"As the nation with which Germany runs neck and neck in military armament, national wealth and influence, Germans pay us British the compliment of dislike. German ambition, spreading rank and high, is checked in the attainment of its ends even by our geographical position. We carry in our veins too large a share of Teutonic blood, to be ingratiating or subservient to our arrogant and domineering neighbours. What hatred is bitterer than racial hatred? Where is enmity deadlier than that one finds existing between women and men of kindred blood?"
The face of David, fair and debonair, rose up before Saxham as he said it. Strange! that even while he thanked his stars for David's ancient treachery, the fact of the betrayal should rankle in the Doctor still.
"Nowhere is there hatred more terrible. Listen, Owen—there is something I want to tell you——"
Lynette shivered and drew the fleecy shawl more closely about her white bare throat, and the slender shoulders and arms that were revealed through the laces of her filmy dinner-gown:
"In the first days of the Siege of Gueldersdorp, a woman from the native stad, the wife of a Barala herd, who came to the Convent for medicine and soup for a sick piccanin—told the Mother that long before the Orange Free State threw in its lot with the Transvaal—long before Oom Paul and Vader Steyn ordered that all rooinek soldiers sent by Groot Brittanje to South Africa should quit the country—the Barala could not sleep in their kraals at night 'for the going of the creatures.' Not all the creatures of prey—the Eaters of Flesh—the crows and the aasvogels, the wild dogs and jackals, the aard-wolves, and hyænas. But the hartebeest and springbok and prongbuck and rietbuck; with the little gazelles and tiny antelopes, the dassies and hares, and all the shy, wild harmless things that are stalked and shot for what is called sport, by most men and some women—they passed away in multitudes each night until just before the dawn. Even the meerkat and the leopard went, the baboons and snakes and the big lizards. Barala trackers followed the trails North to the Marches of the Okavango—and farther still into the Mabunda country—the woman told us—and their wise men had warned them that it was a teeken of War to come."
Her wistful eyes strained towards the East, where between the crowded roofs of the vast City and the shadowy purple day-brow, showed a clear wide band of crocus-yellow, melting into exquisite hyacinth-blue.
"Perhaps I am like the antelope and the hares and the wild-bucks and the other creatures. It may be that this nameless Thing that I have felt coming nearer and nearer is War," said Lynette. Then she winced as though the net had whirled and fallen, and the trident pierced, and cried out irrepressibly: "If so—Bawne will be out there unprotected—in the midst of it! Owen!—do you hear me? How can you stand there so calmly when such a thing may be? How—oh!—how could you consent to his going?"
Saxham's square face was set like a mask in the stern effort for self-control. He was in spirit with the Navigating Lieutenant on the upper bridge of H.M.S. Rigasamos, hearkening to the drone of an aëroplane struggling against the thrust of a north-west gale.... He heard the double knock of a back-fire, and heard men talking about engine-trouble. Even as he brought himself back to say quietly:
"I did as you would have done in the same circumstances. If the same voice that spoke to me had virtually said to you: 'Here stands your only son, a child in years and yet a man for England! Will you let him go?' Would you not have consented? If you deny, I shall tell you that I know my wife better than she knows herself!"
"'A child in years—a man for England....'" The fold between her slender eyebrows deepened and the delicate sensitive upper-lip lifted, showing the white, slightly irregular teeth. "I do not understand," she said piteously; "Was there any question of an order to be carried out?—a duty to be done?"