Chapter IV

"I'd seen that scowl on the terrace at Kerr's Arbour, last February," said John Hazel. "And though he gave no other sign to tell that he recognised me, his eyes flickered for the tenth of a second--and I saw they weren't black, but grey. He took no more notice of me.... He'd finished his prayer, and was squatting down cross-legged--running his beads between his fingers--so I pitched away my fag-end, and began to hum the tune of a song, sitting on the sack of Turkish Army biscuits. It might have been an English hymn--for all the genuine Arabs knew--"

"What was the song?"

"'Loch Lomond'--only the words were altered; to fit the situation--see? Something like this:

'So I took the high-road
And you took the low,
And you got to Asia before me!
And Katharine Forbis sat waiting for news
At the bonny, bonny house of Kerr's Arbour!'"

Muted down to the softness of a mother's cradle-song, the full mellow baritone breathed out the familiar refrain. Bringing tears brimming over Katharine's under-lids,--for by strangest chance the song was one of Edward's favourites, often sung by her to him in the twilight--in the dear familiar drawing-room of the old, distant home....

"So you.... It was wonderful of you to speak to him in that way! ..."

"Not original." He grinned at her. "A variation on the historic Blondel Stunt. Only Blondel was a London Tommy,--and Cœur de Lion a British Brass Hat, camouflaged as a Son of Islam. He took it like a rock, only I saw his eyelid quiver. Yes'm!--that descendant of the Prophet winked at the infidel with the eye that was next me.... Then I did a bit more of the Blondel dodge...."

The smile ceased to quirk the corners of his fleshy red mouth, as he sang under his breath in the full sweet baritone:

"O Julian her brother was killed long ago!
So seek you no further to find him!
And give me a letter to take to her now
Where she's working for the Red Cross at Alex.!"

"And what then? ..." Her colour came and went.... "Didn't Edward--didn't Colonel Yaill manage somehow to speak to you privately? ..."

John Hazel shook his head.

"Nix a word! He's far too old a hand at the risky business of walking about in another man's skin, to give himself away in that style. He got up and shook off the dust,--stepped into his loose gazelle-leather boots,--rolled up his carpet, mounted and rode off with his two Arabs--leaving me chewin' the rag! And yet I knew it was Yaill--and that he'd got my message!"

"What did you do then? ..."

"What did I do! ..."

Forgetful in the excitement of his story, of his damaged left arm, he had released it from the sling, and used it freely, in the supple illustrative gesticulations that bespoke his Eastern blood:

"What? O, I sat tight on the sack of rooty, and smoked another fag, until the sun got too hot even for me! Then I got up and stretched myself, and caught my chameleon--who'd been trying to desert--and put him back on my _sola topi_. We all wear chameleons on our helmets, khaki drill or the tin basin variety--the beasts are champion fly-destructors!--and I believe that's how dragons, and wyverns, and other metal wild-fowl of that kind came to be worn on Crusaders' helms as crests.... Then I hied me back to my bivvy--it was in a cave of the Wady Sheria, and had been used by the natives for keeping goats--and other lively skippers!--and breakfasted with some mates of mine--chaps belonging to my Platoon. I think the menu consisted of rissoles, made of bully-beef with onion, biscuit-crumbs and sand-flies; the bottom of a tin of Dundee marmalade,--more sand-flies!--burned-bean coffee, and dates--with sand-flies again. Barely finished when we got the route. Our Division were to follow up Djemal Pasha's Eighth Army Corps--what was left of 'em--over the hills towards Hebron, and before my company marched off, a message came for me. The Intelligence Officer wanted to speak to Acting Company-Sergeant Hazel--"

Her eyes flashed comprehension:

"Edward! ... My letter! ... Ah! I understand! ..."

He nodded:

"It was the one way to get the thing to me without drawing suspicion.... And it was given me in a similarly--unobtrusive style. It lay before the I.O. on the packing-box table with a lump of mica schist on top of it for a paper-weight. Says Intelligence: 'Acting-Sergeant Hazel, I believe you have undertaken to forward this? ... The writer is much obliged!' So I saluted, and stuffed it in my pocket, and--"

"Oh--what?" cried Katharine Forbis, for the brown face had changed to an ugly livid colour, as John Hazel swayed giddily and caught at a column near.

"Nothing much! ... Got the sun on my head a bit yesterday. Right as rain in a minute--if--if I may sit down? But ... don't wait.... You haven't read your letter! And you must hate me for keeping you from that!"

He sat down heavily in the chair she drew to him, feeling her cool firm hand touch his wrist and her long womanly fingers encircle it, hearing her worshipped voice speaking close by:

"If one can hate one's kindest, truest friend, who has done so much--so simply and unselfishly--"

He shook his dizzy head in his heavy buffalo-like fashion,--and muttered through the whirring of the electrically-driven ventilating-fans:

"What have I done? Nothing much, anyway!"

"You have flown to me out of the midst of battle, bringing Edward's dear message.... Wounded and with a touch of fever, or I don't deserve my nurse's certificate! Do you call that nothing? ..."

