Chapter IV: Part 4

This was no ordinary assemblage. From far and near the tribesmen swarmed in, and men met face to face whose habitual encounter would have sent both dodging to cover, rifle to the shoulder. The blood-feuds were laid aside. Families that for months had lived in terror of their neighbours across the village street, quitting their domiciles stealthily by the back way when they had occasion to go out, while the sudden rifle-shot of the concealed marksman added steadily to the tale of vendetta victims on both sides, mingled now with the throng, albeit cautiously. Men whose dwellings were a doorless tower which they entered and left by a basket on a rope, who tilled their fields with ever a rifle in their hand, strode now down the street, their dark eyes roving from side to side, and passed their adversaries with scarce a scowl. Mullahs, Koran in hand, their young disciples at their skirts, threaded their way through the crowd, giving and receiving pious salutation, exhorting, preaching, inflaming the fanaticism of passions naturally fierce. The blood-feuds between man and man, village and village, were forgotten in the reawakened, never-extinguished feud between Islam and the infidel. Behind the priests marched men armed to the teeth, their faces working in a frenzy, their eyes inflamed. They were _ghazi_--wrought up to the pitch of fervour where their own life is a predetermined sacrifice, so that they may first slay an unbeliever, sure of immediate Paradise as their reward.

Above the murmur of voices came the continual drone:

"_La Allah il Allah!_ There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet!"

It re-echoed down the valley in sudden shouts.

Into this excited throng strode the green turban, the venerable figure of Muhammed Din, piously telling his beads. Men jostled one another out of his way, for this fakir was quite obviously an especially holy man, one who had made the pilgrimage. Giving and receiving the Moslem greeting, "May the peace of Allah be with you!" he inquired the house of the village mullah, and made his way towards it.

He met the priest just on the point of quitting his dwelling. The mullah had a busy and important look. It was a great day for him.

"The peace of Allah be with you!" said Muhammed Din.

"And with you, O holy man!" replied the mullah. He scented an application for hospitality. "Blessed is the day that you come to us, for Allah worketh wonders in my village. Many have come to witness them. Alas! that you did not come before, O holy one, or my house that I have already given up to others would be yours!"

"A corner and a crust of bread, O Mullah!"

"Alas! Allah be my witness! Neither remains to me, O holy one--but I will lodge you with a pious man when the saint whom Allah has sent to us has finished the wonders he is about to show. I must hurry, O holy one! for the moment is at hand. The peace of Allah be with you!"

"Allah has guided my footsteps to you, O Mullah, for I have come from a far land to see these wonders. I will accompany you, for it is His will."

"Hurry, then!" said the priest irritably, "or Shere Khan's house will be full. Allah knoweth that I praise Him for thy coming!" he added by way of afterthought.

The house of Shere Khan, the headman of the village, was besieged by a turbulent crowd of tribesmen, who jostled one another for entrance. In view of the limited space within, only those known to be most influential were admitted. They deposited their weapons as they entered.

Muhammed Din followed the mullah, who bustled in with an air of great importance. The largest room of Shere Khan's house, a gloomy, stone-walled apartment, almost completely dark since the loopholes high up were stuffed with rags, was set aside for the occasion. More than two-thirds of it was already filled with tribesmen, who squatted on the floor. The remaining portion was rigidly kept clear by one or two of Shere Khan's armed retainers. "Sit farther back, O Yakub Khan! More space, O Protector of the Poor! Farther back, O Yusuf, lest the miracles about to be performed by the will of Allah scorch thee! Back, back, O children of the Prophet! I entreat ye!" The entreaty was emphasized by sundry kicks which the sentries grinningly delivered with a sense of the privileges proper to such an occasion.

The wall at the end of the clear space was whitened. High up on the other wall, behind the tribesmen, was a newly erected box of wood, large enough to hold a man, supported on pillars of light timber, and only to be reached by a ladder, of which there was at the moment no sign. The tribesmen turned their heads curiously towards this unusual contrivance and nudged and whispered to one another.

"Behold the cage in which the saint keeps the devils over which Allah and the Prophet have given him power!"

Those who were nearest it stirred uneasily.

"What if it should be the will of Allah that they break out of the cage!"

"We are God's and unto God shall we return!" replied his neighbour nervously, quoting the verse of the Koran which gives protection in time of danger. "May Allah protect us!"

Muhammed Din sat modestly among the throng, telling his beads with bent head.

"What thinkest thou of these wonders, O holy one from a far land?" asked the man next to him.

"The wisdom of Allah is inscrutable and much that is hidden shall be yet revealed," replied Muhammed Din solemnly.

There was a stir of expectation throughout the gloomy apartment. The mullah entered by a door at the farther end, near the whitened wall, uttered a sonorous benediction, and sat down, with grave self-satisfaction, in the front row.

One minute more of tense waiting--and then, amid a low murmur from the assembly, the curtain at the far door was again lifted. The "Saint" appeared. For a moment he stood in a dramatic pose, illumined by a ray of light from without as he held back the curtain. Then, dropping it, he strode solemnly forward into the cleared space. Every eye gazed at him with an avid curiosity. The light in the doorway had revealed him as a youngish man, despite the full beard which lent him dignity. His stately carriage of the long Moslem robes, dimly perceived in the gloom, was worthy of his _rôle_.

