Part 66

"You can tell my country, sir, that I died willingly," panted the moribund.

"With pleasure, when you're dead. But you're not yet, you know, Brooker." His keen glance was following the run of the Doctor's surgical scissors through the brown stuff and revelling in discovery. And Saxham's set, square face and stern eyes were for once all alight with laughter. The dying man went on:

"It's a privilege, sir, an inestimable privilege, to have shed one's blood in a great cause."

"It is, Mr. Brooker, but this is different stuff." His keen face wrinkled with amusement as he sniffed, and dipped a finger in the crimson puddle. "Too sticky." He put the finger to his tongue--"and too sweet. Show him the bottle, Saxham."

The Doctor, imperturbably grave, held forth at the end of the scissors the ripped-up ruins of a small-sized indiarubber hot-water bottle, a ductile vessel that, buttoned inside the khâki tunic, had adapted itself not uncomfortably to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. A hyæna-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding heads. Brooker's face assumed the hue of the scarlet flannel chest-protector exposed by the ruthless steel.

"What the--what the----?" he stuttered.

"Yes, that's the question. What the devil was inside it, Brooker, when the shell-splinter hit you in the tummy and it saved your life? Stand him on his legs, men; he's as right as rain. Now, Brooker?"

Brooker, without volition, assumed the perpendicular, and began to babble:

"To tell the truth, sir, it was loquat syrup. Very soothing to the chest, and, upon my honour, perfectly wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularly every year, and--we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, besides what we keep for ourselves. And if I am to be exposed to mockery when Providence has snatched me from the verge of the grave ..."

"Not a watery grave, Brooker," came from the Chief, with an irrepressible chuckle--"a syrupy one. And--have I your word of honour that this is a non-alcoholic beverage?"

"Sir, to be candid with you, I won't deny but what it might contain a certain proportion of brandy. And the nights in the trench being particularly cold and myself constitutionally liable to chill ... I--I find a drop now and then a comfort, sir."

"Ah, and have you any more of this kind of comfort at your place of business or elsewhere?"

"Why--why ..." the Alderman faltered, "there might be a little keg, sir, in the shop, under the desk in the counting-house."

"Requisitioned, Mr. Brooker, as a Government store. You may feel more chilly without it; you'll certainly sleep more lightly. As far as I can see, it has been more useful outside of you than ever it was in. And--the safety of this town depends on the cool heads of the defenders who man the trenches. A fuddled man behind a gun is worse than no man to me."

The voice rang hard and clear as a gong. "I'm no teetotaller. Abstinence is the rule I enforce, by precept and example. While men are men they'll drink strong liquor. But as long as they are not fool-men and brute-men, they can be trusted not to lap when they're on duty. Those I find untrustworthy I mark down, and they will be dealt with rigorously. You understand me, Brooker? You look as if you did. You've had a narrow squeak. Be thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs has come of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your duty."

W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the resuscitated Brooker flying rags of sanguine stain. Then the stern face of the Chief broke up in laughter. The crinkled-up eyes ran over with tears of mirth.

"Lord, that fellow will be the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh--how old Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that round, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with the sentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech...." He wiped his brimming eyes. "Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him on guard--you remember that lovely affair?--he's registered a vow to impress me with his gallantry and devotion, or die in the attempt. He's the most admirably unconscious humbug I've ever yet met. Sands his sugar and brown-papers his teas philanthropically, for the good of the public, and denounces men who put in Old Squareface and whisky-pegs, as he fuddles himself with his loquat brandy after shop-hours in the sitting-room back of the store. But let us be thankful that Providence has sent Brooker on a special mission to play Pantaloon in this grimmish little interlude of ours. For we'll want every scrap of Comic Relief we can get by-and-by, Saxham, if the other one doesn't turn up--say by the middle of January."

"I understand, sir." Saxham, to whom this man's face was as a book well loved, read in it that the Commissariat was caving. "There has been another Boer cattle-raid?"

The face that was turned to his own in reply had suddenly grown deeply-lined and haggard. "There has been a lot of cattle-shooting. Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was always quite a favourite game with Brounckers. But his gunners hit oftener than they used to. And the Government forage won't hold out for ever." He patted the brown Waler, who pricked his sagacious ears and threw up his handsome bluntish head in acknowledgment of his master's caress. "Presently we shall be killing our mounts to save their lives--and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep life in men--and in children and women.... The devil of it is, Saxham, that there are such a lot of women."

"And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out of pure curiosity," came grimly from Saxham.

"To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! You were going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say as I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrong with the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can't get anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two of the languages I haven't studied." The dry, humorous smile curved the reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass, waited outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They were fastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender white figure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey across the patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and ploughed by shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day by day.

"There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without," commented his companion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler.

"It is the Mother-Superior," Saxham said, "with her ward, Miss Mildare."

"Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse--you know my junior A.D.C., who daily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare--is, that I have not yet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered the young lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she showed plenty of pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on the Recreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, and some Dutch loafers mobbed them--threatened to lay hands on the Sisters--and Miss Mildare stood up in defence--head up, eyes blazing, a slim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with me, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance."

Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, and his tone was not pleasant: "Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a few minutes ago."

"Did he? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome of realisation. Up to the present"--the humorous, keen eyes were wrinkled at the corners--"all the boy's swans have been geese, some of 'em the sable kind."

Saxham answered stiffly: "I should say that in this case the swan decidedly predominates."

The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune before he spoke again. "It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, being shut up here, out of the way of women."