Part 25

"Good! Now, are you quite sure your brother has been killed?" He went on, meeting her startled look.... "Because the War Office isn't infallible.... A pal of mine--reported dead over eleven months ago--has spent about three in trying to convince the authorities that he's very much alive! Last week he heard from them, asking him to reconsider the matter! and send in another detailed statement; and now that he's convinced 'em of his existence--they've docked his pay for the eleven months he's been officially dead! ... And I know another man, a virtuous unmarried one-pipper,--who gets paid an allowance, monthly, for a missus and three kids.... They don't exist--and never did, but the Pay Department says they do,--and returns him the money when he tries to pay it back! One day they'll say he's robbed 'em--and call a Court Martial--but till then he spends the cash in cigars, and other forms of crime. Not as applicable as the first illustration, but still a case in point." He grinned.... "And hasn't it struck you, that Colonel Yaill, knowing the dudheads at Whitehall--would be likely to go on looking for Father Forbis as long as a chance remained? Now, what about those ads. you were going to write for me? I'm quite certain they ought to go in.... But mind you make it clear to Colonel Yaill that you've no private, first-hand information.... Put it '_Julian reported killed_' and then he'll understand!"

She levelled her fine brows and thought a moment, then rose from her chair, saying:

"Would this do? '_Edward ... Julian reported killed Gallipoli, August 21st. Seek no further_' or '_Search useless. Send address for communication. K._" Then as he nodded his approval, "Very well, I'll write the advertisements at once," she said. "Of course I don't know any Arabic, and my Italian is simply rocky--it always sent Father into fits of laughter.... But my German is passable, and my French is--quite decent.... I was educated at the _Sacré Cœur_ Convent, Chalkcliff--where most of the nuns are Parisian ladies.... Smoke if you care to, while I'm writing.... And do find yourself a comfortable chair...."

She crossed the room to a well-used escritoire, inlaid ebony of Indian workmanship, glancing back to smile at John Hazel as she drew up her writing-chair. Her Persian cat leaped purring on her shoulder, and she rubbed her cheek against his warm silver-grey coat, giving the caress craved by his cattish little soul, before she gently set him down.... Then she began to write, and John sat watching her, revelling in her vigorous, healthful uprightness, and the grace with which her long limbs disposed themselves in the seated pose....

"Don't rush it.... Take your time!" ... He was speaking from behind her. "I'll see that the others are cautiously worded.... A man in disguise as an Arab or a Turk might betray himself unconsciously, if his eye happened to drop on a line that was meant for him, you know."

"'A man in disguise.' ..." She caught her breath. "Oh!--you are wonderful!"

"Not even my mother ever thought that," said Hazel, with his gleaming grin. "But I'm ready to put money on my theory that the Colonel--to get out of England in the quietest way possible--has enlisted in some unit of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force."

"As a common soldier--an ordinary Tommy! ... You think so meanly of him? ..."

For a moment her broad front of displeasure was turned upon John Hazel. Then the anger died out of her as he said quietly:

"I've learned to think a lot of ordinary Tommies, since I've been in this beastly War. And I stick to my opinion--for a reason!"

He got up. His big hand had been in his bulging tunic-pocket. He pulled out a Brass Hat, ignominiously squashed, and with the peak broken--and said as he offered it to Katharine:

"Here's my reason! Good enough, I think!"

"Oh!" she cried, "where did you get that? ... It is Edward's!" ... And snatched it almost fiercely, and crushed it against her breast....

"This too!" ... John thrust on her the silver whistle.... "A child was playing with it near the plantation below your Private Road.... That put me on the scent.... I annexed the whistle--here it is for you!--you'll see his name is on it!--and went in and poked about.... To discover the complete uniform of a British C.O., Field jacket, badges, Bedford cords, and the whole posh kit, wrapped up in a trencher, strapped with a Sam Browne, and stuffed into a fox's hole. Presently when it's dark enough, I'll lug the rest of the kit up to you.... Now, do you think I've grounds for my belief? ..."

Katharine was trembling.

"You frighten me!" she said to him. "The police and their helpers have searched and found nothing.... You come--and these hidden things are uncovered at your feet.... What does it mean? Do you believe that you and I have lived on earth before now? ... Are we taking up old threads that were broken ages ago? ..."

