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 The Dop Doctor
 
 The Dop Doctor 
 
 c 
 
 By 
 
 Richard Dehan ^^hc^otl > 
 
 t^l Ary 
 
 
 Toronto 
 Henry Frowde 
 
 191 1
 
 Printed in England
 
 r\i 
 
 
 TO ONE ACROSS THE SEA 
 
 What have the long years brought me nnce first, with this pen for 
 picka,xe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world 
 abovi me, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the 
 hearthplace, and chiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should, honour 
 you who, above all on earth, I hold most in honour — a name among 
 the writers of books that live ? 
 
 What have the long years brought me f Well, not the things I hopad. 
 Just bread and clothing, fire, and a little roof -tree ; the purchased soil 
 to make a grave, and a space of leisure, before that grave be needed, 
 to write, myself, this book for me and for you. Hope has spread her 
 iridescent Psyche-wings and left me ; Ambition long ago shed hers to 
 become a working -ant. Love riever came to sit in the chair beside the 
 ingle. An ocean heaves betveen us, only for nightly dreams and 
 waking thoughts to span. Were tJiose dear eyes to see me as I am to-day, 
 I wonder whether they would know me ? For I grow grey, and furrows 
 deepen in the forehead the dear hand wiU never smooth again. Re- 
 member me, then, ordy as I used to be ; my heart is the same always ; 
 in it the long, long years have u/rought no change. 
 
 But what have the long years brought me ? Experience, that savoury 
 salt, left where old tears have dried upon the shares of Time. Knowledge 
 of my fellow men and women, of all sorts and conditions, and the Love 
 of them. Patience to bear what may yet have to be borne. Courage 
 to encounter what may yet Jiave to be encountered. Fortitude to meet 
 the end, where Faith holds up the Cross. Much liave the long years 
 brought me — besides your first smile and your last kiss. For your 
 next, I look past Death, Ood aiding me, to the Eterruil Life beyond. . . , 
 
 South Wales, 
 
 J^rU 22, 1909. 
 
 2135825 , 
 
 /
 
 Upon a day near the end of August, one long, brilliant 
 South African winter, when the old Vierkleur waved over 
 the Transvaal, and what is now the Orange River Colony 
 was the Orange Free State, with the Dutch canton still 
 showing on the staff- head comer of its tribarred flag, two 
 large, heavily-laden waggons rolled over the grass veld, only 
 now thinking about changing from yellow into green. 
 Many years previously the wheels of the old voortrekkers 
 had passed that way, bringing from Cape Colony, with the 
 household gods, goods and chattels, language and customs 
 of the Dutch, the slips of the pomegranate and peach and 
 orange trees, whose abundant blossoming dressed the 
 orchards of the farms tucked away here and there in the 
 lap of the veld, with bridal white and pink, and hung their 
 girdling pomegranate hedges with stars of ruby red. But 
 days and days, and nights and nights of billowing, spread- 
 ing, lonely sky- arched veld intervened between each 
 homestead. 
 
 The flat-topped hills were draped and folded in the opal 
 haze of distance ; the sky was perfect turquoise ; the 
 rounded kopjes shone hke pink topaz, unclothed as yet with 
 the young pale green bush. To the south there was a veld 
 fire leaping and dancing, with swirling columns of white 
 smoke edged -with flame. But it was many miles away, 
 and the north-west wind blew strongly, driving some puSs 
 of gold cloud before it. Perhaps there would be rain ere 
 long. There had been rain already in the foremost waggon, 
 not from the clouds, but from human eyes. 
 
 The broad wheels crashed on, rolling over the yellow 
 grass and the dry bushes. Lizards and other creeping 
 creatures scuttled across their wide tracks. The patient 
 oxen toiled under the yoke, their dappled nostrils wide- 
 spread, their great dewy eyes strained and dim with 
 
 1
 
 2 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 weariness. They dumbly wondered why they must labour 
 in the daytime when all night long they had travelled 
 ■v^dthout rest. The glorious sunrise had flamed in crimson 
 and gold behind the eastern ranges full five hours before. 
 They were weary to death, and no dorp or farm was yet in 
 sight. The Cape boys who tramped, each leading a fore- 
 ox by the green reim bound about the creature's wide horns, 
 had no energy left even to swear at their beasts. 
 
 The Boer driver was wearied like the ox-team and the 
 Cape boys. His bestial face was dravrn, and his eyes were 
 red-rimmed for lack of sleep. The long whip, with the 
 fourteen-foot stock and the lash of twenty-three feet, had 
 not smacked for a long time ; the sjambok had not been 
 used upon the long-suffering wheelers. Huddled up in his 
 ill-fitting clothes of tan cord, he sat on the waggon-box and 
 slept, his head nodding, his elbows on his knees. He was 
 dreaming of the bad Cape brandy that had been in the 
 bottle, and would be, with luck, again, when the waggon 
 reached a tavern or a store. 
 
 A Kafiir drove the second waggon. It held stores and 
 goods in bales, and some trunks and other baggage belong- 
 ing to the Englishman, for you would have set down the 
 tall, thin, iiigh-featured, reddish-bearded, soft-speaking 
 man who owned the waggons as English, even though he 
 had called himself by a Dutch name. The child of 
 tliree years was his. And his had been the dead body of 
 the woman lying on the waggon- bed, covered with a new 
 white sheet, with a stillborn boy baby lying on her 
 breast. 
 
 For this the man who had loved and taken her, and 
 made her his, had wept such bitter, scalding tears. For 
 this his dead love, \^-ith Love's blighted bud of fruit upon 
 her bosom, had given up her world, her friends, her family — 
 her husband, first and last of all. They had played the 
 straight game, and gone away openly together, to the 
 immense scandal of Society that is so wUUng to wink at 
 tilings done cleverly under the rose. They were to be 
 married the instant the injured husband obtained his 
 decree absolute. The State sanctioned the re-marriage 
 of the divorced if the Churches did not. Their church 
 ehould thenceforwards be the State. But there W8,s no
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 3 
 
 decree nisi even, the injured husband possessing a legal 
 heir by a previously-deceased wife. Besides, in a cold way 
 it gave him pleasure to think of that purpose foiled. He 
 soon knew that his wife's lover had sold his commission 
 in the Army, and he learned, later, through a communica- 
 tion forwarded vhrough a London firm of solicitors, that 
 although he had chosen to ignore a certain appointment 
 oHered upon the opposite side of the Channel, the other 
 man would merely consider it deferred until a suitable 
 opportunity should occur. Meanwhile the writer was 
 travelling in South Africa, not alone. 
 
 Never to be alone again, she had promised him that not 
 quite four years ago. And to-day he sat on a box beside 
 the waggon- bed where she lay dead with her dead boy, and 
 the only thing left to him that had the dear living fragrance 
 and sweet warmth of her slept smiling on his knees — their 
 daughter. 
 
 The long fine beard that he had grown swept the soft 
 flushed cheek of the little creature, and mingled with her 
 yellow curls. Within the last few hours — hours packed 
 with the anguish of a lifetime for him — there were sprink- 
 lings of white upon his high temples, where the hair had 
 grown thin under the pressvure of the Hussar's furred 
 busb}'', the khaki-covered helmet of foreign service, or the 
 forage-cap, before these had given place to the Colonial 
 smasher of felt, and the silky reddish- brown beard had in it 
 wide, ragged streaks of grey. He had worshipped the woman 
 who had given up all for him ; they had lived only for, and in 
 one another during four wonderful years. Hardly a passing 
 t\vinge of regret, never a scorpion-sting of remorse, spoiled 
 their union. 
 
 But they never stayed long in any town or even in any 
 village. Some sound or shape from the old unforgotten 
 world beyond the barrier, some English voice that had the 
 indefinable tone and accent of high breeding, some figure 
 of Englishman or Englishwoman whose rough, careless 
 clothing had the unmistakable cut of Bond Street, some 
 face recognised under the grey felt or the white Panama, 
 would spur them to the desue of leaving it behind them. 
 Then the vahses would be repacked, the oxen would be 
 hastily inspanned, and their owners would start again upon 
 
 1—2
 
 4 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 that never-ending Journey in search of something that the 
 woman was to be the first to find. 
 
 At last, when the sun was high and the worn-out beasts 
 were almost sinking, a group of low buildings came in sight 
 a few miles away beyond a kloof edged with a few poplar- 
 like trees and the kameelthom. A square, one-storey 
 house of corrugated iron, with a mud-walled hovel or two 
 near it, had a sprawling painted board across its front, 
 signifying that the place was the Free State Hotel. 
 Behind it were an orchard and some fields under rude 
 cultivation, and a quarter of a mile to the north were the 
 native kraals. 
 
 At the sight the Boer shook himself fully awake, and 
 sent the long lash cracking over the thin, sweat-drenched 
 backs of the ox-team. They laboured with desperation at 
 the yoke, and the waggon rumbled on. 
 
 The Englishman, hidden with his sorrow under the 
 canvas waggon-tilt, roused himself at the accelerated 
 motion. He rose, and, holding the sleeping child upon one 
 arm, pushed back the front flap and looked out. He spoke 
 to the taciturn driver, who shook his head. How did he, 
 Smoots Beste, know whether a minister of the Church of 
 England, or even a Dutch predikant, was to be found at 
 the place beyond ? All he hoped for was that he would be 
 able to buy there tobacco and brandy cheap, and sleep 
 drunken, to wake and drink again. 
 
 The waggon halted on the brink of the kloof. Little 
 birds of gay and brilliant plumage, blue and crimson and 
 emerald-green, rose in flocks from the bush and grasses that 
 clothed the sides of the coomb ; the hollows were full of the 
 tree-fern ; the grass had little white and purple flowers in it. 
 At the valley-bottom a little stream, that would be a river 
 after the first rains, wimpled over sandstone boulders, the 
 barbel rose at flies. There was a drift lower down. It was 
 all the goaded, worn-out oxen could do to stay the huge 
 creaking waggons down the steep bank, and drag them over 
 the river-bed of sand and boulders, through the muddied, 
 churned-up water that they were djdng for, yet not allowed 
 to taste, and toil with them up the farther side. 
 
 The Englishman was not cruel. He was usually humane 
 and merciful to man and beast, but just now he was deaf
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 5 
 
 and blind. Beside him there was her corpse, beyond him 
 was her grave, beyond that . . . 
 
 Both he and she, in that world that lay beyond the 
 barrier had observed the outward forms of Christianity. 
 They had first met in the Park, one May morning, after a 
 church parade. They sat on a couple of green-painted 
 chairs while Society, conscious of the ever-present news- 
 paper-reporter, paraded past them in plumage as gorgeous 
 as that of the gay-coloured birds that flocked among the 
 tree-fern or rose in frightened clouds as the waggons crashed 
 by. And they discussed — together ^nth the chances of the 
 runners entered for the second Spring Meeting at New- 
 market, and the merits of the problem play, and the newest 
 farcical comedy — the Immortality of the Soul. 
 
 She wore a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa 
 in delicate shades of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat 
 with sweeping white plumes. Her hair was the colour of 
 autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the sunshine, and she 
 had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like 
 shells, and a dehcate, softly-tinted skin undefiled by cos- 
 metics. She thought it wicked to doubt that one waked 
 up again after dying. Somewhere — a vague Somewhere, 
 with all the nice people of one's set about one. He said 
 that Agnosticism and all that kind of thing was bad form. 
 Men who had religion made the best soldiers. Like the 
 Presbyterian Highlanders of the Black Watch and the 
 " Royal Irish " Catholics — but, of course, she knew that. 
 And she said yes, she knew ; meeting his admiring eyes with 
 her own, that were so grey and sweet and friendly, the 
 little gloved hand that held the ivory and gold- bound 
 Church Service lying in her lap. He longed to take that 
 little white, delicate hand. Later on he took it, and a Uttle 
 later the heart that throbbed in its pulses, and the frail, 
 beautiful body out of which the something that had been 
 she had gone with a brief gasping struggle and a long 
 shuddering sigh. . . . 
 
 He kept the beloved husk and shell of her steady on the 
 waggon- bed with one arm thrown over it, and held the 
 awakened, fretting child against his breast with the other, 
 as the sinking oxen floundered up the farther side of the 
 kloof. Amidst the shouting and cursing of the native
 
 « THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 voor-loopera and the Boer and Kaffir drivers, the rain of 
 blows on tortured, struggling bodies, and the creaking of 
 the teak-built waggon- frames, he only heard her weakly 
 asking to be buried properly in some churchyard, or 
 cemetery, with a clergyman to read the Service for the 
 Dead. 
 
 Before his field-glass showed him the sprawling hotel-sign 
 he had hoped that the buildings in sight might prove to 
 mask the outskirts of a native village with an English 
 missionary station, or a Dutch settlement important enough 
 to own a corrugated iron Dopper church and an oak-scrub- 
 hedged or boulder- dyked graveyard, in charge of a pastor 
 whose loathing of the Briton should yield to the mollifying 
 of poured-out gold. 
 
 But Fate had brought him to this lonely veld tavern. 
 He watched it growing into ugly, sordid shape as the 
 waggon drew nearer. To this horrible place, miscalled 
 the Free State Hotel — a mere jumble of corrugated-iron 
 buildings, wattle and mud-walled stables for horses, and 
 a barbed - wire waggon - enclosure — he had brought his 
 beloved at the end of their last Journey together. He 
 shuddered at the thought. 
 
 The waggons were baited and outspanned before the 
 tavern. The drivers went in to get drink, and Bough, the man 
 who sold it, leaving the women to serve them, came forth. He 
 ordinaril}' gave himself out as an Afrikander. You see in 
 him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man 
 of twenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either 
 insolent or cringing, according to circumstances, and whose 
 smile was an evil leer. The owner of the waggons stood 
 waiting near the closed- up foremost one, the yellow-haired 
 child on his arm. He looked keenly at the landlord. 
 Bough, and the man's hand went involuntarily up in the 
 salute, to its owner's secret rage. Did he vtant every 
 English officer to recognise him as an old deserter from the 
 Cape Mounted Police ? Not he — and yet the cursed habit 
 stuck. But he looked the stranger squarely in the face 
 with that frank look that masked such depth of guile, and 
 greeted him with the simple manner that conceaJed so 
 much, and the English officer lifted his left hand, as though 
 it raised a sword, and began to talk. Presently Bough
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 7 
 
 called someone, and a smart, slatternly young woman 
 came out and carried the child, who leaned away from hei 
 rouged face, resisting, into the house. 
 
 The English traveller would take no refreshment. He 
 needed nothing but to know of a graveyard and men to dig 
 a grave, and a minister or priest to read the Burial Service. 
 He would pay all that was asked. He learned that the 
 nearest village- town might be reached in three days' trek 
 across the veld, and that the landlord did not know whether 
 it had a pastor or not. 
 
 Three days' trek ! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious 
 landlord back, and went up into the foremost waggon, 
 dravtang the canvas close. He faced the truth in there, and 
 realized with a throe of mortal anguish that the burial must 
 be soon — very soon. To prison what remained of her in a 
 hastily knocked-together coffin, and drag it over the veld, 
 looking for some plot of consecrated earth to put it in, was 
 desecration, horror. He would bury her, and fetch the 
 minister or clergyman or priest to read prayers. Later, if 
 it cost him all he had, the spot should be consecrated for 
 Christian burial. He came forth from the waggon and 
 held parley with the landlord of the tavern. There was a 
 wire-fenced patch of sandy red earth a hundred yards from 
 the house, a patch Avherein the white woman who was 
 mistress at the tavern had tried to grow a few common 
 English flower-seeds out of a gaily-covered packet left by 
 a drummer who had passed that way. She had grown 
 tired of the trouble of watering and tending them, so that 
 some of them had withered, and the lean fowls had flown 
 over the fence and scratched the rest up. 
 
 • That patch of sandy earth brought a handsome price, 
 paid down in good English sovereigns — the coinage that is 
 welcome in every corner of the earth, save among the 
 scattered islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, where gin, 
 toba.cco, and coffee are more wilhngly taken in exchange 
 for goods or souls. 
 
 The Englishman was business-like. He fetched pen and 
 ink and paper out of that jealously closed-up waggon, drew 
 up the deed of sale, and had it witnessed by the Boer 
 driver and the white woman at the hotel. 
 
 Ho had made up his mind. He would bury her, since it
 
 8 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 must be, and then fetch the clergyman. Knowing him 
 on the road, or returning to the fulfilment of his promise, 
 she would not mind lying there unblessed and waiting for 
 six lonely days and nights. He whispered in her deaf ears 
 how it was going to be, and that she could not doubt him. 
 He swore — not dreaming how soon he should keep one 
 vow — to visit the grave often, often, with his child and 
 hers, and to lie there beside her when kind Death should 
 call him too. 
 
 Then he left her for a moment, and sent for the Kaffir 
 driver and the Boer to come, and, with him, dig her 
 grave. . . . 
 
 But Smoots Beste was already in hog-paxadise, lying 
 grunting on a bench in the bar, and the Kaffir had gone to 
 the kraals with the Cape boys. The English officer looked 
 at the rowdy landlord and the loafing men about the 
 tavern, and made up his mind. No hands other than his 
 own should prepare a last bed for her, his dearest. 
 
 So, all through the remainder of the long day, streaming 
 and drenched with perspiration, which the cold wind dried 
 upon him, he wrought at a grave for her with spade and pick. 
 
 It should be deep, because of the wild-cat and the hungry 
 Kaffir dogs. It should be wide, to leave room for him. The 
 ground was hard, with boulders of ironstone embedded in 
 it. What did that matter ? All the day through, and all 
 through the night of wind-driven mists and faint moonlight, 
 he wrought Hke a giant possessed, whilst his child, lulled 
 with the condensed milk and water, in which biscuits had 
 been sopped, lay sleeping in the tavern upon a little iron bed. 
 
 He had had the waggon brought close up to the wired 
 enclosure. All the time he worked he kept a watch upon 
 it. Did claws scrape the wide wheels or scurrjdng feet 
 patter across the shadows, he left off work until the vora- 
 cious creatures of the night were driven away. 
 
 The pale dawn came, and the east showed a lake of 
 yellow. . . . When the great South African sun rose and 
 flooded the veld with miraculous liquid ambers and flam in g, 
 melted rubies, the deep, wide grave at last was done. 
 
 He climbed out of it by the waggon ladder, struggling 
 under the weight of the last great basketful of stones and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 9 
 
 Bandy earth. He dumped that down by the graveside, and 
 went to the waggon and removed all stains of toil, and 
 then set about making the last toilette of the beautiful 
 woman who had so loved that everything that touched her 
 should be pure, and dainty, and sweet. 
 
 He had dressed her sUken, plentiful, squirrel-brown hair 
 many times, for the sheer love of its loveliness. With 
 what care he now combed and brushed and arranged the 
 perfumed locks ! He laid reverent kisses on the sealed 
 eyelids that his own hands had closed for ever ; he whis- 
 pered words of passionate love, vows of undying gratitude 
 and remembrance, in the shell-like ears. He bathed 
 with fresh water and reclad in fragrant linen the exquisite 
 body, upon which faint discolouring patches already 
 heralded the inevitable end. When he had done, he 
 swathed her in a sheet, and fetched a bolt of new white 
 canvas from the store-waggon, and lined the grave with 
 that. 
 
 And then he placed a narrow mattress in it, and freshly 
 covered pillows, and brought her from the waggon, and to 
 the grave, and carried her down the light wooden ladder, 
 and laid her in her last earthly home, with a kiss from the 
 lips that had never been her husband's. It was so cruel 
 to think of that. It was so hard to cover up the cold, 
 sweet face again, but he did it, and lapped the sheet over 
 her and brought the canvas down. Remained now to fill 
 in her grave and fetch the man whose mouth should speak 
 over it the words that are of God. 
 
 But first — fill in the grave. 
 
 The cold sweat drenched him at the thought of heaping 
 back those tons of earth and stone above her, crushing 
 with a frightful weight of inert matter the bodily beauty 
 that he adored. He felt as though her soul hovered about 
 him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his gar- 
 ments with imploring, impalpable hands. 
 
 The thing must be done, though, before the sordid life 
 stirred again under the roof of the tavern, before the vulgar 
 faces, with their greedy, prying eyes, should be there to 
 snigger and spy. 
 
 He loaded a great basket with fine gravelly sand, and 
 carried it down and laid it on her by handfuls. What
 
 10 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 were his livid, parched lips muttering ? Over and over, 
 only this : 
 
 " Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . ." 
 
 Soon the white swathed-up form was hidden with the 
 sandy gravel. That was a terrible pang. It wrenched 
 the first groan from him, but he worked on. 
 
 More and more of the sandy gravel, but for precaution the 
 stones must lie above. Should the voracious creatures of 
 the night come, they must find the treasure in impregnable 
 security. That thought helped him to lay in the first, 
 and the second, and then greater and greater stones. He 
 was spent and breathless, but still he laboured. He 
 tottered, and at times the tavern and the veld, and the 
 waggons on it, and the flat-topped distant mountains that 
 merged in the horizon, swung round him in a wild, mad 
 dance. Then the warm salt taste of blood was in his 
 mouth, and he gasped and panted, but he never rested 
 until the grave was filled in. 
 
 Then he built up over it an oblong cairn of the iron- 
 stone boulders, made a rude temporary cross out of a spare 
 waggon- pole, working quite methodically with saw and 
 hammer and nails, and set it up, under the curious eyes he 
 hated so, and wedged it fast and sure. Then he knelt 
 down stifBy, and made, with rusty, long unpractised fingers, 
 the sacred sign upon his face and breast. He heard her 
 still, asking him in that nearly extinguished voice of hers, 
 to pray for her. 
 
 * « • • • 
 
 "Dicky! . . ." 
 
 Ah ! the tragedy of the foolish little nickname, faltered 
 by stifiening lips upon the bed of death ! 
 
 " Catholics pray for the souls of dead people, don't 
 they ? Pray for mine by-and-by. It will comfort me to 
 know you are praying, darling, even if God is too angry 
 with us to hear !" 
 
 He held her to his bursting heart, groaning. 
 
 " If He is angry, it cannot be with you. The sin was 
 mine — all mine. He must know !" 
 
 Later she awakened from a troubled sleep to murmur : 
 
 " Richard, I dreamed of Bridget-Mary. She was all 
 in black, but there was white linen about her face and neck,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR H 
 
 and it was dabbled dreadfully with blood." The \Teak, 
 slight body shuddered in his embrace. " She said our 
 wickedness had brought her death, but that she would 
 plead for us in Heaven." 
 
 " She is not dead, my beloved ; I heard of her before 
 we left Cape Colony. She has taken the veil. She is well, 
 and will be happy ki her religion, as those good women 
 always are." 
 
 " I was not one of those good women, Richard " 
 
 He strained her to him in silence. She panted presently : 
 
 " You might have been happy — with her — if I had 
 never come between you !" 
 
 He found some words to tell her that these things were 
 meant to be. From the beginning . . . 
 
 " Was it meant that I should die on these wHd, wide, 
 desolate plains, and leave you, Richard ?" 
 
 He cried out frantically that he would die too, and 
 follow her. Her djing whisper fluttered at his lips : 
 
 " You cannot ! ^Think '.—the chUd !" 
 
 He had forgotten the child, and aow, with a great 
 stabbing pang, remembered it. She asked for it, and he 
 brought it, and she tried to kiss it ; and even in that Death 
 foiled her, and her head fell back and her eyes rolled up, 
 and she died. 
 
 He remembered all this as he tried to say the prayer, 
 without which she could not have borne to have him 
 leave her. 
 
 The curious, mocking faces crowded at the tavern door 
 to see him praying — a strange, haggard scarecrow kneeling 
 there in the face of day. 
 
 But he was not the kind of scarecrow they would have 
 dared to Jeer at openly. Too rich, with all that money in 
 the valise in the locked-up waggon-chest ; too strong, with 
 that sharp hunting-knife, the Winchesteif repeating-rifle, 
 and the revolver he carried at his hip. 
 
 " Our Father Who art in Heaven. ..." 
 
 He knew, the man who repeated the words, that there 
 was no One beyond the burning blue vault of ether Who 
 heard . . . and yet, for her sake, supposing, after all 
 some great Unseen Ear listened, was listening even 
 now. . , .
 
 12 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Hallowed he Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. . . ." 
 
 And if it came, should those have any part in it who had 
 lived together unwed in open sin ? 
 
 " Thy Will he done on earth as it is in Heaven. . . .*' 
 
 The words stuck in his dried throat. Be done, that Will 
 that left him desolate and laid her away, a stiU fair, fast- 
 corrupting thing, under the red earth and the great iron- 
 stone boulders ! 
 
 " Give lis this day our daily bread. ..." 
 
 Her love, her presence, her voice, her touch, had been the 
 daily bread of life to him, her fellow-sinner Oh, how many 
 base, sordid, loveless marriages had not that illicit bond of 
 theirs put to shame ! And yet as a boy he had learned the 
 Seventh Commandment: "Thoushalt not commit adultery." 
 Had she not believed all along that the price of such sweet 
 sinning must be paid, if not in this life, then in the life 
 hereafter, and could it — could it be that her soul was even 
 now writhing in fires unquenchable, whither he, who would 
 have gladly died in torment to save her from outrage or 
 death, had thrust her ? 
 
 " Forgive us our trespasses. ..." 
 
 Man of Sorrows, pitjdng Son of Mary, before Whom 
 the Scribes and Pharisees brought the woman taken in 
 adiiltery, forgive her, pardon her ! If a soul must writhe in 
 those eternal fires they preach of, in justice let it be mine ! 
 Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing 
 white and shameful in the midst of the evil, Jeering crowd, 
 with the wicked fingers pointiag at her, say to this other 
 woman, lifting up Thyself before her terrified, desperate 
 soul, confronted with the awf xil mystery that lies behind the 
 Veil . . . 
 
 " Neither do I condemn thee. ..." 
 
 And do with me what Thou wilt ! 
 
 The ragged, wUd-eyed man who had been kneeling rigid 
 and immovable before the wooden symbol reared upon the 
 new-raised cairn of boulders swayed a Httle. His bead fell 
 forward heavily upon his breast. His eyes closed in spite 
 of his desperate effort to shake off the deadly, sickening 
 coUapse of ^^ill and brain and body that was mastering 
 him. He fell sideways, and lay in a heap upon the ground.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 13 
 
 n 
 
 They went to him, and took up and carried him into the 
 tavern, and laid him down upon a frowzy bed in the room 
 where the child lay upon the iron-framed cot. 
 
 He lay there groaning in the fierce clutches of rheumatic 
 fever. They tended him in a rude way. A valise and an 
 iron-bound leather lady's trunk had been brought from 
 the waggon by his orders, and set in the room where he was 
 in his sight. These contained her clothes and jewels, and 
 he guarded them Jealously even in delirium. About his 
 wasted body was buckled a heavy money-belt. Bough 
 could feel that when he helped the woman of the tavern to lift 
 the patient. He winked to her pleasantly across the bed. 
 But the time was not ripe yet. They must wait awhile. 
 The English traveller was not always delirious. There 
 were intervals of consciousness, and though he seemed at 
 death's door, who knew ? That strong purpose of his 
 might even yet lift him from the soiled and comfortless bed, 
 and send him on the trek again. Meanwhile the oxen were 
 hired out to work for a farmer fifty miles away. That was 
 called sending them to graze and gain strength for more 
 work ; and there was the keep of two Cape boys, and the 
 Kaffir and the Boer driver, and the cost of nursing and sick 
 man's diet, and the care of the child. A heavy bill of 
 charges was mounting up against the English traveller. 
 Much of what the belt contained would honestly be 
 Bough's. 
 
 There was no doctor and no medicine save the few drugs 
 the sick man had carried, as all travellers do. The milk 
 for which he asked for himself and the child, which was 
 procured from the native cattle-kraals for a tikkie a pint, 
 and for which Bough charged at the price of champagne, 
 kept him alive. Broth or eggs he sickened at and turned 
 from, and, indeed, the one was greasy and salt, the others 
 of appalling mustiness. He would regularly swallow the 
 tabloids of quinine or lithia, and fall back on the hard, 
 coarse piUow, exhausted by the mere effort of unscrewing 
 the nickel-cap of the Uttle phial, and tell himself that he was 
 getting stronger. Sometimes he really was so, and then the
 
 14 THE DOP DOCTTOR 
 
 child sat on his wide hollow chest, at.tl played with the 
 beard that was now aU grey and unkempt and matted, 
 until some word in her baby prattle, some look of wondering 
 inquiry in the innocent eyes, golden-hazel and black-lashed, 
 like his owti. that were almost too beautiful to be a man's, 
 people used to say, like the weak, passionate, gentle mouth 
 under the heavy moustache, would bring back all the 
 anguish of his loss, and waken anew that torturing voice 
 that accused him of being false to his compact with the 
 dead. Then he would call, and send the cliild away, borne 
 in the arms of the Hottentot chambermaid to breathe the 
 fresh air upon the veld. And, left alone, he would draw up 
 the rough sheets over his head, \\dth gaunt clutching fingers, 
 and weep, though sometimes no tears came to moisten 
 his haggard, staring eyes. 
 
 One night, wliile the fiat gold hunting- watch ticked above 
 his head in the little embroidered chamois-leather pouch 
 dead hands had worked, Knowledge came to him with a 
 sudden rigor of the muscles of the wasted body, and a burst- 
 ing forth from every pore of the dank, dark-hued sweat of 
 coining dissolution. 
 
 He was not ever going to get well, and fetch the clergyman 
 to pray over and bless her resting-place. He was going to 
 die and lie beside her there, under the red earth topped by 
 the boulder-cairn. He smiled. What an easy solution of 
 the problem ! He had been too intent upon gratifying her 
 last desire to entertain for a moment the thought of suicide. 
 He had always held self-destruction as the last resource of 
 the coward and the criminal, and besides there was the 
 child. 
 
 The child ! . . . 
 
 With a pang of dread and terror unfclt by him before, he 
 raised his gaunt head with an effort from the uneasy pillow, 
 and looked towards where she lay, with staring, haunted 
 eyes. The window was open a little way at the top, and 
 for fear of the night-cliill his fine leopard-skin kaross had 
 been spread over her. . . . One dimpled, rounded, bare 
 arm lay upon the soft dappled fux, the babyish fingers 
 curli^d one upon the other. Rosy human tendrils that 
 shoTild never twine again in a mother's hair. Her child, 
 her daughter ! . . . Born of her body, sharing her nature
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 15 
 
 and her sex, soon to be orphaned For he who could not 
 even lift himself from bed, and drag his body across the 
 floor to cover that lovely babyish arm, would soon be no 
 better protector than the restless ghost that tugged at his 
 heart with its unseen hands. He knew now why it could 
 not rest. 
 
 What would become of the child ? Another fiery 
 scourge, wielded by the Hand Unseen, bit deep into his 
 shrinking conscience, into his writiiing soul His own act 
 had brought this about. Be a cur, and accuse Destiny, 
 blame Fate, lay the onus upon God, as so many defaulters 
 do — he could not. He laj' looking his deed in the foul face 
 until the dawn crept up the sky, and learning how it may 
 be that the sins of their fathers are visited on the children. 
 
 He called for ink and paper as soon as the house was 
 awake, and with infinite labour and many pauses to recover 
 spent strength and breath, for he was greedy of life now, 
 for the reason that we know — he wrote a letter home to 
 England, to a relative who was the head of his family, and 
 bore a great historic title — so great that those who spelled 
 it out upon the envelope were half afraid to slip the heated 
 knife under the crested seal. But Bough did it, and opened, 
 and read. 
 
 It was not going to be the soft snap he had thought, but 
 it would be good enough. Wires might be pulled from 
 Downing Street that would set the Government at Cape 
 Town working to trace the tall thin Englishman who had 
 travelled up with two waggons from Cape Colony in the 
 company of a child and the woman now dead, and for 
 whose sake he had given up those almighty swell con- 
 nections. What a fool — what a thundering, juicy, damned 
 fool the man had been ! whose gaunt eyes were even now 
 making out the landfall of Kingdom Come through the 
 gathering mists of death. 
 
 The letter worried Bough. To have the English Grovem- 
 ment smelling at your heels is no joke, thought he. Any 
 moment the mastiif may grip, and then, if you happen 
 to be an ex-convict and deserter from their Colonial Police, 
 and supposing you have one or two other little things 
 against you . . . the most honest of speculators being occa- 
 sionally compelled to dirty his hands, if only to tone down
 
 16 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 those immaculate extremities to something approaching 
 the colour of other people's — then what becomes of the 
 risky but profitable business of gun-running from the 
 English ports through to the Transvaal ? 
 
 For by men like Bough and his associates vast supplies 
 of munitions tod engines of war were wormed through. 
 The machine-guns in carefully numbered parts came 
 in cases as " agricultural implements," the big guns 
 travelled in the boilers of locomotives, the empty cases of 
 the shells, large and small, were packed in piano-cases, or 
 in straw-filled crates as " hardware " ; the black powder and 
 the cordite and the lyddite came in round wooden American 
 cheese-boxes, with a special mark ; and the Mauser cart- 
 ridges were soldered in tins like preserved meat. How 
 handsomely that business paid only Bough and his merry 
 men, and Oom Paul and his burghers of the Volksraad, 
 knew. 
 
 But Her Majesty's Government, bound about with red- 
 tape, hoodwinked by Dutch Assistant-Commissioners of 
 British Colonies, and deceived by traitorous English 
 ofQcials, were blind and deaf to the huge traffic in arms and 
 munitions. Not that there were no warnings. To the 
 very end they were shouted in deaf ears. 
 
 What of that letter sent from the Resident Commis- 
 sioner's office at Gueldersdorp, that little frontier hamlet on 
 the north-east comer of British Baraland, September 4, 
 1899, little more than a month before the war broke out, 
 the war that was to leave Britain and her Colonies bleeding 
 at every vein ? 
 
 The Boers were in laager over the Border. A desperate 
 appeal for help had been made to the Powers that were, and 
 the reply received to the now historic telegram, through the 
 Resident Commissioner, has equally become a matter of 
 history. 
 
 " All that was possible " was being done by the Imperial 
 authorities. His Excellency assured the inquirer, to safe- 
 guard the lives and property of the inhabitants of the Gold- 
 Reef Town in the event of an attack by a hostile force. 
 
 Also the military armament of the place was about to be 
 materially increased.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 17 
 
 And yet up to the little frontier town upon which so 
 much depended not a single modem gun had been 
 despatched. 
 
 An easy prey had the little town upon the flat-topped 
 hill, set in the middle of a basin, proved to the Boer General 
 and his commandos but for one thing. For weeks after the 
 bursting of the first shell over Gueldersdorp three sides of 
 the beleaguered town were so many open doors for the 
 enemy. Only upon the threshold of each door stood Fear, 
 and guarded and held the citadel. 
 
 m 
 
 That hard taskmaster, Satan, is sometimes wonderfully 
 indulgent to those who serve him well. While Bough, the 
 keeper of the tavern, was yet turning about the open letter 
 in his thick, short, hairy hands, weighing the chances 
 attending the sending of it against the chances of keeping 
 it back, the woman who served as mistress of the place 
 thrust her coarsely-waved head of yellow bleached hair 
 and rouge-ruddled face in at the room door, and called to 
 him : 
 
 " Boss, the sick toff is doing a croak. Giving up the 
 ghost for all he's worth — he is. Better come and take a 
 look for yourself if you don't believe me." 
 
 Bough swore with relief and surprise, delayed only to lock 
 away the letter, and went to take a look. It was as he 
 hoped, a real stroke of luck for a man who knew how to 
 work it. 
 
 Richard Mildare — ^for Bough knew now what had been 
 the name of the Englishman : Captain the Hon. Richard 
 Mildare, late of the Grey Hussars — was dead. No hand 
 made murderous by the lust of gold had helped him to his 
 death. Sudden failure of the heart is common in aggra- 
 vated cases of rheumatic fever, and with one suffocating 
 struggle, one brief final pang, he had gone to Join her he 
 loved. But his dead face did not look at rest. There was 
 some reflection in it of the terror that had come upon him 
 in the watches of th»t last night. 
 
 3
 
 18 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Bough stayed some time alone in the room of death. 
 When he came out he was extremely affable and gentle. 
 The woman, who knew him, chuckled to herself when he 
 met the Kafiir serving-maid bringing back the child from 
 an airing in the sim, and told her to take it to the mistress. 
 Then he went into the bar-room to speak to the English- 
 man's Boer driver. 
 
 Leaning easily upon the zinc-covered counter he spoke 
 to the man in the Taal, with which he was perfectly 
 familiar : 
 
 " Your Baas has gone in, as my wife and I expected." 
 
 Smoots Beste growled in his throat : 
 
 " He was no Baaa of mine, the verdoemte rooinek ! I 
 drove for him for pay, that is all. There is wage owing mo 
 still, for the matter of that — and where am I to get it now 
 that the heathen has gone to the burning V 
 
 Smoots, who was all of a heathen himself, and regularly 
 got drunk, not only on week days, but on Sabbaths, felt 
 virtuously certain that the Englishman had gone to Hell. 
 
 Bough smiled and poured out a four-finger swig of bad 
 Cape brandy, and pushed it across the counter 
 
 " You shall get the money, every tikkie. Only listen 
 to me." 
 
 Smoots Beste tossed off the fiery liquid, and returned in 
 a tone less surly : 
 
 " I am listening, Baas." 
 
 Said Bough, speaking with the thickish lisp and slurring 
 of the consonants that distinguished his utterance 
 when he sought to appear more simple and candid than 
 usual : 
 
 " This dead toff, with his flash waggon and fine team, and 
 Winchester repeating-rifles, had very little money. He has 
 died in my debt for the room and the nursing, and tht; 
 good nourishment, for which I trusted him all these threu 
 weeks, and I am a poor man. The dollars I have paid you 
 and the Kaffir and the Cape boys on his account came out 
 of my own pocket. Rotten soft have I behaved over him, 
 that's the G<:)d'8 truth, and when I shall get back my own 
 there's no knowing. But, 'of course, I shall act square." 
 
 The Boot's thick lips parted in a grin, showing his dirty, 
 greenish-yellow teeth. He scratched his shaggy head, and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 19 
 
 said, his tongue lubricated to incautiousness by the potent 
 liquor : 
 
 " The waggons, and the oxen, and the guns and ammu- 
 nition, and the stores in the second waggon are worth 
 good money. And the woman that is dead had jewels— I 
 have seen them on her — diamonds and rubies in rings and 
 bracelets fit for the vtouw of King Solomon himself. The 
 Englishman did not bury them with her under that 
 verdoemte kopje that he built with his two hands, and 
 they are not in the boxes in the living-waggon." 
 
 " Did he not ?" asked Bough, looking the Boer driver 
 full in the face with a pleasant smile. " Are they not ?" 
 
 Smoots Beste's piggish eyes twinkled round the bar- 
 room, looked up at the ceC^ag, down at the floor, anywhere 
 but into Bough's. He spat, and said in a much more 
 docUe tone : 
 
 "■ What do you want me to do ?" 
 
 Bough leaned over the counter, and said confidentially : 
 
 " Just this, friend. I want you to inspan, and take one 
 of the waggons up to Gueldersdorp, with a letter from me 
 to the Civil Commissioner. I will tell him how the man 
 is dead, and he will send down a magistrate's clerk to put a 
 seal on the boxes and cases, and then he will go through 
 the letters and papers in the pocket-book, and write to 
 the people of the dead man over in England, supposing he 
 has any, for 1 have heard him tell my wife there was not 
 a living soul of his name now, except the child " 
 
 " But what good will all this do you and me, Baas ?" 
 asked the Boer subserviently. 
 
 Bough spresid his hands and shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Why, when the magistrates and lawyers have hunted 
 up the man's family, there wiU be an order to sell the 
 waggons and oxen and other property to pay the expenses 
 of his burying, and the child's ke^p here and passage from 
 Cape Town, if she is to be sent to England . . . and what is 
 left over, see you, after the law expenses have been paid, 
 wUl go to the settlement of our just claims. They will 
 never let honest men suffer for behaving square, sure no, 
 they'll not do that !" 
 
 But though Bough's words were full of faith in the fait 
 dealing of the lawyers and magistrates, his tone implied doubt. 
 
 2—2
 
 20 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Boer lawyers are slim rogues at best, and Engelsch 
 lawyers are duyvels as well as rogues," said Smoots Beste, 
 with a dull flash of originality. 
 
 Bough nodded, and pushed another glass of liquor across 
 the bar. 
 
 " And that's true enough. I've a score to settle with 
 one or two of 'em. By gum ! I call myself lucky to be in 
 this with a square man like you. There's the waggon, 
 brand-new — you know what it cost at Cape Town — and the 
 team, I trust you to take up to Gueldersdorp, and who's to 
 hinder a man who hasn't the fear of the Lord in him from 
 heading north-east instead of north-west, selling the 
 waggon and the beasts at Kreilstad or Schoenbroon, and 
 living on a snug farm of your own for the rest of your 
 life under another man's name, where the English magis- 
 trates and the police will never find you, though their 
 noses were keener than the wild dogs ?" 
 
 " Alamachtig !" gasped Smoots Beste, rendered breath- 
 less by the alluring, tempting prospect. Surely the devil 
 spoke with the voice of the tavern-keeper Bough, when, in 
 human form, he tempted children of men. Sweat glistened 
 on Smoots' flabby features, his thick hands trembled, and 
 his bowels were as water. But his purpose was solidifying 
 in his brain as he said innocently, looking over Bough's left 
 shoulder at the wooden partition that divided ofi the bar 
 from the landlord's dwelling-room : 
 
 " Aye, I am no dirty schelm that cannot be trusted. 
 Therefore would it not be better if I took both teams and 
 waggons, and all the rooinek's goods with me up to 
 Gueldersdorp, and handed it over to the Engelsch landrost 
 there ?" 
 
 The fish was hooked. Bough said, steadily avoiding 
 those twirling eyes : 
 
 " A good notion, but the lawyer chaps at Gueldersdorp 
 will want to look at the Englishman's dead body to be able 
 to satisfy his people that he did not die of a gunshot, or of 
 a knife-thrust ; we must bury him, of course, but not too 
 deep for them to dig him up again. And they will want 
 to ferret in all the comers of the room where he died, and 
 make sure that his bags and boxes have not been tampered 
 with — and then there is the cMld. In a way " — he spoke
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 21 
 
 slowly and apologetically — " the kid and the goods are 
 my security for getting my own back again — if ever I do. 
 So you wiU inspan one of the waggons — the best if you like, 
 with a team of six beasts, and you will trek up to Guelders- 
 dorp— you will travel light enough with only the grub you 
 will need, and the Cape boys, and you will hand over the 
 letter to the Resident Magistrate, and bring back the man 
 who will act as his deputy." 
 
 But at this point Smoots Beste set down his splay foot. 
 He would undertake to deliver the letter, but he objected 
 to the company of the coloured voor-loopers or the Kaffir 
 driver. He was firm upon that and, finding his most 
 honeyed persuasions of no avail, Bough said no more. He 
 would pay off the niggers and dismiss them, or get rid of 
 them without paying ; there were ways and means. He 
 sent up country, and the team came down, six thin, over- 
 worked creatures, with new scars upon their slack and 
 baggy hides, and hoUow flanks, and ribs that showed 
 painfully. Smoots Beste was about to grumble, but he 
 changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up in 
 the flapped pocket of his tan-cord Jacket, and the long whip 
 cracked like a revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs 
 of the wincing oxen, and the white tUt rocked over the 
 veld, heading to the nor'-west. 
 
 " When wHl the Dutchy be back, boss ?" asked the 
 woman, with a knowing look. 
 
 Bough played the game up to her. He answered quite 
 seriously : " In three weeks' time." 
 
 Then he strolled out, smoking a cigar, his hat tilted at 
 an angle that spoke of satisfaction. His walk led him past 
 the oblong cairn of ironstone boulders in the middle of 
 the sandy patch of ground enclosed with zinc wire-netting. 
 At the foot of the cairn was a new grave. 
 
 For the lover did not even lie beside his beloved, as he 
 had vowed once, promised and plarmed, but couched below 
 her feet, waiting, like some faithful hound that could not 
 live without the touch of the worshipped hand, for the 
 dead to rise again. 
 
 Why is it that Failure is the inevitable fate of some men 
 and women ? Despite brilliant prospects, positions that 
 seem assured, commanding talents nobly used, splendid
 
 22 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 opportunities that are multiplied as though in mockery, 
 the result is Nothing from first to last ; while the bad 
 flourish and the evil prosper, and the world honours the 
 stealer of the fruit of the brains that have been scattered in 
 frenzied despair, or have become so worn out from the 
 constant effort of creation that the worker has sunk into 
 hopeless apathy and died. 
 
 Bough was not one of those men whose plans come to 
 nothing. He had prospered as a rogue of old in England, 
 really his native country, though he called himself an 
 Afrilcander. Reared in the gutters of the Irish quarter of 
 Liverpool, he had early learned to pilfer for a living, had 
 prospered in prison as sharp young gaol-birds may prosper, 
 and returned to it again and again, until, having served out 
 part of a sentence for burglary and obtained his ticket-of- 
 leave, he had shifted his convict's skin, and made his way 
 out to Cape Colony under a false name and character. He 
 had made a mistake, it was true, enlisting as a trooper of 
 Colonial Police, but the step had been forced upon him by 
 circumfitances. Then he had deserted, and had since been 
 successful as a white-slave dealer at Port Elizabeth, and 
 as a gold-miner in the Transvaal, and he had done better 
 and better still at that ticklish trade of gun-runniag for Oom 
 Paul. Though, get caught — only once get caught — and 
 the Imperial Government authorities, imder whose noses 
 you had been playing the game Avith impunity for years, 
 made it as hot as Hell for you. Bough, however, did not 
 mean ever to get caught. There was always another 
 man, a semi-innocent dupe, who would appear to have 
 been responsible for everything, and who would get 
 pinched. 
 
 Such a dupe now trudged at the head of the meagre 
 three-span ox-team. WTien, after a hard day's toil, he at 
 length outspanned, the waggon-pole still faithfully pointed 
 to the north-west. But before it was yet day the waggon 
 began to move again, and it was to the north-east that the 
 waggon-pole pointed thenceforwards, and the letter Bough 
 had given Smoots Beste for the Chief Resident Magistrate 
 at Gueldersdorp was saved from the kindling of the camp- 
 fire by a mere accident. 
 
 The oat's-paw could not read, or the illegible, meaningless
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 23 
 
 ink scrawl upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed 
 envelope would have aroused his suspicions at the outset. 
 So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, under- 
 stood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, 
 not elaborate — a mere stage property, nothing more. But 
 yet he gave it in full belief that it would be burned, and 
 that, the boats of Smoots Beste being consumed with it, 
 according to the thick judgment of the said Smoots, it 
 would be as a pillar of fire behind that slim child of the old 
 voortrekkers, hastening his journey north-eastwards. It 
 is typical of the class of Smoots that it never once occurred 
 to him to go north. 
 
 But Smoots Beste never bought a farm with the price of 
 the oxen and the high-bulwarked, teak-built, waterproof- 
 canvas tilted waggon that had cost such a good round sum. 
 There was a big rainfall on the third day. It began with 
 the typical African thunderstorm— deafening, continuous 
 rolls and crashes of heavy cloud-artiUery, and lightning that 
 blazed and darted without intermission, and ran zigzagging 
 in a horrible, deadly, plajrful fashion over the veld, as 
 though looking for dishonest folks to shrivel. One terrible 
 flash struck the wheel-oxen, a thin double tongue of blue 
 flame sped flickering from ridge to ridge of the six gaunt 
 backs . . . there was a smell of burning hair— a reek of 
 sulphur. The team lay outstretched dead on the veld, the 
 heavy yoke across their patient necks, the long horns 
 curving, the thin starved bodies already begiiming to bloat 
 and swell in the swift decomposition that follows death by 
 the electric fluid. 
 
 Smoots Beste crawled under the waggon, and, remember- 
 ing all he had heard his father spell out from the Dutch 
 Bible about the Judgment Day, and the punishment of 
 sinners in everlasting flame, felt very ill at ease. The 
 storm passed over, and the rain poured all through the 
 night, but dawn brought in a clear blue day ; and with it 
 a train of eight transport- waggons, and several wearied, 
 muddy droves of sheep and cattle, the property of the 
 Imperial Government Commissariat Department, Guel- 
 dersdorp, being taken from Basutoland East up to Guel- 
 dersdorp, under convoy of an escort of B.S.A. Police. To 
 the non-commissioned officer in command Smoots Beste,
 
 24 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 resigned to the discharge of a trust, handed the letter for 
 the Civil Commissioner. 
 
 The sergeant, sitting easily in the saddle, looked at the 
 boldly- written direction on the envelope, and smelt no rats 
 — at least until he coolly opened the supposed letter. 
 The scrawled sheet of paper it contained was a surprise, 
 but he did not let Smoots see that. Then the following 
 brief dialogue took place : 
 
 " You were trekking up to Gueldersdorp," he said to 
 the decidedly nervous Smoots, " to fetch down a Deputy 
 Civil Commissioner to deal with the effects of a dead 
 English traveller, at a house kept by the man who wrote 
 this letter — that is, three days' trek over the veld to the 
 southward, and called the Free State Hotel ?" 
 
 Smoots nodded heavily. The dapper sergeant cocked 
 his felt smasher hat, and turned between pleasantly smiling 
 lips the cigar he was smoking. Then he pointed with his 
 riding- whip, a neatly varnished sjambok, with a smart 
 silver top, to the north-west. 
 
 " There lies Gueldersdorp. Rum that when the light- 
 ning killed the ox-team you should have been trekking 
 north-east, isn't it ?" 
 
 Smoots Beste agreed that it was decidedly rum. 
 
 The sergeant said, without a change in his agreeable 
 smile : 
 
 " All right ; you can inspan six of our drove- bullocks, 
 and drive the waggon with us to Gueldersdorp." 
 
 " Thank you. Baas !" said Smoots, without enthusiasm. 
 
 " If you like to take the risk," added the sergeant, who 
 had not quite finished. He ended with an irrepressible 
 outburst of honest indignation : " Why, you blasted, 
 thieving Dutch scum, do you think I don't kriow you were 
 stealing that span and waggon ?" 
 
 And as Smoots, sweating freely, unyoked the dead oxen, 
 he decided in his heavy mind that he would be missing 
 long before the convoy got to Gueldersdorp. 
 
 Nine waggons rolled on where only eight had been 
 before. The mounted men hurried on the daubed and 
 wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. Smoots Beste 
 drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as 
 water within his belly, and there was no resonance in the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 25 
 
 smack of his whip. When the convoy came to a town, 
 he vanished, and the story thenceforth knows him no more. 
 The discreet sergeant of police did not even notice that he 
 was missing until several days later, when the end of the 
 Journey was near at hand. He was a sober, careful man, 
 and a good husband. He shortly afterwards made quite 
 a liberal remittance to his wife, and his troopers pushed 
 Kruger half-sovereigns across most of the bars in Guel- 
 dersdorp shortly after the purchase by a Dopper farmer 
 of a teak-built Cape waggon that a particular friend of 
 the sergeant's had got to sell. And they were careful, at 
 first, not to wag loose tongues. But as time went on the 
 story of the English traveller who had brought the body 
 of the woman to the Free State Hotel, so many days' 
 trek to the southwards from Gueldersdorp, trickled from 
 lip to lip. And years later, years too late, it came to 
 the ears of a friend of dead Richard Mildare. 
 
 The sergeant maintained sUence. He was a careful 
 officer, and a discreet man, and, what is more, religious. 
 In controversial arguments with the godless he would 
 sometimes employ a paraphrase of the story of Smoots 
 Beste to strengthen his side. 
 
 " A chap's a blamed fool that doesn't believe in God, 
 I teU you. I was once after a bung-nosed Dutch thief 
 of a transport-driver, that had waltzed away Math a brand- 
 new Cape cart and a team of first-class mules. Taking 
 'em up to Pretoria on the quiet, to sell 'em to Oom Paul's 
 burghers, he was. Ay, they were worth a tidy lump ! 
 A storm came on — a regular Vaal display of sky-fireworks. 
 The rain came down like gun- barrels, the veld turned 
 into a swamp, but we kept on after the Dutchman, who 
 drove like gay old HeU. Presently comes a blue blaze 
 and a splitting crack, as if a comet had come shouldering 
 into the map of South Africa, and knocked its head in. 
 We pushed on, smelling sulphur, burnt flesh, and hair. 
 ' By gum !' said I ; ' something's got it '; and I was to 
 rights. The Cape cart stood on the veld, without a scratch 
 on the paintA\-ork. The four mules lay in their traces, 
 deader than pork. The Dutchman sat on the box, holding 
 the lines and his voorslag, and grinning. He was dead, too 
 — struck by the lightning in the act of stealing those mules
 
 26 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air 
 after that trjang to persuade me that there isn't such a 
 thing as an overruling Providence !" 
 
 Thus the sergeant : and his audience, whether Free- 
 thinkers, Agnostics, or believers, would break up, feeling 
 that one who has the courage of his opinions is a respectable 
 man. 
 
 As for Bough, in whose hands even the astute sergeant 
 had been as a peeled rush, we may go back and find him 
 counting money in gold and notes that had been taken 
 from the belt of the dead English traveller. 
 
 Seventeen hundred pounds, h?vrd cash — a pretty wind- 
 fall for an honest man. The honest man whistled softly, 
 handling the white crackling notes, and feeling the smooth, 
 heavy English sovereigns slip between his fingers. 
 
 There were certificates of Rand stock, also a goodly 
 number of Colonial Railway shares, and some foreign 
 bonds, all of which could be realised on, but at a distance, 
 and by a skilled hand. There were Jewels, as the Boer 
 waggon-driver had said, that had belonged to the dead 
 woman — diamond rings, and a bracelet or two ; and there 
 were sUk dresses of lovely hues and texture, and cambric 
 and linen dresses, and tweed dresses, in the trunks ; and 
 a great cloak of sables, trimmed with many tails, and 
 beautiful underclothing of silk and linen, trimmed with 
 real lace, over which the mouth of the woman of the 
 tavern watered. She got some of the dresses and all the 
 undergarments when Bough had dexterously picked out 
 the embroidered initials. He knew diamonds and rubies, 
 but he had never been a Judge of lace. 
 
 There was a coronet upon one or two handkerchiefs 
 that had been overlooked when the dead woman had 
 burned the others four years previously. Bough picked 
 this out too, working deftly with a needle. 
 
 He was clever, very clever. He could take to pieces a 
 steam-engine or a watch, and put it together again. He 
 knew all there is to know about locks, and how they may 
 best be opened without their keys. He could alter plate- 
 marks with graving tools and the Jeweller's blow-pipe, 
 and test metals with acids, and make plaster-cast moulds 
 that would turn out dollars and other coins, remarkably 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 27 
 
 like the real thing. He was not a clever forger ; he had 
 learned to write somewhat late in life, and the large, bold 
 round hand, with the capital letters that invariably began 
 with the wrong quirk or twirl, was too characteristic, 
 though he wrote anonymous letters sometimes, risking 
 detection in the enjoyment of what was to him a dear 
 delight, only smaller than that other pleasure of mould- 
 ing bodies to his own purposes, of malice, or gain, or lust. 
 
 IV 
 
 There was a child in the tavern on the veld ; it lay in an 
 old orange-box, half-filled %vith shavings, covered with a 
 thin, worn blanket, in the daub-and- wattle outhouse, 
 where the Hottentot woman, called the chambermaid, and 
 the Kaffir woman, who was cook, slept together on one 
 filthy pallet. Sometimes they stayed up at the tavern, 
 drinking and carousing Math the Dutch travellers who 
 brought the supplies of Hollands and Cape brandy and 
 lager beer, and the American or English gold-miners and 
 German drummers who put up there from time to time. 
 Then the child lay in the outhouse alone. It was a frail, 
 puny creature, always frightened and silent. It lived on 
 a little mealie pap and odd bits of roaster-cakes that were 
 thrown to it as though it were a dog. When the coloured 
 women forgot to feed it, they said : " It does not matter. 
 Anyhow, the thing will die soon !" But it lived on when 
 another child would have died. , . . There was some- 
 thing imcanny about its great-eyed silence and its tenacious 
 hold on life. 
 
 It had only been able to toddle when brought to the 
 tavern. The rains and thunderstorms of spring went by, 
 the summer passed, and it could walk about. It was a 
 weakly little creature, with great frightened eyes, amber- 
 broMTi, with violet flecks in their black-banded irises, 
 and dark, thick lashes ; and the delicately-drawn eyebrows 
 were dark too, though its hair was soft yellow — just the 
 colour of a chicken's down. Many a cuff it got, tmd many 
 a hard word, when its straying feet brought it into the way
 
 28 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 of the rough life up at the tavern. But still the scrap of 
 food was tossed to it, and the worn-out petticoat roughly 
 cobbled into a garment for its little body ; for Bough was 
 a charitable man. 
 
 It was a poor orphan, he explained to people, the child 
 of a consumptive emigrant Englishman who had worked 
 for the landlord of the tavern, and left this burden for 
 other shoulders when he died. Charitable travellers fre- 
 quently left benefactions towards the little one's clothing 
 and keep. Bough willingly took charge of the money. 
 The child strayed here, there, and everywhere. It was 
 often lost, but nobody looked for it, and it always came 
 back. It liked to climb the caim of boulders, or to sit 
 on the long, low hillock at the cairn's foot. The wire 
 fencing had long been removed from the enclosure ; it had 
 gone to make a chicken-pen in a more suitable spot. The 
 cross had been taken down when a prop was wanted for 
 the clothes-line. 
 
 The child, often beaten by Bough and the woman of 
 the tavern, might have been even worse treated by the 
 coloured servants but for those two graves out on the 
 veld. Black blood flows thick with superstition, and both 
 the Kafi&r cook and the snuff-coloured Hottentot chamber- 
 maid nourished a wholesome dread of spooks. Who knew 
 but that the white woman's ghost would rise out of the 
 kopje there, some dark night, and pinch and cufE and 
 thump and beat people who had ill-used her bantling ? 
 As for the dead man buried at her feet, his dim shape 
 had often been seen by one of the Barala stablemen, 
 keeping guard before the heap of boulders, in the 
 white blaze of the moon-rays, or the paler radiance of a 
 starry night, or more often of a night of mist and rain ; 
 not moving as a sentry moves, but upright and still, with 
 shining fiery eyes in his shadowy face, and with teeth that 
 showed, as the dead grin. After that none of the servants 
 would pass near these two graves later than sundown, and 
 Bough welted the Barala boy with an ox-reim for scaring 
 silly Jades of women with lying tales. But then Bough 
 avoided the spot by day as well as by night. Therefore, it 
 became a constant place of refuge for the child, who now 
 slept in the outhouse alone.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 29 
 
 In the long, brilliant winter nights she would leave the 
 Btraw-stuJBfed sack that had been her bed ever since the 
 orange- box had been broken up, and climb the stone-heaps, 
 and look over the lonely veld, and stare up at the great 
 glowing constellation of the Southern Cross. In spring, 
 when pools and river-beds were fuU of foaming beer- 
 coloured water, and every kloof and donga was brimmed 
 with flowers and ferns, she would be drawn away by these, 
 would return, trailing after her armfuls of rare blooms, and 
 thenceforward, imtil these faded, the ridgy grave-mound 
 and the heaped cairn of boulders would be gay with them. 
 She never took them to the house. It might have meant 
 a beating — so many things did. 
 
 Late in November, when the apricots and plums and 
 peaches were ripening on the laden, starling-haunted boughs, 
 she would wander in the orchard belonging to the house, 
 while the heavy drenching rains drummed on the leaves 
 overhead, and sudden furious thunderstorms rent the livid- 
 coloured clouds above with jagged scythes and reaping- 
 hooks of white electric fire, or leaping, dancing, playing, 
 vanishing tongues of thin blue. Once this fire struck a 
 krantz, under the lee of which the child was sheltering, 
 and made a black scorched mark all down the chS-face, 
 but left the child unscathed. 
 
 No one had ever taught her anything ; no one had ever 
 laid a gentle hand upon her. When she fiirst saw mother 
 and daughter, friend and friend, sweetheart and sweet- 
 heart kiss, it seemed to her that they licked each other, 
 as friendly dogs do. She had no name that she knew of. 
 
 " You kid, go there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. 
 You kid, go to the drift for water, or take the besom and 
 sweep the stoep, or scrub out the room there — do you hear, 
 you kid 1" These orders came thick and fast when at 
 last she was old enough to work ; and she was old enough 
 when she was very young, and did work like a little beast 
 of burden. A real mother's heart — all mothers are not 
 real ones — would have ached to see the dirt and bruises 
 on the delicate childish limbs, and the vermin that crawled 
 under the yellow rings of hair. How to be clean and tidy 
 nobody had ever shown her, though she had learned by 
 instinct other things.
 
 30 THE BOP DOCTOR 
 
 That it was best to bear hunger and pain m silence, lest 
 worse befell. That a truth for which one suffers is not as 
 good as a lie for which one gets a bigger roaster-cake, or 
 the scrapings of the syrup-can. That to little, weak, and 
 feeble creatures of their race grown human beings can be 
 marvellously cruel. That the devil lived down in the 
 kraals with the natives, and that Grod was a swear. It is 
 a wonder that she had not sunk into idiocy, or hopelessly 
 sickened and died, neglected, ill-used, half-starved as she 
 was. But when the little one might have been six years 
 of age, the Lady began coming. And after the first time, 
 with very brief intervals of absence, she came every night. 
 
 As soon as you lay down on the sack of straw in the corner 
 of the outhouse, slipping out of the ragged frock if the 
 weather were hot, or puUing the thin old horse- blanket 
 over you if the night were a cold one, keeping your eyes 
 tight shut, for this was quite indispensable, you looked 
 into the thick dark, shot with gleams of lovely colours, 
 sometimes with whirling rings of stars, and gradually, as 
 you looked, all these concentrated into two stews, large 
 and not twinkling, but softly radiant, and you were happy, 
 for you knew that the Lady was coming. 
 
 For she always came, even when you had been most 
 wicked : when you were sent to bed without even the 
 supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body and arms and 
 legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you 
 you deserved. The stars would go a long way off, and 
 while you tingled and trembled and panted with expecta- 
 tion, would come back again as eyes. Looking up into 
 them, you saw them clearly ; the rest of the person they 
 belonged to arrived quite a little while after her eyes were 
 there. Such eyes — neither grey, nor brown, nor violet, but 
 a mingling of all these colours, and deepening as you 
 gazed up into them into bottomless lakes of love. 
 
 Then her face, framed in a soft darkness, which was 
 hair — the Kid never knew of- what colour — her face formed
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 31 
 
 itself out of the darkness that framed those eyes, and a 
 warm, balmy breath came nearer, and you were kissed. 
 No other lips, in your short remembrance, had ever touched 
 you. You had learned the meaning of a kiss only from 
 her, and hers was so long and close that your heart left oflE 
 beating, and only began again when it was over. Then 
 arms that were soft and warm, and strong and beautiful, 
 came round you and gathered you in, and you fell asleep 
 folded closely in them, or you lay awake, and the Lady 
 talked to you in a voice that was mellow as honey and soft 
 as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of the wild pigeons 
 that nested in the l>:rantzes, or the sighing of the wind 
 among the high veld grasses, and the murmur of the little 
 river playing among the boulders and gurgling between 
 the roots of the tree-fern. You talked, too, and told her 
 everything. And no matter how bad you had been, 
 though she was sorry, because she hated badness, she loved 
 you just as dearly as she did when you were good. And 
 oh ! how you loved her — how you loved her ! 
 
 " Please," you said that night when she came first — 
 you remember it quite well, though it is so long ago — 
 " plefkse, why did you never come before ?" 
 
 And she answered, with her cool, sweet, fragrant lips 
 upon your eyelids, and your head upon her breast : 
 
 " Because you never wanted me so much as now." 
 
 " Please take me back home with you," you begged, 
 holding her fast. And she answered in the voice that is 
 always like the sigh of the wind amongst the tree-tops 
 and the murmur of the river : 
 
 " I cannot yet — but I will come again." 
 
 And she does come, and again and again. By degrees, 
 though she comes to you only at night, when the out- 
 house is dark, or lighted only by the stars or the moon- 
 shine, you learn exactly what the Lady is like. 
 
 She wears a silken, softly-rustling gown that is of any 
 lovely colour you choose. The hue of the blue overarching 
 sky at midday, or the tender rose of dawn, or of the violet 
 clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of the sunset : or 
 the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment 
 is sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders 
 and the splendid pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of
 
 32 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 her form even to the eyes of an untaught, neglected child. 
 Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as of shadow, and 
 her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. The 
 sorrow of all the world and all its Joy seem to have rolled 
 over her like many waters, and when she smiles the sweet- 
 ness of it is always almost more than the Kid can bear. 
 
 Who is the Lady ? 
 
 She has no other name than that. She is very, very 
 good, as well as beautiful, and you can bear to tell her when 
 you have been most wicked, because she is so sorry for you. 
 She can play with you, and laugh so softly and clearly and 
 gaily that you, who have never learned but to dread grown 
 people's cruel merriment, join in and laugh too. When she 
 laughs the corners of her eyes crinkle so like the corners of 
 her lips that you have to kiss them, and there are dimples 
 that come wath the laughter, and make her dearer than ever. 
 
 Who is the Lady, tall, and strong, and tender ? That 
 dead woman lying out there under the Little Kopje was 
 small, and slight, and fraU. Who may the Lady be ? Is 
 she a dream or a mere illusion born of loneliness and starva- 
 tion, physical and mental ? Or has Mary, the Mother of 
 Pity, laid aside her girdle of decades of golden roses, her 
 mantle of glory, and her diadem of stars, and come stepping 
 fair-footed down the stau'way that Night builds between 
 Earth and Heaven, to comfort a desolate child lying in a 
 stable who never heard the story of the Christ- Babe of 
 Bethlehem ? 
 
 You ask no questions — you to whom she comes. You 
 call her softly at night, stretching out your arms, and the 
 clasp of her arms answers at once. You whisper how you 
 love her, with your face hidden in her neck. The great 
 kind dark that brings her is your real, real daytime in 
 which you live and are glad. Each morning to which you 
 waken, bringing its stint of hunger and abuse and blows 
 renewed, is only a dreadful dream, you say to yourself, and 
 so can face your world. 
 
 Oh, deep beyond fathoming, mysterious beyond compre- 
 hension is the hidden heau't of a child !
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 33 
 
 VI 
 
 One afternoon when the Kid was quite as tall as the broom 
 she swept the stoep with she had gone to the drift for water. 
 It was a still, bright, hot day. Little puffs of rosy cloud 
 hung motionless under the burning blue sky-arch ; small, 
 gaily-plumaged birds twittered in the bushes ; the tiny 
 black ants scurried to and fro in the pinkish sand of the 
 river beach. She waded into the now clear, sherry-pale 
 water to cool her hot bare limbs, and, bending over, stared 
 down into the reflected eyes that looked back out of the pool. 
 
 Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a 
 curling tousle of matted, reddish- brown-gold hair. Such a 
 neglected, sordid little figure, with thin drab shoulders 
 sticking out of a ragged caHco frock. She was quite 
 startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before, 
 though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the 
 wall of the bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook 
 underneath, and there were swing toilet-glasses in the 
 tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred in her, 
 whispering in the grimy little ear, " It is good to he dean" 
 and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the 
 womanly purpose framed. 
 
 She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from 
 head to foot in the warm clear water. She took fine sand, 
 and scrubbed her head. She dipped and wrung and rinsed 
 her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in the shallows, 
 the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming 
 her slight girlish body through and through as she spread 
 her washed rags to dry on the big hot stones. 
 
 There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was 
 a rustling sound among the green bushes. She had never 
 heard of modesty, but she cowered down among the 
 boulders, and the heavy footstep passed by. She hid among 
 the fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, 
 and went back with her filled water-bucket to the hotel. 
 How could she know what injiiry the kind peremptory voice, 
 bidding her be foul no longer, had done her ? But thence- 
 forwards a new cruelty, afresh peril, attended her steps. 
 
 Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels 
 
 3
 
 34 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 often. She was no wife of his. He had not brought her 
 from Cape Colony. When the hotel was built he had gone 
 up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and 
 brought her back with, him from an establishment he knew. 
 He was generally not brutal to her except when she was 
 ailing, when he gave her medicine that made her worse, 
 much worse — so very iU that she would lie groaning upon 
 a foul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with 
 the coloured women and the customers in the bar. Then, 
 still groaning, she would drag herself up and be about her 
 work again. She did not want to go back to the house at 
 Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, 
 poor bought wretch. 
 
 She had quarrelled with him many times for many 
 things, and been silenced with blows, or curses, or even 
 caresses, were he in the mood. But she had never quar- 
 relled with him about the Kid before. Now when he 
 bought some coloured print and a Boer sunbormet, and 
 some shifts and stockings of a traveller in drapery and 
 hosiery, and ordered her thenceforwards to see that the 
 girl went properly clothed, a new terror, a fresh torture, was 
 added to the young life. The woman had ignored, neg- 
 lected, sometimes ill-used her, but she had never hated 
 her untU now. 
 
 And Bough, the big, burly, dark-skinned man with the 
 strange light eyes, and the bold, cruel, red mouth, and the 
 bushy brown whiskers, why did he follow her about with 
 those strange eyes, and smile secretly to himself ? She was 
 no longer fed on scraps ; she must sit and eat at table with 
 the man and his mistress, and learn to use knife and fork. 
 
 She outgrew the dress Bough had bought her, and 
 another, and another, and this did not make Bough angry ; 
 he only smiled. A man having some secret luxury or 
 treasure locked a^^ ay in a private cupboard will smile so. 
 He knows it is there, and he means to go to the hiding- 
 place one day, but in the mfiantitue he waits, licking his lips. 
 
 The girl had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his 
 anger with unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy 
 hand was more bearable than his smUe and his jesting 
 aii^iability. Now, when she went down to the kraals on an 
 errand, or to the orchard or-garden for fruit or vegetable^, or
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 35 
 
 to the riv6r for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, 
 padding footsteps coming after her, and would turn and 
 pass him with downcast eyes, and go back to the inn, and 
 take a beating for not having done her errand. Beating she 
 comprehended, but this mysterious change in the man 
 Bough filled her with sick, secret loathing and dread. She 
 did not know why she bolted the door of the outhouse now 
 when she crept to her miserable bed. 
 
 Once Bough dropped into her lap a silver dollar, saying 
 with a smUe that she was getting to be quite a little woman 
 of late. She leaj)ed to her feet as though a scorpion had 
 stung her, and stood white to the very lips, and speechless, 
 while the big silver coin rolled merrily away into a distant 
 corner, and lay there. The frowzy woman with the 
 bleached hair happened to come in at that moment ; or 
 had she been spying through a crack of the door ? Bough 
 pretended he had accidentally dropped the coin, picked it 
 up, and went away. 
 
 That night he and the woman quarrelled fiercely. She 
 could hear them raging at each other as she lay trembling. 
 Then came shrieks, and the dull sound of the sjambok 
 cutting soft human flesh. In the morning the woman had 
 a black eye ; there were livid weals on her tear-blurred face. 
 She packed her boxes, snivelling. She was going back 
 along up to Johannesburg by the next thither- bound 
 transport-waggon-train that shoidd halt at the hotel — 
 thrown off like an old shoe after all these years. And she 
 was not young enough for the old life, what with hard work 
 and hard usage and worry, and she knew to whom she owed 
 her dismissal. . . . 
 
 Ay, and if she could have throttled or poisoned the little 
 sly devil she would have done it ! Only — there would have 
 been Bough to reckon with afterwards. For of God she 
 made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of hers, but 
 she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy 
 whiskers and the light, steely eyas. Yet she threw herself 
 upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at the week's 
 end the Johannesburg transport-ridt-r's waggons returning 
 from the district town not 3'et hnked up to the north by 
 the raQway came in sight. 
 
 3—2
 
 36 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Bough poured her out a big glass of liquor, his universal 
 panacea, and another for the transport-rider, with many a 
 Jovial word. He would be running up to Johannesburg 
 before she had well shaken down after the journey. Then 
 they wotdd have a rare old time, going round the bars and 
 doing the shows. Though, perhaps if she had got fixed up 
 with a new friend, some flash young fellow with pots of 
 money, she would not be wanting old faces around 1 
 
 Then he turned aside to pay the transport-rider, and the 
 exile dabbed her swollen face with a rouge-stained, lace- 
 edged handkerchief, and went out to get into the waggon. 
 
 The girl stood by the stoep, staring, puzzled, over- 
 whelmed, afraid. A piece of her world was breaking off. 
 As long as she could remember anything she had known 
 this woman. She had never received any kindness from 
 her ; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but — she 
 wished she was not going. Instinctively she had felt that 
 her presence was some slight protection. Keeping close in 
 the shadow of this creature's frowzy skirts, she had not so 
 feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and the 
 padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the 
 woman passed her now, a rage of unspeakable, agonising 
 fear rose in her bosom. She cried out to her, and clutched 
 at her shabby gay mantle. 
 
 The woman snatched the garment from her hold. Her 
 distorted mouth and blazing eyes were close to the white 
 young face. She could have spat upon it. But she snarled 
 at her three words ... no more, and passed her, and got 
 into the waggon. 
 
 " Halloa, there !" said Bough, coming forward threaten- 
 uiglyj " what you rowing about, eh ?" But no one an- 
 swered. The girl had fled to the boulder-cairn, and the 
 woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary, goaded 
 teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad- 
 beamed vehicles lumbered away. 
 
 But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the 
 dust of the bosom from whence it had first drunk life sat 
 there immovable until the sun went down, ponderiag. 
 
 " Missis now, eh /" 
 
 What did those three words mean ? 
 
 Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 37 
 
 as waitress of the bar that day, and the men who drove or 
 rode by and stopped for drinks, chatting in the dirty 
 saloon, or sitting in the bare front room, with the Dutch 
 stovfe, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they 
 called the coffee-room, to discuss matters relative to the 
 sale of cattle, or sheep, or merchandise, stared at her, and 
 several made her coarse compliments. She refused to 
 touch the loathly-smelling liquor they offered her. Her 
 heart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly 
 conscious of those light eyes of Bough's following, following 
 her, with that inscrutable look. 
 
 When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught 
 her arm, and pulled her near him, and said between his teeth: 
 
 " You will sleep in the mistress's room to-night." 
 
 Then he went away chuckling to himseK, thinking of 
 that frightened look in her eyes. Later, he went out on 
 horseback, and did not return. 
 
 The slatternly bedchamber, with its red turkey twill 
 window-curtains and cheap gaudy wallpaper, which had 
 belonged to the ruddled woman with the bleached hair, 
 was a palace to the little one. But she could not breathe 
 there. Late that night she rose from the big feather bed, 
 and unfastened the inner window shutters, and di'ew the 
 cotton blind and opened the window, though the paint had 
 stuck, and looked out upon the veld. The great stars 
 throbbed in the purple velvet darkness overhead. The 
 falling dew wetted the hand she stretched out into the cool 
 night air. She drew back the hand and touched her 
 cheek with it, and started, for the fresh, cool, fragrant 
 touch seemed like that of some other hand whose touch 
 she once had known. She thought for the first time that 
 if the woman who had been her mother, and who slept 
 out there in the dark under the boulder-cairn, had lived, 
 she might have touched her child so. Then she closed the 
 window quickly, for she heard, afar off, the gallop of a 
 hard-ridden horse draw ing nearer — nearer. And she knew 
 that Bough was coming back. 
 
 He came. 
 
 She heard him dismount before the door, give the horse 
 to the sleepy Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. 
 She heard him clink among the glasses and bottles. S^«
 
 38 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on the landing. 
 It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the 
 room where she was. 
 
 Then his voice bade her rise and open the door. She 
 could not speak or move. 
 
 She was dumb and paralysed with deadly terror. She 
 heard his coaxing voice turn angry ; she listened in helpless 
 terrified silence to his oaths and threats ; then she heard 
 him laugh softly, and the laugh was followed by the jingle 
 of a bunch of skeleton keys. He always carried them ; 
 they saved trouble, he used to say. 
 
 They saved him trouble now. When the bent wire 
 rattled in the lock, and the key fell out upon the floor, 
 she screamed, and his coarse chuckle answered. She was 
 cowering against the wall in a corner of the room when he 
 came in and picked up the key and locked the door. But 
 when his stretched-out, grasping hand came down upon 
 her slight shoulder, she turned and bit it like some savage, 
 desperate little animal, drawing the blood. Bough swore 
 at the sudden sting of the sharp white teeth. So the 
 little beast showed fight, eh ? Well, he would teach her 
 that the master will have his way. 
 
 There was no one else in the house, and if there had been 
 it would have served her not at all. God sat in timeless 
 Eternity beyond these mists of earth, and saw, and made 
 no sign. It was not until the man Bough slept the heavy 
 sleep of liquor and satiety that the thought of flight was 
 bom in her with desperate courage to escape him. The 
 shutters had been left unbolted, and the window was yet a 
 little way open. She sprang up and threw it wide, leaped 
 out upon the stoep, and from thence to the ground, and fled 
 blindly, breathlessly over the veld into the night. 
 
 vn 
 
 Hough, as soon as it was dawn, sent three of the Kaffirs 
 from the kraals, in difTerent directions, to search for her, 
 and, mounted on a fresh pony, took the fourth line of 
 search himself. 
 
 II
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 39 
 
 He had chosen the right direction for riding down the 
 quarry. At broad high noon he came upon her, in a bare, 
 stony place tufted with mUk-bush. She was crouching 
 under a prickly-pear shrub, that threw a distorted blue 
 shadow on the sun-baked, sun- bleached ground, trying to 
 eat the fruit in the native way with two sticks. But she 
 had no knife, and her mouth was bleeding. Bough gave 
 the tired pony both spurs v/hen the prey he hunted came 
 in sight. She leaped up like a wild cat when the mounted 
 man rode down upon her, and ran, doubling like a hare. 
 When overtaken, she fell upon her face in the sand, and 
 lay still, only shaken by her long pants. Bough dismounted 
 and caught her by the wrist and dragged her up with his 
 bandaged right hand. He beat her about her cheeks 
 with his hard, open left. Then he threw her across his 
 saddle, but she writhed down, and lay under the pony's 
 feet. 
 
 He kicked her then, for giving so much trouble, lifted 
 her again, and tried to mount, holding her in one arm. 
 But the frightened pony swerved and backed, and the 
 girl writhed, and struggled, and scratched like a wild 
 cat. She did not know what meroy meant, but she 
 saw by the look that came into those light eyes that 
 this man would have none upon her. She fought and 
 bit and screamed. 
 
 Bough took an ox-reim then, that was coiled behind his 
 saddle, and bound her hands. He tied the end of the 
 leather rope to the iron ring behind his saddle, and re- 
 mounted, and spurred his weary beast into a canter. The 
 little one was forced to run behind. Again and again 
 she fell, and each time she was jerked up and forced to 
 run again upon her bleeding feet, leaving rags of her gar- 
 ments upon the karroo-bushes and blood-marks on the 
 stones. And at last she fell, Sknd rose no more, showing 
 no sign of life under the whip and the spur-rowel. Then 
 Bough bent over and drew his long hunting-knife and cut 
 the reim, leaving her hands still bound. If any spark of 
 life remained in he girl, he could not tell. Her knees 
 were drawn in towards her body ; her eyes were open, and 
 rolled upwards ; there was foam fipon her torn and bleeding 
 mouth. She was as good as dead, anyway, and the wild
 
 40 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 dogs would be sure to come by-and-by. Already an 
 aasvogel was hovering above ; a mere speck, the great 
 bird poised upon widespread wings, high up in the illimit- 
 able blue. 
 
 Presently there would be a flock of these carrion feeders, 
 that are not averse to fresh-killed meat when it is to be had. 
 
 Bough remounted, and, humming a dance tune that 
 was often on his lips, rode away over the veld. 
 
 The great vultin"e wheeled. Then he dropped like a 
 falling stone for a thousand yards or so, and hovered and 
 dropped again, getting nearer — ever so much nearer — 
 with each descent. And where he had hovered at the 
 first were now a dozen specks of black upon the hot, bright 
 blue. 
 
 A wild dog crept down from a cone-topped spitzkop, 
 and stood, snifiing the blood-tainted air eagerly, whining 
 a little in its throat. 
 
 The great vulture dropped lower. His comrades of the 
 flock, eagerly following his gyrations and descents, had 
 begun to wheel and drop also. Another wild dog appeared 
 on the cone-shaped kop. Other furry, sharp-eared heads, 
 with eager, snifiing noses, could be seen amongst the grass 
 and bush. 
 
 Then suddenly the higher vultm'es rose. They wheeled 
 and soared and flew, a bevy of winged black specks hurry- 
 ing to the north. They had seen something approach- 
 ing over the veld. The great bird hanging motionless, 
 purposeful, lower down, became aware of his comrades' 
 change of tactics. With one downward stroke of his 
 powerful wings, he shot upwards, and with a hoarse, 
 croaking cry took flight after the rest. 
 
 The wild dogs stole back, hungry, to covert, as a big 
 light blue waggon, drawn by a well-fed team of eight span, 
 came lumberkig over the veld. 
 
 Would the ox-team veer in another direction ? Would 
 the big blue waggon \\dth the new white tilt roll by ? 
 
 The Hottentot driver cracked his giant whip, and, 
 turning on the box-seat, spoke to a figiire that sat beside 
 him. It was a woman in loose black garments, with a 
 starched white coif like a Dutchwoman's kapje, covered 
 with a floating black veil. At her side dangled and clashed
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 41 
 
 a long rosary of brown wooden beads, with a copper 
 crucifix attached. There were two other women in the 
 big waggon, dressed in the same way. They were Roman 
 Catholic nuns — Sisters of Mercy coming up from Natal, 
 by the order of the Bishop of Bellmina, Vicar-Apostolic, 
 at the request of the Bishop of Paracos, suffragan to 
 North-East Baraland, to swell the numbers of the Com- 
 mimity akeady established in Gueldersdorp at the Convent 
 of the Holy Way. 
 
 The oxen halted some fifty yards from that inanimate 
 ragged little body, lying prone, face downwards, among 
 the scrubby bushes that sprouted in the hot sand. Little 
 crowding tiny ants already blackened the bloodstains on 
 the ground, and the wild dogs would not have stayed long 
 from the feast if the waggon had passed on. 
 
 One white-coifed, taJl, black-clad figure sprang lightly 
 down from the waggon-box, and hurried across to where 
 the body was lying. A mellow, womanly cry of pity came 
 from under the starched coif. She turned and beckoned. 
 Then she knelt down by the girl's side, opened the torn 
 garments, and felt with compassionate, kindly touches 
 about the still heart. 
 
 The other two black figures came hurrying over then, 
 stumbling amongst the stones and karroo-bushes in their 
 haste. Lifting her, they turned the white, bloodless 
 yoimg face to the blue sky. It was cut and scratched, 
 but not otherwise disfigured. Her bound arms, dragged 
 upwards before it, had shielded it from the thorns and the 
 sharp stones. They were raw from the elbows to the 
 wrists. 
 
 They listened at the torn childish bosom with anxious 
 ears. They got a few drops of brandy between the clenched 
 little teeth. The sealed lips quivered ; the heart fluttered 
 feebly, like a dying bird. They gave her more stimulant, 
 and waited, while the Hottentot driver dozed, and the sleek, 
 well-fed oxen chewed the cud patiently, standing in the 
 sun. 
 
 Then the Sisters lifted her, with infinite cave, and carried 
 her to the waggon. The twenty-f our-f'" ot whip-lash 
 cracked, and the patient beasts moved on 'ery soon the 
 big white tilt was a mere retreating spec'. > pon the veld.
 
 42 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The ants were still busy when the wild dogs came out and 
 sniffed regretfully at those traces on the ground. 
 
 Coincidence, did you say, lifting your eyebrows over 
 the book, as the blue waggon of the Sisters rolled lumber- 
 ingly into the story ? The long arm of coincidence 
 stretched to aching tenuity by the dramatist and the 
 novelist ! Nay ! but the thing happened, just as I have 
 told. 
 
 What is the thing we are agreed to call coincidence ? 
 
 Once I was passing over one of the bridges that span the 
 unclean London ditch called the Regent's Canal. I had 
 walked all the way from Piccadilly Circus to Gloucester 
 Crescent, haunted by the memory of a man I had once 
 known. He was the broken-down, drunken, studio-drudge 
 of a great artist, a splendid Bohemian, who had died some 
 years before. Why did the thought of the palette-scraper, 
 the errand-goer, the drunken creature with the cultivated 
 voice and the ingratiating, gentlemanly manners, possess 
 me as I went ? I recalled his high, intellectual, pimply 
 forehead, and large benevolent nose, in a chronic state of 
 inflammation, and seedy semi-clerical garb, for the thing 
 had been an ordained clergyman of the Church of England, 
 and I grinned, remembering how, when a Royal visitor 
 was expected at the great man's studio, the factotum had 
 been bidden to wash his face, and had washed one half 
 of it, leaving the other half in drab eclipse, like the picture- 
 restorers' trade - advertisement of a canvas partially 
 cleansed. 
 
 Idly I tossed the butt of a finished cigar over the 
 bridge balustrade. Idly my eye followed it down to the 
 filthy, sluggishly-creeping water that flows round the 
 bend, imder the damp rear-garden walls below. 
 
 A policeman and a bargeman were just taking the body 
 of an old man out of that turbid canal -stream. It was 
 dressed in pauper's garments, and its stiffened knees 
 were bent, and its rigid elbows crooked, and a dis- 
 honoured, dripping beard of grey hung over the soulless 
 breast. 
 
 The dreadful eyes were open, staring up at the leaden 
 March sky. His face, with the dread pallor of Death upon 
 it, and the mud-stains wiped away by a rough but not
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 43 
 
 unkindly hand, was cleaner than I had ever seen it in 
 life. 
 
 Nevertheless, I recognised in the soaked body in its 
 workhouse livery the very man the thought of whom had 
 haunted me, the great Bohemian painter's drunken studio- 
 drudge. 
 
 vm 
 
 School at the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp 
 was breaking up, suddenly and without warning, very soon 
 after the begirming of the Christmas term. Many of the 
 pupils had already left in obedience to urgent telegrams 
 from relatives in Cape Colony or in the Transvaal, and 
 every Dutch girl among the sixty knew the reason why, 
 but was too astute to hint of it, and every English girl was 
 at least as wise, but pride kept her silent, and the Americans 
 and the Germans exchanged glances of intelligence, and 
 whispered in corners of impending war between John Bull 
 and Oom Paul. 
 
 That deep and festering political hatreds, fierce enthu- 
 siasms, inherited pride of race, and instilled pride in 
 nationality, were covered by worked apron-bibs, and 
 even childish pinafores, is anyone likely to doubt ? 
 Schoolgirls can be patriots as well as rebels, and the 
 seminary can vie with the college, or possibly outdo 
 it, occasion given. Ask Juliette Adam whether the 
 bread-and-butter misses of France in the year 1847 did 
 not squabble over the obstinacy of King Louis Plulippe 
 and the greed of M. Guizot, the claims of Louis Napoleon 
 and the theories of Louis Blanc, of Odilon Barrot, and 
 Ledru-Rollin ? And I who write, have I not seen a North 
 Antrim Sunday-school wrecked in a faction-fight between 
 the Orange and the Green ? Lord ! how the red-edged 
 hyranals and shiny-covered S.P.G. books hurtled through 
 the air, to burst like hand-grenades upon the texted walls. 
 In vain the panting, crimson clergyman mounted the 
 superintendent's platform, and strove to shed the oil of 
 peace upon those seething waters. Even the class-teachers 
 had broken the rails out of the Windsor chtur-backs, and 
 joined the hideous fray, irrespective of age or sex.
 
 44 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Miss Maloney — Miss Geoghegan — I am shocked — 
 appalled ! In the name of decency I command yees to 
 desist !" 
 
 " Hit him again, Moggy Lenahan, a taste lower 
 down !" 
 
 " Serve you right, Mulcahy ! why would you march wid 
 the Green ?" 
 
 Thirty years ago. As I gaped in affright at the horrid 
 scene of strife, small revengeful fingers twisted themselves 
 viciously in my auburn curls, and. wresting from my grasp 
 a " Child's Own Bible Concordance." a birthday outrage 
 received from an Evangelical aunt, Julia .Dolan, aged 
 twelve, began to pound me about the face with it. As a 
 snub-nosed urchin, gifted with a marvellous capacity for 
 the cold storage and quick delivery of Scripture genealogies 
 and Hebrew proper and improper names, I had often 
 reduced my mild, long-legged girl-neighbour to tearful 
 confusion. Now meek Julia seemed as though possessed 
 by seven devils. I had been taught the elementary rule 
 that boys must not hurt girls, but the code had no precept 
 helpful in the present instance, when a girl was hurting me. 
 Casting chivalry to the winds, I remember that I kicked 
 Julia's shins, and she fled howling ; but not before she had 
 reduced my leading feature to a state of ruin, which created 
 a tremendous sensation when they led me home. Later, 
 during the election riots, two yoxmg women fought in the 
 Market Place, stripped to the waist, and wielding boards 
 wrenched from the side of a packing-case, heavy, jagged, 
 and full of nails. And when the soldiers were called out, 
 we know how many a saddle was emptied by the stones 
 the children threw. . . . 
 
 Only a day previously the centipede-like procession of 
 girls of all ages, in charge of nuns and pupil-teachers, 
 in passing over the Gueldersdorp Recreation-Ground, had 
 sustained an experience with which every maiden boSom 
 would have been still vibrating had not an event even more 
 exciting occurred between the early morning roll-call and 
 prayers-muster and breakfast. 
 
 Greta Du Taine had had another love-letter ! 
 
 The news darted from class-room to class-room more 
 quickly than little Monsieur PiiotcU, the French literature
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 45 
 
 professor ; it spread like the measles, and magnified like 
 the mumps. 
 
 The Red Class, composed of the elder girls, " young 
 ladies " who were undergoing the process of finishing, 
 surged with volcanic excitement, hidden, but not in the 
 least repressed. The White Class, their Juniors, who were 
 chiefly employed in preparing for Confirmation, should 
 have been immersed in graver things, but were not. They 
 waited on mental tiptoe for details, and a peep at the 
 delicious document. The Blue Class, as became mere 
 infants ranging from six to ten years old, remained phleg- 
 matically indifferent to the missive, yet avid for samples 
 of the chocolates that had accompanied the declaration, 
 made to eighty girls of all ages by one undersized, pasty, 
 freckled young man employed as junior clerk and chain- 
 assistant in a surveyor's office, and who signed at the end 
 of a long row of symbolistic crosses the unheroic name of 
 Billy Keyse. 
 
 He had seen and been helplessly stunned by the vision 
 of Greta Du Taine out walking at the head of the long 
 winding procession of English, German, Dutch, Dutch- 
 French, Dutch-American, and Jewish girls. They are 
 sent now to be taught in Europe, those daughters of the 
 Rand millionaires, the Stock Exchange speculators, the 
 wealthy fruit-farmers, or cereal-growers, or cattle and 
 sheep breeders, who are descended themselves from the old 
 pioneers and voortrekkers, but they do not get a better 
 education than was to be had at the Convent school at 
 Gueldersdorp, where the Sisters of Mercy took in and 
 taught and trained coltish girl-children, born in a strongly 
 stimulating climate, and accustomed to lord it over Kaffir 
 and Hottentot servants to their hearts' content. These 
 they tamed, these they transformed into refined, cultivated, 
 accomplished young women, stamped with the indefinable 
 seal of high breeding, possessed of the tone and manner 
 that belongs to the upper world. 
 
 What shall I say of the Sisters of the Convent of the 
 Holy Way at Gueldersdorp, I who know but little of any 
 Order of Religious ? They are a Community, chiefly of 
 ladies of high breeding and ancient family, vowed to feed 
 the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, comfort the
 
 46 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 dying, and instruct the ignorant. Like the Fathers of the 
 Society of Jesuits, those skilled, patient, wise tillers in the 
 soil of the human mind, their daily task is to hoe and tend, 
 and prune and train, and water the young green things 
 growing m what to them is the Garden of God, and to 
 other good and even holy people, the vineyard of the devil. 
 Possibly both are right ? 
 
 I have heard the habit of the Order called ugly. But 
 upon the stately person of the Mother Superior the garb 
 was regal. The sweeping black folds were as imposing as 
 imperial purple, and the starched guimpe framed a beauty 
 that was grave, stern, almost severe untU she smiled, and 
 then you caught your breath, because you had seen what 
 great poets write of, and great painters try to render, and 
 only great musicians by their impalpable, mysterious tone- 
 art can come nearest to conveying — the earthly beauty that 
 has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the white 
 fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, 
 or one could not have loved her so. Her scorn of any base- 
 ness was bitterly scathing ; the point of her sarcasm was 
 keen as any thrusting blade of tempered steel ; her will was 
 to be obeyed, and was obeyed as sovereign law, else woe 
 betide the disobedient. Also, though kind and gracious to 
 all, tenderly solicitous for, and incessantly watchful of, the 
 welfare of the least of her charges, she never feigned where 
 she could not feel regard or love. Her rare kiss was 
 coveted in the little world of the Convent school as the 
 jewel of an Imperial Order was coveted in the bigger world 
 outside it, and the most rebellious of the pupils held her in 
 respect mingled with fear. The head-mistresses of the 
 classes had their followers and admirers. It was for the 
 Mother Superior to command enthusiasm, and to sway 
 ambition, and to govern the hearts and minds of children 
 with the personal charm and the intellectual powers that 
 covdd have ruled a nation from a throne. 
 
 Well, she has gone to God. It is good for many souls 
 that she lived upon earth a little. There was nothing 
 sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in her character. 
 Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her 
 Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 47 
 
 of earthly love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those 
 women who most were swayed by her influence in youth 
 are taught to hold her Saint as well as Martyr. And 
 there is One Who knows. 
 
 It was not until recess after the midday dinner that 
 Greta Du Taine could exhibit her love-letter. She was a 
 Transvaal Dutch girl with old French blood in her, a 
 vivacious, sparkling Gallic champagne mingling with the 
 Dopper in her dainty blue veins. Nothing could be prettier 
 than Greta in a good temper, unless it might be Greta in a 
 rage. She was in a good temper now, as, tossing back her 
 superb golden hair plait, as thick as a child's arm, and 
 nearly four feet long, she drew a smeary envelope from the 
 front of her black alpaca school-dress, and, delicately with- 
 drawing the epistle enclosed, yielded the envelope for the 
 inspection of the Red Class. 
 
 " What niggly writing !" objected Nellie Bliecker, 
 wrinkling her snub nose in the disgust that masks the 
 gnawing tooth of envy. 
 
 " And the envelope is all over sticky brown," said another 
 carping critic. 
 
 " That's because he put the letter inside the chocolate- 
 box," explained Greta, " instead of outside. And the best 
 chocolates — the expensive ones — always go squashy. Only 
 the cheap ones don't melt — because they have got stuff like 
 chalk inside. But wait till I show you as much as the 
 envelope of my next letter — that's all, Julia K. Shaw !" 
 
 Julia K. wilted. Greta proceeded : 
 
 " It's directed ' To My Fair Addored One,' because, of 
 course, he didn't know my name. I don't object to his 
 putting a d too much in adored ; I rather prefer it. 
 His own name is simple, and rather pretty." She made 
 haste to say that, because she felt doubtful about it. 
 " Billy Keyse." 
 
 " Billy ?" 
 
 " Billy Keyse ?" 
 
 " B-i-1-l-y K-e-y-8-e !" 
 
 The name went the round of the Red Class. Nobody 
 liked it. 
 
 " He must, of course, have \t«mx christened William. 
 Shakespeare was a William. The Emperor of Germany,"
 
 48 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Btated Greta loftUy, "is a William. Mr. Pitfc and Mr. 
 Gladstone were both Williams. Many other great men 
 have been Williams." 
 
 " But not Billies," said Christine Silber, provoking a 
 giggle from the greedily-listening White Class. 
 
 Greta scorched them into silence with a look, and con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner 
 in the firm of Gadd and Saxby, on Market Square, but 
 something very near it." (Do you who read see W. Keyse 
 carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out the 
 office when the Kaffir boy forgets ?). " He saw me walking 
 in the Stad with the Centipede," Greta added. 
 
 This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty 
 pupUs promenading upon its hundred and sixty legs of 
 various nationalities in search of exercise and fresh air. 
 
 " Go on !" said the Red Class in a breath, as the White 
 Class giggled and nudged each other, and the Blue Class 
 opened eyes and ears. 
 
 " He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by 
 my eyes and my figure and my hair. He is not long up 
 from Cape Colony : came out from London through chest- 
 trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp " (do you 
 hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid Joke ?). 
 " And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get 
 rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du 
 Taine — isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my 
 father 1 — and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class 
 English drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted 
 harness, with rosettes the colour of my eyes." 
 
 Greta threw her golden head back and laughed, display- 
 ing a double row of enviable pearls. 
 
 " But I've got to wait for all these things until Billy 
 Keyse strikes pay-reef. Poor BUly ! Hand over those 
 chocolates, you greedy things !" 
 
 Somebody wanted to know how the package had been 
 smuggled into the Convent. Those lay-Sisters were so 
 sharp. . . . 
 
 " They're perfect needles — Sister Tarsesias particu- 
 larly, and Sister Tobias. But there's a new Emigration 
 Jane among the housemaids. . You've seen her — the sallow
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 49 
 
 thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe in curlers, who 
 walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expect- 
 ing to hear her quack. . . . Well, Billy got hold of her. 
 She didn't know my name, being new, but she recognised 
 me by Billy's description, and sympathised with him, 
 having a young man herself, who doesn't speak a word of 
 English, except ' damn ' and ' Three of Scotch, please.' 
 I've promised to translate her letters ; he writes them in the 
 Taal. And Billy gave her two dollars, and I've given her 
 a hat. It's the big red one mother brought back from 
 Paris — she paid a hundred francs for it at the Maison Climy 
 — and F migration Jane thinks, though it's a bit too quiet 
 for hei taste, it'll do her a fair old treat when she trims 
 it up with a bit more colour and one or two ' imitation 
 ostridi^e ' tips. ... I'd give another hundred francs for the 
 Maison Uluny modiste to hear." Again the birdlike laugh 
 rang out. " Now you know everything there is in the 
 letter, girls, except the bit of poetry at the end, which only 
 my most intimate friends may be permitted to read. 
 Lynette Mildare !" 
 
 Lynette, bending over a separate table- desk in the light 
 of the north window of the long deal match-boarded class- 
 room, looked up from her work of tooling leather, the 
 delicate steel instrument in her hand, a little gilding- 
 brush between her white teeth, a little fold of concentrated 
 attention between her slender brown eyebrows. 
 
 " Yes. Did you want anything ?" 
 
 Greta Jumped up, leaving the rest of the box of chocolates 
 to dissolve among the White Class, and came over, thread- 
 ing her way between the long rows of desk-stalls. 
 
 " Of course I want something." 
 
 " What is it ?" asked Lynette, lajang down the little 
 tool. 
 
 " What everyone has a right to expect from the person 
 who is her dearest friend — sympathy," said Greta, jumping 
 up and sitting on the corner of the desk, and biting the 
 thick end of her long flaxen pigtail. 
 
 "You have it — when there is anything to sympathise 
 about." 
 
 Greta tapped the letter, trying to frown. 
 
 " Do you call this nothing V*
 
 50 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " You have saved me from doing so." 
 
 " Lynette Mildare, have you a heart inside you ?" 
 
 " Certainly ; I can feel it beating, and it does its work 
 very well." 
 
 " Am I, then, nothing to you ?" 
 
 Lynette smiled, looking up at the piquant, charming 
 face. 
 
 " You are a great deal to me." 
 
 ." And I regard you as a bosom-friend. And the duty of 
 a bosom-friend, besides rushing off at once to tell you if 
 she hears anybody say anything nasty of you behind your 
 back — a thing which you never do — is to sympathise with 
 you in all your love-affairs — a thing which you do even 
 seldom er." 
 
 Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe 
 that rested on the beeswaxed boards of the class-room, 
 and kicked the leg of the desk with the heel of the other. 
 
 " Please don't spill the white of egg. or upset the gold- 
 leaf. And as I shall be pupil-teacher of the youngest class 
 next term, I suppose I ought to tell you that * seldomer ' 
 isn't in the English dictionary." 
 
 " I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me. 
 my own self. I should be ashamed to owe ev<?rything I 
 say to silly Nuttall or stupid old Webster. You're artful, 
 Lynette Mildare, trying to change the conversation. I 
 say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs 
 of the heart — and you never, never tell me about yours." 
 
 The beautiful black-rimmed, golden-tawny eyes laughed 
 as some eyes can, though there was no quiver of a smile 
 about the purely-modelled, close-folded hps. 
 
 " Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any," 
 scolded Greta. " You're too lovely by half. Don't try 
 to scowl me down — you are ! I'm pretty enough to make 
 the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them 
 to, but you're a great deal more. Also, you have style 
 and grace and breeding. Anybody could tell that you 
 name of tremendously swell people over away in England, 
 where the Dukes and Marquesses and Earls began fencing 
 in the veld somewhere about the eleventh century, to keep 
 common people from killing the deer, or carving their 
 vulgar names on the castle ■walls, and coming between the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 61 
 
 wind and their nobility. There's a quotation from your 
 dear Shakespeare for you ! He does come in handy some- 
 times." 
 
 " Doesn't he !" agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush. 
 
 " And you're descended from some of the people he 
 wrote about," pressed Greta. " Own it !" 
 
 There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips. 
 
 " Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of 
 Kings and noblemen." 
 
 " If you were a clown, you wouldn t be what you are. 
 The very shape of your head, and ears, and nails, bespeaks 
 a Princess, disguised as a finished head-pupil, going to 
 take over a class of grubby fingered little ones — pah ! — 
 next term. And don't we all know that an English Duchess 
 sends you your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts ! 
 Come, you might as well speak out, when this is my last 
 term, and we have always been such dear friends, and 
 always will be," coaxed Greta, " because the Duchess lets 
 you out, you know !" 
 
 She said it so quaintly that Lynette laughed, though 
 there was a pained contraction between the delicate eye- 
 brows and a vexed and sorrowful shadow on her face, 
 Greta went on : 
 
 " We have all of us always known that you were — a 
 mystery. Has it got anything to do with the Duchess ?" 
 
 The round, shallow blue eyes were too greedily curious 
 to be pretty at the moment. Ljmette met them with a 
 full, grave, answering denial. 
 
 " No ; I am nothing to the Duchess of Broads, or she to 
 me. She is sister to the Mother-Superior, and she sends 
 to me at Christmas and Easter, and on birthdays, by the 
 Mother's wish. Doesn't the Mother's second sister, the 
 Princesse de Dignmont- Veziers, send Katie " — Katie was a 
 little Irish novice — " presents from Paris twice a year ?" 
 
 Greta's pretty eyebrows went up. Her blue greedy eyes 
 became circular with surprise. 
 
 " Yes, of course — out of charity, because Katie was a 
 foundling, picked up in the Irish quarter in Cape Town." 
 
 Lynette went on steadily, but, looking out of the window 
 at the great wistaria that climbed upon the angle of the 
 Convent wing in which were the nuns' cella. 
 
 1 o
 
 52 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " If Katie was a foundling, I am nothing better." 
 
 " Lynette Mildare, you're never in earnest ?" 
 
 The shocked tone and the scandalised disgust on Greta's 
 pretty face stung and hurt. But Lynette went on : 
 
 " I speak the truth. The Mother and the Sisters, 
 who have always known it, have kept the secret. In their 
 great considerate kindness, they have never once let me 
 feel there was any difference between me and the other 
 girls — not once in all these years. And I can never thank 
 them enough — never be grateful enough for their great 
 goodness — especially hers." The steady voice shook a 
 little. 
 
 " We all know that you have always been the Mother's 
 favourite." There was a little cool inflection of contempt 
 in Greta's high, sweet, birdlike tones that had been 
 lacking before. " And she is the niece of a great English 
 Cardinal, and the sister of a Duchess and a Princess, and 
 her step-brother is an Earl." The inflection added for 
 Greta : '^ And yet she turvs to the charity child !" 
 
 Lynette said in a low voice : 
 
 " It is because she is perfect in the way of humility. 
 She is beyond all pride . . . greater than all prejudice . . , 
 she has been more to me than I can say, since she and 
 Sister Ignatius and Sister Tobias found me on the veld 
 seven years ago, when they were trekking up from Natal 
 to join the Sisters who were already working here." 
 
 Greta's face dimpled, and the bright, cold eyes grew 
 greedy again. There was a romance, after all. 
 
 " My gracious ! How did you get there ? Did your 
 people lose you, or had you run away from home ?" 
 
 The delicate wild-rose colour sank out of Lynette's 
 cheeks. Her eyes sank under those bold, curious, blue 
 ones of Greta's. She said, with a painful effort : 
 
 " I — had run away from the place that was called my 
 home. I don't remember ever having lived anywhere 
 else before." 
 
 " My ! And . . . ?" 
 
 " It was a — dreadful place." A little convulsive shudder 
 rippled through the girl's slight frame. Little points of 
 moistiure showed upon the delicate white temples, where 
 oiuug the little stray rin£[8 and tendrils of the red-brown 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 53 
 
 hair. " I wore worse rag8 than the children at the native 
 kraals, and was worse fed, I scrubbed floors, and fetched 
 water, and was beaten every day. Then " — she drew a 
 deep, quivering breath — " I ran away — and — and ran until 
 I could run no more, and fell down. ... I don't remember 
 being picked up. I woke up one day here at the Convent ; 
 and I was in bed, and my hair was cut short, and there 
 was ice upon my head. I said, ' Where am I V and the 
 Mother-Superior stooped down and looked into my eyes, 
 and said, ' You are at home.' And the Convent has been 
 my home ever since, and I hope with all my heart it always 
 will be !" 
 
 Greta descended from the desk. She drew her em- 
 broidered cambric skirts primly about her, and said in a 
 shocked voice : 
 
 " And I asked you to visit me — to come and stay with 
 us at our place near Johannesburg — you who are not even 
 respectable !" 
 
 Lynette grew burning red. One moment her eyes 
 wavered and fell. Then she lifted them and looked back 
 bravely into the pretty, shallow, blue ones. 
 
 " That is why I have told you — what you know now." 
 
 " Of course," Greta said patronisingly, " if you wish it, 
 I shall not tell the class." 
 
 Lynette deliberately put away her tools and the calf- 
 bound volume she had been working on, and shut and 
 locked her desk. Then she rose. Her eyes swept over 
 the long room, its lower end packed with giggling, whisper- 
 ing, squabbling, listening, gossiping, or reading girls. She 
 said very clearly : 
 
 " It will be best that you should tell the class. Do it 
 now. The girls can think it over while they are away, and 
 make up their minds whether they will speak to me or not 
 when they come back. Make no delay." 
 
 Then she went, moving with the long, smooth, light 
 step and upright, graceful carriage that she had somehow 
 caught from the Mother-Superior, out of the room. Curious 
 eyes followed her ; sharp ears, that had caught fragments 
 of the colloquy, wanted the rest ; eager tongues plied Greta 
 with questions, as she stood reticent, knowing, bursting 
 with information withheld, in the middle of the cla8»-
 
 54 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 room, where honours she coveted had been won and prizes 
 gained by the charity-bred foundling. 
 
 You may be sure that Greta told the story. It lost 
 nothing by her telling, be equally sure. But all that 
 heard it did not take it in Greta's way. The stamp of the 
 woman who ruled this place was upon many minds and 
 intellects and hearts here, and her teaching was to bear 
 fruit in bitter, stormy, bloodstained years of days that were 
 waiting at the very threshold. 
 
 " I tell you," said Christine Silber, the handsome Jewess, 
 with a fierce flash of her black Oriental eyes, " foundling 
 or charity girl, or whatever else you choose to call her, 
 Lynette Mildare is the pride of the school." 
 
 Silber's father was President of the Groenfontein Legis- 
 lative Council. A hum of assent followed on her utterance, 
 and an English girl got up upon a form. She was the niece 
 of a High Commissioner, daughter of a Secretary of 
 Imperial Government, at Cape Town, who wrote K.C.M.G. 
 after his name. 
 
 " Silber speaks the truth. Not a girl here is a patch on 
 the shoes of Lynette Mildare. I am going home to London 
 next winter to be presented, and we shall have a house in 
 Chesterfield Gardens for the season, and if Lynette will 
 come and visit us, I can tell her that she will be treated 
 as an honoured guest. As for you, Greta Du Taine, who 
 are always bragging about your father and his money, 
 tell me which three letters of the alphabet you would find 
 tattooed upon his conscience — if the strongest microscope 
 ever made could find his conscience out ? Shall / tell you 
 them ?" She held up her finger. " Shall I tell you how 
 he bought those orange-groves at Rustenburg — and the 
 country seat near Johannesburg — and the drag with the 
 silver-mounted harness and the team of blood bays ?" 
 
 " No, please !" begged Greta, flinching from the torture. 
 
 But the English girl was pitiless. She checked the letters 
 off upon her fingers : 
 
 " I. D. B." 
 
 A shout went up from the Red Class. 
 
 Greta turned and ran.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 55 
 
 IX 
 
 The cell was a larg.^, light, airy room on the first-floor of 
 the big two-storied Convent building that stood in its 
 spacious, teee-shaded, high-fenced gardens beyond the 
 Hospital at the north end of the town. Tali stained- 
 wood presses full of papers and account-files covered the 
 wall upon one side. There also stood a great iron safe, 
 with heavy ledgers piled upon it. Upon the other three 
 sides of the room were bookshelves, doubly and trebly 
 laden, with Latin tomes of the Fathers of the Church, and 
 the works and writings of modern theologians, many of 
 them categorised upon the " Index Expurgatorius." Rows 
 there were of English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish 
 classical authors, and many volumes of recently-published 
 scientific works. It might have been the room of a business 
 man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. 
 There were roller maps upon the walls, and two or three 
 engravings, Bougereau's " Virgin of Consolation," the 
 " Madonna dei Ansidei " of Raffaelle, and a " Crucifixion " 
 over the chimneypiece, which had three little statuettes in 
 tinted alabaster — a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of 
 Padua at the other ; in the middle, the Virgin bearing the 
 Child. 
 
 The Mother-Superior sat writing at a bare solid deal 
 table of the kitchen kind, with stained legs to add to its 
 ughness, and stained black-knobbed fronts to the drawers 
 in it. Her pen flew over the paper. 
 
 Seated though she was, you could see her to be of noble 
 figure, tall and finely proportioned. The habit of the nun 
 does not hide everything that makes for beauty and for 
 grace. The pure outlines of the small, perfectly-shaped 
 head showed through the thin black veil that fell over the 
 white starched coif. The small, high-instepped foot could 
 not be hidden in walking ; the make of the thick shoe might 
 not disguise its form. The delicate whiteness and smooth, 
 supple beauty of her hands, larger than the hands of 
 ordinary women, their owner being of more heroic build, 
 as of ampler mind and keener intellect, betrayed her to be a 
 woman not yet old, though there were some deep lines and
 
 66 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 many fine ones on the attentive face that bent over the 
 large square sheet of paper. 
 
 It was a curious face ; its olive skin bleached to dull 
 whiteness, its expression stern almost to severity. I have 
 heard it likened to a Westmoreland hill-landscape. Lonely 
 tarns lie under the black brows of the precipice ; one feels 
 chilly, and a little afraid. But the sun shines out suddenly 
 from behind concealing mists, and everything is transformed 
 to loveliness. I can in no other words describe the change 
 wrought in her by her rare, sudden, illuminating smile. 
 Her voice was the softest and the clearest I ever heard, a 
 sigh made most audible speech ; but in her Just an^er, only 
 turned to wrath by the baser faults, the fouler vices, it 
 could roll in organ-tones of thunder, or ring like a silver 
 trumpet. And her eye made the lightning for such thunder, 
 and the sword-thrust that followed the clarion-note of war. 
 
 She could have ruled an empire or a court, this woman 
 who managed the thronged, buzzing Convent with the 
 lifting of her finger, with the softest tone of her soft West 
 of Ireland voice, devoid of all trace of the unbeautif ul 
 brogue, cultured, elegant, refined. As I have said, the 
 lessons that she taught bore great fruit during that red 
 time of war that was coming, and will bear greater fruit 
 hereaiter. 
 
 A little is known to me of the personal history of 
 Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne — in religion known as Mother 
 Mary of Bethlehem — that may be here set down. Some 
 twenty-three years previously that devout Irish Catholic 
 nobleman, the Right Honourable James Dominic Bawne, 
 tenth Earl of Castleclare, Baron Kilhail, Count of the Holy 
 Roman Empire, and D.L. for West Connemara, not con- 
 tented with the possession of three very tall, very hand- 
 some, very popular daughters — the Right Honourable 
 Ladies Bridget-Mary, Alyse, and Alethea Bawne— con- 
 sulted his favourite spiritual director, and, as advised, 
 offered his thin white hand and piously regulated affections 
 to Miss Nancy Mclleevy, niece and heiress of Mclleevy 
 of Mclleevystown, the eminent County Down brewer, so 
 celebrated for his old Irish ales ajid nourishing bottled 
 porter. 
 
 This lady, being sufficiently youthful, of good education
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 67 
 
 and manners, and of like faith with her elderly wooer, under- 
 took, in return for an ancient name and the title of Countess 
 of Castleclare, to find the widower m conjugal affection for 
 the rest of his mortified life, and to do her best to supply 
 him with the grievously-needed heir. There was no wicked 
 fairy at Lord Castleclare's wedding, distinguished by 
 the black-browed beauty of the three bridesmaids, his 
 daughters ; and two years later saw the beacons at the 
 entrance of Ballybawne Harbour, on the West Connemara 
 coast, illuminated by the Castleclare tenants in honour of 
 the arrival of the desired heir, upon whom before his birth 
 so much wealth had been expended by Lord Castleclare in 
 pilgrimages, donations, foundations, and endowments t at, 
 some months after it, his lordship conveyed to his three 
 daughters that, in the interests of the Viscount, to whose 
 swollen gums a gold-set pebble enclosing a pious relic of 
 an early Christian martyr was at that moment affording 
 miraculous relief, he, their father, would be obliged by 
 their providing themselves as soon as possible with hus- 
 bands of suitable rank, corresponding religion, and suflScient 
 means to dispense with the customary marriage portion. 
 
 Lady Alyse saw the justice of her father's views, and 
 married the Duke of Broads, an English Catholic peer ; her 
 younger sister, Alethea, went obediently to the altar with the 
 aged and enormously wealthy Prince de Dignmont-Veziers. 
 Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, eldest and handsomest of the 
 three, pleaded — if a creature so stormy and imperious could 
 be said to plead — a previous engagement to an IneUgible. 
 
 " We have all heard of Captain MUdare of the Grey 
 Hussars, my dear child," said Lord Castleclare, going to 
 the door to make sure that those shrieks that had proceeded 
 from the Viscount's sumptuous suite of apartments, 
 situated at the top of the staircase rising at the end of the 
 corridor leading from his father's library, were stilled at the 
 maternal fountain. Finding that it was so, he ambled back 
 to the centre of the worn Bokhara rug that had been under 
 the prie-Dieu in the oratory of James II. at Dublin Castle, 
 and resumed. " We have all heard of Captain Mildare. 
 At the taking of Ali Musjid — arah ! — at Futtehabad, with 
 Gough — arah ! — and at Ahmed Khel, where Stewart cut 
 up the Afghans so tremendously, Mildare earned great
 
 6S " THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 diatinction as well as the Victoria Cross, which I am 
 delighted to see, in glancing through the Army and Navy 
 Gazette, Her Majesty has been pleased to confer upon him. 
 As a gentleman and a soldier he presents aH that is 
 desirable ; as a member of an old Catholic family, he 
 certainly commands my suffrages. But as the husband of 
 my eldest daughter I cannot look upon a younger son 
 with — arah ! — toleration. Honourable reputation is much, 
 bravery is much, but my son-in-law must possess — arah ! — 
 other — other qualifications." The old gentleman stuttered 
 pitiably. 
 
 " One other qualification, you mean, father, if that term 
 can be given to the possession of a certain amount of 
 money," said Lady Bridget- Mary, standing very straight 
 and looking very proudly at her father. " Will you object 
 to telling me plainly for how much you would be content 
 to sell your stock, with goodwill ?" 
 
 Lord Castleclare was a thin, courtly old gentleman, who 
 had conquered, he humbly trusted, all his passions, except 
 the passion for early Catholic Theological Fathers and the 
 passion for Spanish snuff. But he was stung by the irony. 
 He spilt quite a quantity of choice mixture over the long, 
 ivory-yellow nail of his lean, delicate thumb as he looked 
 consciously aside from the great scornful grey eyes that 
 Judged and questioned and condemned him as a mercenary 
 old gentleman. And he caught himself wishing that this 
 fine fiery creature had been born a boy. He looked back 
 again at his eldest daughter. Her white arms were folded 
 upon her bosom, her pearl-coloured silk evening gown was 
 swept aside from the fire, to whose warmth she held an 
 arched and exquisite foot. Her noble head, with its rich 
 coronet of silken black coils, was bent ; her broad brows 
 had ceased to be stormy. With a half-dreamy smile upon 
 her beautiful firm mouth, she w£is looking at a green 
 flashing ring she wore on the third finger of her left hand. 
 And the sight of her so sent a sudden pang of remembrance 
 leaping through the old man's heart. He forgot his 
 spoiled pinch of snuff, and stepped over to her, and took 
 the hand, and looked at the emerald ring with her in 
 silence. 
 
 "My dear daughter," he said, more simply and more
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 69 
 
 sweetly than Lady Bridget -Mary had ever heard him 
 speak before, " I think you love this brave gentleman 
 sincerely ?" 
 
 His daughter's large, beautifully-shaped hand closed 
 strongly over the old ivory fingers. The great brilliant 
 dark grey eyes looked at him through a sudden mist of 
 tears, though she lifted her head and held it high. She 
 said in a low, clear voice : 
 
 " Father, you remember how my mother loved you ? 
 And Richard is as dear to me as you were to her. I want 
 words when it comes to speaking of so great a thing as the 
 love I feel for him. But it is my life. ... I seem to breathe 
 with his breath, and think his thoughts, and speak with 
 his voice, since we found out our secret, and we are each 
 other's for Time and for Eternity." Then she added, with 
 a lovely smile that had a touch of humour in it : " And he 
 will be quite content to take me with only my share of 
 mother's money." 
 
 " Tschah !" said the old father. " Nonsense ! Of 
 course, St. Barre will be delighted to provide for you. 
 Excuse m© ... I must go." 
 
 St. Barre, in the Castleclare nursery, had set up another 
 squeal. 
 
 Thenceforwards the course of true love might have been 
 expected to run smoothly for Lady Bridget-Mary and her 
 gallant lover. But she had reckoned, not without her 
 host, but without her Grey Hussar. In love there ia 
 always one who loves the more, and Lady Bridget-Mary, 
 that fine, enthusiastic, tempestuous creature, was far from 
 realising that she was less to her Richard than he was to 
 her. The reason was not farther to seek than a few doors 
 off in London, when the Ladies Bawno occupied their 
 sombre old corner-house in Grosvenor Square. It was 
 Lady Bridget-Mary's dearest Lucy and bosom-friend, who 
 had married that handsome, grey-moustached martinet, 
 Richard's Colonel. In Lady Lucy Hawting's drawing-room 
 Lord Castleclare's elder daughter had met Captain Mildare, 
 the hero of Futtehabad and Ahmed Khel. The Colonel's 
 wife was a pretty, delicate, graceful creature, some three 
 years older than her black- browed handsome friend, and 
 much more learned, as, of course, befitted a married
 
 60 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 woman, in the ways of the world. And Lady Lucy saw 
 the budding of young passion in the heart of her junior . . . 
 and it occurred to her that it would furnish a very excellent 
 excuse for the constant presence of Captain Mildare, if ... ! 
 the sweetest and most hmpid women have their turbid 
 depths, their muddy secrets — and she had confided every- 
 thing to dearest Bridget-Mary, except the one thing that 
 mattered ! 
 
 Well ! We all know for what reason Le Roi SoleU 
 addressed himself to the wooing of La Valliere. Louis fell 
 genuinely in love with the decoy, not quite so Richard. 
 But sometimes, when those proud lips meekly gave back 
 his kisses, and that lofty beauty humbled itself to obey 
 his will, he almost wished that he had never met the other. 
 A day came when the secret orchard he had joyed in with 
 that other was threaded with a golden clue, and the hidden 
 bower unveiled to the cold-eyed staring day. 
 
 Captain Mildare and Lady Lucy Hawting went away 
 together, and from Paris Richard wrote and broke to the 
 "girl who loved him, and had been his betrothed wife, the 
 common, vulgar, horrible lictle truth. Bridget-Mary had 
 been deceived by both of them from the very beginning. 
 Estimate the numbing, overwhelming weight of that blow, 
 delivered by a hand so worshipped, upon so proud a heart. 
 Those who saw her, and should have honoured her great 
 grief with decent reticence, say that she was mad for a 
 while ; that she grovelled on the earth in her abandon- 
 ment, calling upon God and man to be merciful and kill her. 
 Pass over this. I cannot bear to think that the mere love 
 of a Richard Mildare should bring that lofty head so low. 
 
 While the scandal lived in the mouths of Society, Lady 
 Bridget-Mary Bawne remained unseen. She was pitied — 
 oh, burning, intolerable shame ! She was commiserated as 
 a catspaw, and sneered at as a dupe. Her sisters and 
 her stepmother, her father and her seven aunts, her relatives, 
 innumerable as stars in the Milky Way, found infinite 
 relish in the comfortable conviction that every one of them 
 had said from the very outset that Bridget-Mary would 
 regret the step she had taken in engaging herself to that 
 Captain Mildare. Sharp claws of steel were added to her 
 scourge of humiliation by a thousand petty liberties taken
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 61 
 
 with this, her great, sacred sorrow, as by letters of sympathy 
 from friends, who wrote as if she had suffered the loss of a 
 pet hunter, or a prize Persian cat. 
 
 A suitor ventured to propose for that white rejected 
 hand, addressing himself with stammering diffidence to 
 Lord Castleclare. A young man, the son of an industrious 
 father who had consolidated the sweat of his brow into 
 three millions and a Peerage, hideously conscious of the 
 raw newness of his title, painfully burdened with the 
 bosom-weight of a genuine, if incoherent love, he seemed 
 to Lady Bridget-Mary's family tolerable, almost desirable, 
 nearly quite the thing. . . . 
 
 " He has boiled Jam into sweetness for the whole civilised 
 world," said the most influential and awful of Lord Castle- 
 clare's seven sisters, a Dowager-Duchess who was Lady-in- 
 Waiting, and exhaled the choicest essence of the Middle 
 Victorian era. She still adhered to the mushroom-shaped 
 straw hats of her youth, trimmed with black velvet rosettes, 
 in the centre of each of which reposed a cut Jet button. 
 She went always voluminously clad in black or shot-silk 
 gowns, their skirts so swelled out by a multiplicity of 
 starched cambric petticoats, adorned with tambour-work, 
 that she was credited with the existence of a crinoline. 
 She had, in marrying her now defunct Scots Duke, embraced 
 Presbyterianism, and though her brother believed her, as 
 far as the next world was concerned, to be lost beyond 
 redemption, he entertained for her Judgment in the matters 
 of this planet a great esteem. 
 
