Part 19

"I'm no' saying stric'ly a veesitor," Whishaw amended: "A caller I'se ca' the body--gin need's be ca' him onything." As Whishaw showed a card upon a Benares silversalver, his red-rimmed old eyes blinked, and his frosty-apple visage assumed an expression of scandalised dismay. "I'm sair loth to bring my mistress sic' a message, an' the General's corp lying in the chap_ell_--an' the Funeral on Monday,--and yoursel' an' the Colonel set mourning by a maisterless hairth! But the big, black lad in khaki that rode oot on Alec Govan's motor-cycle frae Cauldstanes the morn's morn, is deid set on winnin' an answer from ye.... He says--an' Gude kens!--for a' his medal an' his wound-stripes, the man may be lying!--that ye're prepared to see him, an' hear what he has to say!" He added: "An' I'm boun' to testify, gin he's nae respeckitable the dougs are deceivit; for Bran an' Laddie an' Dawtie are fell freendly wi' the man."

Yaill had approached the drawing-room window, by the steps leading up to the terrace from the lavender-walk. He had heard, and his heart contracted in a spasm of fierce suspicion, and his brows drew down over narrowed, glittering eyes. He watched the face of Katharine as she pondered over the card of the intruder. It at first occurred to him that the stranger had ridden over from Whingates with a note from Lady Wastwood, telling all. He had no sooner dismissed the idea than another took the place of it. That woman, whom he had left at Coombe Bay, had somehow discovered his destination. From her--and from no other--this urgent stranger came....

"You will not think of seeing the fellow, Katharine? ... Under the circumstances you might very well decline." ...

His voice, sounding strange in his own ears, brought Katharine's head round, and called her absorbed eyes back to his beloved face. She said, as Whishaw clacked his tongue noisily against his palate, and fidgeted from one gouty foot to another:

"The name upon this card was familiar to my father. He told me some weeks before his death, that he looked forward with great interest to the coming of a Mr. Hazel--I suppose the Mr. John Benn Hazel of the firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance Brokers, of Cornhill--London--whose name is on this card.... I know it was his intention to offer Mr. Hazel hospitality. His family--I am told they are Jews of Palestine--has been for more years than I dare to estimate--closely associated with our own.... He has a right--should he wish to exercise it--to attend my father's funeral. Should he even ask to see him--I should not venture to refuse."

Whishaw said, straightening his stooping back to soldierly erectness, and holding the Benares tray against the seam of his trouser-leg:

"Vera' gude, Miss Forbis, mem. Will I bring Mr. Hazel here to ye, or show him in the morning parlour? 'My business wi' the leddy,' says he, 'is maist private, ye ken.'"

Katharine's order to show the visitor into the morning parlour was forestalled by Yaill's saying:

"Receive Mr. Hazel here. While you talk to him I shall smoke another pipe in the garden, if I may?" ...

He hardly gave back the smile that accompanied Katharine's assent. She untied her blue apron and laid aside her veil. Yaill touched her hand swiftly with his lips, and went out again into the frosty morning sunshine, as Whishaw quitted the drawing-room, clacking softly yet....

The door re-opened, showing his black, rook-like shape, bald brow, sharp, little red-rimmed blue eyes, and withered-apple-visage, plimmed into an expression of sour disapproval, behind the vast khaki shoulders of a huge man who stooped low upon the room's threshold, saluting its mistress with almost Oriental reverence....

If the accompanying words had been: "Hail to you, O lady!" instead of "I'm glad to have the pleasure--" as John Hazel bent his gaunt shoulders and lowered his square black head before the tall, womanly shape that towered against its sunlit background of terrace and garden, woodlands and snow-tipped hills, Miss Forbis would hardly have been surprised. For his long right arm had shot out and downwards, sweeping back with the fingers incurved, to touch breast and lips and forehead. As he rose up to his great height of six feet four inches, and some invisible, resistless hand--with the weight of many centuries behind it--ceased to press down his head--the glamour of his Eastern salutation fell from him like a discarded robe....

