Chapter XXIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Has Colonel Yaill?--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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