 " He has boiled jam enough to spread over the surface 
 of the civilised globe, and now proposes to hive its con- 
 centrated extract for the benefit of our dearest girl, in the 
 shape of a settlement that a Princess of the Blood might 
 envy. I call the whole thing pretty," pronounced the 
 Dowager, " almost romantic, or it might be made to 
 sound so if a person of superior intelligence and tact would 
 undertake to plead for the young man. Hi a terrible title 
 has quite escaped me. Lord Plumbanks ? Thank you ! 
 It might have been Strawberrybeds, and that would have 
 increased our difficulty. No time should be lost. There- 
 fore, as you, dear Castleclare, with your wife and tlie boy, 
 who, I am gratified to hear, has cut another, are going to
 
 62 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Rome for Holy Week, perhaps you would wish me in 
 your absence to break the ice with Bridget-Mary ?" 
 
 Lord Castleclare's long, solemn face and arched, lugu- 
 brious evebrows bore no little resemblance to the well- 
 known portrait of the conscientious but unlucky Stuart 
 in whose service his ancestor had shed blood and 
 money, receiving in lieu of both, a great many Royal 
 promises, the Eastern carpet that had belonged to the 
 monarcli's Irish oratory, and the fine sard intaglio, brilliant- 
 set, and representing a Calvary, that loyal servant's 
 descendant wore upon his thin ivory middle finger. He 
 twiddled the ring nervously as he said : 
 
 " She has gone into Lenten Retreat at a Convent in 
 Kensington. I — arah ! — I do not think it would be ad- 
 visable to disturb salutary and seasonable meditations 
 with — arah ! — worldly matters at this present moment." 
 
 " Fiddle-faddle !" said the Dowager Duchess sharply. 
 
 Lord Castleclare lifted his melancholy arched eyebrows. 
 
 " * Fiddle-faddle,' my dear Constant'ia 1" 
 
 " You have the expression !" said she. " Young women 
 or Bridget-Mary's age and temperament will think of 
 marriage in convents as much as outside them. Further, 
 I dread delay, entertaining as I do the very certain con- 
 viction that this weak-minded man who has thrown your 
 daughter over will be back, begging Bridget-Mary to for- 
 give him and reinstate him in the possession of her affec- 
 tions before another two months are over our heads. That 
 little cat-eyed, squirrel-haired woman he has run away 
 with, and against whom I have warned our poor dear girl 
 times out of number " — she reallv believed this — " is the 
 sort of pussy, purring creature to make a man feel her 
 claws, once she has got him. Therefore, although my 
 family may not thank me for it, I shall continue to repeat, 
 ' No time is to be lost !' Still, in deference to your religious 
 prejudices, and although I never heard that the CathoUc 
 Church prohibited jam as an article of Lenten diet, we will 
 defer from offering Bridget-Mary the pot until Easter." 
 
 But Easter brought the news that Lady Bridget-Mary 
 had decided upon taking the veil, and begged her father
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR «3 
 
 not to oppose her wishes. The Dowager-Duchess rushed 
 to the Kensington Convent. . . . All the little straw- 
 mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like 
 chaff before the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as 
 she bore down upon the most disappointing, erratic, and 
 self-willed niece that ever brought the grey hairs of a 
 solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demand- 
 ing in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this 
 maniacal decision? Then she drew back, for at first she 
 hardly credited that this tall, pale, quiet woman in the 
 plain, close-fitting, black woollen gown could be Bridget- 
 Mary at all. Realising that it could be nobody else, 
 she began to cry quite hysterically, subsiding upon a 
 Berlin woolwork covered sofa, while her niece rang the 
 bell for that customary Convent restorative, a teaspoonful 
 of essence of orange-flower in a glass of water, and re- 
 turning to the side of her agitated relative, took her hand, 
 encased in a tight one-button puce glove, saying : 
 
 " Dear Aunt Constantia, what is the use of crying ? 
 I have done with it for good." 
 
 " You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully com- 
 posed, and I always was sensitive. And, besides, to find 
 you like this when I expected you to beat your head upon 
 the floor — or was it against the wall, they said ? — and pray 
 to be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, 
 as though anybody would be wicked enough to do it . . .'* 
 
 A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's 
 white cheeks. 
 
 " All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have 
 done, and drink a little of tliis. The Sisters believe it to 
 be calming to the nerves." 
 
 " To naturally calm nerves, I suppose." The Dowager 
 accepted the tumbler. " What a nice, thick, old-fashioned 
 glass !" She sipped. " You hear how my teeth are 
 chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown 
 here in siich a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your 
 father that you have decided to enter the Novitiate at once.'* 
 
 " It is true," said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very 
 tall and dark and straight against the background of the 
 parlour window, that was filled in A\ith ground-glass, and 
 veiled with snowy curtains of starched thread-lace.
 
 64 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " True ! When not ten months ago you declared to 
 me that you would not be a nun for all the world. . . . 
 You begged me to befriend you in the matter of Captain 
 Mildare. I undertook, alas ! that office . . ." 
 
 The DowagerrDuchess blew her nose. 
 
 " A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt ?" 
 
 " ' Dear aunt,' when you are trampling upon my very 
 heart-strings ! And let me tell you, Bridget-Mary, you 
 have always been my favourite niece. ' For all the world, ^ 
 you said with your own lips, ' / mould not be a nun /' Three 
 millions will buy, if not the world, at least a good slice of 
 it. . . . Figuratively, I offer them to you in this out- 
 stretched hand !" The Dowager extended a puce kid glove. 
 " The husband who goes with them is a good creature. 
 I have seen and spoken with him, and the dear Queen 
 regards me as a judge of men. ' Consie,' she has said, ' j^ou 
 have perception . . .' What my Sovereign credits may 
 not my niece beheve ?" 
 
 Lady Bridget-Mary's black brows were stern over the 
 great Joyless eyes that looked out of their sculptured 
 caves upon the world she had bidden good-bye to. But 
 the fine hnes of humour about the wings of the sensitive 
 nostrils and the corners of the large finely-modelled mouth 
 quivered a Httle. 
 
 " Drink a little more orange-flower water, dear, and never 
 tell me who the man is. I do not wish to hear. I decline 
 to hear." 
 
 The Dowager-Duchess lost her temper. 
 
 " That is because you know already, and despise money 
 that is made of Jam. Yet coal and beer are swallowed 
 with avidity by young women who have not forfeited the 
 right to be fastidious. That is the last tiling I wished to 
 say, but you have wrung it from me. Have you no pride ? 
 Do you want Society to say that you have embraced 
 the profession of a Religious, and intend henceforth to 
 employ your talents in teaching sniffy-nosed schoolgirls 
 Greek and Algebra and Mathematics, because this Mildare 
 has Jilted you ? Again, have you no pride ?" She 
 agitated the Britannia-metal teaspoon furiously in the 
 empty tumbler. 
 
 Lady Bridget-Mary took the tumbler away. Why
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 65 
 
 should the humble property of the Sisters be broken 
 because this kind, fussy woman chose to upbraid ? 
 
 " You ask, Have I no pride ?" she said. " Why should 
 I have pride when Our Lord is so humble that He does 
 not disdain to take for His bride the woman Richard 
 Mildare has rejected ?" 
 
 " You are incorrigible, dearest," said the sobbing 
 Dowager-Duchess, as she kissed her, " and Castleclare must 
 use all his influence with the Holy Father to induce the 
 Comtesse de Lutetia to give you the veil. All of you think 
 I am damned, and possibly I may be, but if so I shall be 
 afiforded an opportunity (which will not be mine in this 
 life) of giving Captain Mildare a piece of my mind !" 
 
 So the Dowager-Duchess melted out of the story, and 
 Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne became a nun. 
 
 This is what the Mother-Superior wrote to her kinswoman, 
 with her mobile, eloquent lips folded closely together as 
 slie thought, and her grave eyes following the swift journey 
 of the pen as it formed the sentences : 
 
 " Now let me speak to you of Lynette Mildare. I have 
 never thotbght it necessary to make the slightest disguise of 
 my great partiality for this, the dearest of all the many children 
 given me by Our Lord since I resigned my crown of earthly 
 motherhood to Him." 
 
 She stopped, remembering what another great lady, also 
 a relative of liers, had remarked when it was first made 
 public that she intended to enter the Novitiate : 
 
 " Indeed ! It would seem, then, that you are devoid of 
 ambition, my dear, unlike the other people of your house." 
 
 She had said, paraphrasing a retort previously made : 
 
 " Does it strike you as lack of ambition that one of our 
 family should prefer Christ before any earthly spouse ?" 
 
 What a base utterance that had seemed to her after- 
 wards ! How devoid of the true spirit of the rehgious, 
 how hateful, petty, profane ! But the great lady had been 
 
 5
 
 66 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 greatly struck by it, and had gone about quoting the words 
 everywhere. She, who had spoken them, repented them 
 with tears, and set the memory of them between her and 
 ill-considered, worldly speech, for ever. 
 She wrote on now : 
 
 " She has no vocation for the life of a religious. I doubt 
 her being happy or successful as a teacher here, were I 
 removed from my post by supreme earthly authority, or by 
 death, either contingency being the expression of the Will 
 of God. She Juis a reserved, sensitive nature, quick to feel, 
 and eager to hide what she feels, indifferent to praise or 
 popularity among the many, anxiously desirous to please, 
 passionately devoted where she gives her love. ..." 
 
 The firm mouth quivered, and a mist stole before her 
 eyes. Being human, she took the handkerchief that la}' 
 amongst her papers and wiped the crowding tears away, 
 and went on : 
 
 " / could v)ish, in anticipation of either eventuality named, 
 that provision might now be made for her. Those who love 
 me — yourself 1 know to be among the number — will not, I feel 
 assured, be indifferent to my wish that she should be placed 
 beyond the reach of want." 
 
 She wrote on, knowing that the imphed wish would be 
 observed as a command : 
 
 We liave never been able to trace any persons who might 
 have been her parents— we have never even known her real 
 name. — Those among whom her childhood was spent called 
 her by none. As you know, I gave her m Holy Baptism 
 one that uxis our dear dead, mother's, together with the surname 
 of a lost friend. She is, and must be always, known as 
 Lynette Mildare." 
 
 Her eyes were tearless, and her hand quite steady as she 
 continued : 
 
 " You must not be at all alarmed or shaken by this letter. 
 1 am perfectly well in health, be quite assured ; I trtist I may 
 be spared to carry on my work here foi- many long years to 
 cume. B%d in case it should be otherwise, I u^rite thus : 
 
 " The country is greatly disturbed, in spite of the reassuring
 
 THP: DOP doctor 67 
 
 reports t/uit have been disseminated by the Home Authorities. 
 I do not, and cannot, imagine wluit the official view may he in 
 London at this moment, fmt it is certain tJiat the Transvaal 
 and Free State are preparing for war. Every hour the enmity 
 between the Boers and the English deepens in intensity. It 
 will he to many minds a relief when, the storm hursts. The 
 War Office may thi'ak mexinly of the Africanised Dutchnuin, 
 as a fighting force, hvi the opinion of every loyal Briton in 
 this country is tlmt he is not a foe to he despised, arul that he 
 will shed the last drop of his own hlood and his children's for 
 the sake of his independence. 
 
 " Above the petty interests of greedy capitulists looms the 
 voider question : Slwll the Briton or the Dutchman rule in 
 South Africa ? Here in this insignificant frontier town we 
 wait the sounding of the tocsin. The Orange Free State has 
 openly allied itself with the Transvaal Government. There 
 are said to he several cornrnaridos in laager on the Border. 
 A public meeting of citizens of this town has been held, at 
 which a vote of 'No cmifidence ' in the Dutch Ministers has 
 bexn passed, and an appeal for help has been made to the 
 Government at Cape Town. It is not yet publicly known 
 what the response lias been, if there is any. I think it 
 ominous that all of our Dutch ptipils, save one, should have 
 been hurriedly sent for by their parents before the ending of the 
 term. Knowing my responsibility, I am sending all home, 
 except the few who ha'ppen to be resident in this town, a^id 
 the school will remain closed, at all events, until the outlook 
 ass'umes a less threatening aspect. It is a relief to many that 
 a. Military Commandant has been appointed by the authorities 
 at Cape Town, and that he arrived here a week ago. He is 
 reported to be an officer of energy and decision, and as he ha.^ 
 already set the troops under his command to work at p-utling 
 the town into a condition of defence, and is organising the 
 civil male population into a regiment of armed " 
 
 There was a light knock at the door. She responded 
 with the permission to enter, and a tall, slight girl, with 
 red-brown hair, came in and closed the door, dropping her 
 little cm-tsy to the Mother-Superior. She wore the plain 
 black alpaca uniform of the Convent, with the ribbon of the 
 Headship of the Ked Class, to be resigned when she should 
 
 5—2
 
 68 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 become a pupil-teacher at the opening of the next term ; 
 and the rare and beautiful smile broke over the face of the 
 elder woman as the younger came to her side. 
 
 " Are you busy, Reverend Mother ? Do you want me 
 to go away ?" 
 
 " I shall have finished in another five minutes, and then 
 there wdll be no more letters to write, my child. Sit where 
 you choose ; take a book, and be quiet ; I shall not keep you 
 waiting long." 
 
 The words were few ; the Mother-Superior's manner a 
 little curt in speaking them. But where Lynette chose to 
 sit was on the cheap drugget that covered the beeswaxed 
 boards, with her squirrel-coloured hair and soft cheek 
 pressed against the black serge habit. 
 
 The Mother-Superior wrote on, apparently absorbed, and 
 with knitted brows of attention, but her large, wliite, 
 beautiful left hand dropped half unconsciously to the silken 
 hair and the velvet cheek, and stayed there. 
 
 There is a type of woman the lightest touch of whose 
 hand is subtler and more sweet than the most honeyed 
 kisses of others. And the Mother-Superior was not liberal 
 of caresses. When Lynette turned her lips to the hand, the 
 face that bent over the paper remained as stem and as 
 absorbed as ever. She went on writing, directed, closed, 
 and stamped her letter, and set it aside under a pebble of 
 white quartz, lined and streaked with the faint silvery 
 green of gold. 
 
 " Now, my child 1" 
 
 The girl said, flushing scarlet : 
 
 " Reverend Mother, I have told the Red Class the truth 
 about me !" 
 
 The Mother-Superior started ; dismay was in her face. 
 
 " Why, child ?" 
 
 " I — I mean " — the scarlet flush gave place to paleness — 
 *' that I have no name and no family, and no friends 
 except you, dearest, and the Sisters. That you found me, 
 and took me in, and have kept me out of charity." 
 
 " Was it necessary to have told— any tiling whatever V* 
 
 " I think so, Mother, and I am glad now that I have done 
 it. There will be no need ior deception any more." 
 
 " My daughter, there has never been the slightest
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 69 
 
 deception of any kind whatsoever upon your part, or the 
 part of anyone else who knew. No interests suffered by 
 your keeping your own secret. Who first solicited your 
 confidence in this matter ?" 
 
 " Greta Du Taine." 
 
 " Greta Du Taine." Very cold was the tone of the 
 Mother-Superior. " May I ask how she received the 
 information she had the bad taste to seek ?" 
 
 " Mother — she took it — not quite as I expected." 
 
 '* Yet she and you have always been friends, my child." 
 
 Lynette rose up upon her knees. The long arm of the 
 Mother-Superior went round the sHght figure that leaned 
 against her, and in the sudden gesture was a passion of 
 protecting motherhood. 
 
 " Mother, she does not wish to be my friend any longer. 
 She was quite horrified to remember that she had invited 
 me to stay with her at the Du Taine place near Johannes- 
 burg. But she said that if I liked she would not tell the 
 class." 
 
 " I have no fear of the rest of the class. They have 
 honour, and good feeling, and warm hearts. What was 
 your reply to Greta's obliging proposition ?" 
 
 " I told her that the sooner everybody knew the better ; 
 and I went out of the room, and came to you — as I always 
 do — as I always have done, ever since " 
 
 Her voice broke in tlie first sob. 
 
 " Ah /" cried the voice of the mother-heart she crept to, 
 as the long arms in the loose black serge sleeves went out 
 and folded her close, " ah, if I might he always here for you 
 to run to ! But God knows best /" 
 
 She said aloud, gently putting the girl away : 
 
 " Well, tlie ordeal is over, and will not have to be gone 
 through again. And for the future, bear in mind that 
 every human being has a right to regard his own business — 
 or hers — as private, and to exclude the curious from affairs 
 which do not concern them." She reached out quick tender 
 hands, and framed the wistful, sensitive face in them, and 
 added, in a lower tone : " For a little told may beget in them 
 the desire to know more. And always remember this : that 
 the only just claim to your perfect confidence in all that 
 ooncerns your past life, and I say all \rith meaning " — the
 
 70 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 girl's -Riiite eyelids fell under her earnest gaze, and the 
 delicate lips began to quiver — " will rest in the man — the 
 honourable and brave and worthy gentleman — who I pray 
 may one day be your husband." 
 
 "No !" she cried out sharply as if in terror, and the 
 slight figure was shaken by a sudden spasm of trembling. 
 " Oh, Mother, no ! Never, never !" 
 
 With a gesture of infinite pity and tenderness the Mother 
 drew her close, and hid the shame-dyed face upon her bosom, 
 and whispered, with her lips upon the red-brown hair : 
 
 " My lamb, my dearest, my poor, poor child ! It shall be 
 never if you choose, Lynette. But make no rash vows, no 
 determinations that 3^ou think irrevocable. Leave the 
 future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put old 
 thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most 
 resolutely away from you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant 
 all innocent creatures of His to be. And do not be tempted 
 to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has 
 acted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind 
 that shine in marshy places, a better Light will shine upon 
 her path one day. I know that you have real affection for 
 her . . . though I must own I have always wondered in 
 what lay the secret of her popularity in the school ?" 
 
 " She is so amusing — and so pretty, Mother." 
 
 " She is exquisitely pretty. And beauty is one of the 
 most excellent among all the gifts of God. Our sense of 
 what is beautiful and the delight we have in the perception 
 of it must linger with us from those days when Angels 
 walked visibly on earth, and talked with the children of 
 men. A lovely soul in a lovely body, nothing can be more 
 excellent, but such a body does not always cage what 
 St. Coluinb called ' the bird of beauty.' And we must not 
 be swayed or led by outward and perishable things, that 
 are illusions, and deceits, and snares." 
 
 The Mother-Superior reached out a long arm, and took a 
 solid leather- bound, red-edged volume from the table, and 
 opened it at a page marked by a flamingo's feather, whose 
 delicate pink faded at the tip into rosy- white. 
 
 " I was reading this a little while before you came in. 
 If you were not a little dunce at Greek, you would be able 
 to construe the classic author for yourself."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 71 
 
 " But I am a dunce, dear, and so I leave you to read him 
 to me," said Lynetto triumphantly. 
 
 " Well, balance this heavy book, and listen." 
 She read : 
 
 " ' When first the Father of the Immortals fashioned with 
 his divirie hands (he huma.n shape : 
 
 " ^ An image first he made of red clay from Ida, tempered 
 with pure water from the stream, of Xanthos, and wine from 
 the aolden kylix home hy heautifid Ganymede, and it was 
 godlike to took upon as a thinq fashioned hy the hands of the 
 god. But the clay ivas not tempered sufficienlly and warped 
 in the drying. Then Zeus Pater fashioned another shape 
 with m^ore cunning, and this was tempered well and warped 
 not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living 
 wul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine 
 gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his 
 forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision of the 
 Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image received 
 that which was meant for the perfect one. 
 
 " ' A7id Zeus Pater, being angered, said : " See what thy 
 malice has wrought. Behold, a beautiful soul has been set 
 in a body unbeauteoUrS and through thine act, and god though 
 I be, I cannot take back the gift that I have given." Then into 
 the other image of Man the divine maker breathed a soul. 
 Bui Zeus being wearied with his labours, and angered by the 
 craft of Hephaistos, it was less pure than the first. And so 
 two men came into being. 
 
 " ' And he whose body had been fashioiied perfectly and 
 without flaw by the Jiands of the divine craftsman, walked the 
 earth with gracious mien. Fair-eyed was he, with locks like 
 clustering vine-tendrils, and cheeJcs rosy as the apples of Love ; 
 hut the soul of this man was cunning, and he rejoiced in evils 
 and cruelties, and deceits and mockeries were upon his lips. 
 
 ''''And he whose image had warped in the drying ivas un- 
 heauiifal in body and swart to look upon, as though blackened 
 by the forge-fires of Hephaistos, but he dealt uprightly and 
 hated evil, and on his lips there was no guile, but faithfulness 
 and trulh. 
 
 " ^ And he who was imperfect in body teas yet fairer in 
 the eyes of Zeus Pater than his brother ; because there dwelt 
 within him a heavieoua aovl.' "
 
 72 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " And yet, Mother, if your beautiful soul had not been 
 i^iven beautiful windows to look out at, and a beautiful 
 aiouth to kiss me or scold me with, and beautiful hands to 
 aold, it would have been a beastly shame !" 
 
 Is there a woman h'ving who can resist such sweet 
 daughterly flatteries ? This was very much a woman, and 
 very much a mother, if very much a nun. She kissed the 
 mouth distilling such dear honey. 
 
 " This, not for the compliment, but because it is seven 
 years to-day since I found you, lying like some poor little 
 strayed lamb on the veld, under the burning sun." 
 
 " That was my real birthday, dearest, dearest ..." 
 
 The girl pressed closer to her with dumb, vehement 
 affection, as though she would have grown to the bosom 
 that had been her shield since then. 
 
 " On that day a little later, when I looked down and 
 you looked up with big eyes that begged for love, I 
 knew that we had found each other. And we have never 
 lost each other since, I think 1" 
 
 Slie smiled radiantly iato the loving eyes. 
 
 " Never, my Mother. But if we did ... if we are ever 
 to be estranged or parted, it would be better ... oh ! it 
 would be better if you had passed by in the waggon, and 
 left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs had done 
 the rest." 
 
 TJie Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, 
 and speaking sternly : 
 
 " Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so. 
 Holy Baptism has been yours, and Confirmation, and you 
 have shared with His Faithful in the Body of Christ. . . . 
 Never let me hear you say that again !" 
 
 " Mother, I promise you, you never shall. But I had a 
 dream last night that was most vivid and strange and 
 awful. It has haunted me ever since." 
 
 The Mother Superior started, for she also had had a 
 strange dream. Of that vision had been born the written 
 letter that now lay under the quartz paper-weight — the 
 letter that was to be sent, with others, by the next English 
 mail that should go out from Gueldersdorp, which said mail, 
 being intercepted h>y the Boers, was not for many months 
 to reach its destination. Supposing it had, this story need
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 73 
 
 never have been written, or else another would have been 
 written in its place. 
 
 " Dear heart, I do not think that it is good or useful to 
 brood upon such things, or to relate them. And the Church 
 forbids us to take account of mere dreams, or in any way 
 be swayed by them." 
 
 " That has always puzzled me. Because, you know . . . 
 supposing St. Joseph had refused to credit a dream ? . . ." 
 
 " There are dreams and dreams, my dear. And the 
 heavenly visions of the Saints are not to be confounded 
 with our trivial subconscious memories. Besides, sweets 
 and fruits and pastry consumed in the seniors' dormitory 
 at night are not only an infringement of school rules, but 
 an insult to the digestion." 
 
 " Mother, how did you find out ?" cried Lynette. There 
 was something very like a dimple in the bleached olive of 
 the sweet worn cheek, lurking near the edge of the close 
 coif, and a twinkle of laughter in the deep grey eyes that 
 you thought were black until you had learned better. 
 
 " Well, though you may not find it easy to believe, I 
 was once a girl at a boarding-school, and I possibly remember 
 how we usually celebrated a breaking-up. There is the 
 washing-bell ; the pupils' tea-bell will ring directly ; you 
 must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of this 
 unpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon 
 walk yesterday ? Sister Cleophee and Sister Francis-Clare 
 have not given me a very definite account." 
 
 Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red. 
 
 " Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation 
 Ground." 
 
 Upon the great brows of the Mother-Superior sat the 
 majesty of coming tempest. Her white hand clenched, 
 her tone was awfully stern : 
 
 " Who were ' they ' ?" 
 
 " Some drunken Boers and store-boys — at least, I think 
 they were drunk — and some Dutch railway-men. They 
 cried shame on the Dutch girls for learning from vile 
 English idolaters. Then more men came up and joined 
 them. They threw stones, and threatened to duck Sister 
 Cleophee and the two other Sisters in the river. And they 
 might have tried to, though we senior girls got round them —
 
 74 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 at least, some of us did — and said they should try that on 
 us first " 
 
 " That was courageous." 
 
 " We " — Lynette laughed a little nervously — " we were 
 awfully frightened, all the same." 
 
 " My dear, without fear there would have been no 
 courage. Then I am told an English officer interposed ?" 
 
 " He was coming from the direction of the Hospital — a 
 tall thin man in Service khaki, with a riding-sjambok 
 under his arm. But it would have been as good as a 
 sword if he had used it on those men. When he lifted it 
 in speaking to them they huddled together like sheep.' 
 
 " You have no idea who he was, of course ?" 
 
 " I do not know his name, but I heard one of the Boers 
 say, ' That slim duyvel with the sjambok is the new Military 
 Commandant.' Another officer was with him, much 
 yoiuiger, taller, and with fair hair. He " 
 
 " 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 white- 
 washed, tile-paved passages, 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 after- 
 wards 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.' "
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 75 
 
 " 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 towermg 
 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 out- 
 spread bat-wings, a Shadow infinitely more terrible than 
 any of these. It was rather a poor copy of a modem 
 picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of the 
 origmal 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 
 nobler 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 w oollen 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 noble-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 uncon- 
 cealed by the short-clipped moustache : 
 
 " This is a brave man."
 
 76 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances, 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 assured Mm, " with 
 the exception of those whose parents reside in the town, 
 or who have no Uving 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 tlie 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 marslialled in 
 Convent fashion against the varnished skirting-board. 
 
 " They are not fixtures," she said, with quiet amusement 
 at his evident reUef, 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 comer of the liigh mantelsheK, 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 kliaki 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."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 77 
 
 " 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 liid it like a diplomat. 
 
 " Ma'am, it is so. The public notice was posted in the 
 town this morning. Forces of Boers are massed on the 
 West Natal and East Baraland borders, waiting untO the 
 British fire a shot. Their secret orders are to wait that signal, 
 but some unlooked-for event may cause them to anticipate 
 these. . . . And we shall be wise to prepare for eventu- 
 alities. For myself, having been despatched by the British 
 Goverrmient 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 deKvered. 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 tliis because it 
 is my duty. I am not naturally unsociable, or bearish, 
 or a surl}^ misogynist. Rather the contrary. Quite the 
 contrary." 
 
 She remembered a slim, bo3dsh, young lieutenant of 
 Hussars with wliom 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,
 
 78 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 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 
 tliat 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, 
 " wluch 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 Johnstouii, 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 camiot, 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 opportimity 
 is yours." 
 
 He folded his arms^ having spoken tlus curtly and 
 crisply. The Mother-Superior rose up out of her chair. 
 It seemed to him as though she would never have done 
 
 II
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 79 
 
 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 ofl&cial 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 assure you that I have never been oth3rwise," she 
 said, " since the begimiing 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 lingers of the 
 gloved hand with the lean, brown, bare one. 
 
 " I anticipate very shortly the outbreak of hostilities." 
 He had quite forgotten that he was talking to a member of 
 the squeaking sex. " 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, 
 
 ((
 
 80 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 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 shell 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 assure you ! — will be mustered against our 
 crazy pieces, only fit for the scrap-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, wdth that smile upon her hps, 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 ? 
 
 " Your Convent, ma'am, unluckily for your Community, 
 happens to be, if not the biggest, at least the most con- 
 spicuously situated building in the place, lying as it does 
 at a distance of four hundred yards from the town, on the 
 north-east side. Like the Hospital, of course, it will be under 
 the protection of the Red -Cross Flag. But the Boer is 
 not chivalrous. He does not object to killing women or 
 sick people, nor does he observe with any standing scrupu- 
 lousness the Geneva Convention. Any object that shows 
 up nicely on the skyline is good enough to pound away 
 at, and the Red-Cross Flag has often helped him to get a 
 satisfactory range. If tiiey bombard us, as I have reason 
 to beUeve they will, you'll have iron and lead in tons poured 
 through these walls."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 81 
 
 She said : 
 
 " When they fall about our ears. Colonel, it will be tim« 
 to leave them !" 
 
 He adored a gallant spirit, and here was one indeed. 
 
 " Ma'am, I am disarmed, since you take things in this 
 way." 
 
 " It is the only way in which to take them," she said. 
 " There should be no panic in the hearts of those who wait 
 on the Divine Will. Moreover, I should wish you to under- 
 stand in case of siege, and an extra demand upon the staffs 
 of the Town and Field Hospitals, that we are all — or nearly 
 all — certificated nurses, and would willingly place our 
 services at your disposal. Let me hope that you will 
 call upon us without hesitation if the necessity should 
 arise." 
 
 He thanked her, and had taken leave, when he asked with 
 diffidence if he might be permitted to see the Convent 
 chapel. She consented willingly, and passed on before, 
 tall and stately, and moving with long, light, even steps, 
 her flowing serge draperies whispering over the tiled 
 passages. The chapel was at the end of a long white- 
 washed corridor upon the airy floor above. His keen 
 glance took in every feature of the simple, spotless little 
 sanctuary as the tall, black-clad figure swept noiselessly 
 to the upper end of the aisle between the rows of rush- 
 seated chairs, and knelt for an instant in veneration of 
 the Divine Presence hidden in the Tabernacle. 
 
 " Unfortunately situated !" he muttered, standing stiffly 
 by the west door. Then he glanced riglit and left, a thumb 
 and finger in the breast-pocket of his jacket, feeHng for a 
 worn Httle pigskin purse. As he passed out before her at 
 the motion, and she mechanically dipped her fingers in the 
 holy-water font, and made the Sign of the Cross before she 
 closed the chapel door, she saw that he held out to her a 
 five- pound note. 
 
 " Ma'am, I am not a Roman Catholic, but . . ." 
 
 " There is no box for alms," she said, pausing outside 
 the shut door, while the lay- Sister waited at the passage 
 end, " as this is only a private chapel," 
 
 " I observed that, ma'am. I am, as I have said, a 
 Protestant. But in the behalf of a dear friend of mine, a 
 
 6
 
 82 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 British officer, of your own faith, who I have reason to 
 believe died \vithout benefit of his clergy, perhaps %vith this 
 you would arrange that a service should be held in memory 
 of the dead ?" 
 
 " I understand," said the Mother-Superior. " You 
 suggest that Holy Mass should be ofPered for the repose of 
 your friend's soul ? Well, I will convey your offering to 
 our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it." 
 
 " I do desire it — or, ratlier, poor Mildare would." 
 
 An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid 
 floors, through the foundations of the Convent, into 
 unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her eyes closed ; she 
 forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her sinking 
 forces. Unseen she put out one hand beliind her, and 
 leaned it for support against the iron-studded oak timbers 
 of the chapel door. But his eyes were not upon her as he 
 went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, worst blow. 
 
 " I said, ma'am, that my dead friend . . . the name is 
 Richard Mildare, Captain, late of the Grey Hussars. . . . 
 You are ill, ma'am. I have been inconsiderate, and over- 
 tired you." He had become aware that great dark circles 
 had drawn themselves round her eyes, and that even her 
 lips were colourless. She said, with a vaUant effort : 
 
 " I assure you, with thanks, that you have been most 
 considerate, and that I am perfectly well. Are you at 
 liberty to tell me, sir, the date of Captain Mildare's death ? 
 For I know one who was also his friend, and would " — a 
 spasm passed over her face — " take an interest in hearing 
 the particulars." 
 
 " Ma'am, you shall know what I know myself. About 
 twenty years ago Captain ISIildare, owing to certain unhappy 
 circumstances, social, and not pecuniary ones, sent in his 
 papers, sold his Commission, and left England." 
 
 She waited. 
 
 " I heard of him in Paris. Then, later, I heard from 
 him. He was with her here in South Africa. She was a 
 woman for whom he had given up everything. They 
 travelled continually, never resting long anywhere, he, and 
 she. and — their child. She died on the trek and he buried 
 her." 
 
 " Yea ?"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 83 
 
 The voice was curiously toneless. 
 
 " Where he buried her has only recently come to my 
 knowledge. It was at a kind of veld tavern in the 
 Orange Free State, a shanty in the grass -country between 
 Driepoort and Xioonfontein, where travellers can get a bad 
 lodging, and bad liquor, and worse company. " Trekkers 
 Plaats ' they call the place now. But when my friend was 
 there it was known as the ' Free State Hotel.' " 
 
 Her lips shut as if to keep out bitter, drowning waters ; 
 her face was white as wax within the starched blue-white 
 of the nun's coif ; his slow sentences fell one by one upon 
 her naked heart, and ate their way in like vitriol. Quite 
 well, too well, she knew what was coming. 
 
 "■ He dug her grave wrh. Ids own hands. He meant to 
 have a clergyman read the Burial Service over it, but 
 before that could be arranged for he also died — of fever, 
 I gather, though'^jnothing is very clear, except that the 
 two graves are there. I liave seen them, and have also 
 ascertained that whatever property he left was appro- 
 priated by the scoundrel who kept the hotel, and afterwards 
 sold it, and cleared out of South Africa ; and that the 
 child is not to be found. God knows what has become of 
 her ! The man who robbed her father may have murdered 
 or sold her — or taken her to England. A man bearing his 
 name was mixed up in a notorious case tried at the Central 
 Criminal Court five years ago. And the case, which ruined 
 a well-known West End surgeon, involved the death of a 
 young woman. I trust the victim may not have been the 
 unhappy girl herself. My solicitors in London have been 
 instructed to make inquiries towards the removal of that 
 doubt. . . ." 
 
 If those keen eyes of his had not been averted, he must 
 have seen the strong shuddering that convulsed the 
 woman's frame, and the spasm of agony that wrung the 
 lips she pressed together, and the glistening damps of 
 anguish that broke out upon the broad wliite foreliead. 
 To save her Ufe she could not have said to him, " She whom 
 you seek is here !" But a voice wailed in her heart, more 
 piercingly than Rachel's, and it cried : " Richard's 
 daughter ! She is Richard's daughter ! The homeless 
 thing, the blighted child I found upon the veld, and nursed 
 
 6— i
 
 84 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 back to life and happiness and forgetfulness of a hideous 
 past ; whom I took into my empty heart, and taught to 
 call me Mother. , . . She is the fruit of my own betrayal ! 
 the offspring of the friend who deceived and the man who 
 deserted me !" 
 
 The visitor was going on, his grave gaze still turned aside. 
 " Of course, the age of the unhappy girl whose death 
 brought about the trial I speak of — everything depends upon 
 that. Mildare's daughter was a child of three years old 
 when she lost father and mother. If aUve to-day she would 
 be nineteen years of age. I wish it had been my great good 
 fortune to trace and find her. She should have had the 
 opportunity of growing up to be a noble woman. In this 
 place, if it might have been, and with an example like 
 yours before her eyes . . . ma'am, good-afternoon." 
 
 He bowed to her, and went away with short, quick, 
 even steps, following the lay-Sister who was to take him 
 to the gate. 
 
 She tottered into the chapel, and sank down before the 
 altar, and strove to pray. Her mind was an eddying 
 blackness shot with the Uvid glare of electric fires. Her 
 faith rocked like a palm in tlie tempest ; her soul was tossed 
 across raging billows like a vessel in the grip of the cyclone. 
 Being so great, slie suffered greatly ; being so strong, she 
 had strong passions to wrestle with and to subdue. Awhile, 
 like that other Mary, who, unlike her, was a fleshly sinner, 
 she strove, rent as it seemed to her, by seven devils. And 
 then she fell down prone at her Master's nail-pierced Feet, 
 and found there at last the healing gift of tears. 
 
 XII 
 
 Emiqeation Jane, the new under-housemaid on trial at 
 the Convent, had a gathering on the top Joint of the first 
 finger of the hand that burned to wear Walt Slabberts' 
 betrothal-ring, and the abscess being ripe for the lancet, 
 she had an extra afternoon in the week to get it attended to. 
 She found Walt waiting at the street-comer under the lamp- 
 post, and her heart bounded, for by their punctuality at
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 86 
 
 the trysting-place you know whether they are serious in 
 their intentions towards you, or merely carrying on, and 
 her other young men had invariably kept her waiting. 
 This new one was class, and no mistake. 
 
 " Watto, Walt !" she hailed Joyously. 
 
 Her Walt uttered a guttura.l greeting in the Taal, and 
 displayed uncared-for and moss-grown teeth in the smile 
 that Emigration Jane found strangely fascinating. To the 
 eye that did not survey Walt through the rose-coloured 
 glasses of affection he appeared merely as a high-shouldered, 
 slab-sided young Boer, whose cheap store-clothes bagged 
 where they did not crease, and whose boots curled upwards 
 at the toes with mediaeval effect. His cravat, of a lively 
 green, patterned with yellow rockets, warred with his 
 tallowy complexion ; his drab-coloured hair hung in 
 clumps ; he was growing a beard that sprouted in reddish 
 tufts from the tough hide of his Jaws, leaving bare patches 
 between, like the karroo. The Slabborts was an assistant- 
 clerk at the Gueldersdorp Railway-Station Parcels-Office, 
 and his wddowed mother, the Tante Slabberts, took in 
 washing from Uitlanders, who are mad enough to change 
 their underwear with frequency, and did the cleaning at 
 the Gerevormed Kerk at Rustenberg, a duty which 
 involves the emptying of spittoons. Her boy was her Joy 
 and pride. 
 
 Young Walt, the true Boer's son that he was, did not 
 entertain the idea of marrying Emigration Jane. The 
 child of the Amalekite might never be brought home as 
 bride to the Slabberts roof. But all the same, her style, 
 which was that of the Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, 
 London, N.W., and her manners, which were easy, and her 
 taste in dress, which was dazzling, attracted him. As 
 regards their spoken intercourse, it had been hampered by 
 the Slabbertian habit of pretending only a limited acquaint- 
 ance with the barbarous dialect of England. But a young 
 man who conversed chiefly by grunts, nudges, and signs 
 was infinitely more welcome than no young man at all, and 
 Emigration Jane knew that the language of love is uni- 
 versal. She had sent him a lovely letter in the Taal making 
 this appointment, causing his pachydermatous hide to 
 know the needle-prick of curiosity. For only last Sabbath
 
 86 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 she had spoken nothing but the English, and a young 
 woman capable of mastering Boer Dutch in a week might 
 be made useful in a variety of ways — some of them 
 tortuous, all of them secret, as the Slabbertian ways were 
 wont to be. 
 
 He advanced to her, without the needless ceremony of 
 touching his hat, eagerly asking how she had acquired her 
 new accomplishment ? 
 
 But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come 
 from the Maison Cluny, and cost a hundred francs, and 
 had been smartened up ^dtll a bunch of pink and yellow 
 artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of a cheerful 
 blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal 
 had written for her. The bilingual young woman who 
 was to be of such use to Walt had only existed in his 
 dreams. And yet — the disappointing creature was ex- 
 ceeding fair. 
 
 " Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy !" giggled 
 Emigration Jane, deliciously conscious that those rather 
 muddy orbs were glued on her admiringly 
 
 The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and 
 rolled over the horsehair frame she had learned to call a 
 " Pompydore " ; the front locks, usually confined in the 
 iron cages called " curlers," frizzled wonderfully about her 
 moist, crimson face. She had on a " voylet " delaine 
 skirt, with three bias bands round the bottom, and a 
 " blowse " of transparent muslin stamped with floral 
 devices. Her shoes were of white canvas ; her stockings 
 pink and open-worked ; her gloves were of white thread, 
 and had grown grey in the palms with agitation. One of 
 them firmly grasped a crimson " sunshyde," with green 
 and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of the stick. 
 
 The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking 
 a squeal from the enchantress. 
 
 " Mind me bad finger ! Lumme ! you did give us a 
 squeeze an' a 'arf." 
 
 " K I shall to hurt you I been sorry. Miss !" apologized 
 ilie Slabbert. 
 
 " All righto, Dutchy !" smiled Emigration Jane. " Don't 
 tear your features." She bestowed a glance of almost 
 vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl in turkey-red cotton
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 87 
 
 twill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woolly 
 hair.' At another ebony female who advanced along t}).e 
 sidewalk pushing a white baby in a perambulator she 
 tossed her head. " Funny," she observed, " when I was 
 'ome I used to swaller all the tales what parsons kep' 
 pitchin' about that black lot 'aving souls like me an' you. 
 When I got out 'ere, an' took my fust place at Cape Town, 
 an' 'eard the IMissis and tlie Master continual say in', 
 ' Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen's work ; leave 
 it to the Caffy,' or ' Call the 'Ottintot gal,' I felt quite 'urt 
 for 'em. Upon me natural, I did ! But when I knoo 
 these blackies a bit better, I didn't make no more bones. 
 Monkeys, they are, rigged up in brown 'olland an' red braid, 
 wot 'ave immytated 'uman beings till they've come to talk 
 langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our 
 meanings. 'Ow do you Uke me dress, Walty dear ? An' 
 me 'at ? That chap what passed with the red mustash 
 said to 'is friend as I looked a bit of fair all right, and no 
 mistake. But I'd rather 'ear you say so nor 'im if you 
 'ad enough English to do it with. Wot do I care about 
 the perisher along of you ?" 
 
 It Avas hard work to talk for two. and keep the ball of 
 courtsliip rolling after the approved fashion of Kentish 
 Town, when tlie slouching young Boer would only grunt in 
 reply, or twinkle at her out of his piggish eyes. But 
 Emigration Jane had come out to South Africa, hearing 
 that places at five shillings a day were offered you by 
 employers, literally upon their knees, and that husbands 
 were thick as orange-peel and programmes on tlie pit- 
 floor of the Britanniar Theayter, 'Oxton, or the Camden 
 Varieties on the morning after a Bank HoHday. Slie had 
 left her first situation at Cape Town, being a girl of spirit, 
 because her mistress had neglected to introduce her to 
 eligible gentlemen acquaintances, as the pleasant-spoken 
 agent at the Emigrants' Information Office in Cheapside, 
 the young gentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, 
 waxed moustache, and diamond tie-pin had made a deep 
 impression upon the susceptible heart of his client, had 
 assured Jane the South African employer would take an 
 early opportunity of doing. The reality had not corre- 
 sponded with fche glowing picture. The employer had
 
 88 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not appeared. 
 Ephemeral flu-tations there had been, with a postman, with 
 a trooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American 
 bar-tender. But not one of these had breathed of indis- 
 soluble union, though each had wanted to borrow her 
 savings. And Emigration Jane had " bin 'ad " in that 
 way before, and gone witli her bleeding heart and depleted 
 Post Office Savings-book before the fat, sallow magistrate 
 at the Regent's Road County Court, and winced and 
 smarted under liis brutal waggeries, only to learn that the 
 appropriator of her womanly affections and her fifteen 
 sovereigns had already three wives. 
 
 The brute, the 'artless beast ! Emigration Jane won- 
 dered at herself, she did, as 'ad bin such a reg'ler soft as 
 to be took in by one to whom she never referred in speech 
 except as " That There Green." That she softened to him 
 in her weaker moments, in spite of his remembered appetite 
 for savings and his regrettable multiplicity of wives, gave 
 her the fair hump. That something in the expression 
 of this new one's muddy eyes recalled the loving leer 
 of "That There Green," she admitted to herself. 
 Womanly anxiety throbbed in the bosom, not too coyly 
 hidden by the pneumonia blouse, as the couple passed the 
 gilded portals of a public bar, and the Slabberts' elbow 
 was thrust painfully into her side, as its owner said 
 heavily : 
 
 " Have you thirst ?" 
 
 She coyly owned to aridity, and they entered the saloon, 
 kept by a Dutchman who spoke English. Two ginger-beers 
 with a stick of Hollands were supplied, and the stick of 
 Slabberts was as the rod of Moses to the other stick for 
 strength and power. But as Emigration Jane daintily 
 sipped the cooling beverage, giggling at the soapy bubbles 
 that snapped at her nose, the restless worm of anxiety kept 
 no gnawing under the flowery " blowse." Too well did she 
 know the ways of young men who hospitably ask you if 
 you're thirsty, and 'ave you in, whether or no, and order 
 drinks as liberal as lords, and then discover that they're 
 short of the bob, and borrow from you in a joking way. . . . 
 Her heart bounded as the Slabberts put his hand in his 
 pocket, saying •
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 89 
 
 " Wat kost het ?" 
 
 The Dutch bar-keeper, who seemed to know Slabberts, 
 answered in English, looking at Emigration Jane ; 
 
 " Half a doUar." 
 
 Half a dollar is South African for eighteenpence. Slab- 
 berts rattled something metallic in his trousers-pocket, 
 and said something rapidly in the Taal. The Dutch bar- 
 keeper leaned across the counter, and said to Emigration 
 Jane : 
 
 " Your young man has not got the money." 
 
 They were all, all alike. A tear rose to her eye. She 
 bravely dried it Adth a finger of a white cotton glove, and 
 produced her purse, an imitation crocodile-leather and sham- 
 silver aflfair, bought in Kentish Town, where you may walk 
 through odorous groves of dried haddocks that are really 
 whiting, and Yarmouth bloaters that never were at 
 Yarmouth, and purchase whole Rambler roses, the latest 
 Paris style, for threepence, and try on feather-boas at 
 two-and-eleven-three, plucked from the defunct carcase of 
 the domestic fowl. She paid for the drinks with a florin, 
 and it was quite Hke old times when Slabberts calmly 
 pocketed the sixpence of change. The bar-keeper leaned 
 over to her again, and said, surrounding her wdth a confi- 
 dential atmosphere of tobacco and schnaps : 
 
 " He is a good man, that young man of yours, and gets 
 much money. He means to give you a nice present 
 by-and-by." 
 
 Her grateful heart overflowed to this friendly patronage. 
 She showed the bar-keeper her gathered finger, and said it 
 did 'urt a treat. She expected it would 'urt worse before 
 Dr. de Boursy-Wilhams — " 'adn't 'e got a tofE's name ?" — 
 'ad done with it. 
 
 " You go to that Engelsch doktor on Harris Street, eh ?" 
 said the bar-keeper, spitting dexterously. 
 
 " Sister Tobias — that's the nun wot 'ousekeeps at the 
 Convent — give me a order to see 'im, to 'ave me finger 
 larnced," explained Emigration Jane. " Ain't 'e all 
 right ?" 
 
 " Right enough," said the bar-keeper, winking at the 
 Slabberts, and adding something in the Taal, that provoked 
 chuckles among the bystanders and called forth a fine display
 
 90 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 of neglected teeth on the part of the personage addressed. 
 " There are plenty other Engelsch will be wishing to be as 
 right, oh, very soon ! For De Boursy -Williams, he has sent 
 his wife and his two daughters away on the train for 
 Cape Town yesterday morning, and he has gone after them 
 t] lat same night, and lie has left all his patients to the Dop 
 Doctor." 
 
 " Some red-necked baboons are wiser than others," said 
 the Slabberts in the Taal. and there was a hoarse laugh, and 
 tlie humorist turned his big heavy body away, and became 
 one of a crowd of otiier Dutchmen, who were, in veiled 
 hints and crooked allusions, discussing the situation across 
 the Border. Emigration Jane was not sensitive to the 
 electricity in the atmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and 
 was perfect in the etiquette of the outing, which, when 
 the young woman has been supplied with the one regula- 
 tion drink, stands her up in the corner like an umbrella 
 in dry weather as long as her young man is a-talking to 
 'is pals. 
 
 " So," the bar-keeper went on, " if you shall want that 
 bad finger of yours looked to, you will have to wait until 
 the Dop Doctor wakes up. He is a big man, who can 
 drink as much as three Boers. . . . He came in this morning 
 to get drunk, and you shall not wake Imn now if you fire 
 off a riJ3e at his ear. But he will get up presently and shake 
 himself, and then he will be quite steady ; you would not 
 guess how drunk he had been unless you had seen. . . . He 
 is over there, sleeping on that table in the corner, and it 
 will be very bad for the man who shall wake him up. For, 
 look you, that Dop Doctor is a duyvel. I have seen him 
 break a man like a stick between his hands for nothing but 
 cutting up a tliieving monkey of a httle Kaffir with the 
 sjambok. And he took the verdoemte tiling home where 
 he lives, they say, and strapped up its black hide with 
 plaster, and set its arm as if it had been a child of Christians. 
 But every Engelschman is mad. Groot Brittanje breeds a 
 nation of madmen." 
 
 The saloon got fuller and fuller. The air solidified with 
 the Taal and the tobacco, and otlier things less pleasant. 
 It was not the hour for a crowd of customers, but nobody 
 had seemed to be working much of late. Tb«y were all
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 91 
 
 Transvaalers and Free Staters, tradesmen of the town, or 
 Boers from outlying farms, and not a man there but was 
 waiting a certain signal to clear out and leave Gueldersdorp 
 to her fate, or remain in the place on a salary paid by the 
 Republics as a spy. The English customer who came in 
 knew at one whiff of the thick atmosphere that it was 
 unhealthy, and ii the man happened to be alone, he 
 ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If 
 he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his 
 conversation to his countrymen, and left witli a certain 
 degree of swagger, and without the appearance of undue 
 haste. 
 
 Once the swing-doors of the saloon opened to admit a 
 short, spare, hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, 
 whose insignificant Cockney countenance was splashed 
 with orange-coloured freckles of immense size. Between 
 his thin anaemic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. And 
 Emigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, 
 recognized the pert, sharp, sallow face seen over the sleeve 
 of a large burgher's outstretched arm. With some trouble 
 she caught the eye of the short, pale young man, and he 
 instantly became a red one. To reach her was difficult, 
 but he dived and wriggled his way across the saloon, 
 wedging his frail person between the blockish bodies with a 
 cool address that reminded her of the first night of a " noo 
 show " at tlie Camden " Theayter," and the queue outside 
 the gallery door. 
 
 " 'inio, 'ullo ! Thought 1 reckonised you, Miss." He 
 touched his cheap imitation Panama with swaggering 
 gallantry, and winked. " But seeing you eight sizes more 
 of a toff than what you were when I previously 'ad the 
 pleasure, I 'esitated to tip you the 'Ow Do." 
 
 She tossed her imitation ostrich plumes in Joyous 
 coquetry. 
 
 "As if I didn't know wot you're after. Garn ! You 
 only wants to know if I acted on the stryte about . . ." 
 
 His projecting ears burned crimson. 
 
 "Well, an' suppose I do. Did she " 
 
 " Did she wot ?" 
 
 " You pipe well enough. Did she 'ave it ?" 
 
 " Ain't you anxious ?"
 
 92 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Tyke it I am anxious. Did she 1 No cod ?" 
 
 " Did she git your letter wot you put in the box o' 
 choc's ? 0' course she did, Mister. Wot do you tyke me 
 for ? A silly looney or a sneakin' thief ?" 
 
 " I'll tell you what I tyke you for. A Jolly little bit of 
 Enghsh All' Right. Say! Do you think . . ." The 
 prominent Adam's apple Jutting over the edge of the 
 guillotining double collar worked emotionally. " Think 
 she'll send an answer, eh ?" 
 
 " Reckon she will ; you watch out an' see !'* 
 
 " You fust-claras little brick !" 
 
 " Gam !" 
 
 " I mean it. Stryte. Next door to a angel — that's wot 
 you are. She's the angel. Tell 'er I said so — that's if you 
 can, you twig ? And say that when I 'eard that nearly all 
 the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day before yes- 
 terday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' 
 she'd gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town 
 Guard, it was with the idear — mind you rub that in ! — of 
 strikin' a blow for Beauty as well as for Britanniar, twig ?" 
 The thin elbow in the tweed sleeve nudged her, provoking 
 a Joyous giggle. 
 
 " I'm fly, no fear. Are you to 'ave a uniform, an' all 
 like that ?" 
 
 His face fell. " The kit don't run to much beyond a 
 smasher 'at an' puttees, but they're the regular Service kind, 
 an' then there's the bandolier — an' the gun. She ain't the 
 newest rifle served out to Her Majesty's Army, not by 
 twenty years. Condemned Martini, a chap says, who's in 
 the know — an' kicks like a mule when I let 'er off — made me 
 nose bleed fust time I tried with blank. But when we gets 
 a bit more used to each other, it '11 be a case of bloomin' 
 Doppers rollin' over in the dust, like rock-rabbits. Don't 
 forget to tell 'er as wot I said so." 
 
 " Why . . . ain't she a Dutchy 'erself ? She wrote a letter 
 for me in their rummy Lingo to my young man !" 
 
 " Cripps !" He stared in dismay. " Blessed if I 'adn't 
 forgot. But if an EngHshman marries a foreigner," he 
 swelled heroic, " that puts 'er in the stryte rimnin'. And 
 'art an' 'and I'm 'ers, whenever she'll 'ave me ! Tell 'er 
 THAT — with a double row of crosses from W. Kevse ! And
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 93 
 
 — can you remember a bit o' poetry ?" He recited with 
 shamefaced rapidity : 
 
 " It is my sentry-go to-night, 
 And when I watch the moon so bright, 
 Shining o'er South Africa plain, 
 I'll thijttk of thee, sweet Greta Du Taine." 
 
 Her eyes were full of awe and wonder. " Lor ! you 
 don't mean to say you made up that by yourself ?" 
 
 The poet nodded. " Reckon about as much. Like it ?" 
 
 " It's perfect lovely ! Better than they 'ave in the penny 
 books." 
 
 " Where Cbralh'ne and the Marquis are playin' the 
 spooney game, and 'im with a Lady Reginer up 'is dirty 
 sleeve. An' there's another thing I want you to let 'er 
 know." His eyes were on hers, his breath fanned her hot 
 cheeks. " There isn't another woman on the earth but 
 her for me. Dessay there may be others ; wot I say is — I 
 don't see 'em !" He waved his hand, dismissing the ardent 
 creatures. 
 
 A pang transpierced the conscience hiding under the 
 cheap flowery blouse. Emigration Jane hesitated, biting 
 the dog's-eared finger-ends of a cotton glove. Should she 
 tell this ardent, chivalrous lover that the Convent roof no 
 longer sheltered the magnificent fair hair-plait and the 
 mischievous blue eyes of his adored ? That Miss Greta Du 
 Taine had left for Johannesburg with the latest batch of 
 departing pupils ! If she told, W. Keyse would vanish 
 out of her Hfe, it might be for ever ; or, ii by chance en- 
 countered on the street, pass by with a casual greeting 
 and a touch of tl^e cheap Panama. Emigration Jane was 
 no heroine, only a daughter of Eve. Arithmetic and what 
 was termed the " tonic sofa " had been more sternly incul- 
 cated than the moral virtues at the Board School in Kentish 
 Town. And she was not long in making up her mind that 
 she would not tell lum — not just yet, anyway. 
 
 What was he saying, in the Cockney that cut like a knife 
 through the thick gutturals of the Taal ? "I shall walk 
 past the Convent to-morrer in kit and 'cetras, on the 
 charnce of 'Er seein' me. Two sharp. And, look 'ere. 
 Miss, you've done me a good turn. And — no larks ! — if 
 ever I can do you another — trust me. Stryte — I mean it !
 
 94 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 You ask chaps 'oo know me if Billy Keyse ever wen* back 
 on a pal V 
 
 She swayed her hips, and disclaimed all obligation. But, 
 gam ! he was gittin' at 'er, she knew ! 
 
 " I ain't ; I mean it ! You should 'ave 'arf me 'eredtt- 
 tary estates — if I 'ad any. As I 'aven't, say wot you'll 
 drink ? Do, Miss, to oblige yours truly, W. Keyse, Esquire." 
 
 W. Keyse plunged a royal, reckless hand into the pocket 
 of his tweed riding-breeches, bought against the time when 
 he should bestride something nobler than a bicycle, and 
 produced a half-sovereign. He owed it to his landlady 
 and the rest, the coin tliat he threw down so magnificently 
 on the shiny counter, but you do not treat your good angel 
 every day. - . . Emigration Jane bridled, and swayed her 
 hips still more. His largeness was intoxicating. One had 
 dreamed of meeting such young men. 
 
 " Port or sherry ? Or a glass of cham, with a lump o' 
 ice in for a cooler ? They keep the stufiE on draught 'ere, 
 and not bad by 'arf for South Africa. 'Ere, you. Mister ! 
 Two chams for self and the young lydy, an' look slippy !" 
 
 The brimming glasses of sparkling, creaming fluid, juice 
 of vines that never grew in the historic soil of France, were 
 passed over the bar. A miniature berg clinked in each, the 
 coldness of its contact with the glowing Up forcing slight 
 rapturous shrieks from Emigration Jane. 
 
 " We'll drink 'Er 'ealth !" W. Keyse raised his goblet. 
 " And Friends at 'Ome in our Isle across the Sea !" 
 
 He drank, pleased with the sentiment, and set down the 
 empty glass. 
 
 The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and 
 tapped him on the arm with a thick, stubby forefinger. 
 
 " Mister Engelschman, I think you shall best go out of 
 here." 
 
 " Me ? Go out? 'Oo are you gettin' at, Myn'eer Van 
 Dunck ?" swaggered W. Keyse. And he slipped one thin, 
 freckled hand ostentatiously under his coat of shoddy 
 summer tweed. A very cheap revolver lurked in the hip- 
 pocket of which Billy was so proud. In his third- floor 
 back bed-sitting-room in Judd Street, London, W.C., he 
 had promised himself a moment when that hip-pocket 
 should be referred to, just in that way. It waa a cheap bit
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 96 
 
 of theatrical swagger, but the saloon was full, not of harmless 
 theatrical pretences, but bitter racial antagonisms, seething 
 animosities, fanged and venomed hatreds, only waiting the 
 prearranged signal to strike and slay. 
 
 Emigration Jane tugged at the hero's sleeve, as he felt 
 for an almost invisible moustache, scanning the piled-up, 
 serried faces with pert, pale, hardy eyes. 
 
 " 'E ain't coddin'. See 'ow black they're lookin'." 
 
 " I see 'em, plyne enough. Waxworks only fit for the 
 Chamber of 'Orrors, ain't 'em 1" 
 
 " It's a young woman wot arsks you to go, not a bloke ! 
 Please ! For my syke, if you won't for your own !" 
 
 Billy Keyse, with a flourish, offered the thin, boyish arm 
 in the tweed sleeve. 
 
 " Righto ! Will you allow me, Miss ?" 
 
 She faltered : 
 
 " I — I can't, deer. I — I'm wiv my young man." 
 
 " Looks after you a proper lot, I don't think. Which is 
 'im ? Where's 'e 'id 'isself ? There's only one other 
 English-lookin' feller 'ere, an' 'e's drunk, lyln' over the 
 table there in the corner. That ain't 'im, is it ?" 
 
 " Nah, that isn't 'im. Tliat big Dutchy, lookin' this way, 
 showin' 'is teeth as 'e smiles. That's my young man." 
 
 She indicated the Slabberts, heavilj'- observant of the 
 couple with the muddy eyes under the tow-coloured thatch. 
 
 " 'Strewth !" W. Keyse whistled depreciatively between 
 his teeth, and elevated his scanty eyebrows. " That tow- 
 'eaded, bung-nosed, 'ulking, big Dopper. An' you a 
 daughter of the Empire !" 
 
 Oh ! the thrice-retorted scorn in the sharp-edged Cockney 
 voice ! Tlie scorching contempt in the pale, ugly little 
 eyes of W. Keyse ! She wilted to her tallest feather, and 
 the tears came crowding, stinging tlie back of her throat, 
 compelling a miserable sniff. Yet Emigration Jane was 
 not destitute of spirit. 
 
 " I ... I took 'im to please meself . . . not you, nor the 
 Hempire neither.*' 
 
 " Reckon you was precious 'ard up for a chap. Good- 
 afternoon, Miss." 
 
 He touched the cheap Panama, and swung theatrically 
 round on his heel. Between him and the saloon-door there
 
 96 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 was a solid barricade of heavy Dutch bodies, in moleskin, 
 tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped by lowering Dutch 
 faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the 
 reedy crow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched 
 in the baggy pockets of old shooting-jackets. 0,thers 
 gripped leaded sjamboks, and others crept to hip-pockets, 
 where German army revolvers were. The bar-keeper and 
 the Slabberts exchanged a meaning wink. 
 
 " Gents, I'll trouble you. By your leave ! . . ." 
 
 Nobody moved. And suddenly W. Keyse became con- 
 scious that these were enemies, and that he was alone. 
 A little hooliganism, a few street-fights, one scuflSe with the 
 police, some rows in music-halls constituted all his experi- 
 ence. In the midst of these men, burly, brutal, strong, 
 used to shed blood of beast and human, his cheap swagger 
 failed him with his stock of breath. He was no longer tlie 
 hero in an East End melodrama ; his heroic mood had gone, 
 and there was a feel of tragedy in the air. The Boers wait? d 
 sluggishly for the next move. It would come when thert 
 should be a step forward on the part of the little Englisli- 
 man. Then a clumsy foot in a cow-leather boot or heavy 
 wooden-pegged sfildschoen would be thrust out, and the 
 boy would be tripped up and go down, and the crowd would 
 deliberately kick and trample the life out of him, and no one 
 would be able to say how or by whom the thing had been 
 done. And, reading in the hard eyes set in the stolid yellow 
 and drab faces that he was " up against it," and no mis- 
 ■take, W. Keyse felt singularly small and lonely. 
 
 Then something happened. 
 
 The drunken EngUshman who had been lying in a hoggish 
 stupor over the little iron table in the corner of the saloon 
 hiccoughed, and lifted a crimson, puffy face, with bleary 
 eyes in it that were startlingly blue. He drew back the great 
 arms that had been hanging over the edge of his impromptu 
 pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, 
 and got slowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, 
 but not stumbling, he moved across the little space of saw- 
 dusted, hard-beaten earth that divided him from W. Keyse, 
 and drew up beside that insignificant minority. The action 
 was not purposeless or unimpressive. The alcohohc wastrel 
 had suddenly become protagonist in the common little
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 97 
 
 drama that was veering towards tragedy. Beside the man, 
 Billy Keyse dwindled to a stunted boy, a steam -pinnace 
 bobbing under the quarter of an armoured battle-ship, its 
 huge mailed bulk pregnant with possibilities of destruction, 
 its barbettes full of unseen, watchful eyes, and hands power- 
 ful to manipulate the levers of Titanic death-machines. 
 
 Let it be understood that the intervener did not present 
 the aspect of a hero. He had been drunk, and would be 
 again, unless some mii-aculous quickening of the alcohol- 
 drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivify the dor- 
 mant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of 
 bushy black eyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, 
 blunt, hooked nose, and grim-lipped yet tender mouth, 
 from the comer of which an extinct and forgotten cigar- 
 butt absurdly Jutted, bore, like his great gaunt frame, the 
 ravaging traces of the consuming drink-lust. His well-cut, 
 loosely-fitting grey morning-coat and trousers were soiled 
 and slovenly ; his blue linen shirt was coUarless and un- 
 buttoned at the neck. His grey felt smasher hat was 
 crammed on awry. But there was a thick lanyard round 
 the muscular neck, ending in a leather revolver-pouch that 
 was attached to his stout belt of webbing. A boy with a 
 fifteen-and-sixpenny toy revolver you can laugh at and 
 squelch ; but, Alamachtig ! a big man with a Webley and 
 Scott was another thing. And the frowy barrier of thick, 
 coarsely-clad, bulky bodies and scowling, yellow-tan faces, 
 began to melt away. 
 
 When a clear lane showed to the saloon door, the Dop 
 Doctor took it, walking with a lurch in his long stride, but 
 with the square head held upright on his great gaunt 
 shoulders. W. Keyse, Esquire, moved in the shadow of 
 him, taking two steps to one of his. The swing doors 
 opened, thudded to behind them. . . . 
 
 " Outside. . . . Time, too !" 
 
 Tlae wide, thin-lipped Cockney mouth grinned a little 
 consciously as W. Keyse Jerked his thumb towards the still 
 vibrating doors of the saloon. " Reg'ler 'ornets' nest o' 
 Dutchies. And I was up agynst it, an' no mistyke, when 
 you rallied up. An', Mister, you're a Fair Old Brick, an' 
 if you've no objection to shykin' 'ands . . . ?" 
 
 But the big ^xxs^ did not seem to see the little Cockney's 
 
 7
 
 98 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 offered hand. He nodded, looking with the bloodshot and 
 extremely blue eyes that were set under his heavy straight 
 black brows, not at W. Keyse, but over the boy's head, and 
 with a surly noise in his throat that stopped short of being 
 speech, swung heavily round and went down the dusty 
 street, that was grilling in the full blaze of the afternoon 
 heat, lurching a little in his walk. 
 
 Then, suddenly, running figures of men came round the 
 corner. Voices shouted, and houses and shops and saloons 
 emptied themselves of their human contents. The news 
 flew from kerb to kerb, and Jumped from windows to 
 Avdndows, out of which women, European and coloured, 
 thrust eaLier, questioning heads. 
 
 The Cape Town train that had started at midday had 
 returned to Gueldersdorp, having been held up by a force of 
 armed and mounted Boers twenty miles down the line. 
 And a Loudon newspaper correspondent had handed in a 
 cable at the post-office, and the operator's instrument, 
 after a futile click or so, had failed to work any more. 
 
 The telegraphic wire was cut. Hostihties had com- 
 menced in earnest, and Gueldersdorp, severed from the 
 South by this opening act of war, must find her salvation 
 thenceforward s in the cool brains and steady nerves of the 
 handful of defenders behind her sand-bags, when the hour 
 of need should come. 
 
 History has it written in her imperishable record, that is 
 not only printed upon paper, and graven upon brass, and 
 cut in marble, but stamped into the minds and hearts of 
 millions of men and women of the British race, how, when 
 tliat hour came, the hero-spirit in their countrymen rose 
 up to meet it. And for such undying memories as these, 
 and not for the mere word of suzerainty, it is worth while to 
 have paid as Britain has paid, in gold, and blood, and tears. 
 
 xm 
 
 " Dop," being the native name for the cheapest and most 
 villainous of Cape brandies, has come to signify alcoholic 
 drinks in general to men of many nations dwelling under the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 99 
 
 subtropical South African sun. Thus, apple-brandy, and 
 peach liqueur, " Old Squareface," in the squat, four-sided 
 bottles beloved no less by Dutchman and Afrikander, 
 American and Briton, Paddy from Cork, and Ileinrich irom 
 the German Fatherland, than by John Chinkey — in default 
 of arrack — and the swart and woolly-headed descendant of 
 Ham, may be signified under the all-embracing designation. 
 
 It did not matter what the liquor was, the bar-tenders 
 were aware who served the Dop Doctor, as long as the stuff 
 scorched the throat and stupefied the brain, and you got 
 enough of it for your money. 
 
 His eyes were blood-red witli brutal debauch now, as he 
 neared the De Boursy-Williams dwelling, a one-storied, soft 
 brick- built, corrugated-iron- roofed house on Harris Street, 
 behind the Market Square. It had been a store, but green 
 and white paint and an iron garden-fence had turned it into 
 a gentlemanly residence for a medical practitioner. Mrs. De 
 Boursy-Williams, a lady of refinement, stamped with the in- 
 effaceable cachet of Bayswater, had hung cheap lace curtains 
 in all the windows, tying them up with silk sashes of Trans- 
 vaal green. Between the wooden pillars of the stoep dangled 
 curtains yet other, of chopped, dyed, and threaded bamboo, 
 while whitewashed drain-pipes, packed with earth and set on 
 end, overflowed with Indian cress, flowering now in extrava- 
 gant, gorgeous hues of red and brown, sulphur and orange. 
 
 The Dop Doctor, left to maintain the inviolate sanctity 
 of this English Colonial home, hiccoughed as he stumbled 
 up the stately flight of three cement steps that led between 
 white-painted railings, enclosing on the left hand a narrow 
 strip of garden with some dusty mimosa shrubs growing in 
 it, to the green door that bore the brass plate, and had the 
 red lamp fitted in the hall-light above it. The plate bore 
 this comprehensive inscription : 
 
 G. DE BOURSY-WILLIAMS, M.D., F.R.C.S. Lond. 
 
 CONilTLTINO-RoOM HoURS : 10 A.M. TO 12 A.M. ; 6 P.M. TO 8 P.M 
 
 MODERN DENTISTRY IN ALL ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 And, scanning the inscription for perhaps the thousandth 
 time, the grim, tender mouth under the ragged black 
 moustache took a satirical twist at the corners, for nobody 
 
 7—2
 
 100 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 knew better than Owen Saxham, called of men in Guelders- 
 dorp the " Dop Doctor," what a brazen lie it proclaimed. 
 He heard the town-clock on the stad square strike five as 
 he pulled out the latchkey from his pocket and let himself 
 in, shouting : 
 
 " Koets !" 
 
 A glazed door at the end of the passage, advertised in 
 letters of black paint upon the ground-glass as " Dispen- 
 sary," opened, and a long, thin Dutchman, dressed in re- 
 spectable black, looked out. He had been hoping that the 
 drunken Englishman had been shot or stabbed in a saloon- 
 brawl, or had fallen down in apoplexy in a liquor-bout, 
 and had been brought home dead on a shutter at last. His 
 long ginger-coloured face showed his cruel disappointment. 
 But he said, as thougli the question had been asked : 
 
 " No, there is no telegram from Cape Town." 
 
 Then he shut the glazed door, and retiirned to the very 
 congenial occupation in which he had been engaged, and 
 Owen Saxham went lieavily to the bedroom placed at the 
 disposal of the locum tenens. The single window looked out 
 upon a square garden with a tennis-ground, where the De 
 Boursy-Wilhams girls had been used to play. The apricot 
 on the south wall was laden with the as yet immature fruit, 
 an abandoned household cat slept, unconscious of impending 
 starvation, upon a bench under a pepper -tree. 
 
 It was a small, sordid, shabby chamber, with a fly-spotted 
 paper, a chest of drawers lacking knobs, a greenish swing 
 looking-glass, and a narrow iron bedstead. His scanty 
 belongings were scattered about. There were no medical 
 books or surgical instruments. Tlie Dop Doctor had sold 
 all the tools of his trade years before. He turned to 
 Williams's books, standard works which had been bought 
 at his recommendation, when he wished to refresh his 
 excellent memory ; the instruments he used when to the 
 entreaties of a fatherly friend Williams added the alluring 
 chink of gold belonged also to that generous patron. There 
 were some old clothes in the ramshackle deal wardrobe ; 
 there was some linen and underclothing in the knobless 
 chest of drawers. With the exception of a Winchester 
 repeating-rifle in excellent condition, a bandolier and 
 ammunition-pouch, a hunting-knife and a Colt's revolver
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 101 
 
 of large calibre, in addition to the wtiapon he carried, there 
 was not an article of property of any value in the room. 
 Old riding-boots with dusty spurs and a pair of veldschoens 
 stood by the wall ; a pair of trodden-down carpet slippers 
 lay beside a big cheap zinc bath that stood there, full of 
 cold water ; some well-used pipes were on the chest of 
 drawers, with a tin of Virginia ; and an old brown camel' s- 
 hair dressing-gown hung over a castorless, shabby, Ameri- 
 can-cloth-covered armchair. And an empty whisky-bottle 
 stood upon the washstand, melancholy witness to the 
 drunkard's passion. 
 
 Yet there were a few poor little toilet articles upon the 
 dressing-table that betokened the dainty personal habits 
 of cleanliness and care that from lifelong use become 
 instinctive. The hands of the untidy, slovenly, big man 
 with the drink-swollen features were exquisitely kept ; and 
 when the dark-red colour should go out of the square face, 
 the skin would show wonderfully unblemished and healthy 
 for a drunkard, and the blue eyes would be steady and 
 clear. Excess had not injured a splendid constitution as 
 yet. But Saxham knew that by-and-by . . . 
 
 What did he care ? He pulled off his soiled, untidy 
 garments, and soused his aching head in the cold, fresh 
 water, and bathed and changed. Six o'clock struck, and 
 found Dr. Owen Saxham reclothed and in his right mind, 
 if a httle haggard about the eyes and twitchy about the 
 mouth, and sitting calmly waiting for patients in the 
 respectably - appointed consulting - room of De Boursy- 
 Wilhams, M.D., F.R.C.S. Lond. 
 
 Usually he sat in the adjoining study, near enough to the 
 carefully-curtained door to hear the patient describe in the 
 artless vernacular of the ignorant, or the more cultivated 
 phraseology of the educated, the symptoms, his or hers. 
 
 Because the cultured man of science, the real M.D. of 
 Cambridge University and owner of those other letters of 
 attainment, was the drunken wastrel who had sunk low 
 enough to serve as the impostor's ghost. If G. de Boursy- 
 Williams, of all t!iose lying capitals, were a member of the 
 London Pharmaceutical Society and properly- qualified 
 dentist, which perhaps might be the case, he certainly pos- 
 sessed no other claim upon the confidence of hia fellow-
 
 102 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 creatures, sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctor 
 brought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst 
 to Gueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey -haired, pink- 
 faced, neatly-dressed little humbug possessed an enviable 
 practice. 
 
 If you got well, he rubbed his hands and chuckled over 
 you ; if you died, he bleated about the Will of Providence, 
 and his daughters sent flowery, home-made wTeaths to place 
 upon your grave, and it all went down, adding to the 
 python-length of the bill for medical attendance. 
 
 This world is thick with De Boursy-Williamses, throwing 
 in bromides with a liberal hand, ungrudging of strychnine, 
 happily at home witli quinine and cathartics, ready at a 
 case of simple rubeola ; hideously, secretly, helplessly per- 
 plexed between the false diphtheria and the true ; treating 
 internal cancer and fibrous tumours as digestive derange- 
 ments for happy, profitable years, until the specialist 
 comes by, and dissipates with a brief examination and with 
 half a dozen trenchant words the victim's faith in the 
 quack. 
 
 Three years before, when the Dop Doctor, coming up 
 from Kimberley by transport- waggon, had stumbled in 
 upon Gueldersdorp, the verdict of a specialist consulted by 
 one of his patients, much lacking in the desirable article 
 of faith, had given De Boursy-Williams's self-confidence 
 a considerable shock. 
 
 Does it matter how De Boursy , much reduced in bulk by a 
 considerable leakage of conceit, came across the Dop 
 Doctor ? In a drinlc-saloon, in a music-hall, in a gaming- 
 house or an opium-den, at any other of the places of 
 recreation where, after consulting and visiting hours, that 
 exemplary father and serious-minded EstabHshed Church- 
 man, was to be found ? It is enough that the bargain was 
 proposed and accepted. Four sovereigns a week secured 
 to De Boursy-Williams the stored and applied knowledge, 
 the wide experience, and the unerring diagnosis of the rising 
 young London practitioner, who had had a brilliant 
 career before him when a Hand had reached forth from the 
 clouds to topple down the castle of his labours and his 
 hopes. For Owen Saxham the money would purchase 
 forgetfulness. You can buy a great deal of his kind of
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 103 
 
 forgetfulness with four pounds, and drink was all the Dop 
 Doctor wanted. 
 
 Now, as the red South African sunset burned beyond the 
 flattened western ridge of the semicircle of irregular hills 
 that fence in the unpretending hamlet town that lies on the 
 low central rise, Owen Saxham sat, as for his miserable weekly 
 wage he must sit, twice daily for two hours at a stretch, 
 enduring torments akin to those of the damned in Hell. 
 
 For these were the hours when he remembered most all 
 that he had lost. 
 
 Remembrance, like the magic carpet of the Eastern story, 
 carried him back to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed 
 with a great magnolia and many roses, standing in old-time 
 gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex and Spanish 
 chestnut, and rhododendron, upon the South Dorset cliffs, 
 that are vanishing so slowly yet so surely in the maw of the 
 rapacious sea. 
 
 Boom ! In the heart of a still, foggy night, following a 
 day of lashing rain, and the boy Owen Saxham, whom the 
 Dop Doctor remembered, would wake upon his lavender- 
 scented pillow in the low-pitched room with, the heavy 
 ceiling-beams and the shallow diamond-paned casements, 
 and call out to David, dreaming in the other white bed, to 
 plan an excursion with the breaking of the day, to see how 
 much more of their kingdom had toppled over on those 
 wave-smoothed rock - pavements far below, that were 
 studded with great and little fossils, as the schoolroom 
 suet-pudding with the frequent raisin. 
 
 More faces came. The bovs' father, fair and florid, bluff. 
 
 %/ ' 7 7 
 
 handsome, and kindly, an English country gentleman of 
 simple affectionate nature and upright life. He came in 
 weather-stained velveteen and low- crowned felt, with the 
 red setter-bitch at his heels, and the old sporting Manton 
 carried in the crook of his elbow, where the mother used 
 to sew a leather patch, always cut out of the palm-piece of 
 one of the right-hand gloves that were never worn out, 
 never being put on. A dark-eyed, black-haired Welsh 
 mother, hot-tempered, keen-witted, humorous, sarcastic, 
 passionately devoted to her husband and his boys, David 
 and Owen.
 
 104 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 David and Owen. David was the elder, fair like the 
 father, destined for Harrow, Sandhurst, and the Army. 
 Owen had dreamed of the Merdiant Service, until, having 
 succeeded in giving the Persian kitten, overfed to repletion 
 by an admiring cook, a dose of castor-oil, and being allowed 
 to aid the local veterinary in setting the fox-terrier's broken 
 leg, the revelation of the hidden gift was vouchsafed to 
 this boy. How he begged off Harrow, much to the disgust 
 of the Squire, and went to Westward Ho, faithfully plodded 
 the course laid down by the Council of Medical Education, 
 became a graduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took his 
 degree brilliantly ; registered as a student at St. Stephen's 
 Hospital ; won an Entrance Scholarship in Science, and 
 secured the William BroAvn Exhibition in his second year. 
 Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened 
 with scalpel and with bistoury by Owen Saxham. 
 
 Oh, the good days ! the delectable years of intellectual 
 development, and arduous study, and high hope, and 
 patient, strenuous endeavour ! The man sitting with 
 knitted hands and tense brain and staring eyes there in 
 the darkening room groaned aloud as he looked back. 
 Nobody envied that broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, bright- 
 eyed young fellow his successes. Companions shared his 
 triumphs, lecturers and professors came down from their 
 high pedestals of dignity to help him on. When he ob- 
 tained his London University diploma with honours for a 
 thesis of exceptional merit, he had already held the post of 
 principal anaesthetist at St. Stephen's Hospital for a year. 
 Now, a vacancy occurring upon the junior staff of surgeons 
 to the Hospital's in-patient Department, Owen Saxham, 
 M.D., was chosen to fill it. This brought Mildred very 
 near. 
 
 For he was very much in love. The hot red blood in his 
 veins had carried him away sometimes upon a mad race 
 for pleasui'e, but he was clean of soul and free from the taint 
 of vice, inherited or acquired, and the Briton's love of 
 home was strong in him. And wedded love had always 
 seemed to him a beautiful and gracious thing, and father- 
 hood a glorious privilege. Stern as he seemed, grave and 
 quiet and undemonstrative as he was, the youngest and 
 sliyest children did not shrink from him. The pink rose-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 105 
 
 leaf tongue peeped fiom between the budding rows of teeth, 
 and tlie innocent considering eyes questioned him only a 
 moment before the smile came. To be the father of 
 Mildred's children seemed the lofty end of all desire that 
 was not mere worldly ambition. 
 
 Mildred was the elder daughter of a county neighbour 
 down in Dorsetshire. She had known Owen Saxham from 
 her school-days, but never until he took to calling at the 
 house in Pont Street, to which Mildred, with her family — 
 mere satellites revolving in the orbit of that shining star of 
 Love — migrated in the Season. She was tall, slight, and 
 willowy, A\dth a sweet head that drooped a little, and round 
 brown eyes that were extremely pretty and wore a per- 
 petual expression of surprise. She was rather ansemic, 
 preferred croquet to lawn-tennis — then the rage — and kept 
 a journal, after the style of an American model. But the 
 space which Mary McMulHns cribbed from Mary McMullins 
 to devote to a description of the bathroom in which the 
 ablutions of her family were performed, and a vivid word- 
 picture of their tooth-brushes ranged in a row, and their 
 recently wrung-out garments in the act of taking the air 
 upon the back-garden clothes-line, was all devoted to Mil- 
 di'ed in Mildred's journal. In it Owen found a place. He 
 was described as a blend between " Rochester " in " Jane 
 Eyre " and " Bazarov " in Turgenev's " Fathers and Chil- 
 dren." In one specially high-flowTi passage he was referred 
 to as a grim granite rock, to which the delicate clematis-like 
 nature of MOdred, clinging, was to envelop it with leaf and 
 blossom. She read him the passage one day. Their faces 
 were very close together as they sat upon the sofa in the 
 pretty Pont Street drawing-room, and his newly- bought) 
 engagement-ring gleamed on her long white hand. . . . 
 The remembrance of that day made the Dop Doctor laugh 
 out harshly in the midst of hia anguish. So trivial and so 
 weak a thing had been that love of hers on which he had 
 founded the castle of his hopes and desires. 
 
 Now the aspiring young man bought a practice with some 
 thousands advanced by his father out of the younger son's 
 portion that should be his one day. It lay just where 
 Hyde Park merges into Paddington. Here a medical man 
 may feel the pulse of Dives for cf^ld. and look at the tongue
 
 106 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 of Lazarus for nothing, and supply medicine into the 
 bargain, if he be of kindly soul, and this hopeful, rising 
 surgeon and physician had an open hand and an un- 
 suspecting nature. 
 
 God ! how much the worse for him. The sweat-drops ran 
 down into the Dop Doctor's eyes as he remembered that. 
 
 He set up his bachelor tent in Chil worth Street, furnishing 
 the rooms he meant to inhabit with a certain sober luxury. 
 By-and-by the house could be made pretty, unless Mildred 
 should insist upon his moving to Wigmore Street, or to 
 Harley Street, that Mecca of the ambitious young prac- 
 titioner. Probably Mildred's people would insist upon 
 Harley Street. They were wealthy ; their daughter would 
 be quite an heiress, " another instance of Owen's luck," as 
 David, long ago gazetted to a crack Cavalry regiment, 
 would say, and Owen would laugh, and admit that, though 
 he would have been glad enough to take his young fair 
 love without dower and plenishing, it was pleasant enough 
 to know that his wife would have an independent fortune of 
 her own. It was one of David's best jokes that Owen was 
 marrying Mildred for her money. David's ideas of humour 
 were crude and elemental. On the other hand, his manners 
 were admirable, and his physical beauty perfect of its 
 type, though men and women turned oftenest to look at the 
 younger brother, whom the women called " plain, but so 
 interesting," and the men " an uncommonly attractive 
 sort of fellow, and as clever as they make them." When 
 the great crash came Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., was 
 about twenty-nine. 
 
 Do you care for a description of the man at his prime ? 
 
 He was probably five feet ten in heiglit, but his scholar's 
 stoop robbed him of an inch or more. The great breadth 
 of the slightly-bowed shoulders, the immense depth and 
 thickness of the chest, gave his upper figure a false air 
 of clumsiness. His arms were long and powerful, terminat- 
 ing in strong, supple, white hands, the hands of the skilled 
 surgical operator ; his thick, smooth, opaque, white skin 
 covered an admirable structure of bone, knit with tough 
 mifficles, clothed with healthful flesh. One noticed, seeing 
 him walk, that his legs were bowed a little, because he had 
 been accustomed to the saddle from earliest childhood,
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 107 
 
 though he rode but seldom now, and one saw also that his 
 small muscular feet gripped the ground vigorously, through 
 the glove-thin boots he liked to wear. He showed no 
 tendency to dandyism. His loosely-cut suits of fine, silky 
 black cloth were invariably of the same fashion. In abhor- 
 ring jewellery, in preferring white cashmere shirts, and 
 strictly limiting the amount of starcli in the thin linen cuffs 
 and collars, perhaps he showed a tendency to faddism. 
 David told him that he dressed himself like a septua- 
 genarian Professor. Mildred would have preferred dear 
 Owen to pay a little more attention to style and cut, and 
 all that, though one did not, of course, expect a man of 
 science to look like a man of fashion. One couldn't have 
 everything, at least, not in this world. . . . 
 
 She said that one day, standing beside the writing-table 
 in the Chilworth Street study, with David's portrait in her 
 hand. It usually stood there, in a silver frame — a coloured 
 photograph of a young man of thirty, stupid and beautiful 
 as the Praxitelean Hermes, resplendent in the gold and 
 blue and scarlet of a crack Dragoon Regiment. Owen 
 stood upon the hearthrug, for once in IVIildred's company, 
 and not tl linking of Mildred. And with tears rising in her 
 round, pretty, foolish eyes the girl looked from the face 
 and figure enclosed within the silver frame, to the face and 
 bust that had for background the high mantel-mirror in its 
 carved frame of Spanish oak. 
 
 There was the square black head bending forwards — 
 " poking," she termed it — upon the massive, bowed 
 shoulders ; the white face, square too, with its short, blunt, 
 hooked nose and grim, determined mouth and Jaws, showing 
 the bluish grain of the strong beard and moustache that 
 Owen kept closely shaven. The heavy forehead, the 
 smutty brows overshadowing eyes of clear, vivid, startling 
 Alpine blue, the close small ears, the thick white throat, 
 were very, very unattractive in Mildred's eyes — at least, in 
 comparison with the three-volume-novel charms of the 
 grey-eyed, golden-mo ustached, classically-featured, swagger- 
 ing young military dandy in the coloured photograph. 
 David had been with his regiment in India when Owen had 
 first seemed to be a good deal attracted to Pont Street. He 
 had wooed Mildred with dogged persistency, and won her
 
 108 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 vnthout perceptible triumph, and Mildred had been im- 
 mensely flattered at first by the conquest of this man, whom 
 everybody said was going to be famous, great, distinguished 
 . . . and now . . . the wedding-day was coming awfully near. 
 And how on earth was it possible for a girl to tell a man 
 with Owen's dreadfully grim, sarcastic mouth, and those 
 terrible blue eyes that sometimes looked through and 
 through you — that she preferred his brother ? 
 
 Poor, dear, beautiful, devoted David ! so honourable, so 
 shocked at the discovery that his passion was reciprocated, 
 so very romantically in love. Only the day previously, 
 calling in at Pont Street at an hour unusual for him, Owen 
 had found them together, IMildred and David, who, having 
 been unexpectedly relieved of duty by an accommodating 
 brother-officer, had, as he rather laboriously explained, run 
 up from Spurhambury for the day. It was an awfully nea.r 
 thing, the guilty ones agreed afterwards, but Owen had 
 suspected nothing. These swell scientific men were often 
 a little bit slow in the uptake. . . . 
 
 But to-day — to-day their dupe saw clearly. He recalled 
 the Pont Street incident, and the flushed faces of the 
 couple. He saw once more the silver-framed photograph 
 in the girl's hand, he felt the mute disparagement of her 
 glance, and was conscious of the relief with which it left 
 him to settle on the portrait again. Ah, how unsuspicious 
 he had been whom they were duping ! Doubtless Mildred 
 would not have had the courage to own the truth, doubtless 
 slie would have married him but for the scandal of tlie 
 Trial. He wrenched his knitted hands together until the 
 joints cracked. She would have married him, and for- 
 gotten David. He, the man of will, and poAver, and 
 patience would have possessed her, stamped himself like a 
 seal upon her heart and mind, given her other interests, 
 other hopes, other desires, children, and happiness. But 
 for the Trial the little germinating seed of treachery would 
 never have grown up and borne fruit. 
 
 Had it been treachery, after all ? Far, far too grand the 
 word. Wlio would expect a modern woman to practise the 
 obsolete virtue of Fidelity ? Fool, do you expect your 
 miniature French bulldog or your toy-terrier to dive in and 
 swim out to you, and hold your drowning carcase up, should
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 109 
 
 you happen to become cramped while bathing in the 
 sea ? The little, feeble, pretty, feather-brained thing, 
 what can it do but whimper on the shore while you are 
 sinking, perhaps be consoled upon a friendly stranger's lap 
 while your last bubbles are taking upward flight, and your 
 knees are drawing inwards in the final contraction ? Happy 
 for the little creature if the kindly stranger carry it away ! 
 
 Poor, pretty, foolish IVIildred, whose gentle predilections 
 were as threads of gossamer compared with the cable-ropes 
 of stronger women's passions ! She had nestled into the 
 strong protecting arm, and dried her tears for the old 
 master on the sleeve of the new one, whimpering a little, 
 gently, just like the toy-terrier bitch or the miniature bull. 
 
 And yet he had once seen a creature tinier and feebler 
 than either of these, a mere handful of yellow floss-silk 
 curls, defend its insensible master with frenzy, as the sick 
 man lay in the deadly stupor of cerebral congestion, from 
 those who sought to aid. Valet and nurse and doctor were 
 held at bay until that snapping, foaming, raging speck of 
 love and devotion and fidelity had been whelmed in a travel- 
 ling-rug, and borne away to a distant room, from whence 
 its shrill, defiant, imploring barks and yelps could be heard 
 night and day until, its owner being at last conscious and 
 out of danger, the tiny creature was set free. 
 
 Ergo, there are small things and small tilings. Beside 
 that epic atom Mildred dwdndled inconceivably. 
 
 And David . . . David, who had shaken his handsome 
 head sorrowfully over his brother's ruined career, who had 
 been horribly sick at the scandal, shudderingly alive to the 
 disgrace, sorrowfully, regretfully compelled to admit that 
 the evidence of guilt was overwhelming ... he did not trust 
 himself to think of David overmuch. That way of thought 
 led to Cain's portion in the very pit of Hell. For six 
 months subsequently to the finding of the Jury in the well- 
 known criminal case. The Crown v. Saxham, David had 
 married Mildred. If she had been irmocent of actual 
 treachery, here was the smooth, brotherly betrayer, un- 
 masked and loathly in the siglit of the betrayed. 
 
 How quietly the storm-clouds had piled up on his bright 
 horizon at the close of his second year of active, brilliant, 
 successful work I
 
 110 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The first lightning-flash, the first faint mutter of thunder, 
 had passed almost unnoticed. Then the tempest broke, 
 and the building wrought by a strong man's labours, and 
 toils, and hopes, and joys, and dolours had been lifted, and 
 torn, and rent, and scattered as a hill -bothy of poles and 
 straw-bundles, or a moorland shelter of heather and bushes 
 is scattered by the fury of a northern mountain- blast. 
 
 His practice had become a large and, despite the many 
 claims of Lazarus at the gates, a lucrative one by the 
 commencement of his third year of residence in Chil worth 
 Street. It was the end of April. He was to be married 
 to Mildred in July. That move to Harley Street had 
 been decided upon, the house taken and beautified. Though 
 his love for her was not demonstrative or romantic, it 
 was deep, and tender, and strong, and hopeful, and Life 
 to this man had seemed very sweet — five years ago. He 
 was successful professionally and socially. He had been 
 chosen to assist a surgeon of great eminence in the perform- 
 ance of a critical operation upon a semi- Royalty. He had 
 written, and publishers had published, a remarkable work. 
 " The Diseases of Civilisation " had been greeted by the 
 scientific reviewers with a chorus of praise, passed through 
 four or five editions — had been translated into several 
 European languages ; and his " Text-Book of Clinical 
 Surgery" had been recommended to advanced students by 
 the leading professors of the Medical Schools when the 
 horrible thing befell. 
 
 XIV 
 
 It was in '94, when even the electro-motor was not in 
 general use, and the petrol-driven machine was slowly con- 
 vincing Paris and New York of its magnificent possibilities. 
 Saxham used a smart, well-horsed, hired brougham for 
 day- visits, and for night work a motor-tricycle. There were 
 no stables to the house in Chilworth Street. He left the 
 motor-tricycle at the place where he had bought it second- 
 hand. The macliine was cleaned and kept in order, and 
 brought to his door by one of the employes at a certain 
 hour, for a fixed weekly sum paid to the proprietor of the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 11] 
 
 establishment, Bough by name, an Englishman bom in 
 the Transvaal, who had quite recently, or so he gave out, 
 emigrated from South Africa, and set up in London as a 
 cycle-seller and repairer, though there were not many 
 cycles at the shop. Heavy packing-cases and crates were 
 always being delivered there, and always being despatched 
 from thence, via Cape Town and Port Elizabeth and 
 Delagoa Bay to the Transvaal, Bough being agent, or so 
 he said, for several South African firms engaged in the trans- 
 port of agricultural machines. Bough had a wife, a large- 
 eyed, delicate-looking, pretty little woman, who seemed 
 afraid of the big, muscular, tanned fellow of thirty-eight or 
 so, with the odd light eyes, and the smooth manner, and 
 the ready smile, and the short, expert, hairy, cruel-looking 
 hands. He had seen life, had Bough, at the goldfields and 
 at the diamond-mines, and as a trooper through the Zulu 
 and Matabele campaigns, and he was ready to talk about 
 what he had seen. Still there were reservations about 
 Bough, and mysteries. The Doctor suspected him of 
 being brutal to his wife, and would not have been surprised 
 any morning up<ui receiving the news of the man's arrest as 
 one of a gang of forgers, or coiners, or burglars. But he 
 lived and let live, and whatever else the big Afrikander 
 mav have been, he was an excellent workman at his trade. 
 
 One evening Bough rode round on the motor-tricycle him- 
 seK, and mentioned casually that his wife was ailing. The 
 Doctor, in the act of moimting the machine, put a brief 
 question or two, registered the repHes in the automatic 
 sub -memory he kept for business, and told the man to send 
 her round at ten o'clock upon the following morning. 
 
 She came, punctual to tlie hour, and was shown into 
 Owen's consulting-room — a little woman wdth beautiful, 
 melancholy eyes and a pretty figure. Illiterate, common, 
 affected, and vain to a degree, hideously misusing the 
 English language in that low, dulcet voice of hers, ludi- 
 crous in her application of the debatable aspirate to words 
 in the spelling of which it has no part. 
 
 Rather an absurd little person, Mrs. Bough. Yet, a 
 tragic little person, in Saxham's eyes at least, by the time 
 she had made her errand plain. 
 
 He heard her tell the tale that was not new to him.
 
 112 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Cultured, highly-bred women had made such appeals to him 
 before, and without shame. How should this little vulgar 
 creature be expected to have more conscience than they ? 
 
 Tliey beat about the bush longer, they put the thmg 
 more prettily. They spoke of their frail physical health 
 and their husbands' great anxiety, and quoted the long- 
 ago expressed opinion of ancient family physicians, who 
 possibly turned uneasily in their decent graves. But the 
 gist of the whole was, that they did not want children, and 
 Dr. Saxham had such a great and Justly-earned reputation 
 in skilful and delicate operations . . . and, in short, would 
 he not be compliant and oblige ? They would pay any- 
 thing. Money was positively no object. 
 
 How many such tempting sirens sing in the ears of 
 yotmg, rising professional men, who are hampered by 
 honourable debts which threaten to impede and drag them 
 down ; who are possessed of high ideals and moral scruples, 
 which, not being essentially, fundamentally embedded and 
 ingrained in the conscience of the man, may possibly be 
 argued away ; who have not implanted in their souls and 
 hearts the high reverence for motherhood and the deep 
 tenderness for helpless infancy that distinguished Owen 
 Saxham ! 
 
 He heard this woman out, as he had heard all the others. 
 He began as he had begun witli every one of them — the 
 delicate, titled aristocrats, the ambitious Society beauties, 
 the popular actresses, the women who envied these and 
 read about them in the illustrated interviews published in 
 the fashion-papers, and sighed to be interviewed also — to 
 Qot one of tliese had he weighed out one drachm less of the 
 bitter salutary medicine that he now administered to Mrs. 
 Bough. 
 
 He invariably began with the personal peril and the 
 inevitable risk. Strange how they ignored it, blinded them- 
 selves to it, thrust it, the grinning, threatening Death's- 
 head, on one side. Of course, he talked like that ! It was 
 most candid of him, and most conscientious. But if they 
 were willing to take the risk — and antiseptic sui'gery had 
 made such hurje strides in these days that the risk was a 
 mere nothing. . . . Besides, there was not really need for 
 anything like an operation, was there ? He could prescribe
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 113 
 
 the kind of dose that ought to be taken, and everything 
 would then be all right. 
 
 He would open that grim mouth of his yet again, and 
 speak even more to the purpose. To these mothers who 
 did not wish to be mothers, who threw the gift of Heaven 
 back in the face of Heaven, preferring artificial barrenness 
 to natural fecundity, and who made of their bodies, that 
 should have brought forth healthy, wholesome sons and 
 daughters of their race, tombs and sepulchres — to 
 these he told the truth, in swift, sharp, trenchant sen- 
 tences, that, like the keen sterilised blade of the surgical 
 knife, cut to heal. When they argued with him, saying 
 that the thing was done, that everybody knew it was 
 done, and that it always would be done, by other men 
 as brilliant as, and less scrupulous than, the homilist ; 
 he admitted the force of their arguments. Let other 
 men of his great calling pile up and amass wealth, if they 
 cliose, by tampering with the unclean thing. Owen 
 Saxham would none of it. At this juncture the woman 
 would have hysterics of the weeping or the scolding kind, 
 or would be convinced of the righteousness of the forlorn 
 cause he championed, or would pretend the hysterics or 
 the conviction. Generally she pretended to the latter, 
 and swam or stumbled out, pulling down her veil to mask 
 the rage and hatred in her haggard eyes, and went to that 
 other man. Then, after a brief absence accounted for as 
 a " rest cure," she would shine forth again upon her world, 
 smiling, triumphant, prettier than ever, since she had 
 begun to make up a little more. Or, as a woman who had 
 passed through the Valley of the Shadow, with only her 
 o^vn rod and staff of vanity and pride to comfort her, she 
 would emerge from that seclusion a nervous wreck, and 
 take to pegging or chloral or spiritualism. Most rarely 
 she would not emerge at all, and then her women friends 
 would send wreaths for the coffin and carriages to the 
 funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their 
 boudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had 
 attended her. For of course he had bungled shockingly, 
 or everything would have gone off as right as rain for that 
 poor dear thing ! 
 
 little Mrs. Bough was of the type of woman that pre- 
 
 8
 
 114 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 tends to be convinced. She had cried bitterly in the be- 
 ginning, as she confessed to Saxham that she was not really 
 married to Bough, and that the said Bough, whom Saxham 
 had always suspected of being a scoimdrel, would certainly 
 go ofiF with " one of them other women and leave her if 
 she went and 'ad a byby." She cried even more bit- 
 terly afterwards, as she wondered how she ever could 'a 
 dreamed o' being that wicked ! Bough might kill her — 
 that he might ! — or go back to South Africa without her : 
 she never would give in, not now. Never now — the Doctor 
 might depend upon that, she assured him, drying her 
 swollen eyes with a cheap lace-edged handkerchief loaded 
 with patchouli. She was shaken and nervous, and in need 
 of a sedative, and Saxham, having the drugs at hand, made 
 her up a simple draught, unluckily omitting to make a 
 memorandum of the prescription in his pocket-book, and 
 gave her the first dose of it before she went away, profuse 
 in thanks, and carrying the bottle. 
 
 And he saw his waiting patients, and stepped into his 
 waiting brougham, and, having for once no urgent call 
 upon his professional attention, dined with Mildred at Pont 
 Street, and was coaxed into promising to take her to tlie 
 opening performance of a classic play which was to be re- 
 vived three nights later at a fashionable West End theatre. 
 Mildred had set her heart upon being seen in a box at this 
 particular function, and Saxham had had some trouble to 
 gratify her wish. 
 
 He remembered with startling clearness every remote 
 detail of that night at the theatre. Mildred had looked 
 exquisitely fair and girlish in her white dress, with a neck- 
 lace of pearls he had given her rising and falling on the lovely 
 virginal bosom, where the lover's eyes dwelt and lingered 
 in the masterful hunger of his heart. Soon, soon, tiiat 
 hunger of his for possession would be gratified ! It was 
 April, and at the end of July, when work was growing slack, 
 they would be married. They were going North for the 
 honeymoon. A wealthy and grateful patient of Saxham's 
 had placed at his disposal a grey, historic Scotch turret- 
 mansion, standing upon mossy lawns, with woods of larch 
 and birch and ancient Spanish chestnuts all about it, 
 looking over the silver Tweed. In the heat and hurry of
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 1 15 
 
 his daily round of work, Saxham, who had spent an autumn 
 holiday at this place, would find himself dreaming about it. 
 The smell of the heather would spice the air that was no 
 longer hot and sickly with the effluvia of the city, and the 
 hum of the drowsy black bees, and the cooing of the wood- 
 pigeons would replace the din of the London traffic, and 
 INIildred's eyes would be looking into his, and her cool, 
 fragrant lips would be freely yielded, and her arms would be 
 about his neck, and all those secret aspirations and yearn- 
 ings and dreams of wedded joy would be realised at last. 
 
 He grinned to himself sitting there in the hot darkness 
 of the South African night, the great white stars and the 
 vast purple dome they throbbed in shut out of sight by 
 the miserable little gaily-papered ceiling with its cornice of 
 gilt wood, remembering that everything had ended there. 
 Thenceforth no more hopes, no dreams, for the man whom 
 Fate and Destiny, hitherto propitious and obliging, had 
 conspired to lash with scourges, and drive with goads, and 
 hound with despairs and horrors to the sheer brink where 
 Madness waits to hurl the desperate over upon the jagged 
 rocks below. 
 
 He supped with them at Pont Street. Mildred came 
 down to say good-night at the door. 
 
 " Have you been happy ?" he had asked, framing the 
 sweet young face in tender hands, and looking in the pretty, 
 gentle brown eyes. 
 
 " You have been so very dear and kind to-night," she 
 had answered, " how could I have helped being happy ? 
 And He " — she meant the Semitic actor- manager, whom 
 she romantically adored ; whose thick, flabby features and 
 pale gooseberry orbs, thickly outlined in blue pencil, eye- 
 browed witli brown grease-paint ; whose long, shapeless 
 body, eloquent, expressive hands, and legs that were very 
 good as legs go, taking them separately, but did not match, 
 had been that night, his admirers declared, moved and 
 possessed by the very spirit of Shakespearean Tragedy — ■ 
 " He was so great ! Don't you agree with me — mar- 
 vellously great ?" 
 
 Saxham had laughed and kissed the enthusiast. It had 
 appeared to him a dreary performance enough, or it would 
 have, had it not been for Mildred and the dear glamour 
 
 8—2
 
 116 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 with which her presence had invested the great gilded 
 auditorium, with its rows of bored, familiar, notable faces 
 in the stalls, representing Society, Art, Literature, Music, 
 and Finance ; its pit and gallery crowded with organised 
 bodies of theatre-goers, one party certain to boo where the 
 other applauded, riot and disorder the inevitable result, 
 unless by a coincidence rare as snow at Midsummer the rival 
 associations might be won upon to display a unanimity of 
 approval, upon which the dramatic Press-critics would 
 rapturously descant in the newspapers next morning. 
 
 XV 
 
 Saxham said his lingering sweet good-night, and shut 
 Mildred into the warm, lighted hall, and ran down the 
 steps, and hailed a passing hansom, and was driven back to 
 Chilworth Street. It had rained, and the heat, excessive 
 for April, had abated, and the wise, experienced stars 
 looked down between drifting veils of greyish vapour upon 
 the little human lives passing below. 
 
 As he jumped down at his door and paid his cabman, his 
 quick eye noticed a bicycle leaning against the area-railings. 
 One of his poorer patients was waiting for the Doctor. 
 Or a messenger had been sent to summon him. He let 
 himself into the lighted hall, whistling the pretty plaintive 
 melody of Ophelia's song. 
 
 A woman sat on the oak bench under the electric globe, 
 her little huddled-up figure making rather a sordid blotch 
 of drab against the strong, rich background of the wall, 
 coloured Pompeian red, and hung with fine old prints in 
 black frames. Her tawdry hat lay beside her, her haggard 
 eyes were set, staring at the opposite wall ; her lower jaw 
 hung lax ; the saHva dribbled from the corner of her under- 
 lip ; her yellow, rigid hands gripped the edge of the bench. 
 It was the woman who passed as the wife of the man 
 Bough. And in instant, vivid, wrathful realisation of the 
 desperate reason of her being there, Saxham cried out so 
 loudly that the servant who had let her in and was waiting 
 up for his master in the basement heard the words : 
 
 " Are you mad ? What do you mean by coming here ?
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 117 
 
 Haven't I told you that I will have nothing to do with you 
 and your affairs. . . ." 
 
 The voice that issued from her blue Ups might have been 
 a scream, Judging by the wrung anguish of the awful face 
 she turned upon him ; but it was no more than a dry, 
 cUcking whisper that the now listening servant could barely 
 hear : 
 
 " Don't be 'ard on a woman . . . hin trouble, Doctor." 
 
 " Hard on you. ... On the contrary, I have been too 
 considerate," he said, steeling his heart against pity. 
 " You must go home to your husband, Mrs. Bough, or 
 apply elsewhere for medical advice. I have none to give 
 you." 
 
 His square face was very stern as he took the cab- whistle 
 from the liall-salver, that was packed with cards and notes, 
 and letters that had come by the last post, and a telegram 
 or two. She moaned as he laid his hand on the knob of the 
 hall-door. 
 
 " It wasn't my doings, Doctor. ... Hi told Bough 
 what you said. Hi did, faithful . . . an' 'e swore if you 
 wasn't the man to do what 'e wanted, 'e'd be damned but 
 'e'd find a. woman as would ! x4Lnd she come next night — 
 a little, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' 
 an' shakin'. Five pounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' 
 shiverin'. An' he wasn't to send no more to the haddress 
 he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Always move 
 hout . . . she says, after a fresh job ! Oh, my Gawd ! An' 
 Bough, he bordered me, an' Hi 'ad to give in. An' to-night 
 Hi reckoned Hi was dyin' an' 'e said Hi best harsk you, 'e 
 was about fed up with women an' tbeir blooming sicknesses. 
 So Hi hiked 'ere because Hi couldn't walk. An' now ! . , ." 
 She groaned : " Hi ham dyin', aren't Hi ?" 
 
 Even to an observation less skilled than that of the 
 expert medical practitioner the signs of swift and speedy 
 dissolution were vsTitten on the insignificant, once pretty, 
 little face. Dying, the miserable little creature had ridden 
 to Chilwortli Street, hastening her own inevitable end by the 
 stupendous act of folly, and ensuring Saxham's. Tliat cer- 
 tainty had pierced him, even as tlie first horrible convulsion 
 seized her and wrenched her sideways off the bench. He 
 caught her, and shouted for his man, and they carried her
 
 118 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Into the consulting-room, and laid her on a sofa, and he 
 did what might be done, knowing that his mercy on her 
 involved swift and pitiless retribution upon himself. 
 Mrs. Bough died three hours later, as the grey dawn 
 straggled through the blinds, and the men with the district 
 ambulance waited at the door, and Dr. Owen Saxham 
 went about his work that day with a strange sensation of 
 expecting some heavy blow that was about to fall. It fell 
 upon the day following the Coroner's Inquest. He was 
 sitting down to breakfast when a Superintendent of Police 
 arrested him upon a warrant from Scotland Yard. 
 
 His servant, very pale, had announced that the Super- 
 intendent wished to see the Doctor. The Superintendent 
 was in the room, courteously saluting Saxham, before the 
 man had fairly got out the words. 
 
 " Good-morning, sir. A pleasant day !" 
 
 " UnUke the business that brings you here, I think, 
 Mr. Superintendent ?" said Saxliam, with his square Jaw 
 set. His man spilt the coffee and hot milk over the cloth 
 in trying to fill his master's cup, " You are nervous, 
 
 Tait. You had better go downstairs, I think, unless " 
 
 Saxham looked interrogatively at the burly, ofificially- 
 clad figure of the Law. 
 
 " No, sir, thank you. We do not at present require 
 your man, but it is my duty to tell him that he had 
 better not be out of the way, in case his testimony is 
 wanted." 
 
 " You hear ?" said Saxham ; and as white-faced Tait 
 fled, trembling, to the lower regions : " Of course, you are 
 here," he went on, pouring out the coffee himself with a 
 firm hand, and looking steadily at the Superintendent, 
 " with regard to the case of Mrs. Bough ? I have expected 
 that a magistrate's inquiry would follow the Inquest. It 
 seemed only natural " 
 
 The Superiutendent interrupted, holding up a large 
 hand. 
 
 " It is my duty to tell you. Dr. Saxham, that everything 
 you say will be taken down and used against you in 
 evidence." 
 
 " Naturally," said Saxham, putting sugar in his coffee. 
 The sugar was used agaiost him. It amused him now to
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 119 
 
 remember that. The Superintendent had never seen a 
 gentleman more cool, he told the magistrate. 
 
 " You see, sir, this Case has been fully considered by the 
 authorities, and it has an ugly look ; and it has therefore 
 been decided to charge you with causing the death of the 
 woman Bough by an illegal act, performed here, in your 
 consulting-room, on the twentieth instant, when she visited 
 you ..." 
 
 " For the first time," put in Saxham quietly. 
 
 " That may be or may not be," said the Superintendent. 
 " You were often at her husband's place of business, you 
 know, and may have seen her or not seen her." 
 
 " As she used to be in Bough's shop, it is possible that a 
 great many of the man's customers besides myself did 
 see her," Saxham went on, eating his breakfast. 
 
 " One of my men out there in the hall — I've noticed you 
 looking towards the door " began the Superintendent. 
 
 " Wondering what tlie shuffling and breathing at the 
 keyhole meant 1" said Saxham quietly. " Tliank you for 
 explaining." 
 
 ** One of my men will fetch a cab when you have finished 
 breakfast, and then, sir," said the Superintendent, " I 
 am afraid I must trouble you to come with me to Padding- 
 ton Police Station." 
 
 " Very well," said Saxham, frowning, " unless you object 
 to using my brougham, which will be at the door " — he 
 looked at his silver table-clock, a present from a grateful 
 patient — " in ten minutes' time." 
 
 " I don't at all mind that, sir," agreed the obliging Super- 
 intendent ; " and the men can follow in the cab. Any 
 objection ?" 
 
 Saxham had winced and flushed scarlet to the hair. 
 
 " For God's sake, don't make a procession of it ! Let 
 things be kept as quiet as possible for the sake of my — 
 family — and — my friends." He thought with agony of 
 Mildred. They were to be married in July, unless 
 
 The Superintendent coughed behind his glove. " The 
 question of Bail will rest with the magistrate, of course," 
 he said. " But I should expect that it would be admitted, 
 upon responsible persons entering into the customary 
 recognisances."
 
 120 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Saxham rose. He had drunk the coffee, but he could 
 not eat. " Like all the rest of them, in spite of his show 
 of coolness," thought the Superintendent. 
 
 " I will ask you for time to telephone to some friends 
 who will, I have no doubt, be willing to give the required 
 undertaking, and arrange for a colleague to visit my patients. 
 You will take a glass of wine while I step into the next 
 room ? The telephone is there, on the writing-table." 
 
 " And a loaded revolver in the drawer underneath, 
 and poisons of all lands handy on the shelves of a neat 
 little cabinet," thought the Superintendent. But he said : 
 " With pleasure, sir, only I must trouble you to put up 
 with my company." 
 
 A tingling thrUl of revulsion ran through Saxham. He 
 set his teeth, and conquered the furious, momentary 
 impulse to knock down this big, burly, smooth-spoken 
 blue-uniformed ofl&cial. 
 
 " Ah, very well. The usual procedm-e in cases of this 
 kind. Please, come this way. But take a glass of wine 
 first. There are glasses on the sideboard there, and claret 
 and port in those decanters." 
 
 " To your very good health, Dr. Saxham, sir, and a 
 speedy and favourable ending to — the present — difficulty." 
 The Superintendent emptied a bumper neatly, and with 
 discreet relish, and followed Saxham into the consulting- 
 room, and once more, at the sound of the measured foot- 
 fall padding behind him over the thick carpet, the suspect's 
 blood surged madly to his temples, and his hands clenched 
 until the nails drove deep into the palms. For from that 
 moment began the long, slow torture of watching and 
 following, and dogging by the suspicious, vigilant, observant 
 Man In Blue. 
 
 A Treasury Prosecution succeeded the Police- Court 
 Inquiry, and the accused was formally arrested upon the 
 criminal charge, and committed to Holloway pending the 
 Trial. The Trial took place before Mr. Justice Bodmin in 
 the following July, occupying five days of oppressive heat in 
 the thrashing out of that vexed question, the guilt or inno- 
 cence of Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S. Who for airless, 
 stifling years of weeks had eaten and drunk and slept and 
 waked in the Valley of the Shadow of Penal Servitude.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 121 
 
 Who was conveyed from the dock to the cell and from the 
 cell to the dock by warders and policemen, rumbling through 
 back streets and unfrequented ways in a shiny prison - van. 
 Who came at last to look upon the Owen Saxham of this 
 hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel 
 for the Crown reared up, day by day, a monstrously- 
 distorted figure, as quite a different person from the other 
 innocent man whom the defending advocate described in 
 flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim 
 of an unheard-of combination of adverse circumstances. 
 
 Things went badly. The case against the prisoner 
 looked extremely black. That monstrous figure of Owen 
 Saxham, based upon an ingenious hypothesis of guilt, and 
 plastered over with a marvellous mixture of truths and 
 falsities, facts and conjectures, grew ugher and more sinister 
 every day. 
 
 The principal witness, the bereaved husband of the 
 hapless victim, dressed in deep mourning and neatly handled 
 by Counsel, evoked a display of handkerchiefs upon his 
 every appearance in the witness-box, from the smart 
 Society women seated near the Bench. Many of them 
 had been Saxham's patients. Several had made love to 
 him, nearly all of them had made much of him, and quite 
 an appreciable number of them had asked him to be 
 accommodating, and render them temporarily immune 
 against the menace of Maternity. These had received a 
 curt refusal, accompanied with wholesome advice, for which 
 they revenged themselves now, in graceful womanly fashion, 
 by being quite sure the wretched man was guilty. More 
 than possible, was it not ? they whispered behind their 
 palm-leaf fans : it was sultry weather, and the vendors of 
 these made little fortunes, hawking them outside. Was 
 it not more than possible that he had been the dead woman's 
 lover ? The Crown Counsel improved on this idea. 
 Wretched little Mrs. Bougli, of infinitesimal account in 
 Life, had become through Death a person of importance. 
 Much was made out of the fact that she had gone to Chil- 
 worth Street some days previously to her deplorable ending, 
 and remained closeted wdth Dr. Saxham for some time. 
 He had supplied her with a bottle of medicine upon her 
 leaving — medicine of which no memorandum was to be
 
 122 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 found in his notes for the day. She had taken the first 
 dose then and there. According to the testimony of the 
 Accused, the bottle had contained a harmless bromide 
 sedative. Upon the oath of the Public Analyst, the same 
 bottle, handed by the husband of the deceased woman 
 to the Police upon the night of her death, and now pro- 
 duced in Court with two or three doses of dark liquid 
 remaining in it, contained a powerful solution of ergotoxine 
 — a much less innocent drug. Who should presume to 
 doubt its administration by the Prisoner, when the label 
 bore directions in his own characteristic handwriting ? 
 Who should dare to affirm his innocence, seeing that to him 
 his victim had hastened, almost in the act of death, begging 
 him, with her expiring breath, " not to be hard on a 
 woman," who had ignorantly trusted him, Gentlemen of 
 the Jury ! only to find, too late, the deceptive nature of 
 his specious promises ? A whip, cried the Bard of Avon, 
 England's glorious, immortal Shakespeare, should be placed 
 in every honest hand to lash such scoundrels naked through 
 the world ! Let that whip, in the honest hands of twelve 
 good Britons, be — the verdict of guilt ! The Counsel for 
 the CroAivn, red-hot and perspiring, sat down mopping his 
 streaming face, for it was tropical weather, with the white 
 handkerchief of a blameless life. Irrepressible applause 
 followed, round upon round thudding against the dingy 
 yellow-white walls, beating against the dirty barred 
 skylight of the stifling, close-packed Court. Then the 
 Judge interposed, and the clapping of hands and thumping 
 of stick and sunshade ferrules upon the dirty floor died 
 down, and the Counsel for the Defence got up to plead for 
 his man, who, by the way, he firmly believed to be 
 guilty. 
 
 That remembrance made the Dop Doctor merry again, 
 this scorching night in Gueldersdorp, five years later. 
 But it was ugly mirth, especially when he recalled his 
 agony of sympathy upon hearing, through her mother, 
 that Mildred was ill in bed. Ah ! how he hated the 
 simpering, whispering, sneering, giggling women in Court 
 when he pictured her, his innocent darling, his sweet girl, 
 suffering for love of him and sorrow for him. David, 
 detained by onerous duties at Regimental Headquarters
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 123 
 
 throughout the whole of the Case, wrote chilly but fraternally 
 expressed letters on blue official paper. Of his mother, of 
 his father, Owen daredmot think. Innocent as he was, the 
 shame of his position, the obloquy of the Trial, must be 
 a branding shame to them for ever. 
 
 It had killed them, the Dop Doctor remembered, within 
 a few years of each other — the hale old Squire and Madam, 
 his Welsh wife, feared by the South Dorset village folks for 
 her caustic tongue, beloved for her generous heart, her liberal 
 nature. It was Mildred who he had believed would die 
 if the Verdict went against him — Mildred, who had con- 
 soled herself so quickly and so well — Mildred, whom he had 
 held a spotless blossom of Paradise, a young saint in purity 
 and singleness of heart, in comparison with those other 
 women. 
 
 Bah ! what a besotted idiot he had been ! She was 
 as they were. The nodding of their towering hats was 
 before his eyes ; the subdued titter that accompanied their 
 whispered comments was in his ears ; the lavender, white 
 rose, and violet essences vnth which they perfumed their 
 baths and sprinkled their clothes were in his nostrils ; suffo- 
 catingly, as his Counsel went on pleading. The intention 
 of his trenchant cross- questioning of Bough, who had lied 
 from the beginning, like a true son of the Devil, his father, 
 8ho,wed plainly now. Little by little the evidence accu- 
 mulated. 
 
 Here, free and unsuspect and doing his best to send 
 another man to Penal Servitude, was the man who had all 
 to gain by fixing the guilt upon the Accused. He had 
 sent the woman, his mistress, to the prisoner ; he had 
 resented the prisoner's refusal to commit or to abet a 
 dangerous and illegal operation. He had compelled his 
 hapless victim to submit herself to the hands of a wretch 
 who lived by such deeds. Possibly he had sickened of 
 his poor toy — he had told her as much. Possibly he had 
 determined, by a bold and daring stroke, to free himself 
 of a wearisome burden, and let another man pay the penalty 
 for his own crime. The substitution of the lethal drug 
 found in the bottle for the harmless bromide mixture 
 given to Mrs. Bough by Dr. Saxham would naturally 
 suggest itself to such a wretch, whose calculating cleverness
 
 124 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 had been crovsTied with success by the culminating master- 
 stroke, admii'able in its simplicity, damnable in its fiendish 
 cunning, of sending the unhappy woman whose deliberate 
 murder he had really planned and carried out, to die upon 
 the threshold of the innocent victim of this diabolical plot. 
 Let those who heard hesitate before they played into the 
 hands of a villain by condemning the blameless to suffer ! 
 Let them look at the young man before them, whose hard 
 work had won him, early in life, his brilliant position as one 
 of the recognised pioneers of the new School of Surgery, 
 as an admitted authority on Clinical Mediciae, whose 
 wedding-bells— the handkerchiefs came out at this — had 
 rung to-morrow but for this harrowing and bitter stroke 
 of adverse Destiny. Wliich would they have ? Let the 
 Jury decide for Christ or Barabbas ! He spoke in all 
 reverence, because the upright, innocent, charitable, self- 
 denying life of a diHgent healer of men would support the 
 analogy of Christ-likeness beside that of the principal 
 witness in this Case, the evil liver, the slanderer, the ex- 
 thief and burglar, the English ticket - of - leave man who 
 had emigrated to South Africa eighteen years previously, 
 had enlisted under a false name in the Cape Mounted 
 Police, had deserted, been traced to Kimberley, and there 
 lost sight of, and who, imder the name of Bough, had 
 recently returned to England, giving himself out as an 
 Afrikander, and setting up in business in London upon 
 the accumulated savings of a career most probably in 
 keeping with his abominable record. 
 
 Warders from Wormwood Scrubbs and Portland Prisons 
 were there to swear to the identity of Abraham Brake, 
 alias Lister, alias Bough, whose photographs, thumb- 
 prints, and measurements an official from the Criminal 
 Identification Department of Scotland Yard was prepared 
 to place before the Court, for whose re-arrest, as a ticket- of - 
 leave man who had failed to keep in proper touch with the 
 Police, an officer with a warrant waited. What, then, was 
 to be the Verdict of the Jury ? Was Dr. Owen Saxham 
 innocent or guilty ? If innocent, then, in the name of God, 
 let biTTi go forth from bondage, to the unutterable relief of 
 those who waited in anguish for the Verdict. His father, 
 his mother, and the fair young girl — the Court was drowned
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 125 
 
 in tears at this last touching reference, even his Lordship 
 the Judge being observed to remove and wipe eyeglasses 
 that were gemmy with emotion, as Counsel dwelt upon the 
 touching picture of the sorrowing bride-elect, whose orange- 
 blossoms had been blighted by the breath of this hideous, 
 this unbearable, this most unfounded charge. . . . 
 
 XVI 
 
 The Judge summed up, with an evident bias in favour of 
 the Accused. An old advocate in criminal causes, his 
 Lordship had formed his own opinion of the principal 
 witness for the Cro^vn, though there was no evidence to 
 prove the guilt of the astute Mr. Abraham Brake, alias 
 Lister, alias Bough. 
 
 The Jury retired, to return immediately. The Verdict 
 " Not Guilty " was received with applause and cheers. 
 Bough departed, to pay the prison penalty of not keeping 
 in touch with the Police. . . . More cheers, strongly de- 
 precated by the Judge. The Dop Doctor could hear that 
 ironical clapping and braying five years ofif. It was over, 
 over ! He was free ! Oh, the mockery of the word ! 
 
 His Counsel shook his hand warmly, and several old 
 friends and colleagues pressed round him with hearty con- 
 gratulations. Then a telegram was handed to him. 
 
 " No bad news, I hope," said the advocate who had 
 defended, seeing Saxham's Ups blanch. " You have had 
 enough trouble to last for some time, I imagine ?" 
 
 " It appears as if my measure was not quite full enough," 
 said Saxham quietly. " My father died suddenly last night, 
 down at our place in South Dorset. The wire says, ' An 
 attack of cerebral haemorrhage,' probably brought on by 
 worry and distress of mind over this damned affair of 
 mine." He ground his teeth together, and went on : '"I 
 must go to my mother without delay. How soon can I get 
 away from here ?" 
 
 It was oddly difficult to realise that all the doors were 
 open, and that the following shadow of the Man In Blue 
 would no longer dog his footsteps. It was strange to drive
 
 126 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 home in the brougham of a friend to Chilworth Street, and 
 let himself into the dusty, neglected, close-smelling, shut- 
 up house. All the servants were out ; probably they had 
 been making holiday through all the weeks that had pre- 
 ceded the Trial. His man returned as the master finished 
 packing a portmanteau for that Journey down to Dorset- 
 shire. Saxham left him to finish while he changed his 
 clothes and scrawled a letter to Mildred. Nothing else 
 but this death could have kept him from hurrying to the 
 embrace of those dear arms. As it was, he half expected 
 her to rush in upon him, stammering, weeping, clinging 
 to him in her overwhelming relief and gladness. ... At 
 every rumble and stoppage of wheels in the street, at every 
 ring, he made sure that she was coming. But she did not 
 come, and he sent his man to Pont Street with his letter, 
 and went down into Dorsetsliire by special train from 
 Waterloo, and found the dead man's dogcart waiting for 
 him, with the old bay cob in harness, and the old coachman 
 who had taught him to ride his pony, waiting, with a band 
 of crape about his sleeve, and drove through the deep, 
 ferny lanes to the old home standing in its mantle of mid- 
 summer leafage and blossom in the wide gardens whose 
 myrtle and lavender hedges overhung the beach below. 
 There was a little, old, bent, white-haired woman in a 
 shabby black gown and white India shawl waiting for 
 him on the threshold, and only by the indomitable, un- 
 quailing spirit that looked out of her bright black eyes did 
 Owen Saxham recognise his mother. She called him Ik^p 
 David's dearest son, and her own boy, and took both hi.s 
 hands, and drew his head down, and kissed him solemnly 
 upon the forehead. 
 
