Part 23

"I had made up my mind--supposing you had left me this time without settling a definite date for our marriage--that I would get drafted out to the East to help Hilda. You remember Lady Donnithorpe? She was a great friend of mine, I have often told you, when we were girls together at Chalkcliff--fellow-pupils at the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.... Sir Hugo is on the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief at Cairo. Hilda is Commandant of the Red Cross Hospital at Montana--seventeen miles from Alexandria--standing in wonderful grounds. It was formerly, or so I understand--a palace of the ex-Khedive. I could drive a car for them, or nurse--I have my certificate--"

"You seem to have got your plans all ready cut and dried--without much reference to me! ..."

His face was wrung as he looked round at her.

"Don't be cruel, Edward! Do not let me remember by-and-by--that on this day that sees me shorn of everything, you were unkind--for the first time...."

He gave a short, impatient groan.

"Who is unkind to both of us but yourself? But you shall be obeyed--I will leave Kerr's Arbour."

Each of the five words gave her its separate stab. She never winced, but said to him unfalteringly:

"There is a train from Cauldstanes at six o'clock. You could catch the King's Cross Express by changing at Carlisle...."

"And it is now four-thirty."

From habit he had glanced at the cheap watch strapped upon his wrist.... The heavy lines between his knitted brows deepened and a vein throbbed in his temple, as he stripped the poor trinket from his wrist and dropped it into the glowing heart of the fire. The glass burst with a sharp little crack--and the leather strap writhed among the hot, devouring flames so like some reptile dying in torment that Katharine turned her eyes away. As Yaill's hard, level voice went on saying:

"From Cauldstanes, six o'clock! ... Thanks! that train would suit me very well. Please no--don't ring!" Her hand had gone out to touch the stud of the bell beside the fireplace. "Don't trouble to order any kind of trap.... I had much rather walk. Some hard tramping in the frosty air will do me good.... Really.... I should prefer it! ..."

"But--your luggage!" She looked at him anxiously.

"My kit! ..." He could have laughed outright, but he controlled himself by main force, and went on in the same stiff, formal tone: "Send it to-morrow morning by an early train to my Club in Pall Mall. I shall take care to leave it properly addressed, so that you have no trouble of any kind--"

"Edward.... Be just ... be fair! Don't--torture me like this!"

The cry broke from Katharine barely of her volition. She caught him by the wrists.

"How am I torturing you?" he asked her coldly.

"What have you decided to do?" Her eyes were on a level with his, begging, commanding. "Tell me! ..." She caught him by the wrists. "Are you going back--to her? ..."

"No!"

Her hands had been like steel upon Yaill's wrists. Her eyes, tawny and fierce as those of an enraged lioness, were fixed upon his. The pang of pity she had felt for the poor giver of the destroyed watch was lost in her anguished sense of her own despoliation,--her own helpless impotence to hold her usurped rights.... But at that deep, stern No! from him her hands grew weak upon his wrists, and the lioness-fury in her eyes died out and left them tender....

"I have said to you that I cannot share my life with her--the woman I have married. I swear to you she shall want for nothing--be treated honourably! As to my plans--the most definite is to go to the Near East and find your brother Julian. Not to fight with Turks for the Holy Sepulchre. My faith is dead in me. When God gives me back You, then I will be friends with Him! Until then--"

"Oh, Edward, hush! ..."

"I will not shock you more, dearest of living women. Give me that one last kiss, and say: 'Good luck to you on your road!' For at the end of the road I may find your brother Julian. In some Turkish prison--enclosure or labour-camp, working under the lash. Now will you kiss--"

"Not here, dear Edward! ..."

She draped her head with the black-lace veil that had been her dead mother's, and smiled--how could she bear to smile?--as she held out her hand....

"We will say our Good-bye in the chapel.... Come, my dearest! ..."

He could not resist her look, her touch.... Together, they went out....

