Billy Keyse had never even beheld the enchantress since that never-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of the serpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one thing. We know that in his case Love's clairvoyant instinct had got its nightcap on. We saw Greta depart on the train bound North and branch off East for the Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg. But if she were not in Gueldersdorp, why did the left breast-pocket of the now soiled and heavily-patched khâki tunic bulge so? There were six letters inside there, tied up with a frayed bit of blue ribbon. Hers? 'Strewth, they were! And each what you might call a Regular One-er of a love-letter. Never mind the paper being thumb-marked as well as cheaply inferior, one cannot expect all the refinements of civilisation in a beleaguered town. It was the spelling that—although we know W. Keyse to be no cold orthographist—occasionally gave him pause as he perused and re-perused the greasy but passionate page. And why did she sign herself "Fare Air?" The sense of ingratitude pierced him even as he wondered. Why shouldn't she if she chose? What a proper beast he was to grumble! Him, that ought to be proud of her demeaning herself to stoop to a young chap in a lower station, so to call. And her a Regular Swell.
He hugged the letters against him with the arm belonging to the hand that held the concertina. Beloved missives, where was the worshipped writer now? Sitting by a tapestry-frame, for he could not imagine her peeling potatoes, down in the Convent bombproof, dreaming of him, weeping over his last letter, or blushfully aware of his vicinity, panting at the bottom of the ladder, listening for the beloved accents of the man who ... Hold hard, though! she had never heard the voice of W. Keyse; or he hers for that matter, but he would have recognised it among a thousand. He had told her so, writing with ink pencil, of the kind that when sucked in moments of forgetfulness tastes peculiarly horrible, and tinges the saliva with violet, at spare moments in the trench. A phlegmatic Chinaman acted as Love's postman, handing in the envelopes that were addressed to Mr. W. Keyse, Esquer, in caligraphy that began in the top left-hand corner, and trickled gradually down into the right-hand bottom one. Pumping the Celestial was no use. John Tow sabee'd only that a fair foreign devil gave the one missive, with a tikkie for delivery, and 'spose one time Tow makee plenty good walkee back with anulla paper some pidgin bime-bye catchee more tikkie. If walkee back no paper, too muchee John catchee hellee, reaping only reproaches and no tikkie at all.
Judge how the heart of W. Keyse bumped against the concertina when the slender vision in the holland skirt and white blouse and broad straw hat appeared from underground. It was not she, though, Queen of heroic thoughts, inspirer of deeds of daring yet to be done, who followed the Mother-Superior.
It was the loveliest girl Beauvayse had ever seen, or ever would see. The girl who had stood up in defence of three nuns against a threatening gang of rowdy Transvaalers, one day in the Recreation Ground,—the girl who had passed as the Staff dismounted at the Hospital gate on the day of appropriation. The Mayor had had no chance of fulfilling his promise of an introduction. The Mayor's wife, with her two children, was an inmate of the Women's Laager. But at last the kind little genii that deal with happenings and chances had brought Beauvayse and his divinity face to face. Now she rose out of the Convent dug-out, in the waste that had been the railway-official's front-garden, like a fair white Psyche-statue, delivered in the course of some convulsion of Nature from the matrix of the earth. And she was even more exquisite than his remembrance of her, even more ...
Beauvayse descended abruptly from an empyrean flight of poetic imagery to remember his torn and soiled silk polo-shirt with its rolled-up sleeves, his earth-stained cords, girt with a belt of vari-coloured webbing, his muddy leather leggings and boots with their caked and dusty spurs, telling of hard service and unresting activity.
But he looked radiantly handsome as he leapt to the ground and came forward, his tall athletic figure, trained by arduous toil and incessant work until the last superfluous ounce of flesh had vanished, looking the personification of manliness, his tanned face, still clean-shaven save for the slight fair moustache, one to set any maiden dreaming of its straight clean-cut features and lazy, long-shaped grey-green eyes. The wide felt hat he touched in salute sat with a jaunty air on the close-cropped golden head. Here was a gallant, heartsome vision to greet Lynette, stepping after the Mother into that outer world, where fire belched warning from iron mouths, and steel destruction sped through the skies, and bullets sang like hornets past your head, or hit the ground near your feet, sending up little bushy columns and spirts of dust.
The wounded man, now carbolised, plugged, and bandaged by Saxham's dexterous hands, took the hastily-scrawled admission-order, included his officer, the ladies, and the Doctor in a left-handed salute, distributed a parting wink among his comrades, counselled W. Keyse in a hoarse whisper to go tender on the off-side G of the instrument he dandled, and trudged sturdily away in the direction of the Hospital.
"Thank you, ma'am. There's no stealing a march on you," Beauvayse said to the Mother-Superior, touching his hat with his gay, swaggering grace, as she emptied a bowl of red water on the ground, and whisked the blue apron and sleeves back into the vast recesses of the mysterious pocket. "But you're spoiling us. Hot water isn't on tap, as a rule, for Field-dressings, and—and won't you——" He reddened to the fair untanned skin upon his temples. "Mayn't I ask, ma'am, to be introduced to Miss Mildare?"
The Mother complied with his request, smiling indulgently. She had known and loved this bright boy's mother in her early married days. The Dark Rose of Ireland and the White Rose of Devon, a noted Society phrasemonger had dubbed them, seeing them together on the lawn one Ascot Cup Day, their light draperies and delicate ribbons whip-whipping in the pleasant June breeze, ivory-skinned, jetty-locked Celtic beauty and blue-eyed, flaxen-locked Saxon fairness in charming, confidential juxtaposition under one lace sunshade, lined with what has been the last new fashionable colour under twenty names, since then; only that year they called it Rose fané. Richard Mildare had praised the sunshade, a Paris affair supplied by Worth with his creation, Lady Biddy Bawne's beautiful gown. He asked Lady Biddy to marry him at the back of the box on the Grand Stand when Verneuil was winning the Cup. Who shall dare say that he was not then a sincere lover? thought the Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way. And then she recalled her wandering thoughts, and turned them to the One Lover who never betrays His chosen. And her rapt eyes looking up, seemed to pierce beyond the flaming sky-vault overhead. She forgot all else, suddenly snatched from earthly consciousness to beatific realisation of the Divine.
There had been for some minutes now a lull in the bombardment from the ridges. The enemy's guns were silent a space, and the hot batteries of harassed Gueldersdorp snatched a brief respite while Boers gathered for the nine o'clock coffee-drinking round their little snapping fires of dried dung and tindery bush. Now and then a rifle cracked, and a bullet sang past or whitted in the dust. But comparative peace brooded over the shattered hamlet of wrecked homes and ploughed-up, littered roads, and raw earthworks blistering in the pitiless sun.