Katharine saw a big, raw-boned, brown-skinned man, of powerfully Semitic type, probably a year or two over thirty; too gaunt to be coarse, and too frankly middle-class in tone and manner to be mistaken for a gentleman. And somewhere--somewhere--she had met the man before....

To John as Whishaw closed the drawing-room door and its owner moved forward with graceful, gracious greeting, the first sight of Katharine brought its disappointing shock. For it was not the woman he had unreasonably expected. Taller--he had only seen the Ideal seated, remember! Older, with great, sad eyes, rust-coloured as the withered leaves, surrounded with brownish circles. The rich carnations that had bloomed in the other woman's cheeks, under the peaked blue cloth storm-cap of Foreign Service, were missing. It was not she, but a woman who was like her! Extremely like her,--John conceded that. But older, paler, graver and more self-contained; without the gay good-fellowship, the heartening smile--the buoyancy--the atmosphere of youth....

And yet, as he stood by the chair to which she had pointed, waiting impassively until she should have chosen and taken her own seat, he knew that he stood in the presence of his very liege lady, whom by virtue of an ancient oath one John Hazel was bound to serve, honour, reverence, defend and obey....

He said to himself that he was glad the real Katharine Forbis was older than _that other_. More dignified, more reserved, and all that sort of thing. He was saying it again when the tall shape of a man in khaki passed the open window on his left hand,--there were four of these opening like doors on a level with the terrace--and a red spark kindled in John's gaunt black eyes,--because he knew the man again. He would deal with him presently. Meanwhile--he looked back at Miss Forbis, and roughly caught his breath. Who had deemed her less than young, with such eyes of gold and bramble-dew, and such roses blooming in her cheeks, as her wide, beautiful mouth curved in a happy smile. And that she WAS the Woman of the muddy road that had led in April, 1915, to the Fighting Line east of Ypres--there could be no doubt....

"Then it _is_ you!"--broke from him.... "I give you my word that hundreds of times since that day on the Menin road, I've said to myself I'd know you again anywhere--even if they'd shown me your skin on a gate! But--up to this minute I've not been sure. Now I'm certain!"

In the same breath she found him again:

"Private John Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London (Fenchurch Street) Fusiliers! .... Well, I sent the postcard to tell you about your friend.... Wallis--you see I remember his name--shot in the shoulder with shrapnel. He wasn't very badly hurt. What!--you never got my message?"

John grinned, showing his mouthful of big, white teeth.

"No such gay luck! Fritz handed me a Blighty one that same afternoon, and I went down to the dressing-station dug-outs by the Meat-Tray Express--the Wheeled Stretcher Line, I mean!--and then back to the Base by the Gingerbread Chuff. Sucking your toffee.... My word! that was some toffee. I kept the wrapper a long time--till the nurses said it was germy, and pitched it in the fire."

Her heart warmed to the familiar soldier-slang. She gave back his smile frankly.

"I think," she said, "I knew you from the first. But how wonderful that you should be _the_ Hazel. The man my father"--She was graver and older now, with that shadow of grief upon her face "--the man of whose coming my dear father spoke, so often, and with such interest. And now you will never meet on earth. Why, I wonder why?"

"Give it up. Altogether, this is a jolly queer stunt. So queer that I've left off being astonished. Wasn't it one of those old Shakespearian Johnnies who said: '_There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy._' Not that I'm by way of cooling my heels outside Pit doors to see the Bard played--give me a tuney Musical Comedy or a rattling Revue! But all the same, old W.S. has got a knack of putting his finger on the spot,--now hasn't he, Miss Forbis? ... But you ... I heard of your being invalided Home. A strain, they called it. Did you get it that day near Ypres?"

Katharine smiled. He remembered the smile, breaking over the face like sunshine....

"Oh no! but in the September following, when the German airmen bombed our Hospital. You see, they'd set on fire, and--"

"And you carried a man out. Hulking brute! Ought to have died before he let a woman lift him. And--where were the orderlies, I should like to know?"

The blustering tone angered Katharine. "What business is it of yours?" was written on her stiffened face.