He stretched out his hands.

"The peace of Allah be with you!" he said in a deep tone that had only the faintest tinge of a European accent.

In a low deep chant of awed voices the assembly returned the salutation.

"O children of the Prophet! Men of the hills! Greeting! Greeting not from me but from the greatest Sultan of the world!" He spoke in their own dialect, but with a strong admixture of Persian words. "Listen! Ye know already--for his fame has passed the confines of the earth--that the great Sultan Willem of the Franks was visited by a vision from God, and that having had truth revealed unto him he turned aside from the error of his ways and embraced the true faith. Written in great letters of gold over the Sultan's palace shall ye find the sacred words: 'There is no God but God and Mohammed is His Prophet!'"

He stopped to allow his words their full effect. A murmur of wonderment came from his audience. "A-ah! God is great! Unto Him be the praise!"

He resumed.

"And with him turned all his vizirs and mullahs and khans from the false belief and called on Allah and Mohammed. I--even I, Abd-ul-Islam, who stand before you--am one of them. The Sultan Willem issued a decree to all his people that they should believe in the true faith--and lo! Allah wrought a miracle and they all believed, destroying their false mosques and building new ones to the glory of the Prophet. Great is Allah and Mohammed His Prophet that these things should have come to pass, O children of the Faith! They are hard of belief, for the Franks ye well know are a stiff-necked race. Yet such it is, and my Lord the Sultan hath sent me on an embassy to you that I may tell you these marvellous things. And that ye may more readily believe, Allah in His great mercy has given me power to show you these wonders with your own eyes." His tone took on a deeper, more sonorous solemnity. "O Allah! Allah! In the name of the Prophet, vouchsafe that these thy children may see the great Sultan Willem as he is at this moment!"

He clapped his hands sharply together.

Instantly a beam of intensely white light shot across the dark apartment from the "cage" and fell upon the white wall at the other end. The "Saint" stepped quickly out of the radiance. On the white surface there suddenly appeared a lifesize portrait of His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II--_gowned in long robes and coiffed with a turban_. A gasp of astonishment broke from the peering spectators in the dark room. Once more the "Saint" clapped his hands. The Imperial figure walked in stately fashion straight towards the audience--seeming that in another moment it would be walking out in the air over its heads--stopped, stretched out its right hand, smiled. The muscles of its face moved, the mouth opened--in a speech that none heard. "_Aie! Aie!_" broke from the spellbound tribesmen.

"Alas! that he is so far away that ye cannot hear his words!" lamented the "Saint." "But I can hear them. He tells you to believe in me, who am his messenger, by the grace of Allah and the Prophet. O Allah, vouchsafe that these Thy followers may witness with their own eyes the conversion of the vizirs to the true faith!" Again a clap of the hands, and the picture on the wall changed.

The tribesmen gazed at what to a Western eye would have been an obviously cardboard imitation of an Oriental room with a dais on one side of it. On that dais stood the figure in Moslem robes. Filling the remainder of the room was a throng of men in German uniforms, _pickelhaube_ on their heads. They advanced one by one to the figure on the dais, knelt, offered up their spiked helmets, and received in exchange a turban from their graciously smiling lord.

"See, O people, and believe!" cried the "Saint."

"_Aie! Aie!_" came the response. "We see and we believe! God is great! There is none great but God, and unto Him be all the praise!"

"Listen! O true believers! The Holy Prophet laid a command on the great Sultan Willem that he should immediately convert all the Frankish nations to the true faith. And the Sultan Willem gave glory to Allah that this command was laid upon him. He sent forth his armies in the great Jehad. The Sultan's armies are the most numerous and bravest in the whole world--not Timur nor Rustum might have stood against them--and none may count the number of their victories in the great war against the infidel Franks. Their triumphs are as the rocks on the hill-sides, beyond reckoning and eternal. All the nations of the Franks fled before them, and were slain like dogs as they ran. And most of all fled before them and were slain the insolent English dogs that, thinking themselves far away from the power of the Sultan Willem, are puffed up with a vain pride and tread upon the neck of the true believer in the land beyond the Indus--nay, who invade your hills and lay waste your crops, seeking to destroy the one true faith. Is it not so?"

"Allah knoweth! He speaketh through thy lips, O holy one!" was the chorused reply from the darkened room. There could be no denial of any statement from a source of such sanctity.

"Look then upon the battle and the destruction of the English dogs!" cried Abd-ul-Islam, giving the signal once more.

Immediately another picture appeared upon the wall--a picture of pseudo-British troops, uniformed so as to be familiar to the tribesmen, taking up a position for battle.

"Watch! O children of the Prophet!" cried the wonder-worker. "Behold the djinns which the Sultan Willem has under his command--for to him has the Prophet given the power of Solomon--behold the djinns that go before the Sultan's army destroying the English infidels!"

Great founts of black smoke leaped up among the soldiers on the wall--debris was flung high into the air--bodies lay upon the ground, visible where the smoke cleared. The soldiers fired quickly from behind cover, dodged, flung up their arms, and fell smitten by an invisible foe. The picture, though a "fake," was cleverly done and would have deceived more sophisticated spectators. The tribesmen did not suppress their exclamations of awe and wonder.