 " That is for your father, my dear," she said. " He 
 never doubted you for one moment, Owen. And this is 
 for myself. We have both beUeved in you implicitly 
 thi'oughout. We would not even write and tell you so. 
 It would have seemed, your father thought, like admitting, 
 tacitly, that we doubted our son. But other people be- 
 lieved you guilty, and oh ! Owen, I think it killed liim !" 
 
 " I know that it has killed him," Owen Saxham said 
 simply. The early morning light showed to the mother's
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 12? 
 
 eyes the ravages wrought in her son's face by the mental 
 anguish and the physical strain of those terrible weeks 
 that were over, and Mrs. Saxham, for the first time since 
 the Squire's death, burst into a passion of weeping. Owen's 
 eyes were dry, even when he stooped to kiss the high, broad 
 forehead of the grand old grey head that lay upon the 
 snowy, lavender-scented pillow in the cool, airy death- 
 chamber, where the perfume of the climbing roses that 
 flowered about the open casements came in drifts across 
 the sharp, clean odour of disiufectant. 
 
 Captain Saxham arrived late that night. His greeting 
 of his brother was stiff and constrained ; his grey eyes 
 avoided Owen's blue ones ; he did not refer to the events 
 of the past ten weeks. He had always had a habit of twist- 
 ing and biting at one of the short, thick ends of his frizzy 
 light brown moustache. Now he wrenched and gnawed 
 at it incessantly, and his usually florid complexion had 
 deteriorated to a muddy pallor. Black mufti did not suit 
 the handsome martial figure, and there is no dwelling so 
 wearisome as a house of mourning, when the servants move 
 about on tiptoe, wearing faces of funereal solemnity, and 
 the afternoon tea-tray is carried in in state, like the corpse 
 of a domestic usage on its way to the cemetery, with the 
 silver spirit-kettle bubbling behind it as chief mourner. 
 But, as the elder son, there was plenty to occupy Captain 
 Saxham. There was business to be transacted with the 
 Squire's solicitor, with his bailiff, with one or two of the 
 principal tenants. There were the arrangements to be 
 made for the Funeral, and for the extension of hospitahty to 
 relatives and friends who came from a distance to attend 
 it. When it was over and the long string of County car- 
 riages had driven home to their respective coach-houses, 
 Owen Saxham returned to town. 
 
 " Give my dear love to Mildred. Tell her, if she grudged 
 the first sight of you to me, she wUl forgive me when she 
 has a son of her own," his mother said. 
 
 " You talk as though she were my wife !" he said, the 
 bitter lines about his set mouth softening in a smile. 
 
 " She would be but for what is past," said Mrs. Saxham. 
 " She must be soon, for your sake. Your father would have
 
 128 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 wished that there should be as little delay as possible. 
 Marry quietly at once, and take her abroad. If she loves 
 you, as I know she does, and must, she will not regret the 
 wedding-gown from Paquin's and the six bridesmaids in 
 Directoire hats." 
 
 For that deferred wedding was to have been a gorgeous 
 and impressive function at St. George's, Hanover Square, 
 with a Bishop in lawn sleeves to pronounce the nuptial 
 benediction, palms, Japanese iiHes, smilax, and white 
 Rambler roses everywhere, while the celebrated " Non Angli 
 sed Angeli " choir of boy-choristers had been specially en- 
 gaged to render the anthem with proper fervour and give 
 due effect to " The Voice that Breathed." 
 
 Owen promised and went back to London. There were 
 cards and envelopes upon the salver in. the hall, but not 
 one from Mildred. That stabbed him to the heart. . . . 
 Not a line, God ! — not a written Une, in answer to that 
 letter in which he told her of the acquittal, and of his 
 father's death, and of his own anguish at having to answer 
 the stern call of filial duty, and leave dear Love uncom- 
 forted by even one kiss after all these weeks of famine, 
 and hurry away to lay that grand grey head in the vault 
 that covered so many Saxhams. Not a line. But here 
 was the letter, which his idiot of a servant, demoralised by 
 the recent catastrophe, had forgotten to send on lying 
 waiting upon the writing-table in his study. He snatched 
 at it in desperate haste, and tore the envelope open. 
 
 Her letter bore the date of that day. She said she had 
 written before and torn the confession up ... it was so 
 difficult to be just to him and true to herself. ... It was 
 a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle 
 in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was 
 dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it ; that she 
 could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had 
 returned in an accompanjdng packet his ring, and presents, 
 and letters, and would ever remain Ms friend (underlined) 
 Mildred. In a rather wobbly postscript, she begged him 
 not to write or to attempt to see her, because her decision 
 was irrevocable. She spelt the word with only one r.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 129 
 
 Saxham read the letter three times deliberately. The 
 walls of the castle he had built, and fondly believed to be 
 a work of Cyclopean masonry, had come tumbling about 
 his ears, and lo ! the huge blocks were only bits of painted 
 card, and the Lady of the Castle, ins true love, was the 
 false Queen, after all. He folded up the letter and put it 
 away in his pocket-book, and went over to the mantel -glass 
 and looked steadily at the reflection of his own square face, 
 haggard and drawn and ghastly, with eyes of startling 
 blue flaring out from under a scowling smudge of meeting 
 black eyebrows. He laughed harshly, and a mocking devil 
 looked out of those desperate eyes, and laughed back. 
 He unlocked an oak-carved, silver-mounted cellaret, and 
 got out a decanter of brandy, and filled a timibler, and 
 drank the liquor off. It numbed the unbearable mental 
 agony, though it had apparently no other effect. But 
 probably he was drunk when he rang the bell and said 
 quietly to Ms man : 
 
 " Tait, do you believe there is a God ?" 
 
 Tait's smooth, waxy countenance did not easily express 
 surprise. He answered, as though the question had been 
 the most commonplace and ordinary of queries : 
 
 *' Can't say I do, sir. I reckon the parsons are respon- 
 sible for floating 'Im, and that they made a precious good 
 thing out of bearin' stock in Heaven until the purchasers 
 began to ask for delivery, and after that . . ." He 
 chuckled dryly. " I've lived with one or two of 'em, and, 
 if I may say so, sir — I know the breed !" 
 
 " He knows . . . the breed . . ." repeated Saxham 
 heavily. 
 
 He asked another question, in the same thick, hesitating 
 way, as he moved across the carpet to the oak-and-silver 
 cellaret. 
 
 " Tait, when tilings went damned badly with you, when 
 that other man let you in for the bill you backed for him, 
 and that girl you were to have married went off with some- 
 one else, what did you do to keep yourself from brooding ? 
 Because you must have done something, man, as you're 
 alive to-day !" 
 
 Tait looked at his master dubiously as he poured out 
 more brandy, and went over and stood upon the hearthrug 
 
 9
 
 130 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 with his back to the empty fireplace, drinking it in gulps. 
 " I did what you're doing now, sir : I took a sight of drink 
 to keep the trouble down. And " He hesitated. 
 
 " Go on," said Saxham, nodding over the tumbler. 
 
 " You're not like other gentlemen in your ways, sir," said 
 smooth ' Tait, " and that makes me 'esitate in saying it. 
 But 1 took on a gay, agreeable young woman of the free- 
 and-easy sort, and went in for a bit o' pleasure, and more 
 drink along with it. One nail drives out another, you know, 
 sir. And if the young lady have thrown you hover " 
 
 " Why, you damned, white-gilled, prying brute ! you 
 must have been reading my correspondence," said Saxham 
 thickly, as he lifted the tumbler to his mouth. 
 
 Tait griimed. He could venture to tell his master, driuik, 
 what he would not have dared to tell him sober. 
 
 " No need for that, sir. I've come and gone between this 
 house and Pont Street too often not to know what was in 
 the wind. Wliy, Captain Saxham was there with her often 
 and often when you never suspected. . . ." 
 
 Tlie tumbler fell from Saxham's hand, and struck the 
 fender, and smashed into a hundrf3d glittering bits. 
 
 "Go !" said Tait's master, perfectly, suddenly, dangerously 
 sober, and pointing to the door. The man delayed to finish 
 his sentence. 
 
 " While you were in Hollo way, sir, and all through the 
 Trial. . . ." 
 
 The door, contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had 
 been left open. He vanished through it Avith harlequin- 
 like agiUty as a terrible, white-faced black figure seemed to 
 leap upon him. , . . 
 
 " I've 'ad an escape for my life !" he said, having reached 
 in a series of bounds the safer regions below stairs. 
 
 " Of the Doctor ? . . . Go on with your rubbishing 
 nonsense !" said the cook. 
 
 " What did you go and do to upset 'im, pore dear ?" 
 demanded the housemaid, who was more imaginative, and 
 cherished tlie buddings of a romantic passion for one who 
 should be for ever nameless : 
 
 " Her at Pont Street has wrote to give 'im the go-by — 
 that's what she've done," said pale-faced Tait, wiping his 
 dewy brow. " And seeing the Doctor for the first time
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 131 
 
 since I've been in his service a bifc overtook with liquor, and 
 more free and easy like than customary — being a gentleman 
 you or me would 'esitate to take a liberty with in the 
 ordinary way o' things — ^I thought I'd let 'im know about 
 the Groings On." 
 
 " Of them two . . ." interpolated the cook — " Her and 
 the Captain ?" 
 
 " Shameless, I call 'em !" exclaimed the incandescent 
 housemaid as Tait signified assent. 
 
 " 'Aven't they kep' it dark, though !" wondered the cook. 
 
 " They're what I call," stated Tait, who had not quite 
 got over the desertion of the young woman he was to have 
 married, and who had gone oflf with somebody else, " a 
 precious downy couple. And what I say is — it's a Rid- 
 dance !" 
 
 " How did 'e take it, pore dear 1" gulped the housemaid. 
 
 " Like he's took every think — that is, up to the present 
 moment," admitted Tait. " But i his is about the last 
 straw." 
 
 The housemaid dissolved in tears. 
 
 " He'll get another young lady," said the cook con- 
 fidently. " And him so 'andsome an' so clever, an' with 
 such heaps of carriage-swells for patients." 
 
 Tait shook his prim, respectable head. 
 
 " The swells '11 show their tongues to another man now, 
 my gal, who 'asn't the dirt of the Old Bailey on his coat- 
 sleeve. Whistle for patients now, that's what the doctor 
 may. Why, every one of 'em has paid their bills, and them 
 that haven't have asked for their accounts to be sent in. 
 And it's ' Lady So-and-so presents her compliments,' 
 instead of ' Dear Dr. Saxham.' Done for, he is, at least 
 as far as the West End's concerned. . . . Mind, I don't 
 set up to be infallible, but experience justifies a certain 
 amount of cocksureness, and what I say is — ^Done for ! 
 Best he can do is — sell the practice, and lease, and plate, 
 and pictures, furniture, and so on, for whatever he can get 
 — the movables would have provoked spirited biddin' at 
 auction if the verdict had been Guilty, but, under the 
 circumstances, they won't bring a twentieth part of their 
 valoo — and go Abroad." Tail's gesture was large and 
 vague. 
 
 9—2
 
 132 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Foreign parts. Pore dear, it do seem cruel !" sighed 
 the cook. 
 
 " And 'is young lady false to 'im, and all. I wonder he 
 don't do away with hisself," sobbed the housemaid. 
 " I do, reely !" 
 
 " With all them wicked knives and deadly bottles 
 handy," added the cook. 
 
 " Not him !" said Tait. " I'm ready to lay any man the 
 sporting odds against him committing sooicide. He's 
 not the sort. Lord ! what was that ?" 
 
 That was only the oversetting of a chair upstairs. 
 
 XVII 
 
 While the servants talked in the kitchen the master had 
 been sitting quietly in the darkening study. All without 
 and within the man was eddjang, swirling blackness. 
 Heat beat and glowed upon his forehead, like the radiation 
 from molten metal ; there was a winnowing and fanning 
 as of giant wings or leaping of furnace-fires. The blood in 
 his throbbing temples sang a dull, tuneless song. But 
 presently he became aware of another kind of singing. 
 
 It was a little hissing voice that came from the inside of 
 the oak-and-silver cellaret. And it sang a song that the 
 man who sat near had never heard before. 
 
 " Why think of the sharp lancet or the keen razor, why 
 long for the swift dismissing pang of the fragrant acid, or 
 the leap down upon the railway-track under the crushing, 
 pulping iron wheels ?" sang the httle voice. " I can give 
 you Forge tfulness. I can bring you Death. Not that 
 death of the body which, for all you know, may mean a 
 keener, more perfect capability to live and suffer on the 
 ps-rt of the Soul, stripped from the earthly husk that haa 
 burdened and deadened it. The Death that is Death in 
 Life. . . . Here am I, ready to be your minister. Drink 
 deep, and die !" 
 
 The man who heard lifted his white, wild, desperate 
 face. The song came more clearly. 
 
 " Wronged, outraged, betrayed of the God you blindly
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 133 
 
 believed in and the man and the woman who had your 
 passionate love, your absolute faith, have your revenge 
 upon the One — as upon these two others. Degrade, cast 
 down, deface, the image of your Maker in you. Hurl 
 back every gift of His, prostitute and debase every faculty. 
 Cease to believe, denying His Being with the Will He 
 forged and freed. Your Body, is it not your own, to do 
 with as you choose ? Your Soul, is it not your helpless 
 prisoner, while you keep it in its cage of clay ? Revenge, 
 revenge, through the body and the soul, upon Him who has 
 mocked you ! Do you not hear Him laugh as you sit there 
 desolate in the darkness — poor, broken reed that thought 
 itself an oak of might — alone, while your brother kisses the 
 sweet lips that were yours. David and Mildred are laugh- 
 ing too, at you. Hasten to efface every memory of the 
 lying kisses she has given you upon the bosoms of the 
 Daughters of Pleasure ! Love, revel, drink ! Drink, I say, 
 and you will bo able to laugh at the One and the two. . . ." 
 
 The little hissing voice drove Saxham mad. He leaped 
 up, frenzied, oversetting the chair. He tore open and threw 
 wide the doors of the oak-and-silver cellaret, and sought in 
 it with shaking hands. He found a bottle of champagne 
 and the brandy- decanter, and a long tumbler, and knocked 
 off the wired neck of the bottle against the chimneypiece, 
 and crashed the foaming wine into the crystal, and filled 
 up the glass with brandy, and tossed off the stinging, 
 bubbling, hissing mixture, and laughed as he set the 
 tumbler down. 
 
 The thing inside the oak-and-silver cellaret laughed too. 
 
 The hall-door shut heavily as Tait and the women in 
 the kitchen sat and listened. They had not spoken since 
 the crash of the falling chair in the room overhead. The 
 area-door was open to the hot, sickly night air of London 
 in midsummer. Tait slid noiselessly out and listened as his 
 master hailed a passing hansom and Jumped lightly in. 
 The flaps banged together, the driver pulled open the roof- 
 trap and leaned down to catch the shouted address. Tait's 
 sharp ear caught it too, and the knowing grin that decorated 
 the features of the cabman was reflected upon his decent
 
 134 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 smug countenance. His tongue was in his cheek as he 
 returned to the kitchen. For his master had given the 
 direction of a house of ill-fame. 
 
 Thenceforwards the door would have shut for ever upon 
 the strenuous, honourable, cleanly, useful life of Owen Sax- 
 ham, were it not that the For Ever of humanity means only 
 a little space of years with God — sometimes only a little 
 space of hours. Saxham did not need the evidence of the 
 shower of cheques from people who hated paying, the 
 request from the Committee of his Club that he would 
 resign membership, the averted faces of his acquaintances, 
 the elaborate cordiality of his friends, to tell him what he 
 knew already. As the astute Tait had said, as Society 
 knew already, he was a ruined man. He had made money, 
 but the enormous expenses of the Defence swallowed up 
 thousands. By bringing an action against the Treasury 
 he might have recovered a portion of the costs — so he was 
 told, but he had had enough of Law. He resigned his post 
 at the Hospital, in spifce of a thinly-worded remonstrance 
 from the Senior Physician. He dismissed his servants 
 generously. He disposed of his lease and furniture and other 
 property through a firm of auctioneers who robbed him, 
 and sold what stocks he had not realised upon, ajid wrote 
 a farewell letter to his mother, and sailed for South Africa. 
 Thenceforwards he was to build his nest with the birds of 
 night, and rise from the stertorous sleep that is born of 
 drunkenness only to drink himself drunk again. 
 
 Prom assiduous letter- writing friends David heard 
 reports of his brother that grieved him deeply. He told 
 these things to Mildred, and they shook their heads over 
 them and sighed together. Poor Owen ! It was most 
 fortunate for his family that the Jury had taken so lenient 
 a view of the case . . . otherwise . . . ! They were quite 
 certain in their own minds that poor Owen had been 
 culpable, if not guilty. They were married six months 
 later. The Directoire hats were out of date, of course, 
 but Louis Quinze, with Watteau trimmings suited the 
 six bridesmaids marvellously, and the " Non Angli sed 
 Angeli " choir rendered the Anthem and the "Voice that 
 Breathed " to perfection. 
 
 And Mildred, who never omitted her nightly prayers.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 135 
 
 made a special petition for the reformation of poor mis- 
 guided Owen upon her wedding-night. 
 
 " Because we are so happy," she told David, who had 
 found her kneeling, white and exquisitely virginal in her 
 lace and cambric draperies by the bedside. " And he 
 must be so miserable. And you know, though I never 
 really cared for him, he was perfectly devoted to me." 
 
 " Who could help it ?" cooed enamoured David, and 
 knelt and kissed his bride's white feet. The white feet 
 would show no ugly stains, although to reach the bridal 
 bed, towards which her husband now drew her, they must 
 tread upon his brother's bleeding heart. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 The Dop Doctor Ufted his head as the bell of the front- 
 door rang loudly at the back passage-end. Two mounted 
 officers of the Military Stafif at Gueldersdorp had trotted up 
 the street with an orderly behind them a moment before. 
 The elder of the two had pulled sharply up in front of the 
 green door whose brass- plate flamed in the last rays of 
 sunset. He had dismounted lightly and gone up the steps 
 and rung, saying something to his companion. The other 
 officer had saluted and ridden on, as though to carry out 
 some order : the orderly had come up and got off his horse 
 and taken the bridle of the officer's, as the Dutch dispensary- 
 attendant, Koets, had plodded heavily along the passage 
 and opened the door, and now slouched heavily back, 
 usliering in a presumable patient. 
 
 " Light the lamp," said the Dop Doctor in Dutch to 
 the factotum, as he rose up heavily out of his chair. " It 
 will be dark directly." 
 
 " There is no need of more hght, I am obUged to you," 
 said the stranger, cool, alert, brown of face as of dress : 
 a thin man, distinct of speech, quiet of manner, and m ith 
 singularly vivid eyes of light hazel. " In the actual dark 
 1 can see quite clearly. A matter of training and habit, 
 because 1 began life as a short-sighted lad. Do we nQcl 
 your assistant further ?"
 
 136 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 In indiiect answer to the pointed question, the Dop 
 Doctor turned to the Dutch dispensary-assistant, and said 
 curtly : 
 
 " Ga uit !" 
 
 Koets went, not without a scowl at the visitor. 
 
 " A sulky man and a surly master," thought the stranger, 
 scanning with those observant eyes of his the gaunt figure 
 in the shabby tweed suit. " Has seen trouble and lived 
 hard," he added, mentally noting the haggard lines of the 
 square face under the massive forehead, over which a 
 plume of badly-brushed hair, black with threads of grey 
 in it, fell av, kwardly. 
 
 " English and a University man, I should say. Those 
 clothes were cut by a Bond Street tailor in the height of 
 fashion about five years ago. And the man is in the second 
 stage of recovery from a bout of diunkenness — unless he 
 drugs ?" But even while the visitor was taking these 
 memoranda, he was saying in the customary tone of polite 
 inquiry : 
 
 " I have, I think, the pleasure of speaking to Dr. 
 Williams ?" 
 
 " Sir, you have not. Dr. De Boursy- Williams has left 
 for Cape Town with his family. You are speaking to his 
 temporary substitute." The bloodshot blue eyes met his 
 own indifferently. 
 
 " Indeed ! Well, I do not grudge the family if, as I 
 believe is the case, it chiefly ranks upon the distaff side. 
 But the Doctor wil) miss a good deal of interesting practice. 
 As to yourself, you will allow the inquiry. . . . Are you a 
 surgeon as well as a medical practitioner ?'* 
 
 " If I were not, I should not be here." 
 
 " I will put my question differently. I trust you will 
 not consider its repetition offensive. Have you an extensive 
 experience in dealing with gunshot wounds ?" 
 
 Saxliam said roughly : 
 
 " I have experience to a certain extent. I will go no 
 further than to say so. I am not undergoing examination 
 as to my professional capabilities that I am aware of, and 
 if you doubt them you are perfectly at liberty to seek 
 medical a.dvice elsewhere." 
 
 " My good sir, I have been elsewhere, and the other
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 137 
 
 doctor, when he learned the purport of my visit, relished 
 it as little as your principal is likely to do. With the 
 imminent prospect of a siege before us, we are making . . ." 
 The speaker, slipping one hand behind him, moved a step 
 backwards and nearer to the room-door. " As I said, sir, 
 with the imminent prospect of a siege before us, we are 
 making a house-to-house requisition. . . . Ah, I thought 
 as much !" 
 
 The door-knob had been quietly turned, the door 
 suddenly pulled open, bringing with it Koets, the Dutch 
 dispensary- attendant, whose large red ear had been glued 
 to the outer keyhole. 
 
 " Your Dutch factotum has been listening. Pick your- 
 self off the mat, Jan, and take yourself out of earshot." 
 The stranger whistled the beginning of a pleasant httle 
 tune, with a flavour of Savoy Opera about it. 
 
 " Ik heb not the neem of Jan," snarled the detected 
 Koets, retiring in disorder. 
 
 The whistler left off in the middle of a deftly-executed 
 embellishment to say : " Unfortunate ; because I don't 
 know the Dutch word for spy." The keen hazel eyes and 
 the liaggard blue ones met, and there was the faint sem- 
 blance of a smile on the grim mouth of the Dop Doctor. 
 Keeping the door open, the visitor went on : 
 
 " I have some notes here — entries copied from the Rail- 
 way freight-books. Three weeks ago twenty carboys of 
 carbolic acid, with a considerable consignment of other anti- 
 septics, surgical necessaries, drugs, and so forth were 
 delivered to Dr. Williams' order at this address. Frankly, 
 as the officer commanding Her Majesty's troops on this 
 border, I am here to make a sequestration of the things 
 I have mentioned, with all other medical and surgical 
 requisites stored upon the premises, that are likely to be of 
 use to us at the Hospital. In the name of the Imperial 
 Government," 
 
 The smile died out on the grim mouth. A sombre anger 
 burned in the blue eyes of the haggard man in shabby tweeds. 
 
 " Damn the Imperial Government !" said the Dop 
 Doctor. 
 
 The stranger nodded in serious assent. " Certainly, 
 damn it ! It is your privilege and mine, shared in common
 
 138 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 with all other Britons, to damn our Government, as long 
 as we remain loyal to our Queen and country." 
 
 The other man quivered with a sudden uncontrollable 
 spasm of hate, rage, and loathing. He clenched his hand 
 and shook it in the air as he cried : 
 
 " You employ the stock phrases of your profession. 
 They have long ceased to mean anything to me. I have 
 been the victim and the sacrifice of British laws. I have 
 been formally pardoned by the State for a crime I never 
 committed. I have been robbed, plundered, ruined, 
 betrayed, by the monstrous thing that bears the name of 
 British Justice. And as I loathe and hate it, so do I 
 cast off and repudiate the name of Enghshman. You 
 speak of the imminent prospect of a siege. What other 
 causes have operated to bring it about but British greed, 
 and the British lust for paramountcy and suzerainty and 
 possession ? Liberal, or Conservative, or Radical, or 
 Unionist, the diplomats and lawyers and financiers who 
 urge on your pohtical machinery by bombast and bribes 
 and catchwords and lying promises, are swayed by one 
 motive — governed by one desire — lands and diamonds 
 and gold. Wealth that is the property of other men, soil 
 that has been fertilised by the sweat of a nation of agricul- 
 turists, whom Great Britain despised until she learned 
 that gold lay under their orchards and cornfields." He 
 broke into a jarring laugh. " And it is for these, the robbers 
 and desperadoes, that the British Army is to do its duty, 
 and for them that De Boursy- Williams is to help pay the 
 piper. As for his property, which you are about to com- 
 mandeer in the name of the British Imperial Government, 
 I suppose I am legally responsible, being left here in charge. 
 Well, be it so ! . . . 1 can only protest against what 1 am 
 free to regard as an act of brigandage, reflecting small 
 credit upon your Service, and leave you, sir, to discover the 
 whereabouts of the carboys for yourself !" 
 
 He waved his hand contemptuously, and swung towards 
 the door. 
 
 " A moment," said the other man, " in which to assure 
 you that the fullest acknowledgments will be given in the 
 case of the stores, and that their owner will be paid for 
 them liberally and ungrudgingly. And, oranting that
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 139 
 
 much of what you have said is true, and that the leaven 
 of self-seeking is to be found in every man's nature, and that 
 greed is the predominating motive with those men who, 
 more than others, work for the building-up of an Empire 
 and the profitable union of Britain with her Colonies, 
 don't you think that there may be something in the good 
 old footballer's motto, ' Play the game, that your side may 
 win'?" 
 
 The Dop Doctor made a slight sound that might have 
 been of indifferent skssent or of contradiction. The other 
 chose to take it as assent. 
 
 " Take the present situation, purely as football. They 
 have picked me as a forward player. And I mean — to 
 play the game !" 
 
 The Dop Doctor might or might not have heard. His 
 square, impassive face looked as if carved in stone. 
 
 " To play the game, Doctor. Perhaps I have my bone 
 or two to pick with — several of the Institutions of my 
 country. Possibly, but I mean to play the game. Fate 
 has ridden me on a saddle-gall or two, and mixed too much 
 chopped straw in proportion to the beans, but — there's the 
 game, ajid I'm going to play it for all I'm worth. As an 
 old University man, that way of looking at things ought 
 to appeal to you." 
 
 Still no answer from the big, sullen, black-haired man in 
 the shabby worn clothes. But his breathing was a httle 
 quickened, and a faint, smouldering glow of something not 
 yet quenched in him showed in the haggard blue eyes. 
 
 " It's a confoundedly handicapped game, too, on the 
 defending side. Doesn't that fact rather appeal to the 
 sportsman in you. Doctor ?" 
 
 The other said slowly : 
 
 " I gather that the struggle will be unequal. It was 
 stated in my hearing yesterday afternoon that a con- 
 siderable force of Boers were advancing on Gueldersdorp 
 from the direction of Geitfontein, and, later, that another 
 large body of them were on the march along the river- valley 
 from the west. I did not attempt to verify what I had 
 heard from my own observation. I was — otherwise 
 engaged." The half -incredulous surprise that the other 
 man could not keep out of his eyes stung him into adding :
 
 140 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Frankly, I did not care to trouble. It did not interest 
 me. 
 
 The Colonel said, with a dry chuckle : 
 
 " No ? But it will presently, though ! And, seen 
 through the glass even now, it's an instructive spectacle. 
 Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed and thoroughly fed 
 if insufficiently washed, gathering in all quarters — marching 
 to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, going 
 into laager. Ten thousand Boers, at a rough estimate, not 
 counting the blacks they have armed against us. . . . And, 
 behind our railway-sleepers and sand-bags, eight hundred 
 fighting European units, twenty per cent, of them raAv 
 civilians ; and seven thousand neutral Barala and Kaffirs 
 and Zulus in the native Stad — an element of danger lying 
 dormant, waiting the spark that may hurry us all sky-high. 
 . . . By God, Doctor, the game's worth playing, except 
 bv cowards and curs !" 
 
 The smouldering glow in the Dop Doctor's eyes had been 
 fanned into a fire. The visitor saw the flame leap, and 
 went on : 
 
 *' There's a native proverb — I wonder whether you know 
 it ? — a kind of Zulu version of the regimental motto, Vestigia 
 nulla retrorsum. It runs like this : ' If we go forward, we 
 die ; if we go backward, we die. Better go forward and die.* " 
 He reached out a long, lean, brown right hand. " Come 
 forward with us. Doctor. We can do with a man like you !" 
 
 The impassive face broke up. Saxham gripped the 
 offered hand as a drowning man might have done. He 
 cried out hoeirsely : 
 
 " You don't know the sort of man I am. Colonel. But 
 everybody else in this cursed place knows, or should know. 
 They call me the Dop Doctor. You understand what that 
 nickname implies ?" He held out his shaking hands. 
 " Look at these ! They would tell you the truth, even if 
 I lied. What use can a man like me be to you, or men like 
 you ? I am a drunkard, sir. I have not gone to bed sober 
 one night in the last five years !" 
 
 There was a pause before the Colonel answered, filled up 
 in the odd way characteristic of the man by a softly- 
 whistled repetition of the opening bars of the pleasant little 
 tune. Then he said quietly and dryly :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 141 
 
 " There is another proverb, not Latin nor Zulu, but 
 English, which impresses on us that it is never too late to 
 mend !" He looked at a tarnished Waterbury watch, 
 worn on a horse's lip-strap. " I am due to inspect the 
 Hospital to-morrow at ten o'clock sharp. If you will 
 meet me there punctually at the half-hour, I shall have the 
 pleasure of introducing you to — your Colleagues of the 
 Medical Staff. And now, if you please, as I have just five 
 minutes left to spai'e, we will have a look at those carboys 
 of carbohc." 
 
 " They are in the old Chinese godown at the bottom of 
 the garden," said Saxham. He felt in one of the baggy 
 pockets of the old tweed coat, pulled out a key, and 
 offered it silently to the conqueror, who motioned it back. 
 
 " Keep it, if you'll be so good. We'll send a waggon and 
 a careful man or two round from the Army Service Stores 
 Department within an hour ; for that stufi: in your friend's 
 carboys is more precious than rubies to us just now — a 
 man's life in every teaspoonful. And if, as you tell me, there 
 is some mercurial perchloride, Taggart and the Medical Stall 
 will jump for joy. What we owe to Lister, Koch, and those 
 fellows ! You'd say so if you'd ever seen gangrene on War 
 Hospital scale — in Afghanistan, in 1880, even as recently 
 as the Zululand Campaign of 1888. The Pathan and the 
 Zulu are slim, and the Boer is even slimmer, but the wiliest 
 customer of 'em all is the Microbe. No wonder WelHngton's 
 old campaigners used to slit the throats of badly-wounded 
 soldiers, or that the ambulance-men of Soult and Bona- 
 parte were merciful enough to knock on the head every 
 poor beggar who had been bayonetted in the body. They 
 knew there was not the atom of a chance. But to-day we 
 know how to deal with the invisible enemy. Thanks to 
 Antiseptic Surgery, that younger daughter of Science and 
 Genius, as some smart fellow puts it in the National Review.'* 
 
 And the pleasant little tune was whistled through to its 
 final grace-note as the two men went down the house- 
 passage and crossed the garden. Verily, to some other 
 men that have lived since Peter of the Nets has it been 
 given to be fishers of their kind ! This man said that night 
 to an olhcer of the StafE *
 
 142 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 XIX 
 
 " I LANDED twenty carboj^^s of carbolic to-day, and a lot 
 of other Hospital stores, by talking football to a man who 
 knows the game, chiefly from the ball's point of view," 
 
 " That counts to you, Colonel," called out Beauvayse, 
 the Chief's fair, bojrish Junior aide-de-camp, from the 
 bottom of the table, " against the awful failure you were 
 grousing about this morning." 
 
 " Ah ! you mean when I tried to frighten some Sisters 
 of Mercy into leaving the town by painting them a luridly- 
 coloured verbal picture of the perils of the present situa- 
 tion," said the Colonel. His keen hazel eyes twinkled, 
 though his mouth was grave. " I ought to have remem- 
 bered that you can't scare a religious, be he or she Roman 
 Catholic, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, by pointing to the 
 King of Terrors. He does to frighten lay-folk, but for the 
 others Death's grisly skeleton-hand holds out the Keys of 
 Heaven." 
 
 " What will it hold for some of us others, I wonder," 
 said one of the dinner-guests, a moody-looking civilian, of 
 Semitic features, whose evening clothes made a dull contrast 
 with the mess-dress of the Staff officers gathered about their 
 Chief's table in his quarters at Nixey's Hotel on the Market 
 Square, " before this month is out ?" 
 The host leaned forward to reply : 
 
 " My dear Mr. Levison . . . special mention in De- 
 spatches Above, with honours and promotion for those of 
 us Avho have been approved worthy. For others, who have 
 tried and failed, a merciful overlooking of blunders, a 
 generous acceptance of the intention where the perfor- 
 mance came short. . . . And for the rest ... a grave on 
 the yellow veld in the shadow of a rock or thorn-bush, 
 with the turquoise sky of day overhead, shimmering in the 
 white-hot sunshine ; or an ocean of purple ether, ridden by 
 what old Lucian called ' the golden galley of the regnant 
 Moon.' That in South Africa ; and at home in England, 
 one's memory kept warm and living in, say, three hearts 
 that recognised the best in one, and loved it. A mother's 
 Leajt, the heait of a friend — and hers /"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 143 
 
 There was no insincerity of flattery in the hum of applaud- 
 ing comment that ensued. All earnest original thought 
 has beauty ; and this man could not only think, but clothe 
 his thoughts in direct and simple language, and add to it 
 the charm of well-modulated and musical utterance. 
 
 " I call that good enough," said the senior Staff Officer, 
 a dark, handsome, eagle- faced Guardsman, who bore a great 
 historic name. " for you or me or any other fellow here — 
 we're not taking into account the living dead ones." 
 
 The Chief leaned forward in his characteristic attitude, 
 and spoke, a long, lean bro\vn forefinger emphasising the 
 sentences, his hawk-keen glance driving them home. " I 
 tell you, Leighbury, that some of those, the rottenest corpses 
 among 'em, will shed their grave-clothes, and rise up and 
 do the deeds of living men before, to quote Levison, this 
 month is out. Never take it for granted that a man is dead 
 until the grass is growing high over his bare bones, and 
 don't make too sure even then ! Because to-day I saw 
 such dry bones move — and it's an instructive if an im- 
 cannj' sight." • 
 
 " Whose were the bones, Colonel ?" called out the hand- 
 some young aide at the bottom of the table. 
 
 The host, his thin, brown fingers busy at the clipped 
 moustache, was listening to the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, 
 who sat upon his right. He withdrew his attentive eyes 
 from that stalwart sportsman's broad, ruddy countenance, 
 to glance smilingly at the fair, handsome face, and reply : 
 
 " Whose 1 Well, up to the present they have belonged 
 to the Dop Doctor." 
 
 " That man !" The Mayor, in the act of taking another 
 slice of the roast, looked round as at the mention of a name 
 familiar, shrugging his portly shoulders. "Surely you 
 know who the fellow is. Colonel ? He drifted up here from 
 Cape Colony three years ago. A capable — confoundedly 
 capable man, handicapped by a severe muscular strain," 
 the Mayor's twinkling eye heralded the resurrection of an 
 ancient jest — " contracted in lifting a cask of whisky — a 
 glass at a time !" 
 
 White teeth flashed in alert tanned faces. The school- 
 boy laugh went round the table ; then the Babel of talk rose 
 up iigain. Most of these men were quite young . . . their
 
 144 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 seniors barely middle-aged, not a man but was what they 
 themselves would have termed both " fit " and " keen." 
 They had wrought for many days in the erection of sand- 
 bag defences, in the digging of trenches, in the drilling of 
 Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers and the newly- 
 enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time 
 of lull before the storm, and they were not to get many 
 more good dinners or peaceful nights in bed for a long 
 siege to come. They did not show outwardly the tension 
 of strung nerves that waited, as the whole world waited, for 
 the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills to 
 the south. Nor did it occur to them that there was any- 
 thing heroic or dramatic in their quiet unaffected pose. 
 Gathered together upon one little spot of border earth 
 destined to be the vital, tragic, throbbing centre of great 
 events and tremendous issues, actions glorious, and deeds 
 scarce paralleled upon the page of History, let us look 
 upon them, well - groomed, well - bred, easy - mannered, 
 cheery, demolishing the good dishes furnished by the chef 
 of Nixey's Hotel, with the hungry zest of schoolboys, 
 exchanging fusillades of not very brilliant chaff. 
 
 Scraps of scientific and technical conversation with refer- 
 ence to telephonic and telegraphic installations between 
 outlying forts and headquarters, electric communication 
 with mines, automatic warning - apparatus, the most 
 effective methods of constructing bomb-proof shelters, the 
 comparative merits of Maxim and Nordenfeldt, crossed 
 in the air like fragments of bursting projectiles, impelled 
 by those admirable engines of destruction. Mingled with 
 reminiscences of cricket, golf, tennis, polo, and motoring, 
 then in its infancy ; anecdotes new and old, and conjectures 
 as to what the fellows at home were doing '? Hurlingham 
 and Ranelagh, Maidenhead and Henley, Eton and Oxford, 
 Sandhurst and Aldershot, Piccadilly in the season, Simla 
 in the heats, the results for Kempton Park and New- 
 market Races — of all these they talked, with rhino and 
 elephant shooting and the big isattues of pheasants now 
 taking place in the Home Midlands and up North. But 
 though the watch-fires of their pickets burned upon the 
 veld, and though the Boer lay in laager over the Border, 
 of him they said not one word. That reticence upon the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 145 
 
 vital point was characteristically English. The excitable 
 Gaul would have wept, kneaded his manly bosom, and 
 alluded to his mother; the stolid Muscovite would have wept 
 also, referring to his Little Father, the Czar; the Teuton 
 would have poured forth oceans of turgid sentiment about 
 the Fatherland ; the dignified Spaniard would have recog- 
 nised himself as a warrior upon the verge of a Homeric 
 struggle, and said so candidly ; the hysterical American 
 would have sung " HaU, Columbia !" and waved pocket- 
 handkerchief-sized replicas of the Star-Spangled Banner 
 until too exhausted to agitate or vocalise. But to these 
 men indulgence in sentiment was "bad form," and unre- 
 strained patriotic utterance merely " gas," tainting the 
 air with an odour as of election- eggs or sulphuretted 
 hydrogen. Therefore were many words to be avoided. 
 
 A pose, if you will, an affectation, this studied avoidance 
 of all appearance of enthusiasm or excitement ; showing 
 the weak spot in the armour of these heroes, henceforth 
 to be of epic fame. But Man is essentially a weak being. 
 It is only when the immortal spirit of him nerves the frame 
 of perishable bone and muscle that he rises to heights 
 that are sublime. Such souls of fire burned within these men, 
 that when the Wind of Death blew coldest and the lead- 
 and-iron hail beat hardest, they only glowed more fiercely 
 radiant ; and Want and Privation, instead of weakening, 
 only seemed to make them more strong ; — strong to endure, 
 strong to foresee plots and avert perils and oppose wit to 
 cunning, and strategy to deceit ; so strong that, by reason 
 of their strength, that little frontier town became a fortress 
 of Titans. And their names, other than those I have 
 given them in this story, shall go ringing down the grooves 
 ^of Time, until Time itself shall be no more. 
 
 10
 
 14« * THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 XX 
 
 While they ate and drank, laughed, and chatted, the 
 man who was to be their comrade, sharer in all those perils 
 and privations yet to come, was tramping up and down 
 the bare boards of the dingy bedchamber in Harris Street, 
 wrestling desperately with his tragic thirst. 
 
 " Why did he come and look at me, and take me by the 
 hand, and awaken my deadened senses to the sting of 
 anguish that has no name ? Why could he not have left 
 me alone in this living death I had attained ?" he cried. 
 " When first I took to the infernal, blessed liquor, it was 
 for the sak« of respite from mental pain, toriure unbearable. 
 Then I was a man, only unhappy. Now ± am lower than 
 the lowest of the sensible, cleanly, decent brutes, because I 
 desire the drink for its own sake, and find gratification in 
 physical degradation. O Grod, if Thou indeed art, and I 
 must perforce return to live the life o* a man amongst 
 men, help to burst the chains that fett< 'V me ! Help me to 
 be free !" 
 
 He swallowed a great draught of wa^er, and stumbled 
 to the unused bed, and threw himself acoss it, raging and 
 panting, and defiant of the very Power iie invoked. And 
 then, against hope, sleep came to him, drowning memory 
 and obliterating thought, and relieving physical suffering. 
 The lines smoothed out of the heavy forehead, and the 
 grim mouth relaxed in the smile that his dead mother had 
 kissed, coming in with the shaded candle to look at her 
 sleeping boy. 
 
 Just as the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, that stalwart York- 
 shireman, mighty hunter of elephetnt, rhino, giraffe, and 
 lion in the reckless days of bloodshed that were before the 
 introduction of the Game Laws into South Africa, was 
 saying to the Colonel : 
 
 " Irreclaimable, sir. Hopeless ! A confirmed drunkard, 
 who has soaked away all self-respect, who has been 
 cautioned and warned and fijied a score of times, by myself 
 and other magistrates. Dr. de Boursy-Wilhams, our 
 leading practitioner here, has taken the fellow imder his 
 wing, in a manner — bails him out when it is necessary,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 147 
 
 and, I believe, when the man is sober enough, give? him 
 work in his dispensary and allows him to administer the 
 anfesthetic when it's a question of a surgical operation. 
 Wonder he trusts him, for my part! Yet De Boursy- 
 Williams is a remarkably successful operator, and hardly 
 ever loses a case. It is unfortunate that he should have 
 been called away to Cape Town at this juncture." 
 
 " He has left Dr. Saxham as locum terpens, I under- 
 stand." 
 
 The Mayor shrugged his portly shoulders. 
 
 " As to his qualifications, there's no doubt. Ranked 
 high at one time as a London West End specialist. I 
 have seen his name myself in a British Medical Directory 
 of some years back as principal visiting-surgeon to St. 
 Stephen's and the Ludgate Hospital for Diseases of the 
 Chest. Has written books — scientific works that are 
 quoted now. Must have been making money hand-over- 
 hand when the collapse came. The usual thing — one slip 
 — and a Police-court Inquiry follows, and down goes the 
 unlucky wretch with the CrowTi on top of him, and all the 
 Press pack yelping for soft snaps. True, the finding of the 
 Jury was ' Not Guilty,' but the fact of there having been 
 a prosecution was enough to ruin Saxham professionally. 
 Ah, I thought you must have heard the name !" 
 
 For the listener had moved suddenly. He did remember 
 the name of the distinguished London practitioner who 
 had been discreditably mixed up in the case of Mrs. Bough, 
 the young, miserable, murdered creature, who might 
 possibly have been the daughter of Richard Mildare. 
 Tough and cool as his tried nerves were, he shuddered at 
 the thought, and a sickly heat made the points of per- 
 spiration stand out upon his forehead. But the Mayor, 
 good man, was prosing on : 
 
 " I can't say the facts of the case are very clear in my 
 recollection, but I have a file of the Daily Wire at home, 
 extending over six years back, so the Criminal Court 
 proceedings must be reported in it. The woman's name. 
 I do remember, was Bough. As regards her age, now you 
 ask me " — for the Colonel had put a quick question — " I 
 fancy she must have been twonty-two or three. Indeed, 
 I am almost certain that was the age as stated by the 
 
 10—2
 
 148 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Medical Witness for the Prosecution. . . . However, I'll 
 go into the reports and let you know for certain." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, in case those Daily Wire, 
 files are bomb-proof, possibly it would be better to take 
 the family with you — and stop until times improve." 
 
 " Not bad, not half bad. Colonel ! But to tell the truth, 
 I wouldn't miss what we used to call the shindy, and these 
 boys of yours term the ' scrap ' for a pile of Kruger sove- 
 reigns. And — I can shoot better than most men, if I am 
 in the sere and yellow sixties." The Mayor was sUghtly 
 ruffled ; the diplomatic touch smoothed him down. 
 
 " My money is on you, Mr. Mayor, when it comes to 
 stopping a Boer with a rifle- bullet at four hundred yards. 
 By the way, I have a little confidence to repose in you. 
 When you meet — as I am convinced you will meet — Dr. 
 Saxham at the Hospital or elsewhere, metaphorically 
 clothed and in his right mind, and in the active discharge 
 of duties which no man, judging by your own testimony, 
 is better fitted to perform, let him down gently." 
 
 The Mayor, conscious of civic dignity and magisterial 
 warnings from the Bench ignored, swelled obviously. 
 
 " My dear sir, you can't let the Dop Doctor down any- 
 how. He is — just about as low as a man can get — short 
 of being imderground." 
 
 " Lend him a hand up — in the first instance — by for- 
 getting that confounded nickname which I was clumsy 
 enough to blurt out just now. Be oblivious of what he is, 
 because of what he has been in the past, and will be in the 
 future. For there is tremendous stuff in the fellow even 
 now — or I am a bad judge of men." 
 
 " Colonel, you're a thundering bad judge of drunkards, 
 from the Bench's point of view, but you'd be a dauined 
 good special pleader for a client in need of all the excuses 
 that could be trumped up for him." 
 
 " We all have something we'd like to have an excuse 
 for, Mr. Mayor." The keen hawk-eyes held a twinkle in 
 reserve. " There was a man I loaew, a mighty hunter 
 before the Lord — and before the Game Laws." The thin 
 bro^Ti fingers of the muscular hard-palmed hand played vsdth 
 the stem of a wineglass as the sentences came out, crisp 
 and pointed. " Well, this is the story of a mistake, and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 149 
 
 an olii shikari of your experience can find even more excuses 
 for it than I can . . . but perhaps I. bore you ?" 
 
 " On the contrary — on the contrary, sir." 
 
 The fish had taken the bait, remained to play the 
 quivering captive until his last swirling struggle brought 
 him within reach of the skilful dip and lift of the angler's 
 net. 
 
 " It was about four years ago, in the Portuguese coast- 
 lands, South of the Zambesi, where elephants are to be had, 
 and rhino, particularly the Keitloa variety with the long 
 posterior horn, and a bad habit of charging the man behind 
 the 600 bore " 
 
 Mr. Mayor's capacious white waistcoat was agitated by 
 a subterranean chuckle. His double chin shook merrily. 
 " A side shot through the head— solid bullet — is the best 
 cure for that, Colonel. But you had to wait in the high 
 swamp-grass and keep the wind of him, and make sure of 
 your aim." 
 
 " Quite so. This man, from the shelter of a rock, waited 
 to make sure of his aim. The rhino was feeding tsetse as 
 he dozed in the high swamp-grass. His biggest horn showed, 
 and a bit of his shiny black skin. One forward lunge of the 
 brute's head — and the hunter could get that side-shot. For 
 that he waited, patience being, as we know, a virtue to be 
 cultivated by the successful stalker of big game " 
 
 The Mayor, boiled prawn-pink to the receding boundary- 
 line of his upright white hair, coughed awkwardly. 
 
 " The man waited two hours. Then the unclad and 
 obese native lady, carrying a long pointed grass-basket on 
 her back, who had squatted down in the high grass to smoke 
 a pipe and administer maternal refreshment to a shiny 
 black piccannin of three or four !" 
 
 The Mayor, purple now, burst out : 
 
 " Got up and went on ! And, if these boys of yours get 
 wind of that story, I shall be roasted within an inch of 
 my life. Whoever told you ? For the love of Heaven, 
 don't give me away !" 
 
 The keen eyes, were dancing now — the big fish had fairly 
 got the gaff. 
 
 " I promise, Mr. Mayor, upon the understanding that 
 you don't give away my man. . . . It's a compact ?
 
 150 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Thanks tremendously ! And here comes the Manager to 
 be congratulated upon the haunch. I never tasted better 
 venison, Mr. Nixey, though, as you say, this is rather 
 far North for koodoo. And the quail were beyond praise. 
 Waiter, a glass for Mr. Nixey. . . . Port — and we're going 
 to ask you to join us in drinlcing a toast. . . ." 
 
 The beautiful, flushed boy rose solemnly, glass in hand. 
 About the long board, adorned with a fine epergne full of 
 roses, Cape jessamine and purple bougainvillea. spread with 
 Nixey's best plate and linen, crystal, and dishes of Stafford- 
 shire cliina piled with golden mandarins, and loquats, the 
 fruit of October ; there was a great uprising of those phleg- 
 matic, self-contained Britons. Straight as the flames of 
 unblown torches, they burned about the table. And with 
 a simultaneous movement all those eyes of varied colours 
 turned to the lean bro\^Ti iace of the Chief, as the sweet 
 young clarion rang out : 
 
 " Gentlemen — the Queen !" 
 
 The brimming glasses rose high, — one crystal wave 
 with the crimson of blood in it. The resonant English and 
 the thinner Colonial voices answered together with a crash. 
 As of the wave breaking on white cliffs northwards, and a 
 great surge of love and loyalty went out from all those 
 hearts to England, throbbing to the steps of the Throne 
 where She sat, bowed with great griefs and great joys and 
 great triumphs and glories, and white-haired with the full 
 burden of her venerable years : 
 
 " The Queen !" 
 
 XXI 
 
 They lingered not long over wine and cigars. Lady 
 Hannah Wrynche, entertaining what she disdainfully 
 termed a " hen party " in her private rooms at Nixey's, 
 vacated in her honour by the landlord's wife — expected 
 them to coffee. Much to the relief of the military authori- 
 ties at Cape Town, Milady, most erratic of Society meteors, 
 had quitted that centre of painstaking official misinforma- 
 tion, for the throbbing spot of debatable land whence 
 events might be gathered as they sprang. Shooting across 
 the orbit of the reddening, low-hanging War-planet, she
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 151 
 
 had descended upon Gueldersdorp in a shower of baggage- 
 trunks, fox-terriers, and interrogations. For one thing, 
 she explained to everybody, she had undertaken to supply 
 a London Daily with a series of articles, written from the 
 Seat of Hostilities, and for another. Bingo was on the Staff, 
 and it would be so nice for him, poor dear, to have his ^vife 
 near him in case he happened to get . . . was " chipped " 
 the proper technical term, or " potted "? The articles were 
 intended to be the real thing — racy of the soil, don't 
 you know ? and full of " go " and atmosphere. Let it be 
 said here that they achieved raciness. The London print 
 in which they appeared came to be christened by the 
 scoffer and the incredulous the Daily Whale — it swallowed 
 and disgorged so many of the Jonahs rejected by other 
 editors. But the profits increased, and the proprietors 
 could afford to smile at envy. 
 
 Just now the insatiable gold fountain-pen from whence 
 our indefatigable Lady Correspondent derived her literary 
 pseudonym, was employed in recording merest gossip, in 
 the absence of the longed-for opportunity for its wielder to 
 prove herself the equal, if not the superior, of Dora Corr. 
 Dora was the woman Lady Hannah admired and envied 
 above all others. Colonial Editor to TJte Thunderbolt, War 
 Correspondent, financial expert, political leader-writer, and 
 diplomatic go-between when Cabinet Ministers and Empire- 
 builders would arrive at understandings, the serfdom of sex, 
 the trammels of the petticoat, may have been said to weigh 
 as lightly upon this thrice-fortunate spiaster as though it 
 were no drawback to be a daughter of Eve. 
 
 Oh ! prayed Lady Hannah, for the chance of proving that 
 another woman can equal this brilliant feminine Phoenix ! 
 Meanwhile her bright eyes and quick sense of humour took 
 note of the toilettes of some of her guests, wives and 
 daughters of notable citizens who had not hurried South 
 at the first mutterings of the storm. The purple satin 
 worn by the Mayoress tickled her no less than the un- 
 feigned horror of its wearer when offered from her hos- 
 tess's chatelaine cigarette-case the choicest of Sobranies. 
 Lady Hannah's laugh was the rattling of a mischievous 
 boy's stick across his sister's piano- wires, and the metallic 
 jangle preceded her assurance that everybody did it —
 
 152 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 all women in Society, at least, and you were thought odd 
 if you didn't. After dinner, in the most exclusive houses, 
 the most rigid of hostesses invariably allowed their women 
 guests to smoke. They knew people worth having wouldn't 
 come if they weren't allowed to. 
 
 " Never beneath my roof !" gasped the shocked and 
 scandalised wearer of the purple splendours demanded of 
 the wife of a Chief Magistrate. " Never at my table !" 
 Of course, the agitated Mayoress went on to say, one had 
 heard of the doings of the Smart Set. But one had hoped 
 it wasn't true, or, at least, had been very much exaggerated 
 by " writing-people." The Mayoress, though a mild 
 woman, had her sting. 
 
 Lady Hannah, immensely tickled to find the morals of 
 Bayswater rampant, as she afterwards expressed it, in the 
 centre of South Africa, cackled as she helped herself to a 
 second liqueur-glass of Nixey's excellent apricot- brandy. 
 Small, thin, restless, she presented a parched appearance, 
 with bright, round, beady eyes continually roving in search 
 of information from beneath the straggling fringe of a 
 crumpled Pompadour transformation, for those horrors 
 had recently become fashionable, and the whole world of 
 women were vying with one another in the simulation of 
 the criminal type of skull, with the Dolichocephalic Bulge. 
 
 " My dear lady, tobacco-ash is an excellent thing for 
 killing moth in carpets, and Time, — when one is compelled 
 to bestow it upon dull people ; and a perfectly healthy. 
 Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortable lodger. 
 But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, 
 it's a question how long both British institutions remain 
 intact, with those big guns getting into position round 
 us. . . ." She waved her small hand, its once well- 
 tended nails superbly ignored, its sun-cracks neglected, its 
 load of South African diamonds coruscating magnificently 
 in the light of Nixey's electric bulbs, and shrugged her thin, 
 vivacious shoulders. 
 
 The entrance of the gentlemen relieved the situation. 
 Lady Hannah jumped up and rushed at the Colonel. " As 
 if she meant to eat the man," the Mayoress said afterwards, 
 in the shadow of that threatened roof. But, impervious 
 to the entreaty of the bright black eyes and the glittering
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 153 
 
 hand that gesticulated with the urgent fan, he bowed, 
 smiled, said a few pleasant words to his hostess, and walked 
 " straight across " — as the Mayoress afterwards confided 
 to the Mayor — to take a seat beside the large, placid, 
 matronly figure palpitating in purple satin on an imported 
 Maple sofa. 
 
 Pleased and flattered, she made room for him, while 
 Lady Hannah became the gossip-centre of a knot of Mess 
 uniforms. . . . 
 
 " Both babies well ?" It would have been unlike him not 
 to have remembered that he had seen children at her house. 
 " Hammy and Berta made great friends with me the other 
 day. . . . Tell them I haven't forgotten the promise to 
 rummage up some odd native toys I picked up in Rhodesia — 
 made of mud and feathers and bits of fur and queerly- 
 shaped seed-pods — the most enchanting collection of birds 
 and beasts that ever came out of the Ark. And the 
 Makalaka have a legend about a big flood and a wise old 
 man who built a house of reeds and skins that floated. . . . 
 The North American Indians will tell you that it was a Big 
 Medicine Canoe, and amongst the tribes of the Nilghiri 
 Hills you find exactly the same story that the Chaldean 
 scribes wrote on their tablets of clay. To-day in 
 Eastern Kurdistan they'll point you out the peak on 
 which the Ark grounded. The Armenians hold it was 
 Ararat. . . . It's curious how the root-legend crops up 
 every\\ here. . . ." 
 
 " But of course it must." Her good, calm eyes showed 
 surprise, and her broad, white, matronly bosom was a little 
 fluttered. " Doesn't the Bible teach us that the Deluge 
 covered the whole earth ? Even Hammy and Berta can 
 tell you the whole story about Noah, and the raven — and 
 the dove." 
 
 He smoothed his moustache with a palm that wiped the 
 smile out. 
 
 " I must get them to tell it me one of these days." The 
 twinkle in his eye was not to be repressed. '' It would 
 save such a deal of trouble to believe there was only one 
 Noah, and only one Ark, don't you know ?" 
 
 Her motherly bosom panted. 
 
 " My children shall never believe anything else !"
 
 154 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 He was grave and sympathetic, though a muscle in his 
 thin check twitched. 
 
 " I believe the toy Ark of our happy childish memories is 
 built, if not of gopher-wood, at least upon the lines laid 
 down in Scripture. Has Hammy ever tried to get his to 
 float ? Mine invariably used to sink — straight to the 
 bottom of the bath. Perhaps that continually-recurrent 
 catastrophe had something to do with the sapping of my 
 infant faith, or the establishment of a sinking-fund of 
 doubt regarding the veracity of the Noachian reporter ?" 
 
 She leaned towards him, her placid grey eyes dilating 
 with pity for this man. 
 
 " You ought to come and sit under our minister, Mr. 
 Oddris, on Sundays. Pray do. He would convince you 
 if anybody could. Such an eloquent, able, well-informed 
 man, and so trvly pious and brave !" 
 
 The laugh perforce escaped him. The convincing 
 Apostle Oddris had called on him at official headquarters 
 that day, to inquire whether, as the said Oddris's wife and 
 children were going to the Women's Laager, his place as a 
 husband and father was not by their side ? Being informed 
 that able-bodied male beings were not included in the list of 
 the defenceless, he had become importunate in the matter of 
 at least a bomb-proof shelter to be erected in his back-yard. 
 
 '* I had rather sit under Hammy and hear about Noah, 
 with Berta on the other knee." 
 
 Her heart went out wholly to him. ... " ' Out of the 
 mouths of babes.' . . . Wasn't that one of the texts wdth 
 promise ? . . . 
 
 " You love children ?" 
 
 " Bless the little beggars !" he said heartily, " they're 
 the j oiliest company in the world." 
 
 She leaned towards him, palpitating between her shyness 
 of the Commander of the Garrison and her womanly curi- 
 osity to know more about the man. 
 
 " Hammond — the Mayor has told me — I hope it is not 
 indiscreet to mention it- — that the first thing you did, on 
 joining your regiment in India as a young subaltern, was 
 to gather all the European children in cantonments to- 
 gether and march them through the place, playing ' The 
 Giri I Left Behind Me ' on the flute."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 156 
 
 His brow grew black as thunder. The utterance came, 
 terse and sharp. 
 
 " Ma'am, you have been ravely misinformed." 
 
 She Jumped in terror. 
 
 " Oh ! . . . Can it be ? . . . Colonel, I do so beg you 
 to forgive me ! Let me assure you that neither the Mayor 
 nor myself will ever again repeat the story." 
 
 '* Ma'am, if you do . . ." 
 
 " But I promise, never . . ." 
 
 " Ma'am, if you never do, at least remember that the flute 
 was an ocarina." 
 
 He left the good soul in an ecstasy of giggles, and crossed 
 to Lady Hannah. She welcomed him with a glitter of 
 eyes and teeth and discovered the reserve-chair that had 
 been covered by her somewhat fatigued and wilted draperies 
 of maize Liberty-silk, veiled with black Maltese lace. 
 
 " What it is to be a man of tact ! You've made that 
 purple creature perfectly happy. Don't say you're going 
 to be less kind to another woman !" 
 
 She tapped with a reproachful fan the scarlet sleeve of 
 his thin serge mess-jacket, her appraising eye busy with the 
 badges worn on the dark green roll-collar and the miniature 
 medals and star. If a clever woman could be the con- 
 fidante of a Cabinet Minister, the post of riglit-hand to 
 the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces in Gueldersdorp might 
 be won. And then the world would know what Hannah 
 Wrynche was born for. What was he saying ? 
 
 *' I never warn my victims beforehand." 
 
 " Sphinx ! and I hoped to find you in the relenting 
 mood !" 
 
 " If possible, ma'am, my granite bosom is more un- 
 yielding than on the last occasion when ..." 
 
 " Do go on !" said the fan. 
 
 " When you tried to tap it." 
 
 " You're all alike." She sighed. " That is, you give 
 the keynote, and the others take up the tune. Even Bingo — 
 Bingo, whom I fLrmly believed incapable of keeping a secret 
 in \\ hich his dearest interests were concerned longer than 
 ten minutes — Bingo has sprung a surprise on me. I shall 
 end by falling in love with my own husband — such an 
 indecent thing to do after seven years of married life !*'
 
 156 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 ** Fortunately, the scene of your lapse from the crooked 
 path of custom is distant from the West End of London 
 nearly seven thousand miles. And you can rely upon me 
 for secrecy." 
 
 " Ah, that ! . . . If only you did leak a little informa- 
 tion now and then." Her eyebrows went up to the dry 
 fringe of her Pompadour transformation. " For the sake 
 of the thirsting public at home, to say nothing of my reputa- 
 tion as a Special Correspondent " 
 
 " Drive over and call on General Brounckers at Head 
 Laager, Geitfontein, on the Border, early to-morrow. 
 Perhaps he would oblige you with matter for a paragraph, 
 and forward the cable by private wire ?" 
 
 Her birdlike eyes were bright on him. 
 
 " I would go if I thought I could get anything by going. 
 Special information — vsdth reference to a Plan of Attack. 
 Oh ! if you knew how I'm dying to be really under fire. 
 To hear bullets zip-zip — isn't that the sound ? — as they 
 strike the ground or walls, and shells scream overhead !" 
 
 She clasped her sunburnt little jewelled hands in affected 
 ecstasy. His eyes were stem, and the lines about his 
 mouth deepened. 
 
 " Pray to-night that you may never hear those sounds 
 you speak of !" 
 
 She struck an exaggerated attitude of horrified con- 
 sternation. 
 
 " But no ! Why am I here ?" 
 
 " The Lord only knows. I've seen a hen peck at a lump 
 of dynamite. , . ." 
 
 " Ah, you never will take me seriously. But own in 
 your secret heart you're as much afraid as I am that a 
 
 Relieving Column will be sent down from Do tell me 
 
 again where Grumer is with the Brigade ? Uli, in Upper 
 Rhodesia — thanks ! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend 
 of Bingo's, and an old flame of mine. But — to burst our 
 lovely peacock bubble of Siege and let the whole situation 
 down, sans coup firir, into muddy commonplace — may 
 Grumer never come !" She held up her coffee-cup, and 
 drank the toast. 
 
 " Only for the women and children here," he said, and 
 his thin nostrils moved to the measure of his quickened
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 157 
 
 breathing, and a hot spark glowed in his keen eyes, " I'd 
 have joined you in that. But under the present circum- 
 stances — I'd give five years of life — and I love life ! — if our 
 lookouts could pick up Grumer's Advance by the time 
 grey dawn creeps up the east again." 
 
 She was incredulous. 
 
 " You, who said when you got orders to sail for South 
 Africa — I have it on the authority of your Henley hostess — 
 ' I hope they'll give me a warm comer ' !" 
 
 " I did say — just that. And I meant it." 
 
 His lips pursed in a soundless wliistle. She went on : 
 
 "I've seen your preparations. The little old forts, put 
 into such repair ! and the armoured train, with a Maxim and 
 a Hotchkiss, standing in the Railway siding, ready for 
 business. And the earthworks ! And the trek-waggon 
 barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed with cor- 
 rugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, 
 the iron skull that's to hold the working brain of the place 
 . . . with underground telegraphic and telephonic communi- 
 cations with all the forts and outposts. It's colossal ! A 
 masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought. ... I 
 thought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expecta- 
 tion that the schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear 
 Old Drury, waiting for the curtain to rise on the fii-st act of 
 the Autumn Drama. But you've given it to me — ^you and 
 our friends out there !" She waved the dry httle glittering 
 hand. " And you can talk in cold blood of marching out — 
 and leaving the hive — and all the honey you might have had 
 out of it. Sweet danger, perilous sport, the great Game 
 of War — played as a man like you knows how to play it 
 in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers and 
 Dominions looking on. Preserve us ! Oh, to be in your 
 shoes this minute, if only for one week ! But as I can't, 
 it's you I hope to see riding the whirlwind and directing 
 the storm. Not only for my own sake and the wretched 
 paper's — though, mind you, I don't pretend to be anything 
 but a mercenary, calculating worldly creature . . ." 
 
 His eyes were very kind. 
 
 " Bingo knows better !" 
 
 Her laugh did not jangle this time. 
 
 " Lady Grasby, that vitriol-tonguer' water-nvmph, as
 
 168 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Bomebody clever once called her, said that if Bingo gt)t 
 killed by any chance, I should sit down and write a gossipy 
 descriptive article, dealing with his military career, married 
 life, and last moments, before I ordered my widow 's- 
 weepers. Horrible things ! They've come in again, too ! 
 Talking of gossip, which I know you only pretend to despise, 
 I found the son of a mutual acquaintance dying in the 
 Hospital here. You know the Bishop of H . . . ?" 
 
 " His eldest son. Major Fraithom, was my senior when I 
 was Assistant Military Secretary at Gibraltar in '90. And 
 the Bishop is quite a dear crony of my mother's." 
 
 " The Bishop," she said, " was always a person of excel- 
 lent good taste — except when he cut off his second son, 
 Julius, with two hundred a year for turning Anglican, 
 wealing a soft hat and Roman collars, and joining the staff 
 at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street West as 
 Junior Curate." 
 
 " St. Margaret's. I know the church. Often go there 
 when I'm at home." 
 
 " It's the Halfway House to Rome, according to the 
 Bishop, who won't be content with running at every red 
 rag of Ritualism that flutters in his own diocese, but keeps 
 up the character of belligerent Broad Churchman by writing 
 pamphlets and asking questions in the House of Lords 
 with reference to affairs which are the business of other 
 people. According to him, the red cassocks of the acolytes 
 at St. Margaret's are cut out of the very skirts of the 
 Woman of Babylon, and Father Turney and his curates — 
 they're all Fathers there, and celibates by choice — are 
 wolves in wool, and Mephistophelean plotters against the 
 liberties of the Church. Punch pubUshed a cartoon of the 
 Bishop shutting his eyes and charging at a ^vindmill in a 
 cope and chasuble. He is sending out a string of Protes- 
 tant-Church-Integrity vans all over England, Scotland, and 
 Wales this season, with acetylene- lantern pictures from 
 Foxe's ' Book of Martyrs,' and a lecturer to point the morals 
 and adorn the tales. . . . But if he could see his Mary's 
 boy to-day, he'd put up with any amount of felt-basin 
 hats and Roman collars, and incense and altar-genuflec- 
 tions wouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh ! it's been a sore with 
 me this many a year, but when I saw him to-day I said.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 159 
 
 ' Thank God I never had a child !' Because to have seen 
 a boy or girl grow up and wither away as that beautiful 
 young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must 
 shudder to look back upon, even when she has found her 
 lost one again in Heaven." 
 
 There was genuine feeling in her voice, usually loud, 
 harsh, and tuneless. The bright black bird-eyes had a gleam 
 as of tears. He turned to her with sympathetic interest. 
 
 "The Bishop will be obliged to you for finding this out. No 
 hint of it had reached me. 1 am due at the Hospital in the 
 morning,and we'll see if something can't be done for the boy." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " It's a case of ttiberculous lung-disease. He developed 
 it in the Clergy House at St. Margaret's, and made light of 
 it, supposing or pretending that the oough and wasting 
 and difficulty of breathing meant bronchial trouble, the 
 result of London fogs. These young people who don't 
 value Life — glorious gift that it is ! When he broke down 
 utterly, at the end of a rampant campaign against Intem- 
 perance — he wouldn't be the Bishop's son if he didn't gall 
 the withers of some hobby-horse or other — the doctors 
 agreed there was nothing for him but South Africa." 
 
 He froMTQed, knowing how many sufferers had died of 
 that deadly prescription. She went on : 
 
 "So he came out — alone — upon the i. I vice of the well- 
 intentioned wiseacres, knowing nothing of the covntry, to 
 live on his two hundred a year until the end. And the end 
 is coming — in Gueldersdorp Hospital — with giant strides." 
 She bhnked. " They've isolated him in a small detached 
 ward. He has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart- 
 nurse is in love with him, unless I'm mistaken in the symp- 
 toms of the complaint. And he looks like St. Francis of 
 Assisi, wedded to Death instead of Poverty — and coughs — 
 fit to tear your heart. B'rrh !" she shuddered. 
 
 He repeated : " I'U see what can be done to-morrow. 
 These cases are deceptive. There may be a gleam of hope." 
 
 " There is one doubt about the case which might infer a 
 hope. I don't know what discoveries the London doctors 
 made, but I wormed out of the chart-nurse, who plainly 
 adores him, that the doctors in Gueldersdorp can't scare 
 up a bacillus for the life of them."
 
 160 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 His eyes lightened involuntary admiration, though his 
 tone was Jesting. 
 
 " You're thrown away on mere journalism. Criminal 
 Investigation or Secret Intelligence would offer wider fields 
 for your abilities." 
 
 " Wait !" she said, her beady eyes black diamonds. " I 
 shall hope to prove one day that an English woman- 
 journalist can be as useful as a Boer spy in the matter of 
 useful information. Why, why am I not a man ? You 
 only don't trust me because I am a woman." 
 
 He had touched the rankling point in her ambition. He 
 applied balm as he knew how. 
 
 " Your being a woman may have made all the difference 
 — for Fraithom. I shall set Taggart of the R.A.M.C. at 
 him to-morrow ; the Major's a bit of a crack at pulmonary 
 cases. And he shall consult with Saxham, and " 
 
 << 
 
 Saxham." Her eyebrows were knitted. " I thought 
 I knew the names of your Medical Staff men. But I can't 
 recall a Saxham." 
 
 " This Saxham is Civilian — and rather a big pot — M.D., 
 F.R.C.S., and lots more. We're lucky to have got him." 
 
 She stiffened, scenting the paragraph. 
 
 " Can it be that you mean the Dr. Saxham of the Old 
 Bailey Case ?" 
 
 " The Jury ac([uitted, let me remind you." 
 
 " I bolieve so," she said ; " but — he vanished afterwards. 
 I think an innocent man would have stopped and faced the 
 music, and not beaten a retreat with the Wedding March 
 almost sounding in his ears. But — who knows ? You 
 have met his brother, Captain Saxham, of the — th 
 Dragoons ? It was he who stepped into the matrimonial 
 breach, and married the young woman." 
 
 " The young woman ?" 
 
 " His brother's fiancee — an heiress of the Dorsetshire 
 Lee-Haileys, and rather a pretty-faced, silly person, with 
 a penchant for French novels and sulphonal tabloids. I 
 always shall believe that she liked the handsome Dragoon 
 best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being — under the 
 cloud of acquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the 
 dear Irish call ' the back of her hand.' " 
 
 " The better luck for him !"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 161 
 
 " It was mere instinct to let go when the man was 
 dragging them both under water," she asserted. 
 
 " A Newfoundland bitch would have risen above it." 
 
 " You hit back quick and hard." 
 
 " I'm a tennis-player and a polo-player and a cricketer." 
 
 " What game is there that you don't play ?" 
 
 " I could tell you of one or two. . . , But I must really 
 go and speak to some of these ladies. One of them is an 
 old friend." 
 
 " I know whom you mean. If I didn't, her glare of envj. 
 would have enlightened me. Did I tell you that I en- 
 countered an old friend — or, at least, a friend of old — at the 
 Hospital yesterday ?" 
 
 " You mean poor Fraithom ?" 
 
 " Not at all. I'm only a friend of his mother. I had 
 only heard of the boy, not met him, until I tumbled over 
 him here. But this face — severely framed in a starched 
 white guimpe and floating black veil — belonged to my Past 
 in several ways." 
 
 He showed interest. 
 
 " Your friend is a nun ? At the Convent here ? How 
 did you come across her ?" 
 
 " She called to see the Bishop's son — ^while I was with 
 him. It seems that. Judging by the poor dear boy's religious 
 manuals and medals, and other High Church contrap- 
 tions, the Matron had got him on the Hospital books as 
 a Roman Catholic. And, consequently, when my friend 
 looked in to visit a day-scholar who was to be operated on 
 for adenoids — I've no idea what they are, but a thing with 
 a name like that would naturally have to be cut out of one 
 — she was told of this poor fellow, and has shed the light of 
 her countenance on him occasionally since. Yesterday 
 was one of the occasions, and Heavens ! what a counten- 
 ance it is even now ! What a voice, what eyes, what a 
 manner ! I believed I gushed a bit. . . . She met me as 
 though we'd only parted last week. Nuns are wonderful 
 creatures : she's unique, even as a nun." 
 
 He said : " I believe I had the honour of meeting the 
 lady of whom you speak when I called at the Convent 
 yesterday afternoon. A remarkable, noble, and most 
 interesting personality." 
 
 11
 
 162 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lady Hannah nodded. " All that. But you ought to 
 have seen her at eighteen. We were at the High-School, 
 Kensington, together, I a brat of ten in the Juniors' Division, 
 she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carried every- 
 thing before her there, and emerged with a B.A. Degree 
 Certificate in the days when it was thought hardly proper for 
 a woman to go about with such a thing tacked to her skirts. 
 And all the students idohsed her, and the male lecturers wor- 
 shipped the ground sh-e trod. And when she was presented 
 — what a sensation ! They called her the ' Irish Rose,' 
 and ' Deirdre,' for her skin of cream and her grey eyes 
 and billowing clouds of black hair. Society raved of her for 
 three seasons, until the fools went even madder about that 
 little Hawting woman — a ; stiff starched martinet's frisky 
 half — who bolted with the man my glorious Biddy had given 
 her beautiful hand to. And the result ! She — ^who might 
 have married an Ambassador and queened it in Petersburg 
 with the best of 'em — she's in a whitewashed Convent, 
 superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikander 
 schoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathe- 
 matics, calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, 
 and the twiddle of the globes. He has something to answer 
 for, that old crony of yours !" 
 
 Lady Hannah stopped for breath, giving the listener his 
 opportunity. 
 
 " My dear lady, you have told me a great deal without 
 enlightening me in the least. Who is my ' crony,' and 
 who was your friend ?" 
 
 Lady Harmah opened her round beady eyes in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " Haven't I told you ? She is — or was — Lady Bridget- 
 Mary Bawne, sister of that high-falutin' little donkey the 
 present Earl of Castleclare, who came into the title and 
 married at eighteen. His wife has means, I understand. The 
 old Dowager Duchess of Strome, a bosom friend of my 
 mother's, was Biddy's aunt, and Cardinal Voisey, handsome 
 being ! is an uncle on the distaS side. All the CathoUc world 
 and his wife were at her taking of the veil of profession nine- 
 teen years ago. The Pope's Nuncio, the Cardinal-Bishop of 
 Mozella, officiated, and the Comtesse de Lutetia was there 
 with the Due d'O. . . . They didn't cut off her beautiful
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 163 
 
 Mack hair, though we outsiders were on tiptoe to see the 
 tiling done. I don't think I ever cried so much in my life. 
 Had hysterics — real — when I got home, and mother 
 
 scolded fearfully. The Duke of C came with his 
 
 equerry, and after the cloister-gates had shut — crash — 
 on beautiful Biddy in her bridal laces, and white satin, and 
 popes of pearls, and we were all waiting, breathless, for her 
 to come back in the habit, I heard the Duke say, not that 
 the dear old thing ever meant to be profane : ' By Grod ! 
 General, I'm damned if Captain Mildare hasn't made 
 Heaven an uncommonly handsome present ! ' And the man 
 he said that to was the husband of the very woman Dicky 
 had run away with not quite twelve months before. Mercy 
 on us !" 
 
 " Good Heavens !" the Ustener had cried and started to 
 his feet, the dark blood rushing to his forehead. The ivory- 
 pale, mutely-suffering face against the background of 
 whitewashed wall flashed back upon his memory, in a circle 
 of dazzling light. He saw her again, leaning against the 
 door of the chapel as he told her the cruel news. He 
 heard her saying : 
 
 " Are you at liberty to tell me the date of Captain 
 Mildare's death ? For I know — one who was also hia 
 friend — and would take an interest in the particulars." 
 
 The particulars ! And he had bludgeoned the woman 
 with them — stabbed her to the heart, poor soul, unknow- 
 ing 
 
 He was blameless, but he could not forgive himself. . . . 
 He drove liis teeth down savagely into his lower lip, and 
 muttered an excuse, and went away abruptly, leaving 
 Lady Hannah staring. He took leave soon after, and went 
 to his own quarters with theD.A.A.G., while her ladyship, 
 with intinite relief, getting rid of her feminine guests, 
 repaired with Captain Bingham VVrynche, familiarly 
 known to a wide circle of friends as " Bingo," and several 
 chosen spirits to the billiard-room, for snooker-pool, and 
 whisky -and-soda. 
 
 " The grey wolf is on the prowl to-night," said one of 
 the chosen spirits, as he chalked Lady Hannah's cue with 
 fastidious care. Ke winked acro.ss the table at Bingo, 
 sunset- red with dinner, champagne, and stroke- play. 
 
 11—2
 
 164 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " S'st !" sibilated the Captain warningly, winking in 
 the direction of his wife. Lady Hannah, her little thumb 
 cocked in the air, her round, birdlike eyes scientifically 
 calculating angles, paused before making a rapid stroke, 
 to say : 
 
 " Don't be cheaply mysterious, my dear man. Of 
 course, the Colonel visits the defences and outposts and 
 80 forth regularly after dark. It's part of the routine, 
 surely ?" 
 
 " Of course. But you don't suppose he goes alone, do 
 you, old lady ?" queried Captain Bingo. 
 
 " I suppose he takes his A.D.C. ?" 
 
 " Not to mention a detachment of the B.S.A. Also a 
 squad of the Town Guard in red neckties, solar topees 
 and bandoliers ; with the Rifles' Band, and D Squadron 
 of the Baraland Irregular Horse. Isn't that the routine, 
 Beauvayse ? You're more up in these things than me, 
 and I fancy there was a change in the order for the 
 
 evemn'." 
 
 "Rather!" assented Beauvayse, continuing,to the rapture 
 of winking Bingo. " On reaching the earthworks where 
 our obsoletes are mounted, the townies will now fire a 
 salute of blank, without falling down ; and the Band have 
 instructions to play ' There's Death in the Old Guns Yet.' 
 Those were the only material changes, except that sentries 
 will for the future wear fly- and fever-belts outside instead 
 of in." 
 
 " So that he can see at a glance," Lady Hannah said 
 approvingly, " that all precautions are being taken. Very 
 sensible, I call it." 
 
 " Ha, ha, haw !" Bingo's Joyous explosion revealed to 
 the outraged woman the fact that she had been " had." 
 " Haw, haw ! What a beggar you are to rot, Beauvayse ! 
 and that makes five to us." 
 
 Lady Hannah, vibrating with womanly indignation, 
 had made her long - delayed stroke, missed the pyramid 
 ball, and sent Pink spinning into the pocket. She threw 
 aside her cue and rubbed her fingers angrily. She hated 
 losing, and they were playing for shilling fives and half-a- 
 ero wn on the game. 
 
 " You — schoolboys !" She threw them a glance of
 
 THE DOP DOOrOR 165 
 
 disdain, as Beauvayse, his seraphic face agrin, screwed 
 in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged over the table. 
 " You artless babes ! Did you suppose I should be likely 
 to swallow such a feuille de chou without even oil and 
 vinegar ? For pity's sake, leave off winking, Bingo ! 
 It's a habit that dates back to the era when women wore 
 ringlets and white book-muslin, and men sported shaggy 
 white beaver hats and pegtop trousers, and all the world 
 read the novels of Lever and Dickens." 
 
 " Have Lever and Boz gone out ?" asked Beauvayse, 
 pocketing his pyramid ball. " I play at Blue." He hit 
 Blue scientifically off the cushion and went on. " Read 
 'em myself over and over again, and find 'em give points 
 in the way of amusement to the piffle Mudie sends out. 
 Not that I pretend to be a judge of literature. Only know 
 when I'm not bored, you know. You to play. Lord Henry." 
 
 But the senior officer of the Staff, Lady Hannah's 
 partner, had vanished. Somebody passing the open window 
 of the billiard-room had whistled a bar or so of a particu- 
 larly pleasant little tune. Another man took Lord Henry's 
 place, and the game went on, but never finished, for one 
 by one, after the same quiet, unobtrusive fashion, the male 
 players melted away. . . . Left alone. Lady Hannah, 
 feeling uncommonly like the idle boy in the nursery-story 
 who asked the beasts and birds and insects to play with 
 him, betook herself to bed. 
 
 The arrogance of men ! she thought as she hung her 
 transformation Pompadour coiffure on the looking-glass. 
 How cool, how unshaken in their conviction of superiority, 
 in spite of all deference, courtesy, pretence of consideration 
 for Queen Dolt. . . . But she would show them all one 
 of these days, what could be achieved by a unit of the 
 despised majority. . . . 
 
 " I should like to see him at night-work," she said after- 
 wards, when, very late, her Bingo appeared in the shadow 
 of the conjugal mosquito-curtains. 
 
 " You wouldn't," was her martial lord's reply. 
 
 " Wouldn't what ?" asked Lady Hannah, sitting up in 
 tropical sleeping attire. 
 
 Bingo, applying her cold cream to a sun-cracked nose, 
 replied to her reflection in the looking-glaiss :
 
 166 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " You wouldn't see him. Like the flea in the American 
 story, when you've got your finger on him is the time he 
 isn't there." 
 
 " But he is there for you ?" 
 
 Bingo shook his head, holding the candle near the glass 
 and regarding his leading feature with interest. 
 
 " Not if he don't choose to be. By the living Tinker ! 
 if I go on brownin' and chippin' at this rate, I shall do 
 for the Etruscan Antiquity Room at the British Museum. 
 Piff, what a smell of burning ! It's the hair-thing hangin' 
 on the looldn'-glass." 
 
 Male Society began to practise the shedding of its final 
 g's, you will remember, about the time that Female Society 
 took to wearing transformation coififures. Lady Hannah, 
 her active little figure rustling in the thinnest of silk 
 drapery, jumped nimbly out of bed, and rushed to save 
 her property. 
 
 " Idiot !" she shrieked. 
 
 " Frightfully sorry ! But you're lumps prettier without," 
 said Bingo. 
 
 " Don't pile insult on injury." 
 
 " Couldn't flatter for nuts !" 
 
 " I'll forgive you if you'll tell me how he manages — to 
 attain invisibility ?" 
 
 Bingo struck an attitude and began to declaim : 
 
 " As the sable shades of Night were broodin' over the 
 beleaguered town of Gueldersdorp, the manly form of a 
 mysterious bearded stranger in grey reach-me-downs and 
 .1 felt slouch might have been observed directin' its steps 
 from one to the other of the various outlyin' pickets 
 posted on the veld ..." 
 
 " Once for all, I decline to believe such theatrical 
 rubbish ! A beard, indeed ! Why not a paper nose and 
 a Pierrot's cap ?" 
 
 " Why not ?" acquiesced placid Bingo, getting into bed. 
 But the eye concealed by the pillow winked ; for he had 
 told her the absolute truth ; and woman-like, that was 
 just what she wouldn't swallow, as he said to Beauvayse 
 next morning.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 167 
 
 XXII 
 
 " The Town Guard," according to W. Keyse. Esquire, who 
 kept a Betts' Journal, one shilling net, including Rail and 
 Ocean Accident Insurance, was " a kind of amachoor copper, 
 swore in to look after the dorp, stand guard, and do sentry- 
 go, atid tumble to arms, just as the town dogs leave oiJ 
 barkin'. an' the old gal in the room next yours is startin' 
 to snore like a Kaffir sow." 
 
 Later on, even more was asked of the townie, and he 
 rose to the demand. 
 
 The smasher hat was not unbecoming to the manly brow 
 it shaded, when W. Keyse put it on and anxiously con- 
 sulted the small greenish swing looking-glass that graced 
 the chest of drawers, the most commanding article of 
 furniture in his room at Filliter's Boarding-House. It 
 was Mrs. Filliter who snored in the room on the other side 
 of the thin partition. Like the immortal Mrs. Todgers, 
 she was harassed by the demands of her resident gentlemen 
 in connection with gravy ; but, unlike Mrs. Todgers, she 
 never supplied even browned and heated water as an 
 equivalent. And the mutton was wonderfully lean, and 
 the fowls, but for difference in size^ might have been 
 ostriches, they were so wiry of muscle, especially as regarded 
 the legs. A time was to come when Mrs. Filliter was to 
 cook shrapnel-killed mule and exhausted cavalry charger 
 for her gentlemen, and when they were to bear up better 
 than most sufferers from this tough and lasting form of 
 diet, because of not having previously been pampered, as 
 Mrs. Filliter expressed it, with delicacies and kickshaws. 
 
 The bandolier was heavy upon the thin shoulders and 
 hollow chest of a pale young Cockney, who had drifted 
 down from Southampton ia the steerage, and roa,red and 
 rattled up from Cape Town by the three foot six inch 
 gauge railway, eight hundred and seventy miles, to Guelders- 
 dorp, that he might find his crown of manhood waiting 
 there. The second-hand Sam Browne belt was distinctly 
 good ; the yellow puttees, worn with his own brown lace-up 
 boots, took trouble to adjust. And it was barely possible, 
 even by standing the small swing looking-glass on the floor.
 
 168 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and tilting it excessively, to see how one's legs looked. 
 W. Keyse suffered from the conviction that these limbs 
 were over- thin. Behind the counter of a fried-fish shop in 
 High Street, Camden Town, serving slabs of browned hake, 
 and skate, and penn'orths of fried eels and chips to the 
 hungry customers who surge in tempestuously to be fed 
 on their homeward way from the Oxford or the Camden 
 Hall of Varieties, or the theatre at the junction of Gower 
 Street and the Hampstead Road — one develops acute- 
 ness of observation, one gains experience, there being 
 always the bloke who cuts and runs without paying, or eats 
 and shows reversed trouser- pockets in default of settle- 
 ment, to deal with. . . . But one does not develop 
 muscle, the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to 
 possess. When he went into the printing- business and 
 bent all day over the formes of type in the composing-room, 
 hand-setting up the columns of the North London Half- 
 penny Herald, to the tune of three-and-eightpence a day, 
 the hollow chest grew hollower, and he developed a " corf." 
 The physician in charge of the out-patients' department 
 at University College Hospital said there was lung-trouble, 
 and a man at the printing-office who had never been there, 
 said South Africa was the cure for that. And W. Keyse 
 had thirty pounds in the Post-Office Savings Bank, earned 
 by the sweat of a brow which was his best feature, and the 
 steamships were advertising ten-pound third-class single 
 fares to Cape Town. One of the Societies for the Aid of 
 Emigrants would have helped him, but while W. Keyse 'ad 
 a bit of 'is own, no Blooming Paupery, said he, for him ! 
 His sole living relative, an aunt who inhabited one of a row 
 of ginger-brick Virginia- creeper- clad almshouses " over 
 aginst 'Ighgyte Cimitery," sniffled a little when he called 
 to say good-bye, bringing in a parting present of a half- 
 pound of Liphook's Luscious Tea and a screw of snuff. 
 " I shan't never see you no more, William." 
 " Ow yes, you will, mother ! Don't be such a silly !" 
 William's step-cousin 'Melia, in service as general in Adelaide 
 Road, Chalk Farm end, had said ; and she had looked 
 coldly upon William immediately afterwards, bestowing 
 an amorous ogle upon Lobster, who sat well forward upon 
 a backless Windsor chair, sucking the silver top of hia
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 169 
 
 swagger cane, — Lobster, who was six foot high and in the 
 Grenadier Guards, and had supplanted William in 'Melia's 
 affections, for they 'ad used to walk out regularly on 
 Sundays and holidays before Lobster came along. . . . How 
 William loved Lobster now ! Why, but for him he might 
 have been married to 'Melia to-day ; — doomed to tread in 
 the ways of commonplace, ordinary married life, fated to live 
 and die without once having peeped into Paradise, without 
 ever having looked upon the ' only woman in the world ! ' 
 Greta, of the glorious golden pigtail, the entrancing figure 
 and the bewitching, twinkling, teasing eyes of blue ! 
 
 Suppose — only suppose — the silent threatening Thing 
 across the border, jewelled with the glowing Argus-eyes of 
 many camp-fires, conjecturable in dark masses flecked with 
 the white of waggon-tilts, and sometimes giving out the 
 dull gleam of iron or the sparkle of steel, were to choose this, 
 W. Keyse's first night on guard, for an attack ! Even to the 
 inexperience of W. K. the sand-bagged earthworks built 
 about Gueldersdorp, the barricades of trek-waggons and 
 railway-trucks blocking up the roads debouching on the 
 veld, the extending lines of trenches, the watchdog forts, 
 the sentinelled pickets, the noiseless, continually moving 
 patrols, all the various parts of the marvellous machinery 
 of defence, controlled by one master-hand upon the levers, 
 would count for nothing against that overwhelming onrush 
 of armed thousands, that flood of men dammed up above 
 the town, and waiting the signal to roll down and over- 
 whelm her, and Cripps ! what a chance to make a 
 
 glorious, heroic splash in Greta's sight ! Die, perhaps, in 
 saving her from them Dutchies. To be sure, she, divine 
 creature, was a Dutchy too. But no matter — a time 
 would come . . . 
 
 Confident in the coming of that time, W. Keyse took the 
 brown rifle tenderly from the corner, and replaced the 
 meagre little looking-glass upon the yellow chest of drawers. 
 In the act of bestowing a final glance of scrutiny upon his 
 upper lip, whose manly crop had unaccountably delayed, 
 he caught sight of a cheap paper- covered book lying beside 
 the tin candlestick whose tallow dip had aided perusal of 
 the volume o' nights. The red surged up in his thin cheeks 
 as he picked up the thing. There were horrible woodcuts
 
 170 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 in it, coloured with liberal splashes of red and blue and 
 yellow, and the print contained matter more lurid still. 
 Vice mopped and mowed and slavered, obscene and hideous, 
 within those gaudy covers. 
 
 He looked round the mean, poor, ugly toom, the volume 
 in his hand ; a photograph of the dubious sort leered from 
 the wall beside the bed. . . . 
 
 " If they rushed us to-night, an' I got shot in the scrap, 
 an' they brought me back 'ere, dyin', and She came . . . an' 
 saw that . . . /" His ears were scarlet as he dashed at the 
 leering photograph and tore it down. Oh, W. Keyse, it 
 is pitiful to think you had to blush, but good to know you 
 had not forgotten how t-o. There was a little rusty fireplace 
 in the room. W. Keyse burned something in it that left 
 nothing but a feathery pile of ashes, and a little shameful 
 heap of mud in the corner of a boy's memory, before he 
 hurried to the Town Guardhouse, where other bandoliers 
 wete mustering, and fell in. As though the Powers deigned 
 to reward an act of virtue on the very night of its per- 
 formance, he was posted by his picket in the shadow of the 
 high corrugated iron fence of the tree-bordered tennis- 
 groimd behind the Convent, as " Lights Out " sounded 
 from the camp of the Irregulars, beyond the Railway-sheds 
 and storehouses. 
 
 It was glorious to be there, taking care of Her, though 
 it would have been nicer if one had been allowed to smoke. 
 The moon of Wilham's passion-inspired verse was not shining 
 o'er South Africa's plain upon this the very night for her. 
 It was dark and close and stiflingly hot. A dust-wind had 
 blown that day, and the suspended particles thickened the 
 atmosphere, to the oppression of the lungs and the hiding 
 of the stars. He knew his picket posted a quarter of a 
 mile away on the other side of the Cemetery ; his fellow- 
 sentry was on the opposite flank of the Convent. He was 
 a stout, middle-aged tradesman, with a large wife and a 
 corresponding family, and it wrung the heart of W. Keyse 
 to think that a tricky fate might have placed that insensible 
 man on the side where Her window was ! Through the 
 boughs of the peach and orange trees, heavily burdened 
 with unripe fruit, you could get an occasional glimpse of 
 whitewashed brick walls, darkened by the outline of shut-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 171 
 
 tered oblongs here and there. And Imagination could blow 
 her cloud of fragrant vapour, though tobacco were denied 
 you. 
 
 " They're all Her windows while she's there behind 
 them w^alls," was the reflection in which W. Keyse found 
 comfort. 
 
 She w^as not there. She was at that moment being kissed 
 on the stoep of the Du Taine homestead near Johannesburg, 
 by a young officer of Staats Artillery, to whom she had 
 agreed to be clandestinely engaged, though Papa Du Taine 
 had other views. 
 
 W. Keyse was spared this tragic knowledge. But if the 
 moon, shining beautifully over the Du Taine gardens and 
 orange-groves, had chosen to tell tales ! 
 
 It was still — still and quiet ; a blue radiance of electric 
 light burned here and there ; at the Staff Office on the 
 Market Square, and at other centres of purposeful activity. 
 Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloons gave out a 
 yellow glare of gas-jets ; the red lamp of an apothecary 
 showed a wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp spraw Jed in the out- 
 line of a sleeping turtle on her squat hillock of gravelly 
 earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds, closely match- 
 ing the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding over- 
 head, the prairie spread about her, deepening to a basined 
 valley in the middle distances, sweeping to a rise beyond, 
 so that the edges of the basin looked dow^n upon the town. 
 High on the hill-ranges in the South more chains of red 
 sparks burned ... he knew them for the watch-fires of the 
 Boer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and 
 West were set thickly with similar tw inkling jewels where 
 the laagers were ; while smaller groups shone nearer, 
 marking the situation of isolated vedettes. The sickly 
 taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clustered 
 humanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes ! He 
 hoped there was enough of 'em, lying doggo up there, 
 waiting the word to roll down and swallow the blooming 
 dorp ! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon 
 his temples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the 
 palms of his hands were moist and clammy. Also, under 
 the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was a sinking, all- 
 gone sensation excessively UEplc.'is;uit to feel. Perhaps
 
 172 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 its wearer had a touch of fever ! Then the stout tradesman 
 on the other side of the Convent sneezed suddenly, and 
 W. Keyse, vrith every nerve in his body jarring from the 
 shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk. 
 
 Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, 
 he gritted his teeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a 
 blooming coward inside the other who was not. He told 
 the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what he thought 
 of him. He only wished — that is, one of him only wished — 
 that a gang of the Dutchies would come along now ! 
 
 He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and 
 when the young soldier had fired into the brown of them 
 and seen the whites of their eyes, and fallen, pierced by 
 a hundred wounds, in the successful defence of the Convent, 
 he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobody could 
 recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, 
 with her white little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy 
 nightgown, and her unbraided pigtail swamping the white 
 with gold, and knew that it was her lover, and knelt by 
 the hero's side. Soft music from the Orchestra, please ! as 
 with his final breath W. Keyse implores a last, first kiss. 
 Even as William No. 1 thrilled to the rapture of that 
 imagined osculation, Billy No. 2 experienced a ghastly 
 fright. 
 
 For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, 
 and looking towards those firefly sparks shining on the 
 heights, came the sound of stealthy measured footsteps 
 and muffled voices talking Dutch. The enemy had made 
 a sortie. The defences had been rushed, the town sur- 
 rounded ! Yet there were only two of them — a big, slouch- 
 ing villain and a short thin one, who wore a giant hat. 
 The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fierce martial 
 ardour of WilHam, and greatly reassured Billy. It was 
 only a townsman taking a night walk with his girl ! 
 
 Crushed and discouraged, W. Keyse relaxed his grip 
 upon the trusty rifle, and slunk back into the shadow, as 
 the tall and the short figures halted at the angle of the 
 fence. 
 
 " 'Ain't it a 'eavenly night ?" came from the short figure, 
 who leaned against the tall one affectionately. " An' me 
 got to go in. A crooil shyme, I call it. 'Ain't it, deer ?
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 173 
 
 Leggo me wyste, there's a love. You've no notion 'ow I 
 shall cop it for bein' lyte." 
 
 He sportively declined to release her. There was the 
 sound of a soft slap, followed by the smack of a kiss. She 
 was very angry. 
 
 " Leggo, I tell you ! Where's your manners, 'orlin' me 
 abart ! If that's the way you be'ayve with your Dutch 
 ones . . . !" 
 
 He spat and asseverated : 
 
 " Neen ! I no other girls but you heb got." 
 
 It was the Slabberts with Emigration Jane. 
 
 " Ho ! So you can talk English a bit — give you a 
 charnce ?" 
 
 " Ja, a little now and then when it is useful. But when 
 we are to be married, you shall only to me talk in my own 
 moder Taal." 
 
 " Shan't I myke a gay old 'ash of it !" Recklessly she 
 crushed the large hat against the unwieldy shoulder. 
 " There, good-night agyne, deer ! Sister Tobias — that's 
 what they call the one that 'ousekeeps and manages the 
 kitchen — Sister Tobias '11 be sittin' up for me, thinkin' 
 I've got meself lost or bin run away with." She gurgled 
 enjoyingly. 
 
 " Tell me again, before you shall go, about the Engelsch 
 Commandant who came to visit at the Convent to-day ? " 
 
 " Lor ! 'Aven't I told you a'ready ? 'E stopped 'arf 
 an 'our or more . . . an' She — that's the Reverend Mother, 
 as they call her — She took 'im over tlie 'ouse, an' after 'e'd 
 gone through the 'ouse, an' Sister Tobias — ain't that a 
 rummy name for a nun ? — Sister Tobias, she showed 'im 
 to the gyte, an' 'e says to 'er as wot 'e's goin' to 'ave the flag- 
 staff rigged up in the gardin fust thing to-morrow momin', 
 an' 'e'll undertake that the workin'-party detached for the 
 purpose will know 'ow to be'ayve theirselves respectful. 
 An' then 'e touches 'is 'at an' gets on 'is 'orse an' . . ." 
 
 " Listen to me." The Slabbertian command of that 
 barbaric language of the Englanders evoked her surprise, 
 but the painful squeeze he gave her arm compelled atten- 
 tion. " Next time the English Commandant to the house 
 shall come, you to listen at the keyhole is." 
 
 " V\ ot for ?"
 
 174 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " For what have you before at keyholes listened, little 
 fool ?" 
 
 " To find out when they was goin' to sack me, so's to git 
 me own notice in fust — see 1 Then you can say to the lydy 
 at the Registry Office — and don't they give theirselves 
 hail's ! — as wot you're leaving because the place don't suit. 
 Twiggy ?" 
 
 " You for yourself did listen, then. Goed. Now it is 
 for me you listen will, if you a true Boer's vrouw wish to 
 become by-and-by." 
 
 She rose to the immemorial allure that is never out of 
 season in angling for her simple kind. 
 
 " That word you said means — wife, don't it, deer ?" 
 Her voice trembled ; the joyous, longed-for haven of mar- 
 riage — was it possible that it might be in sight ? 
 
 " It shall mean wife, if you obey me — ja ! — otherwise it 
 will be that I shall marry the daughter of a good country- 
 man of mine, who many sheep has, and much land, and 
 plenty of money to give his daughter when she a husband 
 gets !" 
 
 Her underlip dropped pitifully, and the tears welled up. 
 It was too dark to see her crying, but he heard her sob, 
 and grinned, himself unseen. 
 
 " I'll do anything for you, deer ! Only don't tyke an' 
 'ave the other One. She may be a Dutchy, but she won't 
 never care for you like wot I do. Don't you know it, 
 Walt ?" 
 
 " I shall it know when I hear what you have found out," 
 proclaimed the Slabberts grimly. 
 
 There was a boiling W. Keyse in the deep shadow of the 
 tall corrugated-iron fence, who restrained with difficulty a 
 snort of indignation. 
 
 " On'y tell me, deer. I'll find out any think you want 
 me to." Before her spread a lovely vista of floors — her 
 own floors — to scrub, and a kitchen range — hers, too — 
 which should cook dinners nice enough to make any hus- 
 band adore you, 
 
 " You shall for me find out what that Commandant of 
 the rooineks is up to under his Flag of the Red Cross." 
 
 " He didn't say nothink about no Red Cross, darlin'." 
 Stilte ! They will the Red Cross Flag hoist, I tell you. 
 
 i(
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 176 
 
 and it will cover more than a parcel of nuns and school- 
 giils. That Commandant is so verdoemte slim ! Tell 
 me, do you cartridges well know when you shall see them ? 
 Little brown rolls with at one end a copper cap — and at the 
 other a bullet. And gunpowder — you have that seen also ? " 
 
 She quavered. 
 
 " Yes ; but you don't want me to touch the narsty, 
 dreadful stuff, do you, Walty deer V* 
 
 He scoifed. 
 
 " Afraid of gunpowder, Meisje, that like a whey-blooded 
 Engelschwoman is, A true Boer's daughter would know 
 how to load a gun, look you, and shoot a man — many men — 
 if fox the help of the Republic it should be ! But you will 
 leain. Watch out, I tell you, for stores that Commandant 
 will be sending into the Convent. Square boxes and long 
 boxes, and cases — some of them heavy as if lined with iron ; 
 painted black with white letters, and others stone-colour 
 with black letters, and yet others grey with red letters ; 
 the letters remember — ' A.O.S.' " 
 
 " But wot '11 be in the boxes, deer ?" 
 
 His English, conned from recently published Imperial 
 Army Service manuals, grew severely technical : 
 
 " If you could their big screws unscrew, and their big 
 locks unlock, you would see, but you will not be able. 
 What in them 1 Cakes ! Black, square cakes, with in 
 them holes ; and grey, square cakes, and red caikes, light 
 and crumbly, that dog-biscuits resemble ; and long brown 
 sticks, Uke peppermint-candy, in bundles tied together 
 with string and paper. Boxes of stuff like the hair of 
 horse, and packets of evil little electric detonators in tubes 
 of copper. x\lamachtig ! who knows what he has not got — 
 that Engelsch Commandant — both in the dorp and hidden 
 in those thrice- accursed mines that he haa laid on the veld 
 about her. Prismatic powder and gun-cotton, dynamite 
 and cordite enough to blow a dozen commandos of honest 
 Booren into dust — a small, fine dust of bones and flesh that 
 shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood. For I 
 tell you that man has the wickedness of the duyvel in liim, 
 and the cunning of an old baboon !" 
 
 She babbled : 
 
 " 'Ow pretty you talk English when you want to. Walty
 
 176 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 deer ! 'Aven't you bin gittin' at me all along, makin' 
 out . . ." 
 
 He swore at her savagely, and she held her tongue, 
 worshipping this new development of masterful brutality 
 in a man whom she had regarded as a " big softy." 
 
 He went on : 
 
 " Now you shall know what to look for, and when the ver- 
 doemte explosives come, you will know them by the boxes 
 and the letters ' A.O.S.' — and you will tell me — and the 
 guns of our Staats Artillery will not shoot that way, for the 
 sake of the little woman who is going to be a true Boer's 
 vrouw by-and-by." 
 
 She threw her arms about his rascally neck, and laid her 
 head upon his hulking shoulder, regardless of the hat she 
 wrecked, and cried in ecstasy : 
 
 " I'll do it, deer ! I'll do it, Walty ! But why should 
 there be any shootin', lovey ? At 'Ome I never could 
 abear to see them theayter plays what 'ad guns an' firin' 
 in 'em ; it made me 'art beat so crooil bad." 
 
 He grinned over the big hat into the darkness. 
 
 " All right ! I wiU tell the men with the guns that you 
 do not like to hear them, and they will not perhaps shoot 
 at all. But you will look out for the boxes with the dyna- 
 mite, and send me the message when it comes ?" 
 
 " Course I will, deer ! But 'ow am I to send the 
 message ?" 
 
 The shadowy right arm of Slabberts swept out, taking in 
 the black and void and formless veld with a large free gesture. 
 
 " Out to there. Stand in this place when it becomes 
 dark, looking east. Straight in front of us is east. The 
 game is great fun, and very easy. Strike a match, and 
 count to ten before you blow it out, and you shall not have 
 done that three times before you shall see him answer." 
 
 " But oo's 'im ?" 
 
 " He is my friend — out there upon the veld." 
 
 " Lor ! but where '11 you be ? Didn't you say as I'd be 
 talkin' to you ? I don't 'arf fancy wot you calls the gyme, 
 not if I 'ave to play it with a strynge bloke !" 
 
 The answer came, accompanied by a scraping, familiar 
 sound. 
 
 The Slabberts was striking a match of the fizzling, splut-
 
 i 
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 177 
 
 tering, Swedish- made non-safety kind, known to W. Keyse 
 and his circle by the familiar abbreviation of " stinkers." 
 
 " Voor den donder ! Have I not told you I shall be 
 there with him — after to-night ?" 
 
 Her womanly tenderness quickened at the hint of coming 
 separation. She clung fondly to his arm, and the match 
 went out, extinguished by a maiden's sigh. He shook her 
 roughly off, and struck another. 
 
 " I shall go away — ]a~and here is the only way for you 
 to reach me !" 
 
 As the fresh match glimmered blue, he held it at arm's 
 length in front of him, counting silently up to ten, then 
 blew it out, and set his heavy boot upon the faintly- glowing 
 spark, and did the thing again. 
 
 Endeavouring not to breathe so as to be heard, W. Keyse 
 flattened himself against the corrugated fence, and waited, 
 looking ahead into the thick velvet darkness, sensing the 
 faint human taint upon the tell-tale breeze, and counting 
 with the Slabberts ; and then, out in the blackness that con- 
 cealed so much that was sinister, sprang into sudden Hfe 
 an answering bluish gli mm er, and lasted for ten beats of 
 the pulse, and went out as suddenly as though a human 
 breath had blown upon it. 
 
 " Is that your pal ?" she whispered. 
 
 " That is my pal now." He struck another match, and 
 flared it, and screened it with his big hand, and showed the 
 light again, and repeated the manoeuvre three times. " That 
 is my pal now — and I have said to him ' No news to-night '; 
 but to-morrow night and the night after, and so on for many 
 nights to come, I shall be out there where he is, and after 
 you have called me and I have answered, just as he has 
 done, you will tell me what there is to tell. Can you spell 
 your language ?" 
 
 " Pretty middlin', Walty deer, though not as I could 
 wish, owin' to me 'avin' to leave Board School in the Fif 
 Stannard when father sold up the 'ome in drink after 
 mother went orf wiv the young man lodger. Some'ow, try 
 all I could, I never . . ." 
 
 " Hou jou smoel ! With our Boer people, when men 
 speak, the women listen ; but you EngUsh ones chatter 
 and chatter ! Remember that this match- talk goes thus : 
 
 12
 
 178 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 For the letter A one flare, and hide the light as you saw me 
 do just now. For B, two flares, and hide the light ; for C, 
 three, and hide ; for D, four, and hide ; and so on . . . 
 It is slow, of course, and matches will blow out when you 
 do not want them to, and a cycle-lamp or a candle- lantern 
 would be esisier to deal with, but for the verdoemte patrols. 
 Do you understand ? Say now what I say, after me. For 
 the letter A one flare and hide. For B . . ." 
 
 He put her through the alphabet from end to end ; she 
 laboured faithfully, and pleased her taskmaster. He 
 grunted approvingly. 
 
 " Zeer goed ! See that you do not forget. And remember, 
 you are to listen and watch, and tell me what you hear and 
 see. If you are obedient, I will marry you — by-and-by." 
 
 He gave her a clumsy hug in earnest of endearments to 
 come. 
 
 " But if you do not please me " — the grip of his heavy 
 hand bruised her shoulder through the thin, flowery 
 " blowse" — "I will punish you — yes, by the Lord ! I will 
 marry a fine Boer maiden who is the daughter of a landrost, 
 and who has got much money and plenty of sheep. And 
 you can give yourself to any dirty verdoemte schelm of an 
 Engelschman you please, for I will have none of you ! 
 To-morrow you shall have a paper showing you how to tell 
 me very many things in match -talk, and earn much money 
 to buy presents for my nice little Boer vrouw. Ala- 
 machtig ! what is this ?" 
 
 " This " was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a 
 condemned Martini poked violently out of the blackness into 
 the Slabbertian thorax. 
 
 " Not in such a *urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper," 
 spluttered the ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the 
 weapon. " Put up them dirty big 'ands o' yours, or, by 
 Cripps ! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin', match-talkin' spy !" 
 
 The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts 
 waggt^f in explanation. 
 
 " This is assault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful 
 burgher. You shall answer to your ofiicer for it, I tell you 
 slap. Voor den donder ! Is not a young man to light his pipe 
 as he talks to a young woman without being called spy by a 
 verdoemte sentry ? Tell him, Jannje, that is all I did do !"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 179 
 
 W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncom- 
 monly heavy. The Slabberts felt it tremble, and thought 
 about taking his hands down and reaching for that Colts 
 six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But though the 
 finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, .and Walt was not fond 
 of risks. 
 
 " Tell him, Jannja !" he spluttered once more. 
 
 She had not needed a second bidding. 
 
 As the domestic hen in defence of her chicken will 
 give battle to the wilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with 
 ruffled plumage, blazing, defiant eyes, and shrill objurga- 
 tions, couched in the vernacular most familiar to their 
 object, hurled herself upon the enemy. 
 
 " You narsty httle brute, you ! To up and try an' 
 murder my young man. With your jor about spies ! 
 Sauce ! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im ! Off the fyce 
 o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it ! Take away that 
 gun, you silly little imitation sojer — d' you 'eer ?" 
 
 The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms 
 ached frightfully. Perspiration trickled into his eyes from 
 under the tilted smasher. He felt damp and small, and 
 desperately at a loss. And — as though in malice — the 
 moon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim 
 vapour, as he said with a lordlj'^ air : 
 
 " You be off', young woman, and don't interfere !" 
 
 Gawd ! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her 
 rage burst the flood-gates. She screeched : 
 
 " You ! . . . It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to — an' 
 this is 'ow I gits it back ?" She gasped. " Because you're 
 arter one young woman wot wouldn't be seen dead in the 
 syme street wi' you ..." 
 
 Pierced with the awful thought that the adored one miglit 
 be listening, W. Keyse lifted up his voice. 
 
 " Sentry. . . , 'Ere ! . . . Mister !" he cried despairingly. 
 " You on the other side, can't you hear ?" 
 
 In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. 
 Keyse, comfortably propped in an angle of the opposite 
 fence, the bulk of the Convent and the width of its garden 
 and tennis-ground being between them, continued to sleep 
 and snore peacefully and undisturbed. 
 
 Emigration Jane continued : 
 
 12—2
 
 180 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear 
 o' you, you try to git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke 
 pinched ! Yah, greedy ! Boo ! You plate-faced, 'erring- 
 backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with your love-letters an' 
 messages ! Wait till I give 'er another o' your screevin' — 
 that's all !" 
 
 " Patrol !" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper. 
 
 She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself 
 as she came, to frenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it 
 outside the big gaudy pubs in the Tottenham Court Road, 
 and the Britannia , Camden Town ! Perhaps the recol- 
 lection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes 
 of the little perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal 
 memory, and provoked the act. Who can tell ? We may 
 only know that she plucked the weapon of lower-class 
 London from her hat, and Jabbed at the pale face viciously, 
 and heard the victim say " Owch !" as he winced, and knew 
 herself, as her Slabberts gripped the rifle- barrel, and wrested 
 it with iron strength from the failing hands of W. Keyse, 
 the equal of those dauntless Boer women who killed men 
 when it was necessary. But, oh ! the 'orrible, 'ideous feeling 
 of 'aving stuck something into live flesh ! Sick and giddy, 
 the heroine shut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous 
 phantasmagoria of coloured pyrotechny, rivalling the 
 most marvellous triumphs of the magician Brock. . . . 
 
 W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was 
 wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the 
 darkness and coil about the largely- looming form of Slab- 
 berts. Enveloped in the neutral- tinted tentacles of this 
 mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, 
 and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants 
 of striving men : 
 
 " Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your 
 picket. Don't fire ; blow your whistle instead !" 
 
 " Pip-ip-ip-'rW ! Pip-ip-r'r /" 
 
 The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of 
 the darkness on the other side of the Cemetery, and con- 
 siderably quickened the arrival of the visiting patrol. 
 
 " Communicating with persons outside the defences by 
 flashlight signals. We can't shoot him for it just yet, buli
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 181 
 
 we can gaol him on suspicion," said the Commander of the 
 picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of B.S.A. 
 troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of the 
 guard-house. 
 
 " Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know ?" 
 asked the officer who had ridden up with the patrol. 
 " Threw him and sat on him until the picket came up, 
 you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version 
 of the story. " A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark 
 wideawake and short pointed beard ! H'm !" 
 
 " Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from 
 town," said the picket Commander. " Must have known 
 the countersign, or the sentries out there would have 
 stopped him. I — see !" 
 
 He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The 
 moonlight was quite bright enough for the exchange of a 
 wink. Then : 
 
 " Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's 
 Sergeant, an old Naval Brigade man. " How did ye get 
 that 'ere nasty prod under the eye ?" 
 
 W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place 
 that hurt. His fingers were red when they came away. 
 
 " The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she 
 Jabbed me with a 'at-pin, to git me to let 'im go." 
 
 " There's a blindin' vixen for you !" commented the 
 Sergeant. " Two inch higher, and she'd have doused your 
 light out. Where did she come from, d'ye know ?" 
 
 " Have you any idea who she was ?" asked the Com- 
 mander of the picket. 
 
 W. Keyse shook his head. 
 
 " 'Aven't the least idear, sir. Never sor 'er before in my 
 natural !" he declared stoutly. 
 
 " Well, you'll know her again when you meet her — or she 
 will you," said the patrol-officer, about to move on, when 
 a deplorable figure came staggering into the circle, and the 
 rider reined up his horse. " What's this ? Hey, Johnny, 
 where's your gun 1" 
 
 It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank 
 of the Convent. 
 
 " And time you turned up, I don't think," commented 
 W. Keyse. " Didn't you 'ear me sing out to you Just now?"
 
 182 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Come, now, what were you up to 1" the Sergeant 
 pressed. " Better up an' own it if you've bin asleep on 
 guard." 
 
 The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest 
 and comment, not at all sympathetic or polite, was a stout, 
 respectable tradesman, with a large, round, ghastly face, 
 who saluted his officer with a trembling hand. 
 
 " I — I have been the victim of an outrage, sir !** 
 
 " Sorry to hear it ; what's your name ?" 
 
 " Brooker, sir," volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. " The 
 other sentry we put on with Keyse here." 
 
 " Mr. Brooker, sir. General Stores, Market Square," 
 babbled the citizen. 
 
 " Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say ?" 
 
 " I have been drugged or hypnotised, sir, and robbed of 
 my gun while in a state of insensibility, sir — upon my 
 honour as an Alderman and Magistrate of this borough ! 
 Swear me, sir, if you have any doubt of my veracitj'^ !" He 
 flapped his hands like fins, and his bandolier heaved above 
 a labouring bosom. 
 
 The Commander of the picket looked pretematuraily 
 grave. 
 
 " Very sorry. Private Brooker, but unless the Sergeant 
 has brought his Testament along, you'll have to give your 
 information in the ordinary way. So they drugged you or 
 hypnotised you — or both, was it ? — and took away your 
 rifle. Of course you saw it done ?" 
 
 " No, sir, I did not see it done. When I woke up . . ." 
 
 " Ah, when you woke up ! Please go on." 
 
 The crowding faces of B.S,A. men and Town Guardsmen 
 were grinning now. The patrol-officer was rocking in his 
 saddle. 
 
 " When I revived, sir, from the swoon or trance . . ." 
 
 " Very good. Private Brooker ; we'll hear the rest of that 
 in the morning. Sergeant, relieve these sentries, and 
 bring Private Keyse and the hypnotic subject before me in 
 the morning. Make this man Brooker a prisoner at large 
 for the present, and fall in the picket." 
 
 The Sergeant saluted. " Very good, sir," 
 
 The bubbling Brooker boiled over frothily as the sentries 
 were changing.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 183 
 
 " A prisoner ! Good God ! do they take me for a traitor ? 
 A Magistrate ... an Alderman, the President of the Gas 
 Committee ..." 
 
 " I should 'ave guessed you to be that if I 'adn't 'eard 
 it, sonny," said the Sergeant dryly, the implied sarcasm 
 provoking a subdued guffaw. He added, as the visiting 
 patrol rode on and the picket marched back to the Ceme- 
 tery : " Can't relieve you of your rifle, because you 'aven't 
 got 'er. What in 'Eaven's name are they goin' to do to 
 you ? Well, you'll find out to-morrow. Left face ; quick 
 march !" 
 
 Counting left-right, and keeping elbow-touch with the 
 next man, W. Keyse got in a whisper : 
 
 " I say, Sergeant, am I in for it as well as Ole Bulgy 
 Weskit ? You might as well let me know and charnce it !" 
 
 The Sergeant answered with unfeeling indifference : 
 
 " Since you ask, I should say you was." 
 
 " That's a bit 'ard ! Wot '11 1 git ?" 
 
 " Ten to one, your skater." 
 
 " Wot is my skater ?" 
 
 " Your Corporal's stripe, you suckin' innocent ! Wot 
 for ? For takin' a Boer spy pris'ner — that's wot for !" 
 
 " Cripps !" said W. Keyse, enlightened, illuminated and 
 srlowinff in the darkness. He added a moment later, in 
 rather a depressed tone : " But it was 'im, the civilian bloke 
 with the beard, 'oo downed the Dutchy, an' sat on 'im till 
 the guard come up." 
 
 The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking 
 to the officer in charge. It was the Corporal who answered, 
 across the man who marched upon the left of W. Keyse : 
 
 " O' course it was. But you 'ad the Dopper fust, and," 
 he cackled quietly, " the Colonel won't be jealous." 
 
 The eyes and mouth of W. Keyse became circular. 
 
 " The who ?" 
 
 " The Colonel, didn't you 'ear me say ?" 
 
 " That wasn't never . . . '»m ?" 
 
 *' All right, since you know best. But him, for all that !" 
 
 " Great Jiminy Cripps !" gasped W. Keyse.
 
 184 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 XXIII 
 
 YoTJ are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the 
 interminable plain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, 
 and before threatened, now isolated like 8ome undaunted 
 coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested with screaming sea-birds, 
 girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst of waters 
 haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent 
 menace, she squatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting 
 the event. 
 
 It was known that on the previous day the telegraph 
 wires north of Beaton had been cut, and this day was to 
 sever the last link with Cape Town at Maripo, some forty 
 miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the Olopo 
 River might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy 
 there overnight. Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, 
 that the armoured train that had been sent up from the 
 Cape with two hght guns of superseded pattern — a generous 
 contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines 
 now bristling from the sand- bagged ramparts — had been 
 seized by a commando, with the officer and the men in 
 charge. This was to be confirmed later by the arrival of 
 an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in the 
 omnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of 
 this chapter he was hiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud 
 of his experiences, in default of other pabulum, and did 
 not get in before dark of the long blazing day. 
 
 Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the 
 northern end of the town to see the Military Executive 
 take over the Hospital. But that the streets were barri- 
 caded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizen 
 carried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion 
 of national rejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the 
 pepper- trees fringing the thoroughfares and clumped in 
 the Market Square rustled in the faint hot breeze. By- 
 and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked 
 under the iron hail that beat in blizzards upon them, 
 and die in the noxious lyddite fumes dispersed by bursting 
 shells. 
 
 The variegated crowd cheered as the Staff dismounted
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 186 
 
 at the white-painted iron gates of the railed-in Hospital 
 grounds. It was not the acclamation of swlmiration, it was 
 the cheer expectant. They wanted to know what the 
 Officer in Command was going to do ? Intolerable sus- 
 pense racked them. Wherever it was known that he would 
 be, there they followed at this juncture — solid masses of 
 humanity, bored with innumerable ear-holes, and enamelled 
 with patient, glittering, expectant eyes. His own keen, 
 kindly glance swept over them as he touched his grey felt 
 hat in acknowledgment of their dubious greeting, that half- 
 hearted but well-meant cheer. He read the mute question 
 written upon all the faces. Part of his answer to the 
 interrogation was standing in the Railway-yard, but they 
 would have to wait a little while longer yet — ^just a little 
 longer. He whistled his pleasant melodious little tune as 
 the porter hurried to open the gates. 
 
 One pair of pale, rather ugly eyes in the crowd were 
 illumined with pure hero-worship. " That's 'im," explained 
 their owner, nudging a big man in shabby white drill, who 
 was shouldering a deliberate way through the press. 
 
 " The Colonel — and ain't 'e a Regular Oner ! Them 
 along of 'im — with the red shoulder-straps and brown 
 leather leggin's, they're cav'l'ry Orficers o' the Staff, they 
 are. An' them others in khaki with puttees — syme as wot 
 I've got on — they're the Medical Swells. Military Saw- 
 boneses — twig ? You can tell 'em, when you're near enough, 
 by the bronze badges with a serpint climbin' up a stick 
 inside a wreath, wot they 'ave on the fronts o' their caps 
 an' on their jacket-collars, an' the instrument-cases wot 
 they carries in their bres' pockets. I'm a bit in the know 
 about these things, being a sort of Service man meself." 
 
 Thus dehcately did W. Keyse invite comment. Splendid 
 additions had certainly been made to the martial outfit 
 of the previous day. The tweed Norfolk had been replaced 
 by a khaki jacket, evidently second-hand, and obligingly 
 taken in by the lady of the boarding-house. A Corporal's 
 stripe, purchased from a trooper of the B.S.A., who, as 
 the consequence of over-indulgence in liquor and language, 
 had one to sell, had been sewn, upon the sleeve. The original 
 owner had charged an extra tikkie for doing it, and it burned
 
 186 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the arm that bore it like a vaccination- pustule on the 
 
 fifth day. 
 
 " Being a sort of Service man meself," repeated W. Keyse. 
 He twitched the stripe carelessly into sight. " C'manding 
 orficer marked me down for this to-day," he continued, 
 v^dth elaborate indiflFerence, " along of a Favourable 
 Mention in the Cap'n's Guard Report. Nothin' much — 
 a little turn-up with a 'ulking big Dutch bloke, 'oo turned 
 out to be a spy." 
 
 In the act of feeling for the invisible moustache, he 
 recognised the face under the Panama hat worn by the 
 big neighbour in white drill, and blushes swamped his 
 yellow freckles. The owner of that square, powerful face, 
 no longer bloated and crimson, but pale and drawn, was 
 the man who had stepped in to the rescue at the Dutchman's 
 saloon-bar on the previous day, where Fate had stage- 
 managed effects so badly that the heroic leading attitude 
 of W. Keyse had perforce given place to the minor role 
 of the juvenile walking-gentleman. " Watto !" he began. 
 
 " It's you, Mister ! I bin wantin' to say thank " 
 
 But a surge of the crowd flattened W. Keyse against the 
 green-painted iron railings surrounding a municipal gum- 
 tree, and the big man was lost to view. Perhaps it was as 
 well that the acqiiaintance made under conditions remote 
 from respectability should not be renewed. But W. Keyse 
 would have preferred to thank the rescuer. 
 
 The taking over of the Hospital was accomplished in a 
 moment, to the disappointment of the ceremony- loving 
 Briton and the Colonial of British race, to say nothing of 
 the Kaffirs and the Barala, who anticipated a big indaba. 
 The little party of officers in khaki walked up the gravel- 
 drive between the carefully-tended grass plats to the 
 stoep where the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, with the matron, 
 house-surgeon, secretary, and several prominent members 
 of the Committee — including Alderman Brooker, puffy- 
 cheeked and yellow-eyed for lack of a night's rest — waited. 
 Military Authority saluted Civic Dignity, shook hands, 
 and the thing was done. Inspection followed. 
 
