Part 42 (1/2)
”You haven't much time. A despatch-runner from Koodoosvaal got through the enemy's lines last night with some letters and this paper. No, no word of the Relief. His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at midnight with some cipher messages. And, if you will let me have your reply to the advertis.e.m.e.nt with the returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see that it is sent.” The rather peremptory tone softened--became persuasive; ”You must build up the great hall again, Saxham, and building can't be done without money. And--it occurs to me that this may be some question of a legacy.”
”My father was not a wealthy man,” Saxham said. ”He gave me a costly education, and later advanced four thousand pounds for the purchase of a West End practice, upon the understanding that I was to expect no more from him, and that the bulk of his property, with the exception of a sum left as provision for my mother, should be strictly entailed upon my brother and his heirs, if he should marry. The arrangement was most just, as I was then in receipt of a considerable income from my profession, and my father died before my circ.u.mstances altered for the worse.
Independently of the provision he made for her, my mother possessed a small jointure, a freehold estate in South Wales, bringing in, when the house is let, about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. That was to have been left to me as the younger son. But her trustees informed me, through these solicitors, that she had changed her mind, as she had a perfect right to do, and bequeathed everything she possessed to my brother's son, a child who”--Saxham's voice was deadly cold--”may be about four years old.”
”A later will may have been found. If I have any influence with you, Saxham, I would use it in urging you to reply to the advertis.e.m.e.nt.”
Saxham agreed unwillingly: ”Very well.”
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 vanis.h.i.+ng.
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 subst.i.tutes for this, and makes.h.i.+fts 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 sh.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+ning 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.
x.x.xI
Pray give a thought to the spy, Walt Slabberts, languis.h.i.+ng in durance vile under the yellow flag. Several times the first-cla.s.s, up-to-date, effective artillery of his countrymen, being brought to bear upon the gaol, had caused the captive to bound like the proverbial parched pea, and to curse with curses not only loud but fervent the indiscriminating zeal of his brother patriots.
He was, though lost to sight behind the walls of what Emigration Jane designated the jug, still fondly dear to one whose pliant affections, rudely disentangled by the hand of perfidy from the person of That There Green, had twined vigorously about the slouching person of the young Boer.
Letters were received, but not forwarded to suspects enjoying the hospitality of the Government, so communication with the object of her dreams was painfully impossible. Stratagems were not successful. A pa.s.sionate missive concealed in a plum-pudding--before it was put on to boil--had become incorporated with the individuality of a prison official, who objected on principle to waste.
On Sundays, when you could go out without your 'art in your mouth an account of them 'orful sh.e.l.lses, a fair female form in a large and flamboyant hat, whose imitation ostridge tips were now mere bundles of quill shavings, and whose flowers were as wilted as the other blossoms of her heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place of bondage, waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen and recognised. Tactics productive of nothing but blown kisses on the part of extra-susceptible warders, and one or two troopers of the B.S.A., who ought to have known better. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected with ringing sniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements is the feminine heart composed, found them strangely solacing.
She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon the morning following the night of the tragedy, another score to the account of the traitor Keyse. Arriving unseemly late, and in an agitated state of mind--and could you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and took away?--she had mechanically accounted for her late return in the well-worn formula of Kentish Town, explaining to the surprised Sisters that there 'ad bin a haccident on the Underground between the Edgeware Road and 'Ammersmiff, an' that her sister Hemmaline had bin took bad in consequence, the second being looked for at the month's end; and to leave that pore dear in that state--her 'usband being at his Social Club--was more than Emigration Jane 'ad 'ad the 'art to do. She received her dismissal to bed, and the advice to examine her conscience carefully before retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whooping hysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated by the knowledge that n.o.body had slept in the Convent that night, until she had run down.
The character supplied by Sister Tobias to her next employer specified terminological inexact.i.tude among her failings, combined with lack of emotional self-control; but laid stress on an affectionate disposition, and a tendency to intermittent attacks of hard work.
She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging--you couldn't call it nothink else, not to be truthful you couldn't--at the Women's Laager, along of them there dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from too candid criticism of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard all the same not to call crock and muck by their right names!
Languis.h.i.+ng in seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of the Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W.
Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the jogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not one to 'ave the world's 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and Chance it! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and-elevenpenny peek-a-boo ”blowse” as she registered her vow. That there Keyse--the conduct of the faithless Mr. Green appeared almost blonde in complexion beside the sable villainy of the other--That There Keyse should Rue the Day!
How to make him?--that was the question. Then came the dazzling flash of inspiration--but not until they had met again.
She was circulating hungry-hearted about the brick-built case that held her jewel--the man who had held out that vista of a home, and called her his good little Boer-wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed to allure and dazzle--the Boer spy had caught many women with it before. Do you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred pa.s.sion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter little downy heads.
She encountered the traitor, I say, and her eyes darted fire beneath a bristling palisade of iron curling-pins. She had not the heart in these days to free her imprisoned tresses. The villain had the peris.h.i.+ng nerve to accost her, jauntily touching the smasher hat.
”'Day, Miss! 'Aven't seen you since when I can't think.”
She replied with a ringing sniff and a glance of infinite scorn that she would trouble him not to think; and that she regarded low, interfering, vulgar fellows as the dirt under her feet. So there!