"There is no mystery about the water at all. It is very simple." Standing there with her head held high and the fine, free, graceful lines of her tall figure outlined by the heavy folds of the now worn and darned black habit, and her hands, still beautiful, though roughened by toil, calmly folded upon her scapular, she was as remarkable and n.o.ble a figure, it seemed to Saxham, as the golden sunlight could fall upon anywhere in the world. And besides, she was his right hand at the Hospital. A capable, watchful, untiring nurse--and beauty would have decked her in his surgeon's eyes if she had been physically ugly or deformed.

"There is no mystery whatever, only when the bombardment first began I thought of the waterworks, and that one of my first cares, supposing I had been General Brounckers"--she smiled slightly--"would have been to operate there. So I set the Sisters to work at filling every empty barrel and bucket and tub in the Convent with water from the taps. And as we happened to have plenty of empty barrels and tubs, why, there is water to be had there now, and will be for some time to come. Go now, my children."

The smiling Sisters waved their hands. The orderly saluted with his whip and drove on in obedience to Saxham's nod.

"Of course, the Sisters are aware," he said, meeting the Mother's grave glance, "that if it is quicker to drive, it is safer to walk?"

She nodded with the gay, sweet smile that had belonged to Lady Biddy.

"They know, of course. But danger is in the day's work. We do not seek it.

We are prepared for it, and it comes and pa.s.ses. If one day it does not pa.s.s without the cost of life, we are prepared for that, and G.o.d's Will is done always."

"You are very brave," he said. It was the first time in his life that he had used the phrase to any woman, and the words came out almost grudgingly.

"Oh no, not brave," she told him; "only obedient." Her veil fluttered in the hot November breeze that bore with it the heavy fetid taint from the overcrowded trenches that ringed Gueldersdorp, and the acrid fumes of the cordite; though the air up here on the veld was sweet compared with the befouled atmosphere of the Women's Laager and the crowded wards at the Hospital, in spite of all that disinfectants could do. She went on:

"And we are very grateful to you for the lift. Sister Ruperta was on duty last night, and Sister Hilda Antony--the rosy Sister--is not as well as she would have us believe. Ah----"

With her grave eyes screened by her lifted hand, she had been watching the progress of the spider westward over the dun-yellow veld. Now the long wailing notes of the headquarter bugle sounded, in slow time, the a.s.sembly, and in the same instant, from the Staff over the Colonel's hotel, where the red lamp signalled danger by night and the Red Flag gave its warning by day, the scarlet danger-signal fluttered in the breeze.

Once, twice, again, the deep bell of the Catholic Church tolled. A dozen other bells echoed the warning, signifying danger by the number of their iron-tongue strokes to the threatened quarter of the town.

"'Ware big gun!" called the sentries. "West quarter, 'ware!"

The Mother-Superior grew pale, for the Women's Laager, towards which the little Boer mare was steadily trotting with the laden spider, lay in the menaced quarter, with a bare stretch of veld between it and the Camp of the Irregular Horse, whose white tents and dug-out shelters were pleasantly shaded by ancient blue gums, picturesque and stately in spite of broken boughs and foliage torn by shrapnel and seared by the chemical fumes of bursting charges innumerable.

"Will you not go down?" Saxham asked her.

She shook her head in reply, and stood with a waiting face in prayerful silence, not stirring save to make the Sign of the Cross. And as the long white fingers fluttered over the bosom of the black habit, the faint cry that Saxham's quick ear had heard before floated up from the populous depths below.

"What is that?"

Before the question had left Saxham's lips, the monster gun spoke out in deafening thunder from the enemy's position at East Point, nearly two miles away. The heavy grey smoke-pillar of the driving-charge towered against the sunbright distance, and simultaneously with the crack of the discharge, sounding as though all the pent-up forces of h.e.l.l had burst the brazen gates of Terror, and rushed forth to annihilate and destroy, the ninety-four pound projectile pa.s.sed overhead, sweeping half the corrugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling with a fiendish clatter and din, as it pa.s.sed harmlessly over the Women's Laager, and, wrecking a sentry's shelter on the western line of defences, burst harmlessly upon the veld beyond, blotting out the low hills behind a curtain of acrid green vapour.

"Get under cover, quick!" Saxham had shouted to his companion, as deafened by the tremendous concussion, and dazed and half-asphyxiated by the poisonous fumes, he strove for mastery with his maddened horse. This regained, he looked for the figure in the black habit and white coif, and knew a shock of horror in seeing it p.r.o.ne upon the ground.

