Part 14

"Haggard and worn," admitted Lady Wastwood. "With those hollows in the temples one knows so well, and that queer tense, sleepless look they can't get rid of. One would naturally have expected that He and Katharine would have been Married Instantly. But I have absolute knowledge, that the subject was Never Broached!"

"Rough on Miss Forbis, rather!" hazarded one of the hearers. To whom Lady Wastwood retorted:

"Fortunately for Miss Forbis--as things have now developed! But that she would have jumped with Joy had Edward breathed a hint of marriage--Nobody could doubt who saw her look at him.... Sweetheart and wife and mother, mingled in her expression. 'She makes me want to cry!' said that Old Rip Delaguett. And he meant the thing.... It's odd how those Bad Men adore Pure Women. Let us do Delaguett justice--he _swore_ she was too good for Yaill!"

"Did _he_ agree with Lord Delaguett?" asked one of the blue ladies.

"If he had," returned Lady Wastwood, "Kathy would have disagreed. And one task absorbed him, body and soul. Assisting the Authorities to reconstitute the Battalion that had been wiped out. This was done, and he was offered the post of Second Military Secretary to Sir Charles Carberry at Gibraltar. Wouldn't you have expected him to take the goods the gods provided, marry his Nice Katharine, and sail for the Rock? Kathy would have risked tin fish in shoals!--and a nuptial couch at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. But--"

"But--?"

"But Edward Yaill wouldn't hear of such a thing! Took the post--went out--absolutely fed--simply hated it! Groused away at G.H.Q. until they gave him what he wanted most."

"One can guess what that was!"

"Naturally. Command of the new old Tweedburgh Regiment, and Active Service in France again. 'To get back just a bit on account from those blighters!' he told me: 'I'd take over a Territorial Regiment from Hell. And to lead one's own Border men again is too--'"

"Absolutely topping!" suggested Yaill's original champion.

"You have the expression. Well, one perished to _trancher le mot_, but in view of Katharine's splendid attitude--"

"Backed him for all she was worth, I'll bet!" said John Hazel internally.

Lady Wastwood's high voice went on, through the Express's oily running:

"Calm, hopeful and encouraging beyond all--one couldn't have ventured to say a Thing! On one point she was adamant--She would do her bit like others. Home Service wasn't enough--you comprehend!--for Kathy Forbis. She had got her First Class Certificate and Qualifications--and went to the Front, dear sweet thing! early in March, 1915, to drive cars for the Red Cross."

"And so Colonel Yaill--"

"Went out again to take over command of his Regiment, Colonel Muir-Rosyll, an old friend of mine--having gone West. And just as though Fate had been lying in wait for Edward!--in September--somewhere South of Loos--the Horror Happened Again!"

"The 'Tweedburghs' were wiped out in the assault upon the village! ... Oh! one remembers...."

The elder of the blue ladies shuddered, the younger bit her lip.

"Swept away.... 'Exterminated'--that's what the newspapers called it. And Edward Yaill's name was on the early list of killed. It seems that he had gone out from Battalion Staff Headquarters--all his officers but two being dead--to take over Telephone-Communication at their Forward Station Dug-out, and got there in time for a terrific bombardment of High Velocity Shell."

"What unutterably Awful luck! Was he very badly wounded?"

"Hardly a scratch on him, when they found him--one has heard so much of the queer fantastic tricks that High Explosive plays. Nearly naked and covered with yellow powder. Quite Dazed--not a notion of his own identity! Which of course was established by a gold curb wrist-chain with an Identification Disc, and an officer's silver whistle with his name upon it still hanging round his Neck--when they took him to a General Casualty Hospital on the Communication Lines. Where the Poor Thing was treated with scores of other Shell Shock cases, until he came round enough to remember his rank and name."

"Didn't Miss Forbis wring out leave and rush from the Front to comfort him?"

"Well, Katharine was badly wanted just then, where she was, at her Receiving Hospital. And personal interests must give place when Duty is in question. I imagine that we're all of us pretty clear on that!"

Lady Wastwood added, as confirmatory sounds came from both her feminine hearers:

"There's no question but her going to him would have saved Yaill. But unhappily, it was not to be. Nice Katharine--poor dear!--was invalided home from the Western Front a month later. Muscular strain, lifting wounded Tommies under Fire. Had to come back for Massage and Electrical Treatment. While Edward Yaill, who had been transferred to a Convalescent British Officers Canvas Camp at the B---- Base (up-to-date place under Red Cross Management, with pines and heather and bracken, and little streams gurgling down steep sandy cliffs)--Edward had been making steady progress towards complete recovery. Until--not quite a fortnight back--he Socially Cut His Throat!"

The ladies exclaimed. The narrator continued:

"Cut his throat by suddenly marrying a Trained Nurse belonging to a Unit of the Red Cross, doing duty at the B---- Base C.O.C.... Having obtained the necessary permit from his Brigadier. Whether the young woman got leave from the Matron-in-Chief on the West Front, or did without it, I couldn't tell you! I think the latter, as she had previously sent in her papers asking leave to retire for reasons of health. At any rate, the ceremony was performed by the Church-of-England Chaplain attached to the C.O.C."

The narrator added, raising her arched eyebrows: "Quite legal, of course, but one Would have expected the thing to have been clinched by a Roman Catholic Priest. Yaill being R.C. like Poor Dear Katherine--to whom, one hopes, her Religion,--always so Much to her--may bring True Courage to Bear the Blow!"

Lady Wastwood added, through her listeners' horrified exclamations:

"Subsequently to the wedding the couple sailed for England, all arrangements having been Cleverly Camouflaged.... Nobody seems to have realised what had happened.... My own enlightenment was to come from Our London Headquarters, where I reported myself yesterday. A Wireless Message had been Received by Our Deputy Assistant Director-General from the Matron-in-chief on the Western Front in France. Our D.A.D.G. happens to be Colonel Yaill's cousin. That's how the item of news got dropped in. And subsequently she 'phoned me in Code at my Mayfair diggings--to say that her Sister-in-law, Lady Ridgely,--Red Cross Commandant of a Tommies' Convalescent Hospital at Coombe Bay, Devon--had encountered Colonel and Mrs. Yaill, upon their honeymoon."

The elder V.A.D. lady moaned despairingly:

"And now he tumbles in on us here--a passenger going North.... How can he? Why, why set foot in Scotland, of all places on the globe?"

The newspaper rustled in a pair of big bony hands, that were shaking with rage as though with ague. There was a roaring in John Hazel's ears.... Spots of red, ringed with paler colour, grew and dimmed and faded out upon the page before him. If the harmless periodical had slipped from his hold, the sight of the mask of murder it had screened might have led to the pulling of the communication-cord and the subsequent appearance of the guard. For the man was not the same man who had shed the black frock coat and silk topper of Cornhill in the September of 1914. He had spilled blood since then, for duty's sake, and for revenge; and found sharp pleasure in the shedding. And much, very much, he wanted to kill Edward Yaill. But Lady Wastwood was answering the two blue ladies:

"That is what I ask myself. Why? and How Can he? ... Unless, indeed, he were going up North to tell--to break the news to Katharine! Or does he possess sufficient Nerve to attend the Funeral?" She added, meeting the ladies' uncomprehending eyes: "Perhaps you have somehow missed the advertisement in Wednesday's _Morning Wire_! Heading the List of Deaths.... 'General Sir Philip Forbis, K.C.B.' and so on.... 'Result of accident.... No Flowers, By Request.' (He hated paraphernalia!) ... 'R.I.P.'" ...

Under cover of the ladies' sympathetic exclamations, John secured the front page of the _Morning Wire_ without any results. But the "Obituary Notices" in the _Illustrated Society_ of that morning's issue supplied him in full with the intelligence he desired....

At Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, N.B., had died on the previous Saturday, the man John was going up North to meet.

"A notable figure in Society and oldest living representative of one of the most ancient Catholic families upon the Border," stated the chronicler, "has now passed away in the person of Major-General Sir Philip Forbis, K.C.B., C.M.G., etc. Born at Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, 1834, the seat of his family for sixteen generations. Married Muriel Helen (d. 1910), dau. of C. Colleston, Esq., J. P., of Wyond Hall, Norfolk. Edu. R.M.A. Woolwich. Entered Royal Horse Artillery 1852. Col. 1882, retired as Hon. Maj. Gen. 1884. Served in Crimean Campaign 1854-7. Wounded eight times. Medal, clasp and Turkish Medal. Prepared five contingents for the War in South Africa. Upon the outbreak of War with Germany in 1914 Major-General Forbis, having kept abreast of modern military progress, raised and trained a Yeomanry Regiment of Light Cavalry for Kitchener's New Army, three squadrons of which are now serving with distinction in France. The deceased officer met his death, as perhaps he would have chosen,--while leading a charge of the Fourth and Fifth Squadrons, on the Cauldstanes Muirlees Racecourse, ceded by the Local Racing Committee to Government as a Military Exercise Ground."

John thought the Major General deceased must have been a jolly fine old fellow. Mentally picturing him as lightly-built, active, wiry and upright, with a keen light blue eye, crisp white hair and close-clipped white moustache, giving the brusque touch of soldierly decision to an aquiline-featured face of many criss-cross wrinkles. He added a peppery temper when put out, and a light hand on a bridle, before he proceeded to the paragraph below:

"General Forbis' elder son, Captain Mark Forbis of the 'Gray Hussars,' went out with the First British Expeditionary Army in August, 1914, and was killed before Mons, while rendering a service for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The second son, the Rev. Father Julian Forbis, of the Order of St. Gerard (now head of the family), has served with distinction as a Chaplain with the Mediterranean Forces recently withdrawn from Gallipoli. Miss Forbis, V.A.D., has rendered excellent service in France as an Ambulance Driver for the Red Cross Society. She has fortunately recovered from the muscular strain, for the treatment of which she was invalided home some months previously; and pending her return to more active duties, has been assisting the overworked Nursing Staff at Cauldstanes County Hospital."

A paragraph below continued:

"The origin of the name of 'Kerr's Arbour,' which has always distinguished the ancient mansion dignified by the massive peel-tower (built by a certain Sir Hew Forbis in 1147 and which has been for nearly nine hundred years the seat of the Forbis' family), is lost in the mists of antiquity. Owing to the loss of some ancient documents, the Scottish Herald's College and collateral authorities can throw but little light upon the question, when broached. The Forbis coat of arms consists of a shield with three escallops _argent_ on a _fesse_ between two chevrons _sable_ and _gules_, with the crest of a wolf's head and the motto: 'FORBYS FOES FA.' But that the original founder of the Forbis family was a Roman tribune named Marcus Fabius, who, reared in Egypt by a Community of Coptic monks, brought his Christian faith with his sword to Britain, in the service of the Emperor Constantius, seems to be generally agreed."

John wondered how the bigwigs at the Scottish Herald's College would like a dip into the contents of that calfskin bag of Old Mendel's. Stowed well within touch of elbow, beside him on the seat, it struck him as wearing a consciously-secretive air. For the bag knew all about the antecedents of the Forbis's (going back a whole generation before Marcus F.). It could have told how the Crusader Sir Hew Forbis (whom John would have liked to kick for a family reason)--built the Tower:--and where the bags of French gold came from that paid the architect and the workmen, and quarried the stone, and "bocht ye lyme an ye clypins of a troop of ye Scots Kyng's Horsys ye betyr for to bynd ye same." ... And why Sir Hew called the place Kir Saba,--transmogrified in the course of centuries to quite another name.

But on these points Scottish Herald's College must perforce remain in ignorance, unless Katharine Forbis--of Kerr's Arbour--who had driven a Car for the Red Cross in France, and had got somehow hurt in lifting wounded Tommies,--and had eyes of "gold and bramble-dew"--John Hazel was mightily taken with that simile of Stevenson's--unless Katharine Forbis should consent to share the secrets of the calfskin bag....

Katharine Forbis, the Ideal Woman.... Devoid as John was of any knowledge of her personality, the vague outlines supplied by the gossip of his fellow passengers adapted themselves quite wonderfully to the image stamped upon his mental retina one April day in Flanders on the grim road that led from the British Reserve Trenches to the Firing Line. Had he received that post-card--and it must have been sent, for She had promised--would it have been signed with the initials K.F.?

Katharine Forbis.... Katharine Forbis. What luck if this Katharine were She? He leaned back and shut his tired eyes, and fell to dreaming of this Katharine: a Princess of the North with cairngorm eyes; to whose court was momentarily drawing nearer--out of the Orient from whence all Mystery springs--a swarthy legate,--bringing neither apes nor parrots, embroideries or spices,--but the rare jewel of an ancient oath of fealty, unbroken by the use and wear of more than sixteen hundred years.

