Part 68 (2/2)
All those eyes, feverishly bright or sickly dull, watched him as he put his hand into the bulging breast-pocket, and slowly fished out a s.h.i.+ning brown briar-root with a stem unchewed as yet by any smoker.
”Twig this 'ere noo pipe. It was sent me by a--by a friend, along of a packet of 'Oneydew, for a--for a kind o' birthday present.” His voice wobbled strangely; there was scalding water dammed up behind his ugly honest eyes. ”She--she bin an' opened the packet and filled the pipe, an'
I shared out the 'Oneydew in the trenches as far as it went, but I bin an'
kep' the pipe, sayin' to myself I'd smoke it when she lighted it wiv 'er own 'ands, an' not--not before. Next day we”--the Adam's apple went up and down again--”we 'ad words, an' parted. I--I never set eyes on 'er dial since.”
The voice of W. Keyse ended in an odd kind of squeak. n.o.body looked at him as he bit his thin lips furiously, and blinked the unmanly tears away.
Then he went on: ”It's--it's near on two months I bin lookin' for 'er.
She--she--sometimes I think she's made a way out of the lines after another bloke--a kind o' Dutchy spy 'oo was a pal of 'ers, or--or else she's dead. There's times I've dreamed I seen 'er dead!” His voice bounded up in that queer squeak again. The word ”dead” was wrung out of him like a long-fanged double molar. His lips were drawn awry in a grimace of anguish, and the pipe he held shook in his gaunt and grimy hand, so perilously that half a dozen other hands, as gaunt and even grimier, shot out as by a single impulse to save it from falling. ”Tyke it an' smoke it between you,” said W. Keyse, and the Adam's apple jerked again as he gulped. ”But read the writin' on the bit o' pyper first, and mind you--mind you give it back.” He resigned the treasure, and turned his face away.
”Blessed Mary!” came in the accent of Kildare, breaking the silence, ”let me hould ut in me han's!”
”Spell out the screeve,” ordered the R.E. Reserve man imperiously.
The Town Guard who had questioned the officer about the difference of time, deciphered the blotty writing on the slip of paper pinned round the stem of the new briar-root. It ran thus:
”i ope yu wil Engoy this Pip Deer; i Fild it A Purpus with Love and Menney Apey Riturnse. from
”FARE AIR.”
”'Is gal?” interrogated the Reserve man.
”His girl,” a.s.sented the man who had read.
”And he never saw her no more, so he did not!” commented the Cardiff stoker as the pipe travelled from hand to hand to be smelt at, dandled, wors.h.i.+pped by every man in turn. Only the Sergeant-gunner, the grey-headed ex-Royal Field Artilleryman, maintained self-command by dint of looking very hard the other way. Then said Kildare impetuously:
”Take ut back, Corp'ril Keyse. 'Tis little wan poipe av tobacca wud count for betune six starvin' savigees.”
”Wot I wants,” growled the Reserve man, ”is to over-'aul a bacca factory afire, and clap my mouth to 'er chimbley-shaft. So take it back, Corporal.
It's no manner o' good to me!”
All the other voices joined in the chorus, and the be-papered pipe was thrust back upon its owner. W. Keyse thanked them soberly, and put the gift of his lost love away.
His pale, unbeautiful eyes had the anguish of despair in them, and the tooth of that sharp death-hunger of which Kildare had spoken was gnawing what he would have termed with simplicity ”his inside.” For if Emigration Jane were dead, what had Life left for him?
After his first superb a.s.sumption of cold indifference had broken down he had sought her, feverishly at first, then doggedly, then with a dizzy sickness of terror and apprehension that made the letters of the type-written casualty-lists posted outside the Staff Headquarters in the Market Square turn apparent somersaults as he strove to read them. This was his punishment, that he should hunger as she had hungered, and still be disappointed, and learn by fellows.h.i.+p in keenest suffering what her pain had been.
The ”Fare Air” letters were some comfort. In the trench at night, when fever and rheumatism kept him from the dog-sleep that other men were s.n.a.t.c.hing, he would hear her crying over and over: ”Oh, cruel, to break a poor girl's heart!” And when sleep came he would track her through strange places, calling her to come back--to come back and be forgiven. And when he awakened from such dreams there would be tears upon his face. And each day he consulted the lists of killed and wounded, and once had staggered white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and found her--oh, with what unutterable relief!--to be a coloured lady who had married a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his quest for the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewed belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle of one awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridly illuminated by the conviction that she had joined Slabberts. Now strange voices whispered always in his ears, saying that she was dead, and urging him to follow by the same dark road over which her trembling feet had stumbled.
He heard those voices as he wrought and sweated with the gun-team at the levers, and the ponderous muzzle-loader rolled back upon the grooves of her improvised mounting. He heard it as they sponged the antique monster out, and fed it with a three-pound bolus of cordite, and a ten-pound ball of ancient pattern with the date of 1770. He heard it now again as he kneeled at a loophole in the parapet, watching Saxham. Those pale, ugly eyes of Billy Keyse were extraordinarily keen. He saw a grimy hand carefully balance an old meat-tin on the top of the parapet of the enemy's western entrenchment. He saw Saxham kneeling, aim and fire, and with the sharp rap of the exploding cartridge came a howl from the owner of the hand, who had not withdrawn it with sufficient quickness.
Half a dozen rifle-muzzles came nosing through the loopholes at that yell.
There was quite a little fusillade, and the sharp cracks and flashes in Saxham's vicinity told of the employment of explosive bullets. But not one hit the man. An unkempt Boer head bobbed up, looking for his corpse. The Winchester cracked, and the unkempt head fell forwards, its chin over the edge of the parapet, and stayed there staring until the comrades of its late owner pulled the dead man down by the heels.
There was a cheer from the rifle-pits in the river-bed, and another from Fort Ellerslie, where eager, excited spectators jostled at the loopholes.
A minute later the Fort's ancient bow-chaser barked loudly, and pitched a solid shot. The metal spheroid hit the ploughed-up ground some ninety feet in front of the parapet where the b.l.o.o.d.y head had hung, and over which those explosive bullets had been fired, rose in a cloud of dust, and literally jumped the trench. There was a roar of distant laughter as the ball began to roll, and s.h.a.ggy heads of curious Boers, inured only to the latest inventions in lethal engineering, bobbed up to watch. More laughter accompanied the progress of the ball. But presently it encountered a mound of earth, behind which certain patriots were taking coffee, and rolled through, and the laughter ceased abruptly. There was a baggage-waggon beyond through which it also rolled, and behind the waggon a plump, contented pony was wallowing in the sand. When the ancient cannon-ball rolled through the pony, the owner spoke of witchcraft. But the patriots who had been sitting behind the mound made no comment then or thenceforward.
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