"No, no, I am not hurt!" she cried, lightly rising as he hurried towards her. The tremendous air-concussion had thrown her down, and beyond a scratch upon her hand and some red dust on the black garments she was in nothing the worse.

"I don't know how I kept my own legs," Saxham said, laughing.

"It went by like twenty avalanches," she agreed. "And blessed be our Lord, excepting for the damage to the roof, no more seems to have been done. I can see the spider stopping near the Women's Laager." She peered out earnestly over the shimmering waste of dusty yellow-brown, and cried out joyfully: "Ah, Sister Hilda Antony and Sister Ruperta are getting out.

All is well with them; all is well."

"But not with the washing."

Saxham had swung round his binoculars, and brought them to bear upon the vehicle and its late occupants. A grim smile played about his mouth as he handed her the gla.s.ses, and heard her cry of womanly distress as she beheld the fruit of late labour scattered on the veld and the Sisters'

agonised activity displayed in the gathering up of sheets, pillow-slips, handkerchiefs, babies' shirts and petticoats, with other garments of a strictly feminine and private character. Her grave, discreet eyes avoided his as she handed back the binoculars, but a dimple showed near the edge of the white coif.

"And now," Saxham said, glancing at his watch, "may I know in what I can be of service?" It had seemed to him that the Mother-Superior hesitated to broach the subject. Nor had he been mistaken. The dimple vanished. Her calm eyes became troubled, and she asked, with a slight catching of the breath:

"Yes, there was something.... Doctor, is it possible for a person to die of fear?"

He answered promptly:

"In circ.u.mstances like the present? Certainly. Undoubtedly possible. I have seen twenty deaths from pure fright since the bombardment began, and I expect to see more before the siege ends, or people get callous to the possibilities of sudden extermination that are afforded them a hundred times a day. Is the person to whom you refer a woman or a child?"

"A young girl----" she was beginning, when a buxom little figure, black veiled and habited like herself, rose up as if from the bowels of the earth.

"I vill look. But I can see nozing," she called to someone invisible below. "It must be that you vait until my eyes shall become more strong."

She shaded them, newly brought from semi-darkness and blinking in the hot, white sunlight. The Mother-Superior hurried to her, saying with a note of anxiety in her usually calm voice:

"Sister--Sister Cleophee; is anything the matter?"

"_Mon Dieu!_ It is ze Reverend Mozer!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other, relief and joy expressed in the rapid movements of pliant hands and expressive eyes.

"Nozing is ze matter, Reverend Mozer, if only you are safe."

"Quite safe, and so are the Sisters. Only the linen was upset."

"My 'eavens, but a miraculous escapement!" The supple hands and the expressive eyes and shoulders of Sister Cleophee made great play. "Me and Sister Tobias, 'ow we _pray_ when we 'ear ze great gun, vith knowledge zat you and ze Sisters were upon the vay to ze Women's Laager. My faith, it vas terrible! Me, if I 'ad not make to ascend and learn how it go vid you, Lynette vould 'ave come running up to make discovery for herself. She behave like a little crazy, a little mad sing--I forget your vord for she zat have lost 'er vits! Sister Tobias and me, we 'ave to 'old 'er." The fine, expressive eyes went past the Mother-Superior, and lighted with evident relief on Saxham. "Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, it is incredible vat zat poor child she suffer. Madame 'ave told you----"

"Madame was about to tell me, my Sister," Saxham said, in his smooth, fluent French, "when you appeared upon the scene."

Sister Cleophee launched, unwitting of the Mother-Superior's gesture of vexation, into voluble explanations in that native language which M. le Docteur spoke so well.

Mademoiselle Mildare, the ward of Madame the Mother-Superior, was no coward. But no! the child had courage in plenty--it was the suspense that devoured her in the absence of the Mother, to whom Mademoiselle was most tenderly attached, that reduced her to a state of the most pitiable. The Sisters left at home each day would talk of the work and the fine weather--anything to distract the mind, that presented itself to them--but now, nothing was of any use. When the Reverend Mother came back at nightfall, behold a transformation. Mademoiselle would laugh and sing and chatter. Her eyes would shine like stars, she would be happy, said Sister Cleophee, with dramatic emphasis and gesture, as a soul in Paradise. Next day, taking her guardian from her side, would bring the terrors back, find redoubled the nervous sufferings of Mademoiselle, to-day reaching such a height that Sister Cleophee felt convinced that something must be done.

"Ah, my Sister, if I could do anything!" the Mother-Superior said, with the velvet Southern Irish inflection in the breathing aspirate, and the soft melodious cadence that made her pure, cultivated utterance so exquisite. The voice broke and faltered, and a spasm of mother-anguish wrung the firm mouth, and as a slow tear dimmed each of her underlids and splashed on the white _guimpe_ she put out her hand blindly, and the sympathetic little Frenchwoman took it in both her own.

