The Dop Doctor
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The Mother-Superior reached out a long arm, and took a solid leather-bound, red-edged volume from the table, and opened it at a page marked by a flamingo's feather, whose delicate pink faded at the tip into rosy-white.
"I was reading this a little while before you came in. If you were not a little dunce at Greek, you would be able to construe the classic author for yourself."
"But I am a dunce, dear, and so I leave you to read him to me," said Lynette triumphantly.
"Well, balance this heavy book, and listen."
She read:
"'When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with his divine hands the human shape:
"'An image first he made of red clay from Idâ, tempered with pure water from the stream of Xanthos, and wine from the golden kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and warped in the drying. Then Zeus Patêr fashioned another shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision of the Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image received that which was meant for the perfect one.
"'And Zeus Patêr, being angered, said: "See what thy malice has wrought. Behold, a beautiful soul has been set in a body unbeauteous and through thine act, and god though I be, I cannot take back the gift that I have given." Then into the other image of Man the divine maker breathed a soul. But Zeus being wearied with his labours, and angered by the craft of Hephaistos, it was less pure than the first. And so two men came into being.
"'And he whose body had been fashioned perfectly and without flaw by the hands of the divine craftsman, walked the earth with gracious mien. Fair-eyed was he, with locks like clustering vine-tendrils, and cheeks rosy as the apples of Love; but the soul of this man was cunning, and he rejoiced in evils and cruelties, and deceits and mockeries were upon his lips.
"'And he whose image had warped in the drying was unbeautiful in body and swart to look upon, as though blackened by the forge-fires of Hephaistos, but he dealt uprightly and hated evil, and on his lips there was no guile, but faithfulness and truth.
"'And he who was imperfect in body was yet fairer in the eyes of Zeus Patêr than his brother; because there dwelt within him a beauteous soul.'"
"And yet, Mother, if your beautiful soul had not been given beautiful windows to look out at, and a beautiful mouth to kiss me or scold me with, and beautiful hands to hold, it would have been a beastly shame!"
Is there a woman living who can resist such sweet daughterly flatteries? This was very much a woman, and very much a mother, if very much a nun. She kissed the mouth distilling such dear honey.
"This, not for the compliment, but because it is seven years to-day since I found you, lying like some poor little strayed lamb on the veld, under the burning sun."
"That was my real birthday, dearest, dearest…"
The girl pressed closer to her with dumb, vehement affection, as though she would have grown to the bosom that had been her shield since then.
"On that day a little later, when I looked down and you looked up with big eyes that begged for love, I knew that we had found each other. And we have never lost each other since, I think?"
She smiled radiantly into the loving eyes.
"Never, my Mother. But if we did … if we are ever to be estranged or parted, it would be better … oh! it would be better if you had passed by in the waggon, and left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs had done the rest."
The Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, and speaking sternly:
"Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so. Holy Baptism has been yours, and Confirmation, and you have shared with His Faithful in the Body of Christ… Never let me hear you say that again!"
"Mother, I promise you, you never shall. But I had a dream last night that was most vivid and strange and awful. It has haunted me ever since."
The Mother-Superior started, for she also had had a strange dream. Of that vision had been born the written letter that now lay under the quartz paper-weight – the letter that was to be sent, with others, by the next English mail that should go out from Gueldersdorp, which said mail, being intercepted by the Boers, was not for many months to reach its destination. Supposing it had, this story need never have been written, or else another would have been written in its place.
"Dear heart, I do not think that it is good or useful to brood upon such things, or to relate them. And the Church forbids us to take account of mere dreams, or in any way be swayed by them."
"That has always puzzled me. Because, you know … supposing St. Joseph had refused to credit a dream?.."
"There are dreams and dreams, my dear. And the heavenly visions of the Saints are not to be confounded with our trivial subconscious memories. Besides, sweets and fruits and pastry consumed in the seniors' dormitory at night are not only an infringement of school rules, but an insult to the digestion."
"Mother, how did you find out?" cried Lynette. There was something very like a dimple in the bleached olive of the sweet worn cheek, lurking near the edge of the close coif, and a twinkle of laughter in the deep grey eyes that you thought were black until you had learned better.
"Well, though you may not find it easy to believe, I was once a girl at a boarding-school, and I possibly remember how we usually celebrated a breaking-up. There is the washing-bell; the pupils' tea-bell will ring directly; you must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of this unpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon walk yesterday? Sister Cleophée and Sister Francis-Clare have not given me a very definite account."
Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red.
"Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation Ground."
Upon the great brows of the Mother-Superior sat the majesty of coming tempest. Her white hand clenched, her tone was awfully stern:
"Who were 'they'?"
"Some drunken Boers and store-boys – at least, I think they were drunk – and some Dutch railway-men. They cried shame on the Dutch girls for learning from vile English idolaters. Then more men came up and joined them. They threw stones, and threatened to duck Sister Cleophée and the two other Sisters in the river. And they might have tried to, though we senior girls got round them – at least, some of us did – and said they should try that on us first – "
"That was courageous."
"We" – Lynette laughed a little nervously – "we were awfully frightened, all the same."
"My dear, without fear there would have been no courage. Then I am told an English officer interposed?"
"He was coming from the direction of the Hospital – a tall thin man in Service khâki, with a riding-sjambok under his arm. But it would have been as good as a sword if he had used it on those men. When he lifted it in speaking to them they huddled together like sheep."
"You have no idea who he was, of course?"
"I do not know his name, but I heard one of the Boers say, 'That slim duyvel with the sjambok is the new Military Commandant.' Another officer was with him, much younger, taller, and with fair hair. He – "
"I hope I shall soon have an opportunity of thanking the Commandant personally. As it is, I shall write. Now go, my dear."
Lynette took her familiar kiss, and dropped her formal curtsy, and went with the red sunset touching her squirrel-coloured hair to flame. The tea-bell rang as she shut the door behind her, and directly afterwards the gate-bell clanged, sending an iron shout echoing through the whitewashed, tile-paved passages, as if heralding a visitor who would not be denied. An Irish novice who was on duty with the Sister attendant on the gate came shortly afterwards to the room of the Mother-Superior, bringing a card on a little wooden tray.
The Mother, the opening sentences of her note of thanks wet upon the sheet before her, took the card, and knew that the letter need not be sent.
"This gentleman desired to see me?"
"He did so, Reverend Mother," whispered the timid Irish girl, who stood in overwhelming awe of the majestic personality before her. "'Ask the Mother-Superior will she consent to receive me?' says he. 'If she won't, say that she must.' Says I: 'Sir, I'd not drame to presume give Herself a message that bowld, but if you'll please to wait, I'll tell her what you're after saying.'"
"Quite right, Katie. Now go and tell Sister Tobias to show him into the parlour. I will be there directly."
Katie bobbed and vanished. When the Mother-Superior came into the parlour, the visitor was standing near the fireplace, with his hands behind his back. One wore a shabby dogskin riding-glove. The other, lean and brown and knotty, held his riding-cane and the other glove, and a grey "smasher" hat. He was looking up quietly and intently at a framed oil-painting that hung above.
It represented a Syrian desert landscape, pale and ghastly, under the light of a great white moon, with one lonely Figure standing like a sentinel against a towering fang of rock. Lurking forms of fierce beasts of prey were dimly to be distinguished amongst the shadows, and by the side of the patient, lonely watcher brooded with outspread bat-wings, a Shadow infinitely more terrible than any of these. It was rather a poor copy of a modern picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of the original had made of the copyist an artist for the time. The pure dignity and lofty faith and patience of the Christ-eyes, haggard with bodily sleeplessness and spiritual battle, the indomitable resistance breathing in the lines of the Christ figure, wan and gaunt with physical famine as with the nobler hunger of the soul, were rendered with fidelity and power.
The stranger's keen ear caught the Mother's long, swift step, and the sweep of her woollen draperies over the shiny beeswaxed floor. He wheeled sharply, brought his heels together, and bowed. She returned his salutation with her inimitable dignity and grace. With his eyes on the pure, still calmness of the face framed in the white close coif, the Colonel commented mentally:
"What a noble-looking woman!"
The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall, spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with its alert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouth unconcealed by the short-clipped moustache:
"This is a brave man."
XI
The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two recognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, she had thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timely interference of the previous day.
"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is official in character," he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladies in charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in those parts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely even there. It would be wise of you under existing circumstances, which I shall explain as fully and as briefly as I may, to send your pupils without delay to their homes."
"All that have not already left," she assured him, "with the exception of those whose parents reside in the town, or who have no living relatives, and therefore do not leave us, go North and South by early trains to-morrow."