"The man had no choice because he was unconscious, and the orderlies' hands were full. There were precious few of them anyhow.... Army Nurses and V.A.D. girls evacuated the wards before you could turn round. Lifting is nothing really--once you get the knack of it. And--in those days I was as strong as a man. A really hefty man, I mean!" She stretched out a long arm with slow, powerful grace, looking down its fair rounded length with critical approbation, and then rose up, impressing John not only by her splendid height, but by her air of authority, and supple grace of movement. She said, moving to an ancient rosewood writing-bureau, unlocking one drawer of many in its upper part, and taking a letter out:

"Forgive me, if in view of the business in hand I remind you that we're side-tracking. This letter my father received on December 21st. He gave it me to read--it is signed with the name upon your card--'John Benn Hazel.' Do I understand that it was written by you?"

He explained, keeping his big, black eyes upon her:

"From Colthill War Hospital, Middlesex. I was there when Old Mendel--when a confidential clerk in a relative's counting-house brought me--just as he'd received 'em from the East--a copy of my late grandfather's Will, and the documents and other things concerned in this business.... There has been delay.... I ought to have explained that a little keepsake here--a love-token from Brother Boche--" he tapped his big chest, somewhere above the left clavicular region--"kept me from getting on to the job before.... I'm really frightfully sorry!"

"Of course. How could I forget your wound!" Her eyes softened as they took in the two gold stripes that graced his cuff, the bagginess of his khaki on the giant frame, and the brand-new ribbon of the D.C.M. "You have been only recently discharged from Hospital and are hardly quite strong yet. Are you?"

"First-class. It only touches me up in the puff now and then, like hell--I beg your pardon!"

John flushed darkly under his tough mahogany hide, and amended:

"I meant to say that I lose my breath and can't get it back again. But this is side-tracking." It was Katharine's turn to flush. "About--about that letter.... You see, I regularly got the wind up when I sat down to write to your father.... And so--I naturally fell back upon the translated draft of the letter of instructions written by my grandfather before his death and sent me with his Will."

Her doubtful face grew clear.

"At last I begin to understand.... The original letter and the Will were written in Hebrew?"

"Well, naturally, since Hebrew was the old man's native tongue, when he wasn't talking French or Modern Greek, or Arabic or Syriac...."

There was a spark of humour in the visitor's cavernous black eyes, and Miss Forbis' wide, beautiful mouth began to curl a little at the corners.

"This clears the air. Will you think me--I hope you will not think me offensively personal, Mr. Hazel, if I say that I found between your language and the phraseology of your letter, shall I say--a discrepancy that rather mystified me."

"Sure that!"

He pounded his knee as he used the Colonial word that the War has grafted upon our English speech for ever--and broke into his big coarse laugh, stopping short to glance at her mourning dress, and redden to his beetling eyebrows, and the cap of coarsely curling hair that capped his high-domed head, as naïvely as a schoolboy.

But Katharine had forgotten to be critical. In glancing over the letter in the big black handwriting of this big-nosed, black-avised young man, its sentences had once more cast their curious glamour over her. Her lips moved soundlessly as she whispered to herself:

"_To the present lord of the Towers of Kir Saba in North Britain, and in Palestine, be it known by the word of Eli Ben Hazaël, present Head of the House of Hazaël of Alexandria in Egypt, and Jaffa in Palestine._

"_The sum of moneys lent by Issachar Ben Hazaël, Merchant, in the Year 1146 of the Christian Era to Sir Hew Forbys, Knight, upon the fields, streams, vineyards and groves with the Tower of Kir Saba in Palestine hath been recovered with the interest thereupon due. The Tower of Kir Saba with the groves, vineyards, streams and fields appertaining, stand free from debt. Therefore are the sealed writings returned, with the moneys that are over the sum of the indebtedness: by the hand of a son of the House of Hazaël, who will receive writings of acknowledgment for the same._

"_Let the present lord of the Tower of Kir Saba in Palestine and in North Britain duly apprise the writer of this as to when it will be convenient to him, to receive the representative of Eli Ben Hazaël._

_Kindly address:_

PRIVATE JOHN BENN HAZEL, CITY OF LONDON (FENCHURCH ST.) FUSILIERS, WARD NO. 8., COLTHILL WAR HOSPITAL, MIDDLESEX."

