Chapter XIV

He had told the girl, according to her, that though the letters on his disc proclaimed him Catholic, he was just as much a Protestant as anything.... And a Church of England clergyman--not the Chaplain attached to the Convalescent Camp--but the pastor of a Protestant church in the town had been consulted, and under his advice the Special license had been procured:

Yaill had written to his Brigadier and Divisional Commander.... As for Nurse Burtonshaw, she had already applied to the Principal Commandant of the Women's Detachments and the Matron-in-Chief at the Front for her discharge. And obtained it--on account of her health,--she had always been anæmic,--and of late headache and indigestion born of chocolate-creams and cigarettes, of which Nurse consumed quantities when off duty, had troubled her a good deal.

"And besides, duck," she told her pal, "if it comes to choosing between Teddy and my profession, my first duty is to Teddy. I do really think it was Providence prevented me signing on for the Duration of the War!"

And so they had been married only a week ago. O God!--O God!--why had nothing happened to prevent the affair? Why hadn't the officiating Church of England clergyman had a fit or a belated attack of scruples? Why out of all the flotillas of aircraft scouring the charted skies on War's endless business, had not one (preferably a bomb-carrier) crashed on the roof of the church?

They had had breakfast at the Conronne--where Brass Hats and Red Tabs did congregate and foregather. In the private room above the restaurant, looking across the short side of the gardens across the Ouai Clemenceau. The hotel was crowded with British khaki and French grey puppets playing the talky interludes that enliven the grimmest tragedy of War.

Nurse Burtonshaw had looked her best in her off-duty dress of pale blue alpaca, with bishop sleeves, and black Red Cross buttons, a white lawn collar and cuffs to match--a black patent leather belt with a sprig of artificial white heather tucked in it, and a white straw hat with the regulation Service ribbon crowning her wonderful red-gold hair. Her Teddy's engagement-ring, chosen by herself, set with three smallish rubies--did duty as keeper to the plain gold ring he had placed--not quite an hour before--on her large, capable left hand....

The popping of corks, the clinking of glasses, and the polyglot roar of male voices from the restaurant below, discussing the one burning topic of the day in every civilised tongue used on earth saving one, came to them as they ate their omelette and sole _matelotte_ at the round table in the big bay window--looking across the Quai upon the outer Port--crammed to the jaws of the long channel between the light-housed jetties--with Allied steamers of all imaginable grades, types and sizes: from Leviathan troopers, converted Cunarders and P. and O. boats disgorging endless streams of men, horses, lorries, guns and munitions; and Hospital ships ceaselessly swallowing processions of walking wounded and stretcher-cases--poured out from the long khaki-coloured Red Cross trains drawn up at the platforms--to T.B.D.'s, British and French mine-sweepers, submarines, American or Eastern oil-tankers, seaplane-carriers, Wireless Service boats and Canadian or Argentine cattle-ships. With a myriad others brought from the world's airts to serve this single end of War.

Lucy Burtonshaw, now Lucy Yaill,--while eating her _déjeuner_ with an unspoiled appetite, saw with relief her newly wedded husband unmoved by this stirring spectacle; long unfamiliar to one laid-by for months in the placid backwater of the Convalescent Camp. His sad grey eyes swept the wonderful panorama without seeming to take it in. Presently they came back to her; and she smiled into them affectionately, as she laid down her fork, and spared her rather large hand, with its brand new wedding-ring under the ruby keeper, to give his a protecting, reassuring squeeze....

"Ducks!" she cooed. (Lucy could coo.) "Sure all this hasn't given you a cooker of a headache?"

He did not seem to hear. He was looking at the sprig of imitation white heather. She followed the direction of his gaze, and took it from her belt.

"That what you're looking at? ... My bit of white heather! ... Pidge"--Pidge being the Hospital nickname of Nurse Pringle, the pal of some pages back--"Pidge gave it me 'For luck' when we said good-bye to each other this morning. 'Not the real thing, but as near as I could get for two frongs!' she said. Want it, Ducks?"

She put in his hand Pidge's parting gift--a caricature of Nature with its gummed green-and-white paper leaves and bells, and trumpery glass dewdrops--and he stared at it as though it held the secrets of the Past and of the Future both....

Perhaps it did for Ducks. For something wakened in him. Some atrophied nerve vibrated, it may be: some long-numbed brain-cell quickened into life....

Who knows what change took place? ... At any rate, the sight and touch of the little shrub with the white-belled flower that grows amongst the purple ling of Northern moors and mountains, made Teddy's slowly-beating heart perform a curious demivolt. Remembrance began to waken from her hazy trance, or dream, or lethargy.... Somewhere, some time, Some One had given him a bit of white heather.... Some One, some time, somewhere--and the gift had meant the world! The round world floating in her ocean of air, and all the planets swinging in their orbits.... A woman utterly, unspeakably beloved by Nurse Burtonshaw's Teddy ... the woman, whose love had been sweet as the honeycomb of the Singer of the Canticles--fragrant as myrrh and ambergris and frankincense; the utter bliss of the body--the soul's bread and wine....

