Part 78 (1/2)
”My G.o.d, how unutterably horrible!”
Saxham shoulders his way into the ring of white faces that have gathered about the dark little muddy officer.
”What has happened to Miss Mildare----?”
The little officer answers, panting:
”The Sisters could not make her understand. She----”
The Chief speaks for him:
”She had been previously stunned by the shock of--a terrible calamity.”
”What calamity?”
”The Mother-Superior has been killed. Two of the Sisters and Miss Mildare found her in the Convent chapel. They got there before evening. She must have been dead some hours. She had been shot through the lungs.”
”By a stray bullet?”
”By a bullet from a revolver, fired close enough to scorch the clothes.
Foul murder, and by G.o.d who saw it done----”
The lean clenched hand, thrown upwards in a savage gesture, the blazing eyes, the livid, furrowed face, the writhen mouth, the furious, jarring voice, leave little doubt of the vengeance that will be wreaked when he shall track down the murderer. He wheels abruptly, and goes to the telephone. The swift, imperative orders volt from fort to fort; the circuit of vigilance is made complete, the human bloodhounds unleashed upon the trail, in a few instants, thanks to the buzzing wire that brings the mouth of a man to the ear of another across a void of miles.
But Bough, primed with knowledge as to which are dummy rifle-pits and which are real, aided by acquaintance with the ground, and covered by that wuthering night of storm, has already pierced the lines. Subsequently that excellent Afrikander, Mr. Van Busch, rejoins Brounckers' bright boy at Tweipans, with information that decides the date of Schenk Eybel's Feint from the East.
L
She had gone about her Master's business all Monday, calm and composed, and inexorably gentle. She did not meet Richard's daughter before nightfall. ”She will not suffer now,” she thought, even as she sent the message that was to allay Lynette's anxiety, and give notice of her whereabouts in case of need. Her mission led her to a half-wrecked shanty at the south end of the town, where some Lithuanian emigrants herded together in indescribable filth and misery. A woman who had been recently confined lay there raving in puerperal fever. Until nightfall, when she was removed to the Isolation Hospital on the veld, near the Women's Laager, the Mother-Superior remained with the patient.
A burly, bushy-bearded man, with a peculiarly dark skin and strange steely eyes, pa.s.sing the broken window, caught sight of the n.o.ble profile and the stately shoulders stooping above the miserable bed. Going home at dark, the Mother heard a stealthy footstep following behind her.
Since the Town Guard had been withdrawn to man the trenches, many people, revisiting their deserted dwellings, had found them plundered of movable possessions, and, losing the fear of Eternity in wrath at the wholesale evaporation of their worldly goods, had thenceforth remained to protect them. Instances there had been of robbery from the person by thieves not all tracked down by Martial Justice and made examples of.
The hovering human night-bird and the prowling human jackal, whose sole end is money and money's worth, have no terrors for Holy Poverty. But there are other creatures of prey more terrible than these. And the padding footsteps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slackening when she went more slowly, and stopping dead when she paused and looked round, conveyed to her a haunting sense of something sinister, and at the same time greedy and guileful, that bided its time to spring.
She moved in long, swift, undulating rushes, her black robes sweeping noiselessly as a great moth's wings over the well-known ground, her course kept unfalteringly; but her heart shook her, and she gasped as the Convent bomb proof neared in sight. She had wrought much and suffered more of late, and she knew herself less strong than she had been. When the blue light that hung from a post by the ladder-hole blinked ”Home” through the mirk of a night of thin rain and mist-shrouded stars, she knew infinite relief. Her great eyes were as wild and strained as a hunted deer's, and her bosom heaved with her panting breaths. She paused a moment to regain her composure before she went down.
The nuns who were not on night-duty were gathered together about the trestle-table sewing, while the lay-Sisters prepared the scanty evening meal. Lynette was there, sitting pale and quiet on her corner-stool.
Richard's daughter had been watching and waiting for her Mother. Ah! to see the relief and gladness leap into the dear face, and s.h.i.+ne in the beautiful wistful eyes that had shed such tears, dear G.o.d!--such tears of anguish upon Sunday--and then had dried at the utterance of her decree--
”You are never to tell him!”
--And changed into radiant stars of joy, by whose light the darkness of her own wickedness and misery seemed almost bearable.
”It is the Mother. Mother----”
Lynette sprang up, and would have hurried to her, but the Mother lifted a warning hand, and calling Sister Tobias to her, pa.s.sed aside into a curtained-off and precautionary cave that had been hollowed out behind the ladder. This was the custom when the ladies of the Holy Way returned from doubtful or infectious cases. Lynette sighed, and went back to her stool to wait. The busy needles had not ceased st.i.tching.
That humble saint, Sister Tobias, hurried to her diligent ministry of purification. When she came in with hot water and carbolic spray, she brought a letter with her. It was directed to the Mother in a coa.r.s.e round-hand.