"Ma'am," he said, "I am heartily glad to hear it." He added, as she invited him to be seated: "Thank you, but I have been in the saddle since five this morning, and if you have no objection I should prefer to stand. And for another reason, I explain things better on my legs. But you will allow me to find you a seat, if – any of these may be moved?" His glance, with some perturbation in it, reviewed the stiff ranks of chairs severely marshalled in Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board.
"They are not fixtures," she said, with quiet amusement at his evident relief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the room offered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, with one hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of a spurred riding-boot on the plain brick kerb.
"I may as well say …" – he ran a finger round the inside of the collar that showed above the khâki jacket – "that, though I have often had the pleasure, and I will add, the great advantage, of meeting ladies of – of your religious profession before, this is the first time that I ever was inside a Convent."
"Or a boarding-school?" she asked, and her rare, sudden smile irradiated her. His hand dropped from his collar. He looked at her with a sudden warmth of admiration there was no mistaking. But her beauty went as suddenly as it had come, and her arched, black brows frowned slightly as she said, in tones that were very cold and very clear, and rather ironical:
"Sir, you are good enough to waste valuable time in trying to break, with due consideration for the nerves of a large household of unprotected women, the news we have expected daily for months. You have come here to announce to us the bursting of the cloud of War. Is it not so?"
He was taken aback, but hid it like a diplomat.
"Ma'am, it is so. The public notice was posted in the town this morning. Forces of Boers are massed on the West Natal and East Baraland borders, waiting until the British fire a shot. Their secret orders are to wait that signal, but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipate these… And we shall be wise to prepare for eventualities. For myself, having been despatched by the British Government on special service to report to the Home Authorities upon our defences in the North – it is an open secret now – I have been sent down here to put the town into a condition to withstand siege. And frankly, without apology for necessary and inevitable bluntness, one of the most important of those conditions is – that the women and children should be got out of it."
The blow had been delivered. The angry blush that he had expected did not invade the pale olive of her cheeks.
He added:
"I hope you will understand that I say this because it is my duty. I am not naturally unsociable, or bearish, or a surly misogynist. Rather the contrary. Quite the contrary."
She remembered a slim, boyish, young lieutenant of Hussars with whom she had danced in a famous London ball-room more than twenty years back. That boy a woman hater! Struggle as she would the Mother-Superior could not keep Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne from coming to the surface for an instant. But she went under directly, and left nothing but a spark of laughter in the beautiful grave eyes.
"I understand," she said. "Woman in time of peace may add a certain welcome pleasantness to life. In time of war she is nothing but a helpless incubus."
"Let me point out, ma'am, that I did not say so. But she possesses a capacity for being killed equal in ratio to that of the human male, without being equally able to defend herself. In addition to this, she eats; and I shall require all the rations that may be available to keep alive the combatant members of the community."
"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break."
His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache. Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted it.
"On the eleventh, the day after to-morrow, a special train, leaving No. 2 platform of the railway-station, will be placed by the British Government at the disposal of those married women, spinsters, and children who wish to follow the example of those who left to-day, and go down to Cape Town. Those who prefer to go North are advised to leave for Malamye Siding or Johnstown, places at a certain distance from the Transvaal Border, where they will be almost certain to find safety. Those who insist upon remaining in the town I cannot, of course, remove by force. I will make all possible arrangements to laager them safely, but this will entail heavy extra labour upon the forces at my command, and inevitable discomfort – possibly severe suffering and privation – upon themselves. To you, madam, I appeal to set a high example. Your Community numbers, unless I am incorrectly informed, twelve religious. Consent to take the step I urge upon you, retreat with your nuns to Cape Town while the opportunity is yours."
He folded his arms, having spoken this curtly and crisply. The Mother-Superior rose up out of her chair. It seemed to him as though she would never have done rising, but at last she stood before him, very straight and awfully tall, with her great stern eyes an inch above the level of his own, and her white hands folded in her black serge sleeves.
"Sir," she said, "we are here under the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese. We have received no order from His Eminence to quit our post – and until we receive it, give me leave to tell you, with all respect for your high official authority, that we shall remain in Gueldersdorp."
Their looks crossed like swords. He grew crimson over the white unsunburned line upon his forehead, and his moustache straightened like a bar of rusty-red iron across his thin, tanned face. But he respected moral power and determination when he encountered them, and this salient woman provoked his respect.
"Let us keep cool – " he began.
"I assure you that I have never been otherwise," she said, "since the beginning of this interview."
"Ma'am," he said, "you state the fact. Let me keep cool, and point out to you a few of the – peculiarities in which the present situation unfortunately abounds."