IX

Certain passengers travelling by the Kelso Express were presently switched off on a Branch Line, to rumble for a chilly hour in unwarmed and feebly-lighted carriages, between low-breasting heathery hills patched with larch and oak-woods, shagged with gorse and delicately topped with snow. Upon the left hand, beyond the blue-green riband of a river narrowing between its encroaching icy borders; lying between low sandstone cliffs hollowed by spates from the hills, the last embers of a fierce red sunset were smouldering away....

Signs of the Day were apparent, in the significant age or suggestive youth of the plaided shepherds who moved as isolated dots upon the cheerless landscape; their collies bounding at their heels, or harrying flocks of black-faced sheep back to the round, stone-built folds upon the hills. Or in the macintosh and shawl-enveloped women driving shaggy ponies in the farm-gigs; or kilted and breeched, wearing the green armlet with the red Crown and lettering,--carting mangolds or forking swedes, herding rough-coated milch-cows back to the byres--or wheeling red Post Office bicycles up steep brae-roads.

A fanged east wind spattering icy sleet, blew from the North Sea across the Cheviots, and lights began to twinkle from grey stone-built manses and slate-roofed farms. Dark had come down when the train stopped at Cauldstanes, the bleak little granite station of the Border market-town. The dazzling blue-white headlights of a big Rolls-Royce car blazed in the dark beyond the platform fence-rails. A one-armed, silver-badged male servant waited on the wet asphalte under the jumping gas. The Station Master, stout, white-bearded and important, passed towards the rear of the train, demanding a "ledda for Whingates." Presently to return, loaded with rugs, pillows and suit-cases, ushering the sought-for lady,--who said in her characteristically staccato accents as she bade her fellow-traveller adieu:

"Good-night and good-bye, if we never meet again! Though this is a small world, isn't it?--and most roads seem to cross at the Front. No! you are Not to help with the things! ... Mr. Smellie will be so obliging.... And here is Padsworth. Glad to see you so fit, Padsworth. I've not forgotten to bring the artificial arm!"

Thus Lady Wastwood, who vanished away into the conjectural regions beyond the platform fence-rails, tall, thin, triangular-faced, graciously smiling; attended by the laden station-master and followed by the one-armed groom....

A red-cheeked girl in a macintosh and scarlet Tam O' Shanter took the soldier's ticket at the gate in the platform-railing, and cried in a strident key, intended for some unseen ear:

"Mrs. Govan, mem! ... Is Mrs. Govan no' ootside wi' the doug-cairt frae the _Cross Keys_?"

A voice pleasanter, rounder and more womanly, came back out of the blackness of the station entrance-yard, crying:

"Ay, am I, Leezie! Is Cornel Yaill there?"

Leezie shrieked back as the headlights of the Rolls-Royce revolved, and the big car turning,--backed, snorted, forged ahead and sped away on soundless tyres into the chilly darkness:

"I kenna, but there's a sodger seekin' a nicht's lodgin'!"

"Tell him the _Cross Keys_ wi' guid supper an' clean beddin' is inside the meenute's walk frae here!" called back the matronly voice. "Losh me! Whatna's that?"

As John Hazel stood outside the platform gate, in the wind-blown flare of its solitary gas-lamp, another tall figure in khaki had appeared from the velvety blur of blackness under the eaves of the preposterous little booking-office; and passing close to the head of the quiet beast between the shafts, had halted by the off-wheel and spoken to the driver....

"Eh, Cornel!" the womanly voice went on, "Gude guide us, but ye scairt me sair! Risin' up oot o' the dairk richt under auld Broonie's nose! ... But that the meir kens ye, the puir beast micht have boltit. An' wha' wad manage the _Cross Keys_ then, I wad weel like to know!"

The answer came in a man's deep voice, with an inflection of melancholy underlying its pleasantness:

"I am sorry, Mrs. Govan. But how is it I find you here, on such a bitter night?"

"Huts! The nicht's no' waur than ither for the time o' year," Mrs. Govan retorted from her perch on the driver's seat. "An' the guidman being laid by wi' a sair hoast--forbye a lad we canna' trust wi' a guid beast on a mirk night--there's nane but mysel' to drive ye to Kerr's Arbour!" The speaker added, in the high keening tone which a Scotswoman of her class invariably assumes in speaking of things having reference to death and mourning; "An' haud ye back ae mair half-hoor from ane that's thinkin' lang until ye come to her--I wouldna'! Not to win my ain lad Alec back frae the Front the night!" She went on as the person addressed made a responsive sound of indeterminate meaning:

"But whatna's to hinder ye, Cornel Yaill, knowing the road's weel as yer pocket, frae driving yersel--as ye've done to my knowledge--mony an' mony a time before noo. Up wi' ye!" She relinquished the reins and jumped down, nimbly enough considering her years and matronly proportions, adding as the man she addressed promptly assumed her vacated seat.... "Bid them gie Broonie a het mesh, puir thing, she's nane sae yoong as has been!--and mind ye send her back wi' the cairt early in the morn's morn. She'll be wantit to bring Mr. Kellar, the lawyer, oot on business conneckit wi' the Will! Na, na! I'll no' be needing a lift to the _Cross Keys_! Here's a soger-man from Lunnon that's bound for the inn, and needin' a wise body to guide him. Gang yer ways wi' guid luck! Gie my love to Miss Forbis!"

The woman added as Yaill tightened the reins, and the mare, answering a whip-touch with an indignant snort, trotted away with the dog-cart into the sleety darkness:

"Your road's lang and ower rough. But, O, Man! there's a braw, braw leddy waiting to greet ye at the ither end!"

X

She was so braw a lady,--not only in the physical meaning of splendid height and just bodily proportion; noble outlines and sweet, healthful hues; hair as richly black-brown as the bracken of her wintry braes, and eyes as tawny-golden as the crystals of her Scottish mountains,--that the heart of the man who loved and had lost her, seemed to shrivel and blister in his bosom, as though some fierce corrosive acid had been poured upon the throbbing flesh....

Again and again he said what he was coming to say, as the willing mare, urged by no sparing hand, made good her journey towards Kerr's Arbour. Straining up steep bare brae-roads; picking her way down slippery descents; plashing through muddy bottoms walled with high cliff-banks clad with funereal firs and shadowy larches, revealed by passing gleams from the dog-cart's lamps. As the high-road changed to a hilly private road bordered by a plantation of conifers backed by a wire park-fence, the beast, which had given signs of distress unheeded by the man--checked at the steep with almost a woman's sob....

Something in the sound wakened a dull pity in Edward Yaill. He got down, and walked beside Brownie, as she slipped and stumbled on stones washed loose by the rain-scour; and as a soldier will, he cursed the badness of the road. It was in a rotten state, compared to what it had been before the War came to take its super-toll of human energy. Sweeping into its huge and bloody maw gentle and simple, noble and infamous, ignorant and learned, penniless and rich. Nothing was the same. Nothing would, could, ever be the same again. Life had been transmuted, not into gold--but from honest silver into a strange, new ugly metal--in this vast, comprehensive crucible of War....

Most hopelessly, irremediably changed of all human beings was Edward Yaill. Once a man meant by his Maker to inhabit an earthly Paradise, by the warm, fragrant side of the tenderest of mates. To that sick-hearted wretch, dogged by a pitiless Fate: outcast, or it seemed so to him--from decent Society: traitor to the woman unswervingly worshipped through the long years of a drawn-out engagement, it was meagrest comfort to know himself blamelessly loyal. Even as a Saint who in the delirium of fever has heard his own crazed voice blaspheming God....

In the horrible wreck and wastage of Yaill's plans, one thought was clear. He must get to Katharine first, and tell her himself before others carried the tale. He looked up at the thin, pale face of the new moon coldly staring down at him between overshadowing branches, and thought it judged and condemned and repulsed him; like the face of the woman in the train. The woman knew Katharine Forbis--might even have written to her. He might find Kerr's Arbour mined, when he got there. A hundred things might have happened to ruin his chances.... What chances he meant he did not clearly know.

Sometimes his mood was cold as he tramped by Brownie, and sometimes hot,--but always he tramped in Hell. He was going--going unless another had been before him, to break the heart of the dearest of living women with five words of his mouth.

"Listen! I have married another!" Afterwards adding: "Even with my soul and body worshipping none but you!" Then--would she die with her great wide eyes reproaching him? Or would she drive him from her with words of scorn? Scornful words would be unlike Katharine Forbis--Katharine who rarely judged and seldom blamed. But the silence in which she would hear him out to an ending, would be infinitely more tragic, unspeakably more terrible than wrath....

Insensibly beneath his feet the steepness levelled. Another mile and Kerr's Arbour would be in sight. But Yaill walked on, now obsessed and held by visions. In mental flashes Katharine came and went.