Part 72 (1/2)
He is in his element; salient and masterful and strong. But the haggard eyes that turn upon him do not s.h.i.+ne with grat.i.tude. He has not reached these hearts. They accuse him, quite unjustly, of a liking for cutting and carving. They suspect him, quite correctly, of being in no hurry for the ending of the siege. How should he be, when, these strenuous days once over, he sees nothing before him but the murky blackness of the night out of which he came, from which he has emerged for one brief draught of renewed joy in living before the dark shall close over him again, and wrap him round for ever?
He has suffered horribly of late. But at the worst his work has never failed to bring relief and distraction. Pure loyalty to a man in whom he believes, has been the main-spring of his unflagging strength. He is not liked or popular in any way, though Surgeon-Major Taggart upholds him manfully, and McFadyen is loyal to the old bond. His harshness repels regard, his coldness blights confidence, and so, though he is admired for his dazzling skill in surgery, for his dogged perseverance and unremitting power of application, for his fine horsemans.h.i.+p and iron nerve; he is not regarded with affection.
He is not in the least aware of it, to do him justice, when his rough ironies and his brusque repartees give offence. In the heyday of his London success he has not truckled to Rank, or Influence, or Affluence.
The owner of a gouty or a varicose leg has never had the more civil tongue from Saxham that the uneasy limb or its fellow was privileged upon State occasions to wear the Garter. He trod upon corns then, as he treads upon them now, without being aware of it, as he goes upon his way.
Julius goes with him, rent by apprehensions, stealing nervous side-glances at the impa.s.sive, opaque-skinned face as Saxham swings along with his powerful, rather lurching gait over the ploughed and littered waste that divides the Hospital from the town beyond it. He speaks once or twice, but Saxham seems not to hear.
The Doctor is listening to a dialogue that is as yet unspoken. He is crus.h.i.+ng a resistance that has not yet been made. In imagination his small, strong, muscular hands are gripped about the throat of the man who has lied to her and deceived her; and he is listening with joy to the gurgling, choking efforts to phrase a prayer for mercy, or utter a final defiance; and he sees with grim pleasure how the fine skin blackens under his deadly hold, and how the lazy, beautiful, grey-green eyes, no longer sleepy or defiant, but staring and horribly bloodshot, are already rolling upwards in the death-agony. The primitive savage that is in every man l.u.s.ts at a juncture such as this, to kill with the bare hands rather than to slay with any weapon known to civilisation.
”Let him look to it how he deals with her! Let him look to it!”
How long it seems since Saxham muttered those words, turning sullenly away to recross the stepping-stones, leaping from boulder to boulder as the river wimpled and laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protection and her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect and triumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to recommence his wooing until the intruder should be gone, divining, as Saxham had instinctively known, the hidden pa.s.sion that rent and tortured him, glowing with the consciousness of secret mastery....
If this meek, thin-blooded young clergyman who walks beside him might have won her, it seems to Saxham that he could have borne it. But that Beauvayse of all others should venture to approach her, presume to rear an image of himself in the shrine of her pure breast; win her from her high aims and lofty ideals with a bold look and a few whispered words, and, having thrown his honourable name into the lap of a light woman as indifferently as a jewelled trinket, should dare to offer Lynette Mildare dishonour, is monstrous, hideous, unbearable....
How comes it that she of all women should be so easily allured, so lightly drawn aside? Was there no baser conquest within reach that this white, virginal, slender saint should become _his_ prey? Shall she be made even as those others of whom she spoke, when the veil of a girlish innocence was drawn aside, and strange and terrible knowledge looked out of those clear eyes, and she said, in answer to his question:
”They are the most unhappy of all the souls that suffer upon earth. For they are the slaves, and the victims, and the martyrs of the unrelenting, merciless, dreadful pleasures of men....”
Of men like Beauvayse.
Not only swart and s.h.a.ggy, or pale and bloated beast-men, or white-haired, toothless, blear-eyed satyrs grown venerable in vice. But beautiful, youthful profligates, limbed like the G.o.ds and fauns of the old Greek sculptors; soft of skin, golden of hair, with sleepy eyes like green jewels, soft persuasive voices with which to pour poisoned words into innocent and guileless ears, and the bold, brave blood of old-time heroes running in their veins, prompting them to the doing of das.h.i.+ng, reckless, gallant deeds, no less than sins of l.u.s.t and luxury.
Let him look to it, this splendid young soldier with the ancient name, hope of his House, pride of his Regiment. Let him look to it how he has dealt with her, who had no thought or dream but to save others from the fate he destines for her, until his cursed, beautiful face smiled down into her own. For every lying oath he has sworn to her, for every false promise made to the wrecking of her maiden peace, for every kiss those innocent lips have been despoiled of, for every touch of his that has soiled her, for every breath of his that has scorched the white petals of the Convent-reared lily, he shall pay the price.
Silently Saxham registers this oath upon that beloved red-brown head, since he denies its Maker His honour, and the whirling blackness that is within him is rent and cloven, for one blinding instant, by the levin-fires of h.e.l.l. He knows thenceforward what he will do, as he walks with the pale Chaplain between the sh.e.l.l-torn houses, and along the littered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard and listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pa.s.s and repa.s.s as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling from the low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental to a sham fight.
They reach the Chaplain's hotel, and go to his room. Saxham waits silently while Julius searches for and finds Father Tatham's letter, takes it and reads it attentively, puts it carefully away in a worn notecase, restores the notecase to the inner pocket of his jacket, and, without a nod or word of farewell, is gone.
XLVII
To the remarkably complete system of underground wires installed by the Garrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah Wrynche, on duty at the Convalescent Hospital that was once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday that saw the publication of the string of paragraphs previously quoted from the _Siege Gazette_, indebted for what she afterwards described with ruefulness as a ”heckled morning.”
Once a week the ”Social Jottings,” bubbling from the effervescent Gold Pen, descended like rain upon the parched soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. To make gossip where there is none is as difficult as making bricks without clay, or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds'
Protection Society, and plumage is Fas.h.i.+on's latest cry. Under the circ.u.mstances a genuine item of general and public interest was a pearl of price. And yet something had told the little lady that the ruthless Blue Pencil of Supreme Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy of casting it before the readers of the _Siege Gazette_. She seemed to hear him saying, in the pleasant voice she knew so well:
”No personalities shall be published in a paper I control.”
He had said that on Sunday, when she had pleaded for a freer hand. Well, he could hardly call the announcement of an engagement a personality, and, supposing he did, how easy to convince him that it was nothing of the kind!
She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, and added the paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks, and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole person the offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil.
Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing-press driven by the little oil-engine that had sustained a sh.e.l.l-casualty at the beginning of the siege, adored Lady Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated part.i.tion that separated the office from the printing-room, and presently came back in inky s.h.i.+rt-sleeves with a smear of lubricating-oil upon his forehead, and laid the wet slips upon the Editorial table. Then he went back, and fell to tinkering at his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. When she had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten minutes Supreme Authority would descend the ladder, wield the Blue Pencil, and depart.
Would he have mercy and not sacrifice? The suspense was torturing.
Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority might be--she dared not use the word ”circ.u.mvented.” ”Got round” was even worse; ”evaded” sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force than Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, and daintily cut off the three paragraphs from the bottom of the slip.