The temporary Convent was a roomy trench dug out of the red gravelly sand,
lined with the inevitable sheets of corrugated iron, and roofed with the
same material, supported by a solid frame of steel rails. Wide chinks
between the metal sheets gave admission to light and air, and earthen
drain-pipes made ventilators in the walls. But the sunlight penetrated
like spears of burning flame, and the air was stifling hot. The paraffin
stove that heated irons for Sister Tobias smelled clamorously, and the
droning of myriads of flies, not the least of the seven plagues of
Gueldersdorp, kept up a persistent bass to the shrill singing of the
little tin kettle. Later, when the April rains began, and the tarpaulins
were pulled over the sand-bagged roof, tin lamps burning more paraffin did
battle with Cimmerian darkness.
Saxham's professional approval was won by the marvellous cleanliness and
neatness of the place, divided into living-room and dormitory by a heavy
green baize curtain, that at the Convent had shut off the noise of the
great classroom from the rest of the house. The curtain was drawn, hiding
the little iron cots brought from the Sisters' cells, ascetic couches
whose narrow wire mattresses must afford scant room for repose to double
sleepers now, where all were crowded, and Conventual rules must be in
abeyance. The outer place held a deal table, the oil cooking-stove; some
household utensils shining with cleanliness were ranged upon a shelf, and
several pictures hung upon the walls. Upon a bracket the silver Crucifix
from the altar of the Convent chapel gleamed against the background of a
snowy, lace-bordered linen cloth. There were orderly piles of cleaned and
mended clothes, military and civilian, the garments of sick and wounded
male patients, who would leave the Hospital without a thought of the
unselfish women who had foregone sleep to patch jackets and sew on missing
buttons. There were haversacks of coarse canvas for the Volunteers,
finished and partly made, with ammunition-pouches and bandoliers. And
Sister Tobias stood ironing at the deal table, partly screened by a line
of drying linen, while Sister Mary-Joseph turned the mangle, and the
little brisk novice, her round cheeks no longer rosy, folded with active
hands. The Dop Doctor's keen quick glance took note of the patient
cheerful weariness written on the three faces, then rested on one other
face there.
Its wild white-rose fairness had dulled into the pallor of old ivory.
There were deep, bluish shadows about the eyes and round the mouth, and
the hollow at the base of the throat, where the pulse throbbed and
fluttered visibly, had grown deep. Her red-brown hair had lost its
burnished beauty. It had become dull like her skin, and her garments hung
loosely upon the form whose soft roundnesses had fallen away. But her eyes
had changed most. Their golden-hazel irises had faded to pale bronze, the
full, fair eyelids had shrunk, the pupils were distended to twice their
natural size. She sat upon a stool in a corner, a slight girlish figure in
a holland skirt and white cambric blouse-bodice, her slender waist
girdled with a belt of brown leather, the colour of her little shoes.
Huddled up against the corrugated-iron wainscot of the rough earth wall,
the obsession of fear that dilated her eyes and parched her lips shook her
in recurrent gusts of trembling, whenever the guns of the Gueldersdorp
batteries spoke in thunder, whenever the Boer artillery bellowed Death
from the heights above. For since the great gun had spoken from East
Point, Death's red sickle had not ceased to ply its task.
Some work, one of the coarse canvas haversacks made by the nuns for
Gueldersdorp's enrolled defenders, lay at the girl's feet. Her right hand,
horrible to see in its incessant, mechanical activity, made continually
the motion of sewing. Her eyes stared blankly, unwinkingly at the opposite
wall, and the gusts of trembling went over her without cessation. At a
more deafening crash than ordinary, an irrepressible scream would break
from her, and her hand would snatch at an invisible garment as though she
plucked back its imaginary wearer from peril by main force.
"She sees nobody. She hear nozing when we speak--she vould feel nozing, if
you should pinch or shake her. Was I not right, Reverend Mozer, to say it
is time zat somesing should be done?"
The shrill whisper came from Sister Cleophee. The Mother-Superior made a
sign in assent. Beyond words, her heart was crying--Oh, misery and joy in
one mingled draught to have won such love as this from Richard's child!
