and awfully tall, with her great stern eyes an inch above the

level of his own, and her white hands folded in her black serge sleeves.

"Sir," she said, "we are here under the episcopal jurisdiction of the

Catholic Bishop of the Diocese. We have received no order from His

Eminence to quit our post--and until we receive it, give me leave to tell

you, with all respect for your high official authority, that we shall

remain in Gueldersdorp."

Their looks crossed like swords. He grew crimson over the white

unsunburned line upon his forehead, and his moustache straightened like a

bar of rusty-red iron across his thin, tanned face. But he respected moral

power and determination when he encountered them, and this salient woman

provoked his respect.

"Let us keep cool----" he began.

"I assure you that I have never been otherwise," she said, "since the

beginning of this interview."

"Ma'am," he said, "you state the fact. Let me keep cool, and point out to

you a few of the--peculiarities in which the present situation

unfortunately abounds."

He laid down, with a look that asked permission, his hat and cane and the

odd glove upon the round, shining walnut-table that stood, adorned with

mild little religious works, in the geometrical centre of the Convent

parlour, and checked the various points off upon the fingers of the gloved

hand with the lean, brown, bare one.

"I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." He had quite

forgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking sex. "I have

begun immediately upon my arrival here to prepare for them. The nucleus of

a sand-bag fort-system has been formed already, mines are being laid down

far in the front, and every male of the population who has a pair of

capable hands has had a rifle put into them."

She looked at him, and approved the male type of energy and action. "If I

had been a man," she thought, "I should have wished to be one like this."

But she bent her head silently, and he went on.

"We have an armoured train in the railway-yard, with a Maxim and a

Hotchkiss. We have a Nordenfeldt, a couple of Maxims more, four

seven-pounder guns of almost prehistoric date, slow of fire, uncertain as

regards the elevating-gear, and, I tell you plainly, as dangerous, some of

'em, to be behind as to be in front of! One or two more we've got that

were grey-headed in the seventies. By the Lord! I wish one or two

Whitehall heads I know were mopping 'em out this minute. Ahem! Ahem!"

He coughed, and grew red under his sun-tan. Her eyes were elsewhere.

"Ma'am, you must try to recollect that the Boer forces are armed with the

newest Krupps and other guns, and that it is more than possible they may

attempt to shell the town. In that case artillery of tremendous range, and

a flight almost equal to that of sound itself--I won't be too technical, I

assure you!--will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for the

scrap-heap, or for gate ornaments. Understand, I tell you what is common

knowledge among our friends--common jest among our enemies. And another

thing I will tell you, ma'am. Those enemies shall never enter

Gueldersdorp!"

She was radiant now, with that smile upon her lips, and that glow in the

great eyes that met his with such frank approval. Confound it, what

business had a nun to be anything like so beautiful? Would she pale, would

she tremble, when he told her the last truth of all?

"Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, happens to be, if not

the biggest, at least the most conspicuously situated building in the

place, lying as it does at a distance of four hundred yards from the town,

on the north-east side. Like the Hospital, of course, it will be under the

protection of the Red-Cross Flag. But the Boer is not chivalrous. He does

not object to killing women or sick people, nor does he observe with any

standing scrupulousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows up

nicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away at, and the Red-Cross

Flag has often helped him to get a satisfactory range. If they bombard us,

as I have reason to believe they will, you'll have iron and lead in tons

poured through these walls."

She said:

"When they fall about our ears, Colonel, it will be time to leave them!"

He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed.

"Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this way."

"It is the only way in which to take them," she said. "There should be no

panic in the hearts of those who wait on the Divine Will. Moreover, I

should wish you to understand in case of siege, and an extra demand upon

the staffs of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all--or nearly

all--certificated nurses, and would willingly place our services at your

disposal. Let me hope that you will call upon us without hesitation if the

necessity should arise."

He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with diffidence if he

might be permitted to see the Convent chapel. She consented willingly, and

passed on before, tall and stately, and moving with long, light, even

steps, her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled passages. The

chapel was at the end of a long whitewashed corridor upon the airy floor

above. His keen glance took in every feature of the simple, spotless

little sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly to the

upper end of the aisle between the rows of rush-seated chairs, and knelt

for an instant in veneration of the Divine Presence hidden in the

Tabernacle.

"Unfortunately situated!" he muttered, standing stiffly by the west door.

Then he glanced right and left, a thumb and finger in the breast-pocket of

his jacket, feeling for a worn little pigskin purse. As he passed out

before her at the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in the

holy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she closed the

chapel door, she saw that he held out to her a five-pound note.

"Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but ..."

"There is no box for alms," she said, pausing outside the shut door, while

the lay-Sister waited at the passage end, "as this is only a private

chapel."

"I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a Protestant. But in the

behalf of a dear friend of mine, a British officer, of your own faith,

who I have reason to believe died without benefit of his clergy, perhaps

with this you would arrange that a service should be held in memory of the

dead?"

"I understand," said the Mother-Superior. "You suggest that Holy Mass

should be offered for the repose of your friend's soul? Well, I will

convey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it."

"I do desire it--or, rather, poor Mildare would."

An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, through

the foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her

eyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her

sinking forces. Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it for

support against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But his

eyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last,

worst blow.

"I said, ma'am, that my dead friend ... the name is Richard Mildare,

Captain, late of the Grey Hussars.... You are ill, ma'am. I have been

inconsiderate, and over-tired you." He had become aware that great dark

circles had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her lips were

colourless. She said, with a valiant effort:

"I assure you, with thanks, that you have been most considerate, and that

I am perfectly well. Are you at liberty to tell me, sir, the date of

Captain Mildare's death? For I know one who was also his friend, and

would"--a spasm passed over her face--"take an interest in hearing the

particulars."

"Ma'am, you shall know what I know myself. About twenty years ago Captain

Mildare, owing to certain unhappy circumstances, social, and not pecuniary

ones, sent in his papers, sold his Commission, and left England."

She waited.

"I heard of him in Paris. Then, later, I heard from him. He was with her

here in South Africa. She was a woman for whom he had given up everything.

They travelled continually, never resting long anywhere, he, and she,

and--their child. She died on the trek and he buried her."

"Yes?"

The voice was curiously toneless.

"Where he buried her has only recently come to my knowledge. It was at a

kind of veld tavern in the Orange Free State, a shanty in the

grass-country between Driepoort and Kroonfontein, where travellers can get

a bad lodging, and bad liquor, and worse company. 'Trekkers Plaats' they

call the place now. But when my friend was there it was known as the 'Free

State Hotel.'"

Her lips shut as if to keep out bitter, drowning waters; her face was

white as wax within the starched blue-white of the nun's coif; his slow

sentences fell one by one upon her naked heart, and ate their way in like

vitriol. Quite well, too well, she knew what was coming.

"He dug her grave with his own hands. He meant to have a clergyman read

the Burial Service over it, but before that could be arranged for he also

died--of fever, I gather, though nothing is very clear, except that the

two graves are there. I have seen them, and have also ascertained that

whatever property he left was appropriated by the scoundrel who kept the

hotel, and afterwards sold it, and cleared out of South Africa; and that

the child is not to be found. God knows what has become of her! The man

who robbed her father may have murdered or sold her--or taken her to

England. A man bearing his name was mixed up in a notorious case tried at

the Central Criminal Court five years ago. And the case, which ruined a

well-known West End surgeon, involved the death of a young woman. I trust

the victim may not have been the unhappy girl herself. My solicitors in

London have been instructed to make inquiries towards the removal of that

doubt...."

If those keen eyes of his had not been averted, he must have seen the

strong shuddering that convulsed the woman's frame, and the spasm of agony

that wrung the lips she pressed together, and the glistening damps of

anguish that broke out upon the broad white forehead. To save her life she

could not have said to him, "She whom you seek is here!" But a voice

wailed in her heart, more piercingly than Rachel's, and it cried:

"Richard's daughter! She is Richard's daughter! The homeless thing, the

blighted child I found upon the veld, and nursed back to life and

happiness and forgetfulness of a hideous past; whom I took into my empty

heart, and taught to call me Mother.... She is the fruit of my own

betrayal! the offspring of the friend who deceived and the man who

deserted me!"

The visitor was going on, his grave gaze still turned aside. "Of course,

the age of the unhappy girl whose death brought about the trial I speak

of--everything depends upon that. Mildare's daughter was a child of three

years old when she lost father and mother. If alive to-day she would be

nineteen years of age. I wish it had been my great good fortune to trace

and find her. She should have had the opportunity of growing up to be a

noble woman. In this place, if it might have been, and with an example

like yours before her eyes ... ma'am, good-afternoon."

He bowed to her, and went away with short, quick, even steps, following

the lay-Sister who was to take him to the gate.

She tottered into the chapel, and sank down before the altar, and strove

to pray. Her mind was an eddying blackness shot with the livid glare of

electric fires. Her faith rocked like a palm in the tempest; her soul was

tossed across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone.

Being so great, she suffered greatly; being so strong, she had strong

passions to wrestle with and to subdue. Awhile, like that other Mary, who,

unlike her, was a fleshly sinner, she strove, rent as it seemed to her, by

seven devils. And then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-pierced

Feet, and found there at last the healing gift of tears.