The fragrance of incense was sweet in the still place, the treasure-chamber of this Catholic dwelling; where you felt the Blessed Sacrament as a guarded Flame, a vital Essence, a Presence mysterious and impalpable, yet instinct with latent Power and conserved Force. When Katharine bowed in adoration of her Lord and Master, Yaill stood erect, silently defying Him,--with set jaws and scowling brows, and hard glittering eyes.

But when Katharine rose, and again took his hand, his icy armour melted. His eyes softened and he yielded to her touch like a big, docile child. She drew him to the small Communion-rail--knelt on the worn red cushion, and was silent; gathering strength to speak, fighting with her anguish; while the haggard frowning man stood stiffly waiting at her side.

A moment more and Katharine's low voice flowed out upon the silence. She said, to the Living Presence in the Veiled Tabernacle:

"My Saviour and my God, Thou seest at Thy Footstool two of Thy servants, who after long years of love and fidelity, and patient waiting and hopes often frustrated, are parted--for life perhaps--as if Death had come between. We do not know--"

The sweet voice wavered and then went on steadily:

"We do not know why we must suffer--we only know it is Thy Will. And we offer Thee--O give us strength to offer Thee! this agony of

## parting--in submission to Thy Majesty and in expiation of our sins--

"What sins?" Yaill asked her in a deep, stern voice.

She seemed not to hear, and went on speaking:

"The sins that we weak mortals have committed in our lives. And now to Thy care, Who didst offer Thyself a living Sacrifice for the redemption of the world upon the Altar of the Cross--I commend my beloved whom Thou hast taken from me! Preserve him in body and in soul from every sort of danger. Guide him, guard him--lead him upon his path in life.... And if--"

She heard Yaill's boot-heel grind upon the stone, and knew that he was trembling....

"Let this end! ..." he said below his breath. "Do you hear me! End now, Katharine! ..."

But she went on, fighting,--had he known the truth,--for the soul of him, her dearest:

"And if we may never be one on earth, O let us be one in Heaven! ..."

Yaill gritted his teeth savagely, and a rending sob tore through his frame. The tears were streaming down his face as he stammered out to her, gulping and choking:

"Lend me ... hanky ... Kathy! I can't find--"

She gave him her handkerchief as a mother might a child, and went resolutely on to the end of her prayer.

"And now before Thee, here present in the Blessed Sacrament as truly as when Thou didst walk with Thy Beloved upon this sorrowful earth,--I promise to be faithful to Edward Yaill my lover, in body and soul, through Life till Death, and in the Eternal Life! ..."

He gave a hoarse inarticulate cry and sank to his knees beside her. She turned and folded him in her arms, and his face sank on her bosom, and the black-lace veil that draped her head fell over his too. It smelt of violets. His scalding tears wetted her neck.... She lifted his face and kissed him,--with all her soul kissed him. But a fold of her mother's black-lace veil came between her mouth and his.

XXIII

Long after Edward Yaill had gone, and Night had settled down upon Kerr's Arbour, old James Whishaw hobbled noiselessly into the chapel to find Katharine kneeling there. He bent his own stiff rheumatic knees upon a chair behind her, and waited, and said a prayer for the daughter of his dead master, dear to him as a daughter of his own. Her face was hidden in her hands, her lace veil fell over them. No movement stirred its patterned folds, no sigh nor sob escaped her.... She might have been the statue of a kneeling woman, wrought in black marble or ebony.

"Miss Forbis, mem!" the ancient servitor whispered after an interval. There was no response. Grown desperate, he ventured a fresh appeal.

"Miss Katharine! ... Miss Kathy, for your ain sake!--for a' our sakes--"

The quavering terror in the cracked, familiar voice reached her. She stirred, and answered:

"You, Whishaw? ... Am I wanted? ... Who--"

She tried to rise to her feet, but could not. The old man hurried to her and lent his feeble strength to help her, and she rose up and they came out of the church together, slowly, arm in arm. As the door swung-to behind them, she put back her veil and whispered:

"Has Colonel Yaill?--"

The butler hardly recognised the drained white face she turned to him. Her voice was a mere thread of sound, the shadow of itself.