"Not for a second do I believe that!" answered John Hazel. "But that we are influenced and guided by others who have walked this earth before us,--yes!--I certainly think we are! While they were about it they might have shown me where the Colonel got the suit of civvies he changed into when he gave his swank rags to Brother Fox for keeps. Plain clothes!" ... He answered Katharine's inquiring look as though she had spoken. "And pretty well worn.... Don't stop to ask me how I know!" ...

"'Plain clothes'! ... A shabby shooting-suit...." Katharine repeated. "Wait one minute--I must look! ..."

And she was gone.... The sixty seconds were barely ticked off by the gilded arrow of the Tudor timepiece before the door opened to admit her, minus the finds of the plantation,--panting a little, with flushed cheeks and radiant eyes of joy....

"I have been to his room," she told John Hazel, breathlessly. "There is a camphor-wood press there where--since August, 1914,--I have kept the suit Edward was wearing when the War call came to him. Rough grey homespun--with a Norfolk jacket. And the things have gone out of the press. He must have taken them--"

"I'm dead sure he took them! Now another question crops up, Miss Forbis. In these days of Compulsory Service--though the Act's not a fortnight old--how's an able-bodied man in plain clothes to avoid being captured by the Government's Fine Tooth Comb? Tapped on the shoulder by a Recruiting Officer or a policeman--and challenged to cough up his Conscription papers, or produce his Exemption Sheet? What would the Colonel's age be? Anything over the Limit?"

The coarseness of his tone offended delicacy.... Her brows contracted as she answered with chilly dignity:

"He was thirty-nine in May. (_Thirty-nine. And he might have married me when he was thirty-one!_)" her heart cried rebelliously. What had Edward thought to gain by those continued delays? She had been at her loveliest, she knew, when they had first loved each other.... Twenty-three--and between twenty-three and thirty-one--eight worse than wasted years!

Years lost--foregone--wilfully forfeited.... Her heart wailed like a plover over its rifled nest.... And yet not lost.... Five of them at least had been glorious with happiness. There had been rare glimpses of sweetness even in these last three years of War....

"Forgive me!" she said, wakened from sad memories by John Hazel's taking leave of her. "I was thinking.... I did not hear you.... Must you absolutely go?"

"I must not stay, Miss Forbis. The other things that are hidden in the plantation I shall leave you to find for yourself. The fox-hole is at the bottom of the bank facing south beside a big stone--you can hardly miss it! You will hear from me, when there is anything you should know--until there is, good-bye!"

She said, with her characteristic, cordial imperiousness: "Good-bye comes after luncheon! ... You must not leave this house again without breaking bread! ..."

He yielded, and soon they were seated at a long, well-covered table in a room whose sombre panelling was relieved by inset portraits of dead-and-gone Forbises, glittering trophies of Indian weapons, horns and heads of big game; some fine pieces of Oriental porcelain and a noble buffet of silver plate. That sense of strangeness still remained. Strongly as the good things of the palate appealed to John Hazel's sensuous nature, he found himself swallowing hot savoury Scotch broth--demolishing cold game-pie and salad with the barest appreciation of their excellence--and gulping down the Chateau Margaux of the Kerr's Arbour cellars, as indifferently as though it had been the beer of the canteen....

"Good-bye, Mr. Hazel," Katharine said at parting, "and God bless you! I shall never forget what you have done. Should I hear from Colonel Yaill, I shall communicate to the address you have given me. Should you hear of him--you will write to me here at Kerr's."

She gave him both her white hands, returning his big strong grasp with warm, sisterly friendliness, sending a strange and wonderful thrill through the giant frame of the man.

"May I--" he asked, almost humbly, with his black eyes entreating hers, in the way that a woman who has been wooed can never misunderstand....

"If you wish!" she answered, cordially, and he stooped and touched with his fleshy lips the beautiful hands he held. Then he released them.... He was at the door, looking back at Katharine.... As he turned the handle she spoke impulsively:

"Where are you going?--you haven't yet told me!"

"I suppose because I thought you would guess," John Hazel returned. "The fact is, I got orders yesterday to join my old crowd--the 'Fenchurch Streets'--at Salonika. So I'm going out to the Near East--to look for your friend!"

"Not to fight?" Katharine asked, smiling, though touched by his rugged simplicity.