 "The warr'ds, said ye ?" The Chief Medical Officer, a 
 tall raw-boned personage, very evidently hailed from North 
 of the Tweed. " I'm obliged to ye, ma'am," he addressed
 
 THE DOP DOCrOR 187 
 
 the flustered matron, " but the warr'ds an' the contents o' 
 the beds in them are no' to say of the firr'st importance — 
 at least, whaur I'm concerr'ned. With your permeesion 
 we'll tak' a look at the Operating Theatre, and overhaul 
 the sterileezing plant, and the sanitary arrangements, and 
 maybe, after a gliJff at the kitchens, tliere would be a 
 moment to spend in ganging through the vi^arr'ds. Unless 
 the Colonel would prefer to begin wi' them ?" He turned 
 a small, twinkling pair of blue eyes set in dry wrinkles 
 upon his Chief. 
 
 " Not I, Major. This is your department. But I shall 
 ask five minutes more grace in the interests of the friend 
 [ spoke of, Dr. Saxham; with whom I made an appointment 
 at the half-hour." 
 
 " You're no' by any chance meaning the Saxham that 
 wrote ' The Diseases of Civilisation,' are ye. Colonel ? 
 I mind a sentence in it that must have been a douse of 
 cauld watter — toch ! vitriol would be the better worr'd — 
 in the faces o' some o' the dandy operators. ' Young men,' 
 he ca'ed them, as if he was a greybeard himsel', ' young 
 men who, led to take up Surgery by the houp o' gains an' 
 notoriety, have given themselves nae time to learn its 
 scienteefic principles — showy operators, who diagnose wi' 
 the knife an' endeavour to dictate to Nature and no' to 
 assist her.' And yet Saxham could daur ! ' I shall prove 
 that the gastric ulcer can be cured wi'out exceesion,' he said, 
 or they say he said in the Lancet report o' the operation on 
 the Grand Duke Waldimir — I cam' across a reprint o' it 
 no' lang ago — when Sir Henry McGavell sent for him, wi' 
 the sweat o' mortal terror soakin' his Gladstone collar. He 
 cut a hole in the Duke's stomach, ye will understand, in 
 front o' the ulcer, clipped off the smaller intesteene, spliced 
 the twa together wi' a Collins button, and by a successful 
 deveece o' plumbing — naething less — earned the eterr'nal 
 gratitude o' the autocrat an' the everlastin' currses o' the 
 Niliilists. All that, seven years ago, an' the thing is dune 
 the day wi'oot a hair's-breadth difference. For why ? 
 Ye canna paint the lily, or improve upon perfection. 
 Toch ! . . . Colonel, that man would be worth the waitin' 
 for, if he stood in your friend's shoes the day !" 
 
 " Rejoice then. Major, and be exceeding glad, for I
 
 188 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 believe this is the man who wrote the book and plugged — 
 or was it plumbed — the potentate." 
 
 The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. " I promise 
 myself a crack or twa wi' him, then. . . . But how is it a 
 busy chiel hke that can get awa' from his private patients 
 and his Hospital warr'ds in the London Winter Season ? 
 Ahem ! ahem !" 
 
 By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing 
 the conversation, it was plain that he had recalled the cir- 
 cumstances under which the " busy chiel " had turned 
 his back upon the private patients and the Hospital wards. 
 " Colonel," he went on, " I could be wishing this varry 
 creeditable - appearing institution — judging from the 
 ootside o't — were twice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe 
 or so to the back of that." 
 
 " My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and 
 happy but once, and that was when we had fifty men down 
 with dysentery and fever in a tin-roofed Railway goods- 
 shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leaky canvas, 
 and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could 
 get no milk." 
 
 " That goes to prove the eleementary di£ference between 
 the male an' the female character. A man will no' keep 
 on dithering for what he kens he canna' get. A woman, 
 
 especially a young an' pretty " He broke off to say : 
 
 " Toch ! will ye hark to Beauvayse ! The very name of 
 the sex sets that lad rampaging." 
 
 " Beautiful ! I tell you, sir," the handsome, fair- 
 haired young aide-de-camp was emphatically assuring 
 that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, " the loveliest 
 girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see — bar none ! 
 I saw her first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang 
 of Boer blackguards insulted some nuns who were in charge 
 of a ladies' school, and to-day she passed with two other 
 Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as the Staff 
 dismounted at the gate." 
 
 " Another rara avis. Beau 1" the Colonel called across 
 the intervening group of talkers. The group of khakd-clad 
 figures separated, and turned first to the Chief, then to the 
 bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast. White teeth flashed 
 in tanned faces, chaff began :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 189 
 
 " In love again, for the first and only time, Toby ?" 
 
 " Since he lost his heart to Miss What's-her-name, that 
 pretty ' JolUty ' girl, with the double-barrelled repeating 
 wink, and the postcard grin." 
 
 " Don't forget the velvet- voiced beauty of the dark, 
 moonless night on the Cape Towti Hotel verandah ! " 
 
 " She turned out to be a Hottentot lady, didn't she ?" 
 
 " Cavalry Problem No. 1. Put yourself in Lieutenant 
 the Right Hon. the Lord Viscount Beauvayse's place, and 
 give in detail the precautions you would have taken ^to 
 insure the transport of your heart uninjured from the 
 Staff Headquarters to the Hospital Gate. Show on the 
 map the disposition of the enemy, whether desirous to 
 enslave, or likely to be mashed. . . ." 
 
 " She was neither," the crimson boy declared. " She 
 was simply a lady, quiet and high-bred and simple enough 
 to have been a Princess of the blood, or to look a fellow 
 in the face and pass him by without the slightest idea — 
 I'd swear io it — that she'd fairly taken his breath away." 
 
 " My dear Lord !" The Mayor took a great deal of 
 comfort out of a title. " Attractive the young lady is, 
 I certainly admit, and my wife is — I may say the word — 
 enthusiastic in her praise. But you go one, or half a dozen, 
 better than Mrs. Greening, who will be perfectly willing, 
 I don't doubt, to introduce you, unless the Colonel enter- 
 tains objections ..." 
 
 " To Staff flirtations 1 Regard 'em as inevitable, Mr. 
 Mayor, like Indian prickly-heat, or fever here. And 
 probably the best cure for the complaint in the present 
 instance would be to meet the cause of it." 
 
 "Judge for yourself , Colonel ; you've first-class long- 
 distance eyesight." There was a ring of defiance in the 
 boy's fresh voice. " You've seen her before, and it isn't 
 the kind of face one forgets. Here they are . . . here she 
 is now, coming back, with the other ladies. The railing 
 spoils one's view, but the gates are open, and in another 
 moment you'll see her pass them." 
 
 The Chief moved to the front of the stoep where the 
 Staff had congregated. Men quietly fell aside, making 
 place for him, so that he stood with Beauvayse, in a clear 
 half -circle of figures attired like his own, in Service browns
 
 190 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and drabs and umbers, waiting until the three approaching 
 feminine shapes should pass across the open space. One 
 or two Staff monocles went up. The Chief Medical 
 OflBcer removed and wiped his steel-rimmed eyeglasses 
 before replacing them on his bony aquiline nose. 
 
 They came and passed — the white figure and the two 
 black ones. Of these one was very tall, one short and 
 dumpy — veiled and mantled, their hands hidden in their 
 ample sleeves, they went by with their eyes upon the 
 ground. But the girl with them-- a slight, willowy creature 
 in a creamy cambric dress, a wide hat of black transparent 
 material, frilled and bowed, upon her dead-leaf coloured 
 hair, and tied by wide strings of muslin under her delicate 
 round chin — looked with innocent, candid interest at the 
 group of men outside the Hospital. The tanned faces, 
 the simple workman-like Service dress, setting off the 
 well-knit, alert figures, the quiet, soldierly bearing, even the 
 distant sound of the well-bred voices, pleased her, even 
 as the whiff of cigars and Russian leather that the breeze 
 brought down from the stoep struck some latent chord of 
 subconscious memory, and brought a puzzled little frown 
 between the delicately-drawn dark eyebrows arching over 
 black-lashed golden hazel eyes. And cognisant of every 
 fleeting change of expression in those lovely eyes, the taller 
 of her two companions thought, with a stab of pain : 
 
 " Your father was that mart's friend, and the comrade of 
 others like him." 
 
 " Now, then !" challenged Beauvayse, as the three figures 
 moved out of sight. 
 
 " The ' Girl With the Golden Eyes ' ?" said somebody. 
 
 " You wouldn't speak of her in the same breath with 
 that brainless beast of Balzac's, hang it all !" expostulated 
 the champion. He turned eagerly to the Colonel. " Now 
 you've seen her, sir, would you ?" 
 
 " Not exactly. And I'm bound to say, I regard 
 your claim to the possession of good taste as completely 
 established. . . . 'Ware the horse, there ! Look out ! 
 look out !" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the 
 Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and 
 ease that comes of perfect physical proportion, carrying 
 the black nun's robes, wearing the flowing veil of the nun
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 191 
 
 with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next instant, 
 his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly 
 before the gates, and rendered nervous by the pressure of 
 the crowd, shied at the towering -panache of imitation grass- 
 made ostrich feathers trailing from the aged and crownless 
 pot-hat worn by a headman of the Barala in holiday attire, 
 jerked the bridle from the hand of the trooper, and backed, 
 rearing, in the direction of the three women passing on the 
 sidewalk. The other horses shied, frustrating the efforts 
 of the orderly to catch the flying bridle, and the danger 
 from the huge, towering bro^\Ti body and dangling iron- 
 shod hoofs was very real, seemed inevitable, when a man 
 in white drill and wearing a Panama hat ran out of the 
 crowd, sprang up and deftly caught the loose bridoon- 
 rein, mastered the frightened beast, and dragged it back 
 into the roadway, in time to avert harm. 
 
 " Cleverly done, but a close thing," the Chief said, as 
 he turned away. " / loish I had had that fellow's chance /" 
 was written in Beauvayse's face. To have won a look of 
 gratitude from those wonderful black-fiinged eyes, brought 
 a flush of admiration into those white-rose cheeks, would 
 have been worth while. The slight, tall, girlish figure in 
 its dainty creamy draperies had passed out of sight now 
 between its two black-robed guardians. And had not 
 Luck, that mutable-minded deity, givpin the golden chance 
 to a hulking stranger in white drill, Lrs, Beauvayse's, might 
 have been the hand to intervene in the matter of the 
 Colonel's restive charger, and his the ears to receive 
 Beauty's aclinowledgments. 
 
 If he had known that her eyes had been too full of his 
 own resplendent, virile, glowing young personality, to even 
 see the man who had stepped in between her and possible 
 danger ! The most innocent girl will have her ideal of a 
 lover and thrill at the imagined touch, and furnish the 
 dumb image with a dream-voice that woos her in im- 
 possible, elaborate, impassioned sentences, very unlike 
 the real utterances of Love when he comes. The blue-eyed, 
 ruddy-cheeked, golden-locked St. Michael portrayed in 
 celestial-martial splendour upon one of the panels of the 
 triptych over the altar in the Convent chapel, had, as he 
 bent stem young brows over the writhing demon with
 
 192 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the vainly-enveloping snake-folds, something of the yonng 
 soldier's look, it seemed to Lynette. Ridiculous and pro- 
 fane, Sister Cleoph6e or Sister Ruperta would have said, 
 to liken a handsome, stupid, young Lieutenant of Hussars 
 to the immortal Captain of the Armies of Heaven. 
 
 But she knew another who would understand. There 
 was no flaw in the perfect sympathy that maintained 
 between Lynette and the Mother-Superior, though, cer- 
 tainly, since the Colonel's visit of the previous day, the 
 Mother had seemed strangely preoccupied and sad. . . . 
 Her good-night kiss, invariably so warm and tender, had 
 been the merest brush of lips against the girl's soft cheek ; 
 her good-morning had been even more perfunctory ; her eyes, 
 those great maternal radiances, turned their light elsewhere. 
 Unloved and neglected, the Convent's spoiled darling 
 hugged her abandonment, weaving a very pretty, ineffably 
 silly romance, in which a noble and beautiful young Hussar 
 lover, suddenly appearing over the corrugated-iron fence 
 of the tennis- ground, the foliage of its fringe of pepper-trees 
 waving in the night- breeze, strode towards the slender white 
 figure leaning from her chamber-casement, whispering, with 
 outstretched hands, and eyes that gleamed through the 
 darkness : 
 
 " O'pen the door I Do you hear, you Kid ? Open the door /" 
 
 Her heart beat once, heavily, and seemed to stop. A cold 
 breath seemed to blow upon the little silken hair- tendrils 
 at the nape of her white neck, spreading a creeping, stiffen- 
 ing horror through her body, deadening sensation, para- 
 lysing every limb. 
 
 The close approach of any man, even the thought of such 
 contact, turned her deadly faint, checked her pulses, 
 stopped her breath. At picnics and parties and dances to 
 which the Mayor's wife or the mothers of some of the pupils 
 would invite or chaperon her, her vivid, delicate, fragile 
 beauty would draw, first men's eyes, and then their owners, 
 not all unhandsome or undesirable; while showier girls 
 looked in vain for partners or companions. The little 
 triumph, the consciousness of being admired and sought 
 after, would quicken Lynette'a pulses, and heighten the 
 radiance of her eyes, and lend animation to her girlish
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 193 
 
 chatter and gaiety to her laughter — at first. Then some 
 over-bold advance, some hot look or wliispered word, 
 would bring quick recollection leaping into the lovely eyes, 
 and drive the vivid colour from the virginal transparent 
 face, and stamp the smiling mouth into pale, breathless lines 
 of Fear. That night in the tavern on the veld had branded 
 a child with premature knowledge of the ferocious, ravening, 
 devouring Beast that lies in Man concealed. Again she felt 
 the scorching l^reath of lust upon her ; she quailed under the 
 intolerable touch ; she shook like a reed in the brutal hands 
 of the evil, dominating power that would brook no resist- 
 ance and knew no mercy. The horrible obsession came 
 upon her now, all the stronger for those moments of forget- 
 fulness : 
 
 " Clang — clang — clang /" 
 
 The little Irish novice had rung the chapel bell for Sext 
 and None. She could hear, from the nuns' end of the big 
 rambling, two-storied house, the rustling habits sweeping 
 along the passage. She hurried to the door, and tore it 
 open, frantically as though that ravening breath had been 
 hot upon her neck, saw the dear black figure of the Mother 
 sweeping towards her, and rushed into the arms that 
 were held out, hiding from that burning, scorching, hideous 
 memory in the bosom that dead Richard Mildare had 
 turned from in his blindness. 
 
 Just as Beauvayse, stimulated by the recollection of the 
 Ma3'or's promise to introduce him to the loveUest girl he 
 had ever seen in his life, or ever should see, mentally regis- 
 tered a vow that he would keep the old buffer up to that, 
 by listening to his interminable hunting-stories, and 
 laughing at his venerable jokes, to tears if necessary. 
 Love, like War, sharpened a fellow's faculties. . . . 
 
 " It's rum to reflect," Beauvayse said, conscious of per- 
 petrating an epigram, " that from time immemorial the 
 fellow who wants to make up to a young woman has always 
 had to begin by getting round an old man !" 
 
 He looked round for the old man, whom the title would 
 have estranged for ever. He had buttonholed the Chief, 
 and was gassing away — joy ! — upon the very subject. 
 
 " I fancy the ladies of the Convent, who occasionally visit 
 the Hospital, were coming in at this gate. The short nun, 
 
 13
 
 194 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 I noticed, had a little basket in her hand. Probably they 
 went round to the side entrance, seeing the — ha, ha ! — the 
 stoep garrisoned by Her Majesty's Imperial Forces. Cer- 
 tainly. . . . Without doubt. We respect the Mother- 
 Superior highly. A most gifted, most estimable person in 
 every way, if rather stem and reserved. . . . Unapproach- 
 able, my wiie calls her. But Miss Mildare, her ward " 
 
 XXIV 
 
 " Miss Mild are !" 
 
 The Chief's keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The 
 whole face had darkened and narrowed, and the clipped 
 brown moustache lost its smiling curve, and straightened 
 into a hard line. 
 
 " Miss 3Iildare ?" 
 
 " Why, yes, that is her name. . . . An orphan, I have 
 heard, and with no living relatives. But she seems happy 
 enough at the Convent, judging by what Mrs. Greening 
 says." 
 
 The hearer experienced a momentary feeling of relief 
 and of anger — relief to think that dead Dick Mildare's 
 daughter should have found refuge in such a woman's 
 heart ; anger that the woman should have concealed from 
 him the girl's identity, knowing her the object of his own 
 anxious search. 
 
 Then he understood. His anger died as suddenly as it 
 had been kindled. He recalled something that he had seen 
 v/hen the rearing horse had inclined perilously towards the 
 footway — that protecting maternal gesture, that swift 
 Interposition of the tall, active, black-robed figure between 
 the white-clad, flower-faced, girlish creature and those 
 threatening iron-shod hoofs. . . . 
 
 " She loves the girl — ^Dick Mildare's daughter by the 
 treacherous friend who stole him from her. Is there a 
 doubt ? With poor little Lady Lucy Hawting's willowy 
 figure and the same nymph-like droop of the little head, with 
 its rich twists and coils of dead-leaf-coloured hair, shaded by 
 the (jig black hat. That woman has taken her to her heart,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 195 
 
 however she came by her ; the parting would be agony, 
 steira, proud, tender creature that she is ! I suppose she 
 will be doing thundering penance for not having told me, 
 a fellow who simply walked into the place and assegaied 
 her with my death-news. Here's a marrowy bone of gossip 
 Lady Hannah shall never crack. And yet I wouldn't 
 swear there's not an angel husked inside that dried-up little 
 chrysalis. For God made all women, though He only 
 turned out a few of 'em perfect, and some only just a little 
 better than the ruck." 
 
 He roused himself from the brown study that brought 
 into relief many lurking lines and furrows in the thin, 
 keen face, as the Chief Medical Officer, fixing him through 
 suspicious eyeglasses, demanded : 
 
 " Ye got yo't-'r full allowance o' sleep last nicht 1" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " Thanks to a Cockney babe in bandoliers, who was bom 
 not only with eyes and ears, like other infants, but with the 
 capacity for using 'em." 
 
 " Ay. It's remarr'kable how many men will dandle 
 complacently through Hfe, from the cradle to the grave, 
 wi'out the remotest consciousness that they're practically 
 blind and no better than deaf, as far as regards real seeing 
 and hearing. But who's your prodeegy T' 
 
 " One of Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. They put him on 
 at the Convent with another sentry, their first experience 
 of a night on guard. By not being in a hurry to challenge, 
 and keeping his ears open while a conversation of the con- 
 fidentially-affectionate kirid was going on between a 
 Dutchman — a fellow employed in the booking-office at the 
 railway, on whom I've had my eye for some little time past 
 — and his sweetheart, my townie found out for himself 
 something that most of us knew before, and something 
 else that we wanted to know particularly badly. . . ." 
 
 " Namely ?" 
 
 " For one thing, that the town is a hotbed of spies, and 
 that our friends in laager outside are nightly communicated 
 with by means of flash-signals.** 
 
 " And that's an indeesputable fact. Toch !" No other 
 combination of letters may convey the guttural, " Have I 
 no' seen the lamps at wair k mysel', after darr'k, at the 
 
 13—2
 
 196 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 end o' the roads that debouch upon the veld ! The Dutch- 
 man would be able to plead precedent, I'm thinking." 
 
 " He will have plenty of time to think where he is at 
 present. When the sentry interfered he was instructing 
 the young woman in a simple but effective code of match- 
 flare signals, by means of which she was to communicate 
 with him when he had cleared out. And he had announced 
 his intention of doing that without delay." 
 
 " An' skipping to his freends upo' the Borr'der. . . . 
 Toch !" The network of wrinkles tightened about the sharp 
 little blue-grey eyes of the Chief Medical Officer. " That 
 would gie a shochtfu' man a kind o' notion that a reese 
 in the temperature may be expectit shortly. An' so you — 
 slept soundly on the strength o' many wakeful nichts to 
 come ? Ay, that would be the kind o' information ye 
 were badly wanting !" 
 
 " You're wrong, Major. The bit of information was 
 this — from the spy to his friends outside : ' No — news — 
 to-night.^ " The keen hiizel eyes conveyed something into 
 the Northern blue ones that was not said in words : " ' No 
 news to-night.' And the sender of that message was a 
 railway man ! " 
 
 The wiry hairs of the Chief Medical Officer's red mous- 
 tache bristled like a cat's. 
 
 " Toch ! Colonel, you will have reason to be considering 
 me dull in the uptake, but I see through the mud wall now. 
 And so the knowledge that ye have no equal at hiding your 
 deeds o' darkness^ even in the licht o' the railway-yard was 
 as good to ye as Dafify's Elixir. And when micht we reckon 
 on getting notification from what I may presume to ca' 
 your double surpreese-packet ?" 
 
 He looked at his watch — a well-used Waterbury , worn upon 
 the silvered steel lip-strap of a cavalry bridle, and said : 
 
 " Ten o'clock. At a quarter past eleven I think we may 
 count upon something. The driver of Engine 123 has 
 given me the word of an Irishman from County Kildare ; 
 and the stoker, a Cardiff man, and the guard, who hails 
 from Shoreditch, are quite as keen as Kildare." 
 
 " You're sending the stuff up North ?" 
 
 " In the direction of the stretch of railway-line they*re 
 busy wrecking, in the hope that it may come in useful."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 197 
 
 '* Weel, I will gie ye the guid wish that the affair may 
 go off exactly as ye are hoping." 
 
 " Thanks, Major ! You could hardly word the sentence 
 more happily." 
 
 They exchanged a laugh as the Mayor bustled up, rubi- 
 cund, important, and with a Member of the Committee to 
 iutroduce. 
 
 " Colonel, you'll permit me to present Alderman Brooker, 
 one of our most energetic and valued townsmen, President 
 of the Gas Committee, and an Assistant Borough Magis- 
 trate. One of Major Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. Was on 
 sentry-go last night not far from here, and had a most extra- 
 ordinary experience. Worth your hearing, if you can spare 
 time to listen to my friend's account of it." 
 
 " With pleasure, Mr. Mayor." 
 
 Brooker, a stout and flabby man, with pouches under 
 bihously tinged eyes, bowed and broke into a violent per- 
 spiration, not wholly due to the shiny black frock-coat suit 
 of broadcloth donned for the occasion. 
 
 "Sir, I humbly venture to submit that I have been the 
 victim of a conspiracy !" 
 
 " Indeed ? Step this way, Mr. Brooker." 
 
 Brooker, soothed by the courteous affability of the recep- 
 tion, his sense of importance magnified by being led aside, 
 apart from the others, into the official privacy of the stoep- 
 comer, began to be eloquent. He knew, he said, that the 
 story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, but 
 a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the 
 personage to whom he now addressed himself, would under- 
 stand — none better — how to uru-avel the tangled web, and 
 follow up the clue to its ending in a den of secret, black, 
 and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon 
 his under-lip. He waved his hands, thick, •^bort-fingered, 
 clammy members. . . . 
 
 " My story is as follows, sir. . . ." 
 
 " I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on 
 condition that you will do me first the favour of listening to 
 a story of mine ?" 
 
 Deferred Brooker protested willingness. 
 " Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a 
 quarter to twelve, I was returning from a little tour of
 
 198 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 inspection " — the slight riding sjambok the Chief caxried 
 pointed over the veld to the northward — " out there, when, 
 passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent, 
 where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town 
 Guard had been posted, I heard a sound that I will en- 
 deavour to reproduce : 
 
 " Gr'rumph ! HonFk f Or^rumph /'* 
 
 Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes. 
 
 The face upon wliich he glued his bulging eyes was grave to 
 sternness. He stuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance : 
 
 " It — it sounds something like a snore." 
 
 " It was a snore, Mr. Brooker, and it proceeded from one 
 of the sentries upon guard." 
 
 " Sir ... I ... I can expl " 
 
 " Oblige me by not interrupting, Mr. Brooker. This 
 sentry sat upon a short post, his back fitted comfortably 
 into an angle of the Convent fence, his head thrown back, 
 and his mouth wide open. From it, or from the organ 
 immediately above, the snore proceeded. He was having 
 a capital night's rest — in the Service of his Country. 
 And as I halted in front of him, fixing upon him a gaze 
 which was coldly observant, he shivered and ceased to snore, 
 and said " : — the wretched Brooker heard his own voice, 
 rendered with marvellous fidelity, speaking in the muffled 
 tone of the sleeper — " ' Annie, iVs damned cold to-night ; 
 and yoii^ve got all tJie blanket. ' " 
 
 "Sir , . . sir !" The stricken Brooker babbled 
 hideously. ... " Colonel ... for mercy's sake ! . . ." 
 
 " I could not oblige the gentleman with a blanj<et, 
 Mr. Brooker, but I relieved him of his rifle and left him, 
 to tell his picket a cock-and-buU story of having been 
 drugged and hypnotised by Boer spies. And — I will 
 overlook it upon the present occasion, but in War-time. 
 Mr. Brooker, men have been shot for less. I think I need 
 not detain you further. Your rifle has been sent to your 
 headquarters— with my card and an explanation. One 
 word more, Mr. Brooker " 
 
 Brooker, grey, streaky, and desperately wretched, was 
 blind to the laughter brimming the keen hazel eyes. 
 
 " I am entrusted by the Imperial Government with the 
 preservation of Public Morality in Gueldersdorp, as well as
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 199 
 
 with, the maintenance of the Public Safety — and I should 
 be glad of an assurance from you that Mrs. Brooker's 
 Christian name is really Annie ?" 
 
 " I— I swear it. Colonel !" 
 
 Brooker fled, leaving the preserver of public morality 
 to have bis laugh out before he rejoined the Staff, glancing 
 at the Waterbury on the short steel chain. Half-past ten. 
 Would the Dop Doctor turn up to appointment, or had the 
 battle with habit and the deadly craving born of indulgence 
 ended in defeat 1 As his eyes moved from the dial, they 
 lighted upon the man : 
 
 " Clothed and in his right mind. . . ." 
 
 His own words of the night before recurred to memory 
 as he came forwards with his long, light step, greeting the 
 new-comer with the easy, cordial grace of high-breeding. 
 
 " Ah, Dr. Saxham, obliged to you for being punctual. 
 Let me introduce you to Major Lord Henry Leighbury, 
 D.S.O., Grenadier Guards, our D.A.A.G. Dr. Saxham, 
 Colonel Ware, Baraland Rifles, arid Sir George Wendysh, 
 Wessex Regiment, commanding the Irregular Horse ; 
 Captain Bingham Wrynche, Royal Bay Dragoons, my 
 senior aide-de-camp, and his junior, Lieutenant Lord 
 Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars. And Dr. Saxham, Major 
 Taggart, R.A.M.C, our Chief Medical Officer." 
 
 He watched the man keenly as he made the intro- 
 ductions, saying to himself that this was better than 
 he had hoped. The ragged black moustache had been 
 shaved away ; the frayed but spotless suit of white drill 
 fitted the heavy-shouldered, thin-flanked, muscular figure 
 perfectly ; the faded blue flaimel shirt, with the white double 
 collar and narrow black tie ; the shabby black kamarband 
 about his waist, the black-ribboned Panama, maintaining 
 respectability in extremest old age, as that expensive but 
 lasting headgear is wont to do, possessed, as worn by 
 the Dop Doctor, a certain cachet of style. His slight, curt, 
 almost frowning salutations displayed a well-graduated 
 recognition of the official status of each individual to whom 
 he was made known, betokening the man accustomed to 
 move in circles where such knowledge and the application 
 of it was indispensable, and who knew, too, that slight 
 from him would have given chagrin. But another moment,
 
 200 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and the Junior Medical Officer, a black-avised little Irishman 
 from County Meath, had gripped him by both hands, and 
 was exclaiming in his juicy brogue, real deUght beaming in 
 his round, rosy face : 
 
 " Saxham ! Saxham of St. Stephens, and the grand ould 
 days ! Deny me now, to my face. Say, ' Tom McFadyen, 
 I don't know you,' if you dare." 
 
 The blue eyes shone out vivid gentian-colour in the kindly 
 smile that illumined them, the stern lips parted in a laugh 
 that showed the sound white closely-set teeth. 
 
 " Tom McFadyen, I do know you. But if you offer to 
 pay me that cab-fare you owe me, I shall say I'm wrong, 
 and that it's another man." 
 
 " Hould your tongue. Jewel," drolled the little junior, 
 who delighted in exaggerating the brogue that tripped 
 naturally off his Irish tongue. " Don't be after giving 
 me away to the Chief and the Senior that believe me, by 
 me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that 
 was King of Tara, and owned the cow-grazing from Trim 
 to Athboy, and ate boiled turnips off shields of gold before 
 potatoes were invented, when the bog-oaks were growing 
 as acorns on the tree. And as to the cab-fare, sure I hailed 
 the hansom out of politeness to your honour's glory, the 
 day that saw me going off to the Army Medical School at 
 Netley, wid all my worldly belongin's in wan ould hat-box 
 and the half of a carpet-bag. Wirra, wirra ! but it's some 
 folks have luck, says I, as the train took me out av' Waterloo 
 in a third-class smoker, while you were left on the platform 
 sheddin' half-crowns out av every pore for the newspaper 
 boys an' porters to pick up, and smilin' like a baby dhramin' 
 av the bottle. You'd passed your exam in Anatomy wid 
 wan hand held behind you an' a glove on the other, you'd 
 got your London University Scholarship in Physiology, 
 and you'd fallen head over ears in love with the prettiest 
 and sweetest girl that ever wore out shoe-leather. You 
 wrote to me two years later to say you'd been appointed 
 an in-surgeon on the Junior Staff, an' that you were 
 engaged to be married. But divil the taste of weddin'- 
 cake did I ever get off you. What " 
 
 The little Irishman, thoughtlessly rattling on, pulled up 
 in an instant, seeing the ghastly unmistakable change upon
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 201 
 
 the other's face. He remembered the grim black reason 
 for the change in Saxham, and for once, his habitual tact 
 deserted him. His rosy gills purpled, even as had the 
 Mayor's on the Dop Doctor's entrance. His eyes winced 
 under the heavy petrifying, unseeing stare of Saxham's 
 blue ones. . . . 
 
 " Sorry to stem the flood of your reminiscences, McFadyen, 
 but we're going to overhaul the Hospital now." 
 
 It was the voice of the visitor who had come to the 
 Harris Street house on the previous night, the tall, loosely- 
 built, closely-knit figure in the easily fitting Service-dress 
 that now stepped across the gulf that had suddenly opened 
 between the two old friends, and laid a hand in pleasant, 
 familiar fashion upon Saxham's heavy, rather bowed 
 shoulders. But for that scholar's stoop they would have 
 been of equal height. He went on : " You ^^dll be able to 
 give us points, Saxham, where they will be needed most. 
 Can't expect Colonial institutions, even at the best, to 
 keep abreast of London." 
 
 The blue eyes met his almost defiantly. 
 
 " As I think I remember telling you, sir, it is five years 
 since I saw London." 
 
 " Well, I don't blame you for taking a long holiday 
 while it was procurable. There are a few of us who would 
 benefit by a gallop without the halter, eh, Taggart ?" 
 
 Saxham would not stoop even to benefit indirectly by the 
 shrewd, kindly tact. He drew himself to his full height, 
 and the words were spoken with such ringing clearness 
 that they arrested the attention of every man present. 
 
 " My holiday was compulsory. I underwent — innocently 
 — a legal prosecution for malpractice. The Crown Jury 
 decided in my favour, but my West End connection was 
 ruined. I resigned my Hospital and other appointments, 
 and left England." 
 
 " Ay !" It was the Chief Medical Officer's broad 
 Scots tongue that droned out the bagpipe note. " Weel, 
 Doctor, it's an ill wind blaws naebody guid, and ye 
 canna expect Captain McFadyen or mysel' to sympatheese 
 overmuch wi' the West End for a loss that is our gain. 
 And, Colonel, it's in my memory that ye had set your mind 
 on beginnin' wi' the Operating Theatre ? . . ."
 
 m THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 XXV 
 
 The chart-nurse looked in to say that the Medical officers 
 of the Garrison Staff were making the rounds, and was 
 stricken to the soul by the discovery that the Reverend 
 Julius Fraithorn had had no breakfast. Occupying a small, 
 single-cotted, electric-bell-less room in the outlying ward — 
 brick-lined and corrugated-iron-built like the greater 
 building, and reserved for infectious cases — the Reverend 
 Julius might have been said to be marooned, had not his 
 dark-eyed, transparent, wasted young face created such 
 hot competition among the nurses for the privilege of 
 attending on him, that he had frequently received break- 
 fast and dinner in duplicate, and once three teas. Some 
 of the probationers, reared in the outer darkness of Dissent, 
 knew no better than to term him " the minister." To 
 the matron, who was High Church, he existed as " Father 
 Fraithorn." Julius is hardly complete to the reader with- 
 out an intimation that he very dearly loved to be dubbed 
 " Father." The matron had never failed in this. 
 
 A letter from Father Tatha,m, Julius's senior at 
 St. Margaret's, lay under the bony hand — a mere bunch of 
 fleshless fingers, in which the skin-covered stick that had 
 been a man's arm ended. Father Tatham wrote to say 
 that, after a bright, enjoyable summer holiday, spent with a 
 chosen band of West-Central London barrow-boys at a Rest 
 Home at Cookham-on-Thames, he has started his Friday 
 evening Confirmation classes for young costermongers in 
 Little Schoolhouse Court, and obtained a record attendance 
 by the simple plan of rewarding punctual attendance and 
 ultimate mastery gained over the Catechism and Athanasian 
 Creed with pairs of trousers. Julius had shaken his head 
 over the trousers, knowing that the first walk taken by the 
 garments in company with the winners would be as far as 
 the pop-shop. But lying there in the clean-smelling, airy 
 Hospital ward, he yearned with a mighty yearning for the 
 stuffy West-Central classroom, and the rowdy crew of 
 London roughs hulking and hustling on the benches, 
 learning per medium of " the dodger," that one's duty to 
 one's neighbour was not to abuse him foully without cause.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 203 
 
 to refrain one's hands from pocket- picking, shop-raiding, 
 hustling, and jellying heads with brass-buckled belts or 
 iron knuckle-dusters, and not to get drunk before Saturday 
 night. 
 
 He had come out to South Africa upon the advice of 
 physicians — honestly-meaning wiseacres- — ignorant of the 
 shifts, the fatigues, the inevitable exertions and privations 
 that the panting, tottering invalid must inevitably undergo^ 
 in company with the hale traveller and the sound emigrant ; 
 the rough, protracted journeys, the neglect and discomfort 
 of the imas and taverns and boarding-houses, where Kaffirs 
 are the servants, and dirt and discomfort reign. He bore 
 them because he must, and struggled on, learning by painful 
 experience that fever-patches are best avoided, and finding 
 out what dust-winds mean to the man who has got sick 
 lungs, and sometimes thinking he was getting better, and 
 would be one day able to go back to the Clergy House, and 
 take up his mission in the West and West-Central districts, 
 and begin work again. 
 
 Now, lying panting on his pillows, raised high by the 
 light chair slipped in behind them, hospital-fashion, he 
 looked beyond the whitewashed walls northwards, to 
 grimy London. He dreamed, while the chart-nurse was 
 still apologising about the forgotten breakfast, of the High 
 Ritual in the sacred place, and the solemn joy of the vested 
 celebrant of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The incense rose 
 in clouds to the gilded, diapered roof, the organ pealed . , . 
 then the ward seemed to fill with men in khaki Service 
 dress, keen-eyed and tan-faced beings, of quiet movements 
 and well-bred gestures, obviously stamped with the oachtt 
 of authority. Upright, alert, well-knit, and strong, the 
 visitors exhaled the compound fragrance of healthy virility, 
 clean linen, and excellent cigars ; and the poor sufferer 
 yielded to a pang of envy as he looked at them, standing 
 about his bed, and thought of that resting-place even 
 narrower, in which his wasted body must soon lie. And 
 then he mentally smote his breast and repented. What 
 was he, the unworthy servant of Heaven, that he should 
 dare to oppose the Holy Will ? 
 
 " Weel now, and how are we the dav ?" said the Chief 
 Medical Ojfificer, presented by the Resident Surgeon to the
 
 204 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 occupant of the bed. He read approaching death in the 
 sunken face against the pillows, and in the feeble pulse as 
 he touched the skeleton wrist, and the Resident Surgeon, 
 catching the Scotsman's eye, shook his head sHghtly, 
 imparting information that was not needed. 
 
 " It is not in my power, I am afraid, sir, to return you 
 the conventional answer," said Julius Fraithom. " To 
 be plain and brief, I am suffering from tuberculous lung- 
 disease, and I am advised that I have not many days to 
 live." 
 
 He smiled gratefully at the Resident Surgeon. 
 
 " Everything that can be done for me here is done. 
 I cannot be too thankful. But I should have liked — I 
 should have wished to have been spared to return to 
 England, if not to live a little longer among my friends, 
 at least to . . ." He broke off panting, and his rattling 
 breaths seemed to shake him. He sounded Like Indian 
 com shaken in a gunny- bag ; he wheezed like the mildewed 
 harmonium in the Hospital chapel, on which he had once 
 tried to play. When he had spoken, his voice had had the 
 flat, deadly softness of the exhausted phthisical sufferer's. 
 When he had moved he had suffered torture : the shoulder- 
 blades and hip-bones had pierced the wasted muscular 
 tissues and projected through the skin. 
 
 " I can't !" he gasped out. " You see " 
 
 A dizziness of deadly weakness seized him. His soft, 
 muffled voice trailed away into a whisper, blue shadows 
 gathered about his large, mobile, sensitive mouth, much 
 like that of Keats as shown in the Death Cast, and his 
 head fell back upon the pillows. Julius had fainted. 
 
 " Poor beggar !" said a large, pink man, wearing the red 
 shoulder-straps and brown-leather leggings of the Staff. 
 to another, a fair, handsome, young giant who leaned 
 against the opposite door-post, as the chart-nurse hurried 
 to take away the pillows, and lay the patient flat, and 
 the shorter of the two medical officers dropped brandy from 
 a flask into a glass with water in it, while the tall Scot, his 
 finger on the pulse, stooped over the pale figure on the bed ; 
 
 " No doubt about his next address being the Cemetery. 
 Should grouse myself if I was in his shoes — or bed-socks 
 would be the proper word — ^what 1"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 205 
 
 Beauvayse agreed. " He looks like a chap I saw once 
 get into a cofl&n at the Cabaret de I'Enfer — that shady 
 restaurant place in the Boulevard de CHchy. When they 
 tui-ned on the lights . . ." He shrugged. " The women of 
 the party thought it simply ripping, I wanted to be sick." 
 
 Captain Bingo had also known the sensation of nausea 
 during a similar experience. " But women' 11 stand any- 
 thing," he said, " particularly if they've been told it's chic. 
 My own part, I can stand any amount of dead men — 
 healthy dead men, don't you know ? But — give you my 
 word — a cadaverous spectacle like that poor chap, bones 
 stickin' out of his hide, and breathin' as if he was stuffed 
 with dry shavin's, or husks like the Prodigal Son, gives me 
 the downright horrors !" 
 
 Thus they conferred, supporting opposite door-posts 
 with solid shoulders, until the C.M.O., turning his head, 
 addressed them brusquely, curtly : 
 
 " Wrynche, if you'd transfer yourself with Lord Beau- 
 vayse to the passage, myself and my colleagues here would 
 be the better obliged to ye." 
 
 " Pleasure !" They removed, with a simultaneous clink 
 of scabbards and a ring of spurred heels on the tiled pave- 
 ment. 
 
 The Colonel remained, making those about the bed a 
 group of five. The chart-nurse stayed, pending the nod of 
 dismissal, a rigid statue of capped and aproned discipline, 
 upright in the comer. 
 
 " Phew !" Captain Bingo blew a vast sigh of relief, and 
 produced a cigar-case. " Well out of that, my boy. All 
 jumps this morning ; wouldn't take the odds you're not as 
 bad ?" 
 
 " Rather !" Beauvayse nodded, and drew the elder man's 
 attention, with a look, to the strong young hand that held 
 a choice Havana just accepted from the offered case. 
 " Shaky, isn't it ? and yet I didn't punish the champagne 
 much last night. It's sheer excitement, just what one feels 
 before riding a steeplechase, or going into Action early on a 
 raw morning. Not that I've been in anything but a couple 
 of Punitive Expeditions — ^from Peshawar, under Wilks- 
 Dayrell, splitting up some North- West Frontier tribes that 
 had lumped themselves together against British Authority
 
 206 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 — up to now. But I'm looking out for the chance oi some- 
 thing better worth having, like you and all the rest of us. 
 Trouble you for a light !" 
 
 " By the Living Tinker, and that's the fourth ! Where 
 d'you think I'd give a cool fifty to be this minute ? Not 
 cooling my heels in a brick-paved passage while a pack of 
 doctors are swoppin' dog-Latin over the body of a moribund 
 young parson, but on the roof of the Staff Quarters, 
 lookin' North, with my eyes glued to the binoculars and my 
 ears pricked for — you know what !" 
 
 Beauvayse groaned. " Isn't that what I'm suffering for 1 
 And the Chief must be ten times worse. How he keeps his 
 countenance — demure as my grandmother's cat lappin' 
 cream. ... I say, the Transvaal Dutch ; they call them- 
 selves the true Children of Israel, don't they ? Well, which 
 did Moses and his little gang come across ihst in the Desert, 
 the Pillar of Cloud, or the Pillar of Fire, or a couple of 
 railway- trucks containin' the raw material for a sky- 
 journey, only waitin' till Brer' Boer plugs a bullet in among 
 the djmamite 1 It makes me feel good all over, as the 
 American women say, Avhen I think of it." He smiled like 
 a mischievous young archangel, masquerading in Service kit. 
 
 Within the room the fainting man was coming back to 
 consciousness, his dry, rattling breaths bearing out Captain 
 Bingo Wrynche's similitude regarding husks and shavings, 
 rings of blue fire swimming before his darkened vision, and 
 a dull roaring in his ears. . . . The Fvoyal Armj' Medical 
 Corps wrought over him ; the nurse lent a deft helping 
 hand ; the Resident Surgeon talked eagerly to the Colonel ; 
 and he, lending ear, scarcely heard the reiterated, stereo- 
 typed parrot-phrases, so taken up was his attention vtdth 
 the man in shabby white drill clothes, who leaned over the 
 foot of the bed, his square face set into an expressionless 
 mask, his gentian-blue, oddly vivid eyes fixed upon the 
 wasted, waxy-yellow face of the sick man, his head bent, as 
 he hstened wdth profound, absorbed attention to the husky, 
 rattling, laboured breaths. 
 
 Suddenly he straightened himself and spoke, addressing 
 himself to the Resident Surgeon. 
 
 " The patient has told us, sir, that he is suffering from 
 tuberculous disease of the lungs. May I ask, was that the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 207 
 
 conclusion arrived at by a London consulting physician, and 
 whether your own diagnosis has confii-med the assertion 1" 
 The Resident Surgeon nodded with patronising indiffer- 
 ence. He was not going to waste civilities upon this 
 rowdy, drunken remittance-man, whom he had seen reeling 
 through the streets of the stad as he went upon his own 
 respectable way. 
 
 " Phthisis fndmonalis." He addressed his reply to the 
 Chief. " And the process of lung-destruction is, as you ^vill 
 observe, sir, nearly complete." 
 
 He encountered from the Chief a look of cool displeasure 
 that flushed him to the top of his knobby forehead, and set 
 him blinking nervously behind his big round spectacles. 
 
 " Br. Saxham asked you, sir, unless I mistake, whether 
 you had ascertained by your own diagnosis, the . . ." 
 Lady Hannah's words came back to him. He recalled the 
 " bit of information wormed out of the nurse," and ended 
 with " the presence of the bacillus ?" 
 
 Saxham's blue eyes thrust their rapier-points at him, 
 and then plunged into the oyster-like orbs behind the 
 spectacles of the Resident Surgeon, who rapidly grew from 
 scarlet to purple, and from purple to pale green. Major 
 Taggart and the Irishman exchanged a look of intelligence. 
 " Koch's bacillus, sir, were this a case of tuberculosis 
 proper, would be present in the expectoration of the 
 patient, and easy of demonstration under the microscope." 
 Saxham's voice was cold as ice and cutting as tempered 
 steel. " May we take it that you can personally testify 
 to its presence here ?" He poiated to the bed. 
 
 " And varra possibly," put in Taggart, " ye could submit 
 a culture for present inspection ? It would be gratifeeying 
 to me and Captain McFadyen here, as weel as to our friend 
 an' colleague Dr. Saxham, late of St. Stephen' s-in-the- 
 West, London, to varrafy the correctness o' your diagnosis." 
 " And it would that !" the Irishman chimed in. "So 
 trot out your bacillus, by all maimer of means !" 
 
 The Resident Surgeon babbled somethiag incoherent, 
 and melted out of the room. 
 
 " Moppin' his head as he goes down the passage," said 
 McFadyen, coming back from the door 
 
 '' He'll no be in sic a Bwcatin' hurry to come back,"
 
 208 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 pronounced the canny Scot, shedding a wink from a dry, 
 red-fringed eyelid. He produced from the roomy breast- 
 pocket of his khaki Service jacket a rubber-tubed stetho- 
 scope, and put it silently into the hand Saxham had 
 mechanically stretched out for it. Then he drew back, 
 his eyes, like those of the other two spectators of the 
 strange scene that was beginning, fixed upon the chief 
 actor in it. One other, weak after his swoon as a new-born 
 child, lay passively, helplessly upon the bed. 
 
 Saxham, his square face stony and set, moved with a 
 noiseless, feline, padding step towards the prone victim. 
 A gleam of apprehension shot into JuHus Fraithom's great 
 dark eyes, reopening now to consciousness. They fixed 
 themselves, with an instinct bom of that sudden thrill of 
 fear, upon the lightly-closed right hand. Instantly com- 
 prehending, Saxham lifted the hand, showed that it held 
 no instrument save the stethoscope, and dropped it again 
 by his side, drawing nearer. Then the massive, close- 
 cropped black head sank to the level of JuHus Fraithorn's 
 breast, revealed in its ghastly, emaciated nakedness by the 
 open nightshirt. The massive shoulders bowed, the supple 
 body curved, the keen ear Joined itself to the heaving 
 surface. In a moment more the agonising, hacking, rending 
 cough came on. Julius battled for air. Raising him deftly 
 and tenderly, Saxham signed to the nurse, who hurried to 
 him, answering his low questions in whispers, giving aid 
 where he indicated it required. 
 
 Steadily, patiently, the binaural stethoscope travelled 
 over the lung area, gathering abnormal sounds, searching 
 for silent spaces, sucking evidence into the assimilative brain 
 behind the eyes that saw nothing but the man upon the 
 bed, the locked human casket housing the secret that was 
 slowly, surely coming to Hght. In the fierce determiuation 
 to gain it, he threw the stethoscope away, and glued his 
 avid ear to the man again. 
 
 " Toch ! but I wouldna' have missed this for a kittie o' 
 Kj-uger sovereigns !" the Chief Medical Officer whispered 
 to his colleague from Meath. And McFadyen whispered 
 back : 
 
 " Nor me, for your shoes. 'Ssh !" 
 
 Saxham was lifting up the groat stooping shoulders, and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 209 
 
 beginnmg to speak in a voice totally different from that of 
 the man known in Gueldersdorp as the Dop Doctor. Clear, 
 ringing, concise, the sentences left his lips : 
 
 " Gentlemen, I invite your attention to a case of involun- 
 tary simulation of the symptoms distinguishing pulmonary 
 tuberculosis by a patient suffering from a grave disease of 
 totally different and possibly much less malignant char- 
 acter. Oblige me by stepping nearer !" 
 
 They crowded about the bed like eager students. 
 
 " In order to show what false conclusions loose modes of 
 reasoning and the habitual reliance upon precedent may 
 lead to, take the instance of the consulting physician to 
 whom some years ago this young man, now barely thirty, 
 and reduced, as you may see for yourselves, to the final 
 extremity of physical decline, resorted." 
 
 " I would gie five shillin' if the man could hear his aia 
 Judgment !" murmured the Chief Medical Officer ; for he 
 had gleaned from a whispered answer of Julius's the omni- 
 potent name of Sir Jedbury Fargoe. " Toch !" He 
 chuckled dryly. Saxham went on : 
 
 " The consulting patient suffers from cough, painful and 
 racking, from impaired digestive power, from increasing 
 debility, fever, and night-sweats. He visits the specialist, 
 convinced that he is consumptive, he receives confirma- 
 tion of his convictions, and you see him to-day presenting 
 the appearance, and reproducing all the symptoms of a 
 patient in consumption's final stage. Possibly the germs of 
 tuberculosis may be dormant in his organisation, waiting 
 the opportunity to develop into activity ! Possibly — a 
 very remote possibility — the disease may have already 
 attacked some organ of his body ! But — and upon this 
 point I can take my stand with the confidence of absolute 
 certainty — the lungs of this so-called pulmonary sufferer 
 are absolutely sound !" 
 
 " My certie ! Send I may live to foregather wi' Sir 
 Jedbury Fargoe !" the Chief Medical Officer prayed in- 
 audibly. " He will gang to the next International Con- 
 sumption Congress wi' a smaller conceit of himsel', or my 
 name's no Duncan Taggart !" 
 
 The lecturer, absorbed in his subject, lifted his hand to 
 silence the murmur, and pursued : 
 
 14
 
 210 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " From what disease, then, is this man suffering ? 
 Logical and progressive conclusions drawn from experience, 
 and based upon the local enlargement which the physicians 
 previously consulted have apparently failed to perceive, 
 lead me to diagnose the presence of a tumour in the medi- 
 astinum, extending its claws into the lungs, and seriously 
 impeding their action and the action of the heart. An 
 operation, serious and necessarily involving danger, is 
 imperative. The growth may be benign or malignant ; in 
 the latter case I doubt whether the life of the patient is to be 
 saved. But in the former case he has good hopes. Under- 
 stand, I speak with certainty. Upon the presence of the 
 growth, simple or otherwise, I am ready to stake my credit, 
 my good name, my profcwssional reputation " 
 
 Ah ! It rushed upon Saxham with a sickening shock of 
 recollection that he was bankrupt in these things, and 
 shame and anger strove for the mastery in his face, and 
 anguish wrung a sob from him, despite his iron composure. 
 
 He wrenched at the collar about his swelling throat, as 
 he turned away blindly towards the window, seeing nothing, 
 fighting desperately with the horrible despair that had 
 gripped him, and the mad, wild frenzy of yearning for the 
 old, glorious life of strenuous effort and conscious power. 
 Lost ! lost ! all that had been vron. 
 
 " I ... I had forgotten . . . !" he muttered ; and then a 
 hard, vigorous hand found his and gripped it. 
 
 " Go on forgetting. Saxham !" said a voice in his ear — 
 a voice he knew, instantly steadying — such virtue is there 
 in honest, heartfelt, comprehending sympathy between 
 man and his fellow-man — the spinning brain, and quieting 
 the leaping pulses, and giving him back, as nothing else 
 could have done, his lost self-control. " You have earned 
 the right !" 
 
 " Man, you're a wonder !" groaned the enraptured Chief 
 Medical Officer. He added, with a relapse into the national 
 caution : " That is, ye will be if your prognosis proves 
 correc'. But the Taggarts are a' of the canny breed of 
 Doobtin' Tammas, an sae I'll just keep a calm sugh till 
 I see what the knife lays bare." 
 
 " Use the knife now, sir. At once — without delay !" 
 
 It was the weak, muffled voice of the patient on the bed.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 211 
 
 Saxham wheeled sharply about, and the stem blue eyes and 
 the great lustrous pleading brown ones, looked into each 
 other. 
 
 The pale JuUus spoke again : 
 
 " I entreat you, Doctor !" 
 
 Saxham spoke in his curt way : 
 
 " You are aware that there is risk ?" 
 
 JuUus Fraithom stretched out Ms transparent hands. 
 
 " What risk can there be to a man in my state ? Look 
 at these ; and did I not hear you say ..." 
 
 " Whatever I may have said, sir, and however urgent I 
 may admit the necessity for immediate operation, you must 
 wait until to-morrow morning." 
 
 " I am fasting, sir, and fed. I received Holy Com- 
 munion this morning, and have not yet breakfasted." 
 
 The return of the chart-nurse followed by a probationer 
 carrying a laden tray provoked an exclamation from the 
 Uttle Irishman. 
 
 " Signs on it, the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil 
 a wonder he went off like he did a bit back. And you can't 
 deny him, Saxham ?" 
 
 " I wad gie him the chance, Saxham " — this from 
 Surgeon-Major Taggart — " in your place ; and maybe I'm 
 putting in six worrds for mysel' as well aa haK a dozen for 
 the patient. For I have an auld bone to pyke wi' Sir 
 Jedbury Fargoe, aboot a Regimental patient he slew for me, 
 three years back, wi' his Jawbone of a PhiUstiue ass." 
 
 Saxham spoke to Fraithorn authoritatively, kindly. 
 
 " You have no near relative to sign the Hospital 
 Register ?" 
 
 " My family are all in England, sir. I have not thought 
 it necessary to distress them with the knowledge of my 
 state." 
 
 " I think Lady Hannah Wrynche, who is now in Guel- 
 dersdorp, happens to be an acquaintance of theirs, if not a 
 friend ?" 
 
 JuHus turned eagerly to the Colonel. 
 
 " It is true, she did come here yesterday. But I should 
 hardly wish . . . Surely, being of mature age and in the 
 full possession of all my faculties " — ^there was a smile on 
 the pale lips — " I may be allowed to sign the book myself ?" 
 
 14—2
 
 212 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The doctors interchanged a look. The Colonel said to 
 the patient : 
 
 " Mr. Fraithom, if the idea is not unwelcome to you, I 
 myself will sign the book, and " — he stooped over the bed 
 and laid his hard, soldierly hand kindly on the pale one — 
 " in the event of a less fortunate termination than that we 
 hope for " — the faces of the three surgeons were a study in 
 inscrutability — " I will communicate, as soon as any com- 
 munication is rendered possible, with the Bishop and Mrs. 
 Fraithom." 
 
 The cough shook Julius as a terrier shakes a rat before 
 he could gasp out : 
 
 " Thank you, sir. With all my heart I thank you !" 
 
 " You shall thank me when you get well !" The Chief 
 shook the pale hand, crossed the bare boards to Saxham, 
 who stood staring at them sullenly, and took him by the 
 arm. They went out of the ward together, talking in low 
 tones. The medical officers followed. Then the chart- 
 nurse and the probationer who had been banished with the 
 tray, came bustling back with towels, and razors, and a 
 soapy solution in a basin, having a carbolic smell. 
 
 Dr. Saxham had gone to take a disinfecting bath, the 
 nurse said, as she went about her minute preparations ; and 
 the Commanding Officer had gone with the Staff, and now 
 her poor dear must let himself be got ready. 
 
 They wrapped the gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe 
 with a heavy monkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded 
 blanket-stockings over the ligament-tied, skin-covered 
 bones that served the wasted wretch for legs, and wheeled 
 in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushioned 
 stretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a very handful 
 of humanity, and wheeled him, hooded and head-first, 
 through the tile-floored passage and out into the golden 
 African sunshine, that baked him gloriously through the 
 CO v« rings, and so into the main building and down a tile- 
 floored passage there. 
 
 He prayed silently as he was wheeled, with bhnded, 
 cowled eyes, through double doors at the end. . . .
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 213 
 
 XXVI 
 
 The operation was over, and the two Celts, self- appointed 
 to the temporary posts of assistant- surgeon and ansesthetist, 
 expressed their emotions in characteristic manner. . . . 
 
 " Twelve minutes to a second between the first incision 
 an' the last stitch. . . . Och, Owen, the Jewel you are ! 
 Give me the loan of your fist, man, this minute." 
 
 " What price Sir Jedbury Fargoe the noo ? The auld- 
 f arrant, scraiehin', obstinate grey gander. A hand I will 
 tak' at him ower the head o' this, or I'm no Taggart of 
 Taggartshowe. Speaking wi' seriousness, Saxham, it was 
 a pretty operation, an' performed wi' extraordinary quick- 
 ness. And I'm sorry there are no' a baker's dozen o' 
 patients for ye to deal wi'. It's a gran' treat to see a borrn 
 genius use the knife." 
 
 " You could have done it yourself, Major, in less time." 
 
 " Maybe I could, and maybe I couldna ! I doubt but 
 we Army billies are better at puttin' men thegither than 
 at takin' them to pieces in the long run. . . . Gently now, 
 porter, wi' liftin' the patient. . . . Ay, McFadyen, that's 
 richt, gie the man a hand. See to him, Saxham, is he no' 
 fine to luik at ? A wheen blue an' puffy, but the pulse 
 is better than I would have expeckit. Wheel him awa', 
 nurse ; he'll no come round for another hour. . . ." 
 
 They wheeled him away, back to the distant ward. 
 The porter followed. The three surgeons standing by that 
 grim table in the rubber-floored central space of the 
 amphitheatre, fenced in by students' benches, vacant save 
 for half a dozen whispering dressers, looked at one another. 
 Bloused and aproned with sterilised material, masked, 
 rubber-gloved, and slippered, and splashed with the same 
 ominous stains that were on the table and upon the floor, 
 Saxham's heavy-shouldered figure was as ominous and 
 sinister as ever played a part in mediaeval torture-chamber, 
 or figured in a nightmare- tale of Poe's device. You can 
 see the other surgeons, bibbed and sleeved, the Irishman, 
 small and dark and wiry, sousing a lethal array of sharp 
 and gleaming implements in a glass bath of carbolic ; 
 Taggart, standing at a glass table, rubber-wheeled and
 
 214 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 movable, like everything else for use, and laden vi^ith rolls 
 ©f lint and bandaging, and blue-glass bottles of peroxide 
 of hydrogen and mercurial perchloride, daintily returning 
 reels of silk-vrorm-gut and bobbins of silver wire to their 
 velvet-lined case. 
 
 " You're no' fatigued ? You would no' like a steemulant ?" 
 
 Saxham started and withdrew his gaze. He had been 
 staring with dull intensity of desire at the brandy-decanter^ 
 forgotten by the matron, whose usual charge it was. And 
 the sharp blue-grey eye of Surgeon-Major Taggart followed 
 the glance to its end in the golden-gleaming crystal. 
 
 " Fatigued ? I hardly think so !" 
 
 He laughed, and the others joined in the laugh, remem- 
 bering the lengthy line of patients operated on in a single 
 mid-week morning at St. Stephen's. And yet his steady 
 hand shook a little, and a curious soft, subtle dulness of 
 sensation was stealing over him. He had gone to bed 
 sober, had risen after three hours of blessed, unexpected, 
 helpful sleep, to battle with his desperate craving until 
 morning. When the old woman left in charge of the house- 
 keeping arrangements had come to his door with hot 
 water and his usual breakfast — a mug of strong coffee 
 with milk and a roll — he had gulped dovm the reviving, 
 steadjdng draught thirstily, and swallowed a mouthful 
 or two of the bread ; and when he was shaved and tubbed 
 and clothed in the shabby white drill suit, had gone down 
 to the dispensary and mixed himself a dose of chloric 
 ether and strychnine, strong enough to brace his jarred 
 nerves for the coming ordeal. 
 
 Not that Saxham habitually drugged : that craving was 
 not yet known to him. But the habitual intemperance 
 had exacted even from his iron constitution its forfeit of 
 shakiness in the morning, and the rare sobriety left the man 
 suffering and unstrung. 
 
 Looking about him as the dose began its work of string- 
 ing the lax nerves and stimulating the action of the heart, 
 he saw that many of the drawers were open, a costly set 
 of graduated scales missing, with their plush-lined box. . . . 
 
 With a certain premonition of what would next be 
 missing, he went into the surgery. A case of silver-mounted 
 surgical instruments had vanished from a shelf, with a
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 215 
 
 presentation loving-cup, given by admirers among De 
 Boursy- Williams's patients to that gifted practitioner. 
 A roll-top desk was partly broken open, but not rifled, 
 the American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts 
 of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had 
 cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous 
 night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the 
 accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed 
 the line of demarcation between the British Imperial 
 Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had 
 meant to wait yet another day, and take many things 
 more, but the coming of those verdoemte soldiers of the 
 Engelsch Commandant to fetch away the carboys of 
 carbolic acid and the other medical stores had roused him 
 to prompt action. 
 
 Later, wearing the brass badge of a Surgeon on the sleeve 
 of his greasy black tail-coat, Koets ruled a Boer Field- 
 Hospital, fearlessly slashing his way into the confidence of 
 the United Republics through the tough, wincing brawn 
 and muscle of Free Stater and Transvaaler. It speaks 
 for the enduring qualities of the Boer constitution to say 
 that many of his patients survived. 
 
 * * * If * 
 
 But the brandy in the decanter. . , . 
 
 How it beckoned and allured and tempted. And the 
 throat and palate of the man were parched with the desire of 
 it. And yet, a moment before, with the toils about his feet, 
 Saxham had wondered at the thought of these degraded 
 years of bondage. He shook his head sullenly as Taggart 
 repeated his question, and went away to wash and get 
 dressed. 
 
 Then he meant to shake oflf his companions and go where 
 he could quench that inward fire. He loathed them as 
 they followed, chatting pleasantly. . . . 
 
 But above the hissing of the hot water from the faucets 
 over the basins came presently another sound, mosfc 
 famihar to the ears of the gossiping Celts. . . . 
 
 " Rifle-fire ! Out on the veld over yonder." McFad- 
 yen's towel waved North. " Do ye hear it ?" 
 
 " Ay, do I First biuid has been drawn. And to 
 which aide ?"
 
 216 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Boom, / . . . 
 
 The Hospital quivered to its foundations at the tre- 
 mendous detonation. Shattered glass fell in showers of 
 fragments from the roof of the operating-theatre, as the 
 force of the explosion passed beneath the buildings in a 
 surging of the ground on which they stood, a slow wave 
 rolling southwards, without a backward draw. 
 
 The lavatory door had jammed, as doors will jam in 
 earthquakes. Saxham tore it open, and the three shirt- 
 sleeved, ensanguined men ran through the theatre, strewn 
 with the debris from the roof, and through the double 
 glazed doors communicating with the passage, populous with 
 patients who should have been in bed, pursued by nurses 
 as pale and shaken as their stampeding charges. The 
 rear of the Hospital faces North, and they ran down a 
 corridor full of dust, ending in more glazed doors, and tore 
 out upon the back stoep, wide and roomy, and full of deck 
 chairs and wicker lounges. 
 
 " Do ye see it ? Ten thousand salted South African 
 deevils ! Do ye no' see it ?" the Surgeon-Major yelled, 
 pointing to a monstrous milk-white soap-bubble-shaped 
 cloud that slowly rose up in the hot blue sky to the North 
 and hung there, sullenly brooding. 
 
 " What is it. Major ?" shouted Saxham, for behind them 
 the Hospital was full of clamour. Nurses and dressers 
 were rurming out into the grounds to listen and question 
 and conjecture, the barely reclaimed veld beyond the 
 palings was black with hurrying, shouting men, bandoliered, 
 and carrying guns of every kind and calibre, from the 
 venerable gaspipe of the native and the aged but still 
 useful Martini-Henry of the citizen, to the Lee - Metford 
 repeating-carbine, and the German magazine rifle of latest 
 delivery to the troops of Imperial Majesty at Berlin. 
 Men were clustered like bees on the flat tin roofs of the 
 sheds at the Railway Works ; men had climbed the signal- 
 posts and were looking out from them over the sea of veld ; 
 the Volunteers garrisoning the Cemetery had poured from 
 their temporary huts and dug-out shelters, and were massed 
 on the top of their sand-bag mounds. A fair, handsome 
 Staff officer, the younger of the two men who had accom- 
 panied the Colonel, went by at a tearing gallop, mounted
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 217 
 
 on a fine grey charger, and followed by an orderly, while 
 the pot-hat and truncheon of a scared native constable 
 emerged timidly from the gaping Jaws of a rusty water- 
 cistern, long dismissed from Hospital use, and exiled to 
 the open with other rubbish waiting transference to 
 the scrap-heap ; and far out upon the railway - line that 
 vanished in the yellowing sea of veld an unseen engine 
 screeched and screeched. . . . 
 
 The Chief, in his pet post of vantage upon the roof of 
 Nixey's Hotel, lowered his binoculars as the persistent 
 whistle kept open. The lines about his keen eyes and 
 mouth curved into a cheerful smile. The sound was coming 
 nearer, and presently Engine 123 backed into view, a mile 
 or so from waiting, expectant Gueldersdorp, and snorting, 
 raced at full speed for her home in the railway - yard. 
 Her driver was the young Irishman from the County 
 Kildare, and her guard hailed from Shoreditch. And 
 both of them had a tale to tell of what Taggart had called 
 the Colonel's double surprise-packet, to a tall man whom 
 they found waiting on the metals by the upper Signal Cabin. 
 
 " Six mile from the start, sorra a yard more or less, sorr ! 
 I sees a comp'ny o' thim divils mustered on the bog, I 
 mane the veld, sorr — smokin' their pipes an' passin' the 
 bottle, an' givin' the overlook to a gang av odthers, that 
 was rippin' up the rails undher the directions av a head- 
 gaffer wid a hat brim like me granny's tay-thray, an' a 
 beard like the Prophet Moses." 
 
 " I sor 'is whoppin' big 'at myself, though we was two 
 mile off when we picked the beggars out," the guard 
 objected ; " but 'ow could you twig 'is beard or that the 
 other blokes was smokin' ?" 
 
 " Did ye ever know a Dutch boss av any kind clane- 
 shaved an' not hairy-faced ?" was Kildare's Just retort, " or 
 see a crowd av Doppers gathered together that the blue 
 smoke av the Blessed Creature was not curlin' out av 
 their mouths an' ears an' noses, an' Old Square Face or 
 Van der Hump makin' the rounds ?" 
 
 " You thought the blokes on the metals was a workin' 
 gang of our chaps at the fust go off," complained the guard, 
 " an' you opened the whistle to warn 'em !" 
 
 " He did that for sure," put in the Cardiff stoker. " But
 
 218 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 he was tipping me the wink while he did it, so he was ; 
 as much as to say he knew they were Boers all the time." 
 
 " Would they have stopped where they was, well widin 
 range, av I had let on I knew they was a parcel av unwashed 
 Dutchmen ?" demanded Kildare hotly. " Would they 
 have hung on as I pushed her towards thim — would they 
 have stopped to watch me uncouplin' the two thrucks, 
 smilin' wid simple interest in their haythen faces, av they 
 had not taken me for a suckin' lamb in oily overalls that 
 took themselves for sheep av the same fold ?" 
 
 " They got a bit suspicious when we steamed orf," 
 said the guard ; " more than a bit suspicious, they did." 
 
 " They took the thrucks for the Armoured Thrain," 
 recounted Kildare, with a radiant smile illuminating a 
 countenance of surpassing griminess, " an' they rode to 
 widin range, an' got off their hairies, an' dhropped in a 
 volley just to insinse them they took to be squattia' 
 down inside them insijious divizes, into what they would 
 be gettin' if they put up the heads av them." He mopped 
 his brimming eyes with a handful of cotton waste, not 
 innocent of lubricating fluid. " Tower av Ivory ! 'twas 
 grand to see the contimpt av thim when the cowards widin 
 did not reply. ' Donder !' says the gaffer in the tay-thray 
 hat and the beard like the grandfather av all the billygoats. 
 ' Is this,' he says, ' the British pluck they talk about ? 
 Show thim verdant English a Dutchman behind a geweer,' 
 he says, an' that's what they call a gun in their dirty 
 lingo — ' an' they lie down Mid all four legs in the air like 
 a puppy that sees the whip. Plug thim again, my sons,' 
 says he, ' an' wid the blessin' av Heaven, we'll stiffen 
 the lot !' " 
 
 " You could never hear him, so you could not, not at all 
 that distance," the Cardiff stoker objected. 
 
 " Could I not see him, ye blind harper, swearin' in dumb 
 show, an' urgin' thim to shoot sthraight for the honour 
 av the RepubUcs an' give the rooi batchers Jimmy ! 
 Ga.-lant-\y they respondid, battherin' the sides av the 
 mystarious locomotive containin' the bloody an' rapacious 
 soldiery av threacherous England wid nickel-plated Mauser 
 bullets, ontil she hiccoughs indacintly, an' wid a bellow 
 to bate St. Fin Barr's bull, kicks herself to pieces !"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 219 
 
 " She did so, surely," affirmed the Cardiff atoker. 
 " Surely she did so." 
 
 " Tell the Colonel 'o\v the engine jumped right off the 
 metals," advised the guard. 
 
 " Clane she did," went on Kildare jubilantly, " an' 
 rattled Davis an' me inside the cab like pays in an iron 
 pod. See the funny-bone I sthripped agin' the side av 
 her !" He exhibited a raw elbow for the inspection of the 
 Chief. " An' when Davis gets the betther av the rest 
 av the black that's on him wid soft soap an' hot wather, 
 there's an oi he'll not wash off." 
 
 " The brake-handle did that, it did so," said Davis, 
 touching the optic tenderly. But Kildare was answering 
 a question of the Chief's. 
 
 " Klilled ! Wisha, yarra ! av I'd left a dozen an twenty 
 to the back av that sthretched on the bog behind me, it's 
 a glad man I'd be to have it to tell ye, sorr. But barrin' 
 they wor' blown to smithereens entirely, not a livin' man 
 or horse av thim did I see dead at all, at all. But the 
 Sergeant an' the Reconnoithrin' Party will asy know the 
 place — asy — by the thundherin' big hole that's knocked 
 in the permanent way there, sizable enough to bury. ..." 
 He paused, for once at a loss. 
 
 " Korah, Dathan, and Abiram," suggested Davis, who, 
 as a Bible Baptist, had a fund of Scripture knowledge upon 
 which he occasionally drew, " with their families and their 
 paviUons and all their substance. . . ." 
 
 " Av Cora was there," said Kildare, " she was disguised 
 as a Dutchman, for sorrow an' oi I clapped on any human 
 baste that was not a square-buttocked Boer in tan-cord 
 throusers. Thank you, sorr, your Honour, an' good luck 
 to yourself an' all av us ! An' we'll dhrink your Honour's 
 health wid it." 
 
 " We will so !" agreed Davis, as the sovereign, dropped 
 into his own twice-greased palm, vanished in the recesses 
 of his black and oleaginous overalls. 
 
 •' Thankee, sir. You're a gentleman, sir !" the guard 
 acknowledged, touching Ms cap and concealing the gold 
 coin slid into his own ready hand with professional celerity. 
 
 " Begob ! an' you might have tould the Colonel some- 
 thin' that was news," commented Kildare, as the tall,
 
 220 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 active figure stepped lightly over the metals and passed 
 up the ramp, and 123 trundled on, and backed into the 
 engine-shed amidst a salvo of cheers and hand-clapping. 
 
 The Colonel whistled his pleasant little tune quite 
 through as, the Reconnoitring Party despatched to the 
 scene of the explosion, he went contentedly back to lun- 
 cheon at Nixey's. True, Ealdare had said, and as the 
 Sergeant in command regretfully testified later, said cor- 
 rectly, that neither Boer nor beast had been put out of 
 action by the flying debris. A poor reprisal had been 
 made, in the opinion of some malcontents, for the act of 
 War committed by the forces of the Republics in crossing 
 the Border, in cutting the telegraph lines, and destroying 
 the railway - bridge. But the moral result was anything 
 but trifling, in its effect upon the Boer mind. The " new 
 square gun " became a proverb of dread, inspiring a salutary 
 fear of more traps of the same kind, " set by that slim 
 duyvel, the English Commandant," and threw over the 
 innocent stretch of veld outside those trivial sand-bagged 
 defences the glamour of the Mysterious and the Unknown. 
 No solid Dutchman welcomed the idea of soaring skywards 
 in a multitude of infinitesimal fragments, in company with 
 other Free Staters or sons of the Transvaal RepubHc 
 similarly reduced. 
 
 No more boasts on the part of Brounckers, General in 
 command of those massed, menacing, united laagers on the 
 Border, seven miles from Gueldersdorp as the crow flew. 
 No more imaginative promises with reference to the taking 
 of the small, defiant hamlet before breakfast, wiping out the 
 garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march 
 refreshed with coffee and biltong, and driving the towns- 
 people before them as prisoners of War. The desperate 
 perils presented by the conjectural and largely non-existent 
 mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly in the 
 telegrams that went up to Pretoria. 
 
 " There's a lot in bluff, you know," that " slim duyvel," 
 the Conmiandant of the rooineks, said long afterwards. 
 " And we bluffed about the Mines, real and dummy, for all 
 we were worth !" 
 
 So, possibly with premonition of the telegram that was
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 221 
 
 even then clicking out its message at Pretoria, there was a 
 note of satisfaction in his whistle out of keeping with the 
 execution actually done, as Nixey's Hotel came in sight 
 with the Union Jack floating over it, denoting that all was 
 well. That flagstaff, with its changing signals, was to 
 dominate the popular pulse ere long. But in these days it 
 merely denoted Staff Quarters, and War, v/ith its grim 
 accompanying horrors, seemed a long way off. 
 
 A white-gowned European nursemaid on the opposite 
 street-comer waved and shrieked to her deserting elder 
 charges, and the Chief's quick eye noted that the small, 
 sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in cool 
 sailor -suits of blue-and- white linen twill, were scampering 
 in his direction. He knew his fascination for children, and 
 instinctively slackened his stride as they came up, abreast 
 now, and shyly hand in hand : 
 
 " Mister Colonel ... 1" The speaker touched the ex- 
 pansive brim of a straw sailor hat with a fine assumption 
 of adult coolness. 
 
 " Quite right, and who are you ?" 
 
 The small boy hesitated, plainly at a nonplus. The 
 roiind-eyed girl tugged at the boy's sailor jumper, whisper- 
 ing : 
 
 " I saided he wouldn't know you !" 
 
 " I fought he would. Because Mummy said he wemem- 
 bered our names ve uvver night at ve Hotel . . . when he 
 promised . . . about ve animals from Wodesia ... all made 
 of mud, an' feavers, and bits of fur ..." 
 
 Memory gave up the missing names, helped by those 
 boyish replicas of the candid clear grey eyes of the Mayor's 
 wife, shining under the drooping plume of fair hair. 
 
 " Mummy was quite right, Ham my, and Berta was 
 wrong, because I remember your names quite well, you see. 
 And the birds and beasts and insects are in a box at my 
 quarters. Come and get them." 
 
 " If Anne doesn't kick up a wow ?" hesitated Hammy, 
 his small brown hand already in the larger one. 
 
 " We'll arrange it with Anne." He waited for the arrival 
 of the white-canopied perambulator and its fluttering- 
 ribboned guardian to say, with a tone and smile that won 
 her instant suffrages : " I'm going to borrow these children
 
 222 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 for a minute or so. Will you come into the shade and rest ? 
 I promise not to keep you long." 
 
 Beauvayse and Lady Hannah's Captain Bingo, relieved 
 from lookout duty, and descending in quest of food from 
 ^he Chief's particular e3rrie on the roof of Nixey's Hotel, 
 hoard shrieks of infant laughter coming from the coffee- 
 room. Knives, forks, and glasses had been ruthlessly 
 swept from the upper end of one of the tables laid for the 
 Staff luncheon, and across the fair expanse of linen, pounded 
 into whiteness and occasional holes by the vigorous thumpers 
 of the Kaffir laundry- women, meandered a marvellous pro- 
 cession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion 
 and giraffe, ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful 
 hands of Matabele toy-makers. Tarantula, with wicked 
 bright eyes of shining berries, brought up the rear, with the 
 bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown, white- 
 striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its 
 back, a tsetse of appallingly gigantic size. . . . 
 
 " Oh, fank you, Mster Colonel," Hammy was saying, 
 with shining eyes of rapture fixed upon the glorious ones ; 
 " and is they weally my own, my vewy own, for good ?" 
 
 " Yours and Berta's, really and for good." 
 
 " And won't you " — Hammy's magnificent effort at 
 disinterestedness brought the tears into his eyes — " won't 
 you want vem to play wif, ever yourself ?" 
 
 The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula 
 and tsetse, into the wooden box, and lifted the children 
 from their chairs, as Captain Bingo and Beauvayse, 
 following the D.A.A.G., came in, brimming with various 
 versions of what had happened out there on the veld. . . . 
 
 " I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run 
 along with Berta now. You'll find your nurse in the hall." 
 
 Berta put up her face confidently to be kissed. Hammy, 
 in manly fashion, offered a hand — the left — the right arm 
 being occupied with the box of toys. As Berta's little legs 
 scampered through the door, he delayed to ask : 
 
 " What are your playfings. Mister Colonel 1" 
 
 " Live men and big guns, just now, Hammy ; and 
 chances and issues, and results and risks." 
 
 The plume of fair hair fell back, clearing the candid grey 
 eyes as Hammy lifted up hia face, confidently lisping :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 223 
 
 " I don't quite fink I know what wesulfcs and wisks are, 
 but I'd like to play wif the live men an' the big gun? too 
 sometimes ... if you didn't want vem always ?" 
 
 " We'll see about it, Hammy, when you're grown up." 
 " Good-bye, Mister Colonel. And I would lend you my 
 beasts an' fings, because I know you wouldn't bweak them ?" 
 " See that Berta has her share in them meanwhile. Off 
 with you, now !" 
 
 Later, in the seclusion of the connubial bedchamber, 
 said Captain Bingo, dressing for dinner, the last time for 
 many months, as it was to prove : 
 
 " What do you suppose was the Chief's next move, after 
 the engine and tender got in, and the crowd hoorayed him 
 back from the Railway Works ? No use your guessin', 
 though. Even a woman wouldn't have expected to find 
 him playin' Noah's Ark in the coffee-room with the Mayor's 
 two kids !" 
 
 " I like that !" said Lady Hannah meditatively, arranging 
 the Pompadour transformation, not apparently the worse 
 for the candle-accident of the previous night. 
 
 " Because you're a woman and sentimental," said her 
 spouse, wrestling with a cuff-link. 
 
 " No ; because I am a woman whose instinct tells her 
 that nothing will seem too big for a man for whom nothing 
 is too small. And — what an incident for a paragraph !" 
 
 He grinned : " With headin's in thunderin' big capitals. 
 . . . ' The Soldier Hero Sports With A Babbling Babe. . . . 
 The Defender Of British Prestige At Gueldersdorp Puts In 
 Half an Hour At Cat's-Cradle Ere The Armoured Train 
 Toddles Out With The B.S.A.P. To Give Beans To The 
 Blooming Boer !' " 
 
 She darted at him, caught him by the lapels . . . made 
 him look at her. 
 
 " It's true ■? You really mean it ? The ball begins ?" 
 " Upon the honour of a henpecked husband — before 
 daybreak to-morrow, you'll bear the music." 
 She sparkled with delight. 
 
 " Oh, poor, unlucky, humdrum women at home in 
 England, walking wath the shooters, or lolling in hammocks 
 under trees, and trying to flirt with fat City financiers or 
 vapid young attaches of Legation ! I shall take the Irish
 
 224 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 mare, and borrow an orderly, and ride out to see a Real 
 Action !" 
 
 His round pink face grew long. " The devil you will !" 
 
 " The devil I won't, you mean. Why, for what else 
 under the sky did I come out here but the glorious chance of 
 War ?" Her impatient foot tapped the floor. He recog- 
 nised the warning of domestic battle, glowered, and gave in. 
 
 " Well, if you get chipped, don't blame me. There's 
 about as much cover on a baccarat-table as you'll find on 
 that small-bush veld." 
 
 " All the better for seeing things, my dear !" She gave 
 him a radiant glance over her shoulder as she snapped her 
 diamond necklace. 
 
 " You'll see things you won't enjoy. Mind that. 
 Unless the whole affair ends in sheer fizzle." 
 
 " I'll pray that it mayn't !" 
 
 " I'd pray to have you much more Uke the ordinary 
 woman who funks raw-head-and-bloody -bones if I thought 
 it would be any good !" 
 
 " My poor old boy, it's thirty years too late. You ought 
 to have begun while I was crying in the cradle. And — I 
 was under the impression that you married me because you 
 found me different from the ruck. And besides — think of 
 my paper !" 
 
 " Damn the rag ! I think of my wife !" 
 
 She swept him a curtsy : 
 
 " Cela va sans dire !" 
 
 " And how a woman of your birth and breedin' can 
 dream of nothin' else but doin' somethin' that'll make you 
 notorious — set the smart crowd gabblin' and gapin' and 
 crushin' to stare — ^is more than I can understand !" 
 
 She flashed round upon him. " You have the wrong 
 word ! Notoriety — any social divorcee or big-hatted music- 
 hall high-kicker can have that — if only they've kicked high 
 enough ! Popularity is what I'd have if I could — and only 
 the People can give it — ^as Brutus and Cromwell and 
 Napoleon knew !" 
 
 He admitted that those old Roman Johnnies who Jawed 
 in the Forum knew what they were about, but added that 
 the Puritan chap with the wart on his nose was a thundering 
 old humbug, ending triumphantly : " And we whacked old
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 225 
 
 Bony at Waterloo ! And — suppose you stop a Boer bullet 
 and get knocked out — where do I come in ?" 
 
 She jangled out her shrillest laugh. " Behind the coffin 
 as Chief Mourner, I suppose. And you'll tack on the ortho- 
 dox black sleeve-band, and look out for Number Two, 
 And choose the ordinary kind, who funks raw-head and all 
 the rest of it, for the next venture. But I prophesy you'll 
 be bored. It's settled about Sheila and the orderly ?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " Righto ! but there'll be two troopers, not one. And 
 you'll be under the Corporal's orders about range, and dis- 
 tance, and keepin' out of the hands of — the other side. 
 You don't absolutely yearn to be killed or taken prisoner, I 
 suppose ?" 
 
 Her heart beat high at the latter-named eventuality. 
 She saw London rushing to read of the thrilling seizure and 
 the yet more thrilling escape of the Lady War Correspon- 
 dent attached to H.I.M. forces on the Frontier : 
 
 Who got clean away, mind jou, with complete informa- 
 tion of the strategic plans of the General in command of 
 the enemy's laagers, sewn inside her corsets or hidden in 
 her shoes ! 
 
 Bingo Uttle dreamed of the definite plan seething under 
 his httle wife's transformation coifiFure. It had matured 
 since her meeting on the railway-journey from Cape Town 
 with an interesting personality. A big, brown-bearded 
 Johannesburger, wdth hght queer eyes, who had been 
 reticent at first, but more interesting after his confidence 
 had been gained. 
 
 Van Busch he had named himself. Of the British South 
 African War Intelligence Bureau. That man knew how 
 to value women. And he had proved them at what he 
 called the risky game. 
 
 " With nerve and josh Uke yours, and plenty of money 
 for palm-oil . . ." Van Busch had said, and winked, signifying 
 that there were no lengths to which a woman of Lady 
 Hannah Wrynche's capabilities might not go. And ho had 
 clipped into her hand a card scrawled with an address 
 where he might be got at in case . . . 
 
 The pencilled oblong of soiled pasteboard was yet in a 
 secret compartment of her handbag. By letter addressed 
 
 15
 
 226 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 care of W. Bough, Transport Agent and Stock-dealer. 
 Van Busch was to be communicated with at a farmstead 
 some thirty miles north. 
 
 The spice of adventure her palate craved could be had 
 by corresponding with Van Busch through the man Bough. 
 After that Well ! She had her plan . . . 
 
 She tied her husband's white tie, took him by the ears, 
 kissed him warmly on each side of his large pink face, 
 glowing with blushes evoked by her unwonted display of 
 affection, and led him away to dinner, her mental vision 
 seeing prophetic broadsheets papering the kerbs of Picca- 
 dilly, the ears of her imagination making celestial melody 
 of those raucous yells : 
 
 "Speshul Edition! Hextry Speshul Edition! 'Ere 
 y'are, sir ; on'y a 'a'penny. Speshul !" 
 
 XXVII 
 
 For nearly two months, from dawn until dark, Guelders- 
 dorp had squatted on her low-topped hill in a screaming 
 blizzard of shrapnel and Mauser bullets. Never a town of 
 imposing size or stately architecture, see her now a battered 
 hamlet of gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and wrecked 
 chimneys ; staring defiance through glassless windows like 
 the blind eyeholes in the mouldered House that once has 
 held the living thought of Man. From dawn until dark 
 the ancient seven-pounders of her batteries had banged and 
 grumbled, her Maxims had rattled defiance from Kopje Fort, 
 and the Nordenfelt released its showers of effective, death- 
 dealing little projectiles. Scant news from outside trickled 
 into the town. Grumer, with his Brigade, was guarding 
 the Drifts, and when the Relief might be expected w&s now 
 a moss-grown topic of general conversation in Gueldcrsdorp. 
 And within her girdle of trenches, stem, grimy, haggard 
 men lived, cheek to the heated rifle- breech, and ate, and 
 snatched brief spells of sleep, booted and bandoliered, 
 and with the loaded weapon ready for gripping. Since 
 the attack on Maxim Kopje had choked the Hospital with 
 wounded men and dotted the Cemetery with little white 
 crosses, nothing of much note had occurred. The armoured
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 227 
 
 train had donn good service, and the Baraland Rifle 
 Volunteers had carried out their surprise against the 
 enemy's western camp one fine dark night, helped by a 
 squadron of the Irregulars, with eleven wounded, and the 
 loss of six out of fifty fighting-men. 
 
 The Convent of the Holy Way stood empty and deserted 
 in its shrapnel-littered garden-enclosure. 
 
 From east, west, north, and soTith the deadly iron 
 messengers had come, making sore havoc of this poor house 
 of Christ. " When the walls fall about our ears. Colonel," 
 the Mother-Superior had declared, " it will be time to 
 leave them." They were lacework now, with a confusion 
 of bare rafters overhead, over which streamed, as if in 
 mockery, the Red-Cross Flag. Grim figures, like geo- 
 metrical problems gone mad, were vxede by water and 
 gas pipes torn from their bedding, and twisted as if by the 
 hands of giants in cruel play. The little iron bedsteads 
 of the Sisters, and the holy symbols over them, were the 
 only articles missing from the cells, revealed in section by 
 the huge gaps in the masonry. 
 
 The Tabernacle of the chapel altar, void of the Un- 
 speakable Mystery it had housed, fluttered its rearward 
 curtains through the wreckage of the east wall and the 
 cheap little stained-glass window, where the Shepherds 
 and the Magi had bowed before the Virgin Mother and the 
 Divine Child. Within sight of their ruined home, the 
 Sisterhood had found refuge. An underground dwelling 
 had been dug for them in the garden before an abandoned 
 soft-brick-and-corrugated-iron bouse, formerly inhabited 
 by one of the head officials of the railway, a personage of 
 Dutch extraction and Boer sympathies, at present seques- 
 tered beneath the yellow flag of the town gaol for their 
 too incautious manifestation ; while his wife and young 
 family were inhabitants of the Women's Laager. And 
 from their subterranean burrow the Sisters carried on their 
 work of mercy as cheerfully as though their Order bad 
 been originally one of Troglodytes, nursing the sick and 
 wounded, cooking and washing for the convalescents, 
 comforting the bereaved, and tending the many orphans 
 of the sioge. 
 
 South lay the laager of the Refugees. To the westward 
 
 16—2
 
 228 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 within the ring of trenches and about a mile and a half from 
 the town, was the Women's Laager, visited not seldom 
 by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of the Red-Cross Flag. 
 Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalked 
 among the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming 
 their human toll. Women languished and little children 
 pined and withered, dying for lack of exercise and fresh 
 air, with the free veld spreading away on all sides to the 
 horizon, and the burning blue South African sky overhead. 
 Famine had not yet appeared among the Europeans, though 
 grisly black spectres in Kaffir blankets haunted the refuse- 
 heaps, and fought with gaunt dogs for picked bones and 
 empty meat- tins, and were found dead not unseldom, 
 after full meals of strange and dreadful things. Fresh 
 meat was still to be had, though the cattle and sheep of 
 the Barala had been thinned by raids on the part of the 
 enemy, and poor grazing. Shell and rifle-fire not infre- 
 quently spared the butcher trouble, so that your joints 
 were sometimes weirdly shaped. But they were joints, 
 and there was plenty of the preserved article in Kriel's 
 Warehouse and at the Army Service Stores. Tea and 
 coffee were becoming rare and precious, the sparkling 
 draught of lager was to be had only in remembrance ; 
 the aromatic beer was all drunk up, and the stone-ginger 
 was three shillings a bottle. Whisky was to be had at 
 the price of liquid gold, brandy was treasured above rubies, 
 and served out sparingly by the Hand of Authority, as 
 medicine in urgent cases. 
 
 You could get vegetables from the Chinaman, who 
 continued to cultivate onions, cabbages, potatoes, and 
 melons in the market-gardens about the town, imperturb- 
 able under shot and shell, his large straw hat affording 
 an admirable target from the Boer sniper's point of view, 
 as metaphorically he gathered his fat harvest of dollars 
 from the soil. What you could not get for any amount 
 of dollars was peace and rest, clean air, and space to stretch 
 your cramped-up limbs in, until Sunday came, bringing the 
 Truce of God for Englishman and Transvaaler. 
 
 The Hospital, like each of the smaller hospitals that had 
 sprung from the parent stalk, was crowded. The operating 
 theatre had been turned into a ward where the lane between
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 229 
 
 the beds just gave room for a surgeon or a nurse to pass, 
 and hourly the cry went up : " Room, more room for the 
 wounded and the sick !" And among these Saxham 
 worked, night and day, like a man upheld by forces super- 
 human. 
 
 " By-and-by," he would say impatiently, when they 
 urged him to take rest, and would bend his black brows, 
 and hunch those great shoulders of his to the work again. 
 
 " Ye have a demon, man," said Taggart, Major of the 
 R.A.M.C, himself a haggard-eyed but tireless labourer 
 in the red fields of pain. " At three o' the smalls ye got 
 to your bed, and at six ye made the rounds, at seven ye 
 were dealing with a select batch o' shell-fire an' rifle-shot 
 casualties — our friends outside being a gey sicht better 
 marksmen when refreshed by a guid nicht's sleep ; at 
 eight ye had had your bit o' breakfast, and got doon your 
 gun an' gane oot for an hour o' calm, invigorating sniping 
 on the veld before returning punctually at ten o' the clock 
 to attack the business o' the day, wi' a bag o' twa Boers 
 to your creedit." 
 
 " I only got one. Major. The other chap hobbled down 
 bandaged, upon crutches, to-day, and had a pot-shot at 
 me as I lay doggo behind my particular stone. I put up 
 my hat on a stick, and — see !" Saxham gravely exhibited 
 a felt Service smasher with a clean hole through it, an 
 inch above the lining-edge. " He's a snowy-locked, hoary- 
 bearded. Father Noah-hatted patriarch of seventy at least, 
 and very proud of his shooting, and I've let him think he 
 got me this time, just to make him happy for one night. 
 To-morrow he is to make the painful discovery that 1 am 
 still in the flesh." 
 
 " Aweel, aweel ! But I would point out to ye that 
 Fortune is a fickle, tricksy jade, and the luck o' the game 
 might fall to your patriarch in the antediluvian headgear 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Then the luck of the game, thought the hearer, deep in 
 that wounded heart of his, would not only be with the 
 patriarch. And the great puzzle. Life, would be solved for 
 good. 
 
 Taggart had said he, Saxham, had a demon. He could 
 have answered that only by hard, unceasing, imreniitting
 
 230 THE DOP DOOl'OR 
 
 work, or, when no more work was there to do, by the fierce 
 excitement of those grilling hours spent lying behind the 
 stone, was the demon to be kept out. Of all things he 
 dreaded inactivity, and though he would drop upon his cot 
 in the tiny bedroom that had been a Hospital ward-pantry, 
 and sleep the heavy sleep of weariness ti.e moment his head 
 touched the pillow, yet he would start awake after an hour 
 or two, parched with that savage, unquenched thirst, and 
 d riak great draughts of the brackish well- water, boiled for 
 precaution's sake, and tramp the confined space until the 
 grip of desire grew slack. But he had never once yielded 
 since the night when a man with the eye and voice of a 
 leader among men had come to the house in Harris Street 
 and taken him by the hand. 
 
 Do you say impossible, that the man in whom the habit 
 of vice had formed should be able to cast off his degrading 
 weakness, like a shameful garment, by sheer force of will, 
 and be sane and strong and masterful again ? I say, 
 possible with this man. You see him plucked from the 
 slough by the strong hand of manly fellowship, and nerved 
 and strengthened, if only for a littlo while, to play the 
 game for the sake of that other's belief in him. Such 
 influence have such men among their fellows for good or 
 for ill. 
 
 You can see the Dop Doctor upon this brilliant 
 November morning mounting a charger lent him by his 
 friend, a handsome Waler full of mettle and spirit — oats not 
 being yet required for the support of humans — and calling 
 au revoir to Taggart as he rides away from the Hospital 
 gates followed by an orderly of the R.A.M.C. in a spider, 
 pulled by a \viry, shabby little Boer mare. 
 
 " The man rides like a fox- hunter," commented Taggart. 
 noticing the ease of the seat, the light handling of the rein, 
 the way in which the fidgety, spirited beast Saxham rode 
 answered to the gentling hand and the guiding pressure of 
 the rider's knee, as a sharp storm of rifle-fire swept from 
 the enemy's northern trenches, and the Mauser bullets 
 spurted sand between the v/heels of the spider and under 
 the horses' bellies. 
 
 Saxham spurred ahead, the spider following. The 
 bullet-pierced, grey felt smasher hat, a manly and not
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 231 
 
 onpicturesque headgear, sat on the man's close- cropped 
 head with a soldierly air becoming to the square, opaque- 
 skinned face that had power and strength and virility in 
 every line of it. The blue eyes, under their black bar of 
 meeting eyebrows, were clear now, and the short aquiline 
 nose, rough-hewn but not coarse, and the grimly-tender 
 mouth were no longer thickened and swollen and red- 
 dened by intemperance. The figure, perfect in its manli- 
 ness, if marred by the too heavy muscular development of 
 the throat and the slightly bowed shoulders, looked well 
 in the jacket of Service khaki, the Bedford cords and puttees 
 M\d spurred brown boots that had replaced the worn white 
 drills, the blue shirt and shabby black kamarband and 
 canvas shoes. Looking at Saxham, even with knowledge 
 of his past, you could not have associated a personality 
 so striking and distinguished, an individuality so original 
 and so strong, with the idea of the tipsy wastrel, wallow- 
 ing like a hog in self-chosen degradation. 
 
 The Mother-Superior, coming up the ladder leading out 
 of her underground abode as the horseman and the attendant 
 spider drew near, thought of Bartolomeo Colleoni, as you 
 see him, last of the great Condottieri, in the bronze by great 
 Verrochio at Venice to-day. In armour, complete in the 
 embossed morion, one with the great Flemish war-horse, 
 he sat to the sculptor, the baton of Captain-General, given 
 him by the Doge of Venice, in the powerful hand that only 
 a little while before aided his picked men of the infantry 
 to pack and harden snow about the granite boulders of 
 the mountains in the Val Seriana, and sent the giant snow- 
 balls thundering down, crushing bloody lanes through the 
 ranks of the Venetian cavalry massed in the narrow defile 
 below, and striking chill terror to the hearts of Doge and 
 Prince and Senate. 
 
 Only the baton was a well-worn staghom- handled crop, 
 Squire Saxham's gift, together with a hunter, to his boy 
 Owen, at seventeen. It was one of the few relics of home 
 that had stayed by Saxham during his wanderings. 
 
 He reined up now, saluting the Mother-Superior with 
 marked respect. 
 
 " Good-morning, ma'am. All well with you and yours 1" 
 
 She answered with unusual hesttation :
 
 232 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " All the Sisters are well, thank you. But — if you could 
 spare me a minute, Dr. Saxham, there is a question I should 
 like to ask." 
 
 " As many minutes as you wish, ma'am. It is not your 
 day for the Hospital, I think ?" 
 
 " Ah, no !" she said, with the velvety South of Ireland 
 vowel-inflection. " We keep Wednesday for the Women's 
 Laager, always. Many of them are so miserable, poor 
 souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who are 
 in the trenches, or who have been killed, and then there are 
 the children to be cared for and washed. Not only the 
 siege orphans, but so many who have sick or neglectful 
 mothers. It takes us the whole day once we get there." 
 
 Saxham dismounted as she stooped to seize the end of 
 a blue cotton-covered washing-basket impelled from below 
 by an ascending Sister. The spider pulled up under 
 cover of the brick-and-corrugated-iron house vacated by 
 the railway-official, as another short storm of riflery cracked 
 and rattled among the eastern foothills, and a whistling 
 hurry of the sharp- nosed little messengers of death passed 
 through Gueldersdorp. Some of them hit and flattened 
 on the gable of the railway-official's house, one went 
 through the leathern splashboard of the spider. Saxham 
 moved instinctively to place himself between the closely- 
 standing group of nuns and possible danger. 
 
 " No, no !" they cried, as one woman, their placid, cheer- 
 ful tones taking a shade of anxiety. " You must not do 
 that !" 
 
 " I know you are all well-seasoned," he said, looking at 
 them with the smile that made his stern face changed and 
 gentle. 
 
 " I am not so sure. The bullets come in the usual way 
 of things. We take our chance of them," the Mother- 
 Superior answered. But she pressed her lips together and 
 grew pale as a faint cry came up from the subterranean 
 dwelling, roofed with sheets of corrugated iron laid upon 
 steel rails, and made bombproof with bags of earth. And 
 Saxham, looking at the fine face, with its worn lines of 
 fatigue and over-exertion, and noting the deep shadowy 
 caves that housed the great luminous grey eyes, said : 
 
 " I think we must have you take some rest, or I shall be
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 233 
 
 having my best helper on my hands as a patient. And 
 that won't do, you laiow." 
 
 " No, it would not do," she said, looking fully and 
 seriously at him. " And therefore I think our Lord will 
 not permit it. But if He should, be sure another will rise 
 up to fill my place." 
 
 " Whoever your successor might be," said Saxham 
 sincerely, " she would not fulfil my ideal of an absolutely 
 efficient nurse, as you do. So from the personal, if not the 
 altruistic point of view, let me beg you to be careful." 
 
 " I take all reasonable care," she told him. " It is true, 
 the work has been heavy this week ; but to-morrow is 
 Sunday, and we shall rest all day and sleep at the Convent. 
 Indeed, some of us have taken it in turn to be on guard 
 there every night, or nothing would be left us." 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 He knew how prowlers and night- thieves made harvest 
 in the darkness among the deserted dwelhngs since Police 
 and Town Guardsmen had been requisitioned to man the 
 trenches. She went on : 
 
 " The upper story of the house is sheer wreck, as you may 
 see, but the ground-floor Is quite habitable. So much so 
 that if the shells did not strike the poor dear place so often, 
 I should suggest your turning it into a Convalescent Home." 
 
 " We may have to try the plan yet," said Saxham. 
 " The Railway Institute is frightfully overcrowded." 
 
 " And," she told him, " a shell struck there yesterday 
 evening, and burst in the larger ward." 
 
 " I had not heard of it," he said. " Was anybody hurt ?" 
 
 " No one, thank God ! But the fire was difficult to put 
 out, until one of the Sisters thought of sand." 
 
 " It was an incendiary shell ?" Disgust and contempt 
 swelled his deep-cut nostrils and flamed from his vivid 
 blue eyes. " And yet these Kaiser's gunners, in their 
 blue-and-white Death or Glory imiforms, can hardly pretend 
 ignorance of the Geneva Convention. But — your question ? ' ' 
 
 " It is — Children !" She beckoned to the two mms, 
 who stood at a little distance apart holding the washing- 
 basket between them. " I will ask you to go on slowly 
 before me with the basket. I wiD overtake you when I 
 have spoken to Dr. Saxham."
 
 234 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Surely, Reverend Mother." One tall, pale, and thin, 
 the other round and rosy, they were alike in the placid, 
 cheerful serenity of their good eyes and readily smiling 
 lips. " And won't we be after taking the bundle V 
 
 " No, no ! It is heavy, and I am as strong as botli of 
 you together." 
 
 " Very well, Reverend Mother." 
 
 They were obediently moving on. 
 
 " A moment." Saxham stopped them. *' If you two 
 ladies have no objection to a little crowding, the spider will 
 hold both of you as well as the bundle and the basket of 
 washing. At least, it looks like a basket of washing." 
 
 All three laughed as they accepted his offer, assuring him 
 that his suspicions were correct. For neither Kafiir 
 laundrywoman or Hindu dhobi would go down any more to 
 the washing troughs by the river, for fear of crossing that 
 Stygian flood of blackness rivalling their own, supposing, 
 as Beauvayse once suggested, that there is a third-class 
 ferry for niggers and persons of colour ? And from the 
 waterworks on the Eastern side of the town the supply 
 had been cut off by the enemy, so that the taps of Guelders- 
 uorp had ceased to yield. 
 
 Old wells and springs had been reopened, cleaned, and 
 brought into use for drinking purposes, so that of a water- 
 famine there could bo no fear. But the element became 
 expensive when retailed by the tin Ducketful, a bath a 
 rare luxury when the contents of the said bucket might 
 be spilled or thrown away in the course of the gymnastics 
 wherewith the sable or coffee-brown bearer sought to evade 
 the travelUng unexploded shell or the fan-shaped charge 
 of shrapnel. Therefore, the Sisters had turned laundry- 
 women. You could hear the sound of Sister Tobias's 
 smoothing-iron coming up from below, thump- thumping 
 on the blanketed board. 
 
 " And where do you think we get the water, now ?" 
 the rosy Sister, in process of being packed into the spider, 
 leaned over the wheel to ask, 
 
 " Not from the Convent ?" Saxham thought of the 
 strip of veld between there and the Hospital, even more 
 fraught with peril than the patch he had Just traversed. 
 or the distance yet to be covered between the Sisters'
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 236 
 
 bombproof and the Women's Laager, where Death, with 
 the red sickle in his fleshless hand, stalked openly from 
 dawn to nightfall. 
 
 " From the Convent, carrying it across after dark. 
 And no well there, either, that you'd get the fill of a tea- 
 spoon out of " — a •' tayspoon " it was in the rosy 
 Sister's Dublin brogue — " and yet there's water there." 
 
 " But how " Saxham began. The Mother-Superior 
 
 shook her head, and the rosy Sister was silent. 
 
 " 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 re- 
 markable and noble a figure, it seemed to Saxham, 
 as the golden sunlight could fall upon anj'where 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 bom- 
 bardment first began I thought of the waterworks, and 
 that one of my first cares, supposing I had been General 
 Broanckers " — she smiled sUghtly — " Mould 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 m 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 Mith 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 passes. If one day it does not pass without
 
 236 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the cost of life, we are prepared for that, and God's V/ill 
 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 beheve. 
 
 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 Assembly, 
 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
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 237 
 
 face in prayerful silence, not stirring save to make the 
 Sign of the Cross. And as the long white fingers fluttered 
 o.ver 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 Hell had burst the brazen gates of Terror, and 
 rushed forth to annihilate and destroy, the ninety-four 
 pound projectile passed overhead, sweeping half the cor- 
 rugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling 
 with a fiendish clatter and din, as it passed 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 corf, and knew a shock of horror in seeing it prone 
 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
 
 238 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and Sister Ruperta are getting out. All is well with them ; 
 all is well." 
 
 " But not with the washing." 
 
 Sax ham 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 
 glasses, and heard her cry of womanly distress as sb? 
 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 coii. 
 
 " 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 circumstances like the present 1 Certainly. Un- 
 doubtedly 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 
 possibiUties 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 Uke herself, rose up 
 as if from the bowels of the earth. 
 
 " I vill look. But I can see nozing," she called to some- 
 one invisible below. " It must be that you vait until my 
 eyes shall become more strong." She shaded them, 
 newly brought from semi-darkness and blinkiag in the hot, 
 white sunlight. The Mother-Superior hurried to her, saying 
 with a note of anxiety in her usually calm voice : 
 
 " Sister — Sister Cleophce ; is anything the matter ?'* 
 
 " Mon Dien I It is ze Reverend Mozer !" ejaculated
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 239 
 
 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 
 up.sot." 
 
 " My 'eavens, but a miraculous escapement !" The 
 supple hands and the expressive eyes and shoulders of 
 Sister Cleophee m;xde 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 discover}' for herself. She behave 
 like a Uttle 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 Dooteur, 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 I^Iother- 
 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 he. 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. VVlien 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 bo 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
 
 240 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Mademoiselle, to-day reaching such a height that Sisier 
 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 Httle French- 
 woman 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 repetition of the faint 
 moaning cry from below. Saxham consulted the Reverend 
 Mother with a look. She bent her head in silent assent. 
 He hitched the horse's bridle to what had been the gate- 
 post of the railway-official's front-garden, as she signed 
 to him to descend the ladder leading to the Sisters' under- 
 ground 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, sup- 
 ported by a solid frame of steel rails. Wide chinks 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 bass 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.
 
 THE DOP DOCIOR 241 
 
 Saxham'a professional approval was won by the mar- 
 vellous 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 
 classroom 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 un- 
 selfish women who had foregone sleep to patch jackets 
 and sew on missing buttons. There were haversacks of 
 coarse 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 drjdng linen, wliile 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 weari- 
 ness 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 bur- 
 nished 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 shrunlc, the pupils were distended to twice 
 their natural size. She sat upon a stool in a corner, a 
 slight girlish figure in a hoUand skirt and white cambric 
 
 16
 
 242 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 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 coarse 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 m.ore deafening crash than 
 ordinary, an irrepressible scream would break from her, 
 and her hand would snatch at an invisible garment as 
 though she plucked back its imaginary wearer from peril 
 by main force. 
 
 " She sees nobody. 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 ?" 
 
 The shrill whisper came from Sister Cleoph^e. The 
 Mother-Superior made a sign in assent. Beyond words, 
 her heart was crying — Oh, misery and joy in one mingled 
 draught to have won such love as this from Richard's child ! 
 But her face was impassive and stern, and her eyes, looking 
 over Saxham's great shoulder as he stood silently watching 
 at the bottom of the ladder stairway, imposed silence on 
 the busy, observant, tactful Sisters^ who continued their 
 labours without a break, as the sewing hand went diligently 
 to and fro, and the recurrent convulsive shudders shook 
 the girl's slight frame, and the irrepressible cry of anguisli 
 was wrung from her at each ear-splitting shellburst.. And 
 yet, with all her agony of love intensifjdng her gaze, the 
 Mother did not see as much as Saxham, who took in 
 every detail and symptom with skilled, consummate ease, 
 realizing the desperate effort that strove for self-command, 
 noting the exhaustion of suspense in the dropped lines of
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 243 
 
 the half-open, colourless mouth, the incipient mental 
 breakdown in the vacant stare of the dilated eyes, the 
 mechanical action of the stitching needle-hand, the con- 
 vulsive shudder that rippled through the slight j&gure at 
 each boom, or crash, or fusillade of rifle-fire that drifted 
 over the shrapnel-torn veld and through the battered 
 town. He threw a swift whisper over his shoulder pres- 
 ently, that only reached the ear of the Mother- Superior, 
 standing behind him, her tall shape concealed from the 
 sufferer's sight by his great form. 
 
 " How long has this been going on ?" 
 
 She whispered back : " I am told ever since the bom- 
 bardment began. Every day, and at night too, should 
 duty detain me at one or another of the Hospitals." 
 
 He added in the same low tone : 
 
 " She has a morbid terror of death under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances ?" 
 
 The Mother-Superior murmured, a hand upon the ache 
 in her bosom : 
 
 " Not of death for herself. For — another.'* 
 
 His purely scientific attitude must have already aban- 
 doned him when he knew gladness that Self was not the 
 dominant note in this dumb threnody of fear. But ho 
 wore the professional mask of the physician as he ordered : 
 
 " Let one of the Sisters speak to her." 
 
 The Mother-Superior glanced at the nun who was ironing, 
 and then at the figure on the stool. The Sister was about 
 to obey when the Boer Maxim-Nordenfelt on the southern 
 position rattled. There was a hissing rush overhead, and as 
 a series of sharp, splitting cracks told that a group of the 
 shining little copper-banded shells had burst, and that 
 their splinters were busily hunting far and wide for some- 
 body to kill, the stitching hand dropped by the girl's side. 
 A new wave of shuddering went over the desolate young 
 figure, pitiable and horrible to see. Dull drops of sweat 
 broke out upon her temples in the shadow of her red- 
 brown hair. 
 
 " How are you getting on %nth your work, dearie ?" 
 
 Sister Tobias had spoken tv> her gently. She moved her 
 head and her fixed eyes in a blind way, and the stitch- 
 ing hand resumed its mechanical task, but she gave no 
 
 l6~-2
 
 244 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 answer, except with the shudderings that shook her, aa 
 a lily is shaken in an autumn blast. 
 
 Then Saxham stepped backwards noiselessly, climbed 
 the steep ladder stairway, and stood waiting for the Mother- 
 Superior in the blazing yellow sunshine, beside the post 
 to which his horse was hitched. The Mother followed in- 
 stantly. He was making some pencil memoranda in a 
 shabby notebook, and kept his eyes upon his writing, and 
 made a mere mask of his square, pale face as he began : 
 
 " It — the case presents a very interesting development. 
 The subject has at one time or other — probably the critical 
 period of girlhood — sustained a severe physical and mental 
 shock ?" 
 
 The great grey eyes swam in sudden tears that were not 
 to be repressed, as the Mother-Superior remembered the 
 finding of that lost lamb on the veld seven years before. 
 She bowed her head in silent assent. 
 
 " You would wish candour," Saxham said, looking away 
 from her emotion. " And I should tell you that this is grave." 
 
 " I know it," her desperate eyes said more plainly than 
 her scarcely moving lips. " But so many others are 
 suffering in the same way, and there is nothing that can be 
 done for any of them." 
 
 He answered with emphasis that struck her cold. " Some 
 measures must be taken in the case, and without delay. This 
 state of things must not go on." He saw that the Mother- 
 Superior caught her breath and wrung her hands together 
 in the loose, concealing sleeves as she said, with a breath of 
 anguish : 
 
 " If she only had more self-control.'* 
 
 " She has self-control." He echoed the word im- 
 patiently. " She is using every ounce she has for all she 
 is worth. She has used it too long and too persistently." 
 
 " I will say then, if she only had more faith !" 
 
 " I know nothing of faith," Saxham said curtly ; " I 
 deal in common- sense." 
 
 She could have asked if it were commonly sensible for 
 a creature made by God, and existing but by His will, 
 to live without Him ? But she put the temptation past 
 her. No cordial flame of mutual esteem and liking ever 
 sprang up between these two, often brought together in
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 245 
 
 their mutual work of help and healing. She recognised 
 Saxham's power, she admitted his skill. But, as his 
 practised eye had diagnosed in the beloved of her heart the 
 signs of physical and mental crisis, so her clear gaze 
 deciphered in his face the story written by those unbridled 
 years of vice and dissipation, and knew him diseased iu 
 soul. She may have been fully acquainted v/ith all 
 Gueldersdorp had learned of him, going here, there, and 
 everywhere, as was her wont, in obedience to her Spouse's 
 call. But if so, she never betrayed Saxham. There was 
 no resentment, only delicate irony in the curve of her 
 finely- modelled lips as she queried : 
 
 " Am I so deficient in the quality of common-sense ?" 
 
 " Madam," he said, " you have manifested it in each of 
 the many instances where I have been brought in contact 
 with you. But in your solicitude for this young girl you 
 have shown, for the first time in my experience of you, 
 some lack of good judgment, and have inflicted, and do 
 inflict, severe suffering on her." 
 
 Her eyes flashed grey fire under her stern brows as she 
 demanded : 
 
 " How, pray ?" 
 
 " It is out of the question, I suppose," Saxham said 
 coldly, " that you should slacken in your ministrations 
 among the sick and wounded, and keep out of daily and 
 hourly danger — for her sake ?" 
 
 " Impossible," her voice answered, and her heart added 
 unheard : " Impossible, unless I should be false to my 
 Heavenly Bridegroom out of love for the child He gave." 
 
 " Then," said Saxham bluntly, " unless these recurrent 
 nerve-storms are to culminate in cerebral lesion and mental 
 and physical collapse — a result more easy to avert than to 
 deal with — take the girl about with you." 
 
 " But " the Mother uttered in irrepressible dismay. 
 
 " I — we go everywhere !" 
 
 It was most true. He had a vision, as she said it, of the 
 black-robed, white-coifed, cheerful Sisters passing in couples 
 through the shrapnel-littered streets, between houses of 
 gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and glassless windows, 
 cheerful, serene, helpful, bringing comfort to the dying, 
 and assistance to the sick, oblivious of whistling bullets
 
 246 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and bursting shells. And the most arduous duties, the 
 most repulsive tasks, the most danger- fraught errands, 
 were hers, always by right, and claim, and choice. What 
 a woman it was ! A very Judith in Israel. He knew 
 that Judith did not like him, but unconcealed admiration 
 was in his blue eyes as he looked at her. 
 
 " I know it. Let her go everywhere. It is the sole 
 chance, and — you spoke of faith just now. ... If you 
 have it for yourself and the religious women of your Order, 
 who go about doing good in confidence of the protection — 
 I do not speak in mockery — of an Almighty Hand, why 
 can't you have it for her ?" 
 
 She had never seemed so noble in his eyes as when she 
 took that implied rebuke of his, with meek bending of her 
 proud head, and candid self-condemnation in the eyes 
 that were lowered and then raised to his, and beautiful 
 humility in her speech : 
 
 " Sir, your reproach is just ; it is I who have been lacking 
 in faith. And — it shall be as you advise." 
 
 The distant bugle blared out its warning. The bell 
 tolled twice, stopped, and tolled four ; the smaller bells 
 echoed. The voices of the sentries came to their ears, 
 loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to the 
 merest spider-thread of sound : 
 
 " 'Ware big gun ! South quarter, 'ware !" 
 
 " I must go to her," the Mother-Superior said, and 
 passed him swiftly and went down the ladder. Saxham 
 followed. The white figure on the stool had not stirred, 
 apparently. Its blank eyes still stared at the wall, and 
 the mechanical hand moved, sewing at nothing, as dili- 
 gently as ever. 
 
 " Lynette !" 
 
 The fixed, blindly- staring eyes came to life. Colour 
 throbbed back into the wan ivory cheeks. The mouth lost 
 its vacant droop. She rose up from the stool with a joyful 
 cry, and, stumbling in her haste, ran into the outstretched 
 arms. As they wrapped about her, clinging to her sole 
 earthly friend and guardian as though she could never 
 let go, came the crash of the driving-charge, the yelling 
 Brocken-hunt of the passage of the huge projectile, the 
 «ar-splitting din of the shellburst. She lifted up a radiant
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 247 
 
 face of laughing defiance, and then choked and quivered 
 and burst out crying, leaning her panting young bosom 
 against the black habit, and weeping as though her whole 
 being must dissolve, Undine-like, in tears. 
 
 Ah, the lovely feminine woman who weeps and clings ! 
 She will never lose hef dominion over the sons of men. 
 The appealing glances of her beautiful wet eyes melt the 
 stoniest male hearts, the soft tendril-like wreathing of her 
 arms about the pillar of salt upon the Plain would have 
 had power to change it back into a breathing human 
 being once more, if Lot had looked back, instead of his 
 helpmeet. Her sterner sisters may feel as keenly, love as 
 tenderly, sorrow even more bitterly than she. Who will 
 believe it among the sons of dead old Adam, who first felt 
 the heaving bosom pant against his own, and saw the first 
 bright tear-showers fall — forerunners of what oceans of 
 world-sorrow to be shed hereafter, when the Angel of the 
 flaming sword drove the peccant pair from Paradise. 
 Ah, the fair, weak woman who weeps and clings ! 
 
 And Owen Saxham, watching Lynette from the ladder- 
 foot, and the Mother-Superior, clasping her and murmuring 
 soft comfort into the delicate, fragile ear under the heaped 
 waves of red-brown hair, shared the same thought. 
 
 How this trembling, vibrating, emotional creature will 
 love one day, when the man arrives to whom imperious 
 Nature shall bid her render up her all ! 
 
 In whom, prayed the unselfish mother-heart, willing to 
 be bereft of even the Heaven-sent consolation for the 
 sake of the beloved, in whom may she find not only the 
 earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying 
 Mother of Mercy ! should she, too, be doomed to stake all 
 upon a wavering, unstable, headlong liichard, what will 
 happen then ? 
 
 Looking at the pair, Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. 
 Lynette's tears had been dried quickly, like all joy-drops 
 that the eyes shed. She was talking low and earnestly, 
 pleading her cause with clinging hands and wistful looks 
 and coaxing tones that were broken sometimes by a sob 
 and sometimes by a little peal of girlish laughter. 
 
 " Mother, I am not made of sugar to be melted in the 
 sun, or Dresden china to be broken. I am strong enough
 
 248 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 to take my share of the work ; I am brave enough to beai" 
 anything — anything," she urged, " if only I may be with 
 you. But to sit cooped up here day after day, safe and 
 sheltered, sewing powder-bags or giving Katie French 
 lessons, or helping Sister Tobias, and Hstening to the 
 guns " — the blood fled from her cheeks and the great pupils 
 of her eyes dilated until they looked all black in her face 
 of whiteness — " the dreadful guns, and wondering where 
 you are when the shells are bursting " — her voice rose in 
 anguish — " I can't bear it ! Mother, do you hear ?" She 
 threw her beautiful head back entreatingly, and the pulses 
 in her white throat throbbed under Saxham's eyes, and her 
 slight hands were desperate in their clutch upon the arms 
 that held her. " I want my share of the risk, whatever it 
 is. I will have it ! It is my right. I have tried to be 
 good and patient, but I can't, I can't, I can't stand this 
 any more !" 
 
 Her voice broke upon a sob, and Saxham said from the 
 doorway that was filled by his great shoulders from post 
 to post : 
 
 " You will not have to stand it any more. The Reverend 
 Mother has reconsidered her decision. She will take you 
 to the Hospital and elsewhere from to-day." 
 
 The man's curt manner and authoritative tone brought 
 Ljmette for the first time to knowledge of his presence. 
 Her glance went to him, and joy was mingled with surprise 
 in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior. 
 
 " Really, Mother ?" 
 
 The Mother-Superior, though her own still face had 
 flushed with quick, irrepressible resentment at Saxham's 
 tone, said cheerfully : 
 
 " It is true, my child. Dr. Saxham thinks it will be best 
 for you. Dr. Saxham, this is my ward. Miss M^ldare." 
 
 Saxham made his little brusque bow. Lynette, bending 
 her lovely head, gave a grateful glance at the khaki-clad 
 figure with the great hulking shoulders, standing under the 
 patch of hot blue sky that the top of the ladder vanished in, 
 and a strange shock and thrill went through the man's 
 whole frame. His odd, gentian-coloured eyes under the 
 heavy thunder-cloud of black eyebrows lightened so sud- 
 denly in reply that the girl felt repelled and half frightened.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 249 
 
 She was conscious of a curious oppression. As for Saxham, 
 a delicate, stinging fire ran newly in his veins. Something 
 stirred in the secret depths of him, and came to life with an 
 awakening thrill exquisitely poignant and sweet. For this 
 shght, unsophisticated, Convent-bred creature, slender as a 
 Uly, reared in innocence among the blameless, was rich as 
 her frail, lovely mother had been before her in the mysteri- 
 ous allure of sex. Beautiful Lady Bridget-Mary at the 
 zenith of her stately beauty had never possessed one-tenth 
 of the seductive charm that emanated from this young 
 girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen gleaming 
 through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb 
 made the senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man 
 bom of woman, with your passions alive and keen-edged 
 in you, and your blood had not lost the lilt of the song that 
 it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since the 
 Woman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis 
 may invite, if unconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter ; 
 the shy, close-folded nymph among the sedges may awaken 
 the prijnal desire of Pan among the reeds. . . . Saxham, 
 even in the years of his degradation, had scarcely simk to 
 the level of the crook-shinned, hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. 
 But he had buOt his nest with the birds of night, and 
 slaked his thirst at impiire sources, and only now did he 
 reaUse how his mad dream of vengeance upon the Power 
 that had cast him down and wrecked his future was to 
 recoil upon himself. " I have done with Love," he had 
 said, " and with Hope, and with Life as it is known of the 
 honourable and the upright and the cleanly among men 
 for ever ! " 
 
 And now ... his thoughts were tipped with fire as he 
 drank in the suddenly-awakened, vivid, delicate beauty 
 of Lynette Mildare. Now he realised the depths of his own 
 mad folly.' Oh, to have had the right to hope again, to 
 love again, to hve again, and be grateful to David, who had 
 betrayed him, and Mildred, who had deserted him — to this 
 end ! Oh, never to have lost the honourable claim to woo 
 such loveliness as this and win such purity, and wear both 
 as a talisman upon his heart for ever ! He drew breath 
 heavily as he looked at the girl, transformed and glowing 
 under the touch she loved, shining from within like some
 
 250 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 frail, transparent alabaster lamp with the light that he 
 had helped to rekindle. And as his great chest expanded 
 with deep draughts of the subtle, intoxicating atmosphere 
 of her, and the blood hummed through his veins to that new 
 measure, the last Unk of his old fetters fell clanking to the 
 ground. And then, with a sting of intolerable remorse, 
 came the memory of his shameful five years' Odyssey 
 spent as a hog among other hogs of the human kind. It 
 had not been an overthrow. It had been a surrender of 
 all that was noble and strong in him to all in him that was 
 despicable and weak and vile. And his soul shuddered, and 
 his heart contracted in the sickening clutch of shame. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 He awakened from that lost moment of enthralment to the 
 pang and the shock of self -disco very, and to the knowledge 
 that somebody was hailing him by name from the top of 
 the ladder. 
 
 " Saxham ! Doctor ! Are you below there ?" 
 
 It was the gay, fresh voice of Beauvayse, halted with a 
 handful of Irregulars, bandoliered, carrying their rifles and 
 the day's provisions, wearing their bayonets on their hips, 
 and sitting their wiry little horses with the ease of old 
 troopers lq the lee-side of the piled-up mound of sandbags 
 that roofed the underground convent. Five men and a 
 Corporal of the Town Guard, similarly burdened and 
 accoutred — we know the pale Cockney eyes and the thin 
 face of the Corporal, whose freckles have long ago vanished 
 in a uniform gingerbread hue — had also taken momentary 
 shelter from one of the intermittent bUzzards of Mauser 
 bullets that drifted through Gueldersdorp. 
 
 One Irregular was sitting on an earth-filled packing-case, 
 swearing softly, nursing a disabled right arm, and looking 
 at the corded network of hairy, sunburned muscles that 
 were deUcately outlined in the bright red stream that 
 trickled from beneath the rolled-up shirt-sleeve of raspy 
 " greyback." 
 
 " We saw your hairy tied up outside. Doctor, and 
 * sensed ' your whereabouts, as McFadyen says. Can the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 251 
 
 ladies spare you for a moment ? Sorry to be a nuisance, 
 but one of my fellows has got winged on our way to relieve 
 the garrison at Maxim Outpost South, and though he swears 
 he is as fit as a fiddle, I don't believe he ought to come on." 
 
