Chapter XXIV

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

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

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

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

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

"_Thank you. Coming by next train._"

He pitchforked a few necessaries into a battered suit-case, left a pencilled note upon the lid of Mrs. Hazel's large, responsible Red Cross work-basket--for his mother now invariably left home directly after breakfast, for the Work Rooms in Mayfair--where, in the delectable company of Duchesses--she spent the hours in the manufacture of Life-Saving Waistcoats for the Fleet, and felt Hospital slippers, until six-thirty. Consuming luncheon, carried in a plated box, and rigorously relegated to such forms of nourishment as may without reproach be assimilated by patriotic British digestive organs in War-time; taking a frugal tea on the scene of activity; and returning at seven to partake of a dinner of generous succulence. Having thus discharged his duty as a son, John departed by taxi for King's Cross, catching the very next express leaving for the North....

The room he had previously occupied at the _Cross Keys_ was vacant. He stepped into its queer conglomeration of ancient smells, and the glass-eyed society of the birds and beasts and fishes in their musty cases, and it might have been that he had never gone away, but that Mrs. Govan in person served his supper in the clammy coffee-room, a part-knitted khaki-coloured sock, bristling with steel knitting-needles, tucked under a stout arm, and the ball bulging the pocket of her apron of black silk.

"Eh, dear!" Mrs. Govan had ceased to address John as "Private" since she had realised his somewhat indeterminate yet undeniable connection with "the family" at Kerr's. "Eh, Mr. Hazel! but this is grievous! ... And to think that I met Cornel Yaill wi' the meir an' cart the vera' nicht he cam' down to atten' the Funeral. Gin' auld Sir Philip cud have kent! But Providence was mercifu'. And sair it has irkit me to think o' Miss Forbis a' alane there at Kerr's, like the last aipple on the strippit tree, as I hae said to Govan, an' telegrams rattlin' ower the wires wi' 'Reply Paid' to the lave o' them--from a' the warld and's wife, beggin' an' prayin' till her: 'Darling Katharine, let us come to you, or if not, winna you come to us,' and gettin' answer: 'A thousand thanks, but no. Lovingly, Katharine.' An' sae, when I e'en kent she had sent for ye, I juist drew a free sough."

Evidently there had been a serious leakage from the Cauldstanes Telegraph Office. John mentally registered the evidence as Mrs. Govan continued:

"Ye'll have haird the latest news o' Cornel Yaill, dootless?"

"Has he been found?" her guest inquired, eliciting the shrill disclaimer:

"Na, na! We'se hae the Police traipsin' in an' out the bar makin' their inquiries--an' the wee laddies in the short breeks--the Boy Scouts I suld say! scoorin' ower the face o' the lan', but neither bone nor feather o' the man hae they fand for a' their pains! And mair nor me an' Govan thinks," she pursed her lips mysteriously, "that it'll be no' for's ain guid when they rin the Cornel doon--wherever's his hidie-hole! Weel free o' siccan a mislaird rogue Miss Forbis may coont hersel! Marriet on a stranger wumman--faugh!--an' the bauld, traipsin' craitur huntin' him doon, un' telegrams to the verra door o' Kerr's Arbour. 'Have knowledge whaur ye are. Return instantly, or I will follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill.' Set her up for a shameless hussy!--an' the brawest leddy in Tweedshire--ay', an' the haill o' Scotland--wi' grand, gentlemen many a ane etchin' to pit a ring on the white hand o' her--"

Mrs. Govan broke off in the midst of her tirade with a sense of genuine alarm. For the blazing black eyes under the heavy brows of John Hazel were sternly set upon her; and the great hooked nose--"siccan glowering e'en, an' siccan a hawk's neb!--eneuch to fricht a body!" seemed fraught with threatenings of doom to come. He said in his deep voice:

"Miss Forbis will hardly thank you for your praise of herself personally, if you couple with it such confoundedly libellous abuse of her nearest and dearest friend."

"Guidsake! ... I'm sure I never thocht.... To be sure naething is kenned for certain.... Ye'll keip it frae Miss Forbis, sir, if I said onything to offend! ..." and the flurried woman bumped down the dish upon the cloth and vanished, leaving John Hazel wondering why on earth he had stuck up for the man.

He slept with the stuffed birds and beasts that night, and next morning, after breakfast, the mare Brownie being under the veterinary for a chill, the old black horse, her stable-companion, having been sent to the blacksmith's for roughing, and Alec Govan's motor-cycle having been requisitioned for the postman's uses--John set out on foot for Kerr's Arbour.

It was piercing cold; the east wind carried the bitter tang of the North Sea, the country lay under a fresh cloak of new-fallen snow, and the chilled thrushes and blackbirds and robins huddled disconsolately in the cropped hedges, and the low bushes and plumps of ivy swaddling old tree-stumps in the plantations by the roadside. As John Hazel's long active legs left the miles behind--what was a road ankle-deep in snow to a Territorial who had wintered in Flemish trenches!--he wondered somewhat as to the nature of the service Katharine Forbis would require at his willing hands.

Help, it might prove, in some further efforts to gain intelligence of the man who had vanished so suddenly.... Who could not be traced, nor ever would be, until the body should be found.... For Edward Yaill was dead, most certainly. Once Katharine Forbis had showed you plainly she despised you, how could you bear to live any more? Yaill had had that much of manhood left in him. So he had gone out with a definite purpose,--and in some dense plantation, or lonely granite quarry, thick-draped with curtains of bramble, had shot himself; creeping well in under the growths to be securely hidden, and died--and there an end of him....

Odd how those miserable grey eyes, with their haunting stare of agony, kept rising up before John Hazel, as he tramped over the hog-backed Roman road over which how many old dead-and-gone Forbis of Kerr's had led their bow and spearmen against the Picts, or Viking pirates from the wild North Sea; or pricked forth to the Wars of Balliol or Bruce--or set out in state and pageantry, with fair ladies in painted litters, or on gaily-caparisoned palfreys--to the Court of the Scots' King at Stirling or Edinburgh. And he wondered at the strange, impersonal love he felt for them, so brave, so bold, so tender, so gallant and gracious--from the Roman Prætor of Alexandria--who had given the black onyx ring to his (John Hazel's) ancestor--down to Sir Rupert the Cavalier, and the fine old General and the lost Julian, and Katharine....

Ah, Katharine! ... Again he saw her noble face irradiated by the glow and glamour, the mysterious beauty that transfigure even a plain woman when she loves with all her soul.

And then the face of Yaill, with its anguish and despair, rose up before him clearer than ever. He heard the compassionate voice of the V.A.D. woman saying:

"His wretched, _wretched_ eyes! ... I _hope_ I'm not going to dream of them! Oh! there _must_ be something to be said for a man who looks like that! ..."

Suppose the man were innocent--the luckless sport of horrible circumstances! ... Had John Hazel been of Scottish blood, he would have said, "I'm fey." Being what he was, he said vigorously, "I'm a bally idiot!" and continued tramping along the snowy road.

Past the hollow way, crossed by a strip of ice, where the snow on the overhanging trees was thawing in long drips and splashes, and the benumbed birds showed more active signs of life. Out of the hollow way, on the left a dense plantation, on the opposite side to, and about a quarter of a mile below the iron gate of the entrance to the Kerr's Arbour private road.