"Behold!" cried the showman. "The soldiers of the Sultan advance!" A serried line of German infantry swept across the picture, bayonets levelled, and the survivors of the defending troops fled before them. The line changed direction and marched straight towards the spectators, an irresistibly advancing menace, swelling larger and larger, uncannily silent.

Shrill cries of alarm broke out from the darkened room. "_Aie! Aie!_ Allah protect us! We are God's and unto God shall we return!"

The line of infantry swelled to a superhuman immensity, seemed on the point of reaching the spectators--and then there was darkness.

From the gloom came the voice of the German emissary.

"You have beheld, O children of the true Faith, the infidel English ran like dogs!"

"Like dogs they ran! With our own eyes we have seen it, praise be to Allah! Death to the infidel!"

"Now see the soldiers of the Prophet, the victorious army of the Sultan, destroying the Christian mosques in the conquered country!" announced the showman, in a voice of triumph.

On the wall was thrown the picture of a Belgian village church. German soldiers were busy about it. Then volumes of smoke began to issue from the windows, tongues of flame. The roof fell in. The church was reduced to a ruin.

"Behold! Ye see with your own eyes!"

"We see, we see! God is great! Unto Him be the praise!" came the reply from the spectators.

"Now see others!" cried the German. "This is the work of the Sultan's armies--will ye now doubt that he has set his face against the Christian infidels?"

Picture after picture of ruined and desolated churches followed upon the wall. The German authorities had evidently prepared a special film of them. Cries of wild approbation broke from the fanatical tribesmen, the mullahs loudest.

"Once more, O people, look upon the English prisoners, whose lives have been spared because they have embraced the true faith, being led through the Sultan's capital!"

A film of a few British prisoners from Gallipoli being marched through the streets of Constantinople was then shown, amid shouts of applause.

The picture was taken off, but the beam of light still blazed across the room. The German placed himself full in it.

"Ye have seen with your own eyes, O warriors of the hills! Praise be to Allah for His mercies! Ye will no longer doubt. In the name of the Prophet, the Sultan Willem, the protector of Islam, commands that ye rise up and sweep beyond the Indus. Everywhere the power of the English is broken. With your own eyes ye have seen it. Only on your borders do they still keep up a vain show. Rise up, O children of the Prophet, and sweep these dogs of infidels into the sea! The rich lands of India and much loot will be the reward of your valour. Paradise awaits those who fall in the sacred fight! The green banner of Islam shall wave over the entire earth, for there is no God but God, Mohammed is His Prophet, and the Sultan Willem is His chosen instrument!"

Karl Schultz felt an inward glow of triumph at his own histrionic power as, his words ringing sonorously through the stone apartment, he stood in the full blaze of light and raised his arm. It evoked loud shouts of fanatic frenzy from the excited assembly. They clamoured to be led against the infidel there and now. He kept his arm outstretched as though to still the tumult, as though his discourse were yet unfinished.

But the cries would not cease. "Great is Allah! Death to the infidel! Death! Allah! Allah! There is no God but God! Allah! Allah! Allah! Death to the infidel--death!"

Suddenly there was a new element in the vociferation, a movement among the assembly far back in the dark room. "Make way for the holy man with great tidings from India! Make way for the _Haj_! In the name of the Prophet--make way, dogs that ye are!"

Schultz looked towards the venerable figure of Muhammed Din pressing through the throng. A sudden doubt leaped up in him, was extinguished in self-confidence. The strange fakir approached. The wild clamour of the tribesmen was stilled in curiosity. They fell back in a sudden awe.

Schultz watched the venerable stranger advance solemnly, silently, into the blaze of light in which he himself stood. Again he was conscious of an instinctive tremor. "The peace of Allah be with thee, O _Haj_!" he said, and he found that he had deliberately to control his own voice. There was something uncannily impressive in the advance of this silent, dignified old man.

"And with all the faithful!" came the sonorous reply, enigmatic to the German's ears.

He found himself looking into a pair of strangely disturbing eyes; heard, with a wild reeling shock of the spirit, his own tongue spoken in a low, level Oriental voice.

"Move not a finger and make not a sound, Schultz Sahib, or you are a dead man!" Schultz Sahib's eyes glimpsed the muzzle of a pistol not six inches from his chest. "_Smile, Sahib!_ or your friends may interrupt us."

Having once ceded to the menace of the pistol, the German's brain could not resist the command of the imperative eyes that seemed to be boring deep into him. He _smiled_--a deathly smile.

"You have forgotten me, Schultz Sahib? It is not so long since we worked together on the railway. One of us at least learned a great deal about the other in those days, _Sahib_. _Smile!_--keep smiling!"

A wild revolt surged up in the German, subsided, without exterior evidence, under the glare of the dominating eyes which held his fascinated. He tried to turn away his gaze, was checked by the level, purposeful voice of the fakir.

"Keep your eyes on mine, _Sahib_! Look elsewhere and you are dead before you have looked!"