 " I'm all right, Sir, 'pon me Sam I am !" protested the 
 dismounted trooper. " It's a bit stiff, but the bleedin' 'II 
 take that off. I shan't shoot a tikkie the worse for it. Lay 
 anybody 'ere a caulker I don't ! " 
 
 Nobody took up the bet, fortunately for the sportsman, 
 as surgical examination proved that the bullet had gone 
 sheer through the fleshy part of the upper arm, breaking 
 the bone, just missing the artery, and leaving a clean hole. 
 
 " You'll have to go to Hospital, my man," pronounced 
 Saxham. 
 
 The face of the wounded Irregular lengthened in disgust, 
 " My crimson luck ! And I'd made up my mind to pick off 
 a brace o' them blasted Dutch wart 'ogs over that there 
 bad job of pore Bob Elhs." 
 
 He blinked violently, and gulped dovra something that 
 rose in his brown, muscular throat as the voice of a comrade, 
 middle-aged Uke himself, coffee-baked as a Colonial, and 
 also speaking with the accents of the English barrack- 
 room, took up the tale. 
 
 " Bob Elhs was 'is pal, Sir, ajod mine, too. We was 
 in the same battery of 'Orse Artillery at AH Musjid, an' 
 we went up along of Lord Kitchener to Elhartoum. An' 
 they shot Bob yesterday. Through the 'ead, clean, an' 'e 
 never spoke another word." 
 
 " Through the loop-'ole o' the parapet, it was," went on 
 the woimded man. " Bein' in the advance trench, we've 
 got on neighbourly terms Like, u-ith the Dutchiea, and 
 Tom Kelly, wot 'as just bin speakin', 'card Bob Ellis 
 promisin' this bloke as 'ow if 'e'd on'y 'urry up an' git killed 
 soon enough, Bob would 'ave 'is farm and 'is frow when 'e 
 come marchin' along to Pretoria. 'Oppin' mad the Dopper 
 was at that, an' the names 'e called pore Bob was some- 
 thing disgraceful. An' when 'e got Bob through the loop- 
 'ole, me an' Kelly made our minds up to show a bit o' fancy 
 shootin' and lay 'im out in turn. That's 'ow it was, Sir. 
 An' now " — the voice grew shaky — " they've corked me. 
 Corked me, by God ! — an' there's not a bloke among the
 
 252 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 lot of us but me can play the concertina." With his un- 
 damaged arm he swung round his haversack, bulging at 
 the top with a cheap, bone-keyed, rosewood- veneered, 
 gaudy-paper-sided instrument of German make, and himg 
 his head over it in silence. 
 
 " But what on earth has the concertina got to do with 
 it ?" Saxham was frankly puzzled, and Beauvayse, with 
 all his professional knowledge of " Tommy," was for once 
 nonplussed. 
 
 " You'd better explain to the Doctor, Corporal Leash. 
 I'm out of the running when it comes to killing men with 
 concertinas. And — ^you don't play as badly as all that, do 
 you ?" 
 
 " On the contrywise, Sir," explained the comrade Kelly, 
 " plays uncommon well, he does — all the tunes of the latest 
 music-'all and patriotic songs." 
 
 " An' them blasted Doppers are uncommon fond o' 
 music, d'ye see. Sir," explained the wounded trooper. 
 " They can't keep their ugly 'eads down behind the sand- 
 bags when they hears it. Up they pops 'em over the edge 
 and then — you take care they don't pop down no more." 
 
 The gay young laughter of Beauvayse was infectious, 
 while white teeth showed, or teeth that were not white, in 
 the tanned faces of Irregulars and Town Guardsmen. Even 
 the mourning comrades grinned, and Saxham smiled grimly 
 as Beauvayse cried : 
 
 " By George, a more original method of reprisal I never 
 came across ! But it's clear if you can't shoot vnth. that 
 drilled arm of yours you can't play the concertina. Wish I 
 could knock a tune out of the thing, Leash, for your sake — 
 enough to make a Boer put his head up. But I'm a dufifer 
 at musical instruments — always was. What do you say, 
 my man ?" 
 
 " Beg pardon, Sir." The Corporal with the Town 
 Guardsmen saluted, making the most of his five feet two 
 inches. " I can pl'y the squiffer — I mean the concertina, 
 Sir — a fair treat for a hammatore. And if I might be let 
 to tyke this man's plyce at Maxim Outpost South, Sir, I 
 could 'elp serve the gun, too, Sir — we've bin' attendin' 
 Artillery Drill in spare hours." 
 
 " I shouldn't think you had any spare hours to spajo V*
 
 THE DOP DOCTTOR 253 
 
 Beauvayse looked at the thin, tanned face with liking, and 
 the keen pale eyes met his fairly. 
 
 " We haven't, Sir, but we manage some'ow." 
 
 " But what about your own duty ?" 
 
 " I'm tykin' these men over. Sir." He indicated a solid 
 family grocer, a clerk of the County Court, a pseudo- 
 Swiss baker, and two Navy Reserve men reduced to the 
 ranks for aggressive intemperance of the methylated-spirit 
 kind, which, in the absence of other liquor, had prevailed 
 among a certain class, until the intoxicating medium was 
 confiscated by Government. 
 
 " Captain Thwaite 'as spared us from the Cemetery 
 Works to relieve Corporal Brice an' 'is little lot at Angle VII. 
 South Trenches. A telephone-message come from our 
 Colonel to say Brice's men was bad with rheumatism and 
 dysentery — but Brice is all right an' fit, Sir — and " — the 
 pale eyes pleaded out of the brickdust-coloured face — '* I'd 
 like the charnce o' gettin' nearer to the enemy, Sir — an' 
 that's the truth." 
 
 Beauvayse conceded. " Very well. I'll square things 
 with your commanding ofiicer as we go along, and explain 
 matters to the Colonel per telephone from Maxim Outpost 
 South. Come on there when you've handed over your men 
 to Brice." 
 
 The pale eyes danced. " Thank you, Sir." 
 
 " An' I'll owe you a dollar whisky-peg for the good 
 turn," muttered the perforated musician, as he handed 
 over the cherished concertina to the volunteer, " till next 
 Sunday that I see you in the stad." 
 
 '* Righto !" said Corporal Keyse, accepting the sacred 
 charge. 
 
 " Look here, though," came from Beauvayse, " there's 
 one thing you must remember — what's your name ?" 
 
 " Keyse, sir — Corporal, A Company, Gueldersdorp 
 Town Guard." 
 
 " Well, Keyse, you've heard Meisje hiccoughing niaety- 
 four-pound projectiles all the morning, haven't you ?" 
 
 " Couldn't possibly miss 'er, sir " — the pale eyes twinkled 
 as the Corporal finished — " not as long as she misses me." 
 
 " She has a talent for missing, otherwise a good many of 
 tts fellows would have heai'd the Long Call before now.
 
 254 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 But most of her delicate little attentions — with the exception 
 of one shell she sent over the Women's Laager, to show 
 the people there that she doesn't mind killin' females and 
 children if she can't get men — most of 'em are meant for 
 Maxim Outpost South ; and one of 'em may get home 
 sometimes, when the German gunner isn't thinking of his 
 sweetheart. Then, if you find yourself soarin' heavenwards 
 in a kind of scattered anatomical puzzle-map of little bits, 
 don't blame me for obligin' you, that's all." 
 
 There was a guffaw from the listeners. W. Keyse 
 saluted, cheerfully joining in. 
 
 " I shan't s'y a word, sir." 
 
 " By George, I believe you !" said Beauvayse. " What's 
 up ? Seen a ghost ?" 
 
 Saxham had swung his wallet round, producing carbolic, 
 antiseptic gauze, First Aid bandages, and other surgical 
 indispensables from its recesses, as by legerdemain, and a 
 tall, stately black figure, followed by a tall, slender white 
 figure, had risen from the bowels of the earth. The Mother- 
 Superior, taking in the situation and the need of her at 
 a glance, called a brief order down the ladder stairway, 
 and went swiftly over to Saxham, whipping a blue apron 
 out of a big pocket, tying it about her, and pulling on a 
 pair of sleeves of the same stuff as she went. Lynette 
 turned to take the basin of hot water that the arm of 
 Sister Tobias extended from below, and the jaws of 
 W. Keyse snapped together. Until he twigged the bronze- 
 red coils of hair under the broad, rough straw hat, he had 
 thought . , . Cripps ! 
 
 We know how the dancing, provoking mischievous blue 
 eyes and adorable wrist-thick golden pigtail of Greta du 
 Taine dwelt in his love-stricken remembrance. Her 
 worshipped image had got a little rubbed and dimmish of 
 late to be sure, but breathe on the colours, and you saw 
 them come out clear, and oh ! be\\dlderLngly lovely. 
 
 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 hia case Love's clairvoyant instinct had
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 255 
 
 got its nightcap on. We saw Greta depart on the train 
 bound North and branch off East for the Du Taine home- 
 stead near Johannesburg. But if she were not in Guelders- 
 dorp, why did the left breast-pocket of the now soiled and 
 heavily-patched khaki 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 
 ^ve know W. Keyse to be no cold orthographist — occasion- 
 ally 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 bis 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 mth 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, m caligraphy that began in the top left-hand 
 corner, and trickled gradually do^f^n into the right-hand 
 bottom one. Pumping the Celestial was no use. John 
 Tow sabee'd only that a fail' 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
 
 256 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 pidgin bime-bye catchee more tikkie. If walkee back no 
 paper, too muchee John catchee hellee, reaping only re- 
 proaches 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 under- 
 ground. 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 super- 
 fluous ounce of flesh had vanished, looking the personifica- 
 tion of manliness, his tanned face, still clean-shaven save 
 for the slight fair moustache, one to set any maiden dream- 
 ing 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
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 257 
 
 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 indul- 
 gently. 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 Oup 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 fanL 
 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 Vemeuil 
 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 ner 
 
 17
 
 258 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 wandering thoughts, ami 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 over- 
 head. 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 Guelders- 
 dorp 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. 
 
 " jVIias IMildare." Beauvayse was speaking in that 
 pleasant, boyish voice of his, standing close to Lynctte, 
 his tall head bending for a glimpse of the eyes of golden 
 hazel, that were shaded by the broad, rough straw hat ; 
 *' if you knew how I've waited for this. Nearly seven 
 weeks since one day in early October, when I saw you on 
 the Recreation Ground, where some brutes were annoying 
 you, and a day or so later you went by the Hospital as 
 I rode up with the Chief. But, of course, you don't re- 
 member ?" His eyes begged her to say she did. 
 
 " I remember quite well." It was the voice he had 
 imagined for her — low, and round, and clear, udth just an 
 undernote of piaintiveness matching the wistful appeal of 
 her eyes. At the first sound of it a shudder of exquisite 
 delight went tlirough him, as though she had touched 
 him with her slender white, bare hand on the naked breast. 
 
 " Thank you for not quite forgetting- You don't know 
 what it means to me, being kept in mind by you." 
 
 " I do not know that I kept you in mind." There was 
 a touch of girlish dignity in her utterance. " I only said 
 that I remembered quite well." 
 
 He bent his head nearer, and lowered his pleasant voice 
 to a coaxing, confidential tone. 
 
 " You'll think me a presumptuous kind of fellow for 
 talking like this, won't you. Miss Mildare ? But the 
 circumstances are exceptional, aren't they ? We're shut
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 259 
 
 up away from the big world outside in a little world of our 
 own, and — such chances fall to every man and most of 
 the women here : a shrapnel bullet or a shell-splinter 
 might stop me before another hour goes by, from ever 
 saying — what I've felt for weeks on end had got to be said — 
 what I'd risk a dozen lives, if I had 'em, to get the oppor- 
 tunity of saying to you." His hot eagerness frightened 
 her. Her downcast eyelids quivered, and her flushed 
 maiden-face shrank from him. 
 
 " Oh, don't be angry ! Don't move away !" Beauvayse 
 entreated ; for Lynette's anxious glance had gone in search 
 of the Mother-Superior, with whom Saxham was now 
 discussing the nuns' idea of utiHsing the Convent as a 
 Convalescent Hospital. In another instant she would 
 have taken refuge by her side. " If you knew how I have 
 thought of you and dreamed of you since I saw you ! If 
 you could only understand how I shall think of you now ! 
 If you could only realise how awfully, utterly strange it 
 is to feel as I am feeling !" His voice was a tremulous, 
 fervent whisper. His eyes gleamed Uke emeralds in the 
 shadow of the wide-brimmed felt hat. " And if I die 
 to-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and long 
 for you, and worship you wherever I am !" 
 
 " Oh, why do you talk to me like this 1" 
 
 Lynette's whisper was as tremulous as Beauvayse's own. 
 Her eyes lifted to the glowing, ardent face for one shy 
 instant, and found it good to look upon. Men, young and 
 not undesirable, had tried to make love to her before, 
 at dances and parties and picnics to which she had been 
 chaperoned by the Mayor's wife. But the first hot glance, 
 the first word that carried the vibration of a passionate 
 meaning, had wakened the old terror in her, and bidden 
 her escape. The nymph had always taken flight at the 
 first step upon the bank, the first rustle of the sedges. 
 She had never lingered to feel the air stirred by another 
 burning breath. She had never asked any one of those 
 other men why he talked like that. Beauvayse went on : 
 
 " Perhaps I even seem a Uttle mad to you — fellows 
 have told me lately that I went on as if I had a tile off. 
 Perhaps I'm what the Scotch call ' fey.' I've got Highland 
 blood in me, anyhow. And you have set it on fire, I think 
 
 17—2
 
 260 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 — started it boiling and racing and leaping in my veins 
 as no woman ever did before. You slender white witch ! 
 you fay of mist and moonlight, you've woven a spell, and 
 tangled my soul in it, and nothing in Life or in Death 
 will ever loose me again." His tone changed, became in- 
 finitely caressing. " How sweet and dear you are to be 
 so patient with me, while I'm sending the Conventionalities 
 to the rightabout and terrifying the Proprieties. Forgive 
 me, Miss Mildare." 
 
 The pleading in his face was exquisite. She felt as a 
 bee might feel drowning in honey, as she wreathed her 
 white fingers together upon the silver buckle of the brown 
 leather belt she wore, and said confusedly : 
 
 " I ... I beUeve I ought to be very angry with you." 
 
 His whisper touched her ear like a Mss, and set her 
 trembling. 
 
 " But you're not ?" 
 
 « T 5» 
 
 She caught her breath as he came nearer. There was 
 a fragrance from him — a perfume of youth and health and 
 vitality — that was powerful, heady, intoxicating as the 
 first warm, flower-scented wind of Spring, blowing down 
 a mountain-kloof from the high ranges. Her white- 
 rose cheeks took sudden warmth of hue, and her pale nostrils 
 quivered. A faint, mysterious smile dawned upon her 
 lips. Something of the old terror was upon her still, and 
 yet — it was delicious to be afraid of him ! 
 
 " Say that you aren't angry with me for being so thun- 
 deringly presumptuous. Please be kind to me and say it." 
 
 Her lips began to utter disjointed phrases. " What can 
 it matter really ? . . . Oh, very well, then ... if my saying 
 so is of such . . . importance. ..." 
 
 " More important than anything in the world !" he 
 declared. 
 
 " Very well, then, I am not angry — not furiously so, at 
 least." The bud of a smile repressed pouted her lips. 
 
 " And," he begged, " you'll let what I've said to you be 
 our secret ? Promise." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 " You sweetest, kindest, loveliest " 
 
 " Please don't," she entreated.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 261 
 
 " And I may know your Christian name ?" he persisted. 
 " I've thought of everything in the worl'd, and nothing's 
 good enough to fit you." 
 
 " Oh, how silly !" Her eyes gleamed with laughter. 
 " It is Lynette." 
 
 He caught at it with rapture. " Perfect ! The last 
 touch. . . . The scent of the rose, or say the dewdrop on it. 
 By George, I'm in earnest !" 
 
 He had spoken incautiously loud. A grating voice 
 addressing him pulled his head round. 
 
 " Lord Beauvayse ..." 
 
 " Did you speak to me, Doctor ? As I was saying, Miss 
 Mildare," he went on, continuing the blameless conversa- 
 tion, " dust-storms and flies are the twin curses of South 
 Africa." 
 
 The harsh voice spoke to him again. He looked round, 
 and met Saxham's eyes, hard and cold as blue stones. The 
 Doctor said grimly : 
 
 " You may not be aware that your men are drawing 
 fire." 
 
 It was undeniable fact. The buUets had begun to hit 
 the ground under the horses' bellies, spirting httle columns 
 of dust and flattening against the stones. Coffee-drinking 
 was over in the enemy's trenches, and the business of the 
 day had begun again. Beauvayse bade the ladies good- 
 morning, and swung himself into the saddle. 
 
 " Au re voir. Miss Mildare. Please get under cover at 
 once." The proprietorship iu the tone stung Saxham to 
 wincing. " Good-morning, ma'am," he cried to the Mother- 
 Superior, " we know you ignore bullets. So long. Doctor. 
 Hope I shan't count one in your day's casualty-bag. 
 Ready, boys ?'* 
 
 The chatting troopers sprang to alert attention. 
 W. Keyse, pensively boring the sandy earth with the 
 pneumatic auger of imaginafcion, in search of the loved 
 one beheved to inhabit the Convent bomb-proof, was re- 
 called to the surface by the curtly-uttered command, and 
 knew the thrill of hero-worship as Beauvayse threw out 
 his lightly-clenched hand, and the troopers, answering 
 the signal, broke into a trot. The hot dust scurried at 
 the horses' retreating heels. Corporal Keyse, trudging
 
 262 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 staunchly in their wake with his five Town Guardsmen, 
 became ghostUke, enveloped in an African repUca of the 
 ginger-coloured type of London fog. And the Mother- 
 Superior looked at her well-worn watch. 
 
 " My child, we must be moving if you are coming with me 
 to the Women's Laager. I am nearly an hour late as it is." 
 
 " I am ready, Mother dear." 
 
 Lynette's eyes came back from following that dust- 
 cloud in the distance to meet the hungry, jealous fires 
 of Saxham's gaze. 
 
 He had seen Beauvayse's ardent look, and her shy 
 heart's first leaf unfolded in the answering blush, and a 
 spasm of intolerable anger gripped him as he saw. He 
 turned away silently, cursing his own folly, and unhitched 
 his horse's bridle from the broken gatepost. With the act 
 a crowd rose up before Lynette and a frightened horse 
 reared, threatening to fall upon three women who were 
 hurrying along the sidewalk outside the Hospital, and 
 a heavy-shouldered, black-haired man in shabby white 
 drills stepped out of the throng and seized the flying 
 bridoon-roin, and wrenched the brute down. She recog- 
 nised the horse and the man again, and exclaimed : 
 
 " Why . . . Mother, don't you remember the rearing 
 horse outside the Hospital that day in October ? It was 
 Dr. Saxham who caught him, and saved us from getting 
 hurt." 
 
 " And we never even thanked you." The Mother- 
 Superior turned to Saxham v/ith outstretched hand and the 
 smile that made her grave face beautiful. " What you 
 must have thought ! . . ." 
 
 " I looked for the person who had been so prompt, but 
 you had vanished — where, nobody seemed to know," 
 Ljmette told him with her clear eyes on the stem, square 
 face. " And then a man in the crowd called out, ' It's the 
 Dop Doctor !' And I thought what an odd nickname ! . . ." 
 She broke off in dismay. Saxham had become livid. His 
 grim Jaws clamped themselves together, sini the blue eyes 
 grew hard as stone. One instant he stood immovable, 
 the Waler's bridle on his left arm, his right hand clenched 
 upon the old hunting-crop. Then ho said very coldly and 
 dibtiEotly :
 
 THE DvOP DOCTOR 263 
 
 " As you observe, it is a queer nickname. But, at any 
 rate, I had fairly earned " 
 
 The bugle from the Staff headquarters sounded, drowning 
 the rest of the sentence. The Catholic Church bell tolled. 
 The other bells took up the warning, and the sentries called 
 again from post to post : 
 
 " 'Ware gun, Number Two ! Southern Quarter, 'ware !'* 
 
 The Krupp bellowed from the enemy's north position, and 
 cleverly lobbed a seven-pound shell not far behind that 
 rapidly-moving, distant pillar of dust, the nucleus of which 
 was a little troop of cantering Irregulars, and not far in 
 front of the lower, slower-moving cloud, the heart of which 
 was a little knot of tramping Town Guardsmen. The 
 shell burst with a splitting crack, earth and flying stones 
 mingled with the deadly green flame and the poisonous 
 chemical fumes of the lyddite. Figures scurried hither and 
 thither in the smoke and smother ; one lay prone upon the 
 ground. . . . 
 
 At the instant of the explosion Saxham had leaped 
 forwards, setting his body and the horse's as a bulwark 
 between Death and the two women. Now, thoixgh 
 L^Tiette's rough straw hat had been whisked from her 
 head by a force invisible, he saw her safe, caught in the 
 Mother-Superior's embrace, sheltered by the tall, protecting 
 figure as the sapling is sheltered by the pine. 
 
 " We are not hurt," the Mother protested, though her 
 cheek had been cut by a flying flake of flint, and was bleed- 
 ing. " But look . . . over there !" She pointed over the 
 veld to the prostrate brown figure, and a cry of alarm broke 
 from Lynette. 
 
 " Oh, Mother, who ... 1' 
 
 " It is a Town Guardsman," Saxham answered, his cold 
 blue eyes meeting the wild frightened gaze of the pale 
 girl. " Lord Beauvayse and the Irregulars got off scot- 
 free. Reverend Mother, do not think of coming. Please 
 go on to the Women's Laager. I v/ill see to the wounded 
 man, and follow by-and-by." 
 
 He mounted, refusing all offers of aid, and rode off. 
 Looking back an instant, he saw the black figure of the 
 woman and the white figure of the girl setting out upon 
 their perilous Journey over the bare patch of ground ^here 
 
 >'>
 
 264 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Death made harvest every day. They kissed each other 
 before they started, and again Saxham thought of Ruth 
 and Naomi. If Ruth had been only one half as lovely as 
 this Convent-grown lily, Boaz was decidedly a lucky man. 
 But he had been a respectable, sober, steady-going farmer, 
 and not a man of thirty-six without a ten-pound note in 
 the world, with a blighted career to regret, and five years 
 of drunken wastrelhood to be ashamed of. And yet . . . 
 the drunken wastrel had been a man of mark once, and 
 earned his thousands. And the success that had been 
 achieved, and lost, could be rewon, and the career that had 
 been pursued and abandoned could be his — Saxham' s — 
 again. And what were his publishers doing with those 
 accumulated royalties 1 For he knew from Taggart and 
 McFadyen that his books still sold. 
 
 " The Past is done with," he said aloud. " Why should 
 not the Future be fair ?" 
 
 And yet he had nearly yielded to the impulse to own 
 to those degraded years, and claim the nickname they had 
 earned him, and take her loathing and contempt in exchange. 
 What sudden madness had possessed him, akin to that 
 unaccountable, overmastering surge of emotion that he had 
 known just now when he saw her tears ? 
 
 We know the name of the divine madness, but we know 
 not why it comes. Suddenly, after long years, in a crowded 
 place or in a solitude where two are, it is upon you or upon 
 me. The blood is changed to strange, ethereal ichor, 
 the pulse beats a tune that is as old as the Earth itself, but 
 yet eternally new. Every breath we draw is rapture, 
 every step we take leads us one way. One voice calls 
 through all the voices, one hand beckons whether it will or 
 no, and we follow because we must. With the Atlantic 
 rolling between us I can feel your heart beat against mine, 
 and your lips breathe into me your soul. The light that 
 was upon your face, the look that was in your eyes as you 
 gave the unforgettable, immemorial kiss, the clasp of your 
 hands, the rising and falling of your bosom, like a wave 
 beneath a sea-bird, like a sea-bird above a wave, shall be 
 with me always, even to the end of time and beyond it. 
 
 For there are many loves, but one Love.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 265 
 
 XXX 
 
 A LONG-LEGGED, thianish officer, riding a khaki-coloured 
 bicycle over a dusty stretch of shrapnel-raked ground, carry- 
 ing a riding-whip tucked under his arm and wearing steel 
 Jack-spurs, might have been considered a laughter- provoking 
 object elsewhere, but the point was lost for Gueldersdorp. 
 He got o£E his metal steed amongst the zipping bullets, 
 and came over to the little group of Town Guards that were 
 gathered round Saxham, who had just ridden up, and 
 their prostrate comrade, who writhed and groaned lustily. 
 
 " You have a casualty. Serious ?" 
 
 Saxham looked up, and his hard glance softened in 
 recognition of the Chief. 
 
 " I'll tell you in a moment, sir." 
 
 The earth-stained khaki jacket was torn down the left 
 side and drenched with ominous red. A little pool of the 
 same colour had gathered under the sufferer. 
 
 " He looks gassly, don't him ?" muttered one of the Town 
 Guardsmen, the Swiss baker wlio was not S^^'iss. 
 
 " Makes plenty of noise," said the County Court clerk 
 hypercritically, " for a dying man." 
 
 " Oh Lord ! oh Lord !" 
 
 The subject had bellowed with sonority, testifying at 
 least to the possession of an uninjured diaphragm, as 
 Saxham begun to cut away the jacket. 
 
 " Oh, come now !" said a brisk, pleasant, incisive voice 
 that sent an electric shock volting through the presumably 
 shattered frame. " That's not so bad !" 
 
 " I told you so," muttered the County Court clerk to the 
 Sm^ss baker. 
 
 " You remember me, Colonel 1" 
 
 Haggard, despairing eyes rolled up at the Chief appeal- 
 ingly. He had met the gaze of those oyster-orbs before. 
 He recognised Alderman Brooker, proprietor of the grocery 
 stores LQ Market Square, victim of the outrage perpetrated 
 on a sentry near the Convent on a certain memorable night 
 in October last. 
 
 " Yes, my man. Anything I can do 1" He knelt down 
 beside the prostrate form.
 
 266 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " You can tell my country, sir, that I died willingly," 
 panted the moribund. 
 
 " With pleasure, when you're dead. But you're not yet, 
 you know, Brooker." His keen glance was following the 
 run of the Doctor's surgical scissors through the brown stuff 
 and revelling in discovery. And Saxham's set, square face 
 and stern eyes were for once all alight with laughter. The 
 dying man "u-ent on : 
 
 " It's a privilege, sir, an inestimable privilege, to have 
 shed one's blood in a great cause." 
 
 '' It is, Mr. Brooker, but this is different stuff." His 
 keen face wrinkled with amusement as he sniffed, and 
 dipped a finger in the crimson puddle. " Too sticky." 
 He put the finger to his tongue — " and too sweet. Show 
 him the bottle, Saxham." 
 
 The Doctor, imperturbably grave, held forth at the end 
 of the scissors the ripped-up ruins of a small-sized india- 
 rubber hot-water bottle, a ductile vessel that, buttoned 
 inside the khaki tunic, had adapted itself not uncomfortably 
 to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. 
 A hyaena-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding 
 heads. Brooker's face assumed the hue of the scarlet 
 flannel chest-protector exposed by the ruthless steel. 
 
 " What the— what the ?" he stuttered. 
 
 " Yes, that's the question. What the devil was inside it, 
 Brooker, when the shell -splinter hit you in the tummy and 
 t saved your life 1 Stand him on his legs, men ; he's as 
 right as rain. Now, Brooker ?" 
 
 Brooker, without volition, assumed ^he perpendicular, 
 and began to babble : 
 
 " To tell the truth, sir, it was loquat syrup. Very 
 soothing to the chest, and, upon my honour, perfectly 
 wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularly every year, 
 and — we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, 
 besides what we keep for ourselves. And if I am to be 
 exposed to mockery when Providence has snatched me 
 from the verge of the grave ..." 
 
 " Not a watery grave, Brooker," came from the Chief, 
 witli an irrepressible chuckle — " a syrupy one. And — 
 have I your word of honour that this is a non-alcoholic 
 beverage ?"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 2<>7 
 
 " Sir, to be candid with you, I won't deny but what it 
 might contain a certain proportion of brandy. And the 
 nights in the trench being particularly cold and myself 
 constitutionally liable to chill . . . I — I find a drop now and 
 then a comfort, sir." 
 
 "Ah, and have you any more of this kind of comfort at 
 your place of business or elsewhere ?" 
 
 ** Why — why . . ." the Alderman faltered, " there might 
 be a little keg, sir, in the shop, under the desk in the 
 counting-house." 
 
 " Requisitioned, Mr. Brooker, as a Government store. 
 You may feel more chilly without it ; you'll certainly sleep 
 more lightly. As far as I can see, it has been more useful 
 outside of you than ever it was in. And — the safety of 
 this town depends on the cool heads of the defenders who 
 man the trenches. A fuddled man behind a gun is worse 
 than no man to me." 
 
 The voice rang hard and clear as a gong. "I'm no 
 teetotaller. Abstinence is the rule I enforce, by precept 
 and example. While men are men they'll drink strong 
 liquor. But as long as they are not fool-men and brute- 
 men, they can be trusted not to lap when they're on duty. 
 Those I find untrustworthy I mark down, and they will 
 be dealt with rigorously. You understand me, Brooker ? 
 You look as if you did. You've had a narrow squeak. Be 
 thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs has 
 come of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your 
 duty." 
 
 W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the re- 
 suscitated Brooker flying rags of sanguine stain. Then the 
 stem face of the Chief broke up in laughter. The crinkled- 
 up eyes ran over with tears of mirth. 
 
 " Lord, that fellow will be the death of me ' Tarta'^lia 
 in the flesh — how old Gozzi would have revelled in him ! 
 Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that round, flabby face, that 
 comic nose, and the bleating voice with the sentimental 
 quaver in it, reeling off the live man's djang speech. . . ." 
 He wiped his brimming eyes. " Since the time when Boer 
 spies hocussed him on guard — you remember that lovely 
 affair ? — he's registered a vow k) impress me with his 
 gallantry and devotion, or die in the attempt. He's the
 
 268 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 most admirably unconscious humtoug I've ever yet met. 
 Sands his sugar and brown- papers his teas philanthropi- 
 cally, for the good of the public, and denounces men who put 
 in Old Squareface and whisky-pegs, as he fuddles himself 
 with his loquat bratndy after shop-hours in the sitting-room 
 back of the store. But let us be thankful that Providence 
 has sent Brooker on a special mission to play Pantaloon 
 in this grimmish little interlude of ours. For we'll want 
 every scrap of Comic Relief we can get by-and-by, Saxham, 
 if the other one doesn't turn up — say by the middle of 
 January." 
 
 " I understand, sir." Saxham, to whom this man's face 
 was as a book well loved, read in it that the Commissariat 
 was caving. " There has been another Boer cattle-raid ?" 
 
 The face that was turned to his own in reply had suddenly 
 grown deeply-lined and haggard. " There has been a lot 
 of cattle-shooting. Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was 
 always quite a favourite game with Brounckers. But his 
 gunners hit oftener than they used to. And the Govern- 
 ment forage won't hold out for ever." He patted the 
 brown Waler, who pricked his sagacious ears and threw up 
 his handsome bluntish head in acknowledgment of his 
 master's caress. " Presently we shall be killing our mounts 
 to save their lives — and ours. Oats and horseflesh will 
 keep life in men — and in children and women. . . . The 
 devil of it is, Saxham, that there are such a lot of women." 
 
 " And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out 
 of pure curiosity," came grimly from Saxham. 
 
 " To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, 
 they know now ! You were going ovor to the Women's 
 Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say as I go. I'm 
 on my wi' v to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone 
 wrong witii the telephone- wire between there and Staff 
 headquarters, and I can't get anything through but 
 Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two of the 
 languages I haven't studied." The dry, humorous smile 
 curved the reddish- brown moustache agaia. The pleasant 
 little whistle stirred the short-clipped hairs of it as the two 
 men turned in the direction of the Women's Laager, over 
 which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where the 
 spider with the little Boer mare, picldng at the scanty grass.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 269 
 
 waited outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not 
 travel so far. They were fastened upon a tall black figure 
 and a less tall and more slender white figure that were by 
 this time halfway upon their perilous journey across the 
 patch of veld, bare and scorched by hellish fires, and 
 ploughed by shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death 
 had reaped his harvest day by day. 
 
 " There goes one of the women we couldn't have done 
 without," commented his companion, wheeling his bicycle 
 beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler. 
 
 " It is the Mother-Superior," Saxham said, " with her 
 ward, Miss Mildare." 
 
 " Ah ! My invariable reply to Beauvayse — ^you know 
 my Junior A.D.C., who daily clamours for an introduction 
 to Miss Mildare — is, that I have not yet had one mys.-lf, 
 though at the outset of aSairs I encountered the young 
 lady under rather trying circumstances, in which she 
 showed plenty of pluck. I thought I had told you. No ? 
 Well, it was one morning on the Recreation Ground. 
 The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, 
 and some Dutch loafers mobbed them — threatened to lay 
 hands on the Sisters — and Miss Mildare stood up in defence 
 — head up, eyes blazing, a slim, tawny-haired young lioness 
 ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with me, and ever since 
 then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance." 
 
 Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, 
 and his tone was not pleasant : " Lord Beauvayse attained 
 the height of his ambition a few minutes ago." 
 
 " Did he ? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome 
 of reaHsation. Up to the present " — the humorous, keen 
 eyes were wrinkled at the comers — " all the boy's swans 
 have been geese, some of 'em the sable kind." 
 
 Saxham answered stiffly : " I should say that in this 
 case the swan decidedly predominates." 
 
 The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune 
 before he spoke again. " It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, 
 being shut up here, out of the way of women." 
 
 " Are there no women in Gueldersdorp ?" 
 
 "Noneof 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. Ue in wait
 
 270 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 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 
 miniLS 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 
 — ^uite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three 
 V; Js on, and am 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 V would meet the case. We have Musical 
 Comedy now in place of what usexi 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 Terp- 
 sichorean — ^to demonstrating the fact. Oh, damned 
 cowardly hounds !" The voice jarred and clanged with 
 irrepressible anger. " Saxham, can't you see ? Brounc- 
 ker'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 puSs of sickly hot, reddish
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 271 
 
 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 Ups 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 hr^ 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. 
 
 " Your doing ?" 
 
 " Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking 
 down from suspense, and the overstrain of inaction. And 
 — to avert even worse evils, I prescribed the tonic of 
 danger. There was no choice In at last !" 
 
 The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind 
 the dumpy earth-bag walls. He thought the white figure 
 had glanced back, and waved its hand, and then a question 
 from his companion startled him beyond his ordinary 
 stolid self-control. 
 
 " By the way . . . with reference to Miss Mildare, have 
 you any idea whether she proposes taking the veil ?" 
 
 " How should I have ideas upon the possibility ?" The 
 opaque, smooth skin of the square, pale face was dyed 
 with a sudden rush of dark blood. The Colonel did not 
 look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone near his 
 boot, and flattened into a shiny star of lead : 
 
 " I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, 
 Saxham. You're too much in earnest, my dear fellow. 
 Burnt NJal himself could hardly have been more grim." 
 
 Saxham answered : 
 
 " That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed 
 only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned 
 through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about 
 my ears in the begioning, and I laughed then, I remember."
 
 272 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and 
 again," said the kindly voice, " at the man who took it 
 for granted that everything was over, and did not set to 
 work by dawn of the next day building up the hall greater 
 than before. Those old Vikings did, ' and each time the 
 high seat was dight more splendidly, and the hangings of 
 the closed beds woven more fair.' They never knew 
 when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, and so it 
 came about that they never were. By the way, I have 
 something here that concerns you." 
 
 " Concerns me ?" 
 
 " I think I may say, nearly concerns you. A para^ 
 graph in this copy of the Gape Town Mercury, which, by 
 the way, is three weeks old." 
 
 A rubbed and shabby newspaper, folded small, came out 
 of the baggy breast-pocket of the khaki jacket. Saxham 
 received it wth visible annoyance. 
 
 " Some belated notice of one of my books." The scowl 
 with which he surveyed the paper testified to a strong 
 desire to pitch it to the winds. 
 
 " Not a bit of it. It's an advertisement inserted by 
 a London firm of solicitors — ^Donkin, Donkia, and Judd, 
 Lincoln's Inn. Possibly you are acquainted with Donkin, 
 if not with Judd ?" 
 
 " They are the solicitors for the trustees of my mother's 
 property, sir. I heard from them three years ago, when 
 I was at Diamond Town. They returned my last letter 
 to her, and told me of her death." 
 
 " They state in the usual formula that it will be to your 
 advantage to communicate with them. May I, as a friend, 
 urge on you the necessity of doing so ?" 
 
 Saxham' 8 grim mouth shut close. His eyes brooded 
 sullenly. 
 
 " I will think it over, sir." 
 
 " You haven't much time. A despatch-runner from 
 Koodoosvaal got through the enemy's lines last night with 
 some letters and this paper. No, no word of the Relief. 
 His verbal news was practically nil. He goes out at 
 midnight with some cipher messages. And, if you will 
 let me have your reply to the advertisement with the 
 returned paper by eleven at latest, I will see that it is sent."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 273 
 
 The rather peremptory tone softened — became persuasive ; 
 " You must build up the great hall again, Saxham, and 
 building can't be done without money. And — it occurs 
 to me that this may be some question of a legacy." 
 
 " My father was not a wealthy man," Saxham said. 
 " He gave me a costly education, and later advanced four 
 thousand pounds for the purchase of a West End practice, 
 upon the understanding that I was to expect no more from 
 him, and that the bulk of his property, with the exception 
 of a sum left as provision for my mother, should be strictly 
 entailed upon my brother and his heirs, if he should marry. 
 The arrangement was most Just, as I was then in receipt 
 of a considerable income from my profession, and my 
 father died before my circumstances altered for the worse. 
 Independently of the provision he made for her, my 
 mother possessed a small Jointure, a freehold estate in 
 South Wales, bringing in, when the house is let, about a 
 hundred and fifty pounds a year. That was to have been 
 left to me as the younger son. But her trustees informed 
 me, through these solicitors, that she had changed her 
 mind, as she had a perfect right to do, and bequeathed 
 everj'thing she possessed to my brother's son, a child 
 who " — Saxham's voice was deadly cold — " may be about 
 four years old." 
 
 " A later will may have been found. If I have any 
 influence with you, Saxham, I would use it in urging you 
 to reply to the advertisement." 
 
 Saxham agreed unwillingly : " Very well." 
 
 The other knew the point gained, and adroitly changed 
 the conversation. It grew severely technical, bristling 
 with scientific terms, dealing chiefly with food-values. 
 The black cloud cleared from Saxham's forehead as he 
 lectured on the energy-fuels, and settled the minimum of 
 protein, fat, starch, and sugar necessary to keep the 
 furnace of Life burning in the human body. 
 
 Milk, that precious fluid, could henceforth only be given 
 to invalids and children. Margarine and Jam were severely 
 relegated to the list of luxuries. Sardines, tinned salmon, 
 and American canned goods had entirely given out. And 
 flour, the staff of life, was vanishing. 
 
 The Joy of battle lightened La their faces as they talked, 
 
 18
 
 274 TUt DOP DOdtdR 
 
 forging weapons that sho>tild Oiakfe ilien enduring, stfad 
 Saxham warmed. His icy armour of habitual silence 
 melted and broke Up. He became eloquent, pouring out 
 his treasured projects, suggesting substitutes for ttiis, dncl 
 makeshifts for that and the other. He was in his element 
 — he knew the ground he trod. He thrust out his gHm 
 under-Jaw, and hulked with liis henvy shoulders as be talked 
 to this man who understood ; ahd every supple movement 
 of his surgeon's hand pointed out some fresh expedient, 
 as the singing bullets went by or whit-whiited about them 
 in the dnst, and now and then a shell burst over patient 
 Gueldersdorp. 
 
 iTiey parted at the Women's Laager, and as the khaki 
 bicycle grew small in the distance, Saxham realised with a 
 shock that he was happy, that life had suddenly become 
 s^eet, and opened! otit anetr before him in a vista, not of 
 shining promise, but with one golden gleam of hope in it, 
 to a man freed by the force of Will from the bondage of 
 the accursed hquoT-thirst. lYeed ! If freed in truth, 
 why should the sight and smell even of Brooker's sticky 
 loquat- brandy have set the long-denied palate craving ? 
 Saxham put that question from him with both hands. 
 
 And then he frowned, thinking of that adaptable instru- 
 ment that had thrummed an accompaniment to the arias 
 of the Opera soprano, as to the Society drawing-room duets 
 sung with the frisky married ladies who liked nice boys, 
 and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, 
 and the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity 
 Theatre, and now must serenade outside a Convent-close 
 in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the whitest of maiden 
 lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed, 
 in a raging tempest of fire and steel and lead. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 Pray give a thought to the spy, Walt Slabberts, languishing 
 in durance vile under the yellow flag. Several times the 
 fifst-class, up-to-date, efl«otive artfjlery of his countrymen, 
 being brought to bear upon the gaol, had caused the captive 
 to bound like the proverbial parched pea, and to curse
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 275 
 
 with curses not only loud but fervent the indiscriminating 
 zeal of his brother patriots. 
 
 He was, though lost to sight behind the walls of what 
 Emigration Jane designated the jug, still fondly dear to 
 one whose pliant affections, rudely disentangled by the 
 hand of perfidy from the person of That There Green, had 
 twined vigorously about the slouching person of the young 
 Boer. Letters were received, but not forwarded to suspects 
 enjoying the hospitahty of the Government, so communica- 
 tion with the object of her dreams was painfully impossible. 
 Stratagems were not successful. A ])assionate missive 
 concealed in a plum-pudding — before it was put on to boil — 
 had become incorporated with the individuality of a prison 
 official, who objected on principle to waste. 
 
 On Sundays, when you could go out without your 'art 
 in your mouth an account of them 'orful shellses, a fair 
 female form in a large and flamboyant hat, whose imitation 
 ostridge tips Mere now mere bimdlos of quill shavings, 
 and whose flowers were as wilted as the other blossoms of 
 her heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place 
 of bondage, waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen 
 and recognised. Tactics productive of nothing but blown 
 kisses on the part of extra-susceptible warders, and one 
 or two troopers of the B.S.A., who ought to have known 
 better. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected 
 with ringing sniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements 
 is the feminine heart composed, found them strangely 
 solacing. 
 
 She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon 
 the morning following the night of the tragedy, another 
 score to the account of the traitor Keyse. Arriving un- 
 seemly late, and in an agitated state of mind — and could 
 you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and 
 took away 1 — she had mechanically accounted for her late 
 return in the well-worn formula of Kentish Town, explaining 
 to the surprised Sisters that there 'ad bin a haccident on the 
 Underground between the Edgeware Road and 'Ammersmiff, 
 an' that her sister Hemmaline had bin took bad in conse- 
 quence, the second being looked for at the month's end ; 
 and to leave that pore dear in that state — her 'usband bein;; 
 
 at his Social Club — was more than Emigration Jano 'uU 
 
 IS o
 
 276 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 'ad the 'art to do. She received her dismissal to bed, 
 and the advice to examine her conscience carefully before 
 retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whoop- 
 ing hysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated 
 by the knowledge that nobody had slept in the Convent 
 that night, until she had run down. The character suppHed 
 by Sister Tobias to her next employer specified termino- 
 logical inexactitude among her failings, combined with lack 
 of emotional self-control ; but laid stress on an affectionate 
 disposition, and a tendency to intermittent attacks of 
 hard work. 
 
 She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging 
 — you couldn't call it nothink else, not to be truthful you 
 couldn't — at the Women's Laager, along of them there 
 dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from too candid criticism 
 of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard all the 
 same not to call crock and muck by their right names ! 
 
 Languishing in seclusion, week and week about, cooking 
 scant meals of the Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy 
 made from them patent packets of Consecrated Soup, 
 can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against 
 W. Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most 
 actively potential in the jugging of her young man, bulked 
 larger evei'y day ? She was not one to 'ave the world's 
 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and 
 Chance it ! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and- 
 elevenpenny peek-a-boo " blowse " as she registered hei 
 vow. That there Keyse — the conduct of the faithless 
 Mr. Green appeared almost blonde in complexion beside 
 the sable villainy of the other — That There Keyse should 
 Rue the Day ! 
 
 How to make him ? — that was the question. Then 
 came the dazzling flash of inspiration — but not until they 
 had met again. 
 
 She was circulating hungry-hearted about the brick- 
 built case that held her jewel — the man who had held out 
 that vista of a. home, and called her his good little Boer- 
 wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed to allure 
 and dazzle — the Boer spy had caught many women with 
 it before. Do you despise her and those others for the 
 predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 277 
 
 the inviolate hearth ? Not so much they yearned for the 
 man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the 
 heart -strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter- 
 branches of which shelter little downy heads. 
 
 She encountered the traitor, I say, and her eyes darted 
 fire beneath a bristling palisade of iron curling-pins. She 
 had not the heart in these days to free her imprisoned 
 tresses. The villain had the perishing nerve to accost her, 
 jauntily touching the smasher hat. 
 
 " 'Day, Miss ! 'Aven't seen you since when I can't think." 
 
 She replied with a ringing sniff and a glance of infinite 
 scorn that she would trouble him not to think ; and that she 
 regarded low, interfering, vulgar fellows as the dirt under 
 her feet. So there ! 
 
 " Cripps !" He was took aback, but not to the extent of 
 taking hisself off, which he ought to. " You're fair mad 
 with me, an' no misty ke.'* His pale eyes were unmis- 
 takably good-natured ; the loss of the yellow freckles, 
 swamped in a fine, uniform, brick-dust colour, was an im- 
 provement, she could not help thinlcing. " But I only 
 did my duty, ]\Iiss, same as another chap would 'ave 
 'ad to. Look 'ere ! Come and 'ave a split gingerade." 
 
 The delicious beverage wa.s three shillings the bottle. 
 She frowned, but hesitated. He persisted ; she ended by 
 giving in. Weeks and weeks since she had walked with a 
 young man ! The Dutchman's saloon was closed and 
 barricaded ; its owner had made tracks to his Transvaal 
 friends at the beginning of the siege. But the aromatic- 
 beer cellar was one of the places open. They went in 
 there. Oh ! the deliciousness of that first sip of the 
 stinging, fizzling beverage ! He lifted his glass in the way 
 that she remembered, and drank a toast. 
 
 " 'Er 'ealth ! If you knew how I bin wantin' to git 
 word of 'er ! She's well, isn't she. Miss ? Lumme ! the 
 Fair Old Knock-out I got when I see the Convent standin' 
 empty. . . . Gone into laager near the railway works 
 now, you 'ave, I know. Safe, if not stric'ly luxurious. 
 But — I git the Regulax Hump when I tiiink of — of a 
 Angel like 'Er 'avin' to live an' eat an' sleep in a — a — ^in 
 a bloomin' rabbit-'ole." He sighed as he wiped the pungent 
 froth from bis upper Up.
 
 278 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Pity you can't tell 'er so !" The sarcasm would have 
 its way, but it failed of his great simplicity. 
 
 " That's why I bin lookin' out for you." He blushed 
 through the brick- dust hue as he extracted a fatigued- 
 looking letter from a baggy left breast-pocket in which it 
 had sojourned in company with a tobacco-pouch, a pipe 
 which must not be smoked in the trenches if a man would 
 prefer to do without a bullet through his brain, a handful of 
 screws not innocent of lubricating medium, a clasp-knife, 
 a flat tin box of carbolised vaseline, a First- Aid bandage, 
 and a ration of bread and cheese wrapped in old newspaper. 
 The bread was getting deplorable, for even the dusty 
 seconds flour was fast dribbling out. 
 
 " You'll give 'er this, won't you, Miss, and tell her I bin 
 thinkin' of 'er night and d'y ? Fair live in the trenches 
 now ; and when I do git stroUin' round the stad, blimme if 
 I ever see 'er. But she's there — an 'ere's a ticker beatin' 
 true to 'er." He rapped a little awkwardly upon the 
 bulging left breast-pocket, " To the bloomin' end, wotever 
 it may be !" 
 
 " Oh, you— silly, you !" 
 
 She found him ridiculous and tragic, and so touching all 
 at once that the gibe ended in a sob. It was not the 
 stinging effervescence of the gingerade that made her choke 
 and brought the smarting tears to her eyes. It was envy 
 of that other girl. And then she noticed, under his left 
 eye, a tiny scar, and she knew how he came by it, and re- 
 membered what she owed him, and saw that the cha.nce 
 had come for her revenge. She could pierce the heart 
 beating under the khaki breast-pocket to its very core with 
 three words as easily as she had jabbed his face with her hat- 
 pin on that never-to-be-forgotten night. She would tell 
 him that the lady of his love had gone up to Jphannesburg 
 weeks and weeks ago. Oh, but it would be sweet to see 
 the duped lover's face ! She would givp him a bit of jaer 
 mind, too — perhaps tear up the letter. 
 
 Then flashed across the murky-black night of her stormy 
 mind the forked- lightning inspiration of what tl^e real 
 revenge would be. To take his letter — write hii^ another 
 back, and yet others, fool him to the top of his bent, and 
 presently tell him, tossing at his feet § sheaf fff billets
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 279 
 
 " And sepve you glad — and no more than your deservings ! 
 Who put away my Walt ?" 
 
 She accepted the letter, only permitting herself one 
 scornful sniff, and put the missive in her pocket. Next day 
 John Tow, the Chinarpan, serenely fatalistic, smilingly per- 
 pendicular in felt-soled shoes, amidst zipping bullets, 
 brought to the trench a reply, signed " Fare Air." 
 
 Thj writer Toke the Libberty of Hopeing W- Keyse was 
 as it J^eft her at preasent. She was Mutch obblig for his 
 Dear Leter Witch it 'ad made her Hapey to Know a Bjave 
 Man fiteing for her Saik. 
 
 " Cr'r !" ejaculated W. Keyse, below his bre^^th. His 
 
 face was radiant as hp read. Her spelling was a bit off, it 
 was impossible to deny. But — Cripps ! — to be called a 
 brave man by the owner of the maddening blue eyes, q,nd 
 that great thick golden pigtail. Tt^e letter went on ; 
 
 " Dear mr. Keyse yu will be Plese to Kno Jane is Sutch 
 a Cumfi^t to me ip Trubel- As it is Selldom Fathfpl Fronds 
 are To be Fownd But Jane is trew as Stele & Cold be 
 Trustid with lbs & lbs. no More at Preasent fypm j-r 
 afexn Swetarlj. 
 
 X X :s, X " Faru A^i." 
 
 His senses reeled, as under pretence of njasldng a sneeze 
 he pressed his burning lips to those osc^latory crosses. He 
 wrote her a flaming answer, begging ^ Sunday rendezvous. 
 She appointed a place and an hour. He went there on the 
 wings of love, but nqbpdy turned up except the Jane who 
 could be trusted with pounds and pounds. 
 
 She hurried to him trembling and quite pale, hef blue 
 pyep — he had never noticed that they weye bjue and refilly 
 pretty — wide with fright under her yellow fripge of curls 
 newly released from steely fetters. Her lips were apart, 
 but lie failed to observe that the teeth they revealed vvere 
 creditably white ; her cotton-gl(»ved hetfid repressed her 
 flut-tering heart, but he did not see its tumultuous throbbing. 
 He gulped as he said, with a fallen jaw and a look pf abject 
 jiusery that pierced her to the quick : 
 
 " Si^e — cpuldn't cpme, then ?" 
 
 " No. pore deer !" gasped the oomfort in trouble, casting
 
 280 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 about for something to tell him. She had made up her 
 mind as she came along ; she would have her revenge there 
 and then, and chance it. Something kept her from laying 
 the candle-flame to the time-fuse. She did not know what 
 It was yet. But, oh ! the sharp look of terror in the thin, 
 eager face pierced her through and through. 
 
 " My Gawd ! She's not bin killed ?" he cried. " Don't 
 tell me she's bin " 
 
 " Lor', gracious goodness, no ! What will you think of 
 next 1" She lied, rallying him, with Jealousy eating at her 
 own poor heart. " Can't git away, that's all. Them Sisters 
 are so precious sharp. An' — ' Go an' tell 'im,' she says, 
 ' 'e'll 'ave to put up with you this once. An' you'll come 
 back an' tell me all about 'im !' " 
 
 He swallowed the bait, and her spirits revived. Emigra- 
 tion Jane, if not the rose, lived with it. Strictly speaking, 
 they spent a pleasant Sunday, though when he found him- 
 self forgetting the absent one, he pulled himself sharply up. 
 He saw her part of the way home ; more she would not 
 allow. 
 
 "And — and" — she whispered at their parting, her 
 eyes avoiding his — " if she can't git out next Sunday — an' 
 it's a chance whether she does, that Sister Tobias being 
 such a watchful old cat — would you like to 'ave me meet 
 you an' tell you all about 'er ?" 
 
 W. Keyse assented, even eagerly, and so it began. Be- 
 hold the poor deceiver drinking perilous joys, and learning 
 to shudder at the thought of discovery. Think of her 
 cherishing his letters, those passionate epistles addressed 
 to the owner of the golden pigtail. 
 
 Think of her pouring out her poor full heart in those 
 wildly-spelt missives that found their way to him, and be a 
 little pitiful. 
 
 She did not thirst for that revenge now. But, oh ! the 
 day would come when he would find out and have his, in 
 casting her off, with what contempt and loathing of her 
 treachery she wept at night to picture. This feeling, that 
 lifted you to Heaven one instant, and cast you down to Hell 
 the next, was Love. Passion for the man, not yearning for 
 the hearth-place, and the sheltering roof, and the security 
 of marriage.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 281 
 
 She left off walking round the gaol — indeed, rather 
 avoided the vicinity of the casket that for her had once 
 held a treasure. What would the Slabberts think of his 
 little Boer-wife that was to have been ? What would he 
 say and do when they let him out ? She took to losing 
 breath and colour at the sound of a heavy step behind her, 
 and woi^ld shrink close to the martial j&gure of W. Keyse 
 when any hulking form distantly resembling the Boer's 
 loomed up in the distance. 
 
 Oh, shame on her, the doubly false ! But — but — she had 
 never been so orful 'appy. Oh, what a queer thing was 
 
 Love ! If only But never, never would he. She 
 
 was mistaken. 
 
 There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the 
 path of single-hearted devotion to the unseen but ever- 
 present wearer of the golden pigtail. 
 
 As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet 
 sensible of the belly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its 
 tense muscles and weary brains by getting up an entertain- 
 ment here and there, W. Keyse escorted his beloved — by 
 proxy, as usual — to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in a 
 cleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial 
 Government to the promoters of the entertainment. 
 
 Oh, the first deHcious sniff of an atmosphere tinged with 
 paint and acetylene from the stage-battens and footlights, 
 and so flavoured with crowded humanity as to be strongly 
 rcininiscent of the lower troop-deck in stormy weather, when 
 all the ports are shut and all the hatches are battened 
 down ! The excess of brilliancy which must no*. *?troam 
 from the windows had been boarded in, and a tarpaulin 
 was drawn over the skylight, in case the gunners of Meisje 
 should be tempted to rouse the monster from her Sabbath 
 quiet, and send in a ninety-four-pound shell to break up an 
 orgy of godless Englanders. But the stuffiness made it all 
 the snugger. You could fancy yourself in the pit of the 
 Theayter of Varieties, 'Oxton, or perched up close to the 
 blue starred ceiling-dome of the Pavilion, Mile End, on a 
 Saturday night, when every gentleman sits in shirt- sleeves, 
 with his arm round the waist of a lady, and the taggots and 
 sausage-rolls and stone-gingers are going off like smoko, 
 and the orange - peel rainp from the upper circle back-
 
 282 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 benches, and the n^it-craeking runs up and down the packed 
 rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches 
 when the fire is hottest. . . . 
 Ah ! that brought one back to Gueldersdorp at once. 
 
 Meanwhile, a pale green canvas railway-truck cover, 
 marked in black, " Light Goods— Destructible," served as 
 a drop-curtain. Another, upon which the interipp of an 
 impossible palace had been delineated in a bewildering 
 perspective of red a^l blue and yellow paint-smudges, 
 served as a general back-scene for the performance. 
 
 The orchestra piano had been wounded by shell-fire, and 
 had a leg in splints. Many members of the crowded audi- 
 ence were in 3trapping and bandages. Drink did not flow 
 plentifully, but there was something to wet your whistle 
 with, and the tobacco-cloud that hung above the trestle- 
 benches, packed with black and yellow faces, as well as 
 brown and white, could almost have been cut with a knife. 
 
 It was a long, rambling programme, scrawled in huge, 
 black-paint characters on a white planed board, hung 
 where everyone could read it. There were comic songs and 
 Christy Minstrel choruses by people who had developed 
 vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display 
 of conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had 
 forgotten the art, if ever he had mastered it. At every new 
 mistake or blunder, and with each fre^h change of expres- 
 sion on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the id a, 
 of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping 
 to vvakc up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he 
 had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and 
 smash a gentleman's watch and produce it intact from some 
 unexpected place of concealment, the spectators rocked 
 and roared. Then there was a Pantomimic Interlude, with 
 a great deal of genuine knockabout, and, the crowning item 
 of the entertainment, a comic song and stump-speech, 
 announced to be given by The Anonymous Mammoth 
 Cowique — an incognito not ^imly suspected to conceal the 
 identity of the Chief himself, being delayed by the Mam- 
 rpoth's character tpp-h^t — a |ondly cherished property of the 
 k^tiggins brand — and the cabbage un^brell^ that went with 
 it, having been accidentally left behind at the Mammoth's
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 283 
 
 hotel, the Master of the Revels, still distinguished by the 
 jib-sail collar ajid shiny bumt-cork complexion of the 
 corner-man, was sent to the front to ask if any lady or 
 gentleman in the audipnce would kindly oblige with a ten- 
 minute turn ? 
 
 " All right, Mister !" 
 
 A soiled cotton glove waved, a flowery hat nodded to the 
 appeal from beliind the acetylene footlights. The faces in 
 the front rows of seats, pale and brick-dust, gingerbread andl 
 cigar- browned European, African coimtenances with roll- 
 ing eyes and shining teeth ; and here and there the im- 
 passive, almond-ej'ed, yellow mask of the Asiatic, slewed 
 round as Emigration Jane rose up La the place beside 
 W. Keyse, a little pale, and with damp patches in the palms 
 of the washed white cotton gloves, as she said : If the 
 gentleman pleased, she could sing— just a little ! 
 
 No, thank you ! She wasn't afryde, not she ; they was 
 all friends there. And do 'er best she would. She took off 
 the big flowery hat quite calrqjy, giving it to W. Keyse 
 to keep. The panic came on later, when the Christy - 
 minstrel-collared, burnt-corked Master of the Revels was 
 gallantly helping her up the short side-ladder, and culmi- 
 nated when he retreated, and left her there, standing on 
 the platform in the bewildering glare of the acetylene foot- 
 lights, a little, rather slight and flat-chested figure of a girl, 
 blue-eyed and yellow-haired, in a washed-out flowpry 
 "blowse," and a " voylet" delaine skirt that had lost its 
 pristine beauty, and showed faded and shabby in the yellow 
 gas-flare. 
 
 Oh ! 'owever 'ad she dared ? That dazzling sea of faces, 
 with the eyes all fixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump 
 grew in her throat, and the crowded benches tilted, and the 
 flaming lights leaped to the roof as the helpless, timid tears 
 welled into her blue eyes. 
 
 And then the miracle happened. 
 
 W. Keyse sat on a back-bench, the thin Cockney face a 
 little raised above the others, because he had sUpped a 
 rolled-up overcoat under him, pretending that it was to get 
 it out of the way, yovi understand. Always very sensitive 
 about his shortness, W. Keyse. And she saw his face, as 
 plain as you please, aqd with a look in the pale, eager eyes.
 
 284 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 that for once was for Emigration Jane, her very own self, 
 and not for That There Other One. She knew in that 
 moment of revelation that she had always been jealous. Oh, 
 wasn't it strynge ? Her heart surged out to W. Keyse 
 across the gulf of crowded faces. And her eyes had in 
 them, all at once, the look that is bom of Love. 
 
 Ah ! who can mistake it ? It begets a solitude in a vast 
 thronged assemblage for you and for me. It sends its 
 silent, wordless, eloquent message thrilling to the heart of 
 the Beloved, and wins its passionate answer back. Ah ! 
 who can err about the look of Love ? 
 
 She drew a deep breath that was her longing sigh for 
 him, infinitely dear, and never to belong to her, and began 
 her song. She sang It quite simply and naturally, in an 
 untutored but sweet and plaintive voice, and with the 
 Cockney accent that spoke of home to nearly all that 
 heard. And her eyes never moved from his face as she 
 sang. 
 
 The song was, I dare say, a foolish, trivial thing. But 
 the air was pretty, and the words were simple, and it had a 
 haunting refrain. To this effect, that the world is a big place 
 and a hard place, with scant measure of Joy in it, for you or 
 for me. Bitter herbs grow side by side with the flowers in our 
 Earth gardens. Salt tears mingle with our laughter ; Night 
 comes down in blotting darkness — perhaps in drenching rain, 
 — at the close of every short, bright day of sunshine. But 
 Life gone by, its hopes and fears and sorrows laid with 
 our once-beating hearts in the good grey dust to rest, I 
 shall meet with you again, in the Land where dreams 
 come true. 
 
 " The Land Where Dreams Come True." That was the 
 title of the song and its refrain, and somehow it caught 
 the listeners by the heart strings, making the women sob 
 aloud, and wringing bright sudden drops from the bold 
 eyes of rough, strong, hardy men. You are to remember 
 how the people stood : that scarcely one was there that had 
 not lost brother or sister, mother or husband, child or 
 friend or comrade since the beginning of the siege ; and 
 thus the touch of Nature made itself felt, and the simple 
 pathos went home to the sore quick. They sang the re- 
 frain with her, fervently, and when the song was done, they
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 285 
 
 sat in touched silence but one moment — and then the 
 applause came down. As it fell upon her like a wall, she 
 screamed in terror, and ran away behind the scene, and 
 was found by W. Keyse a minute later, sobbing hysterically, 
 with her head jammed into an angle of the wail of un- 
 plastered brick-work. 
 
 None saw. He put his arms manfully about the waist- 
 line of the flowery blouse. 
 
 " Oh, let me go ! Oh, what a wicked, wicked girl I've 
 bin ! Oh, it's all come over me on a sudden, like a flood ! 
 Don't touch me — ^I'm not good enough ! Oh ! how can 
 you, can you ?" 
 
 She sobbed the words out, and W. Keyse had kissed her. 
 He did not get another utterance of her that night. She 
 parted from him in tingling silence. His own uneasy sense 
 of faithlessness to One immeasurably beloved, to whom he 
 had pledged inviolable and eternal fidelity, nearly prompted 
 him to ask her not to up and tell. But he manfully kept 
 silence. 
 
 The worst of one kiss of that kind is that it begets the 
 desire for others like it. She had turned her mouth to his 
 in that whirling, breathless moment, and it was small, and 
 warm, and climg. He tried to shake off the remembrance, 
 but it haunted persistently. 
 
 He knew he had beha-ved like a regular beast — a low cur, 
 in fact. To kiss one girl and mean it for another was, in 
 the Keysian Code of morals, to be guilty of a baseness. The 
 worst of it was that he knew, given the chance, he would 
 do the same thing again. 
 
 For he could not shake off the memory of the blushing 
 face, \\'etted with streaming tears from the wide bright eyes 
 that pleaded so. They were blue, too, and the fringe above 
 them might, by a not too exhausting stretch of the imagina- 
 tion, be termed golden. He heard her voice crying to him, 
 " How can you, can you 1" And he trembled at the thought 
 of the mouth that Mssed and clung. 
 
 He had known bought kisses, of the kind that brand 
 the lips and shame the buyer as the seller. Never the 
 kiss of Love, until now. 
 
 And now — was any other worth the taking ? 
 
 " Cr'ripps !" said W. Keyse. " Not much !"
 
 286 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 IXXll 
 
 It was Wednesday agatiri, and Saxham came riding through 
 the embrasure in the oblong earthwork, and down the 
 gravelly glacis that led into the Women's Laager. An 
 obsequious Hindu, in an unclean shirt and a filthy red 
 turban, rose up salaaming, almost under his horse's feet, 
 and took the bridle. He dismounted and went his rounds. 
 
 It might have been the dry bed of a high-banked placer- 
 river, with spare lengths of steel railway-line borne across 
 from bank to bank, covered with beams and sheets of 
 corrugated iron and tarpaulins, with wide chinks to let 
 in the much-needed air and light. A line of living- waggons, 
 crowded with women and children — English, American, 
 Irish, Dutch, and half-caste — ran down the centre of the 
 giant trench. In each of its sloping faces a row of dug-out 
 habitations gave accommodation to twice the number 
 that the waggons held. At the eastern end a line of camp 
 cooking-f)iaces had been arranged in mihtary fashion, but 
 the Dutchwomen's little cofiee-pipkin-bearing fires of dung 
 and chips burned everywhere, and possibly they did some- 
 thing towards purifying the air. For, to be frank, it vied 
 with the native village in the compound and variegated 
 nature of its smells, without the Afjican muskiness of odour 
 that is perceptible in the vicinity of our sable brother. The 
 fat, slatternly, frankly dirty vrouws had not the remotest 
 idea of sanitation ; the Germans and Irish, blandly or dog- 
 gedly impervious to savage smells, pursued their unsavoury 
 way in defiance of the clamorous necessity for hygienic 
 measures, until the majority of the pallid, untidy, scared 
 Englishwomen, the energiitic Americans, and the sturdier 
 Africanders, after making what lieadway was possible 
 against the ever-rising tide of filth, had yielded to the 
 lethargy bred of despair and lack of exercise, and ceased to 
 strive. A few, worthy of honour, still stoutly battled with 
 the demon of Uucleanliness. 
 
 But the first April rainfall would turn the dry ditch 
 into an open sewer — a vast trough of muddy water — in 
 which draggled women would paddle for submerged 
 household gods. Many would prefer to tramp back to the
 
 THS DOP DOCTOR 287 
 
 town at night and sleep in iheir own shraptiel-riddled 
 homes. But the majority stayed, of choice or of necessity, 
 incubating sickness in that fetid place where nothing 
 would thrive but fierce social and political hatreds, and 
 petty grudges, and rankling Jealousies, and shrieking 
 quarrels that burst out and raged a hundred times in d 
 day. 
 
 From one of the dlig-otit refuges Saxham nows^wLynette 
 Mildare coming, making her swift way between the knot^ 
 of frowsy refugees, the negro women-servants squatting 
 over the Uttle cdoking-fiie^, the palHd children swarming 
 on the narrow pathways. 
 
 " Dr. Saxham." Her simple? brown holland skirt dM thin 
 linen blouse hung loosely upon her. Her face, too, had 
 grown thinner, and looked tired. But the eyes were no 
 longer unnaturally dilated, and the face had a more 
 healthful pallor. " ]\Irs. Greening begged me to look out 
 for you. She is so anxious about Berta. We have been 
 doing everything we can, but I am afraid the child is 
 seriously ill. It is the tliird shelter from the end, south 
 side." She pointed out the place. 
 
 He had lifted his hat with his short, brusque srtliite. 
 His vivid eyes wore a preoccupied look, his mobile nostrils 
 angrily sniffed th( villainous air. 
 
 " I'll come directly, iVIiss Mildare. But — who can exjject 
 childi-en to keep healthy under conditions as ihsanitary 
 as these ?" 
 
 " It is— horrible !" Disgust was in her face. " But 
 many of the women are as ignorant as the Kailii-s and Cape 
 boys, and they and the coolie sweepers won't carry away 
 refuse any more unless they're paid." 
 
 " You are sure of this V His tone was curt and official. 
 
 " I am almost certain," she told him. " I have heard 
 some of the women complaining that the charges grew 
 lugher every day. And, when I asked one of the boys why 
 he did not do the m ork properly, he was — rude. . . . Oh, 
 don't punisii him !" 
 
 He had not said a word, but a white-hot spark had 
 darted from his blue eye, and his grim Jaws had clamped 
 ominously together. 
 
 " It is my duty to put dOwn insubordination, and
 
 288 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 chastise inefficiency where I encounter it. May I ask you 
 to point out the fellow who behaved insolently ?" 
 
 She said : " I — I think he is head of the carting-gang 
 A Kaffir boy they call Jim Gubo." 
 
 " That will do, thank you, Miss Mildare. You are not 
 alone here ?" 
 
 Her glad smile assured him of that. " Oh no, I am 
 with the Mother. I go everywhere with her, and I think 
 I am of use. I am not at all afraid of sickness, you know, 
 or — the other things." 
 
 " But yet," Saxham said, " you must be careful of your 
 health." 
 
 " You have no idea how tremendously strong I am," 
 she answered him, and he broke into laughter in spite of 
 himself. She looked so tender, so dehcately frail a creature 
 to be there in that malodorous Gehenna, ministering to 
 the wants of slatternly vrouws and stalwart, down-at-heel 
 Irishwomen. His smile emboldened her to say : "I did 
 not thank you the other day, after all." 
 
 " The Krupp shell came along and changed the subject 
 of the conversation." He added : " Were 3'^ou alarmed ? 
 You had rather an escape." 
 
 " I was with Mother." 
 
 " You love her very dearly ?" The words had escaped 
 him unconsciously. They were his spoken thought. She 
 flushed, and said with a thrill of tenderness in her clear 
 girlish tones : 
 
 " More dearly than it is possible to say. I don't believe 
 God Himself will be angry with me that I have always 
 seen His Face and Our Blessed Lady's shining through 
 ners and beyond it ; for He knows as no one else can ever 
 know what she has been since they brought me to the 
 Convent years and years ago." 
 
 " They " were her people, presumably. It was odd — 
 Saxham supposed it the outcome of that Convent breeding 
 — that she should speak of God as simply, to quote Glad- 
 stone's criticism on the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, as 
 though He were her grandfather. Saxham had been reared 
 in the Christian faith by a pious Welsh mother, but 
 there had always been a little awkwardness about domestic 
 references to the Deity. In times of sadness or bereave-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 289 
 
 ment He was frequently referred to. But always in a 
 deprecatory tone. 
 
 " Your family is not Colonial ?" he asked. 
 
 She shook her lovely red-brown head. 
 
 " I— don't know." 
 
 " Mildare is an unusual surname." 
 
 " You think it pretty ?" 
 
 He thought her very pretty as she stood there, a slender 
 willowy creature with the golden shadow of her rough straw- 
 hat intensifying the clear amber of her thoughtful eyes. 
 
 " Very." 
 
 She looked him in the face and smiled. 
 
 " So did I when the Mother gave it to me. I think it 
 belonged to someone she used to know, and her mother 
 was Lynette. So they baptised me Lynette Mildare. 
 It seems rather strange not having a name of one's own, 
 but really I never had one." 
 
 " Never had one ?" 
 
 Saxham echoed her half- consciously, revelling in the 
 play of light and shadow over the delicate face, and the 
 gleaming as of golden dust upon the outer edges of the 
 waves of red-brown hair drawn carelessly back over the 
 little ears. 
 
 " Not to my knowledge. Of course, I may have had 
 one once." She added, as he looked at her in suddenly 
 roused surprise, " I must have had one once." She 
 was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white- 
 hot sunshine that slanted through one of the wide openings 
 above, and cleft the thick atmosphere of the crowded place 
 like a fiery sword. " I have often wondered what it really 
 is, and whether I should like it if I heard it 1 To exchange 
 Lynette Mildare for EHza Smith . . . that would be horrible. 
 Don't you think so 1" 
 
 Saxham smiled. " I think you are Joking, and that a 
 young lady who can do so under the present circumstances 
 deserves to be commended." 
 
 She looked at him full. 
 
 " I am not joking." Borne by a waft of the sickly air 
 a downy winged seed came floating towards her, a frail 
 gossamer courier coming from the world above with tidings 
 that Dame Nature, in spite of all the destruction wreaked 
 
 19
 
 290 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 by men, was carrying on her business. " And — I do not 
 even know that I am a young lady. See therfe " — she 
 blew a Uttle puff of breath at the moving messenger, and it 
 wafted away upon a new air-pilgrimage, and, rising, caught 
 a stronger current, and soared out of sight — " that Ls me. 
 It came from somewhere, and it is going somewhere. That 
 is all I know about myself ; perhaps as much as I shall ever 
 know. Why do you look ao glad ?" 
 
 His lips were sealed. The throb of selfish triumphant 
 exultation came of the belief that the gulf between them 
 was less wide and deep than he had thought it. A wd,strel 
 may woo and wed a waif, surely, without many questions 
 being asked. And then, at the clear, innocent questioning 
 of her eyes, rushed in upon him, soaldin.^, the memories 
 he had thrust away. He saw the Dop Doctor of Guelders- 
 dorp, his short daily stint of labour done, settling down 
 to drink himself into hoggish oblivion in his accustomed 
 corner of the Dutchman's liquor-saloon. He beheld him, 
 his purpose accomplished, slex^ping stertorously, spilled 
 out like the very dregs of manhood in the sawdust of that 
 foul place ; he shuddered as the bloated, dishevelled thing 
 roused and reeled homewards, trickling at the mouth, as 
 the clear primrose day peeped over the flat-topped eastern 
 hills. And he sickened at the thing he had been. 
 
 " I felt glad," he lied, with looks that shunned L5nQette's, 
 " that in your need you found ao good a friend as the 
 Mother-Superior. Yours must have been a sorrowful, 
 lonely childhood." 
 
 Her own vision rose before her, blotting out his face. 
 She saw the little kopje with the grave at its foot. She 
 saw a ragged cliild sitting there watching for the earliest 
 flush of dawn or the solemn folding of night's wide wing over 
 the lonely veld, and the coming of the great white stars. . . . 
 
 " She is much, much more than a friend. She is the 
 Mother." Her loval heart was in her face. " I have no 
 secrets from her. I tell her everything." 
 
 Was that deeper flush bom of the remembrance of a 
 secret unshared ? And how strange that every change of 
 colour and expression in the delicate face should mean so 
 much, so soon. He said, with a hungry flash of the gentian- 
 blue eyes :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 29] 
 
 " Your love and oeiufidence repay her richly." 
 
 " I can do so littlo. ' There was an anxious fold between 
 the slender eyebrowg. " Only follow her and bo near her ; 
 oaiy look on as she spends herself for others, nev«r resting, 
 never sparing, never discouraged or cast down." Great 
 tears brimmed the white, darkly-fringed underlids, and 
 ran over. ' And she only laughs at me at night when I 
 cry at the sight of her dear, blistered feet." 
 
 " \ou will be able to laugh with her when this is over," 
 Saxham said rather clumsily. 
 
 " Shall I ? Perhaps." Still that fold between the 
 fine, delicate eyebrows. 
 
 " You have seen War," Saxham went on, his own voice 
 sounding strange to him. " And that is a terrible ex- 
 perience for a woman, young or old, but you will be the 
 richer by it in the end, believe me, Mss ^lildare. Richer 
 in courage and endurance and calnmess in the presence 
 of danger and death, and in sympathy with the pain and 
 suffering inevitable under such circumstances." 
 
 " Sympathy ? They had all my sympathy before.'" 
 Her fair throat swelled against its encircling band of moss- 
 green velvet, her voice rang, her eyes flashed golden fire 
 under the shadow of the wide straw hat. " Do you think 
 it needed War to teach me how hideously women suffer ? 
 How they have suffered since the world began, and how they 
 will suffer until its end, anless they rise up in revolt once 
 for all, against the wickedness of men ?" 
 
 She was transformed under Saxham's eyce. The slender 
 virginal body increased in stature and proportions as he 
 gazed, and what obscure emotions seemed striving in her 
 face ! 
 
 " Look at them," she said, indicating with a slight 
 revealing gesture the swarming, dowdy, listless occupants 
 of the crowded trench. " How patient they are, bow 
 resigned tc> the dreadful hfe they drag on here from day to 
 day, full of the horror aiKl the pain and the suffering that 
 you say is inevitable. Why should it be inevitable ? Did 
 these women who are the chief victims of it and the greatest 
 losers by it, choose that there should be War ? See that 
 poor soul svith the rag of crape upon her hat, who sits at 
 her door peehng potatoes. Did she desire it ? Yet her 
 
 19—2
 
 292 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 young husband was shot in the trenches a': week ago 
 and her Uttle baby died of fever this morning. . . . And, 
 did those other women whose homes have been wrecked 
 and ruined, whose sons and husbands and fathers may 
 be shot, and whose children may sicken with the same fever 
 before night, demand of their Governments, Imperial or 
 RepubUcan, that there should be War ? You see them 
 patient and submissive because they neither realise their 
 wrongs or understand their rights. But a day will come 
 when they will understand, and then " — her eyes grew 
 dreamy — " I do not know exactly what will happen. 
 But these international questions, with others, will be 
 decided by a general plebiscite, the women will vote as 
 well as the men ; and as women are in the majority, and 
 every woman will vote for Peace — how can there be War 1" 
 
 " You are an advocate of Universal Suffrage, then ? 
 You beUeve that there must be absolute sex-equality before 
 the world can be — I think ' finally regenerated ' is the 
 stock phrase of the miUtant apostle of Women's Rights ? 
 I have heard this outcry from many feminine throats in 
 London, but Gueldersdorp," said Saxham drily, " is about 
 the last place one would expect to ring with it." 
 
 " ' Universal Suffrage, Sex - Equahty, Women's 
 Rights. . . .' " The shibboleth that Saxham quoted was 
 evidently unfamiliar to the girl. " I know " — there was 
 a sombre shadow in her glance — " what Women's Wrongs 
 are, but I am not very well informed about the things you 
 speak of. The Mother tells me that there are many well- 
 educated women in London and Paris, in Berlin and in 
 New York, who have devoted their hves to the study of 
 such questions. Who write and speak and labour to teach 
 their fellow- women that they have only to band themselves 
 together to be powerful, only to be powerful to be feared, 
 only to will it to be free. When I am twenty-four I mean 
 to go out into the world and meet those leader-women. 
 Some of them, I am told, have suffered loss and ill-usage ; 
 some of them have even undergone imprisonment for the 
 sake of what they believe and teach. Well, I will hear 
 what they have to say, and then they will listen to me. 
 For until my work is done, theirs will never be accomplished. 
 Something tells me that with a most certain voice." 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 293 
 
 " And until that time comes V said Saxham. 
 
 Her eyes grew bright again, a smile played about her 
 exquisite lips. 
 
 " Until that time comes I will study and gather more 
 knowledge, and capacity to fit myself for a struggle with 
 the world." 
 
 " Tou ' struggle with the world ' !" 
 
 Her girlish pride in her high purpose being sensitive, 
 she mistook the brusque tenderness in Saxham' s face 
 and voice for irony. 
 
 " Yes. Perhaps you may not believe it, but I know 
 a great many useful things. Latin and French and German 
 and Italian, well enough to teach and translate. I am well 
 grounded in History and Science and Mathematics. I can 
 take a temperature and make a poultice, or sweep a room 
 and cook a dinner." She nodded at Saxham with a little 
 spark of laughter underlying the sweet earnestness of her 
 look. " Also, I have learned book-keeping and typewriting, 
 and shorthand. I earn enough now, by bookbinding, to 
 pay for my clothes. The Mother says that I am competent 
 to earn my Uving anywhere, and to teach others to earn 
 theirs. But I am not to begin until I am twenty-four. 
 That is our agreement." 
 
 Saxham understood the fine maternal tact that never 
 set this ardent young enthusiast chafing at the tightened 
 rein. But he said roughly : 
 
 " The Mother. . . . How can she approve yom* joining 
 the ranks of the Shrieking Sisterhood ?" 
 
 " She knows," Lynette explained, with adorable gravity, 
 " that I should never shriek." 
 
 " How will you bear parting from her ? And how will 
 she endure parting from you 1" 
 
 The girl's mobile lips began to tremble. The luminous 
 amber eyes were dimmed with moisture as she said : 
 
 " It will not be losing me. Nor could I ever bear to 
 leave her if I did not know that I should come back. But 
 I shall come back. And she will ask me what I have 
 done. And I shall tell her : ' This, and this, and all the 
 rest, my Mother, for the love of you, and for the sake of 
 those others who once sat in darkness and the Shadow of 
 Death, and now have found the Way of Peace.' "
 
 2»4 TME DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " And those others, Beatrice ?" 
 
 Saxham knew now the secret of the haunting familiarity 
 of the beautiful girlish face. The delicate oval outline, the 
 pale wild-rose colouring, th« reddish -bro\\-n of the fine, 
 glistening tresses, the amber-hazel of the wistful, brilliant 
 eyes, reproduced to a w'>nderful degree the modelling and 
 tinting of the wonderful Guido portrait, the white-draped 
 head in the Barberini Gallery, which, in defiance of Berto- 
 lotti and the Edinburgh Review, will always be associated 
 with the name of the sorrowful-sweet heroine of the most 
 sombre of sex-tragedies. 
 
 " Why do you call me Beatrice ?" she asked, with that 
 sudden darkening of those luminous eyes. He told her : 
 
 "Because you are like the Daughter of the Cenci. Shelley 
 used to be my favourite among the English poets, and when 
 I first went to Rome, years ago, the first thing I diu was 
 to hunt up the portrait in the Barberini Palace Gallery ; 
 and it is marvellous. No reproduction has ever done justice 
 to it. One could not forget it if one tried." 
 
 " I am glad I am like Beatrice," she said slowly. " I 
 have always loved and pitied her. I pray to her as my 
 friend among the Blessed Souls in Paradise, and she always 
 hears. And by-and-by she will help me when I go out into 
 the world " 
 
 " To look for those others," Saxham interpolated. '* Tell 
 me who they are ?" 
 
 She looked at him, and for an instant the virginal veil fell 
 from her, and there was strange and terrible knowledge 
 in her eyes. 
 
 " They are women, and girls, and children," she answered 
 him. " They are the most unhappy of all the souls that 
 suffer on earth. For they are the slaves and the victims 
 and the martyrs of the unrelenting, mercOess, dreadful 
 pleasures of Man. And I want to go among them and lift 
 them up, and say to them, ' You are free !' And one day I 
 will do it." 
 
 There was a duU burning under Saxham's opaque skjn, 
 and a drumming in his ears. His authority and knowledge 
 fell from him as that virginal veil had fallen from her ; he 
 stood before her humbled and ashamed, shunning her eyes, 
 that penetrated and scathed his soul as the eyes of an
 
 THE DOP DOCTOE 295 
 
 avenging Angel might, with their clear, simple, direct 
 estimate of himself and his fellow-men. And the distance 
 between them, that had seemed to be lessening as they 
 talked, spread illimitably vast ; a dark, sunless plain, 
 bounded by a livid horizon, reflected in the slimy pools of 
 foul swamps and pestilential marshes, where poisonous 
 reptiles bred in slimy, writhing knots, and the Eaters 
 of Human Flesh lurked under the tangled shade of the 
 Jungles. Less vile of life, even in his degradation, than 
 many men, he felt himself beside this girl a moral leper. 
 
 " Unclean, unclean !" 
 
 While that voice yet echoed in the desert places of his 
 soul, he heard her sajdng : 
 
 " I don't know why I should talk to you of these plans 
 and projects of mine. I never have spoken of them yet to 
 anj^one except the Mother. But — you spoke of sympathy 
 with those who suffer. I think you have it. Dr. Saxham, 
 and that you have suffered yourself. It is in your face. 
 And — ^you are not to suppose that I believe all men to 
 be " 
 
 He ended for her : " To be devouring beasts. No ; but 
 we are bad enough, the best of us, if the truth must be 
 told. And — I have suffered. Miss Mildare, at the hands 
 of men and women, and through the unwritten laws, as 
 through the accepted institutions of what is called Society, 
 most brutally. I would not soil and scorch your ears with 
 the recital of my experiences, for all that a miracle could give 
 me back. I swear to you that I would not !" 
 
 She touched the little ears with a smile that had pathos in it. 
 
 *' They have heard much that is evil, these ears of mine." 
 
 " And the evil has left them undefiJed," said Saxham. 
 
 " Thank you !" 
 
 She begged him again not to forgot the sick child at Mrs. 
 Greening's shelter, and hurried away, keeping her face 
 from Saxham. He knew that there was no hope for him, 
 that there never would be any. And he loved her — hungrily, 
 hopelessly loved her. Dear innocent, wise enthusiast, 
 with her impossible scheme for cleansing the Augean stable 
 of this world ! Chivalrous child-Quixote, tilting at the 
 Black Windmills, whose sails are whirled by burning blasts 
 from Hell, and whose millstones grind the souls of Eve's losi
 
 296 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 daughters into the dust that makes the devil's daily bread — 
 how should the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp dare to love 
 her ? But he did not cease to, for all the height of his 
 self-knowledge and all the depth of his self -scorn. 
 
 He seemed to Lynette a strange, harsh man, but there 
 was something in him that won her liking. He had a stem 
 mouth, she thought, and sorrowful, angry eyes, with that 
 thunder-cloud of black, lowering eyebrow above them. 
 And he looked at her as though she reminded him of some- 
 one he knew. Perhaps he had sisters, though they could 
 }iardly be very young. Or it was not a sister. He must 
 be quite old — the Mother had thought him certainly thirty- 
 five — but possibly he had a young wife in England — or 
 somewhere else ? And she had spoken to him of her great 
 project. She wondered now at that impulse of confidence. 
 Perhaps she had yielded to it to convince herself that her 
 enthusiasm was as strong, her purpose still as clear, as 
 ever, in the mirror of the Future ; that no gay, youthful 
 reflection had ever risen up of late days between it and her 
 wistful eyes when she peeped in. The remembered image 
 of the handsome face that had laughed, even as Beauvayse 
 had declared : 
 
 " Even if I die to-day, it won't end there. I shall think 
 of you, and long for you, and worship you wherever I am." 
 
 The thought of Beauvayse's dying was horrible, intoler- 
 able. His name came after the Mother's in her prayers. 
 He had asked her to keep the secret — his and hers — and 
 called her such exquisite, impossible things for promising 
 that the mere remembrance of his words and his eyes as 
 he said them in that low, passionate, eager voice, took her 
 breath deliciously. 
 
 " Sweetest, kindest, loveliest. . . ." She whispered them 
 to herself as she hurried back to comfort worried Mrs. 
 Greening with the news that the doctor was coming. 
 
 Meanwhile Saxham went on his accustomed way between 
 the long line of waggons and the corrugated-iron lined huts 
 on the other hand, in a cross-fire of appeals, requests, com- 
 plaints. Nothing escaped him. He would pass by, with 
 the most casual glance and nod, women who volubly pro- 
 tested themselves dying, and single out the face that bore 
 the dull, scorched flush of fever or the yellow or livid stamp
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 297 
 
 of rheumatism, or ague, or liver-trouble, with a beckon of 
 his hand, and the owner of such a face, invariably declaring 
 herself a well woman, would be summarily dealt with, and 
 dosed with tabloid or tincture out of the inexhaustible 
 wallet he carried, slimg about his shoulders by its webbing 
 band. 
 
 " Dokter," screeched a portly Tante in a soiled cotton 
 bedgown and flapping kappje, appearing, copper stewpan 
 in hand, from between the canvas tilt-curtains of a living- 
 waggon. " You are come at last ; the Lord be thanked 
 for it ! I have much, much trouble inside." She groaned, 
 and laid her fat, unoccupied hand upon the aflSicted area, 
 adding : " I feel I shall not be quite wholesome here." 
 
 " Wat scheelt er aan, Tante ?" He spoke the Taal with 
 ease. 
 
 The large Tante snorted : 
 
 " What is the matter ? Do you ask me what is the 
 matter ? As if a dokter oughtn't to tell me that ! But 
 the Engelsch are regular devils for asking questions. Since 
 you must know, I have a mighty wallowing under my 
 apron-band, and therewith a pain. How is it begun 1 
 It is begun since middageten yesterday. And little Dierck 
 here has the belly-aohe, and is giddy in the head." 
 
 " Little Dierck will have something worse than the belly- 
 ache, and you also, if you eat of broth or vegetables cooked 
 in a vessel as unclean as that, mevrouw." 
 
 " Hoe ?" The large flabby face under the expansive 
 kappje became red as the South Af'can sunset. She 
 flourished the venerable copper stewpan, its rim liberally 
 garnished with verdigris, ancient deposit of fatty matters 
 accumulated at the bottom. " Do you call my good stew- 
 pan, that my mother cooked beef and succotash and 
 pottage-herbs in before me, an unclean vessel — you ? And 
 were the pan otherwise than clean as my hand — as my 
 apron !" — a double comparison of the unfortuitous kind — 
 " how should I alter matters in a heathen place like this ?" 
 Her large bosom rocked tumultuously. " Dwelling at the 
 bottom of a mud-hole like a frog, God of my fathers ! 
 with bullets as big as pumpkins trundling overhead, ready 
 to whip your head off your body if you as much as stick 
 your nose above ground — the accursed things !"
 
 298 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Th«y are pumpkins sent by your own countrymen, 
 Tante, so you ought to speak of them more civilly. And — 
 scour the pot with a double-handful of clean sand ; it will 
 be for your health as well as the kind's. Come here, 
 jongen — give me a look at the little tongue." The boy 
 went to him confidently, and stuck it out, looking up with 
 innocent wide eyes in the square, powerful face, as Saxham 
 swung round his wallet, continuing, " Here, mevrouw, is 
 a packet of Epsom salts. Take half of it, stirred in a cup 
 
 of warm water, to-morrow morning fasting " 
 
 " Alamachtig !" she protested. " Is that the Engelsch 
 way of doctoring ? To put another belly-grief on the top 
 of the one you have got, what sense is in that ?" 
 
 " It is the new nail, Tante, that drives out the rusty old 
 one. Give the boy a teaspoonful in half a cup of water, 
 and remember to scour the pans." 
 
 Saxham passed on, stepping neatly with his small, tan- 
 booted, spurred feet between the dung and chip fires 
 curling up in blue smoke- spirals, and the sprawling chil- 
 dren, seeming as though he did not notice them, yet catch- 
 ing up one that had a rash, and satisfying himself that the 
 rruption was innocent ere he passed on, visiting every 
 V. ;: -gon-dwelling and cave-refuge, rating the inhabitants 
 of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging from 
 three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy 
 frown that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine 
 had not yet begun to gnaw the vitals of those immured in 
 Gueldersdorp, Di'^ ise had here and there sprung into 
 active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded 
 commvmity with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the 
 hospitals were to be crowded to the doors, to remain 
 crowded for many months to come ; and the cry, " Room 
 for the sick ! more room !" was to go up unceasingly. 
 
 Coming out of a miserable habitation, where lay a woman 
 in rheumatic fever, whose three children had developed 
 measles on the previous day, and, seeing about the door of 
 a neighbouring hovel a particularly noisome aggregation 
 of garbage and waste, he paused but to give a brief direc- 
 tion to the mild- faced Sister who had assumed charge of 
 the sick. Then his voice rang out above all the feminine 
 and childish Babel, strong, resonant, masculine :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 299 
 
 " Where are the head- boys of the gangs that I told 
 off to clean up and carry ash-buckets to the dumping- 
 place ?" 
 
 Whence, under cover of night, the garbage and waste 
 were carted to the destructor in connection with the 
 Acetylene Gas Company's plant, soon to be shattered by 
 one of Meisje's shells. There was no answer. Saxham 
 took the wore hunting-crop from under his arm, and with 
 an easy movement shook out the twisted thong. 
 
 " Where are those two boys ? Jim Gubo ! Rasu !" 
 
 A pale young woman peeling potatoes at her door looked 
 up knowingly. " They won't carry away a cabbage-leaf 
 unless they're bribed, and they open their mouths wider 
 every day. It's a tikkie a bucket now." 
 
 The young woman went back to her potatoes. The 
 offenders, visibly quaking, crept from under a waggon, 
 where they had been gambling with dry mealies for ill- 
 gotten tikkies. A big Kaffir boy in ragged tan-cords and 
 the oroTVTileBs brim of an Oxford straw, with a red-turbaned, 
 blue dungaree-clad, supple Oriental of the coolie class. 
 Jim Gubo, with Uberal display of ivory, assured the Baas, 
 in defiance of the Baas' s own eyes and the organ in Juxta- 
 position, that the work had bewi regularly done. Rasu the 
 Sweeper, with many oaths and protestations, assured the 
 Presence that such neglect as was apparent was owing to 
 the incapacity of the hubshi and his myrmidons, Rasu's 
 own share of the labour and that of his fellow-countryman 
 being scrupulously performed. 
 
 The Presence made short work of Kaffir and Hindu. 
 Shrill feminine clamours filled the air as the singing lash 
 performed its work of castigation ; and while Saxham 
 scored repentance upon the hide of bis blacker brother, 
 holding him writhing, shouting, and bellowing at the full 
 stretch of one muscular arm, as he plied the other he kept 
 a foot on Rasu the Sweeper, so as to have him handy when 
 his turn came. Meanwliile. the Oriental, with tears and 
 lamentable bowlings, wound about the doctor's log. a 
 vocal worm, deprecating tyranny. 
 
 " Your Honour is my father and mother. Let the hand 
 of justice refrain from excoriating the person of the unfortu- 
 nate, wreaking double vengeance upon the hubshi, who ia
 
 300 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 but fuel for Hell, like ail his accursed race, and full ex- 
 planation shall be made." 
 
 He was jerked upward by the scruff, as, smarting, 
 blubbering Africa retired to the shadow of the waggons. 
 
 " Well, what have you got to say ?" 
 
 The bellow of the town batteries, with the clack — clack — 
 clack ! of the HotchMss that had been removed from the 
 armoured train and mounted on the North Fort, reduced 
 the tirade to pantomime. 
 
 " This is a bad, a very bad, place for the son of my 
 mother." The lean brown right hand swept upwards to the 
 thick canopy of white smoke that the shifting breeze rolled 
 back from the Cemetery Earthworks. " The food of coarse 
 grain is diet for camels, and the water stinks very greatly. 
 Moreover, it is better for thy slave to die amongst defile- 
 ments than to carry buckets and be chased by devils in 
 iron pots thirsting for the blood of men. Aie — aie !" 
 
 One of the enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelts had loosed off a 
 group of the gaily-painted little shells. With the re- 
 duplicated rattle of the detonation, they passed over the 
 laager, bursting as they went, sending their fan-shaped 
 showers of splinters broadcast. Slatternly women and 
 scared children bolted for their burrows. Rasu the 
 Sweeper dived frantically between the fore and hind wheels 
 of a waggon, praying to all the gods of the low-caste to 
 ward off those wicked little bits of rending metal. . . . 
 
 " Anyone hurt ?" called Saxham. 
 
 " No one, I think," called back the strong sweet voice of 
 the Mother-Superior, who had come out of a hovel, where 
 she was tending some sick. There was a glint in her deep 
 eyes as she regarded Saxham' s thorough handiwork that 
 told her approval of castigation well deserved. Then : 
 
 " Maharaj ! Oh, Maharaj ! Succour in calamity ! Aid 
 for the dying ! Hai, hai, behold how I bleed !" 
 
 The red-turbaned martyr rolled in the unclean litter, 
 elevating a stick- like brown leg, in the lean, muscular calf 
 of which one of the smallest of the wicked little splinters 
 had, as Rasu the Sweeper dived for the waggon, found a 
 home. 
 
 " That has saved you a well-earned hiding, so thank your 
 stars for it. Let the Kaffir see to it that he insults no more
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 301 
 
 English ladies, or he shall pay for every word with an inch 
 of skin. Now put up your leg." Saxham whipped out the 
 splinter with a little pair of tweezers, deftly cleansed and 
 dressed the wound, bandaged it, and, dismissing Rasu the 
 Sweeper with a caution, was coming across to the Reverend 
 Mother when a chorus of cries and piercing shrieks broke 
 forth : 
 
 " Mijn Jongen ! mijn Jongen !" 
 
 She was a bulky Dutch vrouw, with a dishevelled head of 
 coarse black hair, and a dirty cotton gown, and dirty bare 
 feet in bulgy shoes that were trodden down at heel. But 
 with her livid, purple face and protruding, bloodshot eye- 
 balls uplifted to the drifting cloud of greenish lyddite 
 vapour that thinned away overhead, she was great and 
 terrible, and the very incarnation of Maternity Bereft. 
 
 One huge arm gripped the little body to her broad, pant- 
 ing bosom. She had called him, and he had not answered ; 
 she had sought and found him, just as he had slidden off the 
 box-seat, where he had been playing driver of the ox-span, 
 lying curled up against the dashboard, the little whip of stick 
 and string he had been at pains to make only yesterday fallen 
 from the lax, childish hand. The fair hair on the left temple 
 was dabbled in blood, that trickled from the tiny three- 
 cornered bluish hole. His eyes were open, as if in wonder 
 at the sudden darkness that had fallen at bright midday ; 
 the smile had frozen on the parted, innocent lips. . . . 
 
 Oh, look at this, Premier and President ! Look at this, 
 my Lords and Commons and militant Burghers of Re- 
 publican States ! Grave Ministers who decide in Cabinet 
 Councils that the prestige of the Government you repre- 
 sent is at stake, and that the bedraggled honour of the 
 Country can only be washed clean in one red river, flowing 
 from the veins of Humanity, look, look here ! You who 
 lust for Sovereignty, hiding rapacious Ambitions and base 
 lust for gold behind the splendid ermined folds of the 
 Imperial purple. You who resented Suzerainty, coveting 
 to keep in your hands riches that you could not use, re- 
 sources that your ignorance could not develop, greedy to 
 have and hold what you wrested from the Sons of Ham, 
 lest white men should snatch it back from you again ; and 
 prating of Liberty and Freedom while the necks of three
 
 302 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 races of men were bending under the yoke of an oligarchy 
 more imperious, more pitiless, more covetous, besotted, 
 brutal, and ignorant than any other that the spotted 
 records of History can show — look here, look here ! 
 
 Nations that rush to dreadful Waa", loosing the direful 
 threefold plagtie of Iron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and 
 brand and desolate the once smiling face of your Mothur 
 Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolating cataclysms 
 of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the blood- 
 stained she-devil you misname Glory, look here, in the 
 Name of One who loved and suffered little children, rating 
 their iimocent bodies and spotless souls at such high value 
 that Little Dierck and his countless brother-and-sister- 
 babes that have perished of Iron, Fire, and Disease, as of 
 Terror and Famine, Death's twin henchmen, shall weigh 
 in the balance against Crowned Heads and Lords and 
 Commons and Presidents axid Representatives and 
 Deputies, until they kick the beam ! 
 
 Should there be War ? Of course there should be War ! 
 you say. 
 
 Have you seen War ? Perhaps, even as I have. And, 
 having seen it, dare you Justify the shedding, by men who 
 hold the Christian Faith, of these spilled-out oceans of 
 Christian blood ? 
 
 That question will be settled when the Trumpet of the 
 Great Angel sounds, and the Sea and the Earth shall give 
 up their dead, and everyone shall answer for his deeds before 
 the Throne of God. And until then, look to it that if you 
 war in any cause, the cause be a just one. 
 
 My Dierck ! My little Dierck ! God ! God !- 
 
 Standing with that tragic purple mask turned upwards 
 to the silent sky, and the wild eyes blazing, and the great 
 fist at the end of the uplifted arm brandished in the Face 
 of Heaven itself, the Boer moth^ demanded of her Maker 
 why this thing had been don© ? 
 
 " He was so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the 
 ox-reim end to taste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie 
 or a plum pilfered— he would take them as bold as brass 
 before your face if you didn't give. He said the night- 
 prayer regularly. For the morning. Lord, Thou knowest
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 303 
 
 boys want to be up and at mischief as soon as they have 
 rubbed tho sleep out of their eyes — 'tis only natural. And 
 the father a God-fearing man, and me a ..^man of piety. 
 For when have I backslidden before Thee ? If any of mine 
 have hung b«bck when I told them to loop and do a thing, 
 or sneaked off and hid when we were inspanned for the 
 kerk-going, did I fail to whack them as a mother should ? 
 Nooit, nooit ! And now — ^Death has fallen out of the sky 
 upon the Benjamin of my bosom. Oh, blasted be the eye- 
 sight and withered be the hand of the man that sighted and 
 laid and fired the gun !" 
 
 She cmsed the Kaiser's blue-and-white-uniformed gunner 
 in every function of his body and every corner of his soul, 
 waking and sleeping, dying and dead, with fluent Scrip- 
 tural cuises. The crowded faces about her went white. 
 Some of the women were crying, others shook their heads : 
 
 " Thim that puts the Bad Black Wish on odhers finds 
 sorra knock harrd at their dure," said an Irish voice 
 oracularly. " An' who but herself did be callin' down all 
 manner av' misfortune on ivery wan that crassed her ?" 
 
 " It's a judgment — my opinion," agreed the thin young 
 woman who had been peeling potatoes, and who wore a wisp 
 of draggled crape round a soiled rush hat. " Never a shell 
 busted but you'd a-heered her say she hoped that one had 
 sent another parcel of verdant rooiaeks to Hell. And me 
 sitting over against her with crape on for my husband and 
 baby. 'Tis a judgment, that's what I say." 
 
 " Oh, hush, Mrs. Lennon !" said the Mother-Superior. 
 " Be pitiful and forget. She did not think — she had not 
 suffered. Be pitiful, now that her hour has come !" 
 
 The thick voice of the Boer woman broke out again : 
 
 " Did ever I miss of the Nachtmaal ? Alamachtig, no ! 
 Virtuous as Sarah have I lain in the marriage-bed — never 
 a sly look for another, and my husband with dropsy-legs 
 as thick as boomstammeu, and sixty years upon his loins. 
 Thou knewest, and y< b the joy of my life is taken from me. 
 Where wert Thou, God of Israel, when they killed my 
 Uttle Dierck ?" 
 
 The Mother-Superior leaned to her, and threw a strong, 
 tender arm about the fleehy shoulders. She said, speaking 
 in the Taal :
 
 304 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Hush, hush ! Remember that He gave the Joy before 
 He sent the sorrow. And we must submit ourselves to the 
 Holy Will." 
 
 The Boer woman snorted : 
 
 " As if I didn't know that better than a Papist. Look 
 you, have I shed one tear ?" She blinked hard bright eyes 
 defiantly. The Mother went on in that velvet voice of 
 hers, making the uncouth dialect sound like the cooing of 
 an Irish dove : 
 
 " Better that you had tears, poor mother ! Ah ! best 
 to weep. Did not our Lord weep over His dearest city, 
 and for His beloved friend 1 And when He pitied the 
 Widow of Nain, do you think His eyes were dry 1 Ah ! 
 best to weep." 
 
 She strove to wrench herself away, shouting : 
 
 " He raised Lazarus from the dead for Mary his sister, 
 and she had been a shameless wench. And He gave the 
 other back her boy. What has He done for me 1" 
 
 The sisterly arm held her fast ; the great grey eyes looked 
 into hers, wet with the tears that were denied to her. 
 
 " He has given you an Angel to pray for you in Heaven." 
 
 She snorted rebelliously : 
 
 " His mother wants him down here. . . . And what is 
 Heaven to Uttle Dierck, when he could be sailing his boat 
 in the river-pools, and playing at driving the span ?" 
 
 But she let tne Mother-Superior take him from her, and 
 dropped her great arms doggedly at her sides, watching still 
 dry-eyed aa they laid him down, and Saxham stooped above 
 him, feeling at the pulseless heart. She saw the doktor 
 shake his head and lay down the little hand. She saw the 
 Mother-Superior coax down the eyelids with tender, skilful 
 fingers, and put a kiss on each, making the Sign of the Cross 
 on the still, childish breast, and murmuring a little prayer. 
 She would have screamed to avert the defiling, heathen 
 thing from him, but the memory of the sister-embrace and 
 the sister-look held her dumb. 
 
 It was only when they were stripping hiTn for the last sad 
 toilet, and the cherished top and half a dozen highly-prized 
 marbles rolled out of the pocket in the stumpy little round 
 Jacket she had made out of a cast-off garment of his father's 
 that her bosom heaved, and the fountains of her grief
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 305 
 
 sprang from the stony soil. She wept copiously, and found 
 resignation. Soon she was sxifficiently herself to scold a 
 prodigally-minded spinster relative who had proposed that 
 Little Dierck should be cofiined in his new black Sabbath 
 suit, 
 
 " But you old maids have no sense, no more than so 
 many cabbages. Little angels in the hemel can fly about 
 in clean nightgowns — look in the grandfather's big picture- 
 Bible if you don't believe me. But live boys can't loop 
 about without breeches. So I'll lay these by for the 
 next one." 
 
 xxxm 
 
 Roasting hot Chi-istmas has gone by, with its services and 
 celebrations, its sports and entertainments, its meagre 
 feasting, and its hearty cheer, a bloodless triumph followed 
 by the regrettable defeat sustained in the battle of Big 
 Tree Fort. To-day the Union Jack hangs limp upon the 
 flagstaff that rears its slender height over Nixey's, and 
 the new year is some weeks old. The blue, blue sky of 
 January is without a single puff of cloud, and the taint 
 from the trenches is less sickening, unmingled with the 
 poisonous fumes of the lyddite bursting-charges, and 
 the acrid odour of smokeless powder. It is Sunday, 
 when Briton and Boer hold the Truce of God, and the 
 church-bells ring to cafl and not to warn the people, and 
 sweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shi-apnel- 
 scarred veld. The aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated 
 carcasses of horses and cattle lying on the debatable 
 ground between the Line of Investment and the Line of 
 Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and 
 partridge and wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and 
 bathe in the dry hot sand between the boulder-stones. 
 
 The Market Square is populous with a chatting, saunter- 
 ing crowd of people, who enjoy the luxury of using their 
 limbs without being called on to displays of acrobatic 
 agility in dodging trundling shell. There are Irregulars 
 and B.S.A.P., Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There 
 are the Native Contingent from the stad, and a company 
 of Zulus, and the Kaffirs and the Cape Boys with their gas- 
 
 20
 
 306 THE DOP DOOTOB 
 
 pipe rifles that do good service in default of better, and 
 bring dowTi Oom Paul's Scripturally-flavoured denuncia- 
 tions upon Englishmen, who arm black and coloured folk to 
 do battle for their own sable or brown or yellow rights. These 
 have donned odd garments and quaint bits of finery to 
 mark the holiday, and every white man has indulged in the 
 luxury of a comprehensive wash, a shave with hot water, 
 and a change of clothing, if it is obtainable. Also, drooping 
 feminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from 
 underground buxrows of Troglodytic type, arrayed in 
 fluttering muslins, and crowned with coquettish hats, which 
 walk about in compan; ■ with ragged khaki and clay-stained 
 duck and out-at-elbows tweea, and are proud to be seen 
 in its brave company. 
 
 Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and 
 mothers, lovers and sweethearts, meet after the week whose 
 separating days have seemed like weeks, and visit the houses 
 whose pierced walls and roofs, that let the white-hot sun- 
 shine in through many jagged holes, may one day, so they 
 whisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in 
 peace. Home has become a sweet word, even to those 
 who thought little of home before. And many who were 
 sinful have found conviction of sin and the saving grace of 
 repentance, and many more who denied their God have 
 learned to know Him, in this village town of battered 
 dwellings, whose streets are littered with all the grim 
 debris of War. 
 
 Nixey's has not come scathless through the ordeal. The 
 stately brick chimneys of the kitchen and coflee-room havo 
 been broken off like carrots, and replaced by tin funnels. 
 Patches of the universal medium, corrugated iron, indicate 
 where one of Meisje's ninety-four-pound projectiles recently 
 plumped in through the soft brick of the east wall end, and 
 departed by the west frontage, leaving two holes that might 
 have accommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a 
 window with it. Mrs. Nixey, the children, and the women 
 of the staff inhabit a bombproof in the back-yard. The 
 waiters have developed a grasshopper-like nimbleness, 
 otherwise things go on aa usual. 
 
 It being Sunday, a large long man and another as long, 
 but less bulky, are extended in a couple of long bamboo
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 307 
 
 chairs on Nixey's longish front verandah. The blue, 
 fragrant smoke of two long cigars curls upwards over theii 
 supine heads, and two long drinks containing a very meagre 
 modicum of inferior whisky are contained in two long 
 tumblers, resting in the bamboo nests cunningly devised 
 for their accommodation in the chair-arms. 
 
 It is hot, but both the men look cool and lazy, and 
 almost too fresh to have spent the greater part of the 
 night, the younger upon advanced patrol-duty, and the 
 elder at the Stafi bombproof in the Southern Lines, where 
 messages come in and where messages go out, and where 
 reports are received and from whence orders are despatched 
 from sunset to the peep of day, and from peep of day to 
 sunset. 
 
 The wardrobes of both warriors are much impaired by 
 active service, but their originally white flannel trousers, if 
 patched, discoloured, and shrunken by amateur lavations, 
 boast the cut of Bond Street ; their shirts, if a trifle ragged, 
 are immaculately clean, and the cracks in their canvas 
 shoes are disguised by a lavish expenditure of pipeclay. 
 Beauvayse has runmiaged out and mounted a snowy double 
 collar in honour of the day, with a knitted silk necktie of 
 his Regimental colours, and a kamarband to match is 
 wound about his naa-row, springy waist, and knotted to 
 perfection. Both men might be basking on an English 
 river-bank after a stiff pull up-stream, or resting after a 
 bout at tennis on an English lawn, but for the revolver- 
 lanyards round their strong, bronzed throats, ending in the 
 butts of Smith and Wesson's revolvers of Service calibre, the 
 bandoliers and belts that lie handy on a table, and the Lee- 
 Metford carbines that lean in an angle ma»ie by the house- 
 wall and the verandah end. Also, but for the tension of long- 
 sustained watchfulness on both faces, making it plain that, 
 though resting and reposeful, they are neither of them un- 
 expectant of a summons to be the opposite of these things. 
 It is a look that, at different degrees of intensity, is stamped 
 on every face in Gueldersdorp. And the same uncertainty 
 possesses and pervades even unsentient things. The 
 Union Jack, hanging listlessly from the summit of its lofty 
 staff, bathed in the gulden, glowing atmosphere of this 
 January day, may, in an instant's space, give place to tho 
 
 20—2 
 
 /*
 
 308 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 red signal of danger ; the bugle, now silent, may at any 
 moment blare out its loud and dismal note of warning ; the 
 bells that call with peaceful insistence, " Come to church ! 
 come to church !" in the twinkling of an eye may be clanging 
 scared townsfolk to their burrowed hiding-places. You 
 never know. For Greneral Brounckers, though a God- 
 fearing man, sometimes goes in for Sunday gim-practice, 
 quite unintentionally, as he afterwards explains. Hence, 
 even on the Sabbath, it is as well to be prepared. 
 
 Beauvayse is the first to break the drowsy silence by 
 knocking the lengthened ash off his cigar, and expressing 
 his opinion that the weed might be a worse one. 
 
 " Considerin' the price the box of fifty was knocked down 
 to me for at Kxeils' auction yesterday," states Captain 
 Bingo, " it's simply smokin' gold. Nine pound fifteen-and- 
 six runs me into, how much apiece V He yawns cavem- 
 ously, and gives the calculation up. " Always was a duffer 
 at figures," he says, and relapses into silence until, in the 
 act of throwing the nearly smoked-out cigar-butt away, he 
 pulls himself up, and, economically impaling it on his 
 penknife-blade, secures a few more whiffs. 
 
 " Against the Lenten days to come, when there will be 
 no balm left in Gilead," says Beauvayse, cocking a grey- 
 green eye at him in sleepy derision, " and no tobacco in 
 Gueldersdorp." 
 
 " Klreils' are sellin' dashed bad cigarettes at a pound the 
 box of a hundred now," says Captain Bingo ; " and I've 
 a notion of layin' in a stock of 'em. We smoked tea in the 
 Sudan, and I had a shot at hemp, but it plays the very devil 
 with the nerves. All Jumps and twitches, you know, after 
 a pipe or two. Nervous as a cat, or a woman. And, talk- 
 ing of women, I wonder where my wife is 1" 
 
 He turns a large, pink, disconsolate face upon Beauvayse. 
 Beauvayse responds with the air of one who has suffered 
 boredom from the too frequent enumeration of this con- 
 jecture. " Not knowing, can't say." And there is 
 another silence. 
 
 " How she got the maggot into her head," presently 
 resumes Lady Hannah's spouse, " I can't think. I did 
 suppose her vaultin' ambition to rival Dora Corr — woman 
 who managed to bum her own and a lot of other people's
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 309 
 
 fingers by meddlin' in South African politics over the Raid 
 business — ^had been quenched for good that momin* you 
 took those fifty chaps of the Irregulars out for what she 
 tooutd call their ' baptism of fire.' " 
 
 " That's newspaperese," yawns Beauvayse, his supple 
 brown hands knitted at the back of his sleek golden head. 
 Groes with ' the tented field ' and cdsrui hdli : cherchez 
 la femme and cui bono ? " 
 
 " She's got the lingo at her finger-ends and in her blood, 
 or we wouldn't be cherchaying now," says Bingo dolor- 
 ously. " I asked her if she was particularly keen on gettin' 
 kiUed " 
 
 " Shouldn't have done that. Put her on her mettle not 
 to show funk if she felt it," mumbles Beauvayse. 
 
 " A man can't always be diplomatic," grumbles Bingo. 
 " Anyhow, she'd seen a bit of a scrap at the outset of 
 affairs, when the B.S.A. went out with the Armoured Train, 
 and was wild with me for wantin' to deprive her of another 
 * glorious experience.' . . . And next morning she rides out 
 with a Corporal and two troopers, both chaps beastly sensible 
 of their responsibility, and wishin' her at Cape Town, she 
 in toppin' spirits and as keen as mustard. It was about 
 six o'clock, morning, and she hadn't been gone five minutes 
 before we heard you fellows poundin' away and bein' 
 pounded at like Jimmy ! I was on the roof with the 
 Chief, the sweat runnin' down into the binoculars, until 
 the veld seemed swarmin' with brown mares and grey linen 
 habits and drab smasher hats, with my wife's head under 
 'em, and hoverin' troopers. But I did make out that your 
 party had got into diificulties " 
 
 " We opened on 'em at a thousand yards, and pushed to 
 within five hundred, and if the fellows in charge of the 
 Hotchkiss could have got her into play," Beauvayse inter- 
 rupts rather huffily, " we'd have been as right as rain." 
 
 " Possibly. If I hadn't been on special duty that day, 
 and aa nervous as a cat in a thunderstorm, I'd have volun- 
 teered to bring No. 2 Troop of A out to the rescue, instead 
 of Heseltine. As it was, I nearly fell off the roof when I 
 saw my wife coming, one trooper, as pale with fright as a 
 piece of soap, supportin' her on his saddle, another man 
 leading the mare, dead lame and the Corporal's hairy.
 
 310 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Plugged in the upper works, the Corporal, poor beggar ! 
 but he'd managed to stick on somehow until they got to the 
 Hospital. Have you ever had to deal with a woman in 
 hysterics 1" 
 
 Beauvayse nods sagely. 
 
 " Once or twice." 
 
 " Once is an experience that lasts a man all his lifetime. 
 Phew !" Captain Bingo mops his large pink face. " Never 
 had such a dressing-do \vn in my life." 
 
 " But what had you to do with the Corporal getting 
 chipped ?" 
 
 " The Lord only knows !" says Bingo piously. " But, if 
 you'd heard her, all the rest of the day and half through 
 the night ! . . ." 
 
 " I did," Beauvayse says with a faint grin. " Mine's the 
 next bedroom to yours, you know." 
 
 " ' Oh, the blood ! Oh, the blood !' . . ." Not unsuc- 
 cessfully does the spouse of Lady Hannah attempt to 
 render the recurrent hiccough and the whooping screech of 
 hysteria. " ' Damn it, my dear !' I said, tryin' to reason 
 with her, ' what else did you expect the fellow had got in 
 him ? Sawdust V That seemed to rouse her like nothing 
 else. . . . Turned on me like a tigress, by the living Tinker ! 
 — called me everytliing she could lay her tongue to, and 
 threatened that she'd apply for a separation if I continued 
 to Outrage every feeling of decency that association with 
 such a thundering brute hadn't uprooted from her nature." 
 
 " Whe— «w !" 
 
 Beauvay«e's comment is a shrill-toned whistle. 
 
 " Of course, her nerves were knocked to smithereens, and 
 a man can overlook a lot, under the circumstances. She 
 
 was a mere Jelly when the bombardment began " goes 
 
 on rueful Captain Bingo. 
 
 " — ^Rather !" confirms Beauvayse. — " Lived in the 
 hotfel cellar for the first fortnight, only emergin' from 
 among the beer-banels and wine-casks and liqueur-cases 
 after dark " 
 
 " — ^To blow me up and forgive me, turn and turn about, 
 until daylight did appear. Luckily," reflects Bingo, with 
 a rather dreary chuckle, " I had plenty of night-duty on 
 just then, and so escaped a lot."
 
 THE DO? DOCTOR 311 
 
 " That gave her her chance to shoot the moon !" hints 
 Beauvayse, in accents raufiSed by his long tumbler. 
 
 " By the Living Tinker !" asseverates Captain Bingo, 
 jerked out of his reclining attitude by vigorous utterance 
 of the expletive, " you could have bowled me over with a 
 scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and found her 
 gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on the 
 dressing-table piacushion, in regular elopement style ; and 
 another for the Chief, sayin' — he read it to me — that 
 she'd gone to retrieve the Past, with a capital ' P,' and 
 hoped to convince him ere long that one of her despised 
 sex — underlined, ' despised sex ' — can be useful to her 
 country." 
 
 " ' Can be useful to her country,' " repeats Beauvayse. 
 " Question is, in what way !" 
 
 " Damme if I can imagine !" bursts explosively from the 
 deserted husband. " All I know up to date, and all you 
 know, is that before it was quite Ught she drove out of our 
 lines in Nixey's spider, his mouse-coloured trotter pullin', 
 and her German maid sittin' behind, wavin' a white towel 
 tied to the end of a walkin' -stick of mine, and went straight 
 over to the enemy. We hear in the course of things from 
 a Kaffir despatch-ninner that she's stayin' in a hotel of 
 sorts at TweipanSj where Broimckers has had his head- 
 qiiarters siuce he shifted Chief Laager from Geitfontein. 
 And for any further information vo may knock our rotten 
 heads against a brick waU and tAvjddJe our thumbs. Never 
 you marry. Toby, my boy '" 
 
 A V-shaped veia 8well?i and darkens between the hand- 
 some grey-green eyes and on the broad forehead, white as 
 a girl's where the sun-tan Joave^s off. Beauvayse takes hia 
 cigar again from his mouth, and knocks the ash off de- 
 liberately before he responds : 
 
 " Thanks for the advice." 
 
 " Be warned," says Captain B:nj;o sententiously, " by 
 me. Know when you're well off. as I didn't. Take the 
 advice of your seniors, as I was too pig-headed a fool to 
 do. and don't put it in the power of any woman to make 
 you «is rottenly wretched as 1 am at thin minute." 
 
 " Why I women can make y^xx rottenly wretched," 
 admits Beauvayse, with a confirmatory oreak of the
 
 312 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 bamboo chair. " Bub, on the other hand, they can make 
 you awfully happy — what 1" 
 
 Captain Bingo throws his long legs off their resting-place, 
 and sits sideways, staring rather owlishly at his young 
 friend. He shakes his head in a dismal way several times, 
 and sucks hard at his cigar as he shakes it. 
 
 " For a bit, but does it last ? When I came down to 
 hunt you up last June at the cottage at Cookham " 
 
 " Look here, old man !" The bamboo chair creaks 
 angrily as Beauvayse in his turn sits up and drops his own 
 long legs on either side of it, and drives the foot-rest back 
 under the table seat with a vicious punch. " Don't remind 
 me of the cottage at Cookham, will you ? It's one of the 
 things I want to forget just now." 
 
 " You were as proud as Punch of it last June. Have 
 you let it ?" pursues Bingo, ignoring his junior's request. 
 
 Beauvayse yawns with ostentatious weariness of the 
 subject. 
 
 "No; I haven't let it." 
 
 " Ought to go off like smoke, properly advertised. 
 Somethin' like this : ' To let, Roselawn Cottage, Cook- 
 ham : a charmin' Thames-side bijou residence. Small 
 grounds and large cellar, a boathouse and a houseboat, 
 stables, a pigeon-cote, and a private post-box. Duo- 
 decimo oak dinin'-room, boudoir by Rellis. Ideal nest 
 for a honeymoon, real thing or imitation. Might have 
 become the real thiug if owner hadn't been whisked off in 
 time to South Africa.' And a dashed good job for him. 
 For you've had a decentish lot of narrow escapes, Toby, my 
 boy !" pursues the oracular Captain Bingo, disregarding his 
 junior's forbidding scowl, " and come out of a goodish few 
 tight places, and you've got out of 'em, if I may say so, 
 more through luck than wit ; but that little entanglement 
 I'm delicately alludin' to was one of the closest things on 
 record in the career of a Prodigal Son." 
 
 " Thanks. You're uncommonly complimentary to-day." 
 Beauvayse pitches away his cigar, knocks a feather of ash 
 from his clean silk shirt, and folds his arms resignedly on 
 his broad flat chest. 
 
 " Upon my word, I didn't mean to be. Does it ever 
 strike you," goes on Captain Bingo doggedly, " that if that
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 313 
 
 wire from the Chief asking for your address hadn't found 
 me at the Club, and if I hadn't run down and dug you out 
 at the — I won't repeat the name of the place, since you 
 don't seem to like it — ^you'd have been married and done 
 for, old chap — any date you like to name between then and 
 the beginning of the war ? And, to put things mildly, there 
 would have been the mischief to pay with your people." 
 
 " Yes," Beauvayse agrees rather dreamily ; " there would 
 have been an awful lot of bother with my people." 
 
 " Not that I object to the stage myself," Captaia Biago 
 says, waving a large, tolerant hand ; " and it seems getting 
 to be rather the fashion to recruit the female ranks of the 
 Peerage from Musical Comedy, and a prettier and cleverer 
 little woman than Lessie . . . What are you stoppin' your 
 ears for ?" 
 
 " I'm not," says a muffled, surly voice. " It's a — twinge 
 of toothache." 
 
 " All I've got to say is," declares Captain Bingo, " that 
 marriage with one's equal in point of breedin' is sometimes 
 a blank draw, but marriage with one's inferior is a howling 
 error. And if you had done as I'd stake my best hat you 
 would have done, supposin' you'd been left to loll in the 
 lap of the lovely Lessie " 
 
 Beauvayse Jumps up in a rage. 
 
 " Wrynche, how much longer do you think I can go on 
 listening to this ? You're simply maundering, man, and 
 my nerves won't stand it." 
 
 " Oh, very well ! But you haven't the ghost of a right 
 to lay claim to nerves," Captain Biago obstinately as- 
 severates. " Now look at me." 
 
 " I'm hanged if I want to !" declares Beauvayse. " You're 
 not a cheering object." He drops back into the bamboo 
 chair again. 
 
 " Flyblown, do I look ?" inquires Bingo, with dispas- 
 sionate interest. 
 
 " Well, yes, decidedly," Beauvayse agrees, without 
 removing his eyes from the whitewashed verandah-pillar 
 at which they blankly stare. 
 
 " Streaky yellow in the whites of the eyes, and pouchy 
 under 'em ?" Captain Bingo demands of his younc; friend 
 with unmistakable relish. " ' Yes ' again ? And 1 grouse
 
 314 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and maunder ? Of course I do, my dear chap ! How 
 can I help it ? A married man who, for all he knows, 
 may be a widower •" 
 
 " I wish to God I knew I was one !** 
 
 " My good fellow ?" 
 
 " You heard what I said," Beauvayse flings over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Captain Bingo, his hands upon his straddling iaiees, 
 regards his Junior with circular ey* s staring out of a large, 
 kind, rather foolish face of utter consternation. 
 
 " That you wished to God you were a widower ?** 
 
 " Well, I mean it." 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 •' Good Lord !" 
 
