"None of the kind Beauvayse's canoe is given to capsizing on." The line in his senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. "None of the kind that run after him, lie in wait for him, buzz round him like wasps about a honey-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory scrapes, with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with the professional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, most inexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman in the world. Queer world!"
"A damned queer world!" agreed Saxham.
"I'd prefer to call it a blessed queer one, because, with all its chaotic, weltering incongruities—there's a Carlyleism for you—I love it! I couldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more than Beauvayse could get on minus an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess—quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the Jollity in June—is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the exact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a Principal Boy, and a Chorus in long skirts."
Saxham admitted with a cynical twitch of the mouth:
"There's nothing so short as a long skirt—properly managed."
"You're right. And Lessie Lavigne and the rest of the nimble sisterhood devote their gifts—Thespian and Terpsichorean—to demonstrating the fact. Oh, damned cowardly hounds!" The voice jarred and clanged with irrepressible anger. "Saxham, can't you see? Brouncker's sharpshooters are sniping at the women—the Sister of Mercy and the girl!"
His glance, as well as Saxham's, had followed the tall black figure and the slender white figure on their journey through Death's harvest-field. But his trained eye had been first to see the little jets and puffs of sickly hot, reddish dust rising about their perilous path. They walked quickly, but without hurry, keeping a pace apart, and holding one another by the hand. Saxham, watching them, said, with dry lips and a deadly sickness at the heart:
"And we can do nothing?"
"Nothing! It's one of those things a man has got to look on at, and wonder why the Almighty doesn't interfere? Oh, to have the fellows triced up for three dozen of the best apiece—good old-fashioned measure. See, they're getting near the laager now. They'll soon be under cover. But—I wonder the Convent cares to risk its ewe lamb on that infernal patch of veld?"
"It is my doing." Saxham's eyes were glued on the black figure and the white figure nearing, nearing the embrasure in the earthwork redoubt, and his face was of an ugly blue-white, and dabbled with sweat.