"_How beautiful are thy steps, O King's daughter! ...
How beautiful art Thou, and how comely my dearest, in delights ...
Thy stature like unto a palm-tree ... thy throat like the
best wine ...
Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm:
for love is strong as death: ... if a man should give
all the substance of his house for love he shall despise
it as nothing..._"

"What are you mumbling, Teddy dear? Sounds like a bit out of the Bible."

He lifted his dropped head and said, regarding his wife austerely.

"It is as a matter of fact, something from the Canticle of Canticles. I once got the eight of them by heart, when I was a boy."

"Oh--well! ... Don't mutter, but I thought it came out of the Bible...."

"It does, as I said.... What are you doing?" For Lucy was twisting and tilting her coffee-cup, and peering into it curiously at each new tilt or twist.

"Laying my cup--trying to read my fortune. Though you can't do it with coffee-grounds as well as with tea-leaves, and even with them I'm not a patch on Pidge. Who's Pidge, did you ask? ... Why, Nurse Pidge, my best pal, who gave me the bit o' white heather.... How you do stare--as though you'd never seen me before!"

She trembled with alarm as she reached over to pat her Teddy's cheek. Had not Nurse Pidge, that seeress of things to come _per_ medium of "Best Household Black" or "Liphook's Luscious Tea-Tips" prophesied truly that Nurse Burtonshaw would reap the whirlwind over those letters in the Japanese box....

She shivered as though a chilly draught had pierced her blue alpaca. Nurse Pidge had not let the topic sleep. She had reverted to it often in that odd _argot_,--(compound of homely, commonplace, modern English; up-to-date scientific terms; Public School, Clubland and Army slang),--which comes so trippingly from the tongue of the trained nurse of To-Day.

Pidge had quoted her idol Wyers, Oppenshaw Wyers, F.R.C.S., of Harley Street, Lieutenant Colonel R.A.M.C. (T.), Consulting Surgeon attached to the Staff of the Base Hospital of which the Convalescent Camp was an offshoot.

Who has not heard of Wyers, coarse, gross and tubby in his khaki, who showed the tenderness of an angel and the insight of a demigod in his dealings with shell-shocked men--victims of War's dire curse, hysteria--whose limbs and members, flaccidly limp, or strangely twisted and distorted, refused to obey the bidding of their owners' brains. Who, seized by epilepsy, would fall down foaming, or weep and sob like heart-wrung women; or stumble in their gait and speech like the infant members of a Kindergarten; or sit, staring vacantly, lost in a grey dream of infinite bewilderment--as Teddy used to sit--as Teddy was sitting now.....

"Helpless and hopeless, beyond the aid of Science, dead to the voice or touch of old, sweet love, seemingly unhelped by prayer. Until--just as the stopped watch begins to tick on the removal of some globule of oil, or speck of dust that clogged the mechanism--the paralysed nerve thrills once more into life, the unlocated lesion heals, the infinitesimal blood-clot dissipates, and the man rises up, sane, freed from bonds, healed of his infirmity."

Thus Wyers, as many other men no less great have said before and will say after him, honestly trying to deal with the problem that to the end of all Time will baffle the human race: "And how or why that change takes place cannot even be conjectured by any of us wiseacres.... Call it a Miracle if you will,--it's as good a word as any other. But until that Miracle takes place--and the Angel troubles the pool--Medicine and Surgery must twiddle their thumbs."

Were the waters moving now? Edward Yaill's new-made wife asked herself, timorously watching him. When he had spoken in that new, masterful tone--looked at her with that new glance, so cold and keen and observant, a little shiver had run through her underneath her blue alpaca. The Miracle, she knew in her soul, would spell for her Disaster. Secretly she must have wished that the Angel would never trouble the pool....

The best laid plans will gang agley. Nurse Burtonshaw, formally relieved of her duties by ukase from the Chief Matron on the Front in France, had quitted the Convalescent Camp on the previous afternoon. Two or three letters had been brought in on Number 80's breakfast-tray that morning.... A bill from a Bond Street tailor, a communication from Cox's Bank, London, and a square envelope of thick ribbed linen note with the Cauldstanes postmark, addressed in a clear, firm handwriting--a letter that would, one conjectures--but for the interposition of Destiny,--have joined its fellows in that Pandora casket, the Japanese Box.