 There is a gap of silence only broken when Captain 
 Bingo says heavily : 
 
 " Then you did marry th6 Lavigne after all ? When 
 was it " 
 
 " We'd pulled off the marriage at the local Registrar's 
 a fortnight before you came down with — his wire." 
 
 " By the Living Tinker, then it xcas a genuine honeymoon 
 after all !" A faint grin appears on Captain Wrynche's 
 large perturbed face. 
 
 ' ' Don' t be epigrammatic , Wrynche . " The dull weariness 
 in the young voice gives place to quick affront. " And 
 keep the secret. Don't give me away." 
 
 " Did I ever give you, or any other man who ever trusted 
 me, away 1 Tell me that." 
 
 Captain Bingo gets up and covers the distance between 
 the declc-chairs with a single stride, and puts a big kind 
 hand on the averted shoulder. 
 
 " Of course you never did." The boy reaches up and 
 takes the hand, and squeezes it with the shyness of the 
 Englishman who responds to some display of solicitude or 
 affection on the part of a comrade. " Don't mind my 
 rotting like this. There axe times when one must let off 
 steam or explode." 
 
 " I thought — and ao did a few others, the Chief among 
 *em — that South Africa had saved you by the skin of your 
 teeth,' f ays Captain Bingo, smoking vigorously, and driving
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 315 
 
 his hands very deep into his pockets. " Confoundedly 
 odd how taken in we were ! I could have sworn, my part, 
 that you'd Just stopped short at " 
 
 " At nri ftldn g a blithering idiot of myself," interpolates 
 Beauvayse. " If you'll go back and sit decently in your 
 chair, instead of standing behind me rattlin' keys and 
 coins in your pocket, and dropping hot cigar-ash on my 
 head, I'll tell you how it happened. Nobody listening ?" 
 
 " Not a soul," says Captain Bingo, padding back after 
 a noiseless prowl to the coffee-room window. 
 
 Beauvayse grips either arm of the chair he sits in so 
 fiercely that they crswk again. 
 
 " I — ^I was desperately hard hit over Lassie a year 
 ago 
 
 " So were a lot of other young idiots." 
 
 " That's a pleasant reflection. They were." 
 
 " Of course, I " — Bingo's large face becomes very red — 
 " I inferred nothing in any way against Miss Lavigne's 
 
 chara Dash it, I beg your pardon ! I ought to call 
 
 her Lady Beauvayse." 
 
 " Don't trouble. I think I'd rather you didn't. It 
 would rub things in rather too much," says Beauvayse, 
 paling as the other has reddened. 
 
 " Wouldn't it be as well," hints Captain Bingo, " to get 
 used to it ?" 
 
 " No," Beauvayse throws over his shoulder. " And don't 
 assume a delicacy in speaking of the — the lady, because 
 it's unnecessary. As I've said, I was very much in love. 
 She had — kept house with a man I knew, before we came 
 together, and fchere may have been other affairs — for all 
 I can tell, at least — I should say most probably." Some- 
 thing in Captain Bingo's face seems to say " uncommonly 
 probably,' though he utters no word. " But she was awfully 
 pretty, and I lost my head." He shuts his eyes and leans 
 back, and the lines of his young face are strained and wan. 
 " I— I lost my head." 
 
 " It's — it's natural enough," volunteers Capi-ain Bingo. 
 
 There is another short interval of silence in which the 
 two men on Nixey's verandah see the same vision — lime- 
 lights of varying shsides and colours thrown from different 
 angles across a darkened garden-scene where impossible
 
 316 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 tropical flowers expand giant petals, and a spangled water- 
 fall tumbles over the edge of a blue precipice in sparkling 
 foam. The nucleus of a cobweb of quivering raj's, crossing 
 and intersecting, is a dazzling human butterfly, circling, 
 spinning, waving white arms like quivering antennae, 
 flashing back the coloured lights from the diamonds that 
 are in her hair and on her bosom, are clasped about her 
 rounded waist and wrists, gleam like fireflies from the 
 folds of her diaphanous skirts, and sparkle on her fingers. 
 A provokinig, beguiling Impertinence with great stage eyes 
 encircled by blue rims, a small mouth painted ruby-red, 
 a complexion of theatrical lilies and roses, and tiny, 
 twinkling feet that beat out a measure to which Beauvayse's 
 pulses have throbbed madly and now throb no more. 
 
 " It began in the usual way," he goes on, waking from 
 that stage day-dream, " with suppers and stacks of flowers, 
 and a muff-chain of turquoise and brilliants, and ended up 
 with " 
 
 " With an electric motor- brougham and a flat in May- 
 fair. Oh Lord, what thunderin' donkeys we fellows are !" 
 groans Captain Bingo, rubbing his head, which has hair of 
 a gingery hue, close-cropped until the scalp blushes pinkly 
 through it, and rubbing nothing in the way of consolation 
 into the brain inside it. 
 
 " I bought the cottage at Cookham as a surprise for her 
 birthday," goes on the boy. " She's a year or two older 
 than me '* 
 
 " And the rest," blurts out Captain Bingo. But he 
 drowns the end of the sentence in a giant sneeze. " Must 
 have caught cold last night without knowin' it. Dashed 
 treacherous climate this," he murmurs behind the refuge 
 of a pocket-handkerchief. " And so you bought the 
 cottage for Lessie ? Another nibble out of the golden 
 cheese that the old man's nursing up for you, — what ? 
 And in thingumbob retirement by the something-or-other 
 stream you hit on the notion of splicing the lovely Lessie 
 Lavigne. Poetry, by the Living Tinker !" 
 
 " Do you want to hear how I came to cut my own throat ?" 
 snarls the boy , with white, haggard anger alternating with red 
 misery and shame in his young, handsome face ; " because 
 if you do, leave off playing the funny clown and listen."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 317 
 
 " Never felt less inclined to be funny in my life. Ton 
 my word, I assure you !'* asseverates Bingo. " You're 
 simply a bundle of irritable nerves, my dear chap, and 
 that's the truth." 
 
 " You wouldn't wonder if you knew . . . Oh, damn it, 
 Wrynche !" — the young voice breaks in a miserable sob — 
 " I'm so thundering miserable. And all because there- 
 there was a kid coming, and I did the straight thing by its 
 mother." 
 
 " Whew !" Captain Bingham Wrynche gives vent to 
 a long, piercing, dismal whistle, which so upsets a gaunt 
 mongrel prowling vainly for garbage in the gutters of 
 Market Square that he puts up his nose and howls in 
 
 answer. " Was that how you fell into the " He is 
 
 Dbviously going to say " trap," but with exceeding clumsi- 
 ness substitutes " state." And wonders at the thing 
 having been pulled off so quietly in these days, when con- 
 founded newspapers won't let you call your soul your own. 
 
 " That's because I signed my name ' John Basil Kdward 
 Tobart,' " explains Beauvayse ; " and because the Registrar 
 — a benevolent old cock in a large white waistcoat, like 
 somebody's father in a farcical comedy — ^wasn't sufficiently 
 up in the Peerage to be impressed." 
 
 " Weren't there witnesses of sorts ?" hints Bingo. 
 
 " Of sorts. The housekeeper at the cottage and my 
 man Saunders— the discreet Saunders who's with me here. 
 And a fortnight later came the appointment," goes on the 
 boy. " And — I was gladder than I cared to know at 
 getting away. She — Lessie — meant to play her part in 
 the ' Chiffon Girl ' up to the end of the Summer Season, 
 and then rest until . . ." He does not finish the sentence. 
 
 " I suppose she's fond of you — what ?" hazards Captain 
 Bingo. 
 
 " She cares a good deal, poor girl, and was frightfully 
 cut up at my going, and I provided for her thoroughly 
 well, of course, though she has heaps of money of her own. 
 And when I went to stay with my people for a night before 
 sailing, I'd have broken the — the truth to my mother 
 then, only something in her face corked me tight. From 
 the moment I took the plunge, the consciousness of what 
 a rotten ass I'd been had been growin' like a snowball.
 
 318 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 But on the voyage out " — a change comes into the weary, 
 level voice in which Beauvayse has told his story — " I 
 forgot to grouse, and by the time we'd lifttsd the Southern 
 Cross I wasn't so much regretting what I'd done as wonder- 
 ing whether I should ever shoot myself because I'd done 
 it ? Up in Rhodesia I forgot. The wonderful champagne 
 air, and the rousing hard work, the keen excitement and 
 the tingling expectation of things that were going to happen 
 by-and-by, that have been happening about us since 
 October, were like pleasant drugs that keep you from think- 
 ing. I only remembered now and then, when I saw Lessie's 
 photograph hanging on the wall of my quarters, and the 
 portrait she had set in the back of my sovereign-case, that 
 she and me were husband and wife." He gives a mirthless 
 laugh. " It makes so little impression on a fellow's mind 
 somehow, to mooch into a Registrar's office with a woman 
 and answer a question or two put by a fat, middle-aged 
 duffer who's smiling himself into creases, and give your 
 name ^nd say, ' No, there's no impediment,' and put on 
 the ring and pay a fee — I believe it was seven- and-six — 
 and take a blotchy certificate and walk out — married." 
 
 " It never does take long, by Gad !" agrees Captain 
 Bingo with fervour, " to do any of the things that can't 
 be undone again." 
 
 " Undone. . . !" Beauvayse sits up suddenly and turns 
 his miserable, beautiful, defiant eyes full on the largo, 
 perturbed face of his listener. " Wrynche, Wrjoiche ! 
 I've felt I'd gladly give my soul to be able to undo it, ever 
 since I first set eyes on L5mette IVIildare !" 
 
 Captain Bingo gives vent to another of his loud, dismal 
 whistles. Then he gets out of his chair, large, clumsy, 
 irate, and begins : 
 
 " I might have known it, with a chap like you. Another 
 woman's at the bottom of all your bellowing. You're 
 not a bit sick at having brought an outsider — a rank 
 outsider, by Gad ! — ^into the family stud ; you're not a 
 rap ashamed at havin' disappointed the old man's hopes 
 of you, for you know as well as I do that when you'd done 
 so win' your wild oats and had your fling, you'd have come 
 in when he rang the bell and married Lady Mary IMenzies. 
 You're not; a damned scrap sorry at having broken your
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 319 
 
 mother's heart, though you know in the bottom of your 
 soul that she scented this marriage in the ^ind, and 
 had an interview with the Chief, and went down on her 
 knees to him — her knees, by the Living Tiuker ! — to give 
 you the chance of breakin' off an undesirable connection !" 
 
 Beauvayse is out of his chair now. " Is that true — about 
 my mother ?" he demands, blazilng. 
 
 " I'm not in the habit of lyin'. Lord Beauvayse !" states 
 Captain Bingo hufl&iy. 
 
 " Don't fly off like a lunatic. Bingo, old man. How did 
 you find — that — out ?" 
 
 " Your cousin Townham told me." 
 
 " Damn my cousin Townham for a dried-up, wiggy, 
 pratin' little scandalmonger !" 
 
 Captain Bingo retorts irately : 
 
 " Damn him if you please ; he's no friend of mine. As 
 yours, what I ask you is, between man and man, how far 
 have you gone in this fresh affair ?" 
 
 Beauvayse drives his hands deep into the pockets of his 
 patched flannels, and says, adjusting a footstool with his 
 toe over a crack in the board- flooring, as though the 
 operation were a delicate one upon which much depended : 
 
 " I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that 
 I care for her as I never cared yet, and nevei- shall care, for 
 anyone else." 
 
 The faint grin da\\-n8 again on Captain Wrjmche's large, 
 kindh^ worried face. 
 
 " How many times have you met ?" 
 
 " Only four or five times in all," says Beauvayse. " I'd 
 set eyes on her twice before I was introduced. I couldn't 
 rest for thinking about her. She drew me and drew 
 me. . . . And when we did meet, there was no strangeness 
 between us, even from the first minute. She just seemed 
 waiting for what I had to own up. And when I spoke, 
 I — I seemed to bo only saying what I was meant to say. . . . 
 From the beginning of the world ! And you'd understand 
 better if you'd seen her near " 
 
 " I have seen her in the distance, walking with the 
 Mother-Superior of the Convent. A tall, slight girl. Looks 
 like a lady," says Bingo, " and has jolly hair." 
 
 " It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn suushine or
 
 320 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 a squirrel's back," raves the boy, " and she's beautiful, 
 VVr3niche. My God ! so beautiful that your heart stops 
 beating when you look into her face, and nearly Jumps out 
 of your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. 
 And I swear there's no other woman for me in Ufe or death!" 
 
 " I shouldn't be in such a cast-iron hurry to swear if 
 I were you," Captain Bingo replies Judicially. " And — 
 I've heard you say the same about the others " 
 
 " It was never true before. And she's a lady," pleads 
 Beauvayse hotly. " A lady in manners, and education, 
 and everything. The sort of girl one respects ; the sort 
 of girl one can talk to about one's mother and sisters " 
 
 " You'd talk about your mother to a Kafi&r washer- 
 woman," Captain Bingo blurts out. " Better you should, 
 than go hanging about a Convent-bred schoolgirl and telling 
 her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've got 
 a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins at 
 home ia England." 
 
 The footstool, impelled by a scientific lift of Beauvayse' a 
 toe, flies to the other end of Nixey's verandah. " Is one 
 mistake to ruin a man's life ? I'll get a divorce from my 
 wife. I will, by Heaven !" 
 
 " You told me not to maunder Just now," says Bingo, 
 with ponderous sarcasm. " Who is the maunderer, I'd 
 like to know 1 By the Living Tinker, I should have thought 
 that this siege life would have put iron into a man's blood 
 instead of — of Creme de Menthe. Are you takin' those 
 dashed morphia tabloids of Taggart's for bad-water colly- 
 wobbles again ? Yes ? I thought as much. Chuck 'em 
 to the aasvogels ; stick to your work — you can't complain 
 of its lackin' iuterest or variety — and let this girl alone. 
 She's a lady, and the adopted daughter of an old friend of 
 my wife's, and don't you forget it !" Biago's gills are red, 
 and he puffs and blows as large, excited, fleshy men are 
 wont to, " If you do you'll answer to me !" 
 
 " I tell you," Beauvayse cries, white-hot with passion, 
 and raising his voice incautiously, " that I mean to marry 
 her. I tell you again that I will div " 
 
 " Do you want the man in the street and every soul in 
 the hotel to know your private affairs V* demands Bingo. 
 ^' If so, go on shoutin'. As to your bein' a widower, the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 321 
 
 chances are on the other side. . . . Gueldersdorp ain't 
 exactly what you would call a healthy place just now. 
 And as to divorcin' your wife, how do you know she'll 
 ever be accommodatin' enough to give you reason ? And 
 if she did, do you think a girl brought up in a Catholic 
 Convent would marry you, even if you called to ask her 
 with a copy of the decree absolute pasted on your chest ? 
 Hang it, man, your mother's son you ought to know 
 better ! And — oh come, I say !" 
 
 For Beauvayse sits down astride an iron chair, and lays 
 his shirt-sleeved arms on the back-rail, and his golden, 
 crisply-waved head upon them. 
 
 " I — I love her so, Wrynche. And to stand by and see 
 another man cut in and win what I've lost by my own 
 rotten folly hurts so — so damnably." His mouth is 
 twisted with pain. 
 
 " Is there another chap who wants to cut in ?" Bingo 
 demands. 
 
 " You know one gets a bit clairvoyant when one is mad 
 about a woman," says Beauvayse, lifting his shamed wet 
 eyes and haggard young face from the pillow of his 
 folded arms. " Well, I'm dead certain that there is another 
 man who — who is as badly hit as me." 
 
 " Who is the other man ?" 
 
 " Saxham !" 
 
 " The Doctor ! Shouldn't have supposed a fellow of 
 that type would be susceptible now," says Bingo. " Gives 
 an uncompromisin' kind of impression, with his chin like 
 the bows of an Armoured Destroyer, and his eyebrows 
 like another chap's moustaches." 
 
 " And eyes like a pair of his own lancets undemeatli 
 'em. But he's a frightfully clever beast," says Beauvayse. 
 " And what he wants in looks he makes up in brains. And 
 — and if he knew there was a scratch against me, he might 
 force the running and win hands down. So hang on to 
 my secret by your eyelids, old fellow, and don't give me 
 reason to be sorry I told " 
 
 " You have my word, haven't you ? And, talking about 
 scratch entries," says Biaigo, inspired by a sudden rush of 
 recollection, " I ain't so sure that the Doctor — though, 
 mind you, this is between ourselves — is the sort of wooer 
 
 21
 
 322 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 a parent of strict notions would be likely to encourage. 
 Do you happen to have come across a goggle-eyed, potty 
 little Alderman Brooker ? — a Town Guardsman who runs a 
 general store in the Market Place — that's his place of busi- 
 ness with the boarding up, and the end butted in by a 
 Creusot shell that didn't burst, luckily for Brooker. Well, 
 this beast buttonholed me months ago, and began to spin 
 a cufifer about Saxham." 
 
 " What had the dirty little bounder got to say ?" asked 
 Beauvayse, stiifening in disgust, " about a man he isn't fit 
 to black the boots of ?" 
 
 " Nothing special nice. Said Saxham had lost his 
 London connection through getting involved in a mess 
 with a woman," says the big Dragoon. 
 
 " Don't we all get into messes of that kind ? What 
 more ?" demands Beauvayse. 
 
 " Said the Doctor had kicked over the traces pretty 
 badly here. Pitched me a tale of his — Brooker' s — having 
 often acted as the Mayor's Deputy on the Police Court 
 Bench, Brooker being an Alderman, and swore that he'd 
 liad Saxham up before him a dozen times at least in the last 
 three years, along with the Drunks and Disorderlies." 
 
 " It sounds like a hanged lie !" 
 
 " If I didn't say as much to Brooker," responds Captain 
 Bingo, " I shut him up Kke a box by referrin' politely to 
 glass houses, knowin' Brooker had been squiffy himself 
 one night on guard, and by remindin' him that men who 
 talk scandal of their superior officers under circumstances 
 like the present are liable to be Court-Martialled and given 
 beans. And as the Chief, and Saxham %vith him, dropped 
 on Brooker in the act of smuggling lush into the trenches 
 the other day, I fancy Brooker's teeth are fairly drawn. 
 Though he swore to me that there isn't a saloon-keeper or 
 a saloon-loafer in the town that doesn't know Saxham by 
 the nickname of the Dop Doctor." 
 
 " The man don't exist who objects to hear of the dis- 
 qualifications, mental and physical, of a fellow who he's 
 thought likely to enter the lists with him in the — in the 
 dispute for a woman's favour," says Beauvayse, with a 
 pleasant air of candour. " And though the story sounds 
 like a lie, as I've said, there's a possibility of its being the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 323 
 
 other thing. I'm sorry for Saxham — that goes without 
 sayin' — though I don't like hia overbearin' scientific side 
 and his sledge-hammer manner. But that a man with a 
 record of that kind should set his heart upon a girl like 
 Lynette IMildare is horrible, intolerable, Wrync he ; and while, 
 for the man's own sake, I should respect his beastly secret, 
 for her sake and in her interests, and if I consider that he's 
 putting himself forward at the risk of my — my prospects 
 and my hopes, I shall make use of what I know." 
 
 " You don't mean you'd spHt on the man !" splutters 
 Bingo ; " because, if you do " 
 
 " All's fair in Love and War," says Beauvayse, with a 
 ring of defiance in his pleasant, boyish voice, and a gleam 
 of triumph in his beautiful sleepy eyes. " And this is 
 Love in War. You've put a trump card in my hand against 
 Saxham, whether you meant to or not, and when the time 
 comes, I shall play it." 
 
 He gets up and lounges away. And Captain Bingo, 
 emitting another wailing whistle as ho slews round to stare 
 after the tall, retreating figure with the crisp, golden head, 
 is sure of nothing so certainly as that Beauvayse will play 
 that trump card. He is repentant for having broached 
 the Doctor's secret as he climbs up by the narrow iron stair 
 that leads out upon the roof of Nixey's Hotel, to relieve 
 his commanding ofl&cer at the binoculars. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 You are invited, the very Sunday upon which the pre- 
 viously-recorded conversation took place, to make the 
 acquaintance of the sprightly P. Blinders, Actiug- Secretary 
 to Commandant Selig Brounckers, Head Laager, Transvaal 
 Republic and Orange Free State's United Forces, Tweipans. 
 P. Blinders, a long-bodied, short-legged young Dutch 
 apothecary of the Free State, with short-sighted eyes be- 
 hind hugely magnifying spectacles, and many fiery pimples 
 bursting through the earthy crust of him, possibly testi- 
 fying to the presence of volcanic fires beneath, had acted 
 in the clerkly capacity to the Volksraad at Groenfontein. 
 When Government did not sit at the Raad Zaal, Blinders, 
 
 21—2
 
 324 THE BOP DOCTOR 
 
 as calmly as any ordinary being might have done, dispensed 
 Jalap, castor-oil, and pill-stick over the counter of his store. 
 These are the three heroic besoms employed by enlightened 
 and conscientious Boer housewives for sweeping out tbo 
 interiors of their famiUes. 
 
 Pill-stick is rhubarb-pill in the concrete. The thiifty 
 mother buys a foot or so, and pinches off a bolus of tho 
 required magnitude thrice in the year. No dosing is 
 allowed in between ; the members of the family get it when 
 the proper time comes round. To everyone his or her share, 
 not forgetting the baby. 
 
 When P. Blinders came away, he left his grandfather to 
 keep store, previously explaining to the aged man the differ- 
 ence between hydrocyanic acid and almond-essence for 
 cake-flavouring, powders of corrosive sublimate and 
 Gregory's. By a subtle transition the apothecary-clerk then 
 became the epistolary right-hand of General Broimckers, 
 whose wife, son, and grandson, with P. Blinders, made up 
 his personal staff. And round the Commandant's living- 
 waggon, where they harboured, Chaos reigned and Con- 
 fusion prevailed, and disputes in many tongues — English 
 severely excepted — made Babel. And, side by side with 
 the domestic, decent virtues weltered all the vices rampant 
 in the Cities of The Plain. 
 
 It goes without saying that the fresh site of Head Laager 
 had been cunningly chosen. It occupied a shield-shaped 
 plateau among low, flat-topped hills. The single street of 
 Tweipans bounded it upon the east, and a rocky ridge 
 upon the western side that might have been the vertebra 
 of some huge reptile of the Diluvian Period, protected 
 camp and village from British shell-practice. 
 
 Signs of this were not lacking. Waggons with shattered 
 timbers and fantastically twisted irons, broken carts, and 
 guns dismounted from their carriages, were to be seen, near 
 the dismembered or disembowellfid bodies of the beasts 
 that had drawn them. Dead horse or mule or bullock, de- 
 composing in the sun, seemed to have nothing of offence 
 for Republican noses. The yellow smear of lyddite was 
 everywhere, and, looking over the rock-rampart upon the 
 works below, you saw it like a blight, or yolk of egg spilt 
 upon a war-map. 
 
 „
 
 THE OOP DOCTOR 32fi 
 
 Family parties bivouacked in those bottle-shaped trenches 
 where each fighting unit had his separate box of provisions 
 sunk in the earth beside him, and his cooking-fire of chips 
 and dry dung, and ate and slept and smoked and shot as 
 he thought good. And in despite of such fires, the unre- 
 stricted space and pure hill - air notwithstanding, the 
 noisome ditches wherein the cribbed, cabined, and con- 
 fined defenders of Gueldersdorp alternately grilled and 
 soaked, were alleys of musk-roses, marvels of sanitary 
 purity compared with the works of the besiegers, and the 
 abominable camps, where, in the absence of a nocturnally 
 active Quartermaster-Sergeant, with his band of pioneers, 
 stench took you by the throat and nose, while filth absorbed 
 you over the ankles. 
 
 A whiff of peculiarly overpowering potency, reaching you, 
 made you turn away, and then the immense disorder of 
 the camp seized and held your eyes. 
 
 Arms, saddles, karosses, blankets, clothing, panniers of 
 provisions and boxes of ammunition, were piled about in 
 mountainous heaps. Of military organisation, discipline, 
 authority, law, as these are understood by civilised nations, 
 there was nothing whatever. Men in well-worn velveteens 
 and felt billycocks, hobnobbed with men in the gaudiest 
 uniforms ever evolved by the theatrical costumier. Green 
 velvet and gold lace, topped by cocked hats that had de- 
 spoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainly ridicu- 
 lous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments 
 belongun' to 'um at all at all ! and had come over from 
 the Distressful Country to make a bould bid for glory, with 
 the experience of warfare acquired while lurking behind 
 hedges with shot-guns, in waiting for persons in disfavour 
 with the Land League. 
 
 Patriarchs of eighty years and callow schoolboys of 
 sixteen fought side by side with the fine flower and the 
 lusty prime of Boer manhood, and many had their wives 
 and children with them under the Transvaal colours, and 
 not a few had brought their mothers. When an officer had 
 any order to give his men, he prefaced it with the Boer 
 equivalent for " Hi !" When the men had heard as much 
 as they considered necessary, they would say, " Come on ; 
 let's be going," and slouch away.
 
 326 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 P. Blinders, being a Dutchman of the Free State, minded 
 smells no more than a Transvaal Boer. Yet it sometimes 
 occurred to him as odd that the duties of a Secretary should 
 embrace the peeling of potatoes and the performance of 
 other duties of the domestic land. 
 
 He was squatting in the shadow of the Commandant's 
 living-waggon, polishing off the last of a panful, when 
 Van Busch came along. English being an unpopular 
 language, the big Johannesburger and the little Free Stater 
 exchanged greetings in the Taal. 
 
 " Ging oop, and leave your woman's work there, and walk 
 a piece with me," said Van Busch. " I have something to 
 say to you about my sister that marritd the German 
 drummer, and is stopping at Kink's Hotel." 
 
 You can see Van Busch taking off his broad-brimmed hat, 
 and knocking the sweat from the leather lining-band. He 
 was dressed in a black broadcloth tailed-coat, flannel shirt, 
 and cord breeches, wore heavy veldschoens, and carried a 
 Mauser rifle, as did everybody else, and had a long hunting- 
 knife as well as a heavy six-shooter in the wide canvas 
 pouch-belt, and a bandolier heavy with cartridges. Thus 
 panoplied, he accui-atelyresembled ten thousand other men. 
 
 But his dark, overfed, full-blooded, whiskered face was 
 not that of an agriculturist, and the strange light eyes, rust- 
 coloured like those of an adder, and, like the ophidian's, 
 set flush with the oddly-flattened edges of their orbits, were 
 at variance ^rith the high, rounded, benevolent temples 
 crowned with a thinning brake of curly hair. The rapacious 
 mouth, with the thick scarlet lips, belonged to the eyes. 
 
 He had put on his hat again, but he swept it off in a 
 flourishing bow, as Mevrouw Brounckers, in high -kilted 
 wincey, a man's hat of coarse straw perched on her weather- 
 beaten, sandy-grey head, came stumping do^Ti the waggon- 
 ladder, calling for her potatoes. What was that lazy 
 bedelaar of a Secretary about, and it nearly eleven of the 
 clock ? Didn't he know that her Commandant liked his 
 meals on time ? 
 
 Mevrouw received the politeness less graciously than the 
 potatoes. That man with the eyes and the greedy red 
 mouth was a woman-eater, she knew. Not for sheep and 
 bear would she, grandmother as she was, trust herself in
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 327 
 
 house or barn alone with a klant like that. But her Com- 
 mandant had uses for him, the twinkling-eyed, soft- 
 marmered, big rogue. She watched him walking off with 
 P. Blinders, for whom she entertained a distaste grounded 
 on the knowledge that no good ever came of these double- 
 tongued Free Staters, 
 
 And this one could write in the accursed shibboleth of 
 England as well as in the Taal. She shook her head as the 
 potatoes rattled into the big pot hanging over the fire. And 
 he walked out on Sundays with the young German woman 
 who was maid to the refugee-widow staying at Kink's 
 Hotel, and who never showed her nose inside the Gere- 
 vormed Kerk, the godless thing ! or went out except by 
 bat-light. Of that one the Mevrouw Brounckers had her 
 opinion also. And time would show who was right. 
 
 Meanwhile, Van Busch and P. Blinders, who had left 
 the dorp behind them, and strolled up the almost dry bed of 
 a sluit leading up amongst the hills, conversed, in Sabbath 
 security from English artOlery, and reassuring remote- 
 ness from Dutch eavesdroppers. And their theme was the 
 German drummer's refugee- widow who never went to kerk. 
 
 Van Busch, who found it helpful in his business never to 
 forget faces, had met her on the rail, months back, travelling 
 up first-class from Cape Town. Early in October it was, 
 while the road was still open. And men who kept their 
 eyes skinned went backwards and forwards and round and 
 about, getting the hang of things, and laying up accurate 
 mental notes, because the other kind were even more risky 
 to carry than the nuggets and raw dust that are hidden in 
 the padded linings of the gold-smugglers' heavy garments. 
 
 The lady, small, dark, stylishly-tailored, and with bright 
 black, bird-like eyes, was not a German drummer's widow 
 when Van Busch and she first met. She had chatted in 
 her native English with her square, bulky, sleek-looking 
 fellow-passenger, well-dressed in grey linen drill frock-coat 
 and trousers, with blazing diamonds studding the bosom 
 of his well-starched shirt and linking his cuffs. 
 
 The wide felt hat he politely removed as he came into 
 the carriage revealed to Lady Hannah a tall, expansive, 
 well-developed forehead. Below the line of the hat-rim 
 he was burned coffee-brown, like many another British
 
 328 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Colonial. The observant eye of " Gold Pen " took in the 
 man's vulgarly handsome features and curiously light 
 eyes, and twinkled at the flaring jewellery and the whiskers 
 of obsolete Dundreary pattern that stood out on either side 
 the jewelled one's full, smooth chin. His large, bold, over- 
 red mouth, with the curling outward flange to it, gave her 
 a disagreeable impression. One would have been grateful 
 for a beard that hid that mouth. 
 
 Lady Hannah found it curiously disquieting until her 
 fellow-traveller began to talk, in a thick, lisping voice, with 
 curiously candid and simple intonations. He presented 
 himself, and she accepted him at his own valuation, as a 
 British Johannesburger, and influential member of the 
 Chamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the 
 tall chimneys and white dumping-heaps of the Rand. 
 
 Van Busch called his efforts to be ingratiating " sucking 
 up to " the lady. He sucked up, thinking at first she might 
 be the wife of the English field officer who had been ordered 
 down from the north to take over the Gueldersdorp com- 
 mand. Then he found she was only the grey mare of an 
 officer of the StafE. . . . 
 
 She plied Van Busch in bis triple character of politician, 
 patriot, and mine-owner with questions. Thought she 
 was juicing a lot of information, whereas Van Busch was 
 the one who learned things. Kind of playing at being 
 newspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London 
 newspaper articles all the time. Had laid out to be a httle 
 tin imitation of Dora Corr, or, say, nickel-plated, with cast 
 chasLags. Was burning for an opening in the diplomatic 
 go-betweening line ; wanted to dabble in War Correspon- 
 dence, and so on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest 
 egg in the little lady's nest of ambitions was the desire to 
 do a flutter on the Secret Service lay. 
 
 She wanted to be what he termed a " slew," and she 
 would have called a spy. He fiddled to her dancing, and 
 wearied before she did. 
 
 " What Woman has done Woman may do !" was the 
 burden of her ceaseless song. And when she left the train 
 at Gueldersdorp, ^^ Au revoir " said she with a flash of her 
 bright black eyes, nodding to the big Colonial, who was so 
 excessively civil about handing out her dressing-cas« and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 329 
 
 travelling-bag, " Many thanks, and don't give me away 
 if you should happen to meet me in a different skin one of 
 these fine days, ^Ir. Van Busch." 
 
 " Sure, no ; not I," said the burly Johannesburger, with 
 an effusion of what looked like genuine admiration. " By 
 thunder ! when it comes to playing the risky game there's 
 no daring to beat a woman's. Give me a petticoat, say I, 
 for a partner every time." 
 
 " Bravo !" Her eyes snapped approvingly. She waved 
 a little hand towards a large pink officer of the British 
 Imperial Staff, who was looking into all the first-class com- 
 partments in search of a wife who had been vainly en- 
 treated to remain at Cape Town. " There's my husband, 
 who entertains the precisely opposite opinion. But he 
 hasn't your experience — only a theory worn thin by 
 generations of ancestors, all chivalrous Conservative 
 noodles, who kept their females in figurative cotton-wool. 
 Do let me introduce you. I'd simply love to have him 
 hear you talk." 
 
 Van Busch did not pant to make the acquaintance of the 
 Military Authorities. He thanked the impulsive Lady 
 Hannah, but made haste to climb back into the train. The 
 big pink officer recognised the object of his search, and 
 strode down the platform bellowing a welcome. As Lady 
 Hannah waved in reply, the Johannesburger made a long 
 arm from the window, and thrust a pencil-scrawled card 
 into the tiny gloved hand. 
 
 " S's'h ! Shove that away somewhere safe," said Van 
 Busch, in a thrillingly mysterious whisper ; " and, re- 
 member, any time you want to learn the lay of the land and 
 follow up the spoor of movements on the quiet, that Van 
 Busch, of the British South African Secret War-Intelligence- 
 Bureau, is the man to put you on. A line to that address, 
 care of W. Bough, will always get me. And with nerve 
 and josh like yours, and plenty of money for palm-oil . . ." 
 His greedy mouth made a grinning red gash in the smug 
 brown face with the fine whiskers of blackish-brown. His 
 cold eyes scintillated and twinkled unspeakable things at 
 the httle lady as the train carried him away. 
 
 Assuredly Van Busch understood women no less 
 thorouorbly than his near relative, Bough. He knew that
 
 330 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 yoii could bait for and catch the sex with things that were 
 not tangible. Men wanted to be made sure of money or 
 money's worth. And for the co-operation of P. Blinders 
 in the adroit little game by which the German drummer's 
 refugee-widow who stayed at Kink's Hotel, and only went 
 out after dark, had been relieved of a handsome sum, Van 
 Busch had had to part with nearly one-third of the swag. 
 No wonder he felt and talked Uke a robbed man. 
 
 " All very well to talk," said P. Blinders, scratching his 
 newest pimple, and looking with exaggerated moonish sim- 
 plicity at nobody in particular through his large round 
 magnif5dng spectacles. " But what could you have done 
 without me, once the little Englishwoman smelled the 
 porcupine in the barrel ? When she drove out to your 
 friend Bough's plaats at Haarsgrond in that spider, pre- 
 tending she was your sister that had married a Duitscher 
 drummer in Gueldersdorp, and buried him, and was afraid 
 to be shut up in the stad with all those lustful rooineks, 
 you thought it would be enough to tell her Staats Police 
 or Transvaal burghers were after her to make her creep 
 into a mousehole and pay you to keep her hid. And it did 
 work nicely — for a while. Then the Englishwoman got 
 angry — oh, very angry ! — and told you things that were not 
 nice. Either you should put her in the way of getting the 
 information she wanted, or good-bye to her dear brother, 
 Hendry k Van Busch, and hLs friend Bough." 
 
 " For a pinch of mealies I'd have let the httle shrew 
 go, by thunder !" said the affectionate relative. " But my 
 good heart stopped me. The country wasn't safe for a 
 couple of women to go looping about," he added. " And 
 one of them with two hundred pounds in Bank of England 
 notes stitched into the front of her stays. ..." 
 
 " Five hundred pounds," said the Secretary, with 
 pleasantly twinkling spectacles. Van Busch's stare was 
 admirable in its incredulity. 
 
 " Sure, no, brother ; not so much as that ?" 
 
 " Trudi told me," smirked P. Blinders. 
 
 " You and her seem to be great and thick together," said 
 Van Busch, with a flattering leer. The little ex-apothecary 
 placed his hand upon his chest, and said, with a gleam of 
 tenderness lighting up his spectacles :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 331 
 
 " I have sighed, and she has smiled." He went on, "If 
 your friend Bough had been brave enough to try and take 
 away that wad of banknotes from the little English- 
 woman, he would have met trouble. For in a pocket of her 
 gown she carries a revolver, and sleeps with it under her 
 pillow by night ; that is another thing that Trudi has told 
 me." He kissed his fiuQgers, and waved them in the direc- 
 tion of Kink's Hotel. " She is a lovely maiden !" He blew 
 his nose without the assistance of a pocket-handkerchief, 
 and continued : 
 
 " Of course, Bough might have put some stuff in the 
 Englishwoman's coffee that would have made her sleep 
 while he stole that money, or he might even have killed her 
 quietly, and buried her on the farm. But a man who does 
 that is not so clever and so wise as the man who makes a 
 plan that gets the money and keeps friends all round, and 
 makes everybody happy — is he, now ? And that man is 
 me, and that plan was mine. From P. Blinders you 
 have genuine information to sell the Englishwoman, and 
 when she has bought it, paying well for it, and written it 
 ail down in her despatches to the Commandant at Guelders- 
 dorp, she hands the letters back to you to be smuggled 
 through the lines, and pays through the nose for that also. 
 And who shall say she is cheated ? For the letters do get 
 through " — the pimply countenance of P. Blinders was 
 quite immobile, but the eyes behind the great spectacles 
 twirled and twinkled with infinite meaning — " a week or 
 so after date, perhaps, but what is that ? Nothing — 
 nothing at all." 
 
 " Nothing," agreed Van Busch. The two men smiled 
 pleasantly in each other's faces for a minute more. Then 
 said Van Busch, with a loud sigh : 
 
 " But what I have to tell you now is something. The 
 Englishwoman has got no more money. Ask Trudi, if you 
 think I lie. And, of course, the plan was a good plan, 
 and you were a smart fellow to hit on it ; but now the two 
 hundred poimds is gone- 
 
 (( 
 
 Three hundred remain to get." P. Blinders briskly 
 held up five stumpy red fingers and tucked down the thumb 
 and Uttle finger, leaving a trio of mute witnesses to the cor- 
 rectness of his arithmetic.
 
 332 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " No more remains to get. The cow has run dry." 
 
 The brow of P. Blinders grew scarlet as a stormy sunrise. 
 
 " Hoe ? What is this I hear 1" he demanded with 
 indignation. " Nothing left, and I have not had but a 
 hundred and fifty out of the five hundred. There has 
 been dishonesty somewhere. There have been tricks, 
 unbefitting the dealings of scrupulous Christian men. 
 Foei, foei !" 
 
 Van Busch stuck his thumbs into his belt and smiled 
 amiably down into the indignant eyes behind the spectacles. 
 Then he said, Tv-ith his most candid look and simplest 
 lisp : 
 
 " No tricks, brother ; all fair and above-board. Ask the 
 Commandant whether Van Busch is square or not ? He 
 knows that the hundred and fifty was paid you honestly 
 on his account, and that I kept but fifty for myself. And 
 you're not the chap to bilk him of his due. Sure no, 
 you'll never do that, never ! Go and see him now, and settle 
 up. I had a talk with young Schenk Eybel this morning, 
 and he says the answer to the screeve you wrote to the 
 Officer in Command at Gueldersdorp — to patch up an 
 exchange of the Englishwoman for that slim kerel of a 
 Boer's son they got their claws on at the beginning of the 
 siege — has come in under the white flag this morning. 
 Schenk Eybel has a little plan he can't put through without 
 Walt Slabberts, he says. Loop, brother. You'll find the 
 old man on his grey pony near the Field Hospital." 
 
 The eyes behind the spectacles whirled in terror. The 
 ex -apothecary faltered : 
 
 " What — ^what is this you say ? The money paid me on 
 the Commandant's account — ^when it was to be a secret 
 between us. . . . Foei, foei ! This is unfair. And suppose 
 I have spent it, how shall I replace it ? Do you wish to 
 ruin an honest man ?" 
 
 Van Busch grinned, and P. Blinders gave up hopelessly. 
 At least, it seemed so, for he turned sharp round, and 
 trotted off with sorrowfully-drooping black coat-tails, 
 in search of the meek grey pony and the terrible old man. 
 
 But the front view of the Secretary displayed a counten- 
 ance whose pimples radiated satisfaction, and spectacles 
 that woro r.|:<:ht with joy. Much — very much — would
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR r.)3 
 
 P. Blinders have liked to have kept that hundred and fifty, 
 but his fear had proved greater than his desire. 
 
 He had paid every tikkie of the money faithfully to 
 Brounckers, and his hands were metaphorically clean, 
 and his neck comfortably safe. He was the poorer by a 
 hundred and fifty pounds, but the richer in wisdom and 
 experience ; and — he chuckled at the thought of this — 
 in the joy of knowing himself, in postscripts appended to 
 those despatches of the Englishwoman's, to have poked sly 
 sarcasm at the British Lion. Whose spiny tail P. Blinders 
 imagined to be lashing, even then, at the prick of the goad. 
 
 For another thing, very pleasant to think of, he had 
 successfully pitted the cunning behind his giant spectacles 
 against the superior villainy of Mr. Van Busch of Johannes- 
 burg. 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 The German drummer's refugee-widow, who lived behind 
 two green-shuttered, blinded windows at Kink's Hotel, 
 and was a sister of that good Boer ]\Tijnheer Hendryk Van 
 Busch — " a sister indeed !" snorted Mevrouw Kink ; and 
 never went to the kerk-praying, or put her nose out of 
 doors at all before dark, and had a maid who did her hair, 
 and wore her own in waves, the impudent wench ! and 
 whose portmanteau, and bag, and boots, and shoes, and 
 skirt-bands, had fashionable London tradesmen's labels 
 inside them, was the only person in the village of Tweipans 
 and for a mile round it — good Nederlands measure — who 
 did not know that she was an English prisoner-of-war. 
 
 Her foray in quest of Secret Information had had its 
 hardships, as its alarms and excursions, but she plumed her- 
 self on having accomplished something of what she had set 
 out to do. Van Busch, not counting a week of days when 
 she had found reason to suspect his entire good faith, had 
 behaved like a staunch Johannesburger of British blood 
 and Imperial sympathies. But his valuable services had 
 been rendered for so much more than nothing that Lady 
 Hannah found herself in the condition her Bingo was wont 
 to describe as " stony." She had sent for Van Busch 
 to tell him that the position was untenable. She would
 
 334 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 evacuate it, when he could manage to get hold of Nixey's 
 mouse- coloured trotter and the spider, left in the care of 
 Van Busch's good friend Bough, at Haargrond Plaats. 
 
 A dash for freedom then. In imagination she could hear 
 the mouse-coloured trotter's hoofs rattling over the stony 
 ground, and the crack, crack of the sentries' Mausers, 
 followed by a hail of bullets from the trenches. . . . She 
 could see the headlines of the latest newspaper sensation, 
 flaming on the greenish gloom of the room with the closed 
 shutters and drawn- down blinds : 
 
 " STmRENO Story from the Seat of Hosttuties : 
 Lady War-Correspondent runs the Gauntlet of 
 Boer Rifles." 
 
 " Speshul. Hextry Speshul !" 
 
 * ♦ ♦ ♦ » 
 Perhaps she would be mortally wounded by the time she 
 
 got through the lines, so as to hang in bleeding festoons 
 over the splashboard, and sink into the arms of the husband 
 loved better than aught save Glory, gasping, as her heroic 
 spirit fled 
 
 * * * -^ *. 
 
 " Did the gracious lady say she would have her boots 
 on ?" 
 
 Trudi got up from the flattest and most uncomfortable 
 of the two forbidding beds Kink's principal guest-chamber 
 boasted, and ran her unoccupied needles through her 
 interminable knitting, a thick white cotton sofa-cover or 
 counterpane of irritating pattern — and stood over against 
 her employer in an attitude of sulky submission. She 
 was a square-shouldered, sturdily- built young woman of 
 twenty-five, with round eyes of pinky-blue garnished with 
 white eyelashes, no eyebrows, and a superb and aggressively- 
 brilliantined head of fair hair elaborately dressed, waved, 
 and curled. 
 
 The hair was all attached to Trudi's scalp. Lady 
 Hannah had lain in bed morning after morning, for weary 
 weeks, and watched her " doing it," and wondered that 
 any young feminine creature with such arms, such skin, 
 and such hair should be so utterly unattractive. But 
 she had lived all these weeks in this one room with Trudi, 
 had languished under her handmaid's lack of intelligence,
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 335 
 
 had seen her eat, wielding her knife with marvellous 
 dexterity, and, wakeful, tossed the while she snored. 
 
 And every morning, after MevrouM' Kank had brought in 
 coffee, snorting whenever Trudi's hair caught her virtuous 
 eye, or whenever the German drummer's widow struck her 
 as being more foreign of manners and appearance than 
 usual, Lady Hannah would call for her boots, attire herself 
 as for a promenade outdoors, lift the comer of a blind, 
 steal a glance at the seething, stenching single street of 
 Tv^eipans between the slats of the green shutters, and — 
 unpin her veil and take off her hat without a word. . . . 
 
 By eleven o'clock at night the polyglot confusion of 
 tongues would have ceased, the gaudily-uniformed swag- 
 gerers, the velveteen-coated, wide-awaked loafers, the filthy 
 tatterdemaUons of all nations and their womankind would 
 have turned in. Then Lady Hannah, attended by the 
 unwilling Trudi, was accustomed to venture out for what 
 she called, with some exaggeration, " A whiff of fresh air." 
 
 Except for the gnawing, prowling dogs, the pickets at 
 either end of it, and the sentries posted at longish intervals 
 all down its length, the street of new brick and tin, and old 
 wooden houses that made Tweipans, belonged to Lady 
 Hannah then. Accompanied by Trudi, whose quality of 
 being what I have lieard called " deaf- nosed " with regard to 
 noisy smells, she arrived at the pitch of envying, she would 
 stumble up and down amongst the rubbish, or ^^■ade through 
 the slush if it had been wet, and stop at favourable points 
 to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blue glow- 
 worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether 
 anj'body there was thinking of her under the white stars 
 or the drifting scud ? . . . 
 
 But what was Trudi saying ? 
 
 " The gracious one cannot have her boots." 
 
 " Why not ?" asked Lady Hannah, with languid in- 
 terest. Trudi struck the blow. 
 
 " Because she has none." 
 
 " No boots ? Well, then, the walking-shoes." 
 
 Trudi smiled all over her largo face. This placidity 
 should not long endure. 
 
 " The gracious one has no shoes either. Boots and 
 shoes — all have been taken away. Nothing remains except
 
 336 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the quilted bedroom slippers the gracious one is wearing. 
 And it is impossible to walk out in bedroom slippers." 
 
 " I suppose it is." Lady Hannah yawned. " Well, 
 suppose you go and look for the boots. They may have been 
 
 carried away by mistake, hke " She wondered afresh 
 
 what could have become of that transformation coiffure ? 
 
 " There is no mistake." Trudi announced. " And— the 
 gracious lady forgot her little gun beneath her pillow this 
 morning. That also is missing," volunteered Trudi, who 
 had had her instructions and scrupulously acted up to them. 
 
 " My revolver has been stolen ?" Lady Hannah sprang 
 from her chair, made rapid search, and was convinced. 
 The Browning revolver had been certainly spirited away. 
 
 Red patches burned in her thin little face, and her 
 round black eyes regained some of their lost brightness. 
 Nothing like a spice of excitement for bringing you up to 
 the mark. Just now she had felt positively mouldy, and 
 here she was, herself again. 
 
 " Nobody came into the room in the night. I sleep 
 with the key round my neck, and if they had opened the 
 door with another, I should have awakened on the instant. 
 Nobody has been in the room to-day except the Frau 
 Kink " — ^you will remember that a German drummer's 
 widow would naturally converse in her defunct spouse's 
 native language — " the Frau Kink, with the cofifee-tray. 
 She did not come near the bed. . . ." The suddenness and 
 force of the suspicion that shot up in Lady Hannah's 
 mind lifted her up out of her chair, and set her upon her 
 feet. " It must have been you. Was it you ?" 
 
 She looked hard at Trudi, and Trudi sank upon her bed 
 and dissolved in noisy weeping. 
 
 " Ach, the wickedness !" she moaned. " To suspect of 
 such shamelessness a poor young maiden brought up in 
 honesty. . . . Ach, ach !" 
 
 But Lady Hannah went on : 
 
 " Yesterday morning, when you were so long in coming 
 back with hot water, and I opened the door and looked out 
 into the passage, I saw you whispering with a little stumpy, 
 pimply man, in a long-tailed black coat and large spec- 
 tacles. Who is he, and of what were you talking ?" 
 
 Trudi did not at all regard the verbal sketch of P. Blinders
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 337 
 
 as a correct one, but though her love was bluid to his 
 pimples and ignored his stumpiness, she could not deny the 
 spectacles, which were to her as peepholes affording visions 
 of a blissful married future. 
 
 " He is a Herr who brought me news from my Mutti 
 at home in Germany. She is sick, and my father also, and 
 all my little brothers and sisters are sick too," gulped Trudi, 
 sobbing and wallowing and rasping her flushed features 
 against the knobbly counterpane of the most uncomfort- 
 able of the two beds, " because they hear that I am in this 
 place, and they so greatly fear that I will be dead." 
 
 " You aren't dead yet. And you told me when I engaged 
 you that you were an orphan brought up by an aunt." 
 
 " Pay me my vage," demanded Trudi, lifting a defiant 
 and perfectly dry countenance, and launching the utterance 
 in the forbidden English language, " and I vill now go. 
 I vish not to stop here longer." 
 
 " Very well, but where are you going ?" 
 
 " That," remarked Trudi, tossing her elaborately- 
 diessed head and relapsing into her native language, 
 " has nothing to do with the gracious lady." 
 
 There was insolent triumph and unveiled spite in the 
 large face attached to the elaborate coiffure. The gracious 
 lady, realising that Trudi formed the one link between 
 herself and the rough, strange, suspicious, unfriendly male 
 world outside, pocketed her pride to temporise. Let Trudi 
 remain as companion and attendant to the German refugee- 
 widow yet another week, and the month's due of wages, 
 already trebled in virtue of a service involving risk, should 
 be substantially increased. . . . But Trudi only snorted 
 and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself con- 
 fronting not only a rat determined upon abandoning a 
 sinking ship, but malignantly inclined to hasten the vessel's 
 foundering. 
 
 What was to be done ? It is quite possible to be brave, 
 adventurous, and daring without a revolver, its absence may 
 even impart a faint sense of relief to one, as being no longer 
 under the necessity of shooting somebody with it at a pinch, 
 but without boots or shoes, and a Trudi to put them on, 
 Lady Hannah found herself at a nonplus. To conceal the 
 fact from the rejoicing Trudi, she moved to the window 
 
 2'^
 
 338 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and drew the blind aside, and was instantly confronted 
 with a row of round, staring eyes, the nose belonging to 
 each pair being flattened eagerly against the glass, 
 
 " Oh !" exclaimed Lady Hannah, dropping the blind in 
 consternation at this manifestation of public interest. 
 A snorting chuckle from the malignant Trudi fanned the 
 little lady's waning courage into flame. She crossed the 
 room and turned the door-handle. 
 
 The door was locked from the outside, the key having 
 been removed to accommodate the eye of Mevrouw Kink, 
 who reluctantly removed it to unlock the door, and announce 
 that Myjnheer Van Busch had asked to see his sister, 
 as she ushered the '/isitor in. 
 
 Sisters are not sensitive as a rule to subtle alterations in 
 the regard of their brothers, but the German drummer's 
 refugee-widow could not but read in the face and de- 
 meanour of her relative a perceptible diminution of interest 
 in a woman w ho had no more money. . . . He kept on his 
 broad-brimmed bat and pulled at his bushy whiskers as 
 he exchanged a palpable wink with Trudi, who was accus- 
 tomed, when the gracious lady's brother called, to retire 
 with her knitting behind the shiny American cloth-covered 
 screen that coyly shielded the washstand from a visitor's 
 observation. 
 
 Those flat, light eyes of the visitor's twinkled oddly as 
 Lady Hannah's indignant whisper told of the missing 
 footgear and the vanished revolver, and her conviction 
 that the screened knitter was the active agent in their 
 spiriting away. 
 
 " You believe the girl's slewed on you, eh, and that things 
 are going to pan out rough ? Well, sure, that's a pity !" 
 The big man lolled against the deal table, covered with a 
 cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours, trying to the 
 complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of Mevrouw 
 Kink, the red, wliite, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, 
 with the green staff-line carried all round as an ornamental 
 border. " And I'd not wonder but you were right." He 
 stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with his hatted 
 head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth : 
 " So, now, and what did you think to do ?" 
 
 Lady Hannah controlled an impulse to knock off the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 339 
 
 big man*3 broad-brimmed felt, and even smiled back in the 
 grinning face. . . . One very little lady can hold a great 
 deal of anger and resentment without spilling any over, 
 if she is thoroughly convinced that it would be imprudent 
 as well as useless to display either. 
 
 " As you gather, I intend returning to Gueldersdorp 
 to-morrow at latest. I shall not take my maid, as she 
 wishes for her own reasons to remain behind. Please 
 have the mare and spider here by mid-day coffee-time. We 
 can drive north towards Haargrond and double back 
 when we're beyond the lines, as the coursed hare would do." 
 
 Van Busch's red mouth gleamed, curved back from his 
 tobacco- stained teeth. He said with meaning : 
 
 " Boers shoot hares — not run them." 
 
 " They may shoot or not shoot," proclaimed Lady 
 Hannah. " I start to-morrow." 
 
 " Without boots or shoes ?" asked the red-edged, yellow, 
 fanged smile. 
 
 " Barefoot if I must," she answered, with all the more 
 spirit that she felt like the hare struggling in a wire. 
 " Please send for the mare and the trap. I leave this place 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " The mare and the spider have been commandeered 
 for the use of the United Republics," said Van Busch. 
 As the angry colour flamed up in Lady Hannah's small, 
 pale cheeks, he added, shrugging his shoulders and spreading 
 his hands : " Bough did his best to save them for you, no 
 bounce ! But could one man do anything against so 
 many ? Sure no, nothing at all !" 
 
 She lost patience, and stamped her little foot in its 
 quilted satin slipper. 
 
 " Do you suppose T haven't guessed by this time that 
 Bough the Africander and Van Busch the British-Johan- 
 nesburger are one Boer when it suits them both ?" 
 
 His hand, copper-brown as his face, and with the marks 
 of old tattooing obliterated by an aci(i burn. Jerked as he 
 raised it to stroke and feel his ^vhisker8. Something else 
 upon the hand, in the sharpened state of all her senses, 
 struck out a spark of old association, and recalled a najne 
 once known. She went on. 
 
 " How many men are you, Mr. Van Busch or Bough ? 
 
 22—2
 
 340 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 You provoke the question when I see you wearing the 
 Mildare crest and coat-of-arms." 
 
 He had turned the deeply -engraved sard with his brown 
 thumb and clenched his fist upon it, but as swiftly changed 
 his mind, and took off the ring and handed it to her. 
 
 " I had this ring off Bough, that's a real Uve man, and 
 a thundering good pal of mine, for all your funning. The 
 chap it belonged to died at a farm Bough owned once. 
 Somewhere in Natal it might have been. And the bloke 
 who died there was a big bug in England, Bough always 
 thought. But he came tramping, and hauled up with 
 hardly duds to his back or leather to his feet. Sick, too, 
 and coughing like a sheep with the rinderpest. Bough 
 was kind to him, but he got worse and worse. One night 
 Bough was sitting up with him reading the Bible, when he 
 made signs. ' Take this ring off of my finger and keep it,' 
 says he. ' I've got nothing else to give you, but I reckon 
 the Almighty' 11 foot your bill, for you're a first-class 
 Christian, if ever there was one.* Then he went in, and 
 Bough buried him in regular fancy style " 
 
 " And sent the girl to the nuns at Gueldersdorp, or was 
 she there already ?" 
 
 Van Busch was in the act of taking back the sardonyx 
 signet-ring. His hand Jerked again, so sharply that the 
 ring was jerked into the air, fell to the floor, and rolled 
 under the table. He stooped and reached for it, and asked, 
 with his face hidden by the pa,triotic tablecloth : 
 
 " What girl do you mean ?" 
 
 His dark iace was purple- brown with the exertion of 
 stooping as he rose up. Lady Hannah answered : 
 
 " The Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way 
 at Gueldersdorp has an orphan ward, a singularly lovely 
 girl of nineteen or twenty, whose surname is Mildare. 
 And it struck me Just now — I don't know why now, and 
 never before — that she might be " 
 
 " Bough never said nothing to me about any girl. What 
 like is this one ?" Van Busch twisted the ring about his 
 little finger, and spoke with a more sluggish lisp and slurring 
 of the consonants than even was usual with him. " Is 
 she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, 
 and red cheeks and thick ankles ?"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 341 
 
 Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience 
 of Van Busch, had not yet mastered his method of eliciting 
 information. 
 
 " Miss Mildare is absolutely the opposite of your descrip- 
 tion," she declared. " She is quite tall, and very slight 
 and pale, with slender hands and feet, and reddish-bronze 
 hair, and eyes the colour of yellow topaz or old honey, 
 with wonderful black lashes. ... I have never seen any- 
 thing to compare " She stopped. 
 
 What strange eyes the man had, full of lines radiating 
 from the pin-point pupils, scintillating like a snake's. . . . 
 He said, in his thick, lisping way : 
 
 " A beauty, eh ? And how long might the nuns have 
 had her ?" 
 
 " The Mayor's wife told me she has been under the 
 care of the Convent ladies for some seven years." 
 
 His brown full face looked solid, and his eyes veiled 
 themselves behind a glassy film. He was thinking, as he 
 said : 
 
 " And her name is Mildare, eh ? And you know her 1" 
 
 " I have met her once. She was introduced to me as 
 Miss Lynette Mildare. But just now I find my own affairs 
 unpleasantly absorbing. I am suspected in this place, 
 Mr. Van Busch, and if not actually a prisoner, am certainly 
 under restraint. For how much money down will you 
 undertake to extricate me from this position, and convey 
 me back to Guelder sdorp ?" 
 
 He shook his head, and for once the scent of gain did not 
 rouse his predatory appetite. He was wondering how it 
 should never have occurred to him before that the scared 
 little white-faced tiling might have fallen into kindly hands, 
 and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of ? 
 He was puzzled to account for her remembering the name 
 that had belonged to the man whose grave was at the foot 
 of the Little Kopje. He was conscious of an itching curiosity 
 to find out for his friend Bough whether it really was the 
 Kid or no ? What was the little fool of a woman saying 
 in her shrill voice ? 
 
 " It would be burning your boats, I am quite aware. 
 
 But if it pays to burn them " she suggested, with her 
 
 black eyes probing vainly in the shallow ones.
 
 342 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 He roused himself. 
 
 " A thousand pounds, Enghsh. You've not the money 
 here ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or a cheque ?" 
 
 Her laugh jangled contemptuously. 
 
 " Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books — upon Secret 
 Service ?" 
 
 " I am no Boer, but aji honest, square-dealing Britisher. 
 How often have I to tell you that ? Do you suppose you 
 are a prisoner here because I slewed on you ? Wrong, by 
 God ! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you would 
 cut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, 
 that's what any man would have done." His tone of 
 injury was excellently feigned, and his lisp was simplicity 
 itself. " And to call me a dirty spy, when I got you 
 firHt-hand information, and ran your letters through to 
 Gueldersdorp, at the risk of my blooming neck. . . . Well, 
 you'll be ashamed when you get back there and isee those 
 letters, that's what you will, sure !" 
 
 " The letters got through — ^yes. But did they get through 
 in time to be of use ?" 
 
 The httle she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his 
 whiskers and scraped hLs foot upon the floor, and said in 
 his blandest lisp : 
 
 " They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book 
 and swear it, if you want me." 
 
 How deal with a knave hke this, who popped in and out 
 of holes hke a rabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a 
 snake ? Lady Hannah knew an immense yearning for the 
 absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity, man 
 of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that 
 primitive weapon of punishment, the doubled human fist. 
 
 " In useful time ? Useful Gueldersdorp time or useful 
 Tweipans time ? That is what I want to get at." 
 
 " Oh, hell ! how do I know ?" He had turned sulky and 
 scowling, but her blood was fairly up. 
 
 " I know that you have successfully swindled me out of 
 five hundred pounds, I know that when I met you on the 
 train four months back you shaped your plans and baited 
 a trap "
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 343 
 
 " To catch a silly woman." His scarlet lips rolled back 
 from his tobacco-stained teeth. His jeering eyes were in- 
 tolerable. " Ay, maybe I did. And what's to say now ?" 
 
 " I say you are a blackguard, Mr. Bough Van Busch !" 
 
 The dark face with the light eyes underwent a murderous 
 change. He glanced over his shoulders right and left, and 
 took a step towards her, carrying out the movement sud- 
 denly, as a tarantula darts upon its prey. Before the thick 
 brown muscular fingers had choked the scream that rose 
 in her throat, the key crashed in the lock, and the door was 
 violently kicked open, admitting . . . 
 
 No portrait is required of that burly, bald-browed, sharp- 
 eyed, grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed 
 and sun-cracked countenance, implacable under the slouch- 
 hat Avith the orange- leather band. We know the old green 
 overcoat, and coarse cordviroy breeches, and roughly tanned 
 leather boots, with heavy, old-fashioned spurs, to have been 
 the husk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, 
 twinned with a quiet family-man of bucolic tastes and patri- 
 archal habits. 
 
 Van Busch, broader by inches and taller by half a head, 
 dwindled, seen in juxtaposition with this man of the iron 
 will and the leader's temperament, to a flabby, dwarfish, 
 and petty being. The fierce grey eyes took him in, and 
 read him, and dropped him, and fastened on the little 
 EngUshwoman, as the great boots tramped heavily across 
 the floor, and the great voice roared, speaking in the Taal : 
 
 " Pull up that blind ! Voor den donder ! Shall wo be 
 mice, that sit and squeak in the dark ?" 
 
 Down came the Mevronw Ivink's square of glazed yellow 
 calico, roller, cord, and all, at the impatient wrench of the 
 big, heavy hand. . . . The window was blocked with heavy 
 bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces ; the street 
 was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at 
 the little EngUshwoman who was a prisoner, and the big 
 man who ruled them by Fear. His angry grey eyes blazed 
 at the gapers, and the crowd suiged back a foot or two. 
 Then the fierce eyes darted back at pale Lady Hannah, and 
 the roaring voice began again : 
 
 " You who came here in difiguiae, with a false story and 
 false hair "
 
 344 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lady Hannah jumped in her bedroom slippers, and 
 crimsoned to her natural coiffure, as the missing transforma- 
 tion, appallingly out of wave, was plucked from the baggy 
 pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandished before 
 her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual im- 
 pulse to shriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a con- 
 science-stricken creature in that great man's watchful eyes. 
 His big voice shook her and shook the room as he thundered : 
 
 *' Woman, you are no widow of a Duitscher drummer, but 
 the VTOuw of a field-comet of the Army of Groot Brittanje. 
 He holds a graafschap in Engeland " — a mistake on the 
 part of the General's informant — " and is hand-in-glove 
 with the Colonel Commandant at Gueldersdorp." Not so 
 far from the truth ! thought Lady Hannah. " Would he 
 spy out the land, let him come himself next time. Boers 
 hide not behind their wives' petticoats when there is such 
 business to be done ! " 
 
 In defence of blameless Bingo the hysterical little woman 
 found voice to say : 
 
 " He — didn't know I was coming." 
 
 " What says she ?" 
 
 Before Van Busch could bestir himself to interpret, 
 Lady Hannah had repeated her words in faulty Dutch. 
 
 " So ! Engelsch mevrouws disobey their husbands, it 
 seems ?" Were the fierce, bloodshot grey eyes really 
 capable of a twinkle ? " We Boers have a cure for that. 
 Green reim, well laid on, after the third caution, teaches 
 our wives to fib and deceive no more." 
 
 " You're wrong, sir." 
 
 " Wrong, do you say ? Hoe ?" 
 
 " What the green reim does teach them," explained Lady 
 Hannah, secretly aghast at her own temerity, " is, not to 
 be found out next time." 
 
 He gave a wooden chuckle, but his regard was as menac- 
 ing and his voice as gruff as ever. 
 
 " I make no mouth-play with words. I talk in men and 
 guns, and there are half a dozen among the Engelsch, 
 niet mier, that know how to talk back. There are one or 
 two others that are duyvels, and not men. And the wors* 
 duyvel of all " — he waved the big hand westward — " ia 
 he over there at Gueldersdorp."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 345 
 
 She mentally registered the compliment. 
 
 " You are a woman who writes for the Engelsch news- 
 papers that are full of shameless tales about the Boers." 
 He spat copiously upon the j9oor, and the big voice became 
 a bellow. " Lies, lies ! I have had them read to me, and 
 the people who make them should be shot. Hear you 
 now. You shall write to them and say : * SeUg Brounckers 
 is a merciful man and a just. He is not as zwart as he 
 is painted. He caught me mousing round his hoofd laager 
 at Tweipans — and what does he do ? ' " The pause was 
 impressive. Then the roaring voice resumed : 
 
 " ' He sends me marching down to the gaol at Groenfon- 
 tein, that is packed with dirty white and dirty coloured 
 schelms until there is not room for one more " 
 
 He named the homely parasite hymned by Bums . . . 
 
 — " ' Or he packs me up to Oom Paul at Pretoria, 
 chained to the waggon-tail like the others.' . . ." 
 
 Lady Hannah wondered, while the stuffy room spun 
 round her, who the others were. 
 
 " Geen, I will tell you what he does." He pitched the crum- 
 pled transformation contemptuously into the corner. " He 
 writes to the Engelsch Commandant at Gueldersdorp and 
 says : ' I have here a silly female thing that is no use to me. 
 Take her you, and give me in exchange a man of mine.' ..." 
 
 " And he . . . what does . . .1" She could get out 
 nothing more. 
 
 " He agrees. Mevrouw Vrynks " — " Dutch for Wrynche," 
 thought Lady Hannah dizzily — " you will now pay the 
 Mevrouw Kink what is owing for her amiable entertainment, 
 and you will start for Gueldersdorp in ten minutes' time." 
 
 The roaring voice of the stem, fierce-eyed man, sounded 
 lovelier than the swan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, 
 with her Joyful heart leaping at the gates of utterance : 
 
 " The — mare and spider. You will be so kind as to 
 return them ?" 
 
 His face became as a human countenance rudely carved 
 in seasoned oak. 
 
 " I know nothing of a mare and spider," blared the great 
 voice. 
 
 She looked him straight between the hot fierce eyes, and 
 spoke out pluckily.
 
 348 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " They are not my property. I hired the trap and the 
 trotter from a hotel-keeper at Gueldersdorp. And Mr. 
 Van Busch tells me that they have recently been com- 
 mandeered for the service of the United Forces of the 
 Transvaal and Orange Free State." 
 
 " So ! . . . Well, that is what I would have done, if 
 they were worth having. Where is Van Busch 1" The 
 angry glance pounced on that patriot in the remote comer 
 to which he had modestly retired. Van Busch cringed 
 forwards, hat in hand, explaining : 
 
 " The English Mevrouw mistakes, Myjnheer. Sure, now, 
 I never told her anything of that kind. How could I, when 
 there was no mare and no spider ? Didn't I drive her and the 
 other woman over from Haargrond, with Bough's Uttle beast 
 pulling in a cart of my own ? Call the other woxnan, and 
 she will tell you it was as I say." 
 
 Lady Hannah, supremely disdainful, turned her back 
 upon the liar. . . . 
 
 " So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld 
 waggon ?" demanded the bullying voice. 
 
 " I'm willing to go back in anything that isn't a coffin," 
 she declared. 
 
 He gave the wooden chuckle, swung about and trampled 
 to the door, calling to Van Busch in the tone of a dog's 
 master : 
 
 " Here, you . . . !" 
 
 Van Busch followed, wriggling as obsequiously as the 
 dog with a stolen mutton-chop upon his conscience. 
 The door slammed, the key turned roughly in the lock. 
 Lady Hannah, obhvious of the absence of outdoor foot- 
 wear, flew joyously to cram a few belongings into her 
 travelling-bag and resume her discarded hat. 
 
 Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted 
 away upon his appearance. General SeUg Brounckers was 
 saying to Van Busch : 
 
 "It is a pity that the Engelsch woman's story was not 
 true about that mare and spider. For if a mare and spider 
 there had been, you might perhaps have kept them for 
 your trouble " 
 
 — " Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant,"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 347 
 
 said Van Busch in a hurry, " perhaps the woman was not 
 lying, aiter all. Bough has a mou«e-colouied trotter in 
 the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider stands under 
 the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let 
 Bough know Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have 
 them. He'll make no bones about parting then. Sure, 
 no ! he'll never dare to." 
 
 " I will send a couple of my burghers with you to take 
 care he does not," said the Commandant, in what was for 
 the redoubtable Brounckers an easy tone. "It is un- 
 lucky," he added less pleasantly, " that you were such a 
 verdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I 
 had commandeered both beast and vehicle for Republics' 
 use. Because now I will do it, look you ! No Boer's son 
 that hves, by the Lord ! will I suffer to make Sehg 
 Brounckers out a liar." He added, as Van Busch salaamed 
 and squirmed with more than Oriental submissiveness, 
 " Least of all a sneaking Africander schelm like you. And 
 now, about the money 1" 
 
 " Excellentie " Usped Van Busch, smiling his oily 
 
 brown face into ingratiating creases . . . 
 
 " I am no Excellentie. ... Of how much money, pro- 
 perly belonging to the Republics' war-chest, have you 
 cheated this httle fool of an Engelschwoman ?" 
 
 " Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant," bleated 
 Van Busch, " I had from her one hundred and fifty pounds, 
 which I swear as an honest man has been handed over to 
 Myjnheer Blinders " 
 
 " He has accounted to me." 
 
 " Five weeks back ?" Van Busch hinted. 
 
 " He has accounted for it five weeks back." 
 
 There are men who possess ail the will to be rogues, but 
 have not the requisite courage. Such a man was Blinders, 
 who emerged plus a sweetheart, the approval of his Com- 
 mandant, and the eclat of having chaffed the British Lion, 
 out of the affair that was to prove so expensive to ^ii. 
 Van Busch. 
 
 " And " — the big voice trumpeted, as Van Busch, like a 
 stout pinned butterfly, quivered, transfixed by the glare of 
 the savage eyes — " you will now account to me for the rest." 
 
 Van Busch faltered with a sickly smile :
 
 348 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Fifty more, Myjnheer, that I was bringing you my- 
 self " 
 
 " One hundred and fifty you have paid me, and fifty you 
 were going to pay me. Ik wil het — but where are the other 
 hundreds you have paid Van Busch ?" bellowed the roaring 
 voice. " Does not my old man-baboon at home pouch 
 six walnuts for every one that his wife gets to share A\dth her 
 youngster 1 When I want to make the big thief spit them 
 out, I squeeze him by the neck. So, voor den donder ! will 
 I do to you. Only, geloof mij, I will not do it in play. 
 Pay Blinders the other five hundred pounds before kerk- 
 time. If you haven't got the cash about you, he and young 
 Schenk Eybel shall ride with you to Haargrond, where 
 lives your friend Bough. They can bring back the money 
 and the mare and spider, too. Moreover, Eybel, who is a 
 bright boy, and has a head upon his shoulders, wants a slim 
 rogue of a fellow that talks Engelsch to worm himself in over 
 yonder " — he jerked his gnarled thumb ia the direction 
 of Gueldersdorp — " and bring back a plan of the defences 
 on the west, where the native stad lies. Perhaps I will let 
 you keep two hundred of that five hundred if you are the 
 man to go. . . . But whether you go or stay, by the Lord ! 
 you will find it best to be square with Selig Brounckers." 
 
 And the redoubtable Brounckers stumped o£E. Verily, 
 in times of scarcity, when the lion is a- hungered, the jackal 
 must lose his bone. 
 
 It would be well, thought the dispirited Jackal rue- 
 fully, to remove the unfavourable impression made, by a 
 valuable service rendered to the United Republics. It 
 would be a good thing to stand well with Myjnheer Schenk 
 Eybel, who would, when Brounckers went south, be left 
 in sole command. It would be as well, also, to get a look 
 at that gul that was living with the nuns at Gueldersdorp. 
 
 " Mildare ..." That was the puzzle — her having the name 
 so pat. But these little frightened, white-faced things were 
 sly, and kids remembered more than you thought for. . . . 
 
 Grown up a beauty, too, and with the manners of a lady. 
 He swore again, the thing seemed so incredible, and spat 
 upon the dust. A pretty green shining beetle crawled 
 there. He set his heavy foot upon the insect, and its 
 beauty was no more.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 349 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 As the Captain's heavy cavalry stride shakes Nixey's roof, 
 the upright, lightly-built soldierly figure in khaki turns and 
 comes towards him, giving the binoculars in charge to the 
 Sergeant-Major of Irregulars, who is his orderly of the day. 
 
 " I want a word with you, Wrynche. Rawlings will 
 take the glasses. Come in here under cover." 
 
 He leads the way. The cover is a canvas shelter, perhaps 
 a protection from the blazing sun, but none at all from shell 
 and bullets. There are a couple of wooden chairs under 
 its flimsy spread and a little table. The Chief sits down 
 astride on one of the chairs, accepts a cigar from Captain 
 Bingoes enormous crocodile- leather case, and says, as the 
 first ring of blue smoke goes wavering upwards : 
 
 " You'll be glad to know that Monboia's Barala runner 
 has got through with good news for you." The last two 
 words are rather strongly emphasised. " Just before dawn 
 and after Beauvayse relieved you at Staff Bombproof South." 
 
 Captain Bingo swallows violently, runs a thick finger 
 round inside his collar, and his big face goes through 
 several changes of complexion, ranging from boiled suet- 
 dumpling paleness to beetroot red. He looks away and 
 blinks before he says in a voice that wobbles : 
 
 " Then my wife's— all right ?" 
 
 " Lady Hannah and her German attendant, as far back 
 as the day before yesterday, when Monboia's man saw them, 
 were in the enjoyment of excellent health." 
 
 " Poof !" Captain Bingo blows a genuine sigh of relief, 
 and the latent lugubriousness departs from him. " Good 
 hearing. I've had — call it hippopotamus on the chest this 
 two months, and you'll about hit the mark. Uncertainty 
 and suspense get on a man's nerves, in the long-run. Bound 
 
 to. And never a word — the deuce a line — all these 
 
 Poof !" He blows again, and beams. The Colonel, watching 
 him out of the comer of one keen eye, says, with a twitch- 
 ing muscle in the cheek that is turned away from him : 
 
 " My good news being told, I have a slice of bad for you. 
 But first let me make an admission. Since Nixey's pony 
 pulled Nixey's spider out of Gueldersdorp with Lady Hannah
 
 350 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and her maid in it, I have had three communications from 
 your wife." 
 
 " You're pullin' my leg, sir, ain't you ?" queries Bingo 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Not a bit of it." 
 
 In confirmation of the statement he takes out a shabby 
 pocket-book, fat with official documents, and, unstrapping 
 it, selects three, and hands them to Bingo. They are flimsy 
 sheets of tissue-paper covered with spidery characters in 
 violet ink, and Bingo, taking them, recognises the hand- 
 writing, and is, as he states without hesitation, confoundedly 
 flabbergasted. 
 
 " For they are in my wife's wild scrawl," he splutters 
 at last. " How on earth did they reach you, sir ?" 
 
 " The first was brought in by a native boy who said 
 he belonged to the kraals at Tweipans," says the Chief. 
 " Rolled small and stuffed into a quill stuck through his 
 ear in the usual way. He trumped up a glib story about 
 his cow having been killed and his new wife beaten by 
 Brounckers' men, and his desire to be revenged, and oblige 
 the English ladv who'd been kind to him " 
 
 " Umph ! Native gratitude don't run to being skinned 
 alive with sjamboks — not much !" the other comments. 
 " Chap must have been lyin', or a kind of nigger Phoenix." 
 
 " Exactly. So I couldn't find it in my heart to part 
 with him. He's on the coloured side of the gaol now, with 
 two others, who subsequently landed in with the documents 
 you have in hand there." 
 
 " Am I to read 'em ?" Bingo queries. 
 
 His commanding officer nods, with the muscle in his lean 
 cheek twitching. 
 
 " Certainly. Aloud, if you'll be so good." 
 
 Bingo reads, with baitings on the way, for the tissue 
 sheets stick to his large fingers, which are damp with 
 suppressed agitation : 
 
 " Haargrond Plaats, 
 
 "Nkar Tweipans, 
 
 " October 30ih. 
 
 " To the Oolond Commanding Her Majesty^ 8 Forces in 
 
 Giieldersdorp. 
 
 " Snt, — I beg to report myself arrived at the above 
 addreas, twelve miles distant from the head laager of the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 351 
 
 Boer Commandant, General Brounckers. I have to 
 inform you that an attack will be made on Maxim Kopje 
 South by a large force of the enemy with guns in the 
 beginning of November. 
 
 *' I have the honour to be, 
 " On Secret Service, 
 
 " Yours most obediently, 
 
 " H. Wrynche." 
 
 Bingo stares blankly at his Chief, the sheets of crumpled 
 tissue wavering between his thick, agitated fingers. 
 
 " I got that letter exactly a week after the attack had 
 been made and successfully resisted," says the Colonel's 
 dry, quiet voice. " Read the four lines in a different hand 
 and ink, that are underlined at the bottom, and tell me 
 what you think of 'em." 
 
 Bingo obeyed, and read : 
 
 " Lady's information perfectly correct. We hope this 
 intelligence will reach you in time to he useful. 
 
 " / have ike honour to he, 
 
 " P. Blinders, 
 
 **Actvn/g-Secretary to General 
 "Brounckers." 
 
 " By the Living Tinker !" exploded Bingo. 
 
 " Don't be prodigal of emotion," the Colonel's quiet 
 voice warns the excited husband. " There are two more 
 letters following. Read 'em in the proper sequence. 
 That one with the inky design at the top, that might be 
 the pattern for a pair of fancy pyjamas — that's the next." 
 
 Bingo reads as follows : 
 
 " Ejnk's Hotel, 
 "tweipans, 
 
 '' N</vember 2Uh. 
 
 * To the Colonel Commanding H. M. Forces in Oueldersdorp. 
 
 " Sm, — I beg to report myself arrived at Tweipans. 
 I have the honour to enclose herewith a sketch-plan of 
 the village and the disposition of General Brounckers' 
 laager. Trusting you may find it useful, 
 " I have the honour to be, 
 
 " On Secret Service, 
 
 " Yours most obedientlv, 
 
 "H. Wbynchk."
 
 352 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The sarcastic P. Blinders had appended an italicised 
 comment : 
 
 " His Honour considers the above sketch-plan remarkably 
 faithfvl. The. building next the Oerevormed Kerk, indicated 
 by an X, is the gaol. Gom^fortdble cells at your disposal, 
 which we are keeping vacant. 
 
 " P. Blinders." 
 
 « B-a-a " 
 
 The Chief does not happen to be looking Bingo's way as 
 the infuriated husband menaces with a large clenched fist 
 ;in imaginary countenance attached to the conjectural 
 personality of the sportive P. Blinders. 
 
 " Swear — it will bring the blood down from your head," 
 advises the dry, quiet voice. " But don't tear up the papers ! 
 — they're too amusing to lose." 
 
 " Amusin' !" growls Bingo, with smarting eyes, and a 
 lumpy throat, and a tingling in his large muscles which 
 P. Blinders, being out of reach, can afford to provoke. 
 " You wouldn't think it amusin', sir, if it were your wife, 
 making herself a — a figure of fim for those Dutch bounders 
 to shy at." 
 
 Tliis is the third letter : 
 
 " December 23rd. 
 
 " To the Colonel Commanding, Ghieldersdorp. 
 
 " Sir, — I have to report that the sortie you have plaimed 
 to take place on the morning of the 26th, for the capture 
 of the enemy's big gun, is known to General Brounckers, 
 and that the menaced position will be strengthened and 
 manned to resist you. 
 
 •' Obediently, 
 
 "H. Weynohe." 
 
 Underneath is the sarcastic comment : 
 
 " December 27th. 
 
 " Nice if you had got this in time, eh ? And we wanted 
 those boots and badges. 
 
 " P. B." 
 
 " She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway," says 
 Captain Bingo, blowing his nose emphatically ; " and —
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 353 
 
 by the Living Tinker ! if it had reached us in time, we'd 
 have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, and 
 twenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' 
 into the bargain." 
 
 " Perhaps," says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow 
 on the keen, sagacious face, and both men are silent, 
 remembering an assault the desperate, reckless valour of 
 which deserves to be bracketed in memory with the Charge 
 of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, " If Defeat is ever 
 shame, perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the 
 question to each of that handful of brave men sleeping side 
 by side over there " — he nods in the direction of the 
 Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest has 
 sprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses — " they 
 would tell you it can be more glorious than victory." 
 
 " Of course, you're right, sir. I gather now what your 
 bad news is," says Bingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing 
 his finger along the bristly edges of his sandy moustache, 
 for a minute past. " Judgin' by the marginal annotations 
 of this man Blinders — brute I'd kick to Cape Town with 
 pleasure — my wife's a prisoner in Brounckers' hands ?" 
 
 " An unconscious prisoner — ^yes. Give 'em their due, 
 Wrynche. I shouldn't have credited 'em with the sense 
 of humour they have displayed in their dealings with her." 
 
 If it were possible for Bingo to grow redder in the face, 
 one would say that he has done so, as he bursts out, in 
 a violent perspiration, striding up and down over Nixcy's 
 sheet-leaded roof. 
 
 " Confound their humour ! It's the humour of tom-cats 
 playin' with a — a dashed little silly dicky-bird. It's the 
 humour of aasvogels watchin' a shot rock-rabbit kick. 
 It's the humour of the battledore and the shuttlecock. 
 And I'm the dicky-bird's mate and the bunny's better-half, 
 and the other shuttlecock of the pair, and may T be blessed 
 if I can take it smilin' !" He mops his scarlet and dripping 
 face, and puffs and blows lilce a large military walrus on 
 dry land. 
 
 ** Perhaps you'll manage a smile when you've read this ?" 
 
 Bingo stops in his stride, wheels, and receives an officio I 
 document on blue paper. Under the date of tho previous 
 day, it nms as follows : 
 
 23
 
 354 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 "Head Laauer, 
 "tweipans, 
 
 " January — (h, 
 
 " To the Colonel Commavding the British Forces in 
 Oueldersdorp. 
 
 " Sir, — In reply to your communication I am instructed 
 by General Brounckers to inform you that our prisoner, 
 the Englishwoman who came here in the character of a 
 German drummer's refugee - widow to act as your spy, 
 will be exchanged for a free Boer of the Transvaal Republic, 
 by name, Myjnheer W. Slabberts, who is at present con- 
 fined under the Yellow Flag in Gueldersdorp gaol. The 
 exchange will be efifected by parties under the White Flag 
 at a given point North-East between the lines of invest- 
 ment and defence one hour before Kerk-time to-morrow, 
 being the Sabbath. 
 
 " I have the honour to be yours truly, 
 
 " P. Blindeks, 
 
 "Acting -Secretary to General 
 "BroiMickers." 
 
 << 
 
 P.S. — The youvig lady of German extraction who accom- 
 panied the Englishwoman has entered into an engagement 
 
 P. b: 
 
 to remain here. « r> d >» 
 
 *' P.SS. — The engagement is with yours truly, the young 
 lady having conformed to the faith of the Gerevormed Kerk. 
 We are to be married next Sunday. Would you like us to 
 send you some wedding-cake ? "PR" 
 
 Blinders has certainly had the last dig, but his principal 
 victim fails this time to wince or bellow under the point 
 of his humour. With his big face changing from red 
 to white, and from white to crimson half a dozen times in 
 as many seconds, Capt.-in Bingo says, refolding the paper 
 and returning it with a shaky hand : 
 
 " Then she— she " 
 
 A lump in his throat slides down and sticks. 
 
 " Grerevormed Kerk-time is eleven o'clock." The Colonel 
 looks at his shabby Waterbury, as the brisk clatter of 
 cantering horsp'-hoof'i breaks up the Sabbath stillness of 
 the Market Square, and an orderly, leading an officer's
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 355 
 
 charger, halts before Nixey's door. " The B.S.A. escort, 
 with their man, are due to leave the gaol in ten minutes' 
 time. Here's your orderly with your mount, and you've 
 eight minutes to change in." 
 
 " One minute, sir," Captain Bingo utters with an effort. 
 " This man — this Slabberts — is a well-known spy — a trump 
 card in Brounckers' hand, or be wouldn't be so anxious 
 to get hold of him. And therefore — by this exchange — 
 and a woman's dashed ambitious folly — you may lose 
 heavily in the end. ..." 
 
 " I don't deny it." The haggard shadow is again upon 
 the Colonel's face, or is it that Bingo's radiance dulls neigh- 
 bouring surfaces by comparison ? " But don't let the 
 thought of it spoil your good hour." The smile in the eyes 
 that have so many lines about them is kind, if the mouth 
 under the red- brown moustache is stem and sorrowful. 
 " We don't have many of 'em. Off with you and meet her !" 
 
 Captain Bingo tries to say something more, but 
 makes a hash of it ; and with eyes that fairly run over, 
 can only grip the kindly hand again and again, assuring 
 its owner, with numerous references to the Living Tinker, 
 that he is the most thundering brick on earth. Then, 
 overthrowing the small table and one of the chairs, he 
 plunges down the narrow iron stairway to get into what he 
 calls his kit. Six minutes later, correct to a buclde and 
 a puttee-fold, he salutes his commanding officer, nodding 
 pleasantly to him from Nixey's roof, and buckets down 
 the street at a tremendous gallop, the happiest man in 
 Oueldersdorp, with this shout following him : 
 
 " My regards to Lady Hannah. And tell her that the 
 Staff dine on gee-gee at six o'clock sharp, and I shall be 
 charmed if she'll join us." 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 The little Olopo River, a mere branch of the bigger rivef 
 that makes fertile British Baraland, runs from east to west, 
 along the southern side of (Jueldersdorp, swelled by in- 
 numerable thready water-courses, dry in the blistering 
 winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the 
 
 23—2
 
 :?56 THE DOP BOOrOR 
 
 foothills that bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from 
 the altitude of a balloon or a war-kite, the course of the 
 beer-coloured stream flowing lazily between its high 
 banks sparsely wooded with oak and blue gum, and lavishly 
 clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall grasses, 
 and thorny creepers, would have looked like a verdant 
 ribbon meandering over the dun-and-ochre-coloured veld, 
 where patches of bluish-green are beginning to spread. 
 The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, was fre- 
 quently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a 
 place of resort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, 
 much more precipitous, was clothed with a tangled luxuri- 
 ance of vegetation, and threaded only by native paths, so 
 narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirous 
 of walking side by side. Where the outermost line of 
 defences impinged upon the river-bed, the trees had been 
 cut down and the bush levelled. But east of Maxim Out- 
 post South, and the rifle-pits that flanked Fort Ellerslie, 
 all was as it had been for hundreds of years, in the 
 remembrance of the great granite boulder that stood on 
 the south shore. 
 
 The great boulder had known changes since the old 
 Plutonic forces cast it upwards, a mere bubble of melted 
 red granite, sohdifying as it went into a stone acorn thirty 
 feet high, which the glacier brought down in a slow journey 
 of countless ages, and set upright like a phallic symbol, 
 amongst other boulders of lesser size. The channel the 
 glacier had chiselled was now full of shining honey-coloured 
 water, hurrying over the granite stones and blocks of quartz 
 and pretty vari-coloured pebbles, while the boulder sat 
 high and dry, with the tall-plumed grasses, and the graceful 
 tree-fern, and the yellow-tasselled mimosa crowding about 
 its knees ; and remembered old times, long before the little 
 Bushfellow had outlined the koodoo and the buffalo, and 
 the hunter-man with the spear, in black pigments on its 
 smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gathered from 
 the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the draw- 
 ings. On the western side the great boulder was dressed 
 in crimson lake and yellow-umber-hued lichens from base 
 to summit, and in August, when the aloes flowered in mag- 
 nificent fiery clusters upon its crown and at its base ; and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 357 
 
 in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it in 
 exquisite trails, and white and rose and purple pelargoniums 
 made a carpet for its feet ; and in July, when the yellow 
 everlastings bloomed in every cranny of the rocks, King 
 Solomon in all his glory held less magnificence of 
 state. 
 
 Insects and beasts and biids loved the boulder. The 
 sun-beetle and the orange-tip and peacock butterflies 
 loved to bask on its hottest side, while the old dog-faced 
 baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to his nu- 
 merous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its 
 crannies and bred their young, too often as food for the 
 giant tarantula and the tree-snake ; while the francolin 
 and grouse dusted themselves in the hot sand at the base 
 of its throne pf rocks, and the springbok and the wart-hogs 
 came down at night to drink ; and the woolly cheetah 
 and the red lynx came after the springbok and the 
 wart-hog. 
 
 The boulder had seen War — War between black-skinned 
 men and brown-skinned men, adventurers with great 
 hooked noses and curled beards, with tassels of silk and 
 gold plaited into them and into the hair of their heads, 
 terrible warriors, mighty hunters, and great miners, who 
 came for slaves and ivory and gold, and hollowed strong- 
 holds out of the mountains, and worshipped strange bird- 
 beaked gods, and passed away. Yet again, when these 
 ceased to bo, there had been War ; and this time the black 
 men of the soil fought with white strangers, who wanted 
 the same things — slaves, and skins, and ivory, and the 
 yellow metal of the river-sands and of the rocks. 
 
 Now white men fought with white. The black men owned 
 little of the country : they hid in the kloofs and thickets 
 in terror, while the European conquerors shed each other's 
 blood for gold, and land, and power. The boulder was so 
 very old. It could afford to wait patiently until these 
 men, like all that went before, had passed. 
 
 Every seventh day the guns ceased bellowing and throw- 
 ing iron things that burst and scattered Death broadcast,
 
 368 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and the rifles stopped crack-cracking and spitting steel and 
 lead. Then the scared birds came back : the waxbills. and 
 love-birds, and finches, and sparrows darted in and out 
 among the bushes, and the partridge, and quail, and 
 francoiin ventured down to drink. The old baboon had 
 retired to the lulls with his family ; the springbok and the 
 wart-hog had moved up Bulawayo way ; the cheetah and 
 the lynx had followed them. . . . 
 
 But as long as human lovers came and whispered to each 
 other, standing beside the big boulder, or sitting in its 
 shadow, the boulder would be content. They spoke the 
 old language that it had learned when the world was com- 
 paratively young. Black or yellow or white, African or 
 Oriental or European, this speech of theirs was always the 
 same ; their looks and actions never varied. Either they 
 met and kissed and were happy, or they met and quarrelled 
 and were miserable. When no more lovers should come, 
 the boulder knew that would be the end of the world. 
 
 There was a gaudily dressed, white-faced young woman 
 waiting now beside the big stone upon this seventh day. 
 Her blue eyes were large and wistful. She had taken off 
 her big flaunting hat and hung it on a bush, and her face 
 was not unpretty, topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow 
 curls. She leaned against the sun- warmed gianite,and cried 
 a little. That was the way of w omen when the man was 
 late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyes and hummed a 
 song, and, finally, taking a stump of pencil from her pocket, 
 she began to scribble on the smooth red stone — all part 
 of the old play, the boulder knew. The first woman whom 
 he remembered had drawn a figure meant for a portrait of 
 her lover, with a sharpened flake of flint. 
 
 The young woman, as she sucked her lead-pencil, was 
 quite unconscious that the boulder thought at all. She 
 wrote in an unformed hand, and in letters that began b}^ 
 being large and round, and tailed off into a slanting niggle. 
 " W. Keyse, Esquer." Then she bit the pencil awhile, and 
 dreamed dreams. Then she wrote again, " Jane Keyse " 
 and " Mrs. W. Keyse," and blushed furiously, and then grew 
 pale again in anticipation of the Awful Ordeal to come. 
 For she had made up hei mind to tell him all, and chance it. 
 
 Yesterday had been his birthday. She had sent him,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 359 
 
 per John Tow, a costly gift. The four-ounce packet of 
 honeydew, cheap at five dollars in these days of scarcity, 
 had been opened, and the new pipe filled. A slip of paper 
 coquettishly intimated that the sender had rendered the 
 recipient this delicate little service. She meant to sign 
 " Jane Harris," but her courage failed her, and her trem- 
 bling pen faltered for the last time, " Fare Air." 
 
 Oh ! how she hated that Other One, whom, perhaps, he 
 liked the best, though he had never kissed her ! She 
 would be done with the creature, she thanked her Gawd, 
 after to-day ! Oh, how many times she had made up her 
 mind to tell him the truth, and never done it ! But if she 
 took and died of it, tell him she would this time. 
 
 How would he take the revelation ? Possibly swearing. 
 Probably he would be angry enough to hit her, when he 
 knew. If he only would, and make it up afterwards ! 
 Oh ! how cruel she did sufEer ! She thought she would 
 not tell him just yet. It was too hard. And then it seemed 
 quite easy, and then she cried out in agony : " Is that 'im 
 comin' ? Oh, my Gawd, it is !" 
 
 She clasped her hands over a brand-new blowse, with 
 something under it that jumped and fluttered orful. 
 Mother used to 'ave such palpitytions when her and 
 father 'ad 'ad what you might call a jar. And he was 
 coming, coming 
 
 Surely W. Keyse looked stern and imposingly tall of 
 stature, seen from her lower level, as he appeared among 
 the blue gum-trees on the top of the bank, and began to 
 descend into the ferny gorge where the great boulder sat 
 and sunned himself beside the beer-coloured river, whose 
 barbel kept on rising at the flies. Something W. Keyse 
 dragged behind him, not by a rope, but by a pigtail ; an 
 animated bundle of clean blue cotton, topped by the im- 
 passive, almond-eyed countenance of John Tow, the 
 letter-carr3ang Chinaman, who in the unlawful pursuit of 
 tikkies, finding the letter Avritten by the foreign lady-devil 
 to the male one eagerly paid for on the nail, had offered 
 for half as much again to induce her for the future to write 
 two instead of one. Towing Tow, the smarting victim of 
 feminine duplicity came crashing down upt^n the guilty 
 girl who had betrayed him.
 
 360 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 <c 
 
 See 'ere ! You know this 'ere young lady, and you re- 
 member what you've bin and told me. Say it over again 
 now," thundered W. Keyse, " so as she can 'ear you. Tell 
 me before 'er as wot she wrote them — these letters " — he 
 rapj)od himself dramatically upon the breast-pocket — " and 
 how you see her doing of it, before I kick your backbone 
 through your hat." 
 
 All was lost. The Chinaman had up an' give Emigra- 
 tion Jane away. Certainly he had saved her trouble, but 
 what was he sayin' now, the 'orrible slant-eyed 'eathen ? 
 She could hardly hear him for the roaring in her poor 
 bewildered head. 
 
 " S'pose John tell, can catchee more tikkie ? Plenty 
 fcikkie want to buy chow, allee so baddee times." 
 
 " Always on the make, ain't you ?" commented W. Keyse. 
 With a strong, imperious shove, he dumped the blue bundle 
 down among the cowsUps in which the feet of the guilty fair 
 were hidden, sajdng sternly : " I give you three minutes to 
 git it off your chest, else kickie is wot you'll catch instead 
 o' tikkie." He furnished a moderate sample on account. 
 
 " Oh, ki — ah. Oh, ki — ah !" moaned the tingling John. 
 
 " Don't you be 'ard on him, William " — he hardly knew 
 the voice, it was so weak and small — " it's Gawspel truth. 
 To pay you out — at first, for Juggin' Walt, I did write 
 them letters — every bloomin' screeve." 
 
 " An' sent the pipe and baccy for a birthday present, to 
 make a blushin' fool o' me ?" yelled the infuriated Keyse. 
 " All for the crimson sake of a fat 'og of a Dutchman !" 
 
 The patriot to whom he referred, mounted on an attenu- 
 ated mule, and escorted by a Sergeant and six men of the 
 B.S.A., under the superintendence of a large pink officer 
 of the Staff, was at that moment being conducted at a 
 sharp trot out of the lines, to meet a smallish waggon 
 pulled by a span of four that was being brought down from 
 Tweipans by half a dozen Boers in weathered tan-cord and 
 velveteen, battered pot-hats and ragged shooting- jackets, 
 caitying very carefully-tended rifles, mounted on well-fed, 
 wiry little horses, and accompanied by a White Flag. If 
 she had known, what would it have mattered to her ? All 
 her thoughts were centred in this furious little man, whose 
 pale, ugly eyes fairly blazed at her, as he repeated :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 361 
 
 " To pay — me out. You brawsted little Treachery, 
 you " 
 
 She crimsoned to her hair ; you could see the red blood 
 rushing and rushing up from under the peekaboo em- 
 broidery in front of the tawdry blowse, in a hurry to tell 
 her tingling ears what cruel names he called her. 
 
 " To pay you out at j6b:^t it was. An' afterwards " — 
 her throat hurt her, and her eyes did smart and bum so — 
 " afterwards I — I wanted ... Gawd ! . . ." she shook all 
 over — " you'll never walk out wi' me no more after kMs !" 
 
 " You may take your dyin' oath I won't." He was 
 bitterly sarcastic. " Strite, an* no kid, didn't you know when 
 you done — that — I'd never forgive you as long as I lived ?" 
 
 He plucked the stout package of letters signed " Fare 
 Ail " from his indignant bosom, and threw them at her 
 feet, with the new pipe, her hapless gift. His wrath was 
 infinitely more terrible than she had imagined. Her 
 tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Everything kep' 
 a-spinnin' so, she couldn't 'ardly tell whether she was on 
 'er 'ead or 'er 'eels. She will remember that day to the 
 last breath she draws. . . . 
 
 " Didn't you know it ?" the voice of her Judge demanded 
 again. 
 
 John Tow, finding himself no longer an object of atten- 
 tion, had discreetly vanished. 
 
 " Oh, I did, I did !" Her agony was frantic. " Oh, let 
 me go away and hide and die somewhere ! Oh, crooil, to 
 break a pore gal's 'art ! Wot — wot loves the bloomin' 
 earth under your feet !" 
 
 " Gam !" — the scorn of W. Keyse was something awful — 
 " you an' your love " 
 
 She wrenched the cotton lace away from her thin throat, 
 and tore some of her hair out in the strenuous hysteria of 
 her class, and screamed at him : 
 
 " Me an' my love ! . . . Go on ! . . . Frow it in me face, 
 an' 'ave no pity ! Me an' my love ! . . . Sneer at it, take 
 an' spit on it — ain't it yours all the syme % Oh, for 
 Gawd's syke forgive me !" 
 
 He struck an indomitable attitude and thundered : 
 
 " So 'elp me Jiminy Cripps, I never will !" 
 
 She knew that the oath was irrevocable, and with a faint
 
 362 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 moan, turned to the great boulder that was behind her, 
 and clung to its hard red bosom as if it had been a mother's. 
 She moaned to him as her thin figure flattened itself against 
 the stone, to let her go away and die somewhere. He stood 
 a moment looking at her, and exulting in his power, mean- 
 ing her to suffer yet a little longer ere he relented. Secretly, 
 he knew relief that the golden pigtail and the provoking 
 blue eyes of Miss Greta Du Taine had vanished out of 
 Gueldersdorp before the first Act of War. He would have 
 felt them in the waj' now. Those shining, tearful eyes and 
 the mouth that kissed and clung to his had done their work 
 on the night of the Grand Variety entertainment in the 
 empty Government store. He would pretcmd to go away and 
 leave her. He would come back, enjoy her astonishment, 
 be melted by renewed entreaties, stoop to relent, overwhelm 
 her with his magnanimity, and then proceed to love-making. 
 
 But as a preliminary he swung round upon his heel and 
 strode upwards through the short bush and the tall grasses, 
 the scandalised flowers thrashing his boots. She saw him, 
 although her back v/as turned. If he could have kno\\T]i 
 how tall he seemed to Emigration Jane as he strode away, 
 W. Keyse would have been tickled to the core. But he 
 turned when he felt sure he was well out of sight, and 
 hurried back. 
 
 She was not there. 
 
 He was indifferent at first, then angry, then anxious, then 
 disconsolate. Repentance followed fast on the heels of all 
 these moods. He picked up the packet of letters and the 
 rejected pipe, cursing his own cruelty, and sought her up 
 and down the banks, calling her in tones that were urgent, 
 affectionate, upbraiding, appealing ; but not for all his 
 luring would the flown bird come back to fist. No more 
 beside the river, or in other places where they had been 
 wont to meet, did W. Keyse encounter Emigration Jane 
 again. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 But even without W. Keyse and the vanished author of 
 " Fare Air's " letters the ferny tree-fringed kloof at the 
 bottom of which the beer-coioured river ran over its granite
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 363 
 
 boulders and quartz pebbles, was not empty and v^oid. On 
 Sundays, when the birds returned from the hills, to wliich 
 they had been scared by the hideous tumult of War, 
 thither after High Mass in the battered little Roman 
 Catholic church in the stad, the Mother-Superior and the 
 Sisters would come, bringing with them siich poor food as 
 they had, and picnic soberly. All the week through they 
 had laboured, nursed, and tended the sick and wounded in 
 the Hospitals, and washed and fed and taught the number- 
 less orphans of the siege, and upon this daj^ the ]\Iother- 
 Superior had ruled that they w ere to be together. And all 
 the week through the thought of it kept them going, as she 
 had hoped. You are to see her holding her httle court beside 
 the river upon a certain February afternoon, receiving 
 friends in her sweet, stately fashion, and dispensing hos- 
 pitahty out of the largest and most battered Britannia- 
 metal teapot that ever brewed, what was later originally 
 referred to in the weekly " Social Jottings " column of the 
 Guddersdorp Siege Gazette as the cheering infusion. The 
 Siege Gazette was an intermittent daily, issued from a sub- 
 terranean printing-office, for the dissemination of general 
 orders and latest news, fluctuations in the weight and 
 quality of the meat-rations, and the rise and fall of the 
 free-soup level, being also recorded. To its back-files 1 
 must refer those who seek a fuller account of the function 
 described by the brilliant journalist who signed herself 
 " Gold Pen," as highly successful. She gives you to 
 understand that the company was distinguished, and the 
 conversation vivid and unflagging. And when you realise 
 that everybody present was suffering more or less from the 
 active pinch of himger, that social gathering of men and 
 women of British blood becomes heroic and historic and fine. 
 " Dr Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, was observed,'* 
 we read. " Gold Pen " also notes " the presence of the 
 
 Reverend Julius Fraithorn, son of the Bishop of H , and 
 
 second curate — on leave — of St. Margaret's, Wendish 
 Street ; now happily recovered, thanks to the skill of Dr. 
 Saxham, from an illness, held at no recent date to be in- 
 curable. Mr. Fraithorn has undertaken the onerous duties 
 of Chaplain to the Hospitals in charge of the Mihtary Staff. 
 It was gratifying to observe," she continues, " that the
 
 364 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Colonel commanding graced the occasion bj"^ his martial 
 presence. He was attended by his junior aide, lieutenant 
 Lord Beauvayse. We also saw Lady Hannah Wrynche 
 with her distinguished husband, Captain Bingham Wrynche, 
 Royal Bay Dragoons, Acting Senior Aide," etc., etc. 
 
 " Late apricots from the garden of the ruined Convent, 
 and peaches from its west wall, gathered in the dead of night 
 by Sister Cleophee and Sister Tobias," " Gold Pen " goes 
 on to say, " were greatly appreciated by the guests, each 
 of whom brought his or her own bread." 
 
 A most villainous kind of bannock of unleavened mealie- 
 meal and crushed oats, calculated to try the strongest teeth 
 and trouble the toughest digestion, " Gold Pen " might have 
 added. But the game was to make believe you rather 
 enjoyed it than otherwise. If you had no teeth and no 
 digestion, you were allowed a pint and a half of sowens 
 porridge instead ; and thus helped your portion of exhausted 
 cavalry mount or your bit of tough mule-meat down. And 
 so you went on like your neighbours, playing the game, 
 while your eyes grew larger and your girth less, and your 
 cheekbones more in evidence with every day that dawned. 
 
 Cheekbones have a strange, unnatural effect when they 
 appear in childish faces. There was a child in a rusty 
 double perambulator that had been a stylish baby-carriage 
 only a little while ago, whose wizened face and shrunken 
 hands were pitiable to see. He was wheeled by a sallow 
 woman, with hollow, grey-blue eyes — a woman whose black 
 alpaca gown hung loosely on her wasted figure, and whose 
 shabby, crape-trimmed hat was pinned on anyhow. Siege 
 confinement and siege terrors, siege smells and siege diet, 
 had made strange havoc of the plump comeliness of a 
 matronly lady who once rustled in purple satin befitting a 
 Mayor's wife. She had lost one of her children through 
 diphtheria, and she knew, unless a miracle happened, that 
 she would also lose the boy. 
 
 Only look at him ! She told you in that dull, toneless 
 voice of hers how sturdy he had been, how strong and 
 masterful — how pretty, too, with his plume of fair hair 
 tumbling into his big, shining, grey eyes ! The eyes were 
 bigger than ever now, but the light and the life had sunk 
 out of them, and his round face was pinched, and the colour
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 365 
 
 of old wax. And the arm that hung idly over the side of 
 the little carriage was withered and shrunken — the hand 
 of an old man, and not of a child. The other, under the 
 light shawl that tucked him in, hugged something that 
 bulged under the coverlet. 
 
 " His father can't bear to look at him," the Mayor's wife 
 said, glancing at the Mayor's carefully - averted back. 
 " And I'm sure it's no wonder. He just lies like this, day 
 and night, and doesn't want to move, or answer when you 
 speak to him, and he won't eat. The food is dreadful, but 
 still he might try, Just to comfort his mother " 
 
 " I does twy," piped Hammy weakly, " and ven my 
 tummy shuts, and it isn't no use twying any more." 
 
 The Mother-Superior brought a gaily-coloured little china 
 cup of that rare luxury, new milk, and bent over him, saying 
 cheerfully, as she held it to the colourless mouth, " Not 
 always, Hammy. Taste this." 
 
 " No, fank you." He turned his head away, tightly 
 shutting his eyes. 
 
 "It's real milk, Hammy, not condensed," the soft voice 
 pleaded. He shook his head again, and knit his childish 
 brows. 
 
 " I saided it wasn't no use. My tummy just shuts." 
 
 " I think I would not bother him any more just now," 
 Saxham interposed, noting the droop of the piteous, flaccid 
 mouth, and feeling the flutter of the uneven pulse. The 
 Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. The Mother- 
 Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing 
 and sight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, 
 and a crisp, decided voice said : 
 
 " Then Hammy's tummy is a mutinous soldier, and nmst 
 be taught to obey the Word of Command." 
 
 " Mister Colonel . , ." The dull, childish eyes grew a 
 very little brighter, and the claw-like hand went up in 
 shaky salute to the limp plume of fair hair, not gUstening 
 and silky now, but dull and unkempt, that fell over the 
 broad, darkly-veined waxen forehead. — " It is Mister 
 Colonel. . . . And I haven't seen you for ever an' ever so 
 
 long. An' Berta's deeded, an', an' " The whisper 
 
 was almost inaudible. ... " Vore's something I did so want 
 to tell !" The hidden arm came from under the coverings.
 
 366 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " It's about my Winocewus, vis beast what you givcd 
 me, ever so long ago." He displayed the treasured toy. 
 
 " You shall tell me about Berta and the rhinoceros when 
 I have told you something. A Certain Person can come 
 out of this vehicle, I suppose, Saxham ? It will make no 
 diflFerence, in the long-run, to a Certain Person's health ?" 
 
 " Why, nothing in Heaven or upon earth will make any 
 difference at tliis juncture," returned Saxham, speaking in 
 the same tone, " unless a Certain Person can be roused to 
 the necessary pitch of desiring food. To administer it 
 forcibly would, in my opinion, be worse than useless." 
 
 The Certain Person was lifted out of his cramped quarters 
 by vigorous but gentle hands. The Colonel Commanding 
 sat down with him upon a camp-stool, and as the wasted 
 legs dangled irresponsibly from his supporting knees, and 
 the hot head rolled helplessly against the row of coloured 
 bits of medal-ribbon that were sewn on the left breast of 
 the khaki jacket, he began to talk, holding the limp little 
 body with a kind, sustaining arm. 
 
 " You've seen how my men obey me, Hammy ? Well, 
 your brain and your eyes, your arms and legs, and hands 
 and feet, as well as your tummy, are your soldiers. And 
 it's mutiny if they refuse to carry out the Officer's orders. 
 And you're the Officer, you know." 
 
 " Am I ve Officer, weally 1" 
 
 Interest was quickening in the heavy eyes. 
 
 " You're the Officer. And I'm the Colonel in Command. 
 And when I say to you, ' Lieutenant Hammy, drink this 
 milk,' why, you'll pass along the order to Sergeant Brain 
 and Corporal Eyes and Privates Hands and Mouth and 
 
 Tummy, and see that they carry it out. Where is ? 
 
 Ah ! thank you, ma'am ; that was what I wanted." 
 
 For the Mother-Superior had deftly put the gaily-coloured 
 little china cup into the lean, brown, outstretched hand, 
 and, seeing what was coming, the Lieutenant shed an un- 
 soldierlj'^ tear and raised a feeble whimper. 
 
 " Please, no. Mister Colonel ! My tummy '* 
 
 " Private Tummy is a shirker, who doesn't want to do 
 his duty. But it's your duty as his Commanding Officer to 
 show him that it must be done. And that's the game we're 
 playing. You'll employ tact before you have recourse to 
 
 11
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 367 
 
 stringent measures. Not make the fellow dogged or furious 
 by angry words or threats. When it's necessary to shoot, 
 shoot straight. But, first, you give the order." 
 " Oughtn't ve officer to have a wevolver 1" 
 " Wait a second, and you shall have mine." 
 The deft fingers twirled out and pocketed the cartridge- 
 packed chambers, and put the harmless weapon into the 
 childish hands. 
 
 " It's veway heavy," Hammy said dolefully, as the 
 shining Army Smith & Wesson wobbled in his feeble 
 clutches, then wavered and sank ingloriously down upon 
 his lap. 
 
 " If you had drunk the milk you might have found it 
 lighter. Suppose we try now. Attention !" 
 — " 'Tention !" piped Hammy. 
 
 " Hands, catch hold. Mouth, do your duty. And if 
 Private Tummy disobeys, he'll have to take the conse- 
 quences." 
 
 " Please, what are ve confequences ?" 
 " Brink down the milk, and then I'll tell you." 
 The gay little china cup was slowly emptied. Hammy 
 blinked eyes that were already growing sleepy, and sucked 
 the moustache of white from his upper-lip with relish, 
 remarking : 
 
 " I dwinked it all, and my tummy never shut. Now 
 tell me what are ve confequences ?" 
 
 " A mother without a son, for one thing." The keen, 
 hawk-eyes were gentle. " But drink plenty of milk and 
 eat plenty of bread and porridge and minced meat, and 
 you'll live to see the Relief marching into Oueldersdorp one 
 fine morning, boy." 
 
 " Unless I get deaded like Berta. And that weminds me 
 what I wanted to tell so bad." The lips began to quiver, and 
 the eyes brimmed. " Soldiers mustn't cwy, must vey ?" 
 
 " Not while there's work to be done, Hammy. Would 
 you like to wait now and tell me another day ?" For the 
 little round head was nodding against the row of medal- 
 ribbons stitched on the khaki jacket, and the big round 
 eyes kept open with ditticulty. 
 
 " No, please. It's about the beasts — my beasts what 
 you gived me. Winocewus. an' Lion, an' Tawantula,
 
 368 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 an' Tsetse, an' Black Bee — just like a weal Bee, only not 
 80 sharp at ve end. . . . Don't you wemember. Mister 
 Colonel ?" 
 
 " Of course I remember. The toy beasts I brought 
 down from Rhodesia and gave to a little boy." 
 
 " I was the boy. And — you saided I was to let Berta 
 have her share wof dem. And I did let her play wif all 
 ve owers. But Winocewus had to be tooked such care 
 wof for fear of bweaking his horn — an' Berta was such a 
 little fing, vat — vat " 
 
 " That you wouldn't let her play with Rhinoceros. And 
 you think it wasn't quite fair, or quite kind, and now you're 
 sorry ?" 
 
 Hammy sniffed dolorously, and two large tears splashed 
 down. 
 
 " I'm sowwy. An' I fought if I was deaded too, like 
 Berta, I could go an' tell her I never meaned to be gweedy. 
 An' I wouldn't eat my bweakfust, nor my dinner, nor 
 nothing — and at last my tummy shut, and I didn't want 
 nuffing more." 
 
 The Mother- Superior and the Colonel Commanding ex- 
 changed a glance over the little round head before the 
 man's voice answered the child. 
 
 " That wouldn't have made Bertha happy. She might 
 have thought you a little coward for running away and 
 leaving your mother and all the other ladios behind, shut 
 up in Gueldersdorp. For an officer and a gentleman must 
 go on living and j&ghting while he has anything left to fight 
 for, Hammy. Remember that." 
 
 " Yes, Mister Colonel. . . ." The drowsy eyes closed, the 
 Uttle head nodded off into slumber against the kind, 
 strong shoulder. The Mother - Superior wheeled the 
 perambulator near, and the Colonel, rising, laid the now 
 soundly- sleeping boy back upon his cushions. 
 
 " What mysteries children are !" he said, as the Mother 
 replaced the light covering, screening the sleeping face with 
 tender, careful hands from sun and flies. " Imagine re- 
 morse for an act of selfishness leading a boy of six to such a 
 determination — and a normal, healthy boy, if ever I 
 met one." 
 
 " He has been living for some time under abnormal con-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 369 
 
 ditions," the Mother said softly, looking at the quiet rise 
 and fall of the light shawl covering. " He will take a turn 
 for the better now." 
 
 " And forget his trouble and its cause." The Chief's 
 observant glance had lighted on Rhinoceros, lying upside 
 down in a little clump of flowering sword-grass, into which 
 he had been whisked as the Mother shook out the little 
 shawl. " I think," he said, and pocketed the homed one, 
 " that this gentleman had better go into the fire." 
 
 " Perhaps. And yet it would be a continual reminder to 
 conquer selfishness in great as in little things." She smiled, 
 meeting the keen hazel eyes with her great pure grey ones. 
 
 " If you think so, I will leave it." 
 
 " I will not take the responsibility of advising you to. 
 You have already shown more tact than I can lay claim to 
 in dealing with children. And that has been the business 
 of the greater part of my life, remember." 
 
 He looked at her full, and said : 
 
 " I may possess and employ tact when dealing with men 
 and with children, possibly. But not long ago I was guilty 
 of — and have since bitterly reproached myself for, I beg 
 you to believe me ! a gross and lamentable blunder as re- 
 gards a woman " 
 
 She put out her fine hand with a quick, protesting ges- 
 ture, as if she would have begged him to say no more. He 
 went on : 
 
 " She is a lady whom you intimately know, and whom I 
 have, like everyone else in this town, learned to esteem 
 highly and to profoundly respect. For the terrible shock 
 and the deep pain I must have given that lady in breaking 
 to her ignorantly and hastily the news of the death of a 
 friend who was dear to me, and infinitely dearer to — 
 another with whom she is acquainted — I humbly entreat 
 her pardon." 
 
 He had not known her eyes were of so deep a purple-grey 
 as to be nearly black. Perhaps they seemed so by contrast 
 with the absolute whiteness of her face. The eyes winced, 
 and the mouth contracted as she entreated, voicelessly : 
 
 " I beg you, say no more !" 
 
 " I have but little more to say," he returned. " I will 
 only add that if at any time you wished in kindness to 
 
 24
 
 370 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 make me forget what I did that day, you would apply to 
 me in some difficulty, honour me ^vith some confidence, 
 trust me in any unforeseen emergency in which I might 
 be of use to you. Or to — anyone who is dear to you, and 
 in whom for the sake of old associations and old ties I 
 might even otherwise be deeply interested." 
 
 He had spoken with intention, and now his deliberate 
 glance dropped to the level of the strip of sandy shore beside 
 the river, where the giant Convent kettle boiled upon a dis- 
 proportionately little fire, and Sister Hilda-Antony pre- 
 sided in the Reverend Mother's place at the trestle-sup- 
 ported tray where tho Britannia- metal teapot brooded, as 
 doth the large domestic hen, over an immense family of 
 cups and saucers. Busy as ants, the other Sisters hurried 
 backwards and forwards, attending to the wants of theii- 
 guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or with due 
 precautions taken against puii-adders and tarantulas, lay 
 upon the grass of the high bank in the shade of the fern 
 and bush. And as vivid by contrast with their black- 
 robed, white-wimpled figures, as a slender di'agon-fly 
 among a bevy of homely gnats, the graceful, prettily-clad 
 figure of Lynette showtxi, as she shared the Sister's hos- 
 pitable labours. 
 
 She had her share of girlish vanity. She had put on a 
 plain tailor-made skirt of fine dark green cloth, short 
 enough to show the dainty little brown buckled shoes that 
 she specially afiEected, and a thin white silk shirt and knitted 
 croquet- jacket of white wool. A scarlet leather belt girt 
 her slender waist, and a silver chatelaine jingled a gay tune 
 at her side, and about her white slim throat was a band of 
 scarlet velvet, and her wide- brimmed straw hat had a knot of 
 purple and white clematis in it, and a broad, vivid, emerald- 
 green wing-quill thrust under the knot. And the hair under 
 the green-plumed hat gleamed bronze in the sunshine that 
 filtered through the thick foliage of the blue gum-trees that 
 grew on either bank of the river, and stretched their 
 branches out to clasp across the stream, like hands. She 
 was too pale and too thin, and her eyes were feverishly 
 bright, but she looked happy, carrying her tray of steaming 
 teacups in spite of Beauvayse's anxious attempts to relieve 
 her of the burden, and the Chaplain's diilident entreaties
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 371 
 
 that she should entrust it to him. Their voices, mingled 
 in gay argument, were bomo by a warm puff of spice- 
 scented air to the ears of the elder people, standing in the 
 shade of the trees at the summit of the high, sloping bank, 
 with the rusty perambulator between them. 
 
 " I thank you," the Mother said, in her full, round tones. 
 The eyes of both, travelling back from that delicate, slight 
 young figure, had met once more. " Believing that you 
 speak in perfect sincerity, I thank you, and shall not hesi- 
 tate to call upon you, should the need arise." 
 
 Her voice was very calm, and her discreet glance told 
 nothing. He would not have been a man of woman born 
 if he had not been a little piqued. He said, with an air of 
 changing the subject : 
 
 " Miss Mildare strikes me as a very beautiful girl." 
 " Is she not ?" 
 
 Her eyes grew tender, and her whole face was irradiated 
 by the splendour of her smile. She looked down the 
 bushed and grass-covered slope to where Lynette, all the 
 guests supplied, had thrown herself down to rest on a stone 
 under a tree. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was 
 flecked with sunshine as she leaned her head back with a 
 little air of lassitude and weariness against the scarred 
 bark. But in spito of weariness she was smiling and con- 
 tent. The rest was dehcious, the peaceful quiet enchanting, 
 the air sweet after the fetid odours of the town ; and it 
 was sweet, too, whenever she glanced at the Reverend 
 Julius Fraithom, who was lying at her feet, or Beauvayse, 
 who fanned her alternately with a leafy branch and the tea- 
 tray, to behold her own beauty reflected in the admiring 
 eyes of two young and handsome men. 
 
 The Mother had never seen her thus before. She had 
 been absent from the scenes of Lynette's little social 
 triumphs. Now a great tenderness swelled in her bosom, 
 and a great pity gripped her throat, and wrung the bitter, 
 slow tears into her eyes. 
 
 '* She is happy," she whispered in her heart. " She has 
 forgotten just tor a little while, and her kingdom of woman- 
 hood is hers, unspoiled, and the present moment is sweet, 
 and the future she has no thought of. My poor, pocr 
 love ! Let her go on forgetting, even if it is only for a day." 
 
 2'i— 2
 
 372 TRE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 His voice beside her made her start. He was still 
 speaking of Lynette. 
 
 " Her type is unusual — amongst Colonials." 
 
 She returned : " She was born in the Colony, I believe." 
 
 " Ah ! but of British parents, surely ? I once knew 
 an English lady," he went steadily on, " whom she re- 
 sembles strikingly." 
 
 Her eyes were inscrutable, and her lips were folded close. 
 
 " She was the wife of the Colonel commanding my old 
 Regiment — Sir George Hawting. A grand old warrior, and 
 something of a martinet. He married a third daughter of 
 the Duke of Runcorn — Lady Lucy Bridd water." 
 
 She said without the betraying flicker of an eyelash : "I 
 have seen the lady named. . . ." 
 
 He said, with a prick of self-reproach for having again 
 turned the barb that festered in her bosom : 
 
 " Lady Lucy was a very lovely creature, and a very im- 
 pulsive one. She lived not happily, and she died tragically." 
 
 There was the ring of steel and the coldness of ice in the 
 Mother's words : 
 
 " She met the fate she chose." 
 
 He thought, looking at her : 
 
 " What a woman this is ! How silent, how resourceful, 
 how calm, how immeasurably deep ! And why does she 
 think of me as an opponent 1" He went on, stung by 
 that quiet marshalling of all her forces against him : 
 
 " Unhappily, the fate we choose for ourselves sometimes 
 involves others. The death of that unhappy woman and 
 the father of her child left an innocent creature at the mercy 
 of sordid, evil hands." 
 
 " hi evil hands, indeed, judging by — what you have 
 told me." 
 
 " I would give much to be able to trace her." There 
 was a heavy line between his eyebrows, and his eyes were 
 stem and sad. " It would be something to know what had 
 become of her, even if she were dead, or worse than dead." 
 
 A violent, sudden scarlet dyed her to the edge of the 
 white starched coif. Her mouth writhed as though words 
 were bursting from her ; but she nipped her lips together, 
 and controlled her eyes. And still her silence angered and 
 deiied him. He went on :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 373 
 
 *' If 1 seem to you to harp painfully upon this subject, 
 pardon me. You have my word that, without encourage- 
 ment from you, I will not refer to it after to-day." His 
 close- clipped brown moustache was straightened by the 
 tension of the muscles of his mouth. He passed his palm 
 over it, and continued speaking without moving a muscle 
 of his face or taking his searching eyes from the Mother's. 
 
 " The name of the young lady who is so fortunate as to 
 be your ward, and even more, the striking likeness I spoke 
 of just now, have led me to hope that my dead friend's 
 daughter was led by a Hand, in whose Divine guidance I 
 humbly believe, to find the very shelter he would have 
 chosen for her. Pray answer, acquitting me in your 
 own mind of persistence or inquisitiveness. Am I right 
 or wrong ?" 
 
 She might have been a statue of black marble, with 
 wimple and face and hands of alabaster, she stood so 
 breathlessly still. Her heart did not seem to beat ; her 
 blood was stagnant in her veins. She felt no faintness. 
 Her observation was unnaturally keen, her mind dazzlingly 
 clear ; her brain seemed to work with twice its ordinary 
 power. She thought. He glanced at the shabby watch he 
 wore upon the steel lip-strap, and waited. She was aware 
 of the action, though she never turned her head. She was 
 weighing the question, to tell or not to tell ? Her soul 
 hung poised like a seagull in the momentary shelter of a 
 giant wave-crest. Another moment, and the battle with 
 the raging gale and the driving halberds of the sleet would 
 begin again. 
 
 She looked again towards Lynette, and in an instant her 
 purpose crystallised, her line of action was made clear. 
 She saw a little bunch of wax-belled white heath fall from 
 the girl's scarlet belt in the act of rising. She saw Beau- 
 vayse snatch it greedily from the grass and read the glance 
 that passed between the golden- hazel and the green-grey 
 eyes, and understood with a great pang of jealous mother- 
 pain that she was no longer first in her beloved's heart. 
 Then came a throb of unselfish joy at the knowledge that 
 Richard's girl had come into her kingdom, that the divine 
 right and heritage and crown of Womanhood were hers 
 at last.
 