He laid down, with a look that asked permission, his hat and cane and the odd glove upon the round, shining walnut-table that stood, adorned with mild little religious works, in the geometrical centre of the Convent parlour, and checked the various points off upon the fingers of the gloved hand with the lean, brown, bare one.
"I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." He had quite forgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking sex. "I have begun immediately upon my arrival here to prepare for them. The nucleus of a sand-bag fort-system has been formed already, mines are being laid down far in the front, and every male of the population who has a pair of capable hands has had a rifle put into them."
She looked at him, and approved the male type of energy and action. "If I had been a man," she thought, "I should have wished to be one like this." But she bent her head silently, and he went on.
"We have an armoured train in the railway-yard, with a Maxim and a Hotchkiss. We have a Nordenfeldt, a couple of Maxims more, four seven-pounder guns of almost prehistoric date, slow of fire, uncertain as regards the elevating-gear, and, I tell you plainly, as dangerous, some of 'em, to be behind as to be in front of! One or two more we've got that were grey-headed in the seventies. By the Lord! I wish one or two Whitehall heads I know were mopping 'em out this minute. Ahem! Ahem!"
He coughed, and grew red under his sun-tan. Her eyes were elsewhere.
"Ma'am, you must try to recollect that the Boer forces are armed with the newest Krupps and other guns, and that it is more than possible they may attempt to shell the town. In that case artillery of tremendous range, and a flight almost equal to that of sound itself – I won't be too technical, I assure you! – will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for the scrap-heap, or for gate ornaments. Understand, I tell you what is common knowledge among our friends – common jest among our enemies. And another thing I will tell you, ma'am. Those enemies shall never enter Gueldersdorp!"
She was radiant now, with that smile upon her lips, and that glow in the great eyes that met his with such frank approval. Confound it, what business had a nun to be anything like so beautiful? Would she pale, would she tremble, when he told her the last truth of all?
"Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, happens to be, if not the biggest, at least the most conspicuously situated building in the place, lying as it does at a distance of four hundred yards from the town, on the north-east side. Like the Hospital, of course, it will be under the protection of the Red-Cross Flag. But the Boer is not chivalrous. He does not object to killing women or sick people, nor does he observe with any standing scrupulousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows up nicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away at, and the Red-Cross Flag has often helped him to get a satisfactory range. If they bombard us, as I have reason to believe they will, you'll have iron and lead in tons poured through these walls."
She said:
"When they fall about our ears, Colonel, it will be time to leave them!"
He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed.
"Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this way."
"It is the only way in which to take them," she said. "There should be no panic in the hearts of those who wait on the Divine Will. Moreover, I should wish you to understand in case of siege, and an extra demand upon the staffs of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all – or nearly all – certificated nurses, and would willingly place our services at your disposal. Let me hope that you will call upon us without hesitation if the necessity should arise."
He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with diffidence if he might be permitted to see the Convent chapel. She consented willingly, and passed on before, tall and stately, and moving with long, light, even steps, her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled passages. The chapel was at the end of a long whitewashed corridor upon the airy floor above. His keen glance took in every feature of the simple, spotless little sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly to the upper end of the aisle between the rows of rush-seated chairs, and knelt for an instant in veneration of the Divine Presence hidden in the Tabernacle.
"Unfortunately situated!" he muttered, standing stiffly by the west door. Then he glanced right and left, a thumb and finger in the breast-pocket of his jacket, feeling for a worn little pigskin purse. As he passed out before her at the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in the holy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she closed the chapel door, she saw that he held out to her a five-pound note.
"Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but …"
"There is no box for alms," she said, pausing outside the shut door, while the lay-Sister waited at the passage end, "as this is only a private chapel."
"I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a Protestant. But in the behalf of a dear friend of mine, a British officer, of your own faith, who I have reason to believe died without benefit of his clergy, perhaps with this you would arrange that a service should be held in memory of the dead?"
"I understand," said the Mother-Superior. "You suggest that Holy Mass should be offered for the repose of your friend's soul? Well, I will convey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it."
"I do desire it – or, rather, poor Mildare would."
An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, through the foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her eyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her sinking forces. Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it for support against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But his eyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, worst blow.
"I said, ma'am, that my dead friend … the name is Richard Mildare, Captain, late of the Grey Hussars… You are ill, ma'am. I have been inconsiderate, and over-tired you." He had become aware that great dark circles had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her lips were colourless. She said, with a valiant effort: