The other knew the point gained, and adroitly changed the conversation. It
grew severely technical, bristling with scientific terms, dealing chiefly
with food-values. The black cloud cleared from Saxham's forehead as he
lectured on the energy-fuels, and settled the minimum of protein, fat,
starch, and sugar necessary to keep the furnace of Life burning in the
human body.
Milk, that precious fluid, could henceforth only be given to invalids and
children. Margarine and jam were severely relegated to the list of
luxuries. Sardines, tinned salmon, and American canned goods had entirely
given out. And flour, the staff of life, was vanishing.
The joy of battle lightened in their faces as they talked, forging
weapons that should make men enduring, and Saxham warmed. His icy armour
of habitual silence melted and broke up. He became eloquent, pouring out
his treasured projects, suggesting substitutes for this, and makeshifts
for that and the other. He was in his element--he knew the ground he trod.
He thrust out his grim under-jaw, and hulked with his heavy shoulders as
he talked to this man who understood; and every supple movement of his
surgeon's hand pointed out some fresh expedient, as the singing bullets
went by or whit-whitted about them in the dust, and now and then a shell
burst over patient Gueldersdorp.
They parted at the Women's Laager, and as the khaki bicycle grew small in
the distance, Saxham realised with a shock that he was happy, that life
had suddenly become sweet, and opened out anew before him in a vista, not
of shining promise, but with one golden gleam of hope in it, to a man
freed by the force of Will from the bondage of the accursed liquor-thirst.
Freed! If freed in truth, why should the sight and smell even of Brooker's
sticky loquat-brandy have set the long-denied palate craving? Saxham put
that question from him with both hands.
And then he frowned, thinking of that adaptable instrument that had
thrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to the
Society drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who liked
nice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, and
the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now must
serenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the
whitest of maiden lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed,
in a raging tempest of fire and steel and lead.