 374 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Were hera ? Not yet, but might be hers, if every clue 
 that led back to that tavern upon the veld could be broken 
 or tangled in such wise that the keenest and most subtle 
 seeker should be baffled and lost. It all lay clear before 
 her now, the manipulation of events, the deft rearrange- 
 ment of actual fact that might best be used to this end. 
 As her clear brain plaimed, her bleeding heart trailed wings 
 in the dust, seeking to lead the searcher away from the 
 hidden nest, and now her motherhood and her pride and all 
 the diplomacy acquired in her long years of rule rose up in 
 arms to meet him. 
 
 They were not of equaJ height. Her great, changeful 
 eyes, purple-grey now, dropped to encounter his. She re- 
 garded him quietly, and said : 
 
 " No one csf your wide experience needs to be reminded 
 that resemblances between persons who are not allied by 
 blood exist, and are strangely misleading. But since you 
 have conveyed to me in unmistakable terms your con- 
 viction that Miss Mildare is the daughter of — a mutual 
 friend who bore that surname — is actually identified in 
 your idea with that most unhappy child who was left 
 orphaned some seventeen years ago — at — I think you said 
 a veld hotel in the Orange Free State ?" 
 
 He bowed assent, biting the short hairs of his moustache 
 in vexation and embarrassment. 
 
 " Hardly an hotel — a wretched shanty of the usual 
 corrugated-iron and mud-wall type, in the cattle-grazing 
 country between Driepoort and Kjoonfontein. And — it 
 seems my fate to be continually bringing our conversation 
 back to a — most unhappy and painful theme." 
 
 " I acquit you of the intention to pain or wound. When 
 I have finished what I have to say, we will revert to the 
 subject no more. It will be buried between us for ever, 
 though the memory of the Dead live in our pardoning and 
 loving thoughts, and in our prayers." 
 
 The vivid colour that had flamed in her cheeks had sunk 
 and left them marble. The humid mist of tears that 
 veiled her eyes gave them a wonderful beauty. 
 
 He answered her : 
 
 " Your thoughts could not be otherwise thsua noble and 
 generous. Prayers as pure as yours could not be unheard."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 375 
 
 " No prayers are unheard, though all are not granted." 
 
 She made the slight gesture with her large, beautiful 
 band that put unnecessary speech from her, and let the 
 hand drop again by her side. Her bosom rose and fell 
 quietly with her even speaking. None could have guessed 
 the tumult within, and the doubts and convictions and 
 apprehensions that battled together, and the religious fears 
 and scruples that rent and tore her suffering soul. But 
 for the sake of Richard's daughter she rallied her grand 
 forces, and nerved herself to carry out her hated task. 
 
 " I will tell you how I came to be interested in the young 
 lady who is now my adopted daughter, and whom you know 
 as Lynette Mildare. At the end of the winter of 18 — the 
 Reverend Mother of our Convent died, and I was sent up 
 from the Mother-House at Natal, by order of the Bishop, 
 to take her place as Superior. Two Sisters came with me. It 
 was the usual slow Journey of many weeks. The wet season 
 had begun. Perhaps that was why we did not encounter 
 many other waggons on the way. But one party of emi- 
 grants of the labouring class — we never really learned where 
 bound — trekked on before ua, and generally outspanned 
 within sight. There were three rough Englishmen — two 
 middle-aged and one quite old — a couple of tawdry women, 
 and a young girl. They used to ill-treat the girl. We heard 
 her crying often, and one of the Kafi^r voor-loopers of their 
 two waggons told n. Cape boy who was in our service that the 
 old Baas would kill the little white thing one of these days. 
 She was used as a drudge by them all — a servant, unpaid, 
 ill-fed, worse-clothed than the Kaffirs — but the old man, 
 according to our informant, bore her a special grudge, tind 
 lost no opportunity of wreaking his malice on her." 
 
 " I understand," he said. She \^ ent on : 
 
 " We would have helped the child if we could have 
 reached her ; but it was not possible. If she had run away 
 and taken refuge with us, and the men had followed her, I 
 do not think we should have given her up for any threats 
 of theirs, or even for threats carried out in action." 
 
 " I know you never would have." 
 
 She made the slight gesture with her hand that put all 
 inferred praise aside. 
 
 " The waggons of the emigrants were no longer in sight.
 
 376 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 one morning when we inspanned. They had headed south aa 
 if for the Diamond Mines, a-nd we were trekking west. . . ." 
 There was a slight hesitation, and her lashes flickered, then 
 she took up her story. " Perhaps we were a hundred and 
 fifty miles from Gueldersdorp, perhaps more, when we came 
 upon what we beHeved at first to be the dead body of a 
 young girl, almost a child, lying among the karroo bush, face 
 downwards, upon the sand. She had been cruelly beaten 
 with the sjambok — she bears the scars of that terrible 
 ill-usage to-day. . . . We Judged that she had fainted 
 and fallen from one of the emigrants' trek - waggons. 
 Months afterwards, when her wounds were healed " — her 
 steady Ups quivered slightly — " and she had recovered from 
 an attack of brain-fever brought on by alarm and anxiety 
 and the ill-usage, she told me that she had run away from 
 people who were cruel to her — from a man who " 
 
 " This distresses you. I am grieved " 
 
 He noted the sickness of horror in her face, and the 
 starting of innumerable little shining points of moisture on 
 her white, broad forehead and about her lips. She drew 
 out her handkerchief and wiped them away with a hand 
 that shook a little. 
 
 " I have very little more to say. She was quite crushed 
 and broken by cruelty and ill-usage. No native child could 
 have been more ignorant — she could not even tell us her 
 name when we asked it. She probably had never had 
 one. And Father Wix, who is our Convent Chaplain, and 
 has charge of the Catholic Mission here, baptised her at 
 my instance, giving her two names that were dear to 
 me in that old fife that I left behind so long ago. She is 
 Lynette MUdare. . . . Are you surprised that in seven 
 years a young creature so neglected should have become 
 what you see ? Those powers were inherent in her which 
 training can but develop. We found in her great natural 
 capacity, an intelligence keen and quick, a taste naturally 
 refined, a sweet and gentle disposition, a pure and loving 
 
 heart " Her voice broke. Her eyes were blinded by 
 
 a sudden rush of tears. She moved her hand as though 
 to say : " There is no more to tell." 
 
 " You shut the door upon my hope," he said. 
 
 It was to her veritably as though the gates of her own
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 377 
 
 deed clashed behind her with the closing of the sentence. 
 For she haxi stated the absolute truth, and yet left much 
 untold. She saw disappointment and reluctant conviction 
 in his face, coupled with an immense faith in her that stung 
 her to an agony of shame and self-reproach. What had 
 she suppressed ? 
 
 Nothkig, but that the waggons of the emigrants had 
 turned south for Diamond Town a fortnight before the 
 finding of that lost lamb upon the veld. And her scrupulous 
 habit of truth, her crystal honour, her keen, clear Judgment 
 no less than her rigorous habit of self-examination, told her 
 that the half-truth was no better than falsehood, and that 
 she, Christ's Bride and Mary's Daughter, had deHberately 
 deceived this man. 
 
 Yet for his own sake, was it not best that he should never 
 know the truth ! And for the sake of Richard's daughter, 
 was it not her sacred maternal duty to shield that dearest 
 one from shame 1 She steeled herself with that as he bared 
 his head before her. 
 
 " Ma'am, you have more than honoured me with your 
 confidence, and I need not say that it is sacred in my eyes, 
 and shall be kept inviolate. And for the rest " 
 
 XL 
 
 " Reverend Mother," sounded from below. 
 
 " They are calling us," she said, as though awakened 
 from a dream. 
 
 " May I take you down ?" 
 
 He offered his arm with deference, and she touching it 
 lightly, they went down together. Lynette came to them 
 laughing, a cup in either hand, her aides-de-camp following 
 with plates that held the siege apology for bread and butter 
 and familiar-looking cubes of something. . . . 
 
 " Thank you, INIiss Mildare. What have you here, 
 Beau 1 Cake, upon my word ! Or is it a delusion born of 
 long and painful abstinence from any form of pastry ?" 
 
 " Cake it is, sir, and thundering good cake," proclaimed 
 Beauvayse. " Made from Sister Tobias's special siege recipe, 
 without candied peel or plums or carraways, or any of the
 
 378 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 other what-do-you-call-'ems that go into the ordinary article. 
 Gro in and win, sir. I've had three whacks. Haven't I, 
 Miss Mildare 1" 
 
 He spoke with the infectious enjoyment of a schoolboy, 
 and Lynette's laugh, sweet and gay as a thrush's sudden 
 trill of melody, answered : 
 
 " I think you have had four." 
 
 She flushed as she met the Colonel's eyes, reading in them 
 masculine appreciation of her delicate, vivid beauty, and 
 put her freed hand into the lean palm he held out, saying, 
 with a shy, sweet smile that lifted one comer of the sensitive 
 mouth higher than the other : 
 
 " I didn't come to say How do you do 1 before, because 
 I saw you were busy talking to Mother." Her quick glance 
 read something amiss in another face. " Mother, how tired 
 you look ! Please bring that little camp-stool, Mr. Fraithorn. 
 Oh, thank you. Dr. Saxham ; that one with arms is more 
 comfortable. Colonel, we're all under your command. 
 Won't you please order the Mother to sit down and rest ? 
 She will be so tired to-morrow. Dearest, you know you will." 
 
 She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. 
 The end of the thin black veil, that was shabby now, and 
 had dams in many places, was wafted across her face by a 
 vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and she kissed it, 
 bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked 
 at her, and then turned away. Saxham, in default of any 
 excuse for lingering near her, went back to Lady Hannah, 
 who had been diligently mining in him with the pick and 
 shovel of Our Special Correspondent, and getting nothing 
 out, and sat himself doggedly upon a stone beside her. 
 - " That is a sweet girl." She nibbled bannock, sparsely 
 margarined, and sipped her sugarless, milkless tea, sitting 
 on a little bushy knoll, warranted free from pufE-adders 
 and tarantulas. Saxham answered stiffly : 
 
 " Many people here seem to be under — the same im- 
 pression." 
 
 " Don't you share it ? Don't you think her sweet ?" 
 
 " I have seen young ladies who were — less deserving of 
 the adjective." 
 
 Lady Hannah Jangled a triumphant laugh. She wore 
 the tailored garb the average Englishwoman looks best in.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 379 
 
 at home and abroad, an alpaca coat and skirt of cool grey ; 
 what the American belle terms a " shirt-waist " with pearl 
 studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. 
 Her small face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were 
 as round and as bright as a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk 
 was full of glitter and vivacity. 
 
 " ' Praise from Dr. Saxham.' ... If I were a man," she 
 declared, " I should verdre la boule over that girl. I don't 
 wonder where she gets her lovely manners from, with such 
 a model of grace and good breeding as Biddy Bawne 
 before her eyes, but I do ask how she came by that type of 
 beauty ? And Biddy " 
 
 " Biddy ?" repeated Saxham, at a loss. 
 
 Her laugh shrilled out. 
 
 " I forgot. She is the Reverend Mother-Superior of the 
 Convent to all of you. But I was at school \\dth her, and 
 I can't forget she used to be Biddy. She was one of the 
 great girls, and I was a sprat of ten, but she condescended 
 to let me adore her, and I did, like everybody else. To 
 be adored is her metier. The Sisters swear by her, and that 
 girl worships the ground under her feet. If I had a daughter 
 I should lilce her to look at me in that way — heart in her 
 eyes, don't you know, and what eyes ! Topaz-coloured, 
 aren't they ? She has no conversation, of course. / 
 hadn't at her age — nineteen or twenty, if I am any guesser. 
 What she will be at thirty, if she don't go off ! That little 
 Greek head, and all those waves of rusty-coloured hair. 
 Quite wonderful ! And her hands and feet and skin — 
 marvellous ! And that small-boned slenderness of build 
 that is so perfectly enchanting. Paquin would delight to 
 dress her. And " — her jangling laugh rang out. waking 
 echoes from hollow places — " it looks — do you know ? — it 
 looks as though he would get the chance." 
 
 " Why does it 1" demanded Saxham, turning his square 
 face full upon Lady Hannah, and lowering his heavy, brows. 
 
 " Mercy upon us, Doctor, do you want me to be definite 
 and literal ? Can't you do as I do, and use your eyes ?" 
 Her own roimd, sparkling black ones were full of provoca- 
 tion. " They look as if they could see rather farther into 
 a mud wall than most people's. Please get me one of those 
 peaches. No, I won't have a plate. I am beginning to
 
 380 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 find out that most of the things Society regards as Indis- 
 pensable can be done without. I'm beginning to revert to 
 Primitive Simplicity. Isn't there a prehistoric flair about 
 most of us ? If there isn't, there ought to be. For what 
 are we from week-end to week-end but grimy male and 
 female Troglodytes, eating minced horse and fried locusts 
 in underground burrows by the light of parafl&n lamps ! 
 Another peach. . . . Thanks. Can't you see those dear 
 things, the Sisters, gathering them by lantern-light, and 
 being shelled by Brounckers' German gunners. Wretches ! 
 Beasts ! Horrors !" 
 
 " I hope," said Saxham, with rather heavy irony, " that 
 you acquainted them with your opinion of them while 
 you had the opportunity ?" 
 
 She gaily flipped him with the loose tan gloves she had 
 drawn off. Her bangles clashed, and her eyes snapped 
 sparks under the brim of her hat, whose feathers nodded and 
 swished, and her jangling laugh brought more echoes from 
 the high banks. 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! Do you know. Doctor, I call that thoroughly 
 nasty — to remind me, on such a fine day too, of the Frightful 
 Fiasco. When my own husband hasn't ventured to breathe 
 a hint even. . . . Do you know, when he rode out to meet 
 me with the Escort, all he said was, ' Hullo, old lady ; is 
 that you ? The Chief wants to know if you'll peck with 
 us at six, and I told him I thought you'd be agreeable.' 
 And when we met, he Why do handkerchiefs in- 
 variably hide when people want to sneeze behind them ?" 
 She found the ridiculous little square of filmy embroidered 
 cambric, and blew her thin httle nose, and furtively 
 whisked away a tear-drop. " He never moved a muscle ; 
 Just shook hands in his kind, hearty way, and began to tell 
 the news of the town. . . . Never, by look or word or sign, 
 helped to rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been." 
 She gulped. " I could have put my head down on the 
 tablecloth and cried gallons " — she blew her nose again — 
 " knowing I'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, 
 that flabby Slabberts creature counted for something in the 
 game, or Brounckers wouldn't have wanted him. And 
 Captain — my Captain ! . . ." She threw a sparkling eye-dart 
 tipped with remorseful brine at the spare, soldierly figure
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 381 
 
 and the lean, purposeful face, " If you were to say to me 
 this minute, ' Hannah Wrynche, Jump off the end of that 
 high rock-bluff there, down on those imcommonly nasty- 
 looking stones below,' I vow I'd do it !" 
 
 Saxham's blue eyes were kind. Here was a fellow hero- 
 worshipper. 
 
 " I believe you would do it, and — that he believes it too." 
 
 She tapped him on the sleeve with the long cherry-wood 
 stick of her white green-lined umbrella. 
 
 " Thank you. But don't get to making a habit of saying 
 charming things, because the role of Bruin suits you. Your 
 Society women-patients used to enjoy being bullied, 
 tremendously, I remember. We're made like that." 
 Her shrill laugh came again. " To sauter a pieds joirds on 
 people who are used to being deferred to, or made much of, 
 is the best way to command their cordial gratitude and 
 sincere esteem, isn't it ? Don't all you successful profes- 
 sional men know that ?" 
 
 " The days of my professional successes are past and 
 gone," said Saxham, " and my very name must be strange 
 in the ears of the men and women who were my patients. 
 It is natural and reasonable that when a man falls out of 
 the race, he should be forgotten — at least, I hold it so." 
 
 " You have a patient not very far away who lauds you 
 to the skies." Lady Hannah indicated the slender pepper- 
 and-salt clad figure of Julius Fraithorn with the cherry- 
 wood umbrella-stick. " You know his father, the Bishop 
 
 of H ? Such a dear Httle trotty old man, with the 
 
 kind of rosy, withered-apple face that suggests a dear little 
 trotty old woman, disguised in an episcopal apron and 
 gaiters, and with funny little bits of white fur glued on 
 here and there for whiskers and eyebrows. We met him 
 \vith Mrs. Fraithorn at the Hotel Schwert at Appenbad 
 one June. Do you know Appenbad 1 Views divine : 
 such miles of eye-flight over the Lake of Constance and the 
 Rhine Valley. To quote Bingo, who suffered hideously 
 from the whey-cure, every prospect pleases, and only 
 man is bile — and woman, too, if seeing black spots in 
 showers like smuts in a London fog, only sailing up instead 
 of coming down, means a disturbed gastric system. I'm 
 not sure now that the Bishop did not mention your name.
 
 382 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Can he have done so, or am I hashing things ? Do set 
 my mind aft rest ?" 
 
 Saxham said with stiffness : 
 
 " It would be possible that' the Bishop would remember 
 me. I operated on him for the removal of the appendix 
 in 18—" 
 
 " If you had taken away his Ritualistic prejudices at 
 the same time, you would have made his wife a happy 
 woman. Her soul yearns for incense and vestments, 
 candles, and acolytes, and most of all for her boy. Well, 
 she will thank you herself for him one day. Doctor." The 
 little dry hand, gUttering with magnificent rings, touched 
 Saxham's gently. " In the meantime let a woman who 
 hasn't got a son shake hands Avith you for her." 
 
 " You make too much of that affair." Saxham took the 
 offered hand. It pressed his kindly, and the little lady 
 went on : 
 
 " You're still a prophet in your own country, you know, 
 though it pleases you to make yourself out a — a kind of 
 medical Rip Van Winkle. In June last year — when I did 
 notguessthat I should ever knowyou — ^I heard a woman say: 
 ' If Owen had been here, the child wouldn't have died.' 
 And the woman was your sister-in-law, Mrs. David Saxham." 
 Saxham's blue eyes shot her a steely look. The wings 
 of his mobile nostrils quivered as he drew quickened breath. 
 He waited, with his obstinate under-lip thrust out, for the 
 rest. If he did not fully grasp the real and genuine kindli- 
 ness that prompted the little woman, at least he did her 
 the justice of not shutting her up as an impudent chatter- 
 box. She went on, a little nervously : 
 
 " I don't think I ever mentioned to you before that I 
 had met your brother and his wife ? She is still a very 
 attractive person, but — it is not the type to wear well, 
 and the boy's death cut them both up terribly." 
 " There was a boy — who died ?" 
 
 "In the spring of last year. Of — meningitis, I think 
 
 his mother said, and she declared over and over that if 
 
 you had been there, you would have saved him." 
 
 " At least, I should have done my best." 
 
 She had turned her eyes away in telling him, or she 
 
 would have seen the rehef in his face. He underatood
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 383 
 
 now why his mother's trustees had prompted the solicitors* 
 advertisement. He was his nephew's heir, under the late 
 Mrs. Saxham's will. Seven thousand in Consols and Home 
 Rails, and the little freehold property in North Wales, 
 that brought in, when the house was let, about one hundred 
 and fifty pounds a year, counted as wealth to a man who 
 had possessed nothing. He lifted his square head and 
 threw back his heavy shoulders with the air of one from 
 whom a heavy burden has been taken. His vivid eyes 
 lightened, his heavy brows smoothed out their puckers, 
 and the tense lines about his hps relaxed. His own words 
 came back to him : 
 
 " The Past is done with. Why should not the Future 
 be fair ?" 
 
 He knew, as he looked towards Lynette Mildare, who 
 personified the Future for him, and his mood changed. 
 He had loved her without hope. Now a faint grey began 
 to show in the blackness of his mental horizon. It might 
 be a false dawn, but what a lightening of the heavy heart — 
 what a leap of the stagnant blood — answered to it ! He 
 was no longer penniless. He had never loved monej' or 
 thirsted for estate, but the thought of that sum of seven 
 thousand pounds sohdly invested, and the house that 
 stood in its walled garden on the cliffs at Herion, looking 
 out on the wild, tumbling grey-white waters of Nantavon 
 Bay, was dear to him. 
 
 Plas Bendigaid had been a Convent once. Its grey, 
 stone-tiled, steep-pitched roof and solid walls of massive 
 stone had sheltered his mother's infancy and girlhood. 
 Perhaps they might cov er a loveher head, and echo to the 
 voices of his wife and his childi-en. He gave sweet fancies 
 the rein, as Lady Hannah chattered beside him. He 
 dreamed of that Futm-e that might be fail-, even as he filled 
 up the little lady's pauses with " Yes's " and " No's." 
 
 Love at first sight. He had laughed the possibility to 
 scorn, in other days, holding the passion to be the sober 
 child of propinquity, sympathy, consonance of ideas, 
 sunilar tastes, and pursuits, and fanned into flame, after 
 due time to kindle, by the appearance of a rival. 
 
 A rival ! He laughed silently, grimly, remembering the
 
 384 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 resentful, Jealous impulse that had prompted his interrup- 
 tion when the boyish, handsome face of Beauvayse had 
 leaned so near to hers, and the blush that dyed her white- 
 rose cheeks had answered, no doubt, to some hackneyed, 
 stereotyped, garrison compliment. 
 
 He had seen them together since then : once crossing the 
 veld from the Women's Laager on foot, in the company of 
 the Mother-Superior ; once here beside the river, under 
 the chaperonage of all the Sisters ; once in the Market 
 Square, and always the sight had roused in him the same 
 intolerable resentment and gnawing pain that rankled in 
 him now as he watched them. 
 
 What was Beauvayse whispering, so close to the delicate 
 little ear that nestled under the red-brown hair-waves ? 
 Something that set his grey-green eyes gleaming dangerously, 
 and lifted the wings of the fine nostrils, and opened the boldly- 
 curved mouth in audacious laughter, under the short golden 
 hairs of the cHpped moustache. Somehow that laughter 
 stung Saxham. His muscular hand gripped the old hunting- 
 crop that he carried by habit even when he did not ride, and 
 his black brows were thunderous as he vainly tried to listen 
 to the Uttle woman who chattered beside him. 
 
 " Look about you," she bade him, putting up her 
 tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglasses as though she were in a 
 picture-gallery or at a theatre. " Wouldn't the ordinarj' 
 unimaginative person suppose that Love would be the last 
 flower to blossom in the soil of this battered little bit of 
 debatable ground ? But we know better. So does Miss 
 Wiercke, the German ocuHst's daughter, and so does that 
 tallow-candle-locked young man who plays the 'harmonium 
 at the Catholic Church. And that other pretty girl — I 
 don't know her name — who used to keep the book-registers 
 at the Public Library. She is going to marry that young 
 mining- engineer — a Cornishman, Judging by his blue eyes 
 and black hair — do you happen to be Cornish, too 1 — next 
 Sunday. And the imcertainty about living till then or any 
 time after Monday morning will make quite a commonplace 
 wedding into something tremendously romantic. But you 
 don't even pretend to look when you're told. Aha !" she 
 cried ; "I've caught you. You were watching another 
 pair of lovers — the couple I kept for the last."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 385 
 
 " Not at all," said Saxham, inexpressibly wearied by the 
 voluble little woman's discourse. Ignoring the conven- 
 tional disclaimer, Lady Hannah went on : 
 
 " They're in the early stage — the First Act of the 
 dear old play. Pretty to watch, isn't it ? Though it 
 makes one feel chilly and grown old, as Browning or 
 somebody says. Only the other day one was tipping 
 that boy at Eton, and he looking such a Fourth of June 
 darling as you never saw, got up in duck trousers and a 
 braided blue jacket, and a straw hat with a wreath of 
 white and crimson Banksia roses round it for the Proces- 
 sion of Boats. And now " — she sighed drolly — " he's a 
 long-legged Lieutenant of Hussars, with a lady-kilHng 
 reputation. Though, in the present instance, I'm ready 
 to back my opinion that the biter is fairly bit. Wliat 
 regiments of women will tear their hair — real or the other 
 thing — when Beau becomes a Benedick." 
 
 Saxham saw red, but he gave no sign. She turned down 
 her Httle thumb with a twinkle of triumph. 
 
 " Hahet ! And I'm not sorry he has got it badly. His 
 leitmotif in the music-play has been * See the Conquering 
 Hero ' up to now ; one isn't sorry to see one's sex avenged. 
 But one is sorry for Mary Fraithorn's boy." She indicated 
 the Chaplain with a twirl of her eyeglasses. " She used to 
 visit him with the Sisters when he was ill, and, of course, he 
 has been bowled over. But il n'a pas un radis, unless the 
 Bishop comes round, and don't you think that little Greek 
 head of hers is aware that a great deal of money goes with 
 the Foltlebarre title, and that the family diamonds would 
 suit it to a marvel ?" 
 
 Saxham said gratingly, and with a hostile look : 
 
 " Do you infer that Miss Mildare is vain and mercenary ?" 
 
 " Good mercy, my dear man !" she screamed ; " don'ft 
 pounce, I infer nothing, except that Miss Mildare happens 
 to be a live girl, -tvith eyes and the gift of charm, and that 
 the young men are attracted to her as naturally as drones 
 to a honey-pot. Also, that, if she's wise, she Mill dispose 
 of her honey to the best advantage." Her beady bright 
 eyes snapped suddenly at Saxham, and her small face broke 
 up into laughter. " Ha. ha, ha ! Why, I do beheve . . ." 
 She screamed at him triumphantly. " You, too ! You've 
 
 23
 
 l\S6 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 succumbed. She carries your scalp at her pretty waist 
 with the rest of 'em. How perfectly delightful !" 
 
 Possibly Saxham h?id always been a bear, as her little 
 ladyship had stated, but the last five years had certainly 
 scraped off whatever social veneer had adhered to his 
 manners. The power of facial self-control, the common tact 
 that would have: carried things off with a laugh and a jest, 
 were his no longer, if he had ever possessed them. He got 
 upon his feet and stood before the woman whose six ounces 
 less oi brain-matter had been counterbalanced by so large 
 an allowance of intuition, dumbly furious with her, and so 
 unspeakably savage with himself for not being able to hide 
 his ?inger and annoyance that, as he stood before her with 
 his hulking shoulders hunched and his square, black head 
 sullenly lowered, and his eyes blazing under their heavy 
 brows, he suggested to Lady Hannah's nimble wit and 
 travelled experience the undeniable analogy between a 
 chaffed an^ irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded 
 by the stab of the gaudy paper-flagged dart in his thick 
 neck, £\.nd bewildered by the subsequent explosion of the 
 cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally said, and 
 had pigeon-holed the joke ifor Bingo when it became none. 
 
 " Dp, please, forgive me ! . . . What you must think of 
 me I . . ." she began contritely. 
 
 Repentance gave place to resentment. Saxham, without 
 even an abrupt inclination of the head, had swimg about and 
 left her. She saw the heavily-shouldered, muscularly-built 
 figure crossing the drift a little way down, stepping from 
 boulder ^p bo^:^lder with those curiously small, neat feet, 
 twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with 
 a decidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he 
 was knee-deep in the reeds of the north shore ; now he 
 was climbing the bank. A black-and-white crow flew up 
 heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of 
 the oaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of finches and 
 linnets rose as the covert of tree-fern and cactus and tall 
 gras§, knitted with thorny- stemmed creeper, received him 
 and swallowed him. She saw by the shaking of the fohage 
 that he turned up the stream, and then no more of him. 
 Feather-headed idiot that she had been ! Inconsiderate 
 wretcjj ! How, in Heaven's name, after reminding the man
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 387 
 
 of the perfidy of that; underbred passee little person with 
 the passion for French novels and sulphonal tabloids, who 
 had throAvn the Doctor over, years before, in favour of 
 his brother the Dragoon — how cou^d she have charged him 
 with being a victim to the charms of another young 
 woman ? If Mrs. Da^dd's desertion rankled still, as no 
 doubt it 4id, there be^^g no accounting for masculine 
 taste, \\e would, of course, resient the accusation almost as 
 an insult. Men were such Conseorvatives in love. And, 
 besides, she had Just been telling him ^bout the child. She 
 loathed herself for having perpetrated such a blunder. 
 Saxham had murdered politeness by quitting her abruptly ; 
 but hadn't she deserved the snub ? She deserve^i snubbing. 
 She would go, for the jjaealth of her soul, and talk to dearest 
 Biddy, \Yho always made you feel even smaller than you 
 had thought yourself before. 
 
 She stood up. shaking the sand-grains and grass-burrs 
 from her dress and the folds of the white umbrella. It was 
 nearing six o'clock. The heat was lessening, and the pale 
 turquoise sky overhead was flecked and dappled with little 
 puffs of rosy cloud, bulking in size g-nd deepening in colour 
 to the westward, where their upper edges were pure gold. 
 And the river looked like a stream of liquid honey, upon 
 which giant rose-leaves had b^en scattered, and a breeze 
 was stirring in the grasses and among t^ie leaves. Th^ 
 Sisters were busily repacking their baskets. Little Miss 
 Wiercke, and her lank-haired young organist, sat under a 
 bush, gazing in each other's eyes with the happy fatuity of 
 lovers in the second stage, while the yoi^pg lady who had 
 kept the registers at the Public Library ^va8 teaching her 
 Comit<h mining-engineer ^o wash up ci^ps and saucers in a 
 tin basin — a process which result<^d in the entanglement of 
 fingers of diSerent sexes, arxd rnade Siste^" Tobias pause over 
 her task of wiping crockery to shake h^r head and laugh- 
 
 Little Miss Wiercke was to lose her lank-baired organist 
 a few days later, the preyalent complaint of shrapnelitis 
 carrying him off. And the girl who screamed coouettishly 
 as the mining- etigipiCei^ amorously squeezed her wet fingers 
 under the soapsuds was shortly to be represented in the 
 Comishman's memory by another white cro^s in the 
 Cemetery, a trunk full of pathetic feminine fripperies, and 
 
 26—2
 
 388 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 a wedding-ring that had been worn barely two months. 
 But they did not Imow this, and they were happy. We 
 should never love or laugh if we knew. 
 
 Two other people had passed along the path that ran by 
 the margin of the sand and reed-patches, and were lost to 
 sight. Lady Hannah glanced towards the Mother-Superior, 
 who was being gracious to Captain Bingo and the Chaplain, 
 and hoped Biddy would not miss the owner of the little 
 Greek head and the enchanting willowy figure quite yet. 
 
 Nuns were frightfully scrupulous and gimlet-eyed where 
 their charges were concerned. And certainly, if young 
 people never got away together without qu^il ne vous en 
 deplaise f there would be fewer engagements. And Biddy 
 must know that it was a Heaven-sent chance for the girl. 
 
 The Foltlebarres had sat too long on thorns to grumble 
 at Beau's marrying a girl without a dot, who was not only 
 lovely enough to set Society screaming over her, but modest 
 and a lady. Up to the present his tendency had been to 
 exalt Beauty above Breed, and personal attractiveness 
 above moral immaculateness. 
 
 As in the most recent case of that taking but extremely 
 terrible little person with the toothy, photographic smile, 
 Miss Lessie Lavigne of the JolHty Theatre, the affair with 
 whom might be counted, it was to be hoped, as the last 
 furrow of a heavy sowing of wild oats. As this would be 
 a match d'egcd a egal — in point of blood and education, at 
 any rate— certainly the Foltlebarres would have reason to 
 bless their stars. 
 
 Somebody came over to her Just then, saying : 
 " Bingo seems in excellent spirits." 
 
 She looked, a httle apprehensively, across to where the 
 Mother Snperior and the wistful-eyod, pepper-and-salt-clad 
 Chaplain were patiently listening to the recital of one of 
 Bingo's stock anecdotes. 
 
 " What is he telling the Reverend Mother ?" Her tone 
 was anxious. " I do hope not that story about the un- 
 washed Boer and the cake of soap !" 
 
 " Don't be alarmed. It's a recent and completely harm- 
 less anecdote about the despatch-runner from Diamond 
 Town who got in this morning." 
 Her eyes sparkled.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 389 
 
 " Really . . . ? And with news worth having ?" 
 
 " Mr. Casey might be disposed to think so." 
 
 " Who is Mr. Casey ?" 
 
 " That's a question nobody can answer satisfactorily." 
 
 " But is the inbi Iligence absolutely useless to anybody 
 who doesn't happei to be Mr. Casey ?" she insisted. 
 
 " Not unless they happened to be deeply interested in 
 Mrs. Casey." 
 
 " There is a IMrs. Casey, then ?" 
 
 " So says the man who travelled two hundred miles to 
 bring her letters and the message that she is, as Mr. 
 Micawber would put it, in statu quo." 
 
 " I understand." The bright black eyes were com- 
 passionate. " She has written to her husband — she 
 doesn't know that he has been killed " 
 
 " Nor do we. As far as we can ascertain, the garrison 
 has never included a Casey." 
 
 " Then you think " 
 
 " I think " — he glanced aside as a stentorian bellow of 
 laughter reached them — " that. Judging by what I hear, 
 Bingo has got to the soapy story." 
 
 She frowned anxiously. 
 
 " Bingo ought to remember that nuns aren't ordinary 
 women. I shall have to go and gag him." She took a 
 dubious step. 
 
 " Why ? The Reverend Mother does not seem at all 
 shocked, and Fraithom is evidently amused." He added, 
 as Bingo's rapturous enjoyment of his own anecdote 
 reached the stamping and eye-mopping stage : " And un- 
 doubtedly Bingo is happy." 
 
 " He has got out of hand lately. One can't keep a hus- 
 band in a proper state of subjection who may be brought 
 home to one a corpse at any hour of the day." Her laugh 
 Jangled harshly, and broke in the middle. " The soil of 
 Gueldersdorp being so uncommonly favourable Just now 
 to the production of weeds of the widow's description." 
 
 " It grows other things." Hjs eyes were very kind. 
 " Brave, helpful, unselfish women, for instance." 
 
 " There is one !" 
 
 She indicated the tall, black-robed figure of the Mother 
 with a quick gesture of her little Jewelled hand.
 
 390 ^i. THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " And here is another." He toUchied her sleeve lightly 
 with a finger-tip. 
 
 " Brave. . . . Helpful." Her voice was choky. " Do 
 you think I shall ever forget the hindrance I have been to 
 you ? Didn't I los^ you your Boor spy '" 
 
 " Granted you did." His moustache curved cheerfully 
 at the comefs. " But that's Ancient History, and look 
 what you brought back !" 
 
 " A unit of the despised majority who is thoroughly con- 
 vinced of her own superfluousness. Hannah Wryhche, 
 with the conceit so completely taken out of her that she 
 feels, say, like a deflated balloOh ; Hannah Wrynche, who 
 beheved herself born to be a War Correspondent, and has 
 come down to scribbling gossipy paragraphs for a Httle 
 siege newspaper printed in a damp celldt." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Collectors will pay fancy prices for copies of that saitie 
 Uttle siege newspaper, 'at auctions yet to be." 
 
 " I've thought of that," she bdnfessed. " But, oh ! I 
 ccitild make it so much more spicy if you'd only give rae a 
 freer hand." 
 
 His hazel eyes had a smile in them. " I know you think 
 nie an editorial martinet." 
 
 " You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything 
 that's interesting." 
 
 " No personalities shall be published in a paper I control." 
 
 " I'he Reading PiibUc adorie personalities aiid puerilities." 
 
 " They cdh go to the D'aUy Whale for them, then." 
 
 " Isii't that rather- a personal remark ?" 
 
 " Let me say that if you are occasionally pet-sonal, ybii 
 ai-fej hever, under aiiy circumstances, anything but clever." 
 
 " Thank you. But, oh ! the difference between wh^t I 
 am and what I aspired to be !" 
 
 " And, ah ! the differehce betweeii what I hiiv^ iioile and 
 what I iheant to do !" he said. 
 
 Her black eyes flashed. " You have never feally felt it. 
 Abhieveiiient with you has never hit below the mkrk. You, 
 of all men living, Are least fitted to enter ihto the rueful 
 regrets and dismal disillusions of a Hannah Wrynche." 
 
 " Hannah WrjTjiche, who id content to do a. trbmah's 
 work and fill A woman'iS place ; Hannah Wrynche, who has
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 391 
 
 atoned for a moment of ambitious — shall I say impru- 
 dence ? — splendidly and nobly, has no reason to be rueful 
 or regretful. Don't shake your head. Do you think I 
 don't know what you are doing, day after day, to help and 
 cheer those poor fellows at the Convalescent Hospital ?" 
 
 Her eyes were full of tears. " You make too much of 
 my poor efforts. You underestimate the effect of praise 
 from you." 
 
 " I said very little in the last cipher despatch that got 
 through to Colonel Rickson at Malamye, but what I did 
 say was very much to the purpose, beUeve me." 
 
 She gasped, staring at him with circular eyes of in- 
 credulity. " You've mentioned — me — in your despatches. 
 Me ?" 
 
 " Just so !" he said, and left her groping for the ridiculous 
 Httle gossamer handkerchief to dry the tears of pride and 
 gratitude that were tumbling down her cheeks. 
 
 XLI 
 
 " Clang — clang — clang !" 
 
 A man and a gii'l came back out of Paradise when the 
 Catholic church-bell rang the Angelus. The girl's sweet 
 flushed face had paled at the first three strokes. When the 
 second triple clanged out, her colour came back. She 
 rose from her seat upon a lichened slab of granite in the 
 cool shadow of the great boulder, and bent her lovely 
 head, Beauvayse watching her lips as they moved, sound- 
 lessly repeating the Angelic Salutation : 
 
 " Ave Maria, gratia plena ; Dominus tecum ! Benedicta 
 tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris lui, Jesus." 
 
 The wonderful simplicity of the Chosen One's reply 
 followed, and the announcement of the Unspeakable 
 Mystery. The httle prayer followed, arid the rapid signing 
 with the Cross, and she dropped her slight hand from her 
 bosom, and turned her eyes back upon his. 
 
 " You remind me of riiy mother," he told her. " She 
 is Catholic, you know." 
 
 " And not you T' 
 
 *' We fellows, my brothers Leveetre and rialthSm and
 
 392 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 myself, were brought up as pillars of the Established 
 Church." His sleepy, grey-green eyes twinkled, his white 
 teeth showed in the laugh. " The girls are of my mother's 
 faith. It was a family agreement. Are you quite sure 
 you have come down to earth agaia ? Because there's 
 such an awful lot I want to say to you that I don't know 
 where to begin." 
 
 Though his mouth laughed, his eyes had wistful shadows 
 under them. He had tossed aside his Service felt when she 
 had taken off her hat, and the sunshine, piercing the thick 
 fohage overhead, dappled the scaly trunks of the blue-gum 
 trees, and dripped gold upon the red-brown head and the 
 crisp-waved golden one. 
 
 " I am here. I am listening." 
 
 She stood before him with meekly drooping eyelids, feel- 
 ing his ardent gaze like a palpable weight, under which her 
 knees trembled and her whole body swayed. The great 
 boulder rose upon her left hand like a beneficent presence. 
 Delicate ferns and ice-plants sprang from its chinks and 
 crannies. The long fronds of the sparaxis bowed at her 
 small, brown-shod feet, some bearing seed-pods, others 
 rows of pink bells, or yellow — a fairy chime. In the 
 damper hollows iris bloomed, and the gold and scarlet 
 sword-flowers stood in martial ranks, and gaily-plumaged 
 finches were sidling on overhanging boughs, or dipping and 
 drinking in the shallows. The wattled starlings whistled 
 to each other, or fought as starlings will. A grey partridge 
 was bathing in the hot dry sand between the reed-beds and 
 the bank, and in the deeper pools the barbel were rising at 
 the flies. There was no sound but the running water. 
 The spicy smell of aromatic leaves and the honeyed per- 
 fume of a great chmbing trumpet- flower made the air 
 languorous with sweetness. 
 
 He answered her now. 
 
 " You are here, and I am here. And for me that means 
 everything. And I feel that I want nothing more, and, 
 still, such a tremendous lot besides." 
 
 He breathed as though he had been running, and his 
 sharply-cut nostrils quivered. His white teeth gleamed 
 under the clipped golden moustache. 
 
 Perhaps it made his charm the more definite and irresis- 
 
 J
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 303 
 
 tible that in these days of storm, and stress, and hardship 
 and peril, his handsome face was never without its gay, 
 confident smile. His tall, athletic figure, in the neat work- 
 manlike Service dress that suited him so well, leaned towards 
 her eagerly. He kept his clear eyes on her face, with the 
 direct simplicity of a child's gaze, but the look bred in her 
 a delicious terror. The perfume of youth and health, of 
 vigour and virility, that exhaled from him, came to her 
 mingled with the scent of the crushed spice-leaves and the 
 perfume of the waxen-belled heaths and the breath of the 
 giant trumpet-flower. She was turning dizzy. She could 
 scarcely stand. 
 
 " I — I will sit down," she murmured, and he beat the 
 grasses at the foot of the great granite slab and prodded 
 in chinks and crannies for snakes and tarantulas ; and when 
 she sank down with a faint sigh of relief, threw himself at her 
 feet with a careless, powerful grace, and lay there looking up 
 at her, worshipping the golden lights that gleamed through 
 the thick dark eyelashes, and the sweet shadows under 
 them, and her little pointed chin. 
 
 The lace-trimmed frills of a white cambric petticoat 
 peeped under the hem of her green cloth skirt ; below there 
 was a gUmpse of slender, crossed ankles in brown silk hose, 
 and the little brown shoes laced with wide silk ties. She 
 drew off one of her thin, loose tan gloves, and smoothed 
 back a strajdng lock above her ear, and flushed, hearing 
 him murmur in his caressing voice : 
 
 " Take off the other glove, too." 
 
 She was well aware how beautiful her hands were — small, 
 and slender, and ivory-white, and exquisitely modelled, 
 with httle babyish nicks at the wrists, and at the imier 
 edges of the rosy palms, and gleaming pink nails, of the 
 true almond shape. She thought Httle of her face, though 
 she knew it to be charming ; but she ingenuously admired 
 her slender feet, that were quite as pretty without the 
 silk stockings and Uttle brown shoes, and the delicate 
 hands she bared for him now. He looked at them with 
 ardent longing, and said : 
 
 " How dear of you to do that, because I asked you ! 
 And do you realise that we're here together alone, you and 
 me, for the first time ? Nobody saw us steal away but Sister
 
 394 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Cleophee, and I've a notioh she woul<lh't tell, blessed old 
 soul !" 
 
 Her eyes diniled. 
 
 " You would not call the Mother that ?" 
 
 " No more than I would Queen Victoria or the Princess of 
 Wales. And a snubbing from the Religious would be rather 
 worse, on the whole, than a snubbing from the Royalty." 
 
 " The Princess never snubbed you ?" 
 
 " Didn't she ? Tremeiidously, once. Do you want to 
 hear about it ? She had sent away her brougham while the 
 giddy old Dean and Chapter were showing her round 
 St. Paul's. And — acting as Extra Equerry — I'd got instruc- 
 tions to call her a hack conveyance, and — being young and 
 downy, I'd picked H.R.H. the glossiest growler on the rank. 
 But you've been bred and born here. You don't even know 
 what a growler is. And in five years' time there won't be 
 one left in London." 
 
 " Perhaps I shall see London before Ihe five years are 
 over. And a growler is a four-wheeled cab. You see, I'm 
 not so ignorant. . . ." 
 
 " You sweetest !" he burst out passionately. " I wish 
 I knew all that you could teach me !" 
 
 He niight have frightened her if he had stretched out his 
 arms to clasp her then. But he mastered himself so far. 
 Lying at full length in the grass, leaning upon his elbow, he 
 rested his head upon his hand, and drank her in with 
 thirsty eyes. And that something emanating from him 
 enveloped her, delicately and yet forcefully, constraining 
 and urging and compelling her to meet his gaze. And the 
 perfume of the great honeyed flower came to her in waves 
 of sweetness, growing in strehgth, and the monotonous 
 buzzing of the black honey-bees mingled with the drum- 
 ming of the crickets, and the flowiiig of the riv^er, and the 
 beating of her heart, and the rushing of her blood. She 
 leafaed her fair head back against the great boulder, and 
 said in a voice that shook a Httle : 
 
 " Tell me about the siiubbihg." 
 
 " It was High Art. Three words — arid I kiiew I'd be- 
 hd,ved like a bouridier of the worst — t ha<l to go back and 
 get the other cab, with A, broken front window iahd a 
 cabby. . . ." He chuckled. ' I've met red, noses enough,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 395 
 
 but you could have seen that chap's glowing through the 
 thickest fog that ever blanketed Ludgate Hill and wrapped 
 the Strand in greasy mystery. Don't move, please ! . . . 
 There's a ray of suiishine touching your head that makes 
 yotu" hair look the colour of a chestnut when the prickly 
 green hull first cracks to let it out. Or . . . there's a rose 
 grows on the pergola at home at Foltlebarre Royal, with a 
 coppery sheen on the young leaves. ... I wondered why I 
 kept thinking of it as I looked at you. But I know now. 
 And your skin is creamy white like the flower. Oh, if I 
 could only gather the girl-rose arid carry it home to the 
 others !" 
 
 She was pink as the loveliest La France now. 
 
 " You ought not to talk to me in that way." 
 
 " Don't I know it ?" Beauvayse groaned out. He turned 
 over upon his face in the grass, and lay quite still. A 
 shuddering sigh heaved the strong young shoulders from 
 time to time, and his hands clenched and tore at the grasses. 
 " Don't I know it ? Lynette, Lynette !" 
 
 She loiiged to touch the close-cropped golden head. Un- 
 seen by him, she stretched out a hand timidly and drew it 
 back again, unsatisfied. 
 
 " Lynette, Lyliette ! I'm paying at this moment for 
 every rotten act of headlong folly I've ever committed in 
 my life, and you're making rUe !" He caught at a fold of 
 her skirt and drew it to him and hid his face in it, kissing 
 it again and again. It was one of the caresses she had been 
 used herself to offer where she most loved. Ttt find your- 
 self being worshipped instead of worshipping is an experi- 
 ence. She touched the golden head now, as the Mother had 
 often touched her own. He caught the hand. 
 
 " No, no !" She grew deadly pale, and shivered. 
 " Please let me gu. I — ^I did not " 
 
 She tried to release the hd.nd. He raised himself, and 
 she started at the wartn, quiveriag pressiil-e of his beautiful 
 mouth, scarcely shaded by the young, wheat-golden mous- 
 tache, upon her cool, sweet flesh. She snatched her hand 
 away with a faint cry, and sprang to hoi- feet, and her 
 cheeks blazed anew as she turned to go. 
 
 " You want to leave tile ? You Would punish me like 
 that — Just for a kissed hand ?"
 
 (( 
 
 396 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 He barred her way, taller than herself, though he stood 
 upon the sloping lower level. She had learned always to 
 be true in thought and speech. 
 
 " I — don't — like to be touched." She said it without 
 looking at him. 
 
 " You put your hand upon my head. Why did you do 
 it if you hate me so ?" 
 I — don't hate you !" 
 
 I love you ! My rose, my dove, my star, my Joy ! 
 Queen of all the girls that ever I saw or dreamed of, say 
 that you could love me back again !" 
 
 " I— must not." 
 
 Her bosom heaved. He could see the delicate white 
 throat vibrating with the tumultuous beating of her heart. 
 
 " Why not ? Nobody has told you anything against 
 me ? Nobody has said to you that I have no right to love 
 you ?" he demanded. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Look at me." 
 
 The golden hazel, dark-lashed eyes she shyly turned to 
 his were full of exquisite, melting tenderness. Her lips 
 parted to speak, and closed again. He leaned towards her 
 — hung over her, his own hps irresistibly attracted to those 
 sweetest ones. . . . 
 
 " Lord Beauvayse " she began, and stopped. 
 
 He begged : 
 
 " Please, not the duflSng title, but ' Beauvayse ' only. 
 Tell me you love me. Tell me that you'll wait until I'm 
 able to come to you and say : ' My beloved, the way's 
 clear. Be my wife to-morrow !' " 
 
 His tone was masterful. His ardent eyes thrilled her. 
 She murmured : 
 
 " Beauvayse . . . !" 
 
 She swayed to him, as a young palm sways before a 
 breeze, and he caught her in his strenuous, young embrace, 
 and held her firmly against him. Her old terrors wakened, 
 and dreadful, unforgettable things stirred in the darkness, 
 where they had lain hidden, and lifted hydra-heads. She 
 cried out wildly, and strove to thrust him from her, but he 
 held her close. There was a shaking among the tangled 
 growths of bush and cactus high up on the opposite bank,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 397 
 
 and Lynette realised that Beauvayse's arms no longer 
 held her. She leaned back against the boulder, panting and 
 trembling, and saw Beauvayse's revolver glitter in his steady 
 hand, as something came crashing down through the tangled 
 jungle upon the edge of the farther shore, and a heavily- 
 built man in khaki pushed through the shoulder-high 
 growth of reeds, and leaped upon a rock that had a swirl 
 of water round it. It was Saxham. 
 
 " Miss ]\Iildare !" called the strong, vibrating voice. 
 
 She faltered : 
 
 " It— it is Dr. Saxham." 
 
 " And what the devil does Dr. Saxham want ?" was 
 written in Beauvayse's angry face. But he called out as 
 he lowered his revolver-hand : 
 
 " You've had rather an escape of getting shot, Saxham, 
 do you know ? You might have been a Boer or a buffalo. 
 Better be more careful next time, if you're anxious to 
 avert accidents." 
 
 Saxham was a little like the buffalo as he lowered his 
 head and surveyed the alert, virile young figure and the 
 insolent, high-bred face from under ominously scowling 
 brows. He made no answer ; only laid one finger upon the 
 butt of his own revolver, and the shght action fanned 
 Beauvayse's annoyance and resentment to a white-heat, 
 as perhaps Saxham had intended. He sprang upon another 
 boulder that was in the mid-swirl of the current, and spoke 
 again. 
 
 " Miss Mildare, I was walking on one of the native paths 
 that have been made in the bush there " — he indicated the 
 bank behind him — " when I heard you cry out. I am 
 here, at your service, to offer you any help or protection 
 that is in my power to give." 
 
 Lynette looked at him vaguely. Beauvayse, crimson to 
 the crisp waves upon his forehead and the white collar-line 
 above the edge of his jacket, answered for her. 
 
 " IMiss Mildare does not require any help or protection 
 other than what I am privileged to place at her disposal. 
 You had better go on with your walk, Doctor. You know 
 the old adage about two being company ?" 
 
 He laughed, but his voice had quivered with fury, and 
 the hand that held the revolver shook too. And his eyes
 
 398 THE DOP DOOTOR 
 
 seemed colourless as water against the furious crimson of 
 his face. Still ignoring him, Saxham said, his own square, 
 pale faoe turned full upon Lyne^te, and his vivid blue eyes 
 constraining her : 
 
 " IVIiss Mildare, I am at your comnpiands. Tell me to 
 cross the river and take you back to the ladies of the Con- 
 vent, or order me to continue my walk. In which case I 
 shall understand that the familiarities of Lord Beauvayse 
 are not unwelcome to vou." 
 
 " By God ... ! You " 
 
 Beauvayse choked, then suddenly remembered where 
 an4 how to strike. But he waited, and Saxham waited, and 
 still she did not speak. 
 
 " Am I to go or stay 1 Kindly answer, Miss Mildare !" 
 
 Beauvayse's eyes were on her. He said to her below his 
 breath : 
 
 " Tell him to go !" 
 
 She stammered : 
 
 " Th — thank you. But — I — I — had rather you went on." 
 
 Beauvayse saw his opportunity, and added, with an in- 
 tolerable smile ' 
 
 " My ' familiarities,' as you are pleased to term them, 
 being more acceptable to a lady than the attentions of the 
 Dop Doctor." 
 
 Saxham started as though an adder had flashed its fangs 
 through his boot. A rush of savage blood darkened his 
 face ; his hand quivered near the butt of his revolver, and 
 his eyes blazed murder. But Avith a frightful effort ho con- 
 trolled himself, lifted his hat slightly to Lynette, turned 
 and leaped back to the stone he had quitted, strode through 
 the reed-beds, and plunged back into the tangled boscage. 
 That he did not continue his walk, but turned back towards 
 the town, was plain, for his retreat could be traced by the 
 shaking of the thick bush and the high grasses through 
 which he forced his way. It did him good to battle even 
 with these vegetable forces, and the hooked thorns that tore 
 his clothes and rent his flesh left nothing like the traces that 
 those few words of disroissal, spoken by a girl's voice, and 
 the hateful taimt that had followed, had. left upon his heart. 
 
 It was over. Over — over, the brief, sweet season of hope 
 Nothing was left now but his loyalty to the friend who be- 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 399 
 
 Ueved in him. If that man Ipjad not stood between Saxham 
 and his despair, Gueldersdorp would have got back her 
 Dop Doctor that night. For the Hospital stores included 
 a cherished case or two of Martell and Kinahan, and all 
 these things were under Saxham's hand. 
 
 Th^ heavy footsteps crashed out of hearing. The startled 
 finches settled down again, except at that point, higher up on 
 the opposite bank, to which Beauvayse's attention had first 
 been directed. There the little birds yet hovered like a cloud 
 of butterflies, but, practised scout as Beauvayse was, he paid 
 no heed to ^h^ir distress. She hadl declare^ for him. The 
 Doctor's discomfiture enhanced his. triumph. Gad ! how 
 like an angry buffalo the fellow was ! The sort of beast who 
 would put down his head and charge at a stone wall a.s 
 confidently as at a mud one. It was a confounded nuisance 
 that he had seen what he had seen. But a man who had 
 eventually cut so poor a figure, had been snubbed so 
 thoroughly and completely, might prefer to hold his tongue. 
 And if he did not, here in Gueldersdorp, while no letters got 
 through, while no newKS filtered in from the big humming 
 world outside, it would be possible to carry things bravely 
 off for a long time. He had told Bingo, to be sure, about — 
 about Lessie. But Bingo^ though he might bluster and 
 barge about dishonourable conduct, would never give away 
 a man Avho had trusted him. To be sure, it wa» not quite 
 fair, not altogether square ; it was not playing the game as 
 it should be played, to gain her promise as a free m.an. 
 Should he make a clean breast of it, and tell her the whole 
 wretched story now ? 
 
 Perhaps he might if she had not been standing, a slender 
 grcen-and-white, nymph-like figure, against the background 
 of sun-hot, shadow- flecked, hchened stone, looking at him. 
 The rosy light bathed her in its radiance. And as she 
 looked, it seemed to him that something was dawning in 
 that face of hers. He watched it, breathless with the 
 realisation of his dreams, his hopes, his desires. The prize 
 was his. Every other baser memory was drowning within 
 him. It seemed to him that her purity, as he bathed in it, 
 washed him clean of stain. He forgot everything but; the 
 secret that those sweet eyes told at laat. 
 
 " My beloved ! I'm not good enough to tie your blessed
 
 400 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 little shoes, and yet no other man shall ever have you, hold 
 you, call you his own. . , . Lynette, Lynette ! Dear one, 
 isn't there a single kiss ? And I might get shot to-morrow." 
 
 It was characteristic of him that his brave, gay mouth 
 should laugh even in the utterance of the appeal that 
 melted her. She gave a httle sob, and raised her sweet face 
 to his, flushing loveliest rosy red. She lifted her slender 
 arms and laid them about his strong young throat, and 
 kissed liim very quietly and purely. He had meant to 
 snatch her to Ms leaping heart and cover her with eager, 
 passionate caresses. But the strong impulse was quell6d. 
 He said, almost with a sob : 
 
 " Is this your promise ? Does this mean that you belong 
 to me ?" 
 
 Her breath caressed his cheek as she whispered : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He was thrilled and intoxicated and tortured at once to 
 know himself her chosen. Ah ! why was he not free ? 
 Why had Chance and Luck and Fate forced him to play a 
 part like this ? 
 
 " I wish to Heaven we had met a year ago !" he broke 
 out impulsively. "Half-a-dozen years ago — only you'd 
 have been a mere kid — too young to understand what 
 Love means. . . . Why, Ljmette darling ! what is the 
 matter ? What have I said that hurt ?" 
 
 Her arms had fallen from about his neck. She shrank 
 away from him. He drew back, shocked into silence by the 
 sudden, dreadful change in her. Her eyes, curiously dulled 
 and faded, looked at Beauvayse as though they saw not him, 
 but another man, through him and behind him. Her face 
 was peaked and pinched ; her supple, youthful figure 
 contracted and bent Uke that of a woman withered by some 
 wasting sickness, her dainty garments seemed to lose their 
 colouring and their freshness, and hang on her, by some 
 strange illusion wrought by the working of her mind upon 
 his, like sordid rags. Against the splendid riot of life and 
 colour over and under and about her, she looked like some 
 slender sapling ringed and blighted, and ruined by the inex- 
 orable worm. For she was remembering the tavern on the 
 veld. She was recalling what had been — realising what 
 must henceforth be, in its fullest meaning. She shuddered,
 
 THE DOP DOOTOR 401 
 
 and her half-open mouth drew in the air in gasps, and the 
 blankness of her stare appalled him. He called in alarm : 
 " Lynette dearest ! what is the matter ? Why do you 
 look at me hke that ? Lynette !" 
 
 She did not answer. She shook like a leaf in the wind, 
 and stared through him and beyond him into the Past. 
 That was all. There was a rustling of leaves and branches 
 higher on the bank, and the sound of thick woollen draperies 
 trailing through grass. The bush on the edge of the cleared 
 space that was about the great boulder was parted by a 
 white, strong hand and a black-sleeved arm, and the 
 Mother -Superior moved out into the open, and came down 
 with those long, swift steps of hers to where they were. 
 Her eyes, sweeping past Beauvayse, fastened on the droop- 
 ing, stricken figure of the girl, read the altered face, and 
 then she turned them on the boy, and they were stern as 
 those of some avenging Angel, and her white wimple, 
 laundried to snowy immaculateness by the capable hands 
 of Sister Tobias, framed a face as white. 
 
 " What is the reason of — this ? What has passed be- 
 tween you to account for it ? Has your mother's son no 
 sense of honour, sir ?" 
 
 The icy tone of contempt stung him to risk the leap. He 
 drew himself to his splendid height, and answered, his brave 
 young eyes boldly meeting the stern eyes that questioned 
 him : 
 
 " Ma'am, I am sorry that you should think me capable 
 of dishonourable conduct. The fact is, that I have just 
 asked Miss Mildare to be my wife. And she consents." 
 
 A spasm passed over the pale face. So easily they leave 
 us whom we have reared and tended, when the strange 
 hand beckons and the new voice calls. But the Mother - 
 Superior was not a woman to betray emotion. She drew 
 her black nun's robe over the pierced mother-heart, and said 
 calmly, holding out her hand to him : 
 
 " You will forgive me if I way unjust, knowing that she 
 is dear to me. And now I shall ask you to leave us. 
 Please tell the Sisters " — from habit she glanced at her worn 
 gold watch — " we shall join them in ten minutes' time." 
 
 He bowed, and lifted his smasher hat from the grass, and 
 took up the Lee-Metford carbine he had been carrying and
 
 402 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 had laid aside, and went to Lynette and took her passive 
 hand, and bent over it and kissed it. It dropped by her 
 side lifelessly when he released it. Her face was a mask 
 void of life. He looked towards the Tviother in distress. 
 Her white hand imperiously motioned him away. He ex- 
 postulated : 
 
 " Is it safe for two ladies, ma'am, so far from the town, 
 without protection ? Natives or white loafers may be 
 hanging about." 
 
 " K you desire it, you can remain within hearing of a 
 call. But go now." 
 
 He went, lightly striding down the sandy path between 
 the reed-beds on the foreshore. She watched the tall, athletic 
 figure until it swung round a bend and was lost to sight. 
 
 Then she went to the girl and touched her. And at the 
 touch Lynette dropped as though she had been shot, and 
 lay among the trodden grasses and the flaunting cowslips 
 face downwards. A low, incessant moaning came from 
 the muffled mouth. Her hands were knotted in her hair. 
 She writhed like a crushed snake, and all of her slender 
 neck and face that could be seen and the little ears that her 
 clutching, twining fingers sometimes bared and sometimes 
 covered were one bu rnin g, shameful red. 
 
 '' Lynette ! My dear one !" The Mother, wrung and 
 torn with a very agony of tenderness and pity, knelt beside 
 her, and began with gentle strength to untwine those 
 clutcliing hands from the girl's hair. She prisoned both in 
 one of hers, and passed the other arm beneath the slender 
 rigid body, and lifted it up and held it in her strong embrace, 
 silently until a moan, more articulate than the rest, voiced : 
 
 " Mother !" 
 
 " It is Mother. She holds you ; she will not let you go." 
 
 The head lay helplessly upon her bosom. She felt the 
 rigor lessen. The moaning ceased, and the tortured heart 
 began to leap and strain against her own, as though some 
 invisible hand lashed it with an unseen thong. 
 
 There were no tears. Only those moans and the leaping 
 of the heart that shook her whole body. And it seemed to 
 the Mother that her own heart wept tears of blood. The 
 hour had come at last, as always she had known it would. 
 The love of a man had wakened the woman in Lynette.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 403 
 
 She knew now the full value of the lost heritage, and 
 realised the glory of the Jewel that had been snatched by 
 the brutal hand of a thief. Ah, Lord ! the pity of it ! 
 
 The pity of it ! She, the stainless one, could have 
 stripped off her own white robe of virgin purity, had it been 
 possible, to clothe the despoiled young shoulders of 
 Richard's daughter, cowering prostrate under her burden of 
 guiltless shame, crushed by the terrible knowledge that 
 ruiaed innocence must always pay the penalty, whether 
 the destroyer is punished or goes free. 
 
 The penalty ! Suppose at the price of a lie from lips 
 that had never lied yet it could be eva ted ? The Mother's 
 face contracted with a spasm of mental pain. A dull flush 
 mounted to her temples, and died out ia oUve paleness ; her 
 Ups folded closely, and her black brows frowned over the 
 sombre grey fixes burning in their hollow caves. She re- 
 buked a sinner at that moment, and the culprit was herself. 
 
 She, the Just mistress and wise ruler of so many Sisters 
 in the religious profession ; she, so slow to Judge and con- 
 demn others, was unsparing in austerity towards herself. 
 She had always recognised her greatest weakness in her love 
 for this adopted daughter that might have been her own 
 if Richard Mildare had not played traitor. She had never 
 once yielded to the clingiag of those shght hands about her 
 heart, but she had exacted forfeit from herself, and rigor- 
 ously. So much for excess of partiality, so much for over- 
 consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, so 
 much more of late for the keen mother- Jealousy that had 
 quickened in her to anguish at the thought that another 
 would one day usurp her undivided throne, and claim and 
 take the lion's share of the love that had been all hers. 
 Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. 
 She was all the more exacting towards herself. What right 
 had a nun to be so bound by an earthly tie ? It was de- 
 frauding her Saviour and her Spouse to love with such 
 excess of maternal passion the child He had given. Yet 
 she loved on. 
 
 She reviewed all her shortcomings, even while the girl's 
 head lay helplessly agaiast her, and the scalding tears that 
 had at last begun to gnsh from those shut, quivering eyeUds 
 wetted her breast. She had esteemed and valued perfect 
 
 26—2
 
 404 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 candour above all things. And yet of what concealments had 
 she not been guilty in the shielding of this dearest head ? 
 
 She had deceived, for Richard's child, Richard's friend, 
 in the deft interweaving of fragmentary truths into a whole 
 plausible fabric. She knew that, if necessary, she would 
 deceive again, trailing her wings, fluttering on before, as 
 the golden plover lures the footsteps of the stranger from 
 her nest. 
 
 Perhaps you call her scruples fantastic, her sense of guilt 
 morbid. Even the lay Catholic can with difficulty com- 
 prehend and enter fully into the mental constitution of the 
 Religious. This was a nun, to whom a blur upon the 
 crystal of the soul kept pure, like the virginal body, for the 
 daily reception of the Consecrated Host, meant defilement, 
 outrage, insult, to her Master and her Lord. 
 
 And she had always Jinown, it seemed to her, that this 
 terrible hour would come. When the two young figures 
 had moved away together into the green gloom of the trees, 
 she had felt a premonitory chill that streamed over her 
 whole body like icy water, paralysing and numbing her 
 strength. She had read their secret in their faces, un- 
 conscious of her scrutiny, and watched them out of sight, 
 praying, as only such a mother can, that it might not be as 
 she feared. This was her beloved's great hour ; she would 
 not have stretched out a finger to delay its coming, — she 
 who had known Love, and could not forget ! It might be 
 that in this splendid boy, who was as beautiful as the Greek 
 Alcibiades, and as brave as the young Bayard, lay the 
 answer to all her prayers for her darling. The bridal white 
 would not be a blasphemy, hke the young nun's snowy robe 
 and veil. And yet — and yet, in Lynette's place she knew 
 that she could never have looked into the face of a rosy, 
 smiling, wedded Future without seeing under the myrtle and 
 orange-blossom garland the leering satyr-face of the Past. 
 
 Was it wise that another should be made to share that 
 vision 1 She put that question to herself, looking with 
 great agonised, unseeing eyes over the head that lay upon 
 her bosom, out across the slowly moving water, stained with 
 amber from ironstone beds through which it had wound its 
 way, tinged with ruddy crimson from the sunset. For the 
 sky, from the western horizon lo the zenith, and from
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 405 
 
 fchence to the serried peaks and frowning bastions of 
 purple-black cloud that lowered in the north, was all orange- 
 crimson now, and the moon, then at the ending of her 
 second quarter, swung Uke a pale lamp of electrum at the 
 eastward comer of the flaming tent. 
 
 " Was it wise ?" She seemed to hear her own voice 
 echoing back out of the past. And it said : 
 
 " The only just claim to your entire confidence in all 
 f that concerns your past life will rest in the hands of the 
 man who may one day be your husband." 
 
 The perfume of the great white trumpet-flower came to 
 her in gusts of intensified, sickening, loathsome sweetness. 
 She glanced round and saw it on her right, clasping in its 
 luxuriant embrace a slender young bush that it was killing. 
 The thick, juicy green stems and succulent green leaves, 
 the greedily embracing tendrils and great fleshy-white, 
 hanging flowers revolted her. The creeper seemed the 
 symbolisation of Lust battening upon Innocence. 
 
 Other like images crowded thick and fast upon her. 
 From a mossy cranny in a stone a hairy tarantula leaped 
 upon a little lizard that sunned itself, not thinking Death 
 so near. A lightning- quick pounce of the bloated thing 
 yith the fierce, bright eyes and the relentless, greedy claws, 
 and the little reptile vanished. She shuddered, thinking 
 of its fate. 
 
 The blue gums and oaks that fringed the river gorge and 
 the bushes that grew about were ragged and torn with 
 shell and shrapnel - ball. Chips and flinders had been 
 Icnocked by the same forces from the boulders and the 
 rocks. Amongst the flowers near her shone something 
 bright. It was an unexploded Maxim-shell, a pretty little 
 messenger of Death, girt with bright copper bands and 
 gaily painted. And a ninety-four-pound projectile, ex- 
 ploded, had scattered the shore with its fragments, and 
 doubtless the river-bed was strewn thick with others. 
 You had only to look to see them. Once Lynette's lover 
 knew everything there was to know, the trees and rocks 
 and flowers of the Eden in which every daughter of Eve owns 
 the right to walk, if only once in a whole lifetime, would 
 be marred and broken, scorched and spoiled, like these. 
 
 Purblind that she had been. What claim had any
 
 406 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 man, seeing what the lives of men are, to this pitiful 
 sacrifice of reticence, this rending of the veil of merciful, 
 wise secrecy from an innocent young head ? None, Not 
 the shadow of a claim. She tossed away her former 
 scruples. They sailed from her on the faint hot breeze 
 lightly as thistledown. And now the tear-blurred face 
 was lifted from her bosom, and the voice, hoarse and weak 
 and trembling, appealed : 
 
 " Mother, you are not angry ? I never meant to be 
 underhand, or to hide — anything from you." 
 
 " No," she said, hiding the pang it gave her to realise 
 how much had been concealed between the lines that she 
 had read so often. " You did not mean to." The trem- 
 bling voice went on : 
 
 " He never spoke to me as though we were strangers. 
 
 Never, from the first. And to-day, he " Her heart's 
 
 throbbing shook her. The Mother said : 
 
 " He has told me what has passed. He said that he 
 had asked you to marry him, and you had — agreed." 
 The bitterness of her wounded love was in her tone. 
 
 "I — had forgotten," she panted, '''that — until one 
 little careless thing he said brought it all back to me in 
 such a flood. It was like drowning. Then you came, 
 
 and — and " The quavering, pitiful voice rose to a cry : 
 
 " Mother, must I tell him everything ?" She cowered down 
 in the enfolding arms. " Mother, Mother, must I tell him ?" 
 
 A great wave of pity surged out from the deep mother- 
 heart that throbbed against her own. The deep, melodious 
 voice answered with one word : 
 
 " No." 
 
 Amazement sat on the uplifted, woebegone face of the 
 girl. The sorrowful eyes questioned the Mother's in- 
 credulously. 
 
 " You mean that you " 
 
 She folded the slight figure to her. Her sorrowful 
 eyes, under their great jetty arches, looked out like stars 
 through a night of storm. Her greyish pallor seemed a 
 thin veil of ashes covering incandescent furnace-fires. 
 She rose up, lifting the slender figure. She said, looking 
 calmly in the face : 
 ; " I mean that you are not to tell him. Upon your
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 407 
 
 obedience to me I charge you not to teli him. Upon your 
 love for me I command you — never to tell him ! Eass me, 
 and dry these dear eyes. Put up your hair ; a coil is 
 loosened. He is waiting for us ! Come !" 
 
 XLII 
 
 The tall, soldierly young figure was standing motionless 
 and stiff, as though on guard, on the river-shore beyond the 
 bend. Whatever apprehensions, whatever regrets, what- 
 ever fears may have warred within Beauvayse, whatever 
 consciousness may have been his of having taken an irre- 
 vocable step, bound to bring disgrace and reproach, sorrow, 
 and repentance upon the innocent as upon the guilty, he 
 showed no sign as he came to meet them, and lifted the 
 Service felt from his golden head, and held out an eager 
 hand for L3naette'8. She gave it shyly, and with the 
 thrill of contact Beauvayse's last scruple fled. He turned 
 his beautiful, flushed face and shining eyes upon the 
 Mother, and asked with grave simplicity : 
 
 " Ma'am, is not this mine ?" 
 
 " First tell me, do you know that there is nothing in it ?" 
 
 Her stern eyes searched his. He laughed and said, 
 as he kissed the slender hand : 
 
 " It holds everything for me !" 
 
 " Another question. Are you aware that my ward is a 
 Catholic ?" 
 
 " My wife will be of my mother's faith. I would not 
 have her of any other." 
 
 The Mother gave Beauvayse her own hand then, that 
 was marred by many deeds of charity, but still beautiful. 
 
 Those two, Unked together for a moment in their mutual 
 love of her, made for Lynette a picture never to be for- 
 gotten. Then Beauvayse said, in the boyish tone thai 
 made the man irresistible : 
 
 " You have made me awfully happy !" 
 
 " Make her happy," the Mother answered him, with a 
 tremble in her rich, melancholy tones, " and I ask no 
 more." 
 
 Her own heart was bleeding, but she drew her black
 
 408 THE BOP DOCTOR 
 
 draperies over the wound with a resolute hand. Was 
 not here a Heaven-sent answer to all her prayers for her 
 beloved ? she asked herself, as she looked at the girl. Eyes 
 that beamed so, cheeks that burned with as divine a rose, 
 had looked back at Lady Biddy Bawne out of her toilet- 
 glass, upon the night of that Ascot Cup-Day, when Richard 
 had asked her to be his wife. But Richard's eyes had 
 never worn the look of Beauvayse's. Richard's hand had 
 never so trembled, Richard's face had never glowed like this. 
 Surely here was Love, she told herself, as they went back to 
 the place of trodden grass where the tea-making had been. 
 
 The Sisters, basket and trestle-laden, were already in 
 the act of departure. The black circle of the dead fire 
 marked where the giant kettle had sung its hospitable 
 song. Little Miss Wiercke and her long-locked organist, 
 the young lady from the Free Library and her mining- 
 engineer, had strolled away townwards, whispering, and 
 arm-in-arm ; the Mayor's wife was laying the dust with 
 tears of joy as she trudged back to the Women's Laager 
 beside a husband who pushed a perambulator containing 
 a small boy, who had waked up hungry and wanted supper ; 
 the Colonel and Captain Bingo Wrynche had been sum- 
 moned back to Staff Headquarters, and a pensive little 
 black-eyed lady in tailor-made alpaca and a big grey hat, 
 who was sitting on a tree-stump knocking red ants out of 
 her white umbrella, as those three figures moved out of 
 the shadows of the trees, jumped up and hurried to meet 
 them, prattling : 
 
 " I couldn't go without saying a word. . . . You have 
 been so beset with people all the afternoon that I never 
 got a chance to put my oar in. Dear Reverend Mother, 
 everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will ever 
 preach again about Providence spreading a table in the 
 wilderness without my coming back in memory to to-day. 
 May we walk back together ? I am a mass of ants, and 
 mosquito-bitten to a degree, but I don't think I ever enjoyed 
 myself so much. No, Lord Beauvayse, the path is narrow, 
 and I have a perfect dread of puff-adders. Please go on 
 before us with Miss Mildare. No ! . . . Oh, what. . . ? 
 You haven't . . . ?" 
 
 It was then that Lady Hannah dropped the white umbrella
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 409 
 
 and clapped her hands for joy. Something of mastery 
 and triumph in the young man's face, something in the 
 pale radiance of the girl's, something of the mingled Joy 
 and anguish of the pierced maternal heart shining in the 
 Mother's great grey eyes, had conveyed to the exultant 
 little woman that the plant that had thriven upon the 
 arid soil of Gueldersdorp had borne a perfect blossom with 
 a heart of ruby red. 
 
 " Oh, you dears ! you two beautiful dears ! how happy 
 you look!" she crowed. "I must kiss you, both!" She 
 did it. " Say that this isn't to be kept secret !" She clasped 
 her tiny hands with exaggerated entreaty. " For the 
 sake of the Gueldersdorp Siege Gazette, and its seven hundred 
 subscribers all perishing for news, tell me I may let the 
 cat out of the bag in my next Weekly Column. Only 
 say that people may know !" 
 
 As her black eyes snapped at Beauvayse, and her tiny 
 hands dramatically entreated, he had an instant of hesita- 
 tion, palpable to one who stood by. In an instant he 
 pulled himself together. 
 
 " The whole world may know, as far as I am concerned." 
 
 " It is best," said the Mother's soft, melodious voice, 
 " that our world, at least, should know." 
 
 " And when — oh, when Is It To Be ?" begged Lady 
 Hannah. 
 
 Confound the woman ! Why could she not let well 
 alone ? A sullen anger burned in Beauvayse as he said, 
 and not in the tone of the ardent lover : 
 
 " As soon as we can possibly manage it." 
 
 The Mother's voice said, coldly and clearly : 
 
 " I do not approve of long engagements. If the marriage 
 takes place, it must be soon." 
 
 With the consciousness of one who is impelled to take 
 a desperate leap, Beauvayse found himself saying : 
 
 " It cannot be too soon." 
 
 " Then . . . before the Relief ?" cried Lady Hannah, 
 and Beauvayse heard himself answering : 
 
 " If Lynette agrees ?" 
 
 The rapture of submission in her look was intoxicating. 
 He reached out his hand and laid it lightly on her shoulder. 
 Then, without another word, they went on together, and
 
 410 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the tall, soldierly figure in brown, and the slender shape 
 in the green skirt and little white coat, with the dainty 
 plumed hat crowning the squirrel-coloured hair, were seen 
 in darkening relief against the flamiug orange of the sky. 
 
 " A Wedding under Fire. Bridal Ceremony in a Be- 
 leaguered City," murmured the enthusiastic journalist. 
 Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her chatelaine, seemed 
 to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined herself aiding, 
 planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to describe 
 the ceremony and the wedding- veil on the little Greek head. 
 She babbled as her quick, bird-like gait carried her along 
 beside the tall, stately-moving figure in the black habit : 
 
 " Dear Bridget ... I may call you that for the sake of 
 old days V 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " This must make you very happy. Society mothers 
 of marriageable daughters will tear their transformations 
 from their heads, and dance upon them in despair, when they 
 hear that Beau s^est rangL But that I don't hold forth 
 to worldly ears I would enlarge upon the immense social 
 advantages of such a union for that dear child." 
 
 " Of course, I am aware that it is an excellent match." 
 
 Were her ears so unworldly ? The phrase rankled in 
 her conscience like a thorn. And in what respect were 
 those Society mothers less managing than the nun 1 she 
 asked herself. Could any of them have been more astute, 
 more eager, more bent on hooking the desirable 'parti for 
 their girls than she had shown herself just now ? And 
 was this, agaia, an unworldly voice whisperiug to her 
 that the publicity ensured by a paragraph penned by this 
 gossip-loving Uttle lady would fix him even more securely, 
 bind him more strongly, make it even less possible for him 
 to retreat, should he desire it — by burning his boats behind 
 him, so that he had no alternative but to go on ? She 
 sickened with loathing of herself. But for her there was 
 no retreat either. Here Lady Hannah helped her unawares. 
 With a side-glance at the noble face beside her, pale olive- 
 hued, worn and faded beyond the age of the woman by 
 her great labours and her greater griefs, the arched black 
 eyebrows sprinkled of late with grey, the eyelids thin over 
 the mobile eyeballs, purpled with lack of sleep and secret,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 411 
 
 bitter weeping, the close-folded, deeply cut, eloquent 
 mouth wither^ like a Japonica-bloom that lingers on in 
 ' frost, the strong, salient chin framed in the snoMy, starched 
 guimpe, she faltered : 
 
 " You don't shy at the notion of the par — the announce- 
 ment in the Siege Gazette, I mean ? . . ." 
 
 " Upon the contrary, I approve of it," said the Mother, 
 \ and walked on very fast, for the bells of the Catholic 
 Church were ringing for Benediction. 
 
 " Is it good-night, or may I come in 1" Beauvayse whis- 
 pered to Lynette in the porch. 
 
 She dipped her slender fingers in the little holy-water 
 font beside the door, and held them out to him. 
 
 " Come in," she answered, and held white, wet fingers 
 out to him. He touched them with a puzzled smile. 
 
 " Am I to ■ ? Ah, I remember !" 
 
 Their eyes met, and the golden radiance in hers passed 
 into his blood. He bared his high, fair head as she made 
 the sign of the Cross, and followed her in and up the nave 
 as Father Wix, in purple Lenten stole over the snowy 
 cotta starched and ironed by Sister Tobias's capable hands, 
 began to intone the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. 
 The Sisters were already in their places — a double row 
 of black-draped figures, the Mother at the end of the first 
 row, Lady Hannah in the chair beside her, where Lynette 
 had always sat until now. It was not without a pang 
 that the one saw her place usurped by a stranger ; it was 
 piercing pain to the other to feel the strange presence at 
 her side. But something had already come between 
 these two, dividing them. Something inWsible, impal- 
 pable as air, but nevertheless thrusting them apart with 
 a force that might not be resisted. 
 
 Only the older of the two as yet knew clearly what it 
 meant. The yotmger was too dizzy with her first heady 
 draught from the cup of joy, held to her lips by the strong, 
 beautifully-shaped brown hand that rested on Beauvayse's 
 knee as he sat, or propped up Beauvayse's chin as he knelt, 
 stiff as a young crusader on a monument, beside her. But 
 the Mother knew. Would not the God Who had been 
 Justly offended in her. His vowed servant, that day, exact 
 to the last tittle the penalty ? She knew He would.
 
 412 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Rosary ended, the thin, kind-eyed h'ttle elderly priest 
 preached, taking for the text of his discourse the Introit 
 from the Office of Quinquagesima. 
 
 " Esto mihi in Deum protectorum, et in locum refugii, ut 
 salvum me facias.^* 
 
 " Be Thou unto me a God, a protector, and a place of 
 refuge, to save me : for Thou art my strength. . . ." 
 
 Then the Salutaris was sung, and followed by the 
 Litany of the Holy Name. 
 
 The church was crowded. A Catholic congregation is 
 always devout, but these people, well-dressed or ill-dressed, 
 prosperous or poor, pale-faced and hollow-eyed every one. 
 Joined in the office with passion. The responses came like 
 the beating of one wave of human anguish upon the Rock 
 of Ages. 
 
 " Have mercy on us /" 
 
 Hungry, they cried to One Who had hungered. Sinking 
 with weariness, they appealed to One Who had known 
 labours, faintings, agonies, and desolations. 
 
 " Have mercy on v^ /" 
 
 He had drunk of Death for them, had been buried and 
 had risen again. 
 
 Death was all about them. They could hear the beating 
 of his wings, could see the red sweep of his blood-wet, 
 dripping scythe. And they prayed as they had never 
 prayed before these things befell : 
 
 " Have mercy on us /" 
 
 They sang the Tantum Ergo, and the cloud of incense 
 rose from the censer in the priest's hand. Then, at the 
 thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and the first white gleam of 
 the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of the 
 Altar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden wind 
 sweeps over a field of ripened com. Only one or two 
 remained unmoved, one of these a man's head, young and 
 crisply-waved, and golden. . . . 
 
 And then came the orderly crowding to the door, and they 
 were outside under the great violet sky, throbbing with 
 splendid stars, breathing the tainted air that came from 
 the laagers and the trenches. But oh, was there ever a 
 sweeter night, following upon a sweeter day ? 
 
 Beauvayse's hand found and pressed Lynette's. She 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 413 
 
 looked up and saw his eyes shining in the starlight. He 
 looked down and saw the Convent lily transformed into a 
 very rose of womanhood. 
 
 " I am on duty at Staff Bombproof South to-night. 
 Wliat I would give to be free to walk home with you !" 
 
 Lady Hannah's jangling laugh came in. 
 
 " Haven't you had the whole day ? Greedy, uncon- 
 scionable young man ! Say good-night to her, and be off 
 and get some food into you. Don't say you haven't any 
 appetite. I am hungry enough to be interested even in 
 minced mule and spatch-cocked locusts, after all this. Good- 
 night ! I must kiss you again, child ! I hope you don't mind?" 
 
 Lynette gave her cheek, asking : 
 
 " Where is the Mother ?" 
 
 The voice of Sister Tobias answered out of the purplish 
 darkness : 
 
 " She has gone on with Sister Hilda- Antony and Sister 
 Cleophee, dearie. She is going to sleep at the Convent 
 with them, and I was to give you her love, and say good- 
 night." 
 
 Say good-night ! On this of all nights was Lynette to 
 be dismissed without even the Mother's kiss ? She gave back 
 Beauvayse's parting hand-pressure almost mechanically. 
 Then she heard his voice, close at her ear, say pantingly : 
 
 " No one will see. . . . Please, dearest !" 
 
 She turned her head, and their lips met under cover of 
 the pansy-coloured darkness. . . . Then he was gone with 
 Lady Hannah, and Lynette was walking home to the 
 Convent bombproof, explaining to the astonished Sisters 
 that the Mother knew ; that the Mother approved of her 
 engagement to Lord Beauvayse ; and that they would 
 probably be married very soon. Before the Relief . . . 
 
 " ' Before the Relief.' Well, no one but Our Lord knows 
 when that's to be. . . . And so you're very happy, are you, 
 dearie ?" 
 
 Even as she gave her shy assent in answer to Sister 
 Tobias's question, its commonplace homeliness, Uke the 
 feeling of the thick dust and the scattered debris underfoot, 
 brought back Lynette for a moment out of the golden, 
 diamond-dusted, pearl-gemmed dream-world in which she 
 had been straying, to wonder, Was she really very happy ?
 
 414 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 She asked herself the question sitting with the Sisters 
 at their little scanty supper. She asked herself as she 
 knelt with them in prayer, as she lay in bed, the Mother's 
 place vacant beside her — Was she happy after all ? 
 
 She had drunk sweetness, but there had been a tang of 
 something in the cup that cloyed the palate and sickened 
 the soul. She had learned the love of man, and in a 
 measure it had cast out fear, that had been her earlier 
 lesson. 
 
 To be held and taken and made his completely, what must 
 it be like ? She glowed in the darkness at the thought. 
 And then the recollection of a ruthless strength that had 
 rent away the veil of innocence from a woman-child surged 
 back upon her. 
 
 Just think. Suppose you laid your hand in the warm, 
 strong clasp that thrilled delight to every nerve, and set 
 your heart beating, beating, and, drawn by the shining 
 grey-green Jewel-eyes and the mysterious, wooing smile 
 upon the beautiful lips, and the coaxing, caressing tones 
 of the voice that so allured, you gave up all else that had 
 been so dear, and went away with him ? What then ? 
 Suppose 
 
 Suppose the smiling face of Love should turn out to be 
 nothing but a mask hiding the gross and brutal leer of 
 Lust, what then ? She saw that other man's dreadful 
 face, painted in hot and living colours upon the darkness. 
 She writhed as if to tear her hps from the savage, furious 
 mouth. She shuddered and grew cold there in the 
 sultry heat. The clasp of the protecting mother-arms 
 might have driven away her terror, but she was alone. 
 It would have been sweet to be alone that night if she had 
 been happy. 
 
 Why had the Mother shunned her ? She knew that 
 she had. Why had she felt, even with the glamour of his 
 presence about her, and the music of hia voice in her ears, 
 that all was not well ? 
 
 Why, even with the lifting of her burden, in the un- 
 utterable relief of hearing, from the lips that had been her 
 law, that her dreadful secret need never be revealed, 
 had she felt consternation and alarm ? The words were
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 415 
 
 written in fiery letters, on the murky dark of the bomb- 
 proof, where the tiny lamp that had hung before the 
 Tabernacle on the altar of the Convent chapel now burned, 
 a twinkling red star, before the silver Crucifix that hung 
 upon the east wall. 
 
 "He is not to be told. I command you never to tell him !" 
 
 The doubt germinated and presently pushed through a 
 little spear. Had those lips given right counsel or wrong ? 
 Ought he to be told ? Was it dishonest, was it traitorous, 
 to hide the truth ? And yet, what are the lives of even the 
 upright, and clean, and continent among men, compared 
 with the life of a girl bred as she had been ? The sin had 
 not been hers. She, the victim, was blameless. And yet, 
 and yet . . . 
 
 To this girl, who had learned to see the Face of Christ 
 and of His Mother reflected in one human face that had 
 smiled down upon her, waking in the little white bed in 
 the Convent infirmary from the long, recuperating sleep 
 that turns the tide of brain-fever, the thought that a shadow 
 of deceit could mar its earnest, candid purity was torture. 
 Months back they had said to her — the lips that had given 
 her the first kiss she had received since a dying woman's 
 cold mouth touched the sleeping face of a yellow-haired 
 baby held to her in a strong man's shaking hands, aa the 
 trek-waggon rolled and rumbled over the veld : 
 
 " The man who may one day be your husband will have 
 the right to know." 
 
 It was a different voice to the one that had commanded, 
 " You are never to tell him I" Lynette lay hstening to 
 those two voices until the alarm-clock belled and the 
 Sisters rose at midnight for matins. Then she lay hstening 
 to the soft murmur of voices in the dark, as the red lamp 
 glimmered before the silver Christ upon the wall. The 
 nuns needed no light, knowing the office by heart : 
 
 " Delicta quis intelligit ? ab occultis meis munda ine, et ab 
 alienis parce servo t'UA> " — " Who can comprehend what sin 
 is ? Cleanse me from my hidden sins, and from those of 
 others save Thy servant." 
 
 The antiphon followed the Gloria, and then the soft 
 womanly voices chanted the twenty-third Psalm : 
 
 ■' Quift asctndit in montem Domini 1" — " Who shall ascend
 
 416 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 to the Mount of the Lord, and who shall dwell in His holy 
 Sanctuary ? Those who do no ill and are pure. . . . who 
 do not give their heart to vain desires, or deceive their 
 neighbour with false oaths." 
 
 Or deceive . . . with false oaths. To marry a man, letting 
 him think you . . . something you were not . . . did not that 
 amount to deceiving by a false oath ? 
 
 Lynette lay very still. The last " Hail, Mary !" over, 
 the Sisters returned silently to bed. Wire mattresses 
 creaked under superimposed weight. Long breaths of 
 wakefulness changed into the even breathing of slumber. 
 The only one who snored was Sister Tobias, a confirmed 
 nasal soloist, whose customary comet-solo was strangely 
 missing. Was Sister Tobias lying awake and remembering 
 too ? 
 
 Sister Tobias was the only other person in the Convent 
 besides the Mother, who knew. She had helped her faith- 
 fully and tenderly to nurse Lynette through the long illness 
 that had followed the finding of that lost lamb upon the 
 veld. She was a homely creature of saintly virtues, the 
 Mother's stafif and right hand. And it was she who had 
 asked Ljmette if she was happy ? 
 
 Somebody was moving. The grey light of dawn was 
 filtering down the drain-pipe ventilators and through the 
 chinks in the tarpaulins overhead. A formless pale figure 
 came swiftly to Lynette's bedside. She guessed who it 
 must be. She sat up wide awake, and with her heart 
 beating wildly in her throat. 
 
 " Dearie !" The whimper was Sister Tobias's. She could 
 make out the ghmmer uf the white, plain nightcap framing 
 the narrow face with the long, sagacious nose and wise, 
 kindly, patient eyes. " Are you awake, dearie ?" 
 
 " Yes," Lynette whispered back, shuddering. The dry, 
 warm, hard hand felt about for her cold one, and found and 
 took it. Lips came close to her ear, and breathed : 
 
 " Dearie, this grand young gentleman you're engaged to 
 be married to . . ." 
 
 " Yes ?" 
 
 " Has he been told ? Does he know .?" 
 
 The long, plain face was close to Lynette's. In the 
 greying light she could see it clearly. Her heart beat in 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 417 
 
 heavy, sickening thuds. Her teeth chattered, and her 
 whole body shook as if with ague, as she faltered : 
 
 " The Mother says — he is not to be told." 
 
 There was a dead silence. It was as if an iron shutter 
 had suddenly been pulled down and clamped home between 
 them. Then Sister Tobias said in a tone devoid of all 
 expression : 
 
 " The Mother knows best, dearie, of course. Lie down 
 and go to sleep." 
 
 Then silence settled back upon the Convent bomb- 
 proof, but sleep did not come to everybody there. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 The Mother was kneeling, as she had knelt the whole night 
 through, before the dismantled altar in the battered little 
 chapel of the Convent, with the big white stars looking 
 down upon her through the gaps lq the shell-torn roof. 
 When it was the matin-hour she rose and rang the bell. 
 Matins over, she still knelt on. When it was broad day 
 she broke her fast with the Sisters, and went about the 
 business of the day calmly, collectedly, capably as ever. 
 Only her face was white and drawn, and great violet circles 
 were about her great tragical grey eyes. 
 
 " The blessed Saint she is !" whispered the nuns one to 
 the other. 
 
 If she had heard them, it would have added yet another 
 iron point to the merciless scourge of her self- scorn. 
 
 A Saint, in that stained garment ! What tears of bitter- 
 ness had fallen that night upon the shameful blots that 
 marred its whiteness ! But for Richard's child, even 
 though she herself should become a castaway, she must 
 go on to the end. All the chivalry in her rose in arms 
 to defend the young, shame-burdened, blameless head. 
 
 Ah ! if she had known ? . . . 
 
 Cold, Ught, cruel eyes had watched from across the river 
 that day as her tall, imposing figure, side by side with the 
 slender, more lightly-clad one, moved betw een the mimosa- 
 bushes and round the river-bend. When the two were 
 fairly out of sight, the jungle of tree-fern and cactus had 
 
 27
 
 418 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 rustled and cracked. Then the burly, thickset, powerful 
 figure of a bearded man pushed through, traversed the reed- 
 beds, and, leaping from boulder to boulder, crossed the 
 rivci. Before long the man was standing on the patch of 
 trodden grass and flowers in the lee of the great boulder, 
 shutting up a little single- barrelled, brass-niounted ^ejd- 
 glass that had served him excellently well. 
 
 He was Bough, alias Van Busch, otherwise the man 
 who had come in through the enemy's hues as a runner 
 from Diamond Town, bringing the letter from a hypo- 
 thetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. 
 His light eyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like 
 an adder's, looked about and all around the place, as he 
 stroked the dense brake of black-brown beard that cleverly 
 filled in the interval between Mr. Van Busch' s luxuriant 
 whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a little tan- 
 leather glove, lying in a tuft of pink flowers. The dainti- 
 ness of the little glove brought home to Bough more forcibly 
 than anything else, that the Kid had become a lady. 
 
 For it was the girl, sure. No error about that little white 
 face of hers, with the pointed chin, and the topaz-coloured 
 eyes, and the reddish hair. The glass had brought her 
 near enough to make that quite certain. He had been too 
 far oS to hear a word, but he had made out what had been 
 going on very well. First, she had been giddying with the 
 tall young English swell, drawing him on while he seemed 
 courting her, as all women knew how to, and then the 
 tall Sister of Mercy had come and rowed her ; and she had 
 cried, thrown down there among the grass and flowers, 
 exactly as if somebody had beaten her with a sjambok 
 to cure her of the G. D.'d obstinacy that had to be thrashed 
 out of women, if you would have them get to heel when 
 you chose it, or come at your call when you chose again. 
 
 Suppose he chose again. When a man with brains in 
 his holy head once set them to work, there were few things 
 he could not do. He could scare others off his property, 
 for certain. He could exercise upon the girl herself the 
 unlimited power of Fear. He must lie doggo because of 
 the Doctor. It was a thxindering queer chance the Doctor 
 turning up in this place. And as one of the bosses, helping
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 419 
 
 to run the show, and powerful enough to pay off old scores, 
 if he should chance to recognise in the densely bearded face 
 of the man from Diamond Town the features of the Prin- 
 cipal Witness in the once-famous Old Bailey Criminal 
 Case : *' The Crown v. Saxham." 
 
 Bough would lie low, and watch, apd wait, and then 
 spring, as the tarantula springs. He had cleverly blurred 
 all trails leading back to the tavern on the veld, and h© 
 knew enough of girls and women to believe that this girl 
 had kept secret what haxi happened there. He would pick 
 up with her, anyway, and ofier to marry her and make an 
 honest girl of her. If she had a snivelling fancy for the 
 dandy swell who had made love to her and kissed her, he 
 would threaten to tell the fellow the truth unless she gave 
 him up. Or he would blow on her to the nxma she lived 
 with, and they would have nothing more to do with her. 
 
 Voor den donder ! suppose they knew already ? The 
 plan wanted careful working out. A false step, and Guel- 
 dersdorp might become unhealthy for the man who had 
 brought the letter from Diamond Town to oblige Mrs. Casey. 
 
 Suppose the spoor that led back to the tavern on the 
 veld and the grave by the Little Kopje, not as well hidden 
 as Bough had thought, those jewels and securities and the 
 one thousand seven hundred pounds cash might get an 
 honest man into trouble yet, even after the lapse of seven- 
 teen years. He breathed heavily, and the pupils of his 
 strange light eyes dilated, and the sweat rolled off his fore- 
 head and cheeks until the skin shone like copper. He had 
 been a reckless, easy-going young chap of twenty-six seven- 
 teen years ago. Forty-three years of life had taught him that 
 when you are least expecting them to, buried secrets are 
 sure to resurrect. No, Gueldersdorp was not & healthy place 
 for Bough or for Van Busch ! That chattering little paroquet 
 of a woman with the sharp black eyes might use them one 
 day, to the detriment of the philanthropist who had brought 
 in the letter from Diamond Town for Mrs. Casey. 
 
 Then the girl ! . . , He grinned iik his bushy btard, 
 thinking how thundering scared she would look if she en- 
 countered him by chance, and recognised him. The beaz'd 
 would not hide him from her eyes. No, no ! And he 
 smelled at the little tan glove, tha^ had a slight, clean, 
 
 27—2
 
 420 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 delicate perfume about it, and thrust it into his breeches- 
 pocket, and crossed the river again, making his way back 
 to the native town by devious native paths that snaked 
 and twined and twisted through the tangled bush, as he 
 himself made his tortuous progress through the world. 
 
 He was in an evil mood, made blacker by the prospect of 
 spending a lonely night without the solace of liquor or 
 woman. For Vice was at a low ebb in Gueldersdorp just 
 now, and the commonest dop was barely obtainable at the 
 price of good champagne, and it would not do for the man 
 from Diamond Town to seem flush of dollars. 
 
 Sure, no, that would never do ! He must make out with 
 the tobacco he still had left, and the big lump of opium he 
 carried in a tin box in a pocket of the heavy money- belt he 
 wore under his miner's flannel shirt. He groped for the 
 tin box, and got it, and bit off a corner of the sticky brown 
 lump, and ate it as he went along, and his laboured breathing 
 calmed, and the chilly sweat dried upon his copper-burned 
 skin, that had the purplish-black tinge in it that comes of 
 saturation with iodide of potassium. And the pupils of his 
 colourless eyes dwindled to pin-points, and his thick hands 
 ceased to shake. He was not the man he had been ; and he 
 had learned the opium - habit from a woman who had 
 managed a joint at Johannesburg, and it grew upon him — 
 the need of the soothing, supporting deadener. He went 
 along now, under the influence of it, scarcely feeling the 
 ground under his heavy leather veldschoens. 
 
 He trod on something presently, lying on the path. It 
 moved and whimpered. He struck a match with a steady 
 hand, and held the glimmering blue phosphorus-flame 
 doT\Tiwards, and saw a Kaffir girl, a servant of the Barala, 
 who had crept out with a bow strung with twisted crocodile- 
 gut and a sheaf of reed arrows, to try and shoot birds. The 
 Barala, though they were sorely pinched, like their European 
 fellow -men, did not starve. They earned pay and rations. 
 They helped to keep the enemy out on the south and west 
 sides of the town, and dug most of the trenches — often 
 under fire- — and ran the despatches, and sometimes brought 
 in fresh meat. But their slaves, and the native hangers- 
 on at the kraals, suffered horribly. They ate the dogs that 
 had been shot, and the other kind of dog, and fought with
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 421 
 
 the live ones for bones, and picked up empty meat- tins 
 and licked them. They stalked about the town and the 
 native stad like living skeletons. They dropped and died 
 on the dust-heaps they had been rummaging for offal. 
 Soup-kitchens were started later on, when it was found how 
 things were going with them, and hides and bones and heads 
 of horses and mules were boiled down into soup, and they 
 were fed. But a time was to come when even that soup 
 was wanted to keep the life in white people. You saw the 
 famine-stricken black spectres crawling from refuse-pile to 
 refuse-pile, and dying in that pitiless, beautiful sunshine, 
 under the blue, blue February sky, because white people 
 had got to keep on living. 
 
 The native girl had been too weak to kill anything. Death 
 had come upon her in the midst of the teeming life of the 
 jungle, and she had fallen down there in her. ragged red 
 blanket among the tree-roots that arched and knotted over 
 the path. Her eyes were already rolled up and set. They 
 stared blindly, horribly, out of the ashen-black face. When 
 she heard the steps of a shod person the last spark of life 
 glimmered feebly up in her. Her wild, keen, savage power 
 of scent yet remained. She smelled a white man, and her 
 cracked and swollen lips moved, and a voice like the sound 
 made by the rubbing of dry canes together uttered the word 
 that is the same in Dutch and English : 
 
 " Water !" 
 
 Bough's pale, flat, scintillating eyes were quite expres- 
 sionless, but his thick lips parted, and his strong yellow 
 teeth showed in his thick brake of beard. With the caution 
 of one who knows that a single glowing match-end dropped 
 among dry vegetation may cause a devastating conflagra- 
 tion, he blew out the lingering flame, and rolled the little 
 charred stick between his tough-skinned fingers before he 
 threw it down. Then he raised himself up, and stepped 
 over the dying creature, and went upon his way, humming 
 a dance-tune he liked. He was not changed. It was still 
 a joy to him to have feebler beings in his power, and taunt 
 and torture and use them at his will. 
 
 He had assumed the skin of the man from Diamond Town 
 in the well-paid service of that bright boy of Brounckers', 
 who had, it may be remembered, a plan.
 
 422 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The pla,n involved a feint from the eastward, and an 
 attack upon that weakest spot in the girdle of Guelders- 
 dorp's defences, the native stad. The Barala might be 
 incorruptible ; the weak spot was the native village, never- 
 theless. And the business of the tnan from Diamond 
 Town was to lounge about its neighbourhood, using those 
 sharp light eyes of his to excellent purpose, and storing his 
 retentive memory — for it would not do for a stranger to be 
 caught putting pencil to paper in a town Under Martial Law, 
 and bristling with suspicion — with the information indis- 
 pensable for the putting in elBFect of young Schenk Eybel's 
 ingenious plan. 
 
 The Jackal had had to yield his bone to the hungry lion. 
 StUl, it was wise to be in good odour with the Republics ; 
 that was why Van Busch had taken on the Job. He had 
 not been impelled to risk his skin, and get shut up in this 
 stinking, starving hole by anything the sharp-eyed little 
 Englishwoman, so unpleasantly awake at last regarding the 
 genuine aims and real character of the chivalrous Mr. Van 
 Busch of Johannesburg, had dropped. Hell, no ! That 
 Unripe nectarine had been plucked and eaten years ago. 
 And yet how the ripe fruit allured him to-day, seen against 
 its background of dull green leaves, its smooth cheeks 
 glowing under the kisses of the sun. 
 
 The swell English officer had kissed them too. As she 
 meant, the sly little devil, slipping away for her bit of fun. 
 Grown a beauty, too, as an3'body but a thundering, Juicy, 
 damned fool might have known she would ! He swore 
 bitterly, thinking what a gold-mine a face and figure like 
 that might have proved to an honest speculator up 
 Johannesburg way. 
 
 His case, he thought, was somewhat similar to that of 
 old Baas Jacobs, the Boer who found the first great South 
 African diamond on his farm near Hopetown, and threw it 
 down beside the door, with other pretty shining pebbles, 
 for his child to play with. The child's mother tossed it to 
 Van Niekirk as a worthless gift. Van Niekirk passed it on 
 to J. O'Reilly. When the English Government mineralo- 
 gist pronounced the stone a diamond, and the Colonial 
 Secretary and the French Consul sent it to the Paris 
 Exhibition, and the Governor of the Colony bought the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 423 
 
 Jewel, old Baas Jacobs must have felt mighty sick. AD the 
 world hungering, and admiring, and coveting the beautiful 
 thing he had thrown down on the ground. . . . Small wonder 
 that to the end of his days he had talked as a robbed man. 
 The jewel Bough had left on the veld had belonged to him 
 once. Wdl, it should be his again. He swore that with a 
 blasphetnous oath. Thenceforward he proceeded warily, 
 feeling his way, formulating his plan, a human tarantula,- 
 evil-eyed and hairy-clawed, calculating the sudden leaipi 
 upon its prey; an adder coiled, waiting the moment to 
 strike. . . . 
 
 XLIV 
 
 Saxham was shooting on the veld, north of the Clayfields, 
 in a ginger-hued dust-wind and a grilling sun. Upon hia 
 right showed the raw red ridge of the earthworks, where two 
 ancient seven-pounders were entrenched in charge of a hand- 
 ful of Cape Police. The pits of the sniping riflemen scarred 
 across the river-bed some fifty yards in advance. Upon his 
 left, some two hundred yards farther north, the recently 
 resurrected ship's gun, twelve feet of honeycombed metal, 
 stamped on the flank " No. 6 Port," and ca.sting solid shot 
 of eighteenth- century pattern, projected a long black nose 
 from Fort Ellerslie, and every time the venerable weapon 
 went off without bursting, the Toa^ti Guards occupying the 
 Fort and manning the eastern entrenchments raised a cheer. 
 
 Saxham, emptying and filling the magazine with cool, 
 methodical regularity, kept changing his position with ei 
 restlessness and recklessness puzzling alike to friends and 
 foes. Now he aimed and fired, lying " doggo " behind his 
 favourite stone, while bullets from the enemy's trenched 
 flattened themselves upon it, or buried themselves harm- 
 lessly in the dry hot soil. Now he moved from cover, and 
 shot squatting on his heels, or sprawled lizard-like in the 
 open, courting the King of Terrors with a calm indifference 
 that was commented upon by those who witnessed it 
 according to their lights. 
 
 " Begob !" said Kjldare, ex-driver of Engine 123, who, 
 with the Cardiff man, hie stoker of old, was doing duty at 
 Fort Ellerslie vice two Town Guardsmen permanently
 
 424 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 resting, " 'tis a great perfawrumance the Doc is afther givia' 
 us this day !" He coolly borrowed the gunner's sighting- 
 glasses, and, with his keen eyes glued to them and his ragged 
 elbows propped on the Fort parapet, he scanned the distant 
 solitary figure, dropping the words out slowly one by one. 
 " Twice have I seen the fur fly o£F av' wan av' thim hairy 
 baboons av' Boers since he starrtud, an' supposin' the air a 
 laste thicker, 'tis punched wid bullet-holes we'd be seein' 
 ut all round 'um, the same as a young lady in the sky-in- 
 terrific dhressmakin' line would be afther Jabbin' out the 
 pattern av' a shoot av' clothes." 
 
 " And look you now, if the man is not lighting a pipe," 
 objected the Cardiff stoker, whose religious tendencies were 
 greatly fostered by the surroundings and conditions of 
 siege life. " Sitting on a stone, with the rifle between his 
 knees and the match between his two hands, as if the teffel 
 was got tired of waiting, and had curled up and gone to 
 sleep." The speaker sucked in his breath and solemnly 
 shook his head, adding : " It is a temptation of the Tivine 
 Providence, so it is !" 
 
 " Sorra a timpt," rejoined Kjldare, reluctantly sur- 
 rendering the glasses to the gunner, a grey ex-sergeant of 
 R.F.A., " sorra a timpt, knowin', as the Docthur knows, 
 that do what he will and thry as he may, no bullut will do 
 more than graze the hide av him, or sing in his ear." 
 
 " And how will he know that, maybe you would be 
 telling 1" demanded the Cardiff stoker incredulously. 
 
 " I seen his face," said Ealdare, Jerking a blackened 
 thumb towards the gunner's sighting-glasses, " minnits 
 back through thim little Jiggers, an' to man or mortal that's 
 as sick wid the hate av Life, an' as sharp-set with the hunger 
 for Death as the Docthur is this day, no hamim will come. 
 'Tis quare, but thrue." 
 
 •' I've 'ad a try at several kinds of 'ungers," said the R.E. 
 Reserve man, who acted as gunner's mate. " There's the 
 'unger for glory, combined with a smart uniform wot'U 
 make the gals stare, as drives a man to 'list. There's the 
 'unger for kisses an' canoodlin' wot makes yer want to 
 please the gals. There's the 'unger for revenge, wot drives 
 yer to bash in a bloke's face, and loses you yer stripes if 'e 
 'appens to be your Corp'ril. Then there's the 'unger for
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 425 
 
 gettin' under cover when you're bein' sniped, an' the 'unger 
 for blood, when you've got the Hafridis, or the Fuzzies, or 
 the Dutchies, at close quarters, and the bay' nits are flickerin' 
 in an' out of the dirty caliker shirts or the dirty greatcoats 
 like Jimmy ! There's the 'unger for freedom and fresh 
 hair when you're shut up in a filthy mud cattle-pound like 
 this 'ere Fort, or a stinldn' trench, with a 'aJidful of straw 
 to set on by day an' a ragged blanket to kip in by nights. 
 But the 'unger to die is a 'unger / ain't acquainted with. 
 I'm for livin' myself." 
 
 " I was hungry when you began to jaw," snarled the 
 man who had been clerk to the County Court. His lips 
 were black and cracking with fever, and his teeth chattered 
 despite the fierce sunshine that baked the red day parapet 
 against which he leaned his thin back. "I'm hungrier 
 now, and thirsty as well. Give the bucket over here." 
 He drank of the thick, yellowish, boUed water eagerly and 
 yet with disgust, spilling the liquid on his tattered clothing 
 through the shaking of his wasted hands. Then he turned 
 to the wall, and lay down sullenly, scowling at the lantern- 
 jawed sympathiser who tried to thrust a rolled-up coat 
 under his aching head. 
 
 " They'll be bringin' us our foddher at twelve av the 
 clock," said Kildare, with a twinkle of inextinguishable 
 humour in his hollow eyes. " Shuperannuated cavalry 
 mount stuped in warrum kettle-gravy, wid a block av baked 
 sawdust for aich man that can get ut down. 'Tis an insult 
 to the mimory av the boiled bacon an' greens I would be 
 aiting this day at Canicknavore, to say nothin' av' the 
 porther an' whisky that would be washing ut down. Lashin's 
 and lavin's there 'ud be for ivery wan, an' what was over, me 
 fadher — God be good to the ould boy alive or dead ! — would 
 be disthributin' amongst the poor forninst the dure " 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir." Another of the famine- bitten, ragged 
 little garrison addressed the question to the officer in charge 
 of the Fort battery, as he stepped down from the lookout 
 with his field-glass in his hand. " Can you tell us the 
 difference of time between South Africa and England ?" 
 
 " Two hours at Capetown. I'm not quite sure about the 
 difference at Gueldersdorp." The Lieutenant went over to 
 the ancient smooth-bore, and conferred with the gunnexa
 
 426 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 standing at her breech. The winches groaned, the heavy- 
 mass of metal tilted on the improvised mounting, as the man 
 to whom the Lieutenant had replied said, 'with a quaver of 
 longing in his voice : 
 
 " ' Two hours ! My God, suppose it only took that time 
 to get home !" 
 
 " It 'ud be a sight easier to 'ang on 'ere," said the R.E. 
 Reserve man who acted as gunner's mate, " if there was 
 such a thing as a plug o' baccy to be 'ad. Wot gives me the 
 reg'lar sick is to see them well-fed Dutchies chawin' an' 
 
 blowin', blowin' an' chawin', from momin' till night " 
 
 He spat disgustedly. 
 
 " When honust men," groaned Kildare. " would swop a 
 year av life for a twist av naygurhead. Wirra-wirra !" 
 
 There was a dry and mirthless laugh, showing teeth, 
 white or discoloured, in haggard and bristly faces. Then a 
 short young Corporal, who had been leaning back in an 
 angle of the earthwork, hugging his sharp knees and staring 
 at nothing in particular with pale-coloured, ugly, honest 
 eyes, grew painfully crimson through his crust of sun-tan 
 and grime, and said something that made the lean bodies in 
 ragged, filthy tan-cord and dilapidated khaki, or torn and 
 muddy tweed, slew round upon the unclean straw on which 
 they squatted. All eyes, were they hunger-dull or fever- 
 bright, sought the Corporal's face. 
 
 " Dessay you'll think me a greedy 'ound," said the 
 Corporal, with a painful effort that set the prominent 
 Adam's apple in his lean throat jerking, " when you tyke 
 in wot I've got to s'y. It makes me want to git into me own 
 pocket and 'ide, to 'ave to tell it. For me an' you, we've 
 shared an' shared alike, wotever we 'ad, while we 'ad 
 anythink — except in one partic'lar." The Adam's apple 
 jumped up and down as he gulped. He was burning 
 crimson now to the roots of his ragged, light-brown hair, 
 and the tips of his flat-rimmed, jutting ears, and the patch 
 of thin bare chest that showed where his coarse greyback 
 shirt was unbuttoned at the necki 
 
 All those eyes, feverishly bright or sickly dull, watched 
 him as he put his hand into the bulging breast-pocket, and 
 slowly fished out a shining brown briar-root with a stem 
 anchewed as yet by any smoker.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 427 
 
 " Twig this 'ere noo pipe. It was sent me by a — by a 
 friend, along of a packet of 'Oneydew, for a — for a kind o' 
 birthday present." His voice wobbled strangely ; there 
 was scalding water dammed up behind his ugly honest eyes. 
 " She — she bin an' opened the packet and filled the pipe, 
 an' I shared out the 'Oneydew in the trenches as far as it 
 went, but I bin an' kep' the pipe, sayia' to myself I'd smoke 
 it when she lighted it wiv 'er own 'ands, an' not — not 
 before. Next day we " — the Adam's apple went up and 
 do^^-n again — " we 'ad words, an' parted. I — I never set 
 eves on 'er dial since." 
 
 The voice of W. Keyse ended in an odd kind of squeak. 
 Nobody looked at him as he bit his thin lips furiously, and 
 blinked the immanly tears away. Then he went on : " It's 
 — it's near on two months I bin lookin' for 'er. She — she — 
 sometimes I think she's made a way out of the lines after 
 another bloke — a kind o' Dutchy spy 'oo was a pal of 'ers, 
 or — or else she's dead. There's times I've dreamed I seen 'er 
 dead !" His voice bounded up in that queer squeak again. 
 The word " dead " was wrung out of him like a long-fanged 
 double molar. His lips were drawn OMTy in a grimace of 
 anguish, and the pipe he held shook in his gaunt and grimy 
 heind, so perilously that half a dozen other hands, as gaunt 
 and even grimier, shot out as by a single impulse to save 
 it from falling. " Tyke it an' smoke it between you," said 
 W. Keyse, and the Adam's apple jerked again as he 
 gulped. " But read the writin' m the bit o' pyper first, 
 and mind you — mind you give it back." He resigned the 
 treasure, and turned his face away. 
 
 " Blessed Mary !" came in the accent of Kildare, breaking 
 the silence, " let me houJd ut in me ban's !" 
 
 " Spell out the screeve," ordered the R.E. Reserve man 
 imperiously. 
 
 The Town Guard who had questioned the officer about 
 the difference of time, deciphered the blotty writing on the 
 slip of paper pinned round the stem of the new briar- root. 
 It ran thus : 
 
 " i ope 3^1 wil Engoy this Pip Deer ; i Fild it A Purpua 
 with Love and Mfenney Apey Ritumse. from 
 
 " Fabb Aib."
 
 428 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " 'Is gal 1" interrogated the Reserve man. 
 
 " His girl," assented the man who had read. 
 
 " And he never saw her no more, so he did not !" com- 
 mented the Cardifif stoker as the pipe travelled from hand 
 to hand to be smelt at, dandled, worshipped by every man 
 in turn. Only the Sergeant-guimer, the grey-headed ex- 
 Royal Field Artilleryman, maintained self-command by 
 dint of looking very hard the other way. Then said 
 Kildare impetuously : 
 
 " Take ut back, Corp'ril Keyse. 'Tis little wan poipe av 
 tobacca wud count for betune six starvin' savigees." 
 
 " Wot I wants," growled the Reserve man, " is to over- 
 *aul a bacca factory afire, and clap my mouth to 'er chimbley- 
 shaft. So take it back, Corporal. It's no manner o' good 
 to me !" 
 
 All the other voices joined in the chorus, and the be- 
 papered pipe was thrust back upon its owner. W. Keyse 
 thanked them soberly, and put the gift of his lost love away. 
 
 His pale, unbeautiful eyes had the anguish of despair in 
 them, and the tooth of that sharp death-hunger of which 
 Kildare had spoken was gnawing what he would have 
 termed with simplicity " his inside." For if Emigration 
 Jane were dead, what had Life left for him ? 
 
 After his first superb assumption of cold indifference had 
 broken down he had sought her, feverishly at first, then 
 doggedly, then with a dizzy sickness of terror and appre- 
 hension that made the letters of the type-written casualty- 
 lists posted outside the Staff Headquarters in the Market 
 Square turn apparent somersaults as he strove to read them. 
 This was his punishment, that he should hunger as she had 
 hungered, and still be disappointed, and learn by fellowship 
 in keenest suffering what her pain had been. 
 
 The " Fare Air " letters were some comfort. In the 
 trench at night, when fever and rheumatism kept him from 
 the dog-sleep that other men were snatching, he would hear 
 her crying over and over : " Oh, cruel, to break a poor girl's 
 heart !" And when sleep came he would track her through 
 strange places, calling her to come back — to come back and 
 be forgiven. And when he awakened from such dreams 
 there would be tears upon his face. And each day he 
 consulted the lists of killed and wounded, and once had
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 429 
 
 staggered white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a 
 Jane Harris, and found her — oh, with what unutterable 
 relief ! — to be a coloured lady who had married a Rifleman. 
 After that he had perked up, and continued his quest for the 
 beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with 
 renewed belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. 
 Then, in the middle of one awful night, the darkness of his 
 mental state had been luridly illuminated by the con- 
 viction that she had Joined Slabberts. Now strange voices 
 whispered always in his ears, saying that she was dead, and 
 urging him to follow by the same dark road over which her 
 trembling feet had stumbled. 
 
 He heard those voices as he wrought and sweated with 
 the gun-team at the levers, and the ponderous muzzle- 
 loader rolled back upon the grooves of her improvised 
 mounting. He heard it as they sponged the antique 
 monster out, and fed it v/ith a three- pound bolus of cordite, 
 and a ten-pound ball of ancient pattern with the date of 
 1770. He heard it now again as he kneeled at a loophole in 
 the parapet, watching Saxham. Those pale, ugly eyes of 
 Billy Keyse were extraordinarily keen. He saw a grimy 
 hand carefully balance an old meat-tin on the top of the 
 parapet of the enemy's western entrenchment. He saw 
 Saxham kneeling, aim and fire, and with the sharp rap of 
 the exploding cartridge came a howl from the owner of the 
 hand, who had not withdrawn it with sufficient quickness. 
 
 Half a dozen rifle-muzzles came nosing through the loop- 
 holes at that yell. There was quite a little fusillade, and 
 the sharp cracks and flashes in Saxham's vicinity told of 
 the employment of explosive bullets. But not one hit the 
 man. An unkempt Boer head bobbed up, looking for 
 his corpse. The Winchester cracked, and the unkempt 
 head fell forwards, its chin over the edge of the parapet, and 
 stayed there staring until the comrades of its late owner 
 pulled the dead man do\vn by the heels. 
 
 There was a cheer from the rifle-pits in the river-bed, and 
 another from Fort EUerslie, where eager, excited spectators 
 jostled at the loopholes. A minute later the Fort's 
 ancient bow-chaser barked loudly, and pitched a solid 
 shot. The metal spheroid hit the ploughed-up ground 
 some ninety feet in front of the parapet where the bloody
 
 430 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 head had hung, and over which those explosive bullets had 
 been fired, rose in a cloud of dust, and literally Jumped the 
 trench. There was a roar of distant laughter as the ball 
 began to roll, and shaggy heads of curious Boers, inured 
 only to the latest inventions in lethal engineering, bobbed 
 up to watch. More laughter accompanied the progress of 
 the ball. But presently it encountered a mound of earth, 
 behind which certain patriots were taking coffee, and rolle'4 
 through, and the laughter ceased abruptly. There was a 
 baggage-waggon beyond through which it also rolled, and 
 behind the waggon a plump, contented pony was wallowing 
 in the sand. When the ancient cannon-ball rolled through 
 the pony, the owner spoke of witchcraft. But the patriots 
 who had been sitting behind the mound made no commei:^t 
 then or thenceforward. 
 
 At this juncture, and with almost a sensation of pleasure, 
 Saxham saw his old acquaintance Father Noah climb out 
 of his particular trench, briskly for one well stricken in years, 
 and toddle out, laden with rifle, biltong bag, and coffee-can, 
 to his favourite sniping-post, where a bush rose beside a 
 rock, which was shaded by a small group of blue-gums. 
 Soon the smoke of the veteran's pipe rose above his lurking- 
 place, and aa Saxham, with a grunt of satisfaction, stretched 
 himself upon his stomach on the hot, sandy earth and pulled 
 the lever, a return bullet sheared a piece off his boot-heel, 
 and painfully jarred his ankle- bone. 
 
 No one else was shooting at the big rooinek now. It was 
 understood that Father Noah had a prior claim. And the 
 old man peered hopefully up to see the result of his shot, 
 and rubbed his eyes. For the hulking dief was standing, 
 voor den donder ! standing as he emptied his magazine, 
 and the bullets sang about Father Noah as vjqiously ap 
 hornets roused to anger by the stripping of a decayed thatch. 
 The magazine of the repeating- rifle emptied, Saxham 
 calmly refilled it, causing the puzzled patriarch to waste 
 many cartridges in wild shooting at that erect, indifferent 
 mark, and finally to abandon the level-headed caution to 
 which he owed his venerable years, and climb a tree to 
 obtaia a better view of the tactics of the enemy. 
 
 Saxham laughed as the invisible hornets sang in the air 
 about him. The battered solar helmet he wore was pierced 
 
 1
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 431 
 
 through the hinder brim, and he was bleeding from a 
 bullet-graze upon the knuckle of the second finger of his left 
 hand. Since that Sunday afternoon beside the river, when 
 he learned the madness of his hope and the hopelessness of 
 his madness, he had taken risks like this daily, not in the 
 deliberate desire of death, but as a man consulting Fate 
 negatively. 
 
 Father Noah would decide, one way or the other : the 
 issue of their protracted duel should determine things for 
 Saxham. If he sent the old man iu, then there was Hope, 
 if the superannuated, short-stocked Martini, with that 
 steady old finger on the trigger, and that sharp old eye at 
 the backsight, ended by accounting for Saxham, then there 
 would be an end to tlys burning torment for ever. Strangely, 
 he did not believe that he could be killed by any other 
 hand than Father Noah's. Doubtless the long overstrain 
 was telling upon him mentally, though physically the 
 man seemed of wrought steel. 
 
 " To-day will settle it, one way or the other. To-day " 
 
 As the thought passed through his mind, and he 
 brought the sights into line with the mark, a scrap of 
 white, fluttering some twenty inches lower down, caught 
 his eye. He dropped the tip of the Winchester's foresight 
 to the bottom of the backsight's V, and knew, almost 
 before the shot rang out, and an ownerless Martini tumbled 
 out of the tree-crotch, that Fate had decided for Saxham. 
 
 Then he went back to the Hospital, grim- jawed and 
 inscrutable as ever. A dirty white rag was being hoisted 
 on a pole by one of the relatives of the deceased. Father 
 Noah, with the long ends of his dirty grey beard raggedly 
 bannering in the dust- wind, was still waiting for the bearers 
 of the hastily improvised stretcher of sticks and green 
 reims, as Sa^diam, having obtained a strip of black cloth 
 with a needle and thread from the Matron, pulled ofE his 
 jacket and sat down upon the end of the cot- bed in his 
 little room, and neatly tacked a mourning-band upon the 
 upper part of the left sleeve. 
 
 It was his nature to absorb himself in whatever work 
 he undertook. As he stitched, the crowded Hospital 
 buzzed about him like a hive, the moans of sick men and 
 the rattling breaths of the dying beat in waves of sound
 
 432 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 upon his brain, for the long rows of beds stood upon either 
 side of the corridors now, with barely a foot of room between 
 them. In the necessarily open space before the Doctor's 
 door a woman's hurrying footsteps paused, there came a 
 rustling, and a sheet of printed paper folded in half was 
 thrust underneath. 
 
 " The Siege Gazette, Doctor," called the Matron's pleasant 
 womanly voice, as, simultaneously with the utterance of 
 Saxham's brief word of thanks, she passed on. In the 
 famine for news that possessed him, as every other human 
 being in the town, the sight of the Uttle badly-printed sheet 
 was welcome, although it could hardly contain anything 
 to satisfy his need. He set the last stitches, fastened 
 and cut the thread, reached down a long arm from the foot 
 of the bed, and took up the paper. 
 
 The Latest Information had whiskers. The General 
 Orders announced an issue of paper currency in small 
 amounts, owing to the deplorable shortage of silver, con- 
 gratulated those N.C.O.'s and men of the Baraland Irregu- 
 lars who, under Lieutenant Byass, occupying the advanced 
 Nordenfeldt position, had brought so effective a fire to 
 bear upon the enemy's big gun that Meisje had been com- 
 pelled to abandon her commanding position, and take up 
 her quarters in a spot less advantageous, from the enemy's 
 point of view. A reduction in the Forage ration was hinted 
 at, and a string of Social Jottings followed, rows of asterisks 
 exploding Uke squibs under every paragraphic utterance of 
 the Gold Pen. 
 
 Not for nothing had Captain Bingo dolefully boasted 
 that his wife exuded journalese from her very finger-ends. 
 Saxham recognised in the style, the very table-Moselle of 
 Fashionable Journalism. So like the genuine article in 
 the shape of the bottle, the topping of gilt-foil, the arrange- 
 ment of wire and string, that as the stinging foam over- 
 flowed the goblet, snapping in iridescent bubbles at the 
 cautious sipper's nose, and evaporated, leaving nothing 
 in particular at the bottom, it was barely possible to 
 believe the vintage other than the genuine article from 
 Fleet Street. Stay. . . . The French quotations were 
 not enclosed in inverted commas. That let Lady Hannah 
 out. 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 433 
 
 " Society in Gueldersdorp," she wrote, " bubbles with 
 interested expectation of the public announcement of a 
 matrimonial engagement with which the intimate friends 
 of the happy lovers profess etre aiix anges. 
 
 * » * * » 
 
 " Not for worlds would we draw the veil of delightful 
 mystery completely aside from the secret of two young, 
 charming and popular people. Yet it may be hinted that 
 the elder son of a representative English House and heir 
 of a sixteenth -century Marquisate, who is one of the most 
 gallant and dashing among the many heroic defenders of 
 our beleaguered town, proposes at no very distant date 
 to lead to the altar one of the loveliest among the many 
 lovely girls who grace Gueldersdorp's social functions. 
 
 * ♦ » * * 
 
 " Both bride-elect and bridegroom-to-be attended High 
 Mass at the Catholic Church on Sunday, when the Rev. 
 Father Wix, in apprising parishioners of the near approach 
 of Lent, caused an ii-resistible smile to ripple over the faces 
 of his hearers. Toujours perdrix may sate in the long-nm, 
 but perpetually to faire maigre is attended with even 
 greater discomfort. 
 
 * ♦ » » * 
 
 " We have pleasure in announcing the approaching 
 marriage of Lieutenant the Right Hon. Viscount Beauvayse, 
 Grey Hussars, Junior Aide to the Colonel Commanding 
 H.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, to Miss Ljmette Bridget-Mary 
 IVGldare, ward of the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Holy 
 Way, North Veld Road." 
 
 XLV 
 
 Saxham has not been staring at the printed words because 
 they have struck him to the heart with their intelligence, 
 but — or so it seems to him— because they convey nothing. 
 There is an aching pain at the back of his neck, and his 
 mind is curiously dull and sluggish. But after a Uttle 
 he becomes aware that somebody is knocking at his door. 
 
 " Who is it " 
 
 The Doctor thinks he utters these words, but in reality 
 
 28
 
 434 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 he has only made a harsh croaking sound that might mean 
 anything. The door opens and shows the Chaplain standing 
 smiling on the threshold. 
 
 The Reverend Julius Fraithorn, no longer a worn and 
 wasted pilgrim stumbling amongst the thorns and sharp 
 stones of the Valley of the Shadow, appears in these days 
 as a perfectly sound and healthy, if rather too narrow- 
 shouldered, young Anglican clergyman, not unbecomingly 
 arrayed, in virtue of his official position under martial 
 authority, in a suit of Service khaki such as Saxham wears, 
 with the black Maltese Cross on the collar and the band of 
 the wide-peaked cap. Yellow puttees conceal the unduly 
 spare proportions of his active legs, and the brown boots 
 upon his long slender feet are dusty, as, indeed, is the rest 
 of him, not with the reddish dust of the veld that powders 
 Saxham to the very eyelashes, and lies in light drifts in 
 every wrinkle of his garments, but with the yellowish dust 
 of the town. 
 
 " I rather thought," the Chaplain says, hesitating, as 
 Saxham, without lifting his eyes, turns his square, white 
 face upon the visitor, " that you said ' Come in ' 1" 
 
 " Come in, and shut the door, and sit down," says 
 Saxham heavily and thickly. And Juhus does so, and, 
 occupying the single cane-seated chair the bedroom boasts, 
 glows upon Saxham with a sincerity of affection and a 
 simplicity of admii'ation pleasant to see, and asks in his 
 thin, sweet voice how things are goLug. 
 
 " Things are going," Saxham returns, seeming to wake 
 from a heavy broun study. " You could not put it better 
 or more clearly. Will you smoke ?" He pitches a rubber 
 tobacco-pouch to the Chaplain, who catches it, and the 
 treasured box of matches that comes after, and as one 
 man sparingly fills a well-browned meerschaum, and the 
 other a blackened briar-root, with the weed that grows 
 more rare and precious with everj^ hour of these days of 
 dearth : " That's one of the things that are going quickest 
 after perchloride of mercury, carboUc, and extract of beef. 
 As a fact, we are using formaldehyde as an anaisthetic in 
 minor operations ; and violet powder and starch, upon the 
 external use of which I laid an embargo weeks ago, to the 
 great indignation of the younger nurses, are being employed 
 
 1
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 435 
 
 insteaa jf arrowroot. And the more the medical stores 
 dimmish, the more the patients come rolhng in." 
 
 " And each new want that arises, and each new difficulty 
 that crops up, finds in you the man to meet it and over- 
 come it," says the Chaplain fervently. He is disposed 
 to make a hero of this brilhant surgeon who has saved his 
 life, and his enthusiasm is only marred by Saxham's 
 painfully-apparent lack of belief in certain vital spiritual 
 truths that are the daily bread of fervent Christian souls. 
 Now that he has become aware of the black band upon the 
 sleeve of the jacket that Kes across Saxham's knees, where 
 he sits upon the end of the cot-bed that, Mdth a tiny chest 
 of drawers and a hanging bookshelf laden with volumes and 
 instrument-cases, completes the furnishing of the narrow 
 room, he says, with sympathy in his gentle voice and in 
 the brown eyes that have the soft lustre of a deer's or oi a 
 beautiful woman's : 
 
 " I am sorry to see this, Saxham. You have lost a 
 friend ?" 
 
 " Lc^'it a friend .?" 
 
 Saxham, echoing the last three words, stares at the 
 Chaplain in a strange, dull way, and then forgets liim for 
 a minute or more. Baths are not to be had in Gueldcrsdorp 
 in these days, and though it is not Sunday, when bathing 
 in the river becomes a possibility, the Chaplain observes 
 that the Doctor's thick, close-cropped black hair is wet, 
 and that broad streaks of shining moisture are upon his 
 pale, square face, and that he breathes as though he had 
 been running. But perhaps he has been sluicing his head 
 in the washstand basin, thinks the Chaplain. No ; the basin 
 has not recently been used. And then it occurs to Juhus, 
 but not until he has noticed the starting veins and corded 
 musclCvS on the backs of the hands that are clenched upon 
 the jacket, that Saxham is suffering. 
 
 " I always said he felt a great deal more than he permitted 
 himself to show," reflects the man of Religion looking at 
 the man of Medicine. " And the absence of beUef in Divine 
 Redemption and a Future State must terribly intensify 
 the pain of a bereavement. If I only knew how to comfort 
 him !" And all he can do is to ask, still in that tone of 
 sympathy, when the Funeral is to be. 
 
 26—2
 
 436 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Perhaps about the midday cofEee-drinking," says 
 Saxham heavily, " they would scrape a hole and dump 
 him in. But they're not over fond of risks, and they would 
 probably leave him where he is till nightfall." 
 
 Julius Fraithorn longs, more than ever, that eloquence 
 and inspiration were his to employ in the healing of the 
 man who has raised himself almost from the dead. But he 
 can only faker something about the inscrutable designs of 
 Providence, and not a sparrow falling to the ground un- 
 noticed. And he expresses, somewhat tritely, the hope 
 that Saxham's friend was prepared to meet his end. 
 
 " I don't exactly suppose he expected it. He had a 
 right to count upon pulling ofiE the match," says Saxham, 
 with a dreary shadow of a grin, " because a better man 
 behind a gun than Father Noah you wouldn't easily meet. 
 And Boers are fine shots, as a rule." 
 
 " Boers. ... A Boer. ... I thought you told me you 
 had lost a friend ?" Mild astonishment is written on the 
 Chaplain's face. And Saxham looks up, and the other 
 sees that his eyeballs are heavily injected with blood, and 
 that the vivid blue of their irises has strangely faded. 
 
 " I gave him every opportunity to be my friend," says 
 the dull voice heavily, " by moving out from cover, 
 even by standing up. But no good. He suspected a ruse, 
 and it worried him. Then he climbed a tree, emptied his 
 bandolier at me from a perch of vantage among the branches, 
 and had started to refill it from a fresh package, when I got 
 the chance, and brought him down spreadeagled. And so 
 ends Father Noah." 
 
 The Chaplain comprehends fully now, turns pale, and 
 shudders. A blue line marks itself about his mouth ; he 
 is conscious of a qualm of positive nausea as he says : 
 
 " You — ^you don't mean you have been talking of a man 
 you have shot ?" 
 
 " Just so," assents Saxham, and the sentence that follows 
 is not uttered aloud. " And I wish with all my soul that 
 the man had shot me !" 
 
 " And this is War," says Julius Fraithorn. He pulls 
 out his handkerchief and wipes his damp forehead and 
 the beady blue lines about his mouth, and the craclv and 
 rattle of rifle-fire sweeping over the veld and through tlio
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 437 
 
 town, and the ping, ping, ping ! of Mauser bullets flattening 
 on the iron gutter-pipe and the corrugated iron of the roof 
 above them seem to answer " Certainly, War." 
 
 " Why, you look sick, man," says Saxham the surgeon, 
 whose keen professional eye has not missed the Chaplain's 
 pallor, though the other Saxham is still dazed and blind, 
 and stupefied by the blow that has been dealt bim by 
 Lady Hannah's gold fountain-pen. He leans forward, and 
 lightly touches one of the Chaplain's thin wrists, suspecting 
 him of a touch of fever, or town-water dysentery. But 
 JuUus jerks the wrist away. 
 
 " I am perfectly well. It was — the way in which you 
 spoke just now that rather — rather " 
 
 " Revolted you, eh ?" says Saxham, again with the dim 
 shadow of a smile. " Revealed me as a brute and a savage. 
 Well, and why not, if I choose to be one or the other, or 
 both ? You Churchmen beUeve in the power of choice, 
 don't you ? Prove to a man that there is something 
 worth having in the bowels of the earth, he burrows like 
 a mole and gets it. Let him once see utility in flying, 
 give bim time and opportunity, and he will fly. So if it 
 is to hia interests to be clean-lived, high-minded, exemplary, 
 he will be all these things to admiration. Or, if he should 
 happen to have lost the gout for virtue, if he determines 
 that Evil shall be his good, he will make it so." He smiled 
 dourly. " Deprive him of a solid reason for living, he 
 can die. Hold up before his dying eyes the prospect of 
 continued existence under hopeful conditions, he takes up 
 his bed and walks, like the moiibund paralytic in the 
 Gospel you preach. You're a living proof of the human 
 power of working miracles. . . . Granted I cut away a 
 tumour from under your breast-bone more skilfully than 
 a certain percentage of surgeons could have done it. But 
 what brought you safely through the operation, healed 
 your wound by the first intention, and set you on youi 
 legs again ? I'll trouble you to tell me ?" 
 
 " The mercy and the grace of God," says the Chaplain, 
 " manifested in His unworthy servant through your science 
 and your skill." 
 
 " You employ the technical terminology of youi 
 profession," Saxham answers, with a shrug.
 
 438 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The blank stare and the congested redness have gone out 
 of his eyes, and his voice is less dull and toneless. He is 
 coming back to his outward self again, even while the inner 
 man lies mangled and bleeding, crushed by that tremendous 
 broadsword stroke of Fate that has been dealt him by the 
 gold pen of Lady Hannah, and he is ready enough to argue 
 with the Chaplain. He gets off the bed and slips on hia 
 Jacket, takes a turn or two across the narrow floor-space, 
 then leans against the distempered wall beside the window, 
 puffing at his jetty briar -root, his muscular arms folded on 
 his great chest, his powerful shoulders bowed, Ms square, 
 black head thrust forward, and his blue eyes coolly studying 
 Julius as he talks. 
 
 " Let me — without rubbing your cloth the wrong way — 
 put the case in mine. Your belief in a Power that my 
 reason tells me is non-existent stimulated your nervous 
 centres, roused and sustained in you the determination 
 without which my science and my skill — and I do not 
 value them lightly, I assure you — would have availed 
 you nothing. You said to yourself, ' If God will it, I shall 
 get over this,' and because you willed it, it was so. Were 
 I a drimkard, an outcast, the very refuse of humanity, 
 tainted with vice to the very centre of my being, I have 
 but to will to be sober and live decently, and while I 
 continue to will it, I shall be what I desire to be." 
 
 Saxham's eyes hold JuUus's, and challenge them. But 
 no shadow of a Dop Doctor who once reeled the streets 
 of Gueldersdorp rises from those clear brown depths as the 
 speaker ends, " Don't underestimate the power of the 
 Human Will, Fraithom, for it can remove mountains, and 
 raise the hving dead." 
 
 " Nor do you venture to deny the Power of the Almighty 
 Hand, Saxham," answers the thin, sweet voice of the 
 Churchman ; " because It strewed the myriad worlds in 
 the Dust of the The Infinite, and set the jewelled feathers 
 in the butterfly's wing, and forged the very intellect 
 whose power you misuse in uttericig the boast that denies 
 It. Think again. Can you assure me with truth that 
 you have never, in the stress of some great mental or 
 physical crisis, cried to Heaven for help when the 
 Struggle was at its worst ? Think again, Saxham,"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 439 
 
 But Saxham obstinately shakes his head, still smiling. 
 As he stands there transfigured by the dark, fierce spirit 
 that has come upon him and possessed him, there is some- 
 thing about the hulking man with the square, black head 
 and the powerful frame, that breathes of that superb and 
 terrible Prince of the Heavenly Hieraichy who fell through 
 a kindred sin, and the priest in Julius shudders, recognising 
 the tremendous power of such a nature as this, whether 
 turned towards Evil or bent to achieve Good. The while, in 
 letters of delicate, keen flame, the denier sees written on the 
 tables of his inward consciousness the utterance that once 
 broke from him, as, racked and tortured in body and in 
 soul, he wrestled with his devil on that unforgettable night. 
 
 *' God ! if indeed Thou Art, and I must perforce return 
 to live the life of a man amongst men, help me to burst the 
 chains that fetter me. Help me — oh, help me to be free !'^ 
 
 And in his heart he knows that the desperate prayer has 
 been granted. But in this new-born, curious mood of his 
 he will not yield, but combats his own innermost conviction, 
 being, ia a strange, perverted way, even prouder of this 
 Owen Saxham who has gone down of his own choice to the 
 muddiest depths of moral and physical decadence, and come 
 up of the strength of his own will from among the hideous 
 things that hang suspended and drifting in the primeval 
 sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His 
 is a combative nature, and the great blow he has sustained 
 this day in the wreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left 
 him quivering to the centre of his being with resentment 
 that strikes back. 
 
 " Think again yourself. Ask yourself whether the Deity 
 who creates, preserves, blesses, punishes, slays, and raises up, 
 is the natural outcome of man's need of such a Being, or His 
 own desire of Himself 1 And which conception is the greater — 
 that the God in whom you Churchmen and the millions of lay- 
 folk who recognise you as Divinely-appointed teachers be- 
 lieve, should have commanded, " Let the universe exist," and 
 have been obeyed, or that the stujiendous pigmy Man should 
 have dared to say, ' Let there be God,' and so created Him ?" 
 
 He laughs jarringly as he knocks the ashes out of the 
 blackened pipe upon the corner of the window-ledge. 
 
 " Give credit to the human imagination and the human
 
 440 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 will for inventing a personage so useful to the Christian 
 Churches as the Devil. For as in the beginning it was 
 necessary for Man to build up Heaven and set his God 
 therein, so, to throw His unimaginable purity and incon- 
 ceivable perfection into yet more glorious relief, it was 
 required that Hell should be delved out and the objective 
 personality of Satan conceived and kennelled there, and 
 given Just sufficient power to pay the marplot where the 
 Divine plans are concerned, and just enough malevolence 
 to find amusement in the occupation. What should we do, 
 where should we be, without our Satanic souffre-dotUeur — 
 our horned scapegoat, our black puppet, without whose 
 suggestions we should never have erred, whose wooden 
 head we bang when things go wrong with us," says Saxham 
 bitterly. He reaches out a hand for the tobacco-pouch 
 and his glance falls upon the day's issue of the Siege Gazette 
 lying on the parquet linoleum, where it has fallen from his 
 hand a little while ago. He stoops and picks it up, and 
 offers it to Julius. 
 
 " There's the announcement of an engagement here " 
 
 He smooths the crumpled sheet, holds it under the 
 Chaplain's eye, and points to the two last paragraphs of 
 the " Social Jottings " column. " Take it as an instance. 
 . . . Did Heaven play the matchmaker here, or has Hell 
 had a finger in the matrimonial pie ? Or has the blind and 
 crazy chance that governs this desolate world for me, tipped 
 the balance in favour of one young rake, who may be saved 
 and purified and renewed by such a marriage, while his 
 3lder in iniquity is doomed to be wrecked upon it, ruined 
 by it, destroyed through it, damned socially and morally 
 because of it . . ." 
 
 The fierce words break from Saxham against his will. He 
 resents the betrayal of his own confidence savagely, even 
 as he utters them. But they are spoken, beyond recall. 
 And the effect of the paragraph upon the Chaplain is re- 
 markable. His meek, luminous brown eyes blaze with 
 indignation. He is aflame, from the edge of his collar — a 
 patent clerical guillotine of washable xylonite, purchased 
 at a famous travellers' emporium in the Strand — to the 
 thin, silky rings of dark hair that are wearing from his high, 
 p?ile temples. He says, and stutters angrily in saying :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 441 
 
 " This is a lie — a monstrous misstatement which shall 
 be withdrawn to-morrow !" 
 
 " How do you know that ?" 
 
 The Chaplain crushes the Siege Gazette into a ball, pitches 
 it into a comer of the room, grabs his Field-Service cap and 
 the cane he carries in lieu of the carbine or rifle with(jut 
 which the male laity of Gueldersdorp and a good many of 
 the women do not stir abroad, and makes a stride for the 
 door. He meets there Saxham, whose square face and 
 powerful figure bar his flaming exit. 
 
 "It is enough that I do know it. Kindly allow me to pass." 
 
 " What are you going to do ?" 
 
 The Chaplain is plainly uncertain, as he wrestles with 
 the clerical guillotine of washable xylonite, and stammers 
 something about unwarrantable liberty and a lady's 
 reputation ! And Saxham recognises that Saxham is not 
 the only sufferer from the festering smart of Jealousy, and 
 that the vivid red-and-white carnation- tinted beauty of the 
 delicate face in its setting of red- brown hair has grievously 
 disturbed, if it has not altogether dissipated, the pale 
 young Anglican's views of the celibate life. 
 
 Agnostic and Churchman, denier and believer, have split 
 on the same amatory rock. The knowledge breathes no 
 sympathy in the Dop Doctor. 
 
 He observes the Chaplain's face, dispassionately and yet 
 intently, as in the old Hospital days he might have studied 
 the expression of a monkey or a guinea-pig, or other organ- 
 ism upon which he was experimenting with some new drug. 
 And the Reverend Julius demands, with resentful acerbity : 
 
 " What are you staring at ? Do you imagine that the 
 colour of my cloth debars me from — from taking the part of 
 a lady whose name has been dragged before the public ? I 
 shall call at the office where this rag is published, and insist 
 upon a contradiction of this — this canard /" 
 
 " Don't you know who edits the rag ?" asks Saxham 
 raspingly. " Do you suppose that any unauthorised an- 
 nouncement, or statement that has not been ufficially cor- 
 roborated would be allowed to pass ? The paragraph comes 
 from an authoritative source, you may be sure !" 
 
 " I am in a position to disprove it, from whatever source it 
 eomes !" cried the Chaplain hotly. " He shall contradict il
 
 442 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 himself, if there is necessity. He may be a prodigal and a 
 rake — he bears that reputation — but at least he is not a 
 liar and a scoundrel." 
 
 "Who?" Saxham's heart ia drubbing furiously. A cool, 
 vdvifying liquid like ether seems to have passed into his 
 blood. His quiet, set, determined face and masterful, ob- 
 servant eyes oppose the Chaplain's heat and indignation, as 
 if these were waves of boiling lava beating on a cliff of 
 granite. " Who is not a liar and a scoundrel 1" 
 
 " I speak of Lord Beauvayse," says the Reverend Julius 
 Fraithom in the high-pitched voice that shakes with rage. 
 " He is a married man, Saxham ; I have incontrovertible 
 testimony to prove it. He gave his name to the woman 
 who was his mistress a week before he sailed for Cape Town. 
 He " 
 
 There is a strange rattling noise in the throat of the man 
 who listens. Julius looks at him, and his own resentment 
 appears, even to himself, as impotent and ridiculous as the 
 anger of a child. If just before it has seemed to him that he 
 has heard the voice of mankind's arch-enemy speaking with 
 Saxham's mouth, he discerns at this moment, reflected in 
 Saxham's, the face of the primal murderer. And beiug, as 
 well as a sincere and simple-hearted clergyman, something 
 of a weakling, he is shocked to silence. 
 
 XLVI 
 
 An instant, and Saxham's own face looks calmly at the 
 dazed Chaplain, and the curt, brusque voice demands : 
 " What is this incontrovertible testimony ?" 
 " A letter," says Julius breathlessly, " from a person who 
 saw the entry of the marriage at the Registrar's o£fice where 
 it took place." 
 
 " Is anyone else in possession of this information 1" 
 " With the exception of the Registrar and the witnesses 
 of the marriage, up to the middle of last September, when 
 the letter was written, nothing had leaked out. I received 
 the communication by the last mail from England that 
 was delivered at the Hospital before I underwent the 
 operation."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 443 
 
 " Tliat was the last mail that got through. Who was 
 your correspondent V 
 
 " One of the senior officiating priests of St. Margaret's, 
 Wendish Street, the London church where I did duty ..s 
 Junior curate." 
 
 " Have you kept the letter ?" 
 
 " It is in my desk at my hotel, with some other correspon- 
 dence of Father Tatham's. You may see it if you wish." 
 
 " I will see it. In the meanwhile, let me have the pitVi r* 
 it. This clergyman — happening to visit a Registrar's 
 office Where was the office ?" 
 
 " At Cookham-on-Thames, where Father Tatham has 
 established a Holiday Rest Home for the benefit of our 
 London working lads " — the Chaplain begins. He is sitting 
 on the end of the bed, weak and worn and exhausted with 
 the emotions that have torn him in the last half-hour. 
 Beads of perspiration thickly stud the high temples, out of 
 which the flushing colour has sunk ; his cheeks are pallid 
 and hollow. His eyes have lost their fire ; his muscles are 
 flaccidly relaxed ; his sloping shoulders stoop ; his long, 
 limp hands hang nervelessly at his sides. 
 
 " One moment." Saxham glances at the gold chronometer 
 that was a presentation from the students of St. Stephen's 
 years ago. It is rather typical of the man that, even when 
 under stress of his heroic thirst he has pawned the watch for 
 money wherewith to buy whisky, he should have only 
 borrowed upon it such small sums as are easily repaid. He 
 hcvS yet another five minutes to bestow in listening to the 
 Chaplain's story, yet even as he returns the chronometer 
 to its pocket, his quick ear catches the frou-frou of feminine 
 petticoats outside the door. He opens it, frowning. A 
 nurse is standing there with a sunmions in her face. She 
 delivers her low-toned message, receives a brusque reply, 
 and rustles do\\Ti the corridor between the long lines of 
 pallets as Saxham draws back his head and shuts the door, 
 and, setting lus great shoulders against it, and facing Julius, 
 orders : 
 
 " Go on !" 
 
 Julius goes on : 
 
 " At Roselawn Cottage — a pretty place of the toy-resi- 
 dence description, standing in charming gardens not fax
 
 444 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 from the Holiday Rest Home, lived a lady — an actress very 
 popular in Musical Comedy — who was known to be the mis- 
 tress of Lord Beauvayse. I need hardly tell you the Father 
 touched on the unpleasant features of the story as delicately 
 as possible " 
 
 " Without doubt. But — get on a little quicker," says 
 Saxham grimly, jerking his head towards the door. " For 
 I am wanted. And don't speak loud, for there are people 
 on the other side there. With regard to this woman — 
 actress, or whatever she may be ?" 
 
 " With all her moral Ifkxities," goes on Julius, " Miss 
 Lessie Lavigne " 
 
 " Ah, I know the name," says Saxham sharply. " On 
 with you to the end. ' With all her moral laxities ' " 
 
 " Miss Lessie Lavigne is a generous, kindly, charitable 
 young woman," goes on Julius. " And the Holiday Home 
 has benefited largely by her purse. She is known to the 
 Matron ; and Father Tatham — having occasion to visit the 
 Registrar's office at Cookham on the 29th of last June, for 
 the purpose of looking up the books, with the Registrar's 
 consent, and satisfying himself of the existence of the entry 
 regarding a marriage between one of our young fellows 
 then at the Home and a girl he very foolishly married when 
 on a hopping excursion in the autumn of the previous year 
 — ^Father Tatham encountered Miss Lavigne — or Lady 
 Beauvayse, to give her her proper title " 
 
 " In the Registrar's office ?" 
 
 " In the act of quitting the Registrar's outer office," says 
 the bumt-out Julius in a weary voice, " in the company of 
 Lord Beauvayse, and followed by his valet and a woman 
 who probably were witnesses ; for when the Father entered 
 the inner office the register was lying open on the table, 
 the entry of the marriage still wet upon the page." 
 
 " And your religious correspondent pried first," says 
 Saxham, with savage irony, " and afterwards tattled ?" 
 
 " And afterwards, seeing in the Times that Lord Beau- 
 vayse was under orders for South Africa, mentioned his 
 accidental discovery when writing to me," says Julius 
 Fraithorn wearily. 
 
 " That will do. When can I see the letter at your hotel ? 
 The sooner the better," says Saxham, with a curious smile,
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 445 
 
 " for all purposes. Can you walk there with me now ? 
 Very well " — as Julius assents — " that is arranged, then." 
 
 " What is to be done, Saxham ?" Julius stumbles up. 
 The fires that btrned in him a few moments ago are 
 quenched ; his slack hand trembles irresolutely at his beau- 
 tiful weak mouth, and his deer-like eyes waver. 
 
 " I advise you," says Saxham, " to leave the doing of 
 what is to be done to me." His own blue eyes have so 
 strange a flare in them, and his heavy form seems so alive 
 and instinct with threatening and dangerous possibilities, 
 that Julius falters : 
 
 " You believe Lord Beauvayse has been a party to — has 
 wilfully compromised Miss Mildare ? You — you mean to 
 remonstrate with him ? Do you — do you think that he will 
 listen to a remonstrance '?" 
 
 " He will fimd it best in this instance," says Saxham 
 dourly. 
 
 " Do not — do not be tempted to use any violence, Sax- 
 ham," urges the Chaplain nervously, looking at the tense 
 muscles of the grim, square face and the purposeful right 
 hand that hovers near the butt of the Doctor's revolver. 
 *' For your own sake as much as for his !" 
 
 Saxham's laugh is ugly to hear. 
 
 " Do you tliink that Lord Beauvayse would wind up as 
 top-dog if it came to a struggle between us ?" 
 
 " It must not come to a struggle, Saxham," says the 
 Chaplain, very pale. " We — we are under Martial Law. 
 He is your superior officer." (Saxham, Attached Medical 
 Staff, holds the honorary rank of Lieutenant in Her Majesty's 
 Army.) " Remember, if Carslow — the man who killed 
 Vickers, of the Pittsburg Trumpeter " — he refers to a grim 
 tragedy of the beginning of the siege — " had not been medi- 
 cally certified insane, they would have talcen him out and 
 shot him." 
 
 Saxham shrugs his massive shouders, and with the 
 utter unmelodiousness that distinguishes the performance 
 of a man devoid of a musical ear, whistles a fragment of a 
 little tune. It is often on the lips of anotlier man, and 
 the Doctor has picked it up unconsciously, with one or two 
 other characteristic habits and phrases, and has fallen into 
 the habit of whistling it as he goes doggedly, uuwoaiyingly,
 
 446 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 upon his ever-widoning round of daily duties. It helps him, 
 perhaps, though it gets upon the nerves of other people, 
 making the younger nurses, not unmindful of his arbitrary 
 action in the matter of the violet powder, want to shriek. 
 
 " The Military Executive would be perfectly welcome to 
 take me out and shoot me, if first I might be permitted to 
 look in at Staff Bomb proof South, and render Society the 
 distinguished service of ridding it of Lord Beauvayse. 
 Who's there ?" 
 
 Saxham reopens the door, at which the nurse, now re- 
 turned, has knocked. The tired but cheerful-faced young 
 woman, in an unstarched cap and apron, and rumpled gown 
 of Galatea cotton-twill, informs the Doctor that they have 
 telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that 
 the password for the day is " Honour." 
 
 " You are going to him now V* asks the Chaplain 
 anxiously and apprehensively. 
 
 " Oddly enough, I have been sent for to attend to a shell 
 casualty," says Saxham, picking up and putting on his 
 Service felt, and moving to take down the canvas wallet 
 that is his inseparable companion, from the hook on which 
 it hangs. " Or, rather, Taggart was ; and as he has thirty 
 diphtheria cases for tracheotomy at the Children's Hospital, 
 and McFadyen's hands are full at the Refugees' Infirmary, 
 the Major asks if I will take the duty. It's an order, I sup- 
 pose, couched in a civil way." 
 
 He swings the heavy wallet over his shoulders, and picks 
 up his worn hunting-crop. 
 
 " And so, let's be moving," he says, his hand upon the 
 door-knob. " Your hotel is on my way. I may need that 
 letter, or I may not. And in any case I prefer to have seen 
 it before I meet the man." 
 
 " One moment." The Chaplain speaks with a strained 
 look of anxiety, squeezing a damp white handkerchief into 
 a ball between his palms. " You have taken upon yourself 
 the duty of bringing Lord Beauvayse to book over this — very 
 painful matter. ... I should like ... I should \vish you to 
 leave the task of enUghtening Misa Mildare to me." 
 
 " To you. And why ?" 
 
 Saxham waits for the answer, a heavy figure filling up the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 447 
 
 doorway, with scowling brows, and sullen eyes that care- 
 fully avoid the Chaplain's face. 
 
 " Because I — because in inflicting upon her what must 
 necessarily be a — a painful humiliation " — the Rev. 
 Julius clears his throat, and laboriously rolls the damp 
 handkerchief-ball into a sausage — " I wish to convince Miss 
 Mildare that my respect and my — esteem for her have — 
 not diminished." 
 
 " And how do you propose to drive this conviction home ?" 
 
 The Reverend Julius flushes to the ear-tips. The cold- 
 ness of the questioning voice gives him a nervous shudder. 
 He says with an effort, looking at the thick white, black- 
 fringed lids that hide the Doctor's q\iecr blue eyes : 
 
 " By offering Miss Mildare the honourable protection of 
 my name. M}' views, as regarding the celibacy incumbent 
 upon an anointed servant of the altar, have, since I knew 
 her, undergone a — a change. . . . And it occurs to me, when 
 she has got over the first shock of hearing that she has been 
 deceived and played w ith by a person of Lord Beauvayse's 
 lack of principle " 
 
 " That she may be induced to look with favour on the 
 parson's proposal ?" comments Saxham with an indifference 
 to the feelings of the person he addresses that is positively 
 savage. The raucous tones flay Julius's sensitive ears, the 
 terrible blue eye^ blaze upon him, scorch him. He falters : 
 
 " I — I trust my purpose is pure from vulgar self-seeking ? 
 I hope my attitude towards Ivliss Mildare is not unchivalrous 
 — or ungenerous ?" 
 
 " In manipulating her disadvantage to serve your own 
 interests," says Saxham's terrible voice, " you would un- 
 doubtedly bo playing a very low-dowTi game." 
 
 Julius laughs, shortly and huffily. 
 
 " A low-do\\'n game ! . . . Ha, ha, ha ! You don't mince 
 your words, Doctor !" 
 
 " I can phrase my opinion oven more plainly, if you desire 
 it," returns Saxham brutally. " To bespatter a rival for 
 the gaining of an advantage by contrast is a Yahoo's trick 
 to which no decent gentleman would stoop." 
 
 " At a pinch," retorts the Chaplain, stung to the point of 
 being sarcastic, " your ' decent gentleman ' would be likely 
 to remember the old adage, ' '^^I's fair in Love and ' "
 
 448 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Exactly. All is fair," returns Saxham, squaring his 
 dogged Jaws at the other, and foldiag his great arms upon 
 his deep wide chest. " And all shall be, please to under- 
 stand it. It is, unfortunately, necessary that Miss Mildaro 
 should be undeceived as regards Lord Beauvayse. But the 
 painful duty of opening her eyes will be undertaken by 
 that " — the break before the designation is scathingly con- 
 temptuous—" by that— distinguished nobleman himself, 
 and by no other." 
 
 " How can you compel the man to give himself away ?" 
 demands the Reverend Julius incredulously. Saxham 
 answers, mechanically opening and closing his small, mus- 
 cular surgeon's hand, and watching the flexions and exten- 
 sions of the supple fingers with an ugly kind of interest : 
 
 " I shall compel him to. How doesn't concern you at the 
 moment. What matters is — ^your parole of honour that 
 you will never by word, or deed, or sign disclose to Miss 
 Mildare that Lord Beauvayse was not, when he engaged 
 himself to marry her, in a position to fulfil his matrimonial 
 proposals. Short of betraying your rival, you are at liberty 
 to further your own views as may seem good to you. The 
 plan of campaign that I, in your place, should choose 
 might not find favour in your eyes. . . ." 
 
 His look bears upon the younger man with intolerable 
 weight, his heavily-shouldered figure seems to swell and 
 fill the room. Julius is clearly conscious of hatkig his 
 saviour, and the consciousness is acid on his palate as he 
 asks, with a wry smile : 
 
 " What would your plan be if you were in my place ?" 
 
 " To praise where a rival was worthy of praise ; to be 
 silent where it would be easy to depreciate ; to win her 
 from him, not because of my own greater worth, but in 
 spite of the worst she could know of me. That would, in 
 my opinion, be a conquest worthy of a man." 
 
 The pupils of the speaker's flaming blue eyes have 
 dwindled to mere pin-points, a rush of blood has darkened 
 the square pale face, to sink away again and leave it 
 opaquely colourless, as Saxham says with cool distinctness : 
 
 " And now, before we leave this room, I must trouble you 
 for that promise — oath, if you feel it would be more iv 
 your line of business. I don't possess a copy of the Scrip
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 449 
 
 tures, but I think that is a Crucifix you wear upon your 
 ^ watch-chain ?" 
 
 It is. And when the Reverend Julius has kissed the sacred 
 symbol with shaking lips, and taken the oath as Saxham 
 dictates, his heart tattooing furiously under the baggy khaki 
 jacket, and an angry pulse beating in his thin cheek, Saxham 
 adds, with the flickerkig shadow of a smile, as he opens the 
 I door, and signs to the Chaplain to pass out before him : 
 
 " You observe, I have turned the weapons of your pro- 
 fession against you. Exactly as — ^replying to your ques- 
 tion of a moment back with regard to compelling — exactly 
 as I intend to do in the case of Lord Beauvayse !" 
 
 He motions to the other to pass out before him, and locks 
 the door upon his stuffy httle sanctum whose shelves are 
 piled with a heterogeneous confusion of tubes and bottles, 
 books and instruments, specimens of foodstuffs under the 
 process of analysis for values, and carefully-sealed watch- 
 glasses containing choice cultures of deadly microbes in 
 bouillon, before he leads his way down the long corridor, 
 where narrow pallets, upon which sick men and boys are 
 stretched, range along the wrJls upon either hand, and the 
 air is heavy with the taint of -uppurating wounds, and the 
 hot, sickly breath of fever and malaria. 
 
 He walks quickly, his keen blue eyes glancing right and 
 left with the effect of carelessness, yet missing nothing. 
 He stops, and loosens the bandage, and reUeves the 
 swollen Hmb. He delays to kneel a moment beside one 
 low pillow, and turn gently to the hght a face that is ghastly, 
 with its bristly beard and glassy, staring eyes, and its pallor 
 that Ls of the hue of old wax, and lay it gently back again 
 as he beckons to the nurse to bring the screens, and hide 
 the Dead from the sight of the hving. 
 
 He is in his element ; sahent and masterful and strong. 
 But the haggard eyes that turn upon him do not shine with 
 gratitude. He has not reached these hearts. They accuse 
 him, quite unjustly, of a liking for cutting and carving. 
 They suspect him, quite correctly, of being ia no hurry for 
 the ending of the siege. How should he be, when, these 
 strenuous days once over, he sees nothing before him but 
 the murky blackness of the night out of which he came, 
 from which he has emerged for one brief draught of renewt;d 
 
 29
 
 450 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Joy in living before the dark shall close over him again, and 
 wrap liim round for ever ? 
 
 He has suffered horribly of late. But at the worst his 
 work has never failed to bring relief and distraction. Pure 
 loyalty to a man in whom he believes, has been the main- 
 spring of his unflagging strength. He is not liked or 
 popular in any way, though Surgeon-Major Taggart up- 
 holds him manfully, and McFadyen is loyal to the old bond. 
 His harshness repels regard, his coldness blights confidence, 
 and so, though he is admired for Ms dazzling skill in surgery, 
 for his dogged perseverance and unremitting power of 
 application, for his fine horsemanship and iron nerve ; he is 
 not regarded with affection. 
 
 He is not in the least aware of it, to do him justice, when 
 his rough ironies and his brusque repartees give offence. In 
 the heyday of his London success he has not truckled to 
 Rank, or Influence, or Affluence. The owner of a gouty or 
 a varicose leg has never had the more civil tongue from 
 Saxham that the uneasy limb or its fellow was privileged 
 upon State occasions to wear the Garter. He trod upon 
 corns then, as he treads upon them now, without being 
 aware of it, as he goes upon his way. 
 
 JuUus goes with him, rent by apprehensions, stealing 
 nervous side-glances at the impassive, opaque-skinned face 
 as Saxham swings along with his powerful, rather lurching 
 gait over the ploughed and Httered waste that divides the 
 Hospital from the town beyond it. He speaks once or 
 tmce, but Saxham seems not to hear. 
 
 The Doctor is listening to a dialogue that is as yet un- I 
 spoken. He is crushing a resistance that has not yet been 1 
 made. In imagination his small, strong, muscular hands 
 are gripped about the throat of the man who has lied to her 
 and deceived her ; and he is listening with joy to the gurgling, 
 choking efforts to phrase a prayer for mercy, or utter a final 
 defiance ; and he sees with grim pleasure how the fine skin 
 blackens under his deadly hold, and how the lazy, beautiful, 
 grey-green eyes, no longer sleepy or defiant, but staring 
 and horribly bloodshot, are already rolling upwards in the 
 death-agony. The primitive savage that is in every man 
 lusts at a juncture such as this, to kill with the bare hands 
 rather than to slay with any weapon known to civilisation. 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 451 
 
 " Let him look to it how he deals with her ! Let him 
 look to it !" 
 
 How long it seems since Saxham muttered those words, 
 turning sullenly away to recross the stepping-stones, 
 leaping from boulder to boulder as the river wimpled and 
 laughed in mockery of his clumsy tender of protection and 
 her rejection of it, and Beauvayse's tall figure stood, erect 
 and triumphant, on the flower-starred bank, waiting to 
 recommence his wooing until the intruder should be gone, 
 divining, as Saxham had instinctively known, the hidden 
 passion that rent and tortured him, glowing with the con- 
 sciousness of secret mastery. . . . 
 
 If this meek, thin-blooded young clergyman who walks 
 beside him might have won her, it seems to Saxham that he 
 could have borne it. But that Beauvayse of all others should 
 venture to approach her, presume to rear an image of him- 
 self in the shrine of her pure breast ; win her from her high 
 aims and lofty ideals with a bold look and a few whispered 
 words, and, having thrown his honourable name into the 
 lap of a light woman as indifferently as a jewelled trinket, 
 should dare to offer Lynette Mildare dishonour, is mon- 
 strous, hideous, unbearable. . . . 
 
 How comes it that she of all women should be so easily 
 allured, so lightly dra-wTi aside ? Was there no baser con- 
 quest within reach that this white, virginal, slender saint 
 should become his prey ? Shall she be made even as those 
 others of whom she spoke, when the veil of a girlish inno- 
 cence was drawn aside, and strange and terrible knowledge 
 looked out of those clear eyes, and she said, in answer to his 
 question : 
 
 " They are the moat unhappy of all the souls that suffer 
 upon earth. For they are the slaves, and the victims, and 
 the martyrs of the unrelenting, merciless, dreadful pleasures 
 of men. . . ." 
 
 Of men like Beauvayse. 
 
 Not only swart and shagg}', or pale and bloated beast - 
 men, or white-haired, toothless, blear-eyed satyrs grown 
 venerable in vice. But beautiful, youthful profligates, 
 limbed like the gods and fauns of the old Greek sculptors : 
 soft of skin, golden of hair, with sleepy eyes Uke green 
 Jewels, soft persuasive voices with which to pour poisoned 
 
 29—2
 
 452 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 words into innocent and guileless ears, and the bold, brave 
 blood of old-time heroes running in their veins, prompting 
 them to the doing of dashing, reckless, gallant deeds, no less 
 than sins of lust and luxury. 
 
 Let him look to it, this splendid young soldier with the 
 ancient name, hope of his House, pride of his Regiment. 
 Let him look to it how he has dealt with her, who had no 
 thought or dream but to save others from the fate he 
 destines for her, until his cursed, beautiful face smiled dowu 
 into her own. For every lying oath he has sworn to her, 
 for every false promise made to the wrecking of her maiden 
 peace, for every kiss those innocent lips have been despoiled 
 of, for every touch of his that has soiled her, for every 
 breath of his that has scorched the white petals of the 
 Convent-reared lily, he shall pay the price. 
 
 Silently Saxham registers this oath upon that beloved 
 red-brown head, since he denies its Maker BQs honour, and 
 the wliirling blackness that is vpithin him is rent and cloven, 
 for one blinding instant, by the ]e\Tn-fires of Hell. He 
 knows thenceforward what he will do, as he walks with the 
 pale Chaplain between the shell-tom houses, and along the 
 littered streets, where men and women and children, thin 
 and haggard and listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia 
 of long confinement, pass and repass as indifferently as 
 though no guns were battering and growling from the low 
 grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire 
 were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental 
 to a sham fight. 
 
 They reach the Chaplain's hotel, and go to his room. 
 Saxham waits silently while Julius searches for and finds 
 Father Tatham's letter, takes it and reads it attentively, 
 puts it carefully away in a worn notecase, restores the note- 
 case to the inner pocket of his jacket, and, without a nod 
 or word of farewell, is gone. 
 
 XLVII 
 
 To the remarkably complete system of underground wires 
 installed by the Garrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah 
 Wrynche, on duty at the Convalescent Hospital that was
 
 THE DOP DOCTOU 453 
 
 once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday that saw 
 the publication of the string of paragraphs previously 
 quoted from the Sieqe Gazette, indebted for what she after- 
 wards described with ruefulness as a " heckled morning." 
 
 Once a week the " Social Jottings," bubbling from the 
 effervescent Gold Pen, descended like rain upon the parched 
 soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. To make gossip where there 
 is none is as difficult as making bricks without clay, or 
 trimming a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds' 
 Protection Society, and plumage is Fashion's latest cry. 
 Under the circumstances a genuine item of general and 
 public interest was a pearl of price. And yet something had 
 told the little lady that the ruthless Blue Pencil of Supreme 
 Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy of casting 
 it before the readers of the Siege Gazette. She seemed to 
 hear him saying, in the pleasant voice she knew so well : 
 
 " No personalities shall be published in a paper I control." 
 
 He had said that on Sunday, when she had pleaded for a 
 freer hand. Well, he could hardly call the announcement 
 of an engagement a personality, and, supposing he did, how 
 easy to convince him that it was nothing of the kind ! 
 
 She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, 
 and added the paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated 
 by an explosion of asterisks, and gave the blotty sheets to 
 Young Evans, who combined in his sole person the offices 
 of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil. 
 
 Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing- 
 press driven by the little oil-engine that had sustained a 
 shell-casualty at the beginning of the siege, adored Lady 
 Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated partition that 
 separated the office from the printing-room, and presently 
 came back in inky shirt-sleeves with a smear f»f lubricating- 
 oil upon his forehead, and laid the \\et slips upon the 
 Editorial table. Then he went back, and fell to tinkering at 
 his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. When 
 she had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten 
 minutes Supreme Authority would descend the ladder, 
 wield the Blue Pencil, and depart. Would he have mercy 
 and not sacrifice ? The suspense was torturing. 
 
 Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme 
 Authority might be — she dared not use the word " ciroum-
 
 454 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 vented." " Got round " was even worse ; " evaded " 
 sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own 
 feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral 
 force than Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the 
 editorial scissors, and daintily cut off the three paragraphs 
 from the bottom of the slip. 
 
 The thing was done, and the snipped-o£f paragraphs con- 
 cealed, as a pair of brown boots, with steel jack-spurs at- 
 tached, came neatly down the ladder. The Chief gave her his 
 cheery " Good-morning," and congratulated her on looking 
 well. Her cheeks burned and her heart rat- tatted against 
 the hidden paper, as he ran his keen eye down slip after 
 slip, and initialled them for the press. She almost shrieked 
 as he took up the " Social Jottings." The underground 
 office whirled about her as the blue pencil steadily travelled 
 down. Then — he was gone — and the initialled proof lay 
 before her. She had nothing to do but neatly and deli- 
 cately paste on the bit she had snipped o£F. This done, she 
 gathered up her various small belongings, swept them into 
 her bag, and went, leaving the passed proof of the " Social 
 Jottings " column waiting for Young Evans with the rest. 
 
 In the middle of the night she realised what she had done. 
 But even in a beleaguered town under the sway of Martial 
 Law you cannot hang a lady, or order her out and shoot her 
 for Mutiny and Treason combined. There would be a 
 reprimand ; what Bingo pleasantly termed " an official 
 wigging," unless the Blue PencU could, by any feminine 
 art, be persuaded that it had passed those pars. 
 
 But, of course, she would never stoop to such a deception. 
 The ruse she had employed was culpable. The other thing 
 would be infamous. And — he \^ ould be sure to see that the 
 end of the proof-slip had been pasted on. 
 
 She slept jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the 
 Convalescent Hospital in that stage of penitence that 
 immediately precedes hysterical breakdown. She experi- 
 enced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who, 
 regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to 
 be going on just then, was walking along reading the 
 Siege Gazette. Shirt-sleeved Young Evans had worked until 
 daylight getting the Thursday's issue out. And there was 
 a tremendous run upon copies. Every other person Lady
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 455 
 
 Hannah encountered upon the street seemed to have got 
 one, and to find it unusuaUy interesting. The women 
 especially. None of them were dull, or languid, or dim- 
 eyed this morning. The siege crawl was no longer in 
 evidence. They walked upon springs. Upon the stoep of 
 the Hospital, where the long rows of convalescents were 
 airing, every patient appeared plunged in perusal. Those 
 who had not the paper were waiting, with watering mouths, 
 until those who had would part. A reviving breath seemed 
 to have passed over them, and spots of colour showed in 
 their yellow, haggard faces. They talked and laughed. . . . 
 
 Lady Hannah passed in, conscious of an agreeable 
 tingling all down her spine. The hall-porter, a brawTiy, 
 one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lost what he was wont 
 to term his " flapper " at the outset of hostilities, was too 
 deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the " Social 
 Jottings " column to salute her. Inside you heard little 
 beyond the crackling of the flimsy sheet, mingled with the 
 comments, exclamations, anticipations, expectations that 
 went off on all sides, met each other, and rebounded, 
 exploding in coruscations of sparks. Something had hap- 
 pened, something was going to happen, after months and 
 months of eventless monotony. It warmed the thin blood 
 in their veins like comet champagne, and quickened their 
 faded appetites like some salt breath from the far-distant sea. 
 
 The flavour of success upon the palate may, like Imperial 
 Tokay, be sensed but once in a lifetime, but you can never for- 
 get that once. Out of her gold fountain-pen Lady Hannah 
 had spurted a little ink upon the famished Gueldersdorpians, 
 and their dry bones moved and lived. She knew a fine 
 must be paid for this dizzying draught of popularity, even 
 as she tied on a bibbed apron, ajid superintended the serving 
 and distribution of the patients' one-o'clock dinner. 
 
 Horse-soup, with a few potato-sprouts, and one or two 
 slivered carrota to the gallon, formed the menu to-day. 
 There was no more white bread, and a villainous bannock 
 of crushed oats had to be soaked in your porringer if you 
 had no strength to chew it. Sweetened bran-jelly followed, 
 and upon this the now apologetic but smiling porter, with 
 the intelligence that her ladyship was wanted at the wall- 
 Jigger in the Matron's room.
 
 456 
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The ring-up came from HotchMss Outpost North, « here 
 Captain Bingo was this day on duty, via the Staff Head- 
 quarter office in Market Square, and the voice that filtered 
 to the ear of Lady Hannah was unmistakably that of her 
 spouse, and tinged with a grufifness as unusual as ominous. 
 
 " Hullo. Is that you ?" 
 
 " Qu'ii ne vous en deplaise !" 
 
 Bingo growled in a perfectly audible aside : 
 
 " And devil a doubt. What other woman would jabber 
 French through a telephone ?" 
 
 " A Frenchwoman would, possibly." 
 
 " Don't catch what you're saying. Look here, what 
 made you shove such a whacking bouncer into the Siege 
 Gazette .?" 
 
 " Please put that into English." She underwent a 
 quaking at the heart. 
 
 " I say, that announcement about Toby and the Mildare 
 filly is all my eye." 
 
 " It isn't all your eye. It's first-hand, fully-authorised 
 fact." 
 
 " Rot !" 
 
 " Paix et peu ! Say rot, if it pleases you !" 
 
 " You'll have to withdraw and apologise." 
 
 " I can't make out what you're saying." 
 
 " It will end in your eating humble-pie. Can you hear 
 that ?" 
 
 " I can hear that you are in a bearish temper." 
 
 "I've reason to be. If a man had written what you 
 have I should punch his head." 
 
 " Say that again !" 
 
 " I say, if a stranger of the kickable sex had told such a 
 pack of infernal " 
 
 Click ! 
 
 Lady Hannah hung up the receiver, blew a contemptuous 
 kiss into the gape of the celluloid mouthpiece, and turned to 
 go. There was another ring-up as she reached the door. 
 
 " Hallo. Are you the Convalescent Hospital ?" 
 
 " Yes. Who are you ?" 
 
 " Stafif Bombproof South. I want to speak to Lady 
 Hannah Wrynche." 
 
 " I'm here. Lord Beauvayse."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 457 
 
 " I say, I'm going to rag you frightfully. Why on earth 
 have you given us away in that beastly paper ?" 
 
 " Whom do you mean by ' us ' 1" 
 
 " Well, me and Miss Mildare." 
 
 " Didn't you tell me on Sunday that you were engaged ?" 
 she demanded indignantly. 
 
 " I did." The answer came back haltingly. 
 
 " And that you didn't care who knew it ?" 
 
 " Fact." 
 
 " And that you two were going to be married as soon as 
 you could pull off the event ?" 
 
 "Yes." The voice was palpably embarrassed. "But 
 
 " WeU ?" 
 
 " But — things you don't mind people knowing look 
 beastly in cold print." 
 
 " If I were in your shoes I should think they looked 
 beautiful." 
 
 Nothing but a faint buzz came back. Lady Hannah 
 went on : 
 
 " If I were in your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and 
 paragon as Lynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I 
 should want the whole world to envy me my colossal good 
 luck. I should go about in sandwich-boards advertising it. 
 I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim it through that. 
 I should " 
 
 There was no response beyond the buzzing of the wire. 
 Beauvayse had evidently hung up the receiver. 
 
 " Is there any creature upon earth more cowardly than a 
 man engaged ?" Lady Hannah demanded of space. There 
 was a futile struggle inside the telephone-box. Somebody 
 else was trying to ring up. She put the receiver back upon 
 the crutches, and — 
 
 " Ting — ting — ting /" said the beU in a high, thin voice. 
 
 " Who is it ?" she asked. 
 
 The answer came back with official clearness : 
 
 " Officer of the day. Staff Headquarters. If you're the 
 Convalescent Hospital, the Colonel would like to speak to 
 Lady Hannah Wrynche." 
 
 Her knees became as jelly, and her heart seemed to turn 
 a somersault. She answered in a would-be jaunty voice 
 fchafc wobbled horribly :
 
 458 
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Fere — here — is Lady Hannah." 
 
 " Hold on a minute, please !" 
 
 She held on. She had not shuddered at the end of 
 tho wire for more than a minute when the well-known, 
 infinitely-dreaded voice said in her ear, so clearly that she 
 Jumped : 
 
 " Lady Hannah there ? How d'you do ?'* 
 
 She gulped, and quavered : 
 
 " It — it depends on what you're going to say." 
 
 " I see." There was the vibration of a stifled laugh, and 
 her heart Jumped to meet it. " So you anticipated a 
 hauling over the coals V 
 
 Revived, she shrugged her little shoulders. 
 
 " Have I deserved one V 
 
 The voice said, with unmistakable displeasure in it : 
 
 " Thoroughly. Why were not the last three paragraphs 
 of the weekly ' Social Jottings ' column submitted to me 
 yesterday with the rest V 
 
 She heard herself titter imbecilely. Then a voice, which 
 she could hardly believe her own, said, with a pitiable effort 
 to be gay and natural : 
 
 " Weren't they ? Perhaps you overlooked them ?" 
 
 " You know I did not overlook them." 
 
 This was the cold, incisive, cutting, rasping voice which 
 Bingo was wont to describe as razors and files. Her ears 
 burned like fire, and her bright, birdlike eyes were round 
 and scared. She gasped : 
 
 " Oh ... do you really " 
 
 " I want the truth, please, without quibbling." The 
 voice was harsh and cold, and inexorably compelling. 
 " Why were those paragraphs not shown to me ?" 
 
 She winked away her tears. 
 
 " Because I was sure you'd blue-pencil them out of 
 existence. And a genuine bit of news is such a roc's egg in 
 these times of scarcity." 
 
 " Genuine !" 
 
 There was incredulity in the tone. 
 
 " Upon my honour as the wife of a British Dragoon." 
 
 He said crisply : 
 
 " Precipitate publication, even of authentic information. 
 ie likely to be resented by the persons concerned."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 459 
 
 She remembered, with a sinking at the heart, that one 
 person concerned had already objected. 
 
 " Both of them authorised the insertion." 
 
 " And the oflficial consent to it was obtained by a trick." 
 
 She whispered, her heart in the heels of her Louis Quinze 
 shoes : 
 
 " Please — please don't call it that !" 
 
 " How can I call it anything else ? Besides, has it 
 occurred to you that, should any copies of to-day's issue 
 get through these lines, the Foltlebarres will be thrown 
 into a state of volcanic eruption ?" 
 
 " If the Foltlebarres aren't absolute beetles they'll jump 
 for joy. How could their boy possibly do better ?" 
 
 " I don't see how myself." 
 
 " Ah, if you're going to back up Toby, the day is as good 
 as won." 
 
 " You're very kind to say so." 
 
 The red was dying out of Lady Hannah's ear-tips. That 
 " You're very kind " had a gratified sound. The most 
 rigorous and implacable of men can be buttered, she 
 thought, if the emollient be dexterously applied. And a 
 bright spark of naughty triumph snapped in each of her 
 birdhke black eyes. 
 
 " Thanks." He was speaking again. " Apologies for 
 keeping you. You're up to your eyes in Hospital work, I 
 don't doubt." 
 
 " There is enough to keep one going." 
 
 " Without the additional tax of Uterary labour." She 
 was conscious of a premonitory, apprehensive chill that 
 travelled from the roots of her hair down her spine, and ap- 
 parently made its exit at the heels of her Louis Quinze 
 shoes. " So the ' Social Jottings ' column will not appear 
 in the Siege Gazette after to-day. Good-moming." 
 
 " Is that my punishment for insubordination ?" 
 
 Not a sound lq reply. " He must have himg up the re- 
 ceiver and gone away. Oh, horrid, horrid male superiority !" 
 thought Lady Haimah. " To have been put imder arrest, 
 even to have been ordered out and shot, would be preferable 
 to being figuratively spanked and put in the corner." She 
 winked away some more tears, and sniffed a little deject- 
 edly. " And only the other day he seemed quite pleaaed
 
 4C0 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 with me/' she added pensively. Then she shrugged her 
 shoulders, and rang up the Head Hospital, North Veld Road. 
 
 " Who you-e ?" 
 
 It was the sing-song voice of the Barala hall- boy. 
 
 " I'm Lady Hannah Wrynche. Is the Reverend Mother 
 on duty in the wards to-day ?" 
 
 " I go see. You hang-e on." 
 
 Lady Hannah hung on until her small remaining stock of 
 patience deserted her. As she stamped her small feet, 
 longing to accelerate the languid movements of the call- 
 boy with a humanely-wield<^ hatpin, a whisper in the 
 velvet voice she knew stole across the distance. 
 
 " Hannah. Is it you ?" 
 
 " It's me, Biddy dear." 
 
 There was a soft laugh that ended in a sigh. " It is so 
 long since anybody called me that." 
 
 " I wouldn't dare to with you looking at me." 
 
 " Am I so formidable of aspect ? But go on." 
 
 " It's not so easy. But I've had an awful morning. 
 
 Everybody I like best down on me like bricks and m " 
 
 The speaker gulped a sob. 
 
 " You are crying, dear !" 
 
 " Not a drop. But if you Join in the heckling I shall 
 dribble away and dissolve in salt water. It's all about 
 those wretched paragraphs of mine in the Siege Gazette. 
 But perhaps you haven't seen it ?" 
 
 " I have seen it." 
 
 " You were quite willing that the fiancailles should be 
 made public. . . . Indeed, you gave me to understand 
 you desired it." 
 
 " I was quite willing. I did wish it." 
 
 " Yes. . . . Thank you, dear ; that was what I wanted 
 to hear from you. I understand now what the one clapping 
 pair of hands must mean to the actor who is booed by all 
 the rest of the audience. Good-bye, dear." 
 
 " Stay. . . . Who are the persons who disappiove of the 
 announcement ?" 
 
 " My Bingo, for one. Not that anything the dear old 
 stupid says matters in the sUghtest. And — and Toby." 
 
 " ' Toby ' ?" 
 . " I mean Lord Beauvayse."
 
 THE DOP BOCTOR 461 
 
 " Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this 
 matter it was for me to decide." 
 
 " Certainly, dear." 
 
 " Whose is the other objecting voice ?" 
 
 " The Chief thinks I ... we ... it .. . I rather fancy 
 that he used the word ' precipitate ' in expressing his 
 opinion." 
 
 " Refer him to me if he expresses it again." 
 
 " Of course, dear, since you . . ." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye, dear. If Biddy Bawne hadn't been a nun," 
 reflected Lady Hannah, as she went out of the Matron's 
 office and back to her patients, who had long ago dined, " I 
 think she would have made rather a despotic Empress. 
 ' Refer him. to me,' indeed. What is it. Sergeant ? Don't 
 say I'm rung up again." 
 
 But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, 
 and her little ladyship went back. This last communica- 
 tion proved a puzzling one. 
 
 " You there ?" 
 
 " I am Lady Harmah Wrynche. Where are you ?" 
 
 There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice 
 said : 
 
 " I don't know as that matters." 
 
 " Who are you ?" 
 
 There was another hesitation. Then the stranger 
 parried with a question : 
 
 " You write them weekly screeds in the Siege Gazette ?" 
 
 " I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. 
 Kindly say who is spealdng ?" 
 
 " Nobody that matters much. Can you teU me where 
 Miss IMildare lives ?" 
 
 " Not without knowing who you are." 
 
 " You may call me an old friend of hers," said the tliickish, 
 lisping voice, with a sluggish chuckle in it that the little 
 woman at the other end of the wire had heard . . . 
 where ? . . . 
 
 " If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, 
 how is it you don't know her address ?" she demanded. 
 
 " Keep her address all you want to. Only next time yon 
 come alongside her give her a message for me. Aak her if
 
 462 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 she remembers the Free State Hotel on the veld, three days' 
 trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her friend ?" 
 
 Lady Hannah repeated : 
 
 " ' And Bough, who was her friend.' You are 
 Bough ?" 
 
 "Click /" Somebody had hung up the receiver. 
 
 Lady Hannah spent another bad night, not wholly due to 
 the indigestible nature of a dinner of mule colloped, and 
 locusts fried in batter by Nixey's chef. Staggering in the 
 course of disturbed and changeful dreams, under the im- 
 pact of sufficient bricks and mortar to rebuild toppledown 
 Gueldersdorp, being hauled over mountains of coals, and 
 getting into whole Gulf Streams of hot water, she was 
 slumberously conscious that these nightmares were less 
 harassing than one nasty, perplexing little vision that kept 
 cropping up among the others. It had no beginning and 
 no end. In it the Matron's room at the Convalescent Hos- 
 pital and Kink's Family Hotel at Tweipans were somehow 
 mixed up, and the ingenuous Mr. Van Busch, that Afri- 
 kander gentleman of British sympa.thies, whose chivalrous 
 and patriotic sentiments had prompted and urged him to 
 the imperilling of his own skin and the risking of his own 
 liberty in the interests of an English lady masquerading 
 for political reasons as the refugee-widow of a German 
 drummer, was oddly confused in identity with an uncomfort- 
 ably mysterious individual who possessed neither features 
 nor name. 
 
 *' Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel on the 
 veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was 
 her friend ?" the voice would say. 
 
 " You are Bough ?" she would find herself asking. 
 
 There would be a little guttural, horrible laugh, and 
 nothing would answer but the buzzing of the wire. 
 
 And then she was wide awake and sitting up in bed, with 
 a thumping heart. She was no longer in any doubt as to 
 the identity of the owTaer of the voice. Van Busch was in 
 Gueldersdorp . . . and however he came, and whatever 
 disguise of person or of purpose sheltered him, his presence 
 boded no good. The merely logical masculine mind doffs 
 hat respectfully before the superiority of feminine intuition.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 463 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 SaxhaM, shouldering out of Julius's hotel upon his way to 
 Staff Bombproof South, is made aware that the hundred- 
 foot-high dust-storm that has raged and s\\irled throughout 
 the momiag is in process of being beaten down into a por- 
 ridge of red mud by a downpour of February rain. 
 
 Straight as Matabele spears it comes down, sending pedes- 
 trians who have grown indifferent to shell-fire to huddle 
 under cover, adding to the wretchedness of life in trench or 
 bombproof as nothing else can. And the Doctor, biting 
 hard upon the worn stem of the old briar-root, as he goes 
 swinging along through the hissing deluge with his chin 
 upon his breast and his fierce eyes sullenly fixed upon the 
 goal ahead, recalls, even more vividly than upon Sunday, 
 the angry buffalo of Lady Hannah's apt analogy. 
 
 He is drenched to the skin, it goes without saying, in a 
 minute or two. So is the Railway Volunteer, who chal- 
 lenges him at the bridge that carries the single-gauge railway 
 southward over the Olopo, in spite of his ragged waterproof 
 and an additional piece of tarpaulin. So is a mounted 
 officer of the Staff, in whom Saxham mechanically recognises 
 Captain Bingo Wrynche, as he goes by at a furious gallop, 
 spurring, and jagging savagely at the mouth of the hand- 
 some if attenuated brown charger, who sends stones and 
 mud and water flying from his furious iron-shod hoofs. So 
 is the Barala on guard by the wattled palisade of the native 
 village — a muddy-legged and goose-fleshy warrior, in a 
 plumed, brimless bowler and leopard-skin kaross, whose 
 teeth can be heard chattering as he stands to attention 
 and brings his gaspipe rifle to the slope. The Chinamen 
 working in the patches of market-garden, where the scant 
 supply of vegetables that command such famine-prices are 
 raised, are certainly sheltered from the wet by their colossal 
 umbrella-hats, but the splashed-up red gruel has imbrued 
 them to the eyes. Yet they continue to labour cheerfully, 
 hoeing scattered shell-fragments out of their potato-drills 
 and removing incrusted masses of bullets that incommode 
 the young kidney-beans, and arranging this ironmongery 
 and metal-ware in tidy piles, possibly with a view to future
 
 464 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 commerce. And so, with another challenge from a picket, 
 posted between the Barala village and the south trenches, 
 where many of the loyal natives are doing duty, Saxham 
 finds himself on the perilous tongue of land that lies behind 
 Maxim Kopje South, and where the Staff Bombproof is 
 situated. 
 
 As the long, low mound comes into view, a dazzling white 
 flash leaps from a fold of the misty grey hills beyond, and 
 one of Meisje's great shells goes screaming and winnowing 
 westwards. Then a sentry of the Irregulars, a battered, 
 shaggy, berry-brown trooper, standing Imee-deep in a hole, 
 burrowed in the lee of a segment of stone-dyke that is his 
 shelter, challenges for the last time. 
 
 " 'Alt ! I know you well enough, Doctor." It is a 
 man whose wounded arm was dressed, one blazing day last 
 January, outside the Convent bombproof. " But you'll 
 'ave to give the countersign. Pass Honour and all's well. 
 But " — ^the sentry's nostrils twitch as the savour of Sax- 
 ham's pipe reaches them, and his whisper of appeal is as 
 piercing as a yell— " if you left a pipeful be'ind you, it 
 wouldn't do no 'arm. Don't pull your pouch out, sir ; the 
 lookout orficer 'as 'is eye on you. Open it by the feel, an' 
 drop a pinch by the stone near your toe. I'll get it when 
 they relieve me." 
 
 Saxham complies, leaving the sentry to gloat distantly 
 over the little brown lump of loose tangled fibres rapidly 
 reducing to sponginess under the downpour from the skies. 
 The long mound of raw red earth, crusted with greenish- 
 yellow streaks of lyddite from the bursting-charges, rises 
 now immediately before him. At its eastern end is a flag- 
 staff displaying the Union Jack. Under the roof of the 
 little penthouse foom which the flagstaff rises are sheltered 
 the vari-coloured acetylene lamps that are used for signal- 
 ling at night. 
 
 Midway of the raw mound rises the rear elevation of an 
 officer in dripping waterproofs, who is looking steadily 
 through a telescope out between the long driving 
 lances of the rain, beyond Maxim Kopje South to those 
 mysterious hills, swathed in grey-black folds of storm-cloud, 
 that look so desolate, and whose folds are yet as full 
 of swarming, active, malignant life as the blanket of an
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 465 
 
 unwashed KaJ0&r. An N.C.O. is posted a little below the 
 officer, whose narrow shoulders and dark hair, showing 
 above the edge of the tumed-up collar and below the brim 
 of the Field-Service cap, prove him to be not Beauvayse. 
 And the usual blizzard of rifle-fire, varied >)y brisk bursts 
 of cannonading, goes on, and the Red Scythe of the De- 
 stroyer sweeps over these two figures and about them in 
 the customary way. But even women and children have 
 grown indifferent to these things, and the men have long 
 ceased to be aware of them. 
 
 A bullet sings past Saxham's ear, as the acrid exhala- 
 tions of a stable rise gratefully to his nostrils, recently 
 saluted by the fierce and clamorous smells of the native 
 village. The ground slopes under his feet. He goes down 
 the inclined way that ends in the horses' quarters, and the 
 orderly, who is sitting on an empty ammunition-box outside 
 the tarpauhn that screens off the interior of the officer's 
 shelter, stiffens to the salute, receives a brief message, and 
 disappears within. 
 
 Before Saxham rise the bony brown and bay and chestnut 
 hindquarters of half a dozen lean horses, that are drowsing 
 or fidgeting before their emptied mangers. Against the 
 division of a loose-box that holds a fine brown charger, still 
 saddled and steaming, and heavily splashed with mud, 
 there leans a stretcher, which, by the ominous red stains 
 and splashes upon it, has been recently in use. 
 
 Upon Saxham's left hand is the shelter for the rank and 
 file. Here several gaunt, hollow-eyed, and hairy troopers 
 are sitting on rough benches at a trestle-table, playing 
 dominoes and draughts, or poring over tattered books by 
 the hght of the flickering oil- lamps, with tin reflectors, that 
 hang against the earth walls. None of them are smoking, 
 though several are sucking vigorously at empty pipes ; and 
 the rapacious light that glares in every eye as Saxham 
 mechanically knocks out the ashes from his smoked-out 
 briar-root against the side-post of the entrance is sufficient 
 witness to the pangs that they endure. 
 
 Perhaps it is characteristic of the Doctor that, with a hell 
 of revengeful fury seething in his heart, and a legion of 
 devils unloosed and shrieking, prompting him to murder, 
 he should have paused to relieve the tobacco-famine of the 
 
 30
 
 466 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 sentry, and be moved to a further sacrifice of his sole luxury 
 by the sight of those empty pipes. The old rubber pouch, 
 pitched by a cricketer's hand, flies in among the domino- 
 players, and rebounds from a pondering head, as the orderly 
 comes back, and lifts one corner of the tarpaulin for the 
 Doctor to pass in. A pack of ravening wolves tussling over 
 an unusually small baby might distantly reproduce the 
 scene Saxham leaves behind him. The trestle-table and 
 benches are upset, and men and benches, draughts and 
 dominoes, welter in horrible confusion over the earthen floor, 
 when the scandalised orderly-corporal rushes in to quell 
 the riot, and thenceforward joins the rioters. 
 
 They fight like wolves, but the man who rises up from 
 among the rest, clutching the prize, and grinning a three- 
 cornered grin because his upper lip is split, divides the 
 tobacco fairly to the last thread. They even share out 
 the indiarubber pouch, and chew the pieces as long as 
 the flavour lasts. When the thick, fragrant smoke curls 
 up from the lighted pipes, it steals round the edges of the 
 tarpaulin that has dropped behind Saxham, passing in to 
 the wreaking of vengeance upon the thief whose profane 
 and covetous hand has plucked the white lily of the Convent 
 garden. 
 
 Now, with that deadly hate surging in his veins, with 
 the lust to kill tingling in every nerve and muscle, he will 
 soon stand in the presence of his enemy, and hers. As 
 he thinks of this, suddenly a bell rings. The sound 
 comes from the north, so it cannot be the bell of 
 the Catholic Church, or that of the Protestant Church, 
 or the bell of the Wesleyan meeting-house, or of the 
 Dutch Kerk. 
 
 " Clang-clang I clang-clang ! Clang " 
 
 The last clang is broken ofl^ suddenly, as though the rope 
 has been jerked from the ringer's hands, but Saxham is 
 not diverted by it from his occupation. With that curious 
 fatuity to which the most logical of us are prone, he has 
 been conning over the brief, scorching sentences with which 
 he means to strip the other man's deception bare to the 
 light, and make known his own self-appointed mission to 
 avenge her. 
 
 " They telephoned for me, and I have come, but not
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 467 
 
 in the interests of your sick or wounded man. Because 
 it was imperative that I should say this to you : Your 
 engagement to Miss Mildare and your approaching marriage 
 to her were announced in to-day's Siege Gazette. You 
 have received many congratulations. Now take mine — 
 liar, and coward, and cheat !" 
 
 And with each epithet, delivered with all the force of 
 Saxham's musciilar arm, shall fall a stinging blow of the 
 heavy old hunting-crop. There will be a shout, an angry 
 oath from Beauvayse, staggering back under the unex- 
 pected, savage chastisement, red bars marring the insolent, 
 high-bred beauty of the face that has bewitched her. 
 Saxham will continue : 
 
 " You approached this iimocent, inexperienced girl as 
 a lover. You represented yourself to her and to. her mother- 
 guardian as a single man. All this when you had already 
 a wife at home in England — a gaudy stage butterfly sleek 
 with carrion-juices, whose wings are jewelled by the vices 
 of men ; and who is worthy of you, as you are of her. 
 I speak as I can prove. Here is the written testimony of 
 a reliable witness to your marriage with Miss Lavigne. 
 And now you will go to her and show yourself to her in 
 your true colours. You will undeceive her, or " 
 
 There is a foggy uncertainty about what is to follow 
 after that " or," But the livid flames of the burning hell 
 that is in Saxham throw upon the greyness a leaping reflec- 
 tion that is red like blood. A fight to the death, either 
 with weapons, or, best of all, with the bare hands, is what 
 Saxham secretly lusts for, and savours in anticipation as 
 he goes. 
 
 Let the humanitarian say what he pleases. Man is a 
 manslayer by instinct and by will. 
 
 And within the little area of this beleagiiered town do 
 not inen kill, and are not men killed, every day ? The 
 conditions are medieval, fast relapsing into the primeval. 
 The modem sanctity and inviolability attending and sur- 
 rounding human life are at a discount. Even for children, 
 the grim King of Terrors had become a bugaboo to laugh 
 at ; red wounds and ghastly sights are things of everyday 
 experience ; there is a slump in morcality. 
 
 30—2
 
 468 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 In those old. far-distant Cliilworth Street days, two men 
 oho engaged in a battle to the death about a woman desired 
 might have seemed merely savages to Saxham. Here 
 things are different. The elemental bed-rock of human 
 nature has been laid bare, and the grim, naked scars upon 
 it, testifying to the combat of Ice and Fire for the round 
 world's supremacy, will never be quite hidden under 
 Civilisation's green mantle of vegetation, or her toadstool- 
 growths of bricks and mortar, any more. 
 
 And the men are well matched. Saxham knows himself 
 the more muscular, but Beauvayse has the advantage of 
 him in years, and is lithe, and strong, and supple as the 
 Greek wrestler who served the sculptor Polycleitos as a 
 model for the Athlete with the Diadem. 
 
 It will be a fight worth having. No quarter. And 
 Saxham' s breath comes heavily, and his blue eyes have 
 in them a steely glitter, and, as the tarpaulin falls behind 
 him, he shifts to a better grip on the strong old hunting- 
 crop. 
 
 Overhead the rain drums deafeningly on the tarpaulins. 
 The long bombproof is heterogeneously furnished with 
 full and empty ammunition - boxes marked A.O.S., a 
 leathern sofa-divan, tattered by spurs and marked by 
 muddy boots, several cane or canvas deck-chairs, and others 
 of the Windsor pattern common to the barrack- room. 
 Arms and eiccoutrements are in rude racks against the 
 corrugated-iron-panelled walls ; a trestle-table covered with 
 oilcloth runs down the middle. It is lighted by a couple 
 of acetylene lamps hanging by their chains from iron bars 
 that cross the trench above, and there is another lamp, 
 green-shaded, upon a bare deal table that stands, strewn 
 with papers, against the farther wall. 
 
 A man in shirt-sleeves sits there writing. Another man 
 is busy at a telephone that is fixed against the wall beyond 
 the writing-table. There is something fateful and ominous 
 about the heavy silence in which they do their work. It 
 is broken only by a strange sound that comes almost 
 continuously from — where Saxham does not trouble to ask. 
 It is the groaning, undoubtedly, of the wounded man to 
 whose aid he has been summoned, with the added injunc- 
 tion, " Bring morphia," showing that little further can be
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 469 
 
 [done for him, whoever he may be, than to smooth his 
 passage into the Beyond by the aid of the Pain Slayer. 
 
 Let him wait, however sore his need, until Saxham has 
 dealt with his enemy. He is resentfully impatient in the 
 knowledge that neither of the men present is Beauvayse. 
 
 Then, as he stands sullen and lowering, the man who 
 has been writing gets up and comes to him. Saxham 
 recognises the keen-featured face with the rusty-brown 
 moustache, and the grip of the lean, hard hand that hauled 
 a Dop Doctor out of the Slough of Despair is familiar. 
 The pleasant voice he likes says something about some- 
 body being very wet. It is Saxham, from whose soaked 
 garments the water is i-unning in streams, and whose boots 
 squelch as he crosses the carpet that has been spread 
 above the floor- tarpaulin. The friendly hand pours out and 
 offers him a sparing measure of that rare stimulant, whisky. 
 
 " As preventive medicine. We can't have our Medical 
 Staff men on the sick-list." 
 
 Some such commonplace words accompany the proffered 
 hospitality. 
 
 " I shall not suffer, thanks. You have a shell-casualty, you 
 have 'phoned us, but before I see your man it is imperative 
 that I should speak to Lord Beauvayse. Where is he 1" 
 
 " He is here." 
 
 " My business with him is urgent, sir." 
 
 The man at the telephone makes a sound indicative that 
 a message is coming through. The Chief is beside him 
 instantly, with the receiver at his ear. He looks round for 
 an instant at Saxham as he waits for the intelligence, and 
 the muscles of his face twitch as if under the influence of 
 some strong, repressed emotion, and the Doctor's practised 
 glance notes the unsteadiness of the uplifted hand. Then 
 he is saying to the officer in charge at Maxim Kopje South : 
 
 " The ammunition comes up to-night. Tell Gaylord 
 that we are short-handed here, and shall want him to help 
 on night duty. . . . Practically as soon as he can Join us. 
 No, no better. All for the present . . . thanks ! Saxham, 
 please come this way." 
 
 There is a sleeping- place at the end of the long, narrow, 
 lamp-lit perspective, curtained off from the rude bareness 
 of the outer place. Light shows between the curtains.
 
 470 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and they are of plush, in hue a rich, deep red. As that 
 strong colour smks into his brain, through his intent and 
 glittering eyes, Saxham the man has a sudden furious 
 impulse to tear the deep folds back, with a clash of brazen 
 rings on iron rods, and call to the betrayer who lurks behind 
 them to come out and be dealt with. But that hollow, 
 feeble moaning sounds continuously from the other side, 
 and Saxham the surgeon stays his hand and follows the 
 Colonel in. There are two camp-beds in the small sleep- 
 ing-place, and a ■« ashstand and a folding-chair. A lamp 
 hangs above, and its light falls full upon the face of the 
 man whom he is seeking. 
 
 Ah ! where are they ? His furious anger and his deadly 
 hate, where are they now ? Like snow upon the desert 
 they vanish a^\ ay. How can one rage against this shattered 
 thing, stretched on the pallet of the low cot-bed from which 
 the blankets have been strij)ped away ? First Aid band- 
 ages have been not ineffectually applied. Fragments of 
 packing-case have been employed as splints for the broken 
 arm and shattered hand, but, in spite of all that has been 
 done, the beautiful yoimg life is sinking, waning, flowing 
 out with that ruddy tide that will not be stayed. 
 
 The greenish pallor and the sweat of mortal agony are 
 upon the face of Beauvayse, thrown back upon the pillow, 
 and looking upwards to \^'here the deluging rain makes 
 thunder on the tarpaulined roof. The atmosphere is heavy 
 with the sour-sickly smell of blood, and lamp-fumes ; he 
 draws each breath laboriously, and exhales it with a 
 whistling sound. Tluough his clenched teeth, revealed by 
 the lips that are dragged back in the semi-grin of desperate 
 agony, that dumb, ceaseless moaning makes its way despite 
 the gallant effort to restrain it. The one uninjured arm 
 hangs downwards, its restless fingers picking at the blood- 
 stained matting that covers the loose boards of the floor. 
 A sheet has been lightly laid over him. It is dabbled 
 with the prevailing hue, and sinks in an ominous hollow 
 below the breast. And beyond the bottom of it splashed 
 leggings and muddy boots with spurs on them stick out 
 with helpless stiffness. 
 
 A flask of brandy — a precious restorative treasured for 
 use in such desperate need as this — stands with a tumbler
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 471 
 
 and a jug of water on the camp washstand that is between 
 the two cot-beds. Upon the second bed sits a big and 
 stoutish man, whose large face, not pink just now, is hidden 
 in his thick, quivering hands. It is Captain Bingo Wrynche, 
 heavy Dragoon, and honest, single-hearted gentleman, 
 to whom belongs the blowna and muddy charger drooping 
 in the loose-box outside. The telephone has summoned 
 him in haste from Hotchkiss Outpost North, to see the last 
 of a friend. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 " It was just before the rainstorm that it happened. He 
 was on the lookout. They have been moving the big gun 
 and the 16-pounder Krupps again, and some of the laagers 
 seem to be shifting, so we have kept an extra eye open of 
 late, by night as well as by day. He was very keen 
 always. ..." 
 
 Already he is spoken of by those who have known and 
 loved him as one who was and has been. 
 
 " He had relieved me at 10 a.m. He might have been 
 up over an hour when it happened. The orderly- sergeant 
 had got his mouth at the speaking-tube, in the act of sending 
 down a message ; he did not see him hit. It was a shell 
 frorn their Maxim-Nordenfelt. Apd when we got to him, 
 the first glance told us there was little hope." 
 
 " There is none at all," says Saxham curtly, as is his 
 wont. " A splinter has shattered the lower portion of the 
 spine. The agony can be deadened with an opiate, and the 
 ruptured arteries ligatured. Beyond that there is nothing 
 else to do, though he may live tUl morning." 
 
 " He managed to ask for Wrynche before he swooned, 
 so we 'phoned him at Hotchldss Outpost North. He got 
 here ten minutes ago, badly cut up, but there has been 
 no recognition of him. Do what you can, Saxham, in the 
 case. Every moment may bring VVrynche's recall. There 
 is another person I should have expected the poor boy to 
 ask for. . . . That young girl, Saxhant, whose heart ha^ 
 to be broken with the news, sooner or later. Perhaps 
 about nightfall, when it will be safe for her to venture, 
 I ought to send an escort for Miss IVIildare ?"
 
 472 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The slow, dusky colour rises in Saxham's set, pale face, 
 and as slowly sinks out again. He has been standing in 
 low-toned colloquy with the Chief outside the heavy 
 plush curtains. He turns silently upon his heel and 
 vanishes behind them. 
 
 " Ting— ting— ting /" 
 
 The telephone- bell heralds an urgent recall from Hotch- 
 kiss Outpost North. And a beckoning hand summons 
 Captain Bingo from the bedside of his dying friend ere 
 ever the word of parting has been spoken. 
 
 " It is for you, Wrynche, as I expected." 
 
 " I am ready, sir. Orderly, get my damned brute out !" 
 
 The sorrow and love that swell the big man's heart to 
 bursting find rather absurd expression in his savage 
 objurgation of the innocent brown charger. But Captain 
 Bingo, when he stoops over the camp-bed where lies 
 Beauvayse, kisses him solemnly and clumsily upon the 
 forehead, and then goes heavily striding out of the death- 
 chamber with his bulldog jowl well down upon his chest ; 
 and a moment later when he is seen bucketing the lean 
 brown charger through the thrashing hailstorm that is 
 jagged across by the white-green fires of bursting shell, is 
 rather a tragic figure, or so it seems to me. 
 
 Meanwhile, what of the man who lies upon the bed ? 
 Since Bingo's face came between and receded into, those 
 thick grey mists that gather about the dying, he has lost 
 consciousness of present things. Fever is rising id those 
 wellnigh empty veins of his, his skin is drawing and 
 creepiag ; it seems as though innumerable ants were running 
 over him. The hand that is not powerless tries to brush 
 them away. Sometimes he thinks he is in Hospital, and 
 that the man in the next bed is groaning, and then he is 
 aware that the groans are his own. He is conscious that 
 a needle-prick in the sound wrist has been followed by 
 sensible relief. The unspeakable grinding agonies subside ; 
 he is able to murmur, " Thanks, Nurse," as he gulps some 
 liquid from the glass a strange hand holds to his lips. . . . 
 
 The groans are sighs now, and the clogged brain, spurred 
 by mori^hia, shakes off its lethargy. The fever goes on 
 rising, and he begins, silently, for his powers fail of speech, 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 473 
 
 to wander over all the past. Could Saxham, sitting 
 motionless and vigilant on the folding-chair, his keen eyes 
 (luick to note each change, his deft hand prompt to do all 
 that can be done — could Saxham hear, he would behold, 
 anatomised before bis ment/al vision, the soul of this his 
 fellow-man. 
 
 " Coming straight for me — five round black spots punched 
 in the grey. If they go by, luck's on my side, and I marry 
 her. If not . . . hit — and done for !" 
 
 Exactly thus has Saxham made of the imconscious Father 
 Noah, of the Boer sharp shooters behind their breastwork, 
 the arbiters of Fate. 
 
 " Send for Bingo !" flashes across the dying brain. 
 " Something to say to Bingo. Don't bring her. Who'd 
 want a woman who loved him to remember him like this ? 
 What was it the Mahometan syce the miisth elephant killed 
 at Bhurtpore said about his wife ? ' Lei her cool my grave 
 with tears.' Until she finds out . . . until someone tells 
 her. Ah — 'h !" There is a groan, and a convulsive shudder, 
 and the beautiful dim eyes roll up in agony, and the blue, 
 swollen lips are wrung as the feeble voice whispers : " Nurse, 
 this hurts like — hell ! Some more — that stuff !" 
 
 Saxham gives another subcutaneous injection of morpliia. 
 The curtains part, and the Colonel, in waterproof and a 
 dreadnought cap, comes noiselessly in. " No change," 
 Saxham answers to the mute inquiry. " I anticipate none 
 before midnight. Of course, the weakness is progressive." 
 
 " Of course." The Chief touches the cold, flaccid wrist. 
 There are hollows in his lean cheeks, and deep crow's-feet 
 at the corners of the kindly hazel eyes, and the brown 
 moustache is ominously straight and curveless. " Tell 
 him, if he recovers consciousness, that I thought it best to 
 send for her. Chagrave has gone with a couple of the 
 men. It's a desperate night for a woman to be out in, but 
 they took an Ambulance sling-chair with them. They'll 
 wrap her in tarpaulins, and carry her in that." 
 
 He nods and goes up on the lookout with a night-glass, 
 and the wearied officer he relieves comes down. As he 
 has said, it is a desperate night of driving sleet and swirl- 
 ing blackness, illuminated only with the malignant corusca- 
 tions of lyddite bursting-charges. But the tt-mpest without
 
 474 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 is nothing to the tempest that rages in the soul of tlie 
 quiet man in sodden khaki who watches by the dying. 
 
 She has been sent for. . . . She is coming. ... To kneel by 
 the low cot and weep over him who lies there ; kiss the tor- 
 tured lips and the beautiful dim eyes, and hold the un- 
 wounded head upon her breast. . . . How sliall Saxham bear 
 it without crying out to tell her ? He clenches his hands, 
 and sets his strong jaw, and the sweat breaks out upon his 
 broad, pale forehead. The man upon the bed, mentally 
 clear, though incapable of coherent speech, is now listening 
 to comments that shall ere long be made by living men 
 upon one who very soon shall be numbered with the dead. 
 
 " Well, well, don't be hard on the poor beggar !" he hears 
 them saying. " Give the devil his due : not a bad chap — 
 take him all round. Got carried away and lost his head. 
 She's as lovely as they make 'em, and he . . . always a 
 fool where a pretty woman was concerned — poor old Toby !" 
 
 He pleads unconsciously, with his most merciless judge, 
 in his utter incapacity to plead at all. . . . 
 
 And so the time goes by. There has been coming and 
 going in the place outside- The guard has relieved the 
 double sentries, the official lamp burns redly under the 
 little penthouse. A reconnoitring-patrol ride out, the 
 horses' hoofs soundiiig hollow on the earth-covered boards 
 of the sloping way. The business of War goes on in its 
 accustomed grooves, and the business of Life wUl soon be 
 over for Beauvayse. Yet she has not come. And Saxham 
 looks at liis watch. 
 
 Nine o'clock. He has not eaten since early morning. 
 He is wet to the skin and stiff with long sitting. But when 
 the savoury odours of hot horse-soup and hot bean-coffee, 
 accompanied by the clinking of crockery and tin pannikins, 
 announce a meal in readiness, and would-be hosts come to 
 the curtains and anxiously beg him to take food, he merely 
 shakes his square black head and falls again to watching 
 the unconscious face of Beauvayse. The conscious brain 
 beliind its blankly-staring eyes is thinking : 
 
 " Those paragraphs. ... In black and white the thing 
 looked damnable. And think of the gossip and tongue- 
 wagging. Whatever they say about me . . . she'll be the 
 one to suffer. They're never so hard on . . . the man !"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 476 
 
 He has uttered these last words audibly ; they pierce to 
 the heart's core of the mute, impassive watcher. Strong 
 antipathy is as clairvoyant as strong sympathy, and witli a 
 leap of understanding, and a fresh surge of fierce resentment, 
 Saxham acknowledges the deadly truth contained in those 
 few halting words. She will be the one to suffer. Beside 
 the martyrdom inevitably to be endured by the white 
 saint, the agony of the sinner's death-bed pales and d\\indles. 
 There is a savage struggle once again between Saxham 
 the man and Saxham the surgeon beside the bed of death. 
 
 His sudden irrepressible movement has knocked the 
 tumbler from the little iron washstand at his elbow. It 
 falls and shivers into fragments at his feet. And then — 
 the upturned face slants a little, and the eyes that have 
 been blankly staring at the roof-tarpaulins come down 
 to the level of his own. He and her fallen enemy regard 
 each other silently for a moment. Then Beauvaj'se says 
 weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice that 
 wooed and won her : 
 
 " Thought it was WrjTiche. Where is " 
 
 The question ends in a groan. 
 
 Saxham the man shrinks from him with unutterable 
 loathing. But Saxham tlie surgeon stoops over him, 
 saiydng, in distinct, even tones : 
 
 " Captain Wrjoiche w as here. He has been recalled to 
 Hotchkiss Outpost North. Brink this." This is a little 
 measure of brandy-and- water, in which some tabloids of mor- 
 pliia have been dissolved. And Beauvayse obeys, panting : 
 
 " All right. But . . . more a job for the Chaplain than 
 the Doctor, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Do you wish the Chaplain sent for ?" 
 
 There is a glimmer of the old lazy, defiant humour in 
 the beautiful dim eyes. 
 
 " What could he do ?" 
 
 Saxham answers — how strangely for him, the Denier : 
 
 " He would probably pray beside you, and talk to you 
 of God." 
 
 There is a pause. The faint, almost breathless whispei 
 asks : 
 
 " It's night, isn't it ?" 
 
 " It is dark and stormy night."
 
 (( 
 
 476 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Beauvayse says, in the whispering voice interrupted by 
 long, gasping sighs that are beginning to have a jarring 
 rattle in them : 
 
 " Before to-morrow, ... I shall know more of God . . . 
 than the whole Bench of Bishops." 
 
 There is silence. And she does not come. The man on 
 the bed makes a painful effort, gathering his nearly -spent 
 forces for something he wants to say : 
 
 " Doctor !" 
 Let me wipe your forehead. Yes ?" 
 I . . . insulted you frightfiilly the other day." 
 
 " You need not recall that. I have forgotten it." 
 
 " I . . . beg your pardon ! Will you . . . shake hands ? . . . 
 My left, if you don't mind. The other one's ... no good." 
 
 He tries to lift the heavy arm that lies beside him. There 
 is only a faint movement of the finger-tips, and he gives 
 up the efifort with a fluttering sob. And the square white 
 face with the burning eyes under the loM^ering brows 
 opposes itself to his. Words are crowding to Saxham's lips : 
 
 " / would gladly shake the hand of the man who insulted 
 me and who has apologised. And I honour the brave officer 
 who meets Death upon the field. But with the would-be 
 betrayer of an innocent girl, the dancing-woman^ s husband 
 who proposed himself as mate for Lynette Mildare, I have 
 nothing but contempt and abhorrence. He is to me a leper. 
 Worse, for the leper I would touch to cure f" 
 
 He does not utlor the words, nor does his rugged, un- 
 conquerable sincerity admit of his taking the hand. He 
 fights with his liatred in silence. And she has not come. 
 What is he saying in that weak voice with the rattling 
 breaths between ? 
 
 " Listen, Saxham. . . . There's . . . something I wane 
 you . . . say to Miss Mildare." 
 
 The grey mists that gather about him shut out a clear 
 view of Saxham's terrible face. The feeble whisper 
 struggles on, broken by those rattling gasps. 
 
 " Tell her forget me. Say when I . . . asked her ... to 
 marry me. . . ." 
 
 Silence. He is falling, falling into an abyss of vast un- 
 certainties. The blue lips dabbled with foam can frame 
 no more coherent words. Only the brain behind the dying 
 
 f
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 477 
 
 eyes is alive to understand when Saxham approaches his 
 own Uvid faoe and blazing eyes to the face upon the pillow, 
 and says : 
 
 " Do not try to speak. Close your eyes when you mean 
 ' Yea.' I know what you wish me to tell Miss Mildare. It 
 is that when you asked her to marry you, you were already 
 the husband of another woman. Am I correct ?" 
 
 The afl&rmative signal comes. 
 
 " You were married to Miss Lavigne at the Registrar's 
 office, Cookham-on-Thames, last June, before you sailed. 
 The witnesses were your valet and a female servant at 
 Roselawn Cottage. And knowing that you were not free, 
 you deceived and cheated her. That is what I am to tell 
 Miss INIildare ? Signal if I am right." 
 
 The dying eyes are brimming with tears. When the lids 
 shut, signifying " Yes," slow, heavy drops are forced 
 between them. 
 
 " Very well. Now hear. I will not tell her !" 
 
 The eyes open wide with surprise. 
 
 " I will never tell her," says Saxham again. " I will 
 not blacken any man's reputation to further my own 
 interests." The vital strength and the white-hot passion 
 of him, contrasted with the spent and utter laxity of the 
 dissolving thing of clay upon the bed, seem superhuman. 
 " Do you hear me ?" he demands again. " Listen once 
 more. KJaowing the truth of you, I came here to force you 
 to undeceive her. Had you refused, I would certainly have 
 killed you. But I would never have betrayed you !" 
 
 That " never " of Saxham's carries conviction. The 
 pale ghost of a laugh is in the dying eyes. The wraith of 
 Beauvayse's old voice comes back again to say : 
 
 " Doctor, you're a . . . damned good sort !" And then 
 there is a long, long silence, broken only by those painful 
 rattling breaths, never by her coming. 
 
 The end comes, and she is not there. A pale blink in the 
 wild sky eastward hints to the night lookouts of hot drink, 
 food, and welcome rest. The Chief stands beside the com- 
 fortless camp-bed, where the hope of a high old House is 
 flickering out. The Doctor holds the wet and icy wrist, 
 where the pulse has ces/sed to be perceptible. The sheet 
 above the labouiing breast rises and falls with those panting,
 
 478 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 rattling gasps ; the beautiful eyes are rolled up and inwards. 
 The light is very nearly out, when, with a last effort, the 
 flame leaps up. Ho thinks that what is the barely per- 
 ceptible whisper of a tongue already clay is a loud and 
 ringing cheer. He thinks that he is shouting, his strong 
 young voice topping a hundred other voices. It seems to 
 him who, for the bribe of all the beauty he has coveted, and 
 all the love that is yet unwon, could not speak one audible 
 word or move a finger, that he waves his hat again and 
 again. Oh ! glorious moment when the white moonbeams 
 blink on the grey dust-wall rolling down from the North, 
 and the horsemen of the Advance ride out of it, and cluster- 
 ing enemies that have rallied again to the attack waver, 
 and disperse, and scatter. . . . 
 
 " Hurrah ! They're rurming — running for their lives ! 
 Give it 'em with shrapnel ! Oh, pepper 'em like hell ! The 
 Relief ! The Relief ! Hurrah !" 
 
 It is all over with the opening of the day-eye in the east. 
 When they leave hitn, beautiful, and stem, and calm in that 
 deep slumber from which only the Angel with the Trumpet 
 may awaken him, and pass out between the curtains, the 
 dark, short officer who was on the lookout when the Doctor 
 came, stands very pale and muddy, and steaming with 
 damp, waiting to report. And two troopers of the Irregu- 
 lars, wet and muddy and steaming too, are waiting also. 
 Just inside the tarpaulins of the outer doorway. And she 
 is not there. 
 
 A few rapid words, an exclamation from the Chief, shaken 
 for once out of his steely composure, and quivering from 
 head to foot with mingled rage and grief : 
 
 " My God, how unutterably horrible !" 
 
 Saxham shoulders his way into the ring of white faces 
 that have gathered about the dark little muddy officer. 
 
 " What has happened to Miss Mildare ?" 
 
 The little officer answers, panting : 
 
 " The Sisters could not make her understand. She " 
 
 The Chief speaks for him : 
 
 " She had been previously stunned by the shodt of — a 
 terribb calamity." 
 
 " What calamity i"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 479 
 
 " The Mother-Superior has been killed. Two of the 
 Sisters and IMiss IVIildare found her in the Convent chapel. 
 They got there before evening. She must have been dead 
 some hours. She had been shot through the lungs." 
 
 " By a stray bullet ?" 
 
 " By a bullet from a revolver, fixed close enough to scorch 
 the clothes. Foul murder, and by God who saw it done " 
 
 The lean clenched hand, thrown upwards in a savage 
 gesture, the blazing eyes, the livid, furrowed face, the 
 \vrithen mouth, the furious, jarring voice, leave little doubt 
 of the vengeance that will be wreaked when he shall track 
 down the murderer. He wheels abruptly, and goes to the 
 telephone. The swift, imperative orders volt from fort to 
 fort ; the circuit of vigilance is made complete, the human 
 bloodhounds unleashed upon the trail, in a few instants, 
 thanks to the buzzing wire that brings the moiith of a man 
 to the ear of another across a void of miles. 
 
 But Bough, primed with knowledge as to which are 
 dummy rifle-pits and w^hich are real, aided by acquaintance 
 with the ground, and covered by that \vuthering night of 
 storm, has already pierced the lines. Subsequently that 
 excellent Afrikander, Mr. Van Busch, rejoins Brounckers' 
 bright boy at Tweipans, with information that decides the 
 date of Schenk Eybel's Feint from the East. 
 
 She had gone about her Master's business all Monday, calm 
 and composed, and inexorably gentle. She did not meet 
 Richard's daughter before nightfall. " She will not suffer 
 now," she thought, even as she sent the message that was 
 to allay Lynette's anxiety, and give notice of her where- 
 abouts in case of need. Her mission led her to a half- 
 wrecked shanty at the south end of the tov\Ti. where some 
 Lithuanian emigrants herded together in indescribable 
 filth and misery. A woman who had bfeen recently con- 
 fined lay there raving in puerperal fever. Until nightfall, 
 when she was removed to the Isolation Hospital on the 
 veld, near the Women's Laager, the Mother-Superior 
 remained with the patient.
 
 480 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 A burly, bushy-bearded man, with a pecuUarly dark skin 
 and strange steely eyes, passing the broken window, caught 
 sight of the noble profile and the stately shoulders stooping 
 above the miserable bed. Going home at dark, the Mother 
 heard a stealthy footstep following behind her. 
 
 Since the Town Guard had been withdrawn to man the 
 trenches, many people, revisiting their deserted dwellings, 
 had found them plundered of movable possessions, and, 
 losing the fear of Eternity in wrath at the wholesale evapora- 
 tion of their worldly goods, had thenceforth remained to 
 protect them. Instances there had been of robbery from 
 the person by thieves not all tracked down by Martial 
 Justice and made examples of. 
 
 The hovering human night-bird and the prowling human 
 Jackal, whose sole end is money and money's worth, have 
 no terrors for Holy Poverty. But there are other creatures 
 of prey more terrible than these. And the padding foot- 
 steps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slacken- 
 ing when she went more slowly, and stopping dead when 
 she paused and looked round, conveyed to her a haunting 
 sense of something sinister, and at the same time greedy 
 and guileful, that bided its time to spring. 
 
 She moved in long, swift, undulating rushes, her black 
 robes sweeping noiselessly as a great moth's wings over the 
 well-known ground, her course kept unfalteringly ; but her 
 heart shook her, and she gasped as the Convent bomb proof 
 neared in sight. She had wrought much and suffered more 
 of late, and she knew herself less strong than she had been. 
 When the blue light that hung from a post by the ladder- 
 hole blinked " Home " through the mirk of a night of 
 thin rain and mist-shrouded stars, she knew infinite rehef . 
 Her great eyes were as wild and strained as a hunted deer's, 
 and her bosom heaved with her panting breaths. She paused 
 a moment to regain her composure before she went down. 
 
 The nuns who were not un night-duty were gathered 
 together about the trestle-table sewing, while the lay-Sisters 
 prepared the scanty evening meal. Lynette was there, 
 sitting pale and quiet on her corner-stool. Richard's 
 daughter had been watching and waiting for her Mother. 
 Ah ! to see the relief and gladness leap into the dear face, 
 and shine in the beautiful wistful eyes that had shed such 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 481 
 
 tears, dear God ! — such tears of anguish upon Sunday — and 
 then had dried at the utterance of her decree — 
 
 " You are never to tell him !" 
 
 — And changed into radiant stars of Joy, by whose light the 
 darkness of her own wickedness and misery seemed almost 
 bearable. 
 
 " It is the Mother. Mother " 
 
 Lynette sprang up, and would have hurried to her, but 
 the Mother lifted a warning hand, and calling Sister Tobias 
 to her, passed aside into a curtained-off and precautionary 
 cave that had been hollowed out behind the ladder. This 
 was the custom when the ladies of the Holy Way returned 
 from doubtful or infectious cases. Lynette sighed, and 
 went back to her stool to wait. The busy needles had not 
 ceased stitching. 
 
 That humble saint. Sister Tobias, hurried to her diligent 
 ministry of purification. When she came in with hot water 
 and carbolic spray, she brought a letter with her. It was 
 directed to the Mother in a coarse round-hand. 
 
 " Somebody dropped this down the ladder-hole as I came 
 by with my kettle," said Sister Tobias. " It's the first 
 letter-box I ever knew that was as wide as the door. Maybe 
 'twill bring in a new fashion, for all we Imow." She made 
 her homely joke with a sore heart for the sorrow she read in 
 the Mother's beloved face, and trotted away to fetch clean 
 towels, sajring — a favourite saying with Sister Tobias — 
 that her head woiild never save her heels. 
 
 The Mother opened the letter. It was anonymous, and 
 utterly vile. Had the pen been dipped in hquid ordure, the 
 thing written could not have been more defiling to the 
 touch than its meaning was to this pure woman's chaste 
 eyes. Had a puff-adder writhed out of the envelope, and 
 struck its fangs into her beautiful hand, it would have 
 poisoned her less certainly. And every beat of the obscene 
 words upon her brain, strangely enough, awakened an echo 
 of those long padding footsteps that had followed in the 
 dark. And the wiiter Imew of all that had happened at the 
 tavern on the veld, when a human brute had triumphed in 
 hia bestiahty, and a girl-child had been helpless, and the 
 great white stars had looked down unmoved and changeless 
 upon Innocence destroyed. 
 
 31
 
 482 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The Mother read the letter from the loathly beginning 
 to the infamous end. She had been sorely wrought upon 
 of late. She tried to pray, but she knew the Ear Above 
 must be ayertod from one who had lied and was in deadly 
 sin. . . . When Sister Tobias came back she found her 
 lying in a swoon. 
 
 The little old crooked, nimble Sister, with the long, pale 
 sheep-face, dropped on her knees beside that prone column 
 of stately womanhood, removed the Mother's hooded mantle, 
 loosened the yuimpe and habit, and worked strenuously to 
 revive her, dropping tears. 
 
 " My beautiful, my poor lamb !" she crooned. " What's 
 come to her '< What wicked shadow's black on all of us ? 
 What's brooding near us — Mary be our guardian ! — that's 
 struck at her to-night ?" 
 
 The letter lay upon the floor, where it had dropped from 
 the unconscious hand. It lay there for Sister Tobias, and 
 might lie. If the Mother willed to tell its contents, she 
 would tell. If not, the httle old nun, her faithful daughter, 
 would never ask or seek to know. 
 
 She opened her great eyes at last, and smiled up at the 
 tender, wrinkled ugliness of the long, sheep-like face in the 
 close white linen wimple. 
 
 *' Say nothing to anybody. I was overdone," she said, 
 and rose. Sister Tobias picked up the letter, and gave it 
 to her. There was a Boer mutton-fat candle flaring 
 draughtily in an iron sconce upon the wall. The Mother 
 moved across the Uttle room, and bui-ned the letter to the 
 last blank cox-ner, and trod the fallen ashes into impalpable 
 powder. Then she helped Sister Tobias to remove every 
 trace left, and obviate every danger that might result from 
 her late toil, and rejoined her quiet family of daughters aa 
 though nothing had happened. 
 
 Tkey recalled afterwards how cheerful and how placid 
 she had seemed that night. Her smile had a heart-breaking 
 sweetness, and her voice made wonderful melody even in 
 their accustomed ears. 
 
 They supped on the little that they had, and chatted, 
 said the night-prayers, and went, aching, all of them, with 
 unsatisfied hunger, to bed. Vou may conjecture the 
 orderly, modest method of retiring, each Sister vanishing in
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 483 
 
 turn behind a curtained screen to disrobe, lave, and vest 
 herself for sleep, emerging in due time in the loose., ful) 
 conventual night-garment of thick white twilled linep, high- 
 throated, monldsh-sleeved, and girdled with a thjin potton 
 cord, her face, plain or pretty, young or elderly, framed in 
 the close little white drawn cap of many tucks. 
 
 Then, the ladder having been removed, and the tarpaulin 
 pulled over its hole, the lights were extinguishfid, and only 
 the subdued crimson glow of the tiny lamp that burned 
 before the silver Crucifix that had stood above the Taber- 
 nacle on the altar of the Convent chapel burned ruby in 
 the thick, hot dark, where, upon the Uttle iron beds, each 
 divided by a narrow, white-cotton-covered board into 
 two constricted berths, the row of quiet figui'cs lay out- 
 stretched, her Breviary upon every Sister's pillow, and hei 
 beads about her wrist. 
 
 The Mother lay very still, seeing the hideous sentences 
 of the anonymous letter written in helhsh characters of 
 mocking flame on the background of the dark. She prayed 
 as the wrecked may when the ship beneath their feet is 
 going down. Beside her Ljnaette, not daring to disturb thx** 
 silence, suddenly grown rigid and awful, lay aching with 
 the loneliness of living on the other side of the wide gulf of 
 division that had suddenly yawTied between. 
 
 She had spent the day at the Hospital with Sister Hilda- 
 Antony and Sister Cleophee. She had not seen Beauvayse. 
 But a note had come from him, that had warmed the heart 
 she hid it near. His dearest, he called her — his own 
 beautiful beloved. He could not snatch a minute from 
 duty even to kiss his darling's sweetest eyes, but on Sunday 
 they would be together all day. And would she not meet 
 him at the Convent on Thursday, at twilight, when the 
 shelling stopped, and it would be safe for his beloved to 
 venture there ? She must not ccme alone. Dear old 
 Sister Tobias would bring her, and play Mrs. Grundy's pa rt. 
 And, with a thousand kisses, he was hers in life and death. 
 
 Lynette's first love-letter, and it seemed to her so beauti- 
 ful. It laid a hand upon her heart that thrilled, and waa 
 wBj-m and strong. The hand said " Mine !" 
 
 His. She would be his one day — soon ; and there 
 would be no more mysteries between the mau and She 
 
 31—2
 
 4S4 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 woman welded by Grod's ordinance into husband and wife. 
 She shivered a Uttle at the thought of that intimate, pecu- 
 liar, utter oneness. And then, with a sickening, horrible 
 sinking of the heart, she realised that, however well such 
 a yecret as that she guarded might be hidden before the 
 priest and the clergyman made they twain One, it must 
 be known of both afterwards, or else be for ever threaten- 
 ing to start through the burying earth, crjdng, " I am here. 
 How came you to forget 1" 
 
 She had been cold in the sultry heat of that long noon, 
 and deaf when voices spoke to her. She was thinking. . . . 
 How if she might be mistaken in Beauvayse, even now ? 
 He was beautiful and brave and alluring to her woman's 
 sense in what she knew of him and what was yet to know. 
 He called her and drew her. Nothing noble awakened in 
 her at the smile on the gay, bold lips and in the grey-green, 
 jewel-bright eyes. When he had held her to his heart, she 
 had not felt her soul merge with another, its fellow, and yet 
 stronger and greater, in that embrace. He and she were 
 not bodiless spirits floating in pure ether, but an earth- 
 made girl and boy, very much athirst for the common cup 
 of human rapture, hungry for the banquet of mortal bliss. 
 
 It was sweet, but how if he were another, and not the 
 one ? How if her hasty gift of herself robbed both in the 
 long end ? How if his headlong passion and tempestuous 
 love should be torn from him like rags in the first instant 
 of that discovery that must almost iaevitably be made ? 
 She heard his boyish voice crying, " Hateful ! . . . You 
 have deceived me !" and was stabbed with quick anguish, 
 knowing him in the right. 
 
 Men did not enter into marriage pure. By some un- 
 written code of that strange lawgiver, the World, they 
 were absolved of the necessity of spotlessness. They 
 might slake their thirst at muddy sources unrebuked. 
 And the more each wallowed, the more he demanded of the 
 woman he wedded that she should be immaculate in thought 
 and used — if ia knowledge, that was all the better. 
 
 What a cloud of doubts assailed her, swarming like 
 bees, settling in every blossomed branch of her mind, and 
 blotting out the sweetness with angry buzzing, furry bodies, 
 armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge. She
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 485 
 
 had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the 
 red earth at its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She 
 felt at this juncture very like the tree. A little more, only 
 a shght increase of the burden, and the slender trunk 
 would have snapped. When the native bee-master came 
 and shook the double swarm into a couple of hives., the 
 little tree stayed crooked. It did not regain its beautiful, 
 healthful uprightness for a long time. 
 
 The Mother had commanded her never to tell Beauvayse. 
 She realised that in this one sorrowful instance she was wiser 
 than her teacher. If unutterable misery was not to result 
 from their union, he must be told the truth before . . . 
 
 Once he knew it, would he love her any longer 1 Would 
 he desire to make her his wife ? She knitted her brows 
 and her fingers in anguish, and set her little teeth. Possibly 
 not. Probably not. 
 
 And supposing all went well and they were married. 
 She had not realised clearly, even when she talked of 
 travelling abroad into the unknown, conjectmred world, 
 what it would mean to go out from this, the first home she 
 had ever known, and leave the Mother. She caught her 
 breath, and her heart stopped at the thought of waking 
 up one morning in a new, strange country, and knowing 
 that dear face thousands of miles away. 
 
 The loneliness drove her to daring. She reached out 
 a timid hand, and laid it upon the breast of the still, rigid, 
 immovable figure beside her. Ah, what a leaping, striving, 
 throbbing prisoner was caged there ! A faint sob of surprise 
 broke from her. Ah ! what was it 1 what could it mean ? 
 
 The faint sound she uttered plucked at the strings of 
 that tortured heart. The Mother turned, rose upon her 
 elbow, leaned over the low dividing barrier, took the 
 slight body in her arms, and gathered it closely to her, 
 shielding it from the fangs of that coiled, formless Terror 
 that threatened in the dark. She felt how thin and light 
 it was, and how frail the arms were that clung about her, 
 and how wasted was the face that pressed against the coarse, 
 conventual linen, covering the broad, deep bosom whose 
 chaste and hidden beauties Famine had not spared. 
 
 She would be a real mother once — Just once. God 
 would not grudge her that. iShe bared her breast to the
 
 486 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 cheek with a sudden half-savage, wholly maternal gesture, 
 and drew it close and pillowed it and rocked it. Had 
 Heaven wrought a miracle and unsealed those white 
 fountains of her spotless womanhood, she would have 
 found it sweet to give of herself to Richard's starving 
 child. But she had nothing but her great, indignant pity 
 and her boundless agony of love. Long hours after the 
 face lay hushed in sleep above her heart, and while the long, 
 soft breaths of slumber went and came, she lay staring out 
 into the sinister blackness over the beloved, menaced head. 
 
 Rain leaked through the tarpaulin over the ladder- 
 hble, falling in heavy, sullen gouts and splashes on the 
 beaten earth below as blood drips from a desperate wound. 
 That image rose, and the blackness seemed all red — red 
 with those lines of iiery writing on it, smoking and crawling, 
 flickering and blazing, climbing, and licking with thin, 
 greenish tongues of hell-begotten flame. 
 
 Then the midnight hour struck, and it was time to rise 
 for Matins. Long after the Sisters had gone back to bed 
 the Mother knelt on, a motionless figure wrestling in silent 
 prayer before the silver Crucifix upon the wall. Dawn 
 found her still kneeling. No ray of heavenly light had 
 found her soul, that weltered in darkness, crying to One Who 
 deemed not to hear. 
 
 LI 
 
 Shb did not venture to take Lynette with her to the Hospital 
 next day, but secletly charged Sister Tobias and Sister 
 Hilda- Antony to carry her whithersoever they went, and 
 nbt once to let her out of sight. This done, she knew herself 
 impotently helpless to do more. This strong and salient 
 woman, lapped in unseen, impalpable serpent-coils that 
 tightened every hour, was waxing weak. By her o^noi 
 deed she had barred out help and put counsel far from her. 
 She had known the punishment would not be long in coming, 
 when, for the sake of Richard's daughter, she had lied to 
 Richard's friend. 
 
 Now she knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would 
 have been wiser to have saved her spotless garment from the 
 
 H
 
 THE DOP DOCTOtv 487 
 
 smirch by telling him the truth. Then she could have fought 
 this invisible tarantula Thing, with the conjectural hairy 
 claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the padding feet 
 that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid 
 her. God was in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and 
 trust, but the comfort of a human counsellor would have 
 been unspeakable. 
 
 In a purely spiritual difficulty she would have gone to 
 Father Wix. The kindly, fussy, feeble little old priest 
 could hardly help her in this ext^emit3^ She had never 
 told him what had happened at the tavern on the veld. 
 Deep in her pitying woman's heart the child's cruel secret 
 had been buried, once learned. Sister Tobias was the only 
 one who shared it. 
 
 Meanwhile she was followed that night and the next 
 night ; and on the morning of the Thursday, when she rose 
 from her sleepless bed, another letter weighted with a stone 
 had been dropped down the ladder-hole. She was to give 
 the anonymous writer a meeting and receive a message, 
 unless she wished them that chose to be nameless to lay 
 in wait for the girl. Most likely that would be the better 
 way. She could choose. 
 
 She burned the second letter before she went to the 
 Hospital. She found there the single sheet of the Sieqe. 
 Gazette fluttering in every hand. Even her dignified reserve 
 could not ward off the well-meant congratulations, the 
 eager questions, the interested comments on the news 
 contained in the three last paragraphs of the colunm that 
 was signed " Gold Pen." Tlien came the telephone 
 message from Lady Hannah. We know what words of 
 hers the wire carried back. All the more firm, all the more 
 courageous, all the more determined that her kn('*\«t shook, 
 and her heart was as water \vithin her. For the Thing that 
 coiled in the dark would surely strike new. 
 
 Perhaps it was some premonition of approaching dtath 
 that made her, always gracious, always infinitely kind, 
 untiring in helpful deeds, move about among the sick that 
 day, with such a sorrowful-sweet tenderness for them in her 
 noble face and in her gentle touch, and in that wood-dove's 
 voice of bora, that they spoke of it long afterwards with 
 bated breath. A perfume as of rare inceuao was waited
 
 488 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 from the folds of her veil, they said, and a pale aureole of 
 light shone about her white-banded forehead, and her 
 
 eyes Ah ! who that met their look could ever forget 
 
 those eyes ? 
 
 It was before twilight when she left the Hospital and went 
 to the Convent, a tall, upright, mantled and hooded figure, 
 stepping through the heavy rain that had fallen since noon, 
 under a quaint monster of a cotton umbrella with ribs of 
 ancient whale, — ^Tragedy carrying Farce. 
 
 It was not the custom to linger in the neighbourhood of 
 the Convent, even among those who were most indifferent 
 to shot and shell. No one was visible in its vicinity, except 
 one burly, bushy-bearded, dark-skinned man in tan-cords 
 and a moleskin jacket. He lounged against a bent and 
 twisted lamp-post, near the broken entrance-gates, cutting 
 up a lump of something that might have been cake-tobacco 
 upon his broad, thick palm with a penknife. 
 
 She passed him as she went in. His slouched hat made 
 shadow for his eyes. But so curiously shallow and flat 
 and rusty pale were they against the purplish-brown of the 
 full-blooded, bearded face, that their sharp, sly, sudden 
 look as she went by was as though the adder-fangs had 
 slashed at her. She knew it was the man who had written 
 those two letters. And something else she knew, but did 
 not dare to admit her knowledge even to herself as yet. 
 
 She mustered all her forces to meet what was coming 
 as she went up the broken stairs. The wind and the long, 
 driving lances of the rain came at her through the gaps in 
 the walls. The sky was a driving hmry of muddy vapours. 
 The grey hills were blotted out by mist and fog. Long 
 flashes of white fire leaped from them, and the heavy 
 boom of cannon followed. Then all would be still again. 
 She passed down the whitewashed, matted, sodden cor- 
 ridor, and drew out the heavy key of the chapel door from 
 a deep pocket under her black habit, and went in. 
 
 Rain beat in here through jagged holes in the soft 
 brickwork and poured through the broken roof, whose 
 rubbish littered the floor. Whiter squares on the white- 
 washed walls, sodden now with damp, and peeling, showed 
 where the pictures of the Stations of the Cross had hung ; 
 with them all draperies had been stripped away and hidden.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 489 
 
 The crimson- velvet-covered ropes that had done duty 
 instead of altar-rails had been removed, their brass 
 supports unscrewed from the floor. The naked altar-stone 
 was covered with fragments of cheap stained-glass from 
 the little east window of which the Sisters had been so 
 proud. The Tabernacle gaped empty ; sandy, reddish- 
 grey dust filled the tiny piscina, and lay thick upon the 
 altar-stone and the shallow wooden altar-steps, and 
 wherever else the rain had not reached it to turn it into 
 yellow mud. 
 
 WTiy had she come here ? Because she felt as though 
 the Presence that had housed under the veil of the Con- 
 secrated Element were still guarding Its desecrated home. 
 And near the door of the tiny sacristy dangled the rope 
 communicating with the bell that hung, as yet uninjured, 
 in the Uttle wooden cupola upon the roof. The bell could 
 be rung, should need arise. She did not formulate in thought 
 what need. But the recollection of those poisonous adder- 
 eyes stirred even in that proud, dauntless woman's bosom 
 a cold and creeping fear. And when she heard the padding, 
 stealthy footsteps whose sound seemed burned in upon 
 her brain, traversing the soaked matting of the corridor, 
 she caught her breath, and an icy dew of anguish moistened 
 her shuddering flesh. 
 
 Then slowly, cautiously, the door opened. He came in, 
 shutting it noiselessly after him. It was the man she had 
 seen loafing by the lamp-post. And, standing tall and 
 forbidding on the bare altar's carpetless steps, she threw 
 out her white hand in a quick, imperious gesture, forbidding 
 his nearer approach. 
 
 For an instant the dignity and authority of the tall, 
 black-robed figure gave pause even to Bough. Then he 
 touched his wide-brimmed felt hat to her with a civility 
 that was the very essence of insolence, and took it off and 
 shook the wet from it, and dropped it back upon his head 
 again. He leaned against the wall by the door where there 
 was a little holy-water font, and stuck his gross thumbs in 
 bis belt, and waited for her to begin. Always he followed 
 that plan when the woman was angry. Nothing remained 
 for any bloke to teach Bough about the sex. You let her 
 row a bit, and when she had done herself out, you put in
 
 490 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 what you had got to say. That was Bough's way with 
 them always. 
 
 " You have written letters to me and followed me." 
 
 His gritming red mouth and toba'Cco-stained teeth 
 8h.>w»>d in the beard. He looked at her and waited. 
 
 " Why have you done this ? And, now that you have 
 brought yourself into my sight, quitting the safe shelter 
 of darkness and anonymity, what is to hinder me from 
 handing you over to those who administer and enforce 
 Martial Law in this town, and will deal with you as you 
 deserve ?" 
 
 His light eyes glittered. His teeth showed again in the 
 brown bush. He spat upon the floor of the sacred place, 
 and answered : 
 
 " That's all blow. How do I know what you mean about 
 writing letters and following ? Who has seen me doing it ? 
 Not one of the mob. I'm just a man that has come in 
 off the road out of the rain. Maybe I have no business in 
 this crib ? That's for you to say. . . . Maybe I have a 
 message for somebody you know. So you don't choose 
 to give it, then that's for her to hear." 
 
 He swung about in pretended haste, and laid his hand 
 upon the door. 
 
 " Stop," she said, with white lips. " You will not 
 molest the person to whom you refer. You will give your 
 message — if it be one — to me, and to me alone." 
 
 " High and mighty," the ugly, wordless smile that faced 
 round on her again seemed to say. "But in a little I'll 
 bring you down off that. . . ." He spat again upon the 
 Chapel floor, and scratched, his head under his hat, and 
 began, like a simple, good-natured follow, a rough miner 
 with a heart of gold : 
 
 " No offence is meant, lady, and Why should it be 
 taken ?" 
 
 She seemed to grow in height as she folded her arms in 
 their flowing black sleeves, and looked down upon him 
 silently. The boiling whirlpool in her breast mounted as 
 it spun, stifling her. But she was outwardly calm. He 
 went smoothly on, with an occasional display of red mouth 
 and grinning teeth in the big beard, and always that baleful 
 glitter in his strange light eyes :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 491 
 
 "I'm a man that, in the goodness of his heart, is always 
 doing Jobs for other people, and never getting thanked for 
 it. I started to push my way up here, two hundred miles 
 from Diamond Town, three weeks back, with a letter from 
 a woman to her husband. She couldn't pay me nothing, 
 poor old girl. Said she'd pray for me to her dying day 
 There was a pal of mine put up the grubstake. His 
 name " — his evil eyes were glued upon her face — " wag 
 Bough. You've heard that name before !" 
 
 It was an assertion, not a question. The fierce rush of 
 crimson to her brow, and the flame that leaped into her 
 eyes, had already spoken to her knowledge. She was 
 deadly quiet, gathering all her superb forces for a sudden 
 lioness-spring. He went on : 
 
 " He's a widower now, Bough, and well-to-do. Getting 
 on for rich. Got religion tOo, highly respected. Says 
 Bough to me, ' There's a young woman at the Convent at 
 Gueldersdorp that's not the sort for holy, praying ladied 
 to have under their roof, for all the glib slack- J aw she may 
 have given them.' " 
 
 Her great eyes burned on him. 
 
 " Say what you have to say, and be brief. Go on." 
 
 He shifted from one foot to the other, and licked hia 
 fleshy lips. 
 
 " I've got to tell the story my own way, lady. Don't 
 you quarrel with it. Says Bough : ' They picked her up on 
 the veld seven years ago, a runaway in rags. As pretty a 
 girl she was,' says he, ' as you'd see in a month's trek, and 
 from what I hear they've made a laxiy of her.' " 
 
 Still silent and watchful, and her eyes upon him, search- 
 ing him. He went on : 
 
 " ' However the years have changed her,' says Bough, 
 