To the remarkably complete system of underground wires installed by the
Garrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah Wrynche, on duty at the Convalescent
Hospital that was once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday that
saw the publication of the string of paragraphs previously quoted from the
_Siege Gazette_, indebted for what she afterwards described with
ruefulness as a "heckled morning."
Once a week the "Social Jottings," bubbling from the effervescent Gold
Pen, descended like rain upon the parched soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. To
make gossip where there is none is as difficult as making bricks without
clay, or trimming a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds'
Protection Society, and plumage is Fashion's latest cry. Under the
circumstances a genuine item of general and public interest was a pearl of
price. And yet something had told the little lady that the ruthless Blue
Pencil of Supreme Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy of
casting it before the readers of the _Siege Gazette_. She seemed to hear
him saying, in the pleasant voice she knew so well:
"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control."
He had said that on Sunday, when she had pleaded for a freer hand. Well,
he could hardly call the announcement of an engagement a personality, and,
supposing he did, how easy to convince him that it was nothing of the
kind!
She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, and added the
paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks,
and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole person
the offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil.
Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing-press driven by the
little oil-engine that had sustained a shell-casualty at the beginning of
the siege, adored Lady Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated partition
that separated the office from the printing-room, and presently came back
in inky shirt-sleeves with a smear of lubricating-oil upon his forehead,
and laid the wet slips upon the Editorial table. Then he went back, and
fell to tinkering at his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. When
she had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten minutes Supreme
Authority would descend the ladder, wield the Blue Pencil, and depart.
Would he have mercy and not sacrifice? The suspense was torturing.
Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority might
be--she dared not use the word "circumvented." "Got round" was even
worse; "evaded" sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own
feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force than
Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, and
daintily cut off the three paragraphs from the bottom of the slip.
The thing was done, and the snipped-off paragraphs concealed, as a pair of
brown boots, with steel jack-spurs attached, came neatly down the ladder.
The Chief gave her his cheery "Good-morning," and congratulated her on
looking well. Her cheeks burned and her heart rat-tatted against the
hidden paper, as he ran his keen eye down slip after slip, and initialled
them for the press. She almost shrieked as he took up the "Social
Jottings." The underground office whirled about her as the blue pencil
steadily travelled down. Then--he was gone--and the initialled proof lay
before her. She had nothing to do but neatly and delicately paste on the
bit she had snipped off. This done, she gathered up her various small
belongings, swept them into her bag, and went, leaving the passed proof of
the "Social Jottings" column waiting for Young Evans with the rest.
In the middle of the night she realised what she had done. But even in a
beleaguered town under the sway of Martial Law you cannot hang a lady, or
order her out and shoot her for Mutiny and Treason combined. There would
be a reprimand; what Bingo pleasantly termed "an official wigging," unless
the Blue Pencil could, by any feminine art, be persuaded that it had
passed those pars.
But, of course, she would never stoop to such a deception. The ruse she
had employed was culpable. The other thing would be infamous. And--he
would be sure to see that the end of the proof-slip had been pasted on.
She slept jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the Convalescent
Hospital in that stage of penitence that immediately precedes hysterical
breakdown. She experienced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who,
regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to be going on just
then, was walking along reading the _Siege Gazette_. Shirt-sleeved Young
Evans had worked until daylight getting the Thursday's issue out. And
there was a tremendous run upon copies. Every other person Lady Hannah
encountered upon the street seemed to have got one, and to find it
unusually interesting. The women especially. None of them were dull, or
languid, or dim-eyed this morning. The siege crawl was no longer in
evidence. They walked upon springs. Upon the stoep of the Hospital, where
the long rows of convalescents were airing, every patient appeared plunged
in perusal. Those who had not the paper were waiting, with watering
mouths, until those who had would part. A reviving breath seemed to have
passed over them, and spots of colour showed in their yellow, haggard
faces. They talked and laughed....
Lady Hannah passed in, conscious of an agreeable tingling all down her
spine. The hall-porter, a brawny, one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lost
what he was wont to term his "flapper" at the outset of hostilities, was
too deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the "Social Jottings"
column to salute her. Inside you heard little beyond the crackling of the
flimsy sheet, mingled with the comments, exclamations, anticipations,
expectations that went off on all sides, met each other, and rebounded,
exploding in coruscations of sparks. Something had happened, something was
going to happen, after months and months of eventless monotony. It warmed
the thin blood in their veins like comet champagne, and quickened their
faded appetites like some salt breath from the far-distant sea.
The flavour of success upon the palate may, like Imperial Tokay, be sensed
but once in a lifetime, but you can never forget that once. Out of her
gold fountain-pen Lady Hannah had spurted a little ink upon the famished
Gueldersdorpians, and their dry bones moved and lived. She knew a fine
must be paid for this dizzying draught of popularity, even as she tied on
a bibbed apron, and superintended the serving and distribution of the
patients' one-o'clock dinner.
Horse-soup, with a few potato-sprouts, and one or two slivered carrots to
the gallon, formed the menu to-day. There was no more white bread, and a
villainous bannock of crushed oats had to be soaked in your porringer if
you had no strength to chew it. Sweetened bran-jelly followed, and upon
this the now apologetic but smiling porter, with the intelligence that her
ladyship was wanted at the wall-jigger in the Matron's room.
The ring-up came from Hotchkiss Outpost North, where Captain Bingo was
this day on duty, _via_ the Staff Headquarter office in Market Square, and
the voice that filtered to the ear of Lady Hannah was unmistakably that of
her spouse, and tinged with a gruffness as unusual as ominous.
"Hullo. Is that you?"
"Qu'il ne vous en deplaise!"
Bingo growled in a perfectly audible aside:
"And devil a doubt. What other woman would jabber French through a
telephone?"
"A Frenchwoman would, possibly."
"Don't catch what you're saying. Look here, what made you shove such a
whacking bouncer into the _Siege Gazette_?"
"Please put that into English." She underwent a quaking at the heart.
"I say, that announcement about Toby and the Mildare filly is all my eye."
"It isn't all your eye. It's first-hand, fully-authorised fact."
"Rot!"
"Paix et peu! Say rot, if it pleases you!"
"You'll have to withdraw and apologise."
"I can't make out what you're saying."
"It will end in your eating humble-pie. Can you hear that?"
"I can hear that you are in a bearish temper."
"I've reason to be. If a man had written what you have I should punch his
head."
"Say that again!"
"I say, if a stranger of the kickable sex had told such a pack of
infernal----"
_Click!_
Lady Hannah hung up the receiver, blew a contemptuous kiss into the gape
of the celluloid mouthpiece, and turned to go. There was another ring-up
as she reached the door.
"Hallo. Are you the Convalescent Hospital?"
"Yes. Who are you?"
"Staff Bombproof South. I want to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche."
"I'm here, Lord Beauvayse."
"I say, I'm going to rag you frightfully. Why on earth have you given us
away in that beastly paper?"
"Whom do you mean by 'us'?"
"Well, me and Miss Mildare."
"Didn't you tell me on Sunday that you were engaged?" she demanded
indignantly.
"I did." The answer came back haltingly.
"And that you didn't care who knew it?"
"Fact."
"And that you two were going to be married as soon as you could pull off
the event?"
"Yes." The voice was palpably embarrassed. "But----"
"Well?"
"But--things you don't mind people knowing look beastly in cold print."
"If I were in your shoes I should think they looked beautiful."
Nothing but a faint buzz came back. Lady Hannah went on:
"If I were in your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and paragon as
Lynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I should want the whole world
to envy me my colossal good luck. I should go about in sandwich-boards
advertising it. I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim it through that. I
should----"
There was no response beyond the buzzing of the wire. Beauvayse had
evidently hung up the receiver.
"Is there any creature upon earth more cowardly than a man engaged?" Lady
Hannah demanded of space. There was a futile struggle inside the
telephone-box. Somebody else was trying to ring up. She put the receiver
back upon the crutches, and--
"_Ting--ting--ting!_" said the bell in a high, thin voice.
"Who is it?" she asked.
The answer came back with official clearness:
"Officer of the day, Staff Headquarters. If you're the Convalescent
Hospital, the Colonel would like to speak to Lady Hannah Wrynche."
Her knees became as jelly, and her heart seemed to turn a somersault. She
answered in a would-be jaunty voice that wobbled horribly:
"Here--here--is Lady Hannah."
"Hold on a minute, please!"
She held on. She had not shuddered at the end of the wire for more than a
minute when the well-known, infinitely-dreaded voice said in her ear, so
clearly that she jumped:
"Lady Hannah there? How d'you do?"
She gulped, and quavered:
"It--it depends on what you're going to say."
"I see." There was the vibration of a stifled laugh, and her heart jumped
to meet it. "So you anticipated a hauling over the coals?"
Revived, she shrugged her little shoulders.
"Have I deserved one?"
The voice said, with unmistakable displeasure in it:
"Thoroughly. Why were not the last three paragraphs of the weekly 'Social
Jottings' column submitted to me yesterday with the rest?"
She heard herself titter imbecilely. Then a voice, which she could hardly
believe her own, said, with a pitiable effort to be gay and natural:
"Weren't they? Perhaps you overlooked them?"
"You know I did not overlook them."
This was the cold, incisive, cutting, rasping voice which Bingo was wont
to describe as razors and files. Her ears burned like fire, and her
bright, birdlike eyes were round and scared. She gasped:
"Oh ... do you really----"
"I want the truth, please, without quibbling." The voice was harsh and
cold, and inexorably compelling. "Why were those paragraphs not shown to
me?"
She winked away her tears.
"Because I was sure you'd blue-pencil them out of existence. And a genuine
bit of news is such a roc's egg in these times of scarcity."
"Genuine!"
There was incredulity in the tone.
"Upon my honour as the wife of a British Dragoon."
He said crisply:
"Precipitate publication, even of authentic information, is likely to be
resented by the persons concerned."
She remembered, with a sinking at the heart, that one person concerned had
already objected.
"Both of them authorised the insertion."
"And the official consent to it was obtained by a trick."
She whispered, her heart in the heels of her Louis Quinze shoes:
"Please--please don't call it that!"
"How can I call it anything else? Besides, has it occurred to you that,
should any copies of to-day's issue get through these lines, the
Foltlebarres will be thrown into a state of volcanic eruption?"
"If the Foltlebarres aren't absolute beetles they'll jump for joy. How
could their boy possibly do better?"
"I don't see how myself."
"Ah, if you're going to back up Toby, the day is as good as won."
"You're very kind to say so."
The red was dying out of Lady Hannah's ear-tips. That "You're very kind"
had a gratified sound. The most rigorous and implacable of men can be
buttered, she thought, if the emollient be dexterously applied. And a
bright spark of naughty triumph snapped in each of her birdlike black
eyes.
"Thanks." He was speaking again. "Apologies for keeping you. You're up to
your eyes in Hospital work, I don't doubt."
"There is enough to keep one going."
"Without the additional tax of literary labour." She was conscious of a
premonitory, apprehensive chill that travelled from the roots of her hair
down her spine, and apparently made its exit at the heels of her Louis
Quinze shoes. "So the 'Social Jottings' column will not appear in the
_Siege Gazette_ after to-day. Good-morning."
"Is that my punishment for insubordination?"
Not a sound in reply. "He must have hung up the receiver and gone away.
Oh, horrid, horrid male superiority!" thought Lady Hannah. "To have been
put under arrest, even to have been ordered out and shot, would be
preferable to being figuratively spanked and put in the corner." She
winked away some more tears, and sniffed a little dejectedly. "And only
the other day he seemed quite pleased with me," she added pensively. Then
she shrugged her shoulders, and rang up the Head Hospital, North Veld
Road.
"Who you-e?"
It was the sing-song voice of the Barala hall-boy.
"I'm Lady Hannah Wrynche. Is the Reverend Mother on duty in the wards
to-day?"
"I go see. You hang-e on."
Lady Hannah hung on until her small remaining stock of patience deserted
her. As she stamped her small feet, longing to accelerate the languid
movements of the hall-boy with a humanely-wielded hatpin, a whisper in the
velvet voice she knew stole across the distance.
"Hannah. Is it you?"