"Little or nothing!" He shook his great black head doggedly as Katharine went on:

"And I take it as my right! What claim have I to such service?"

"Every claim," said Hazel's deep voice. "Every imaginable right!"

"And--" Her voice broke between tears and laughter:--"And you encourage me in selfishness. Why, I haven't even asked you if you wouldn't like a drink! ..."

"A drink!" he said with his old grin, though the brown of his face still showed faded, and deep lines showed by his jaws and at the wings of his great hooked nose. "A brandy and Polly with a lump of ice, and a ring of lemon in it. Offer me one now, Miss Forbis--and hear it boil as it goes down!"

"You shall have it." Katharine said laughing, though once her lip would have curled in scorn of the vulgarity of the ex-insurance-broker. "But first you must come to the Out-Patient's Department, and let the Surgeon in charge there look at this arm.... A mere nothing, perhaps, as you say"--for John was beginning to explain about its being a flesh-cut.... "When was it dressed last? ... The day before yesterday! ... That's quite enough.... You will come with me! ..."

So John Hazel, thrilling with well-concealed joy at being the object of his lady's solicitude, was towed away to a tile-lined, cement-floored Department on the Palace ground-floor, where the sword-cut on his left arm, looking rather angry--was bathed and cleaned, iodined, and strapped up by the doctor and nurse on duty there.... And the longed-for goblet of iced brandy and Apollinaris having been produced and duly disposed of--John Hazel took leave of Miss Forbis and went upon his way.

"Where shall you be? ... What address will find you?" she asked as she gave him her hand in farewell....

"I'm supposed to be quartered at a General Hospital at Alex.... Number Thirty-Seven," returned John. "But I'm not due there until to-morrow morning, and I'm going to wangle leave to live and sleep at my own house...."

"Your house! ... Have you a house at Alexandria? ..."

"We have had a house at Alexandria for more than sixteen hundred years!"

Again Antiquity rose up and confronted Katharine in the person of this big young man of powerfully Semitic type. He went on:

"Of course I never saw it until the Division came to Egypt. I went over from Kantara, and entered into possession a week or so before we got the route for Palestine.... I like it! ... You would like it.... It is the kind of place that's bound to interest you--for several reasons.... One of them being that it's a wonderfully preserved example of Roman-Egyptian Domestic Architecture. A relic of Alexandria--as Alexandria used to be...."

Katharine said with her characteristic sweet heartiness, though Yaill's letter was burning to be read:

"I should love to visit your house at Alexandria--if I may bring a friend with me? ... Lady Wastwood, who came out with me on the poor Hospital ship _Loyalty_ and has been very ill here. She is convalescent now and helping us in the Secretarial Department, until she is fit to take over her own work. And I believe she is rather keen on ancient inscriptions, cat-headed goddesses and crowned _uræi_--and all that sort of thing."

"Then will you both honour me by coming to tea with me in the City to-morrow?--Numero VII, Rue el Farad,--I'll have a car waiting for you at the Palace gateway by sharp half-past four."

He smiled, well pleased, as Katharine consented; and heaved up his great body, and reached for the battered drill sun-helmet, as the silvery note of the luncheon-gong sounded from the long corridor crossing the bottom of the pillared entrance-hall.

"That's settled then.... Thanks all the same!--but I won't stay to luncheon.... Do you think I don't know how you're longing to get rid of me--and run away and shut yourself up, and read what you've got there! ..."

His black eyes went significantly to the outline of Yaill's letter, thrust by Katharine between the buttons of her white silk blouse, when--at some juncture of the wound-dressing in the Out-Patient's Department--she had come to the help of the surgeon and charge-Sister with deft, accustomed hands.

Her fine brows frowned a little at the familiarity, but there was no use in being angry with the man. John Hazel was just--John Hazel--Miss Forbis told herself; as standing in the sun-blaze on the doorsteps of the Hospital, she watched his great figure stride down the sanded avenue of swaying casuarina-trees, on the way to find the borrowed car left waiting at the entrance-gates.

Women and doctors and V.A.D. members were streaming towards the Palace from every quarter,--but for Katharine the Staff luncheon-gong issued its second summons in vain. She was hurrying down a shady side-alley of cypresses and tamarisks--ending in a pavilion of marble fretwork--covered with the royal mantle of a great Bougainvillia--standing in a riotous tangle of November-blooming roses,--a dear resort of hers and Lady Wastwood's in their free unworking hours....

"_Oh!_ just like a girl of nineteen!" she murmured, conscious of the thrill and tumult of her fair soul and pure body as she drew Yaill's letter from its fragrant hiding-place.

Ah, my Katharine, but there you were wonderfully mistaken. Miss Nineteen would have failed to experience one-tenth of your blissful emotion as you kissed the folded sheet of coarse Eastern paper,--broke the clay and beeswax seals bearing the impression of your love-gift, the cut sardonyx--and read the words penned but a few days previously by Yaill's beloved hand.