Part 41 (2/2)

”You're right. And Lessie Lavigne and the rest of the nimble sisterhood devote their gifts--Thespian and Terpsich.o.r.ean--to demonstrating the fact.

Oh, d.a.m.ned cowardly hounds!” The voice jarred and clanged with irrepressible anger. ”Saxham, can't you see? Brouncker's sharpshooters are sniping at the women--the Sister of Mercy and the girl!”

His glance, as well as Saxham's, had followed the tall black figure and the slender white figure on their journey through Death's harvest-field.

But his trained eye had been first to see the little jets and puffs of sickly hot, reddish dust rising about their perilous path. They walked quickly, but without hurry, keeping a pace apart, and holding one another by the hand. Saxham, watching them, said, with dry lips and a deadly sickness at the heart:

”And we can do nothing?”

”Nothing! It's one of those things a man has got to look on at, and wonder why the Almighty doesn't interfere? Oh, to have the fellows triced up for three dozen of the best apiece--good old-fas.h.i.+oned measure. See, they're getting near the laager now. They'll soon be under cover. But--I wonder the Convent cares to risk its ewe lamb on that infernal patch of veld?”

”It is my doing.” Saxham's eyes were glued on the black figure and the white figure nearing, nearing the embrasure in the earthwork redoubt, and his face was of an ugly blue-white, and dabbled with sweat.

”Your doing?”

”Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking down from suspense, and the overstrain of inaction. And--to avert even worse evils, I prescribed the tonic of danger. There was no choice---- In at last!”

The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind the dumpy earth-bag walls. He thought the white figure had glanced back, and waved its hand, and then a question from his companion startled him beyond his ordinary stolid self-control.

”By the way ... with reference to Miss Mildare, have you any idea whether she proposes taking the veil?”

”How should I have ideas upon the possibility?” The opaque, smooth skin of the square, pale face was dyed with a sudden rush of dark blood. The Colonel did not look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone near his boot, and flattened into a s.h.i.+ny star of lead:

”I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, Saxham. You're too much in earnest, my dear fellow. Burnt Njal himself could hardly have been more grim.”

Saxham answered:

”That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed then, I remember.”

”And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and again,” said the kindly voice, ”at the man who took it for granted that everything was over, and did not set to work by dawn of the next day building up the hall greater than before. Those old Vikings did, 'and each time the high seat was dight more splendidly, and the hangings of the closed beds woven more fair.' They never knew when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, and so it came about that they never were. By the way, I have something here that concerns you.”

”Concerns me?”

”I think I may say, nearly concerns you. A paragraph in this copy of the _Cape Town Mercury_, which, by the way, is three weeks old.”

A rubbed and shabby newspaper, folded small, came out of the baggy breast-pocket of the khaki jacket. Saxham received it with visible annoyance.

”Some belated notice of one of my books.” The scowl with which he surveyed the paper testified to a strong desire to pitch it to the winds.

”Not a bit of it. It's an advertis.e.m.e.nt inserted by a London firm of solicitors--Donkin, Donkin, and Judd, Lincoln's Inn. Possibly you are acquainted with Donkin, if not with Judd?”

”They are the solicitors for the trustees of my mother's property, sir. I heard from them three years ago, when I was at Diamond Town. They returned my last letter to her, and told me of her death.”

”They state in the usual formula that it will be to your advantage to communicate with them. May I, as a friend, urge on you the necessity of doing so?”

Saxham's grim mouth shut close. His eyes brooded sullenly.

”I will think it over, sir.”

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