But her face was impassive and stern, and her eyes, looking over Saxham's
great shoulder as he stood silently watching at the bottom of the ladder
stairway, imposed silence on the busy, observant, tactful Sisters, who
continued their labours without a break, as the sewing hand went
diligently to and fro, and the recurrent convulsive shudders shook the
girl's slight frame, and the irrepressible cry of anguish was wrung from
her at each ear-splitting shellburst. And yet, with all her agony of love
intensifying her gaze, the Mother did not see as much as Saxham, who took
in every detail and symptom with skilled, consummate ease, realizing the
desperate effort that strove for self-command, noting the exhaustion of
suspense in the dropped lines of the half-open, colourless mouth, the
incipient mental breakdown in the vacant stare of the dilated eyes, the
mechanical action of the stitching needle-hand, the convulsive shudder
that rippled through the slight figure at each boom, or crash, or
fusillade of rifle-fire that drifted over the shrapnel-torn veld and
through the battered town. He threw a swift whisper over his shoulder
presently, that only reached the ear of the Mother-Superior, standing
behind him, her tall shape concealed from the sufferer's sight by his
great form.
"How long has this been going on?"
She whispered back: "I am told ever since the bombardment began. Every
day, and at night too, should duty detain me at one or another of the
Hospitals."
He added in the same low tone:
"She has a morbid terror of death under ordinary circumstances?"
The Mother-Superior murmured, a hand upon the ache in her bosom:
"Not of death for herself. For--another."
His purely scientific attitude must have already abandoned him when he
knew gladness that Self was not the dominant note in this dumb threnody of
fear. But he wore the professional mask of the physician as he ordered:
"Let one of the Sisters speak to her."
The Mother-Superior glanced at the nun who was ironing, and then at the
figure on the stool. The Sister was about to obey when the Boer
Maxim-Nordenfelt on the southern position rattled. There was a hissing
rush overhead, and as a series of sharp, splitting cracks told that a
group of the shining little copper-banded shells had burst, and that their
splinters were busily hunting far and wide for somebody to kill, the
stitching hand dropped by the girl's side. A new wave of shuddering went
over the desolate young figure, pitiable and horrible to see. Dull drops
of sweat broke out upon her temples in the shadow of her red-brown hair.
"How are you getting on with your work, dearie?"
Sister Tobias had spoken to her gently. She moved her head and her fixed
eyes in a blind way, and the stitching hand resumed its mechanical task,
but she gave no answer, except with the shudderings that shook her, as a
lily is shaken in an autumn blast.
Then Saxham stepped backwards noiselessly, climbed the steep ladder
stairway, and stood waiting for the Mother-Superior in the blazing yellow
sunshine, beside the post to which his horse was hitched. The Mother
followed instantly. He was making some pencil memoranda in a shabby
notebook, and kept his eyes upon his writing, and made a mere mask of his
square, pale face as he began:
"It--the case presents a very interesting development. The subject has at
one time or other--probably the critical period of girlhood--sustained a
severe physical and mental shock?"
The great grey eyes swam in sudden tears that were not to be repressed, as
the Mother-Superior remembered the finding of that lost lamb on the veld
seven years before. She bowed her head in silent assent.
"You would wish candour," Saxham said, looking away from her emotion. "And
I should tell you that this is grave."
"I know it," her desperate eyes said more plainly than her scarcely moving
lips. "But so many others are suffering in the same way, and there is
nothing that can be done for any of them."
He answered with emphasis that struck her cold. "Some measures must be
taken in the case, and without delay. This state of things must not go
on." He saw that the Mother-Superior caught her breath and wrung her hands
together in the loose, concealing sleeves as she said, with a breath of
anguish:
"If she only had more self-control."
"She has self-control." He echoed the word impatiently. "She is using
every ounce she has for all she is worth. She has used it too long and too
persistently."
"I will say then, if she only had more faith!"
"I know nothing of faith," Saxham said curtly; "I deal in common-sense."
She could have asked if it were commonly sensible for a creature made by
God, and existing but by His will, to live without Him? But she put the
temptation past her. No cordial flame of mutual esteem and liking ever
sprang up between these two, often brought together in their mutual work
of help and healing. She recognised Saxham's power, she admitted his
skill. But, as his practised eye had diagnosed in the beloved of her heart
the signs of physical and mental crisis, so her clear gaze deciphered in
his face the story written by those unbridled years of vice and
dissipation, and knew him diseased in soul. She may have been fully
acquainted with all Gueldersdorp had learned of him, going here, there,
and everywhere, as was her wont, in obedience to her Spouse's call. But if
so, she never betrayed Saxham. There was no resentment, only delicate
irony in the curve of her finely-modelled lips as she queried:
"Am I so deficient in the quality of common-sense?"
"Madam," he said, "you have manifested it in each of the many instances
where I have been brought in contact with you. But in your solicitude for
this young girl you have shown, for the first time in my experience of
you, some lack of good judgment, and have inflicted, and do inflict,
severe suffering on her."
Her eyes flashed grey fire under her stern brows as she demanded:
"How, pray?"
"It is out of the question, I suppose," Saxham said coldly, "that you
should slacken in your ministrations among the sick and wounded, and keep
out of daily and hourly danger--for her sake?"
"Impossible," her voice answered, and her heart added unheard:
"Impossible, unless I should be false to my Heavenly Bridegroom out of
love for the child He gave."
"Then," said Saxham bluntly, "unless these recurrent nerve-storms are to
culminate in cerebral lesion and mental and physical collapse--a result
more easy to avert than to deal with--take the girl about with you."
"But----" the Mother uttered in irrepressible dismay. "I--we go
everywhere!"
It was most true. He had a vision, as she said it, of the black-robed,
white-coifed, cheerful Sisters passing in couples through the
shrapnel-littered streets, between houses of gaping walls, and shattered
roofs, and glassless windows, cheerful, serene, helpful, bringing comfort
to the dying, and assistance to the sick, oblivious of whistling bullets
and bursting shells. And the most arduous duties, the most repulsive
tasks, the most danger-fraught errands, were hers, always by right, and
claim, and choice. What a woman it was! A very Judith in Israel. He knew
that Judith did not like him, but unconcealed admiration was in his blue
eyes as he looked at her.
"I know it. Let _her_ go everywhere. It is the sole chance, and--you spoke
of faith just now.... If you have it for yourself and the religious women
of your Order, who go about doing good in confidence of the protection--I
do not speak in mockery--of an Almighty Hand, why can't you have it for
her?"
She had never seemed so noble in his eyes as when she took that implied
rebuke of his, with meek bending of her proud head, and candid
self-condemnation in the eyes that were lowered and then raised to his,
and beautiful humility in her speech:
"Sir, your reproach is just; it is I who have been lacking in faith.
And--it shall be as you advise."
The distant bugle blared out its warning. The bell tolled twice, stopped,
and tolled four; the smaller bells echoed. The voices of the sentries came
to their ears, loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to the
merest spider-thread of sound:
"'Ware big gun! South quarter, 'ware!"
"I must go to her," the Mother-Superior said, and passed him swiftly and
went down the ladder. Saxham followed. The white figure on the stool had
not stirred, apparently. Its blank eyes still stared at the wall, and the
mechanical hand moved, sewing at nothing, as diligently as ever.
"Lynette!"
The fixed, blindly-staring eyes came to life. Colour throbbed back into
the wan ivory cheeks. The mouth lost its vacant droop. She rose up from
the stool with a joyful cry, and, stumbling in her haste, ran into the
outstretched arms. As they wrapped about her, clinging to her sole earthly
friend and guardian as though she could never let go, came the crash of
the driving-charge, the yelling Brocken-hunt of the passage of the huge
projectile, the ear-splitting din of the shellburst. She lifted up a
radiant face of laughing defiance, and then choked and quivered and burst
out crying, leaning her panting young bosom against the black habit, and
weeping as though her whole being must dissolve, Undine-like, in tears.
Ah, the lovely feminine woman who weeps and clings! She will never lose
her dominion over the sons of men. The appealing glances of her beautiful
wet eyes melt the stoniest male hearts, the soft tendril-like wreathing of
her arms about the pillar of salt upon the Plain would have had power to
change it back into a breathing human being once more, if Lot had looked
back, instead of his helpmeet. Her sterner sisters may feel as keenly,
love as tenderly, sorrow even more bitterly than she. Who will believe it
among the sons of dead old Adam, who first felt the heaving bosom pant
against his own, and saw the first bright tear-showers fall--forerunners
of what oceans of world-sorrow to be shed hereafter, when the Angel of the
flaming sword drove the peccant pair from Paradise. Ah, the fair, weak
woman who weeps and clings!
And Owen Saxham, watching Lynette from the ladder-foot, and the
Mother-Superior, clasping her and murmuring soft comfort into the
delicate, fragile ear under the heaped waves of red-brown hair, shared the
same thought.
How this trembling, vibrating, emotional creature will love one day, when
the man arrives to whom imperious Nature shall bid her render up her all!
In whom, prayed the unselfish mother-heart, willing to be bereft of even
the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she
find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For,
all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon
a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what will happen then?
Looking at the pair, Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. Lynette's tears had
been dried quickly, like all joy-drops that the eyes shed. She was talking
low and earnestly, pleading her cause with clinging hands and wistful
looks and coaxing tones that were broken sometimes by a sob and sometimes
by a little peal of girlish laughter.
"Mother, I am not made of sugar to be melted in the sun, or Dresden china
to be broken. I am strong enough to take my share of the work; I am brave
enough to bear anything--anything," she urged, "if only I may be with you.
But to sit cooped up here day after day, safe and sheltered, sewing
powder-bags or giving Katie French lessons, or helping Sister Tobias, and
listening to the guns"--the blood fled from her cheeks and the great
pupils of her eyes dilated until they looked all black in her face of
whiteness--"the dreadful guns, and wondering where you are when the shells
are bursting"--her voice rose in anguish--"I can't bear it! Mother, do you
hear?" She threw her beautiful head back entreatingly, and the pulses in
her white throat throbbed under Saxham's eyes, and her slight hands were
desperate in their clutch upon the arms that held her. "I want my share of
the risk, whatever it is. I will have it! It is my right. I have tried to
be good and patient, but I can't, I can't, I can't stand this any more!"
Her voice broke upon a sob, and Saxham said from the doorway that was
filled by his great shoulders from post to post:
"You will not have to stand it any more. The Reverend Mother has
reconsidered her decision. She will take you to the Hospital and elsewhere
from to-day."
The man's curt manner and authoritative tone brought Lynette for the first
time to knowledge of his presence. Her glance went to him, and joy was
mingled with surprise in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior.
"Really, Mother?"
The Mother-Superior, though her own still face had flushed with quick,
irrepressible resentment at Saxham's tone, said cheerfully:
"It is true, my child. Dr. Saxham thinks it will be best for you. Dr.
Saxham, this is my ward, Miss Mildare."
Saxham made his little brusque bow. Lynette, bending her lovely head, gave
a grateful glance at the khaki-clad figure with the great hulking
shoulders, standing under the patch of hot blue sky that the top of the
ladder vanished in, and a strange shock and thrill went through the man's
whole frame. His odd, gentian-coloured eyes under the heavy thunder-cloud
of black eyebrows lightened so suddenly in reply that the girl felt
repelled and half frightened. She was conscious of a curious oppression.
As for Saxham, a delicate, stinging fire ran newly in his veins. Something
stirred in the secret depths of him, and came to life with an awakening
thrill exquisitely poignant and sweet. For this slight, unsophisticated,
Convent-bred creature, slender as a lily, reared in innocence among the
blameless, was rich as her frail, lovely mother had been before her in the
mysterious allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the zenith of her
stately beauty had never possessed one-tenth of the seductive charm that
emanated from this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen
gleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made the
senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with your
passions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not lost the lilt
of the song that it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since the
Woman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis may invite, if
unconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter; the shy, close-folded nymph
among the sedges may awaken the primal desire of Pan among the reeds....
Saxham, even in the years of his degradation, had scarcely sunk to the
level of the crook-shinned, hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. But he had built
his nest with the birds of night, and slaked his thirst at impure sources,
and only now did he realise how his mad dream of vengeance upon the Power
that had cast him down and wrecked his future was to recoil upon himself.
"I have done with Love," he had said, "and with Hope, and with Life as it
is known of the honourable and the upright and the cleanly among men for
ever!"
And now ... his thoughts were tipped with fire as he drank in the
suddenly-awakened, vivid, delicate beauty of Lynette Mildare. Now he
realised the depths of his own mad folly. Oh, to have had the right to
hope again, to love again, to live again, and be grateful to David, who
had betrayed him, and Mildred, who had deserted him--to this end! Oh,
never to have lost the honourable claim to woo such loveliness as this and
win such purity, and wear both as a talisman upon his heart for ever! He
drew breath heavily as he looked at the girl, transformed and glowing
under the touch she loved, shining from within like some frail,
transparent alabaster lamp with the light that he had helped to rekindle.
And as his great chest expanded with deep draughts of the subtle,
intoxicating atmosphere of her, and the blood hummed through his veins to
that new measure, the last link of his old fetters fell clanking to the
ground. And then, with a sting of intolerable remorse, came the memory of
his shameful five years' Odyssey spent as a hog among other hogs of the
human kind. It had not been an overthrow. It had been a surrender of all
that was noble and strong in him to all in him that was despicable and
weak and vile. And his soul shuddered, and his heart contracted in the
sickening clutch of shame.