XVII

Katharine looked up from the queer, absorbing letter, four pages of big plain note with the printed address of the Hospital, to meet the intent black stare of the representative of the House of Hazaël....

She said, returning the letter to the envelope, and keeping it in her hand as she went back to her chair opposite him:

"Your grandfather--was an old man?"

"He was nearly a hundred years of age, and mentally in topping condition when the War happened and swept away all his sons and grandsons too, except my brother and myself. And that broke his heart. Peace be upon him!" added John without intending it.

"Peace be upon him!" echoed Katharine Forbis. "I think that is a beautiful thing to say. He would have said it for my dear father had he known!" she added. "But they have met by now, in that good place where all good men foregather. Do you not think they have?"

"My grandfather was a devout Jew," said the big fleshy-lipped mouth opposite her.

"And my father was a faithful Catholic," said Miss Forbis. "And Catholics and Jews who have served God according to the light He gave them, are equal in His sight. Do you not believe so?"

"I've never given much time to theological and--ar--ar--dogmatic questions. But at Lloyds it stands that all ships are good ships if the insurance has been paid. Now as to these documents and things--" John reached down a long arm and hauled out from under his chair a business-like bag of shabby cowskin. "Here in this bag you see, I've got the whole caboodle!" (Really this was a very objectionable young man.) "But first, if you don't mind, the rings have got to be verified. That black agate you're wearing--and this of mine...."

He wagged a huge third finger. Katharine repressed a sense of this big, florid, hook-nosed young City insurance-broker's having taken a liberty, when she admitted, glancing at one of the large, beautiful hands lying lightly clasped together on her black lap:

"It is odd. This ring--which is a family heirloom worn up to the day of his death by my dear father--and that you have on, are practically identical...."

"With this difference, that mine is the original intaglio, and yours a facsimile of the design in relief. The 'mate to the gem' I rather think they'd call it." He looked at the black agate with the head of Hercules shouldering the club, and crowned with the lion-mask, once the signet of Philoremus Fabius, given by his patron to Hazaël the Jew.

"Would they? ... Oh, well, it's possible!" Katharine admitted. He went on:

"I was given to understand that this is no end of an heirloom. Been handed down in my grandfather's branch of the family--the trunk, I suppose I ought to call it--since the year 308...." He rubbed the antique greenish-gold setting on his sleeve, and looked at it closely, then drew it from his big third finger, and rose up from his chair.

It seemed to Katharine Forbis as though he would never have finished getting up. With a strange sensation she also realised that she was up against Antiquity and Tradition, in the person of this Territorial Tommy grafted upon a Cornhill insurance-broker; who spoke the colloquial English of the City, mingled with the slang of the camp and the trenches,--as a foreign language painstakingly acquired. Great as was her sense of race, it was belittled by Hazel's, with that history behind him that was written by the Eternal Finger on the living rock of Sinai....

And he was towering over her as she sat there--salient, masterful--endued with an authority ancient as the hills. Saying in his deep bass tones as he bent over her:

"It need not take a moment, Miss Forbis, but the form is absolutely necessary. It proves beyond doubt that you are you, and that I am--whom I say I am! ... May I ask you to hold out your left hand!"

She obeyed him, lightly resting the downward-turned palm of the hand that wore the black onyx upon the upturned palm of Hazel's. Now he brought the faces of the rings together, carefully adjusting them until the intaglio of his own ring covered the relievo of its counterpart, and the gems wedded into one chipped and shabby black onyx square....

"Good!" The young London business man was once more merged in the Jew of Syria. "There could be no proof more convincing than the marriage of these gems." He lifted his hand, and the rings were two again--and Katharine saw him return to his chair and become once more a large young London Territorial grafted on an insurance-broker, of Cornhill, E.C.

