Part 67 (1/2)
The antiphon followed the _Gloria_, and then the soft womanly voices chanted the twenty-third Psalm:
”_Quis ascendit in montem Domini?_”--”Who shall ascend to the Mount of the Lord, and who shall dwell in His holy Sanctuary? Those who do no ill and are pure.... Who do not give their heart to vain desires, or deceive their neighbour with false oaths.”
Or deceive ... with false oaths. To marry a man, letting him think you ...
something you were not ... did not that amount to deceiving by a false oath?
Lynette lay very still. The last ”Hail, Mary!” over, the Sisters returned silently to bed. Wire mattresses creaked under superimposed weight. Long breaths of wakefulness changed into the even breathing of slumber. The only one who snored was Sister Tobias, a confirmed nasal soloist, whose customary cornet-solo was strangely missing. Was Sister Tobias lying awake and remembering too?
Sister Tobias was the only other person in the Convent besides the Mother, who knew. She had helped her faithfully and tenderly to nurse Lynette through the long illness that had followed the finding of that lost lamb upon the veld. She was a homely creature of saintly virtues, the Mother's staff and right hand. And it was she who had asked Lynette if she was happy?
Somebody was moving. The grey light of dawn was filtering down the drain-pipe ventilators and through the c.h.i.n.ks in the tarpaulins overhead.
A formless pale figure came swiftly to Lynette's bedside. She guessed who it must be. She sat up wide awake, and with her heart beating wildly in her throat.
”Dearie!” The whisper was Sister Tobias's. She could make out the glimmer of the white, plain nightcap framing the narrow face with the long, sagacious nose and wise, kindly, patient eyes. ”Are you awake, dearie?”
”Yes,” Lynette whispered back, shuddering. The dry, warm, hard hand felt about for her cold one, and found and took it. Lips came close to her ear, and breathed:
”Dearie, this grand young gentleman you're engaged to be married to ...”
”Yes?”
”_Has he been told? Does he know?_”
The long, plain face was close to Lynette's. In the greying light she could see it clearly. Her heart beat in heavy, sickening thuds. Her teeth chattered, and whole body shook as if with ague, as she faltered:
”The Mother says--he is not to be told.”
There was a dead silence. It was as if an iron shutter had suddenly been pulled down and clamped home between them. Then Sister Tobias said in a tone devoid of all expression:
”The Mother knows best, dearie, of course. Lie down and go to sleep.”
Then silence settled back upon the Convent bombproof, but sleep did not come to everybody there.
XLIII
The Mother was kneeling, as she had knelt the whole night through, before the dismantled altar in the battered little chapel of the Convent, with the big white stars looking down upon her through the gaps in the sh.e.l.l-torn roof. When it was the matin-hour she rose and rang the bell.
Matins over, she still knelt on. When it was broad day she broke her fast with the Sisters, and went about the business of the day calmly, collectedly, capably as ever. Only her face was white and drawn, and great violet circles were about her great tragical grey eyes.
”The blessed Saint she is!” whispered the nuns one to the other.
If she had heard them, it would have added yet another iron point to the merciless scourge of her self-scorn.
A Saint, in that stained garment! What tears of bitterness had fallen that night upon the shameful blots that marred its whiteness! But for Richard's child, even though she herself should become a castaway, she must go on to the end. All the chivalry in her rose in arms to defend the young, shame-burdened, blameless head.
Ah! if she had known?...
Cold, light, cruel eyes had watched from across the river that day as her tall, imposing figure, side by side with the slender, more lightly-clad one, moved between the mimosa-bushes and round the river-bend. When the two were fairly out of sight, the jungle of tree-fern and cactus had rustled and cracked. Then the burly, thickset, powerful figure of a bearded man pushed through, traversed the reed-beds, and, leaping from boulder to boulder, crossed the river. Before long the man was standing on the patch of trodden gra.s.s and flowers in the lee of the great boulder, shutting up a little single-barrelled, bra.s.s-mounted field-gla.s.s that had served him excellently well.
He was Bough, _alias_ Van Busch, otherwise the man who had come in through the enemy's lines as a runner from Diamond Town, bringing the letter from a hypothetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. His light eyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like an adder's, looked about and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake of black-brown beard that cleverly filled in the interval between Mr. Van Busch's luxuriant whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a little tan-leather glove, lying in a tuft of pink flowers. The daintiness of the little glove brought home to Bough more forcibly than anything else, that the Kid had become a lady.