"Reverend Mozer, you can do zis. You can bring Monsieur le Docteur to see Lynette. You can 'ave his advice upon 'er case, and you can----"

Another fusillade of rifle-fire, sweeping from the west over Gueldersdorp, brought a repet.i.tion of the faint moaning cry from below. Saxham consulted the Reverend Mother with a look. She bent her head in silent a.s.sent. He hitched the horse's bridle to what had been the gatepost of the railway-official's front-garden, as she signed to him to descend the ladder leading to the Sisters' underground abode. And he went down to meet his Fate there.

XXVIII

The temporary Convent was a roomy trench dug out of the red gravelly sand, lined with the inevitable sheets of corrugated iron, and roofed with the same material, supported by a solid frame of steel rails. Wide c.h.i.n.ks between the metal sheets gave admission to light and air, and earthen drain-pipes made ventilators in the walls. But the sunlight penetrated like spears of burning flame, and the air was stifling hot. The paraffin stove that heated irons for Sister Tobias smelled clamorously, and the droning of myriads of flies, not the least of the seven plagues of Gueldersdorp, kept up a persistent ba.s.s to the shrill singing of the little tin kettle. Later, when the April rains began, and the tarpaulins were pulled over the sand-bagged roof, tin lamps burning more paraffin did battle with Cimmerian darkness.

Saxham's professional approval was won by the marvellous cleanliness and neatness of the place, divided into living-room and dormitory by a heavy green baize curtain, that at the Convent had shut off the noise of the great cla.s.sroom from the rest of the house. The curtain was drawn, hiding the little iron cots brought from the Sisters' cells, ascetic couches whose narrow wire mattresses must afford scant room for repose to double sleepers now, where all were crowded, and Conventual rules must be in abeyance. The outer place held a deal table, the oil cooking-stove; some household utensils shining with cleanliness were ranged upon a shelf, and several pictures hung upon the walls. Upon a bracket the silver Crucifix from the altar of the Convent chapel gleamed against the background of a snowy, lace-bordered linen cloth. There were orderly piles of cleaned and mended clothes, military and civilian, the garments of sick and wounded male patients, who would leave the Hospital without a thought of the unselfish women who had foregone sleep to patch jackets and sew on missing b.u.t.tons. There were haversacks of coa.r.s.e canvas for the Volunteers, finished and partly made, with ammunition-pouches and bandoliers. And Sister Tobias stood ironing at the deal table, partly screened by a line of drying linen, while Sister Mary-Joseph turned the mangle, and the little brisk novice, her round cheeks no longer rosy, folded with active hands. The Dop Doctor's keen quick glance took note of the patient cheerful weariness written on the three faces, then rested on one other face there.

Its wild white-rose fairness had dulled into the pallor of old ivory.

There were deep, bluish shadows about the eyes and round the mouth, and the hollow at the base of the throat, where the pulse throbbed and fluttered visibly, had grown deep. Her red-brown hair had lost its burnished beauty. It had become dull like her skin, and her garments hung loosely upon the form whose soft roundnesses had fallen away. But her eyes had changed most. Their golden-hazel irises had faded to pale bronze, the full, fair eyelids had shrunk, the pupils were distended to twice their natural size. She sat upon a stool in a corner, a slight girlish figure in a holland skirt and white cambric blouse-bodice, her slender waist girdled with a belt of brown leather, the colour of her little shoes.

Huddled up against the corrugated-iron wainscot of the rough earth wall, the obsession of fear that dilated her eyes and parched her lips shook her in recurrent gusts of trembling, whenever the guns of the Gueldersdorp batteries spoke in thunder, whenever the Boer artillery bellowed Death from the heights above. For since the great gun had spoken from East Point, Death's red sickle had not ceased to ply its task.

Some work, one of the coa.r.s.e canvas haversacks made by the nuns for Gueldersdorp's enrolled defenders, lay at the girl's feet. Her right hand, horrible to see in its incessant, mechanical activity, made continually the motion of sewing. Her eyes stared blankly, unwinkingly at the opposite wall, and the gusts of trembling went over her without cessation. At a more deafening crash than ordinary, an irrepressible scream would break from her, and her hand would s.n.a.t.c.h at an invisible garment as though she plucked back its imaginary wearer from peril by main force.

"She sees n.o.body. She hear nozing when we speak--she vould feel nozing, if you should pinch or shake her. Was I not right, Reverend Mozer, to say it is time zat somesing should be done?"