"It's me, Biddy dear."
There was a soft laugh that ended in a sigh. "It is so long since anybody
called me that."
"I wouldn't dare to with you looking at me."
"Am I so formidable of aspect? But go on."
"It's not so easy. But I've had an awful morning. Everybody I like best
down on me like bricks and m----" The speaker gulped a sob.
"You are crying, dear!"
"Not a drop. But if you join in the heckling I shall dribble away and
dissolve in salt water. It's all about those wretched paragraphs of mine
in the _Siege Gazette_. But perhaps you haven't seen it?"
"I have seen it."
"You were quite willing that the _fiancailles_ should be made public....
Indeed, you gave me to understand you desired it."
"I was quite willing. I did wish it."
"Yes.... Thank you, dear; that was what I wanted to hear from you. I
understand now what the one clapping pair of hands must mean to the actor
who is booed by all the rest of the audience. Good-bye, dear."
"Stay.... Who are the persons who disapprove of the announcement?"
"My Bingo, for one. Not that anything the dear old stupid says matters in
the slightest. And--and Toby."
"'Toby'?"
"I mean Lord Beauvayse."
"Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this matter it was for
me to decide."
"Certainly, dear."
"Whose is the other objecting voice?"
"The Chief thinks I ... we ... it ... I rather fancy that he used the word
'precipitate' in expressing his opinion."
"Refer him to me if he expresses it again."
"Of course, dear, since you ..."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye, dear. If Biddy Bawne hadn't been a nun," reflected Lady Hannah,
as she went out of the Matron's office and back to her patients, who had
long ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress.
'_Refer him to me_,' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say I'm rung up
again."
But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, and her little
ladyship went back. This last communication proved a puzzling one.
"You there?"
"I am Lady Hannah Wrynche. Where are you?"
There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice said:
"I don't know as that matters."
"Who are you?"
There was another hesitation. Then the stranger parried with a question:
"You write them weekly screeds in the _Siege Gazette_?"
"I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. Kindly say who is
speaking?"
"Nobody that matters much. Can you tell me where Miss Mildare lives?"
"Not without knowing who you are."
"You may call me an old friend of hers," aid the thickish, lisping voice,
with a sluggish chuckle in it that the little woman at the other end of
the wire had heard ... where?...
"If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, how is it you
don't know her address?" she demanded.
"Keep her address all you want to. Only next time you come alongside her
give her a message for me. Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel
on the veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her
friend?"
Lady Hannah repeated:
"'And Bough, who was her friend.' You are Bough----?"
"_Click!_" Somebody had hung up the receiver.
Lady Hannah spent another bad night, not wholly due to the indigestible
nature of a dinner of mule colloped, and locusts fried in batter by
Nixey's chef. Staggering in the course of disturbed and changeful dreams,
under the impact of sufficient bricks and mortar to rebuild toppledown
Gueldersdorp, being hauled over mountains of coals, and getting into whole
Gulf Streams of hot water, she was slumberously conscious that these
nightmares were less harassing than one nasty, perplexing little vision
that kept cropping up among the others. It had no beginning and no end. In
it the Matron's room at the Convalescent Hospital and Kink's Family Hotel
at Tweipans were somehow mixed up, and the ingenuous Mr. Van Busch, that
Afrikander gentleman of British sympathies, whose chivalrous and patriotic
sentiments had prompted and urged him to the imperilling of his own skin
and the risking of his own liberty in the interests of an English lady
masquerading for political reasons as the refugee-widow of a German
drummer, was oddly confused in identity with an uncomfortably mysterious
individual who possessed neither features nor name.
"Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel on the veld, three days'
trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her friend?" the voice would say..
"You are Bough?" she would find herself asking.
There would be a little guttural, horrible laugh, and nothing would answer
but the buzzing of the wire.
And then she was wide awake and sitting up in bed, with a thumping heart.
She was no longer in any doubt as to the identity of the owner of the
voice. Van Busch was in Gueldersdorp ... and however he came, and whatever
disguise of person or of purpose sheltered him, his presence boded no
good. The merely logical masculine mind doffs hat respectfully before the
superiority of feminine intuition.