He heard the words reverberating through him, endlessly re-echoing in chambers of his soul magically open to them. He felt himself fixed, immobile, in a strange paralysis of the faculties. The terrible eyes looked into his that he could not close--he felt, as it were, waves of immeasurable strange force flowing from them, rolling over him, submerging him. And yet still he looked into the eyes of the fakir, his own eyes an open port to their influence.

A subtle, pervading odour ascended his nostrils, filled his lungs, mounted to his head. His brain grew dizzy with it. And still the compelling eyes held him, prevented him from turning his own eyes to the source of the odour. He lost the sense of his environment, was oblivious to the awed tribesmen staring silently at the pair in the blaze of light. He saw nothing but the eyes--lost consciousness of his own body. He stared--and lost consciousness even of the eyes at which he stared.

There was vacuity, oblivion, an annihilation of time--and then out of that vacuity a voice commenced to speak. He heard it with a shock of the nerves--it crashed through darkness with a mighty power. He seemed suspended like a lost spirit in everlasting night, fumbling around the vague yet massive foundations of the world--indefinitely remote from all that he had ever known. He could not detach himself from those foundations. They quivered under the booming voice, communicated an unpleasant thrill to the core of him. An awful unimaginable disaster seemed to envelop him. The tiny germ of consciousness that was still his fought for extension, strove to see. All was blackness--blackness. And still the voice went on relentlessly, driving through darkness, like a ploughshare thrust forward by the firm grip of a mighty and inexorable hand. Immeasurable results seemed dependent on its progress. He listened to it--and as he focused himself on the listening, a dim perception of his environment came to him. He was vaguely conscious of a sea of faces, upturned, listening--as he himself listened. Those faces--they were in some relation to him, there was a link between them and him--he could not determine it. He listened. The words rang like sounding brass, the vowels roaringly sonorous, the consonants clashing. He concentrated himself on their meaning--penetrated to it suddenly as through veils smitten asunder.

"_Lies and again lies, O children of the Prophet! A mockery of lies! The Sultan Willem is a servant of Shaitan who feigneth religion that he may lure true believers to their damnation while they unwittingly serve the Evil One!_" His perception leaped up, clawing at danger, and then was dragged down again, engulfed. He felt himself like a man drowning in black waters at night--down--down--and then, fighting obscurely, he shot up again, heard the inexorable voice continuing: "_This magic you have looked upon is a false magic--the magic of unbelievers in league with Eblis!_" He heard the re-echoing denunciation in a spasm of full consciousness--was suddenly cognizant of the sea of faces, of fierce passions exhaling from it--was completely aware of the menace of utter ruin. A great revulsion surged in him. This must be stopped--stopped! The necessity for instant protest was an anguish in him. All of himself that he could summon from the darkness as his own shrieked the negative, and yet he did not utter a sound--knew that he did not. "_Climb up into that box some of you, and ye shall find no magic but a Frank there!_" He strained with all his soul towards the faculty of speech--felt his powers vanquishing the spell of dumbness--on the verge of utterance shaped his words of denial. "_Lo! have I not spoken the truth? Yea, I cannot speak other than the truth, for I am the runaway servant of Muhammed Din, and his sanctity hath broken the compact between me and the Evil One!_" In staggering horror he realized--_the voice was his own_!

He stood fixed, incapable of movement, and saw--like a man that has dreamed and cannot yet distinguish dream from reality--the mob of tribesmen surging obscurely in the long stone room, saw the blinding white eye of the lantern still shining steadfastly upon him--saw it waver, swing from side to side, and then, with one last blinding flash, disappear. In the utter darkness he heard shouts and shrieks and fierce derisive laughter. He heard crash upon crash as heavy objects were flung from a height at the other end of the room. He heard a piercing yell, an agonized, appealing utterance of his own name. For a brief second it shocked him into complete consciousness--_his operator_! Then, ere he could break his invisible bonds, he felt a pair of cool hands pressed tightly against his brow, over his eyes, and he relapsed totally--with a last little gasp--into nothingness.

He awoke again to see the tribesmen surging round him, fiercely shouting. The room re-echoed with reiterated cries of "_Sharm! Sharm!_"[1] and a howl that was so unmistakably for blood that it chilled him to the heart. The room was lighter now--the rags had been pulled down from the high loopholes in the wall. He saw Muhammed Din standing before him, fending off his adversaries. He was still incapable of voluntary movement. A great faintness swept over him. He reeled back; found himself supported by the angle of the wall. He had been thrust back there all unconscious of the movement.

Dazed and sick, he heard Muhammed Din speaking.

"O children of the Hills, Allah and His holy Prophet sent me to you to rescue you from the snare of the Evil One. On me is laid the charge of vengeance upon this wretch, who was my slave ere he became the possessed of Shaitan. But this much of vengeance will I grant ye, for this much is just. He made a mock of you. Make ye a mock of him. Let him be driven out of the village, face tailwards upon an ass. The women and children shall cry derision upon the runaway servant who came to deceive you as a saint with the false magic of Shaitan!"

Staring speechlessly before him, the exposed charlatan heard the howls of approval of the mob. His faintly working intellect wondered how the mullah was taking this deception--perhaps even yet---- He saw Muhammed Din hold up a large bag of money. He recognized it with a last hopelessness.

"This gold"--Muhammed Din emptied some of it upon his hand--"this gold hath my servant surely received from Shaitan. It is accursed unless some holy man receive it. Therefore to you, O Mullah, do I give it."

The mullah snatched at it.

"Great is Allah and for the meanest of His creatures doth He provide!" he said. "Thou speakest truth, O holy fakir. Praise be to Allah that I am here to protect the faithful from the accursed magic of this gold. As to this wretch, accursed of Allah, let him be driven quickly forth as thou sayest, O holy one! It is meet that thy vengeance should not have to linger."

There was a rush at the fallen magician. He swooned into their arms.

* * * * *

Some little time later, when the last stone had been flung and the last epithet of mocking insult had ceased to echo from the hills, Schultz Sahib, his hands bound behind his back, his feet tied under the belly of his mount, raised his eyes from the ass's tail that he had been contemplating.

"Thou hast won, O Muhammed Din--but even yet I do not understand. What happened?"

The fakir smiled.

"Thou hast thy magics, Schultz Sahib--what thinkest thou of the magic of Muhammed Din? Hurry, O Willem, hurry!" he cried, as his stick descended with a resounding thwack upon the hind-quarters of the ass. "Thou art laggard in thy invasion of the territories of the English!"

* * * * *

The Political Officer listened to the story, and, embracing hypnotism in the studies of his exile, made a note of it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Sharm_, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.]

THE OTHER SIDE

A deep silence brooded over No. 3 Ward, Officers. It was late afternoon in October, but the room was as yet unillumined from within. The two long lines of windows that confronted one another--the ward was a temporary hut-building--did so in a contrast of lights, the eastern windows, backed by grey obscurity, reflecting broken beams of the glory of gold and purple and fiery red that streamed in from the west. The two lines of beds, the indistinct greys and whites of the ward, were delicately touched by the warm glow where they rose into its radiance. It picked out the short curves of the turned-back sheet, humped with the recumbent form beneath, in an imponderable caress upon the broken humanity that lay, desperately finite, under the splendour that knows no final setting. A mingled odour of disinfectant and anæsthetic hung in the air, explanatory of the dead quiet, of the heavy breathing that was part of the silence. This was a ward of the severely wounded, recently arrived. From the utmost climax of human effort, thunderous to the ear, dreadful to the eye, maddening to the soul whether it exulted triumphant over the menace of instant extinction or shrank appalled and paralysed in the horror of brutal death, from the fierce superiority of the unscathed killer, from the sudden shock, these men had come, many of them unconsciously, by train and ship and train and car to the white and green hospital on the empty moorland, to the hushed screened peace of the bed-ranked ward.

At the further end of the ward a Medical Officer stood in murmured conversation with a Sister. He was outlined black against the radiance of the sunset, but on her the glow fell fully illuminant, rosy upon the starched whiteness of the coif and apron, touching the pale face into faint colour. Her large, serious eyes rested upon him, attentive to his instructions, glanced away to the patient in the end bed as he spoke.

"Number Ten must be very carefully watched, Sister," he said, the little smile upon his face indicative only of his confidence in the quiet young woman before him, in no way minimising the gravity of his words. "I am afraid we are going to have a very hard fight for him. But we mustn't let him slip through our fingers. We'll keep him on this side if we can."

She assented with a nod of the head, and a long deep breath that was clearly a sigh. He scrutinised her sharply.

"You have something on your mind, Sister. No bad news, I hope?" His voice was very kind. "Captain Hershaw is all right?"

The Sister's engagement was generally known in the hospital.

The large eyes opened, revealing a mute, long-suffered anxiety.

"It is more than a week since I heard from him, Doctor. I am afraid--horribly afraid," she said in a low voice. "This terrible fighting----!"

"The post is sometimes held up during active operations, Sister. You must not be prematurely anxious. A week is not very long. You must believe in his luck. He has had a charmed life so far," the M.O.'s kindly smile emphasised his reassuring tone.

"He has--he has. And life always seems so--so vivid in him. I cannot imagine him"--her voice sank almost to inaudibility--"dead."

"Don't!" He smiled, full of sympathy. "Believe in his star." His tone changed to the professional. "Would you like to go off duty, Sister? I will speak to the Matron. A car is going into town. Go and look at the shops."

"No--no, Doctor, thank you very much. I won't leave my dear boys here. Poor lads! it does me good to fight for them--almost as if----" she stopped, turned away.

"Very well, Sister. Send for me if any change occurs in Number Ten."

The M.O. walked down the ward, throwing little glances at the silent patients, and departed.

For some little time the Sister busied herself noiselessly about the ward. Then Number Ten stirred uneasily in his bed.

"Sister!" he called in a faint voice.

She was by his side in an instant.

"A drink, please!"

She gave it him, looked down on the young, strongly masculine features as he drank, with an interest that was subtly, unconsciously more than professional. From the moment of his arrival in the ward--even in his silences--Number Ten had been a personality. Though powerless in bed there was a curious hint of brute force in him.

"Now you must go to sleep again, Captain Lavering," she said, smoothing his pillow.

"I can't, Sister." His eyes closed and opened again in a spasm of pain. "I--I want to feel someone near me," his voice was very weak, "to get hold of life again. Sister, sit beside me--for a moment, please."

She glanced at him irresolutely, smoothed the hair from his hot forehead with a cool hand, and then acceded to his request, seated herself on the chair by the bed.

"But you mustn't talk!" she warned him.

"I won't, Sister!" He was quiet for a moment. "Sister! I'm very bad, I know--but I'm not going to die! I won't die--I won't let myself die!" Despite his weakness, there was intense will-power in his tone.

"Hush, hush! Of course you are not going to die." Involuntarily, she laid her hand upon the bed as if to transfuse some of her own life-force into him.

He reached out a hand, grasped hers, resisted her attempt at withdrawal.

"Please!--please!" he murmured. "I want to hold on to life--there's so much----" His eyes closed sleepily. "I feel life flowing into me," he said. The grip on her hand was tight.

For a long time she sat thus, her hand clasped in his. Number Ten slept, with heavy breathing. It seemed to her that his fever diminished. She feared to withdraw herself lest she should awaken him. The long ward was deathly still.

Presently there was a noise of footsteps. An orderly approached, changing his gait to a clumsy tip-toe in obedience to her gesture.

"A telegram for you, Sister," he said.

She glanced at the patient, essayed to release her hand. It was firmly held in the sleeper's grasp.

"Open the telegram, Thomson," she said in a whisper.

The orderly obeyed, handed her the drab piece of paper.

She took it, glanced at it, nodded a speechless dismissal to the orderly.

"_The War Office reports that Ronald is missing believed killed Hershaw._"

The words branded themselves into her brain as she sat there fixed, immobile. She could hear them in the wailing cry of the widowed mother who had written the telegram, but her own voice seemed to her for ever dumb, never to break this crushing silence. She stared--with dry eyes--straight before her. The obsequial lights of the departed sun, framed by the window opposite, were extinguished one after another. She did not stir, was unconscious that her hand was still in the grasp of the wounded man. "_The War Office reports_----" It was like staring at a high, closed door.

An immeasurable time passed before an orderly entered, switched on the electric light, drew the blinds. She roused herself, found the grip upon her hand relaxed. She rose--with tight lips and burning eyes, went about her duties.

That evening it was by an effort of will, sternly administered, that she sat at table in the Sisters' messroom. She scarcely ate, was deaf to the feminine chatter around her. One of the sisters, a notorious flirt, joked her upon her loverlike posture with Number Ten. The orderly had evidently talked. Sister Braithwaite did not reply. As soon as possible she fled to her little matchboarded cubicle.

By her bedside was a photograph of a clean-featured young man, with intellectual eyes, more than ordinarily vivid in their expression. She kissed it passionately--"Ronald! Ronald!"--the loved name came from the depths of her. The merciful tears fell fast, her bosom heaved.

She slept with a packet of letters pressed tight against her warm body.

* * * * *

She heard her name called: "Mary! Mary!" in a startlingly familiar voice. She heard herself reply: "Ronald!" It was very dark. Where was she? Ah, by the stream. It seemed queerly natural that she should be by that stream. It was not so dark after all--only twilight. Twilight with dark woods coming down to the stream. Her name was called again: "Mary! Mary!" her lover's voice impatient. Again she heard herself reply: "Ronald! Where are you?" "Here, dear! On the other side! You must cross the stream."

Of course! She must cross the stream--that was quite natural--and there was a little footbridge, offering passage. She went over, not daring to look down. On the other side she waited. He was not yet visible. She wondered what suit he would be wearing, wondered why she wondered. He came towards her, his clothes curiously more conspicuous than his face. He was clad in his old tweed suit, and mysteriously it seemed odd to her. Yet what else should he be wearing? It was the suit he always wore when out for a walk. She glanced at her own clothes with a subtle sense of strangeness, yet it was her old summer frock she wore. This little puzzle about clothes played itself out in cosmic depths of her, receded or was solved, vanished. Her lover was standing at her side, enfolded her.

"Mary! I have been so anxious about you!"

She looked up to eyes that seemed like stars in the twilight.

"I, too, Ronald--I have been worrying about you." There was a sense of something terrible in the background, imminent, and yet she felt it had been with her for a long time. It ceased. "But everything's all right now--I have found you."

A little glimmering something in the depths of her asked why she said that, seemed to repeat doubtfully: "Found you----" in a long, eternally re-echoing voice. She felt eerie. It was as though her existence was a duplicate imperfectly combined, like the double vision, half running into each other, of badly adjusted binoculars.

"I am so glad you are safe, dear," she heard herself say.

"Let us go and hear the nightingales," he said in the voice so ringingly his own. He drew her along the path in the twilight, his arm about her waist.

Nightingales? Now? Of course, why not? The season was early June--what was the silly half-thought submerged beyond the horizon of her mind?

She allowed herself to be impelled by the pressure of his arm. Closely linked, they followed the tenebrous path by the wood, climbed skirting its dark edge. Her lover talked copiously and interestingly as he always did--on a multitude of subjects. He was humorous, satirical, rhapsodic, earnestly eloquent by turns. How like him it was! She admired the wide range of his mind. Much more easily than usual--she realised it in a little glow of self-flattery--she comprehended him all through a long and intricate disquisition. Yet lurking somewhere in her dream-consciousness was the feeling that there was an all-important topic on which he did not touch. A part of her tried to identify that topic and failed. The failure worried her. He talked of travel, of a trip into Germany through the Black Forest, across Lake Constance into Austria and the Tyrol. Of course! That was to be their honeymoon tour. In the days before--before what?--before something--they had often talked about it. They were not even officially engaged then--she remembered how they used to laugh together over these distant projects that were treated as imminent facts. They had even had a little quarrel over the choice of two alternative stopping places. She came back to his voice.

"Listen!" he said. "Listen!"

A nightingale was singing with supernatural power. Loud, thrillingly resonant under the stars that now powdered the sky, the song welled out to them. Its burden, mysteriously comprehended by them to esoteric depths, was sorrow--the sorrow of all the world, here completely expressed, transmuted into so strange a beauty that the listener held his breath. The deep sobs, shudderingly repeated, that threw off the magic runs of crystal sound, pervaded the atmosphere about them with a mystic spell, evoked an immense pity in them. They could have wept. Suddenly they were conscious of a perfidy in this magically induced compassion--a danger, common to both, implied in it, imminent. He flung his arms about her to protect her, shielding her from it.

"You are mine, dearest!--mine!--only mine!"

His words went ringing through the stars, passed out of hearing, but were not silenced. She felt kisses of intense fervour upon her mouth--responded.

"I am!" she cried. Her words also rolled away endlessly, as though permuted into imperishable brass. "I am yours alone!"

She half-woke in the feeling of a near presence, then sank again into a sleep that remembers not its dreams.

* * * * *

She awoke in the morning obsessed by the baffling sense of an occurrence she could not recall. Then the memory, the realisation of her loss flooded in on her--harshly predominant in those first empty moments as yet unlinked to the distractions of the day. She wept, uncontrollable tears. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried in a low voice, her face buried in the soft pillow. Then she remembered. Her tears were checked. The details of her dream opened one by one, stirred in her a curious, subtle fear she felt unworthy of her. The vividness of it woke an atavistic emotion, the shrinking reaction of primitive humanity from the influence of those dead to this world. Yet a more recent growth in her tried to glory in the contact--impelled by an obscure sentiment of duty. "I do love you, Ronald!" she murmured again to the pillow. "I am yours alone!" The saying of the words seemed to merge her dream-life into unison with the actual.

There was much to do in the long, freshly-aerated ward that morning. As one by one each bed had its sheets turned back, exposing the gashed, perforated or fractured bodies of men who winced with pain, the crude other side of war was laid bare. Into strong relief, too, was thrown the complementary phase of the other side of the vast catastrophe where the noblest are proudly conscious of the wounds they inflict. With tender care, the utmost solicitude not to cause one unnecessary pang of suffering, the khaki-clad doctors, the grey-uniformed, white-coifed and aproned nurses, laboured to save and heal.

Sister Braithwaite thrust herself utterly into her daily task of dressing wounds, of soothing pain, of bringing a cheerful smile on to the face of the sufferer.

So doing, she eluded for quite long periods the obsession which haunted her.

Number Ten was once more the focus of interest in the ward. His condition had grown worse during the night. To-day he was in a dangerous fever. The doctor was grave. Sister Braithwaite watched over him with unremitting care, found herself passionately fighting off death. In the early afternoon the crisis passed. He woke from a quiet sleep, looked up to the Sister standing by his bed.

"You have saved me, Sister," he said in a weak voice. "I could feel it----"

"Hush, Captain Lavering. Go to sleep. We are all trying to get you well."

"It was you," he said faintly, as his eyes closed once more.

The silence of the ward was suddenly broken by a merry peal of bells floating in through the open windows. In the little village church tucked away in a near-by hollow of the moor a wedding was being solemnised. Sudden tears, a strange emotion, surged up in Sister Braithwaite.

A case that had made good progress was removed from the ward, a newly-arrived, severely-wounded man brought in.

"If only it were Ronald!" The neat, prim figure of the Sister, supervising the orderlies busy lifting the casualty into the bed, gave no indication of the desperate agonised prayer.

* * * * *

She dreamed.

"----Mine at last, my beloved--really mine!" The familiar voice thrilled through her, very close, overhead.

"Yours! Always yours!" she heard herself murmur.

She took her head from the darkness that obscured her vision--it was his coat against which she had been nestling; she saw the little white touzled-up hairs of the rough tweed ere her gaze stretched to longer focus. She looked to his face, met his vivid eyes--looked round at her surroundings.

They were alone in the first-class compartment of a railway train that rocked and roared. His lips were pressed on hers. "The great day, dearest!" he said. Her mind leaped to the allusion. Their wedding-day! They had been married that morning--she could hear still the joyous peal of bells--were going away on their honeymoon. The tweed suit he wore was quite new--something like the old. She was in a travelling-dress that he had already admired. Of course! It all came back to her as if she had just awakened from a little sleep.

The train rushed on. She lived through all the cinematograph-like pictures of the journey. A halt and descent--little anxieties about the luggage--then--after an interlude which was vague--another train, another long journey--all was a continuous long experience. She thrilled at a surreptitious squeeze of his hand--ah, yes, there were other people in the carriage now--rounded her lips at him in a provoking similitude of a kiss, daringly profiting by the inattention of their fellow-travellers. A yearning for him--induced by the naughty little act--filled her breast, persisted. There was bustle, confusion. They were in a throng of travellers who hurried. Hurry! They must not lose the boat. It lay there before them, only its upper works seen, its two great funnels leaning backward, belching black smoke. The black smoke spread over the sky. It was night. They were on board the boat, cradled in an easy motion, sensible of the throb of the engines. On and on they journeyed, linked in a very close communion of eyes that spoke, of hands that squeezed each other. She tasted a thousand little kindnesses. How good he was! How loving!

And still the journey went on. Yet more trains. She must have slept. She woke to a great city, filled with innumerable inhabitants, all very busy. They spoke a strange language very rapidly to one another. She could not understand a word. But he, Ronald, understood--conversed with them in their foreign tongue. How clever he was! There was music somewhere--from a lighted café that flooded a damp street with radiance.

She was bewildered in a variety of new and strange impressions, leaned on him, soul and body. He led her, sure of himself. Her love for him seemed to increase at this revelation of his unfailing self-reliance. Yet she knew that she loved him with all her being, had always loved him so.

"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked. Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing, Rembrandtesque, on the carved stonework of the ancient buildings. She recognised it at once--how accurate the picture postcards had been! Brussels--the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning on his strong arm.

The dream continued----.

* * * * *

All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.

Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely, it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad. But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.

She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.

* * * * *

Her dream linked itself onto its predecessor. The honeymoon was finished. She looked back down a long vista of travel, of happy days. She had really lived through all those experiences. She picked them one by one from her memory like rare pieces from a jewel-case, contemplated them with a smile. Each expanded into a picture. The day they had walked together down the rugged path of the tiny valley imprisoned in the wooded hills, a fierce little stream outpacing them as it dashed against great boulders, and had come upon a sunny meadow where children garlanded with flowers laughed and danced in a ring; a wonderful blue lake on whose shores were yellow houses with red roofs and ancient cypresses on a greensward near the water's edge--the melancholy reiterated note of a church bell beat like a pulse through the scene; an old, old town with gabled houses leaning in close confidence, rich carvings--the grotesque; in all was a pervading peace, rich quiet life that thrives sleepy with well-being from year to year; over all was the ecstasy of mutual love through which they had beheld the world.

Another memory came to her--early morning in the Alps, a sea of wild narcissi all about them and, beyond, the great white peaks glittering in the sun of a blue sky. They went on and on, up and up. The flowers were left behind--and she remembered she had regretted leaving them, had grudged the effort to climb for the sake of climbing--but he had insisted. They stood at last high up, dazzlingly white snowfields stretching away on every side, a summer sun beating hot upon them. The air was rarefied, induced in them a subtle ecstasy as they stood marvelling at the brilliant austere beauty of the great peaks lifting themselves into the sky, their robes slipping from their rocky shoulders in a miracle of purity. He encircled her waist with his arm, spoke in the voice that stirred mysterious depths in her.

"Dearest," he said. "Not a flower but snow is the true emblem of love. White as the essential soul, how soon on the lower levels it is defiled, disappears! But on the heights it endures stainless for ever, no matter how hot the kiss of the sun."

And she had kissed him, speechlessly.

But all this was past. She was at home now, waiting for him to come back from his work. Their home, the home they had always planned, was all around her. The very pieces of furniture they had regarded in shop windows with longing eyes, had calculated the cost of, were there. That quaint old table in the centre of the room, half covered with the embroidered openwork white linen laid for tea--how covetously they had once looked on it! How depressed they had been at the dealer's price! But it was there, after all. Ronald had bought it, he who never rested until he attained his heart's desire. How purposeful he was! How strong! How loving-kind! She closed her eyes, leaned back in a swimming ecstasy of love.

There he was! She heard his footstep at the other side of the door. He entered, was radiant, enfolded her in that wonderful embrace where she was a surrendered thing. He had a little parcel, handed it to her. Tremblingly she opened it, certain of delight. It was a framed enlargement of a photograph they had taken that morning in the high Alps. With a little happy cry she gazed once more on the long smooth slopes of snow, stretching up to the dark-patched peaks. Once more his arm encircled her, his deep voice spoke.

"So shall we live, darling, always--ever upon the heights."

* * * * *

She lay awake in her bed, ere it was day, and understood in a great tremulous awe. In her dreams she and Ronald were living precisely the life they would have lived had there been no war. The honeymoon--their home--all would have been accomplished ere this. Had there been no war! Exactly as she had dreamed they would have travelled together--his arm would have enfolded her--in long, long happiness they would have lived. She burst into a passion of tears, stifled in the pillow. Then she turned her head, wondering, feeling as if her heart had stopped. Would this dream continue? Was it--in some mysterious way--_real_? Her lips moved in a prayer, but she scarcely knew what she prayed.

She was glad to escape into the busy actual life of the ward, into the light of day.

From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.

In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known, diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien, spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover. But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional interest.

Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional. When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project----. She fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face. When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.