"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 pa.s.sages, 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 n.o.bler 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 n.o.ble-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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sured 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 khaki 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 ma.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 a.s.sure 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 antic.i.p.ate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." He had quite forgotten that he was talking to a member of the squeaking s.e.x. "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 sh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sure you!--will be mustered against our crazy pieces, only fit for the sc.r.a.p-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?