Teddy, always indifferent where correspondence was concerned, had not had time to read the letters, hurrying to tie the Knot that takes so much undoing. He had thrust his mail hastily into a breast-pocket of his Service jacket--it would well keep till by and by. Now he fished the letters out and laid them on the clean coarse napery of the breakfast-table, with another envelope containing two official leaflets badly printed on thin yellowish paper, duly stamped and _viséd_ by Military Authority, and having names and personal details filled in with red ink. Ensuring to Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Angus Sholto Yaill, etc., etc., late C.O. Tweedburgh Regiment of Infantry, Discharged from the Convalescent Hospital Camp B---- Base, and Proceeding Home on (indefinite) Leave--as to Lucy Alice Burtonshaw T.N. of such and such a Nursing Detachment. Invalided Home from Service in France under the British Red Cross--transit at the expense of the British Government, per steamer and rail to Folkestone, London and Coombe Bay, Devonshire. The passes arrested Yaill's eye. He did not open the letters. He thrust them back in his pocket; and said with a glance at the new, cheap silver wrist-watch that had been the wedding-gift of his bride:

"We have just time to catch the boat without hurrying you, I think, dear!"

And so they had gone out by the _Couronne's_ side-entrance to the debilitated fiacre that waited on the cobblestones in the cold bright forenoon, and for the moment the guilty fears that throbbed under the blue alpaca were lulled to treacherous rest....

Old friends--these chiefly warriors going back on Blighty leave--came up to Colonel Yaill upon the Folkestone boat, with hearty greetings and crushing hand-grips. Service and Club acquaintances saluted and spoke. People were frightfully glad to see Yaill looking so beany, and generally tophole.... Every one was expecting soon to hear of his going back to the Front.... Meanwhile a rest--well-earned, by the Living Tinker!--discreetly combined with recreation, would soon set him on his legs. Country-house Bridge, and pillow-ragging, or London jazz and champagne-parties only good for lieutenants.... A bit of huntin' and a pleasant house-party just the thing, etc., what? ... Shooting and fishing had generally gone to the dogs, all the junior keepers having been called up--but there were woodcock and snipe and hares--that place of yours in Cumberland must be stiff with 'em! and up North--the Gala Water--or at a pinch--(the speaker twinkled knowingly)--the Rushet where it ran through the Kerr's Arbour property,--might supply a decent fish or two....

So, as the Folkestone steamer pushed through the crowded War-traffic of the English Channel waters, chaperoned by the dim grey shape of a T.B. destroyer,--watched from the air by a pilot seaplane,--the desultory chatter ran on.... With a reference or so to the War news of the month-end; the German aircraft-raid on the Kentish coast, the Arabs of the Senussi dispersed in West Egypt, the impending declaration of War by Albania on Austria: winding up with a proposed adjournment to the bar for drinks; though Government-controlled Scotch, thirty-five under proof--and Government-brewed malt-liquor--cursed rotten swipes--eh, what? ...

The speaker pulled himself up with a surprised glance at the fresh-coloured young woman in the white straw hat and the pale blue alpaca gown peeping from underneath a starred Regulation cloak, who had laid her rather large ungloved hand on the arm of the fellow-officer addressed, saying:

"No! ... It wouldn't be good for you! ... Please not, Teddy!"

"Beg pardon, Nurse! ... I thought my friend alone. Didn't seem to realise you'd got him on a lead. Quite right to give me the tip. Colonel, the invitation's off! ... Unless you'll pledge me in something soft; lemon-squash or ginger-beer!--pretty rotten, I expect!--or tea, or coffee. Perhaps Nurse'll join?" He thought as he screwed his eyeglasses tighter: "_What glorious hair! ... My favourite colour.... Yaill strikes me as rather a lucky kind of chap!_" ...

"No, thank you!" Lucy drew herself up and looked at her husband.

With that possessive hand upon his arm, Yaill hesitated the fraction of an instant, then took the header:

"'No thanks!' for both Mrs. Yaill and myself.... We breakfasted rather late, didn't we, Lucy? ... Let me introduce Major Scales-Packard, my wife...."

"Awfully delighted!"

The eyeglass of Scales-Packard, who knew Katharine Forbis,--leaped out of its orbit as his eyebrows shot up under the peak of his cap. He grew red,--stammered something congratulatory, saluted and speedily vanished. And Lucy breathed more freely. Dimly she sensed that she had stepped across the frontiers of a new, and possibly hostile country. That man, Teddy's friend, had looked at her--when Teddy had introduced him,--as though she had been guilty of child-stealing....

Had she? ... The question probed to the quick, so that she paled and shivered; and found relief in the solicitude her convalescent displayed: permitting Teddy in his new role of guardian and protector, to envelop her in plaids and waterproofs, to find her a seat upon the smutty leeward side of the grimy after-deck saloon-cabin--and supply her with Captain's biscuits and tea, both of War's villainous brand. Her mental qualms would have been justified had she overheard Scales-Packard confiding to numerous acquaintances on board:

"See that tall, good-lookin' man with a blue Hospital brassard? ... That's Yaill, late C.O. of the Tweedburgh Regiment! Gassed and shell-shocked last September somewhere north of Loos.... Married his nurse at the Base C.O.C. and comin' home--poor silly blighter!--to break it to the finest woman God ever made--who's waited for him years and years."