"He has gone this hoor an' mair," he said, "an' a wire has juist come for him. My bairn--Miss Katharine, dearie!--there is anither for him that's gane! An' O I doot bad news in baith, by word the bringer dropped wi' them--"

"Give me the wires.... I understand...." she said. "The messenger has gossiped?"

"They're weel kent for loose-tongued, claverin' bodies at Cauldstanes Post Office," owned Whishaw, adding bitterly: "Nor ye'll no' bind Discretion on Meggy Proodfoot, wi' the King's Croon on her airm." He took the salver with the two orange envelopes from a console table in the hall, and brought it to his mistress, entreating: "Gin' ye could see yer ain face ye wad be frichtit, Miss Katharine. Let me get ye a glass o' wine before ye'se open them, my lamb!"

But Katharine mingled no juice of the grape with this, her latest draught of the strong black wine of Sorrow. She opened the envelope that bore Yaill's name, and by the light of the great wood fire that blazed in the hall hearthplace, deciphered the message it contained.

"This must be re-telegraphed to Edward's London Club," flashed through her mind before the vile sense of the words upon the sheet drove clearly home to her; and then she started as though their concentrated venom had seared to the very bone.

"_Have discovered where you are. Return instantly or I shall follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill. Tor View, Coombe Bay._"

A moment Katharine staggered under the shock. Then with the fierce blood burning in her cheeks, she won her shaken composure back, saying as she encountered the Watery blue stare of her ancient servitor:

"There is nothing to trouble us in this. I know it to be not important." And she crumpled up the flimsy sheet and dropped it into the midmost of the fire, adding: "We will not trouble Colonel Yaill by forwarding it at all."

Then she opened the other orange envelope. It held a communication from the Casualty Department at the War Office, and told her with official brevity that her brother Julian was dead.

"_Regret to inform news received from eye-witness confirms report that Father Julian Forbis, O.S.G., R.C. Chaplain --th Brigade, 29th Division, Mediterranean Forces, Gallipoli, was killed on August 21st by direct hit Turkish shrapnel shell during storming of Scimitar Hill. No remains recoverable._"

She read out the withering message of disaster in a low clear voice devoid of a trace of expression. The butler and the servants who had gathered in the hall broke into sobs and lamentations. But what avail are tears and outcries? They are only of use to vent the sorrow that is neither poignant or profound. Miss Forbis went to the drawing-room and penned some telegrams; one to the Father Superior of Julian's Monastery at Clerport, one to Julian's dearest friend, in the trenches before Arras,--a brief note to the lawyer and notary, Mr. Kellar,--already (through that local Post Office leakage) in possession of the intelligence,--and a third telegram for Colonel Edward Yaill, addressed to his London Club.

And then, moving mechanically as an automaton, she went from the room, encountered Whishaw and gave the messages to be taken into Cauldstanes that night by a mounted groom. The wires to be left at the private house of the postmaster for despatch in the early morning; the note to be handed to Mr. Kellar, sitting with his old cronies over his toddy and his well-loved rubber of whist.

Mrs. Bell, Miss Forbis's elderly companion (worn out by the day's sorrowful ceremonial) had long retired to her room. Time enough to break the news to her upon the following morning. Katharine ordered the wearied servants to shut up the house and go to bed, and herself set the example. But when her tearful maid had quitted her for the night, reluctantly and wistfully,--she could not bear the notion of lying down in that now desolate house to rest. It stifled her. So she dressed again,--threw over all a hooded woollen mantle, took a small electric lantern and went out of the room....

To ascend above the level of ordinary daily existence, to climb a height and draw into the lungs long breaths of purer air, seems to be a craving shared by not only those whose bodies are racked and worn by chronic suffering, but by those others who in heart and soul are wrung by mental pain. The Lawgiver of Israel ascended into the fastnesses of Sinai--not only to receive the commands of the Most High--but to hide his anguish at the backslidings of his rebellious people--turning to unholy commerce with Egyptian god-devils and Canaanitish idols,--from the pure worship of the One God. And His Son was wont to climb the solitary heights of mountains, when He was weary with the healing of multitudes--and oppressed with His burden of human woe! And since His day, how many others have known the need, and sought the same alleviation:

"When on the heights I drink the air And watch the budding of each star Out of the dusk, this grief I bear Is somewhat soothed; my load of care Lightens, and Thou art not so far--"

Descending to the ground-floor, Katharine, barely of her own volition, passed through a small, heavy baize-covered door at the northern end of the hall. It led into the Tower, and she crossed a great stone-flagged, stone-vaulted room lighted by narrow window-slits high in the massive stone walls, unlocked another door with a key that was in the lock, huge and old-fashioned, but oiled and working smoothly, and came out at the foot of the narrow stone stairway that spiralled, storey by storey, to the top of the Tower.

She was weary, but the turmoil and anguish of her spirit set the claims of the body out of court. She moved on, tall and stern and beautiful, flashing her guiding light on a jutting stone in the wall here, or a broken step there,--just as though she were conducting some visitor to admire the famous view from the battlements.

The young moon of February rode high in the southern heavens. The Standard hung at half-mast from the flagstaff of the Tower. There was little wind to stir its heavy pendent folds, what there was came almost balmily in drifts from the west.

Some belated workman or field-labourer was going home across the policy,--or possibly some gamekeeper or shepherd may have been setting out upon his nightly rounds. The night being dark and still, he sang; perhaps because he was sorrowful, possibly because he was happy; it may have been to cheer his loneliness. But whoever he was, he had a voice; a sweet, if untutored baritone,--and the matchless beauty and poignant pathos of "The Land o' the Leal" beat in wave upon wave of anguish, and sorrow, and yearning, upon Katharine's tortured soul....

"O God!" she cried aloud in her anguish, "I cannot bear it. Desolate, desolate, stripped bare of everything! ... All of them taken!--Mark and my father, and to-day Edward! ... O Edward, my love! and Julian! ... Ah! ..."

And her own cry was flung back from the battlements, so thin, so weirdly eldritch that she shuddered at the sound....

Madness was near my Katharine in that hour of abandonment. But when the wild spirit of Marioun Forbis, whose tragic tale I have not time to tell here, cried to her: "Be bold! One leap will end it!" and the thin ghostly hands of proud, sinful Countess Edith plucked at her garments to drag her to the battlements; and Mistress Juliana, who starved herself to death for grief because her too-severely punished babe had died in a fit in the dark cupboard where it had been shut up after a whipping, lent her impalpable, invisible aid to urge her kinswoman to the desperate deed,--the saintly Mother St. Edward, Abbess of the Brigittine Convent of Syon (stripped of all and driven thence to exile with her Community by the edict of fierce Elizabeth), whispered of submission to the Divine Will. And heroic Madam Lucy--who nursed her smitten household back to life through the days when the Great Plague raged in England,--and only lay down to die at length when all she loved were safe,--leaned to her ear and whispered "Courage!" and countless other noble women of her ancient race gathered about her then....

And at last the memory of her own lost, beloved mother rose up to aid her, and the Mother of All Mothers--pitying her faithful daughter's anguish--interceded with Her Divine Son that the gift of prayer might be restored to ease the breaking heart....

It came like a spate among the hills after long drought, and Katharine fell upon her knees, and leaned her aching head against the rough-hewn stone, and told God all her trouble, and knew that He heard.... Then she rose up calmed and comforted, and so went down the Tower stair and back to her bedroom. And slept and dreamed of a gigantic man,--tawny-brown of skin, and with a vast black beard, fierce black eyes and a great hooked nose exactly like John Hazel's,--wrapped in a vast hooded mantle--carrying an iron-shod staff like St. Christopher's--and wearing immense boots such as are never seen now. He went before her over a desert which she needs must traverse, seeking for the lost Julian--a waved expanse of scorching yellow sand, peopled by ugly Things that lived in burrows, and kept popping up their diabolical horned heads to mock and gibe at Katharine.... Then the Bearded One stood in the midst of a raging torrent (which it seemed that Katharine must negotiate), and leaned on his immense staff to steady himself, stretching out the other hand to help her across.... There was a black onyx intaglio of Hercules in an antique setting of greenish gold on his huge forefinger.... And his vast hand, as it enfolded hers, felt warm and friendly and kind. And she asked, for the black eyes under the dense black brows were more like than ever:

"You're John Hazel, really, aren't you? ..."

And the huge man answered, in a booming bass, showing great white teeth in the thicket of his hirsuteness:

"Nay, daughter of the race of him I loved! But John Hazaël is of me!"

XXIV

Wonderful times, these of which I write, fruitful in world-shaking happenings, hecatombs of slaughtered men; sledge-hammer strokes of Fate and Destiny. Sudden descents of long-suspended swords upon anointed heads. Tragedies, calamities, dazzling adventures, murders and massacres, high deeds of patriotism, stirring deeds of heroism, wakening admiration, pity or terror. Who shall marvel that into this whirlpool of great events the Mysterious Disappearance of A Well Known British Commanding Officer (as recorded by the Press under the above and similar headings) dropped with as little sensation as the fall of a pair of binoculars from an aviator's hand.

"Staying at Kerr's Arbour, N.B."--I quote from one of the newspaper paragraphs, "the officer, a well-known personality in Society, possessing a great record of distinguished service with the famous Tweedburgh Regiment of Infantry, left the house at which he was an honoured guest, after the funeral of Sir Philip Forbis, which he had attended in the morning, and has not been since heard of. It transpires that Colonel Yaill had intended to walk to Cauldstanes Station, for the purpose of taking a late afternoon train to the junction of Carlisle. He had ordered his luggage to be forwarded to his London Club on the morning following, and carried with him nothing but a trench-coat and a walking-stick. The calamity which has again befallen the 'Tweedburghs' since the appointment of Colonel E. A. Yaill to command the regiment, will be fresh in the sympathetic memory of every reader. On September 1915, Colonel Yaill made his way to the front-line trenches through a blizzard of German H.E. and finding of the few living men left in them not one unwounded, took over and carried on the Telephone and Wireless Communications with Brigade and Divisional H.Q. until for the second time the dug-out containing the installations was blown in by a High Velocity shell. Severe shock was sustained by the gallant officer, who was discovered later, alive but quite dazed, and taken to Hospital. Since then he has successfully undergone treatment at the B---- Base Hospital Camp, which he quitted little more than a week ago, with a convalescent discharge. To add to the strange interest, and thicken the mystery of the case, it has transpired that on the morning he left the Hospital Camp at B---- the missing officer was married to a young and attractive lady, by name Miss Lucy Burtonshaw, serving with her Red Cross Unit at the B---- Base Convalescent Camp, as a certified nurse. Up to the present we can only record that whether the disappearance of Colonel Yaill may be ascribed to foul play, or a sudden loss of memory, no clue has been discovered up-to-date which throws any light upon his whereabouts. At his country home, 'The Grange,' Scraefell, N. Cumberland, his sisters, the Misses Olive and Isabella Yaill, are in the utmost distress and anxiety regarding his probable fate. At his Club _The Services_, in Pall Mall, no communication has been received from him, nor can his brother, Mr. Anthony Yaill, K.C., or Sir Arthur Ely, head of the eminent firm of Ely and Ely, for many years solicitors to the Yaill family, supply any information whatever concerning the missing officer."

Private John Hazel, returned to the bosom of his family at Campden Hill, read this, or a similar paragraph, in the morning Wire, and somewhere towards forenoon of the same day, received a telegram, the perusal of which gave him another unexpected thrill. It ran as follows:

"_Can you come? In great anxiety. Katharine Forbis Kerr's Arbour T.O. Cauldstanes Tweedburgh N.B._"

He had written a brief, business-like note from the _Cross Keys Hotel_ on the day of his return from her father's funeral, taking leave of Miss Forbis, repeating his offer of service, and enclosing an address from whence, in case of need, he might always be communicated with. Strangely soon the call had come. Strangely natural, as in the run of long-accustomed things it seemed to be responding to the appeal, to answer by the messenger waiting the reply:

"_Thank you. Coming by next train._"