Part 22 (2/2)
It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... I thought I was incapable of the delicious s.h.i.+ver of expectation that the schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given it to me--you and our friends out there!” She waved the dry little glittering hand. ”And you can talk in cold blood of marching out--and leaving the hive--and all the honey you might have had out of it. Sweet danger, perilous sport, the great Game of War--played as a man like you knows how to play it in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers and Dominions looking on. Preserve us! Oh, to be in your shoes this minute, if only for one week! But as I can't, it's you I hope to see riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. Not only for my own sake and the wretched paper's--though, mind you, I don't pretend to be anything but a mercenary, calculating worldly creature ...”
His eyes were very kind.
”Bingo knows better!”
Her laugh did not jangle this time.
”Lady Grasby, that vitriol-tongued water-nymph, as somebody clever once called her, said that if Bingo got killed by any chance, I should sit down and write a gossipy descriptive article, dealing with his military career, married life, and last moments, before I ordered my widow's-weepers.
Horrible things! They've come in again, too! Talking of gossip, which I know you only pretend to despise, I found the son of a mutual acquaintance dying in the Hospital here. You know the Bishop of H ...?”
”His eldest son, Major Fraithorn, was my senior when I was a.s.sistant Military Secretary at Gibraltar in '90. And the Bishop is quite a dear crony of my mother's.”
”The Bishop,” she said, ”was always a person of excellent good taste--except when he cut off his second son, Julius, with two hundred a year for turning Anglican, wearing a soft hat and Roman collars, and joining the staff at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street West as Junior Curate.”
”St. Margaret's. I know the church. Often go there when I'm at home.”
”It's the Halfway House to Rome, according to the Bishop, who won't be content with running at every red rag of Ritualism that flutters in his own diocese, but keeps up the character of belligerent Broad Churchman by writing pamphlets and asking questions in the House of Lords with reference to affairs which are the business of other people. According to him, the red ca.s.socks of the acolytes at St. Margaret's are cut out of the very skirts of the Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and his curates--they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice--are wolves in wool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the liberties of the Church.
_Punch_ published a cartoon of the Bishop shutting his eyes and charging at a windmill in a cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string of Protestant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, Scotland, and Wales this season, with acetylene-lantern pictures from Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' and a lecturer to point the morals and adorn the tales.... But if he could see his Mary's boy to-day, he'd put up with any amount of felt-basin hats and Roman collars, and incense and altar-genuflections wouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh! it's been a sore with me this many a year, but when I saw him to-day I said, 'Thank G.o.d I never had a child!'
Because to have seen a boy or girl grow up and wither away as that beautiful young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must shudder to look back upon, even when she has found her lost one again in Heaven.”
There was genuine feeling in her voice, usually loud, harsh, and tuneless.
The bright black bird-eyes had a gleam as of tears. He turned to her with sympathetic interest.
”The Bishop will be obliged to you for finding this out. No hint of it had reached me. I am due at the Hospital in the morning, and we'll see if something can't be done for the boy.”
She shook her head.
”It's a case of tuberculous lung-disease. He developed it in the Clergy House at St. Margaret's, and made light of it, supposing or pretending that the cough and wasting and difficulty of breathing meant bronchial trouble, the result of London fogs. These young people who don't value Life--glorious gift that it is! When he broke down utterly, at the end of a rampant campaign against Intemperance--he wouldn't be the Bishop's son if he didn't gall the withers of some hobby-horse or other--the doctors agreed there was nothing for him but South Africa.”
He frowned, knowing how many sufferers had died of that deadly prescription. She went on:
”So he came out--alone--upon the advice of the well-intentioned wiseacres, knowing nothing of the country, to live on his two hundred a year until the end. And the end is coming--in Gueldersdorp Hospital--with giant strides.” She blinked. ”They've isolated him in a small detached ward. He has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart-nurse is in love with him, unless I'm mistaken in the symptoms of the complaint. And he looks like St. Francis of a.s.sisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty--and coughs--fit to tear your heart. B'rrh!” she shuddered.
He repeated: ”I'll see what can be done to-morrow. These cases are deceptive. There may be a gleam of hope.”
”There is one doubt about the case which might infer a hope. I don't know what discoveries the London doctors made, but I wormed out of the chart-nurse, who plainly adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorp can't scare up a bacillus for the life of them.”
His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his tone was jesting.
”You're thrown away on mere journalism. Criminal Investigation or Secret Intelligence would offer wider fields for your abilities.”
”Wait!” she said, her beady eyes black diamonds. ”I shall hope to prove one day that an English woman-journalist can be as useful as a Boer spy in the matter of useful information. Why, why am I not a man? You only don't trust me because I am a woman.”
He had touched the rankling point in her ambition. He applied balm as he knew how.
”Your being a woman may have made all the difference--for Fraithorn. I shall set Taggart of the R.A.M.C. at him to-morrow; the Major's a bit of a crack at pulmonary cases. And he shall consult with Saxham, and----”
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