He answered:

"To do that, and the other job too...."

"It is almost certain that I, myself, shall be going out to Egypt shortly," she told him, "to work at the Hospital of Montana near Alexandria--with my friends of the Red Cross."

He nodded gravely.

"Good luck to you and them! There's a thing I'd like to hear you say, Miss Forbis. Do you mind just telling me to carry on?"

"Carry on, John Hazel!" said Katharine royally.

He waved a hand to her, and was gone. And the great lonely, empty House of Kerr's Arbour was tenfold emptier and lonelier without that vital, powerful embodiment of faith and loyalty....

_Book the Third:_ THE FINDING

I

Weeks after John Hazel had sailed with a draft of leave-expired "Fenchurch Streets,"--to join the Division to which that gallant London regiment was attached--with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces at Salonika--and while brave British men in Palestine were cracking their teeth on that hard nut of Gaza--H.M. Transport _Loyalty_, (an ex-Austrian Lloyd Liner captured at the beginning of the War, and converted into a Mediterranean Hospital ship), sailed for Egypt,--and in the _Photographic Puff_ of the week's issue appeared--under an enlarged snapshot of the pre-War departure of the ex-Austrian Lloyd from Southampton Docks--this announcement:

"POPULAR SOCIETY PEERESS, COMMANDANT OF L.L.W.S.L., SAILS FOR EASTERN THEATRE OF WAR."

Another periodical of the type that daily caters for readers of another order, published, under a portrait of Lady Wastwood in exiguous dinner dress:

"TRIXIE MAKES TRACKS FOR EGYPT TO FIND OUT WHY SPHINX SMILES."

While in the _Daily Wire_ of a few days' later issue was published a brief paragraph to the effect that H.M. Transport _Loyalty_ had been torpedoed on the fifth day of her voyage out to Alexandria; carrying some officers and men of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force returning from sick-leave; a detachment of Military Nurses and fourteen brand-new ambulance-cars; many War Hospital stores and comforts destined for our wounded, together with a complete unit of the British Red Cross.

"Miss Forbis, V.A.D., of Kerr's Arbour, N.B., is included in the list of the rescued, as also Trixie, Lady Wastwood, O.B.E., Commandant L.L.W.S.L., who was on her way to the East to employ her well-known powers of organisation in the establishment of a Hostel for Convalescent Officers (Auxiliary) in the neighbourhood of Alexandria." The famous motto of the Legion is, doubtless, familiar to our readers: "Do Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick At Nothing, and Never Grouse."

The usual boat-drill had not been neglected, and when the alarm had once been sounded, everybody had dutifully turned up at his or her allotted station in overcoat and cork lifebelt, to be not at all astonished by the intelligence that the scare was simply a dud.... No attack upon the part of enemy submarines had been anticipated.... The _Loyalty_, with her three vast squares of green paint bounding a white-edged Red Cross (outlined at night by brilliant electric lights)--amidships on each side, ought to be regarded as sacrosanct by German submarines.... But of course people understood there were loose mines in the Mediterranean, though the minefields were all known.

Lady Wastwood had rather ruffled the good-humour of the Captain by constantly asking him how he could be Certain of this? But after he had personally conducted the Commandant, life-belt and all--for from this practical insurance Trixie never separated--to his chart-house on the Lower Bridge, and displayed before her green eyes a chart of the Mediterranean, ornamented with designs in coloured inks by the Navigating; Lieutenant--indicating areas strewn with floating mines by the Kaiser and the Sublime Porte, "G.M. at such-and-such a depth, and T.M. at such-and-such another," and illustrated the uses of the telephones between the Wireless Room and the chart-house, and the telegraphs linking the officer on the bridge with the engine-room, and the speaking-tubes communicating with the batteries of quick-firing guns fore and aft,--Trixie's anxieties were completely laid to rest. She thanked the Captain effusively, and with a gracious smile and bow to the Navigating Lieutenant, descended to the saloon-deck cabin,--which she shared with Miss Forbis--to renew her complexion for the 12.30 lunch.

To wash your hands, arrange your hair and refresh your complexion while arrayed in a life-belt being impossible, Trixie removed her practical insurance, hanging it on the cabin sofa-end while she monopolised the looking-glass.

"Of course I am a grouse--and a disgrace to the Legion, I know it too well!" she owned to Katharine, as she intensified her V-shaped Pierrot smile with a stick of scarlet paste, "and instead of playing rounders and quoits and clock-golf--which is exactly the same kind of thing as playing water polo in a wash-hand basin--what I really long to do is to huddle in a deck-chair, and look out for oily streaks and white breaks in the water. But I am the victim of a morbid imagination--that keeps telling me what happens to you when you get wrecked at sea. You go down and come up three times--and see all the events of your past life processioning before you. That must be horrible! And they say it always happens--the people, I mean, who have nearly been drowned--and were only just saved in time!"

"But nobody who has been quite drowned has ever given an account of it," said Katharine, with her wholesome, heartening laugh.

Sea and sunshine had done much for Miss Forbis. Private Abrahams would have recognised her for the bright-eyed, smiling woman he had met that day on the Menin Road.... We cannot always mourn the dead, or bewail the lost that are living; though often her heart cried out in anguish for her dear ones; and waking of nights upon the shallow pillow of the upper bunk in the suffocating cabin, she would feel for a silver whistle she carried in her bosom--and kiss it--and cry herself to sleep again.... Or lie sleepless amidst the creakings, the overhead tramplings and shoutings; the snorting of electrically-driven ventilators; the occasional thump! of a bigger sea than usual upon the bows of the _Loyalty_, and the dismal sounds emitted by sufferers from the malady of the sea....

"How sensibly you look at things, Kathy dear," said Lady Wastwood, putting the final touch to her Pierrot smile....

Friendly and even affectionate as were the relations between these two women,--no reference had ever been made by one or the other to that February day of Trixie's encounter with Edward Yaill on board the Scotch Express. But the subject was in the air, and both felt it,--and possibly because of this, their conversation was elaborately casual....

Trixie added, as she intensified the eyebrows that resembled musical slurs, with a black pencil: "But really, my stupid nerves are quieting down! The skipper has cheered me wonderfully. There's something so refreshingly bluff and reassuring about a big smiling sailor man with white ducks and an Irish accent,--of the northern kind that one doesn't associate with dynamite and revolvers and masks. He has quite put my idiotic fears to bed. I shall never--AH!"--

A hot, violet-yellow light seemed to fill the cabin, as the terrible detonation shook the _Loyalty_. The air seemed flame.... Dust filled their lungs and nostrils, and the shattering crash of descending tons of water, mingled with the great cry blended of innumerable voices, that goes up to Heaven from a mined or torpedoed ship.... Then the shrieks and cries ceased, as Discipline asserted itself. Through the deafening roar of escaping steam--and the racket of shattered engines--the bugle sounded the alarm--in deadly earnest now....

"Come!" said Katharine Forbis. She wrenched open the cabin door, letting in a rush of water, seized both their life-belts and gripped hold of Lady Wastwood, who, half-swooning, wavered as though about to fall. Somehow Miss Forbis dragged her charge through a jam of white-faced men and women--along the broad gangway, oddly tilted forwards--ankle-deep in water--up the main companion--tilted too, at that queer forward angle--down which the sea was rushing in a heavy waterfall. Drenched and gasping, to reach the promenade-deck--emerging into the radiant beauty of a Mediterranean day with the shout:

"All passengers on deck with life-belts on! All passengers on deck with life-belts on!" ringing in her ears....

Sun and sea, sea and sun,--and Death at its ugliest--an uncanny combination.... There was no panic after the first outcry and the headlong scrimmage for the upper deck. The deafening boom of escaping steam made it necessary to shout so as to be heard by those who stood nearest.... The forward tilt of the smooth white planks increased momentarily. The _Loyalty's_ bow-plates and forward compartments had been stove in by the explosion. She was settling down by the nose, into the mirror-clear water--while the Military Nurses in their grey cloaks,, and the men and women of the Red Cross stood to attention on her tilting decks--and her officers went to and fro....

There never had been panic, there was even a little laughter.... No fear of horrors of thirst and starvation attending on shipwreck in the crowded Mediterranean Sea.... The low grey hulls of the _Loyalty's_ two attendant Destroyers were visible on her starboard a long way ahead.... They were getting steam up.... "Coming to look after us!" shouted somebody to somebody. Of course they had been apprised by Wireless of what had occurred....

"Great invention, Wireless!" shouted somebody else to Katharine....

Katharine nodded back. She hardly felt depressed.

"_B'mm. Hm'm! Oom'm m! ..._"

A seaplane came droning out of the bright distance from where the low grey hulls of Destroyers showed, shepherding a stately procession of camouflaged troopers and battleships,--and hovered in narrowing circles over the _Loyalty_. Her pilot shut off--and his observer shouted something through a megaphone. What he said could not be heard through the roar of the escaping steam. Then he dropped a weighted note and flew away southwards, and the Second Officer grabbed the note and hurried off to take it to the Captain on the bridge.... Katharine never saw him again.... But inside the space of twenty seconds every soul on board the doomed vessel was in possession of the ugly fact....

The _Loyalty_ had got out of her course,--strayed miles from the guarded ocean highway, traversed in comparative safety by the shipping of the Allies, patrolled by British Fleet hydroplanes, submarines and Argus-eyed T.B.D.'s.... She was in the middle of a Turkish minefield, one of those fulminating enemy areas marked out on her charts with lines and letters in coloured inks, that had been displayed by her Captain to the anxious eyes of Lady Wastwood. The powerful magnetos of a German submarine,--hovering in her near vicinity, had caused deviation in the British transport's compasses. Or, there had been a blunder--the truth will never be known....

Of the boats that had got away from the ship,--the first were crowded with women only; the next were packed with women and a sprinkling of men.... They pulled away towards those grey shapes on the southern horizon--topped by columns of slanting smoke--and presently were mere specks upon the straining sight....

As Katharine and Lady Wastwood were helped over the rail into their boat, and it was lowered to the level of the water--something like a shudder went through the _Loyalty_.... Her stern-ports lifted at a greater angle, and her bows were submerged more deeply. Looking up at her huge grey bulk, it seemed to Katharine that some vast cetacean,--bombed and harpooned--lay dying in agony upon the smooth and glassy sea....

She saw the Captain on the bridge, binoculars in hand, speaking to one of the minor officers. Urged in some way, he shook his head as though in refusal, and as his subordinate quitted the bridge--resumed his interrupted scanning of the distant sea. Perhaps the binoculars had focussed the travelling top of a periscope, and the breaking of white water, miles away to the east....

When the double White Death Streak cleaved the blue sea, and one after another two torpedoes hit the _Loyalty_ on her port side amidships--her bows plunged downwards, throwing most of the people remaining on her decks, into the water. Others clung to her rails and the roofs of her deck-structures, as with a thunderous rattle of scrapping iron, her bowels fell out of her mangled body,--and she dived and vanished in a whirlpool of her own. As her stern heaved up perpendicularly, lifting her huge triple screws sheer out of the swirling water, a Portuguese sailor scrambled up upon her counter, naked as in the hour of his birth,--and so stood poised; his rich brown body gleaming,--his wild eyes and bared teeth glittering in the sun:

"_Mao riao parta o' diabo!_ ... (May the Thunderbolt split you, devil! ...")

He shook his dark clenched fist towards the east, shrieking out the imprecation--meant perhaps for the Kaiser or the Sultan or the Commander of the submarine,--and dived magnificently as the ship sank, dragging down with her the last boats....

And then, through suffocation, and roaring sounds of water in her ears--flashes of sunlight piercing her smarting eyes, wedges of blackness driving over mind and soul--lightning flashes of consciousness--gasped-out prayers to God, wild cries for help,--washed down her choking throat by volumes of bitter waters--Katharine Forbis came up out of the depths--to find herself floating in sunlight and strange silence, on a sea covered with a strange confusion of floating _débris_....

Not alone, for all the silence. In the company of a good many other people, pluckily bent on keeping their courage up, and other folks' as well. Military nurses and Red Cross V.A.D's, orderlies, officers, sailors, Tommies.... Some of the men on duty forward had been horribly injured by the explosion of the Turkish contact-mine. What could be done for them had been done before quitting the sinking _Loyalty_. But as the blood from their cruel wounds drained away into the waste of water.... It was not the first time that Katharine Forbis had seen brave men die.... Then a V.A.D. woman perched with two others on a gangway, called to her across a patch of water--a lagoon ringed-in with floating wreckage:

"Oh, do look at the Commandant!--I am afraid she is dying!"