"Now I must hand you over these...." He was opening the cowskin bag, dipping in his big hands and bringing out--were these shrivelled things parchments? Wrapped in squares of faded yellowish silk, tanging the homely-sweet atmosphere of the room with myrrh and benzoin and other Eastern odours, spicy, pervasive, suggestive and queer. "First of all--" he handed the surprised Katharine the flat wallet of mouldy parchment sewn with antique silkworm gut--"this contains the original Title Deed of the Tower of Kir Saba, with the fields, streams, wells, vineyards and groves appertaining, granted to the Tribune Justus Martius of the Tenth Roman Legion by the divine Emperor Vespasian, on the tenth day of August in the second year of his reign...."

He paused to explain that the year was A.D. 70, when the old Roman Johnnies under Titus took the temple at Jerusalem, and then dealt with the remainder of the documents from the deed of mortgage between Sir Hew Forbis, and Issachar Ben Hazaël in the year 1146, down through the lengthy list of accounts and vouchers, the latest cleanly typed in purple ink on yellowish Levantine foolscap in the Jaffa offices of Messrs. Abel Manasseh, Ephraim and Co. Winding up:

"And I think you'll agree with me, Miss Forbis,--what with Wars, earthquakes, locusts and dry seasons; the raids of the Saracens and the Third and Fourth Crusades--not forgetting the Fifth in 1197 when Pope Innocent III issued a Bull dooming the people of the Ten Tribes to perpetual servitude,--that during what we Jews have got some excuse for calling the Dark Ages--there was nothing doing to any extent in the wine- and olive-trade."

"You talk," Katharine murmured, "as though all this happened yesterday."

"Speaking in my sense," said John Hazel, "it happened in December last...."

He went on,--seeming to feel his way,--garnishing his sentences less and less with the argot of the City and the slang of the trenches,--falling unconsciously more and more into the dignified archaic English of the translated typescript:

"Christianity had a grudge to work off on us Hebrews. When one of those jolly old mediæval jossers wanted to cleanse his crime-stained soul, he had it rubbed into him at G.H.Q. that the best Sapolio was the blood of a Jew. If kings or nobles wanted to raise an extra bit of pocket-money, they'd only to squeeze a Jew between a brace of paving-stones"--Katharine shuddered--"and drain away the gold. Between imposts and confiscations, spoliations, expulsions and massacres, not only in Syria but in West, North and Central Europe,--we Hazaëls had hardly a fighting-chance to develop our own, or another's property! The lands of Kir Saba had long lain desert round the ruins of the Tower,--when my ancestors were driven into Spain, to join the Sephardim there.... In Spain we struck root and prospered, they tell me. Near the end of the fourteenth century Spain became too hot for us. With luck at low-water-mark and all the hounds of Torquemada's Inquisition baying at our blistered heels, we flew the coop into Mohammedan Turkey--and under the protection of the Infidel we spat upon--Sultan Bayazet the Second--settled on friendly soil and held up our heads again. By the middle of the Eighteenth Century things began to pick up. An astonishing discovery, originally touched upon by Shakespeare in _The Merchant of Venice_ blazed like a meteor--I've seen meteors blaze in France, but they were nothing to the German star-shell!--across the mentality of intellectual Christendom. 'The Jew pays better as a citizen than as a pariah. Pen him in the Ghetto and he cuts no ice--because Gentile laws cripple his energies. Let him out--he will be more useful still! His money is the golden manure of successful speculation. His Jewish brains are the pith and marrow of every progressive plan. In Law, Literature, Science, Poetry, Music and Art the alien leads--only God knows the reason!'"

The great clenched fist struck the mantelshelf heavily, making its vases of ancient Persian pottery tremble on their ebony pedestals:

"Fools! When He showered these flaming gifts upon the leaders of His Chosen People--did He not know that the Jew of all men would use to most advantage what he had received. So, from the kick-ball of the Dark Ages he has become the hub of Civilisation. The golden grease that oils the World's axles as it spins between the Poles!"

He pulled up and looked at his listener like a man suddenly awakened. His big black eyes burned with a dull red glow in their gaunt caves, and his bluish-shaded temples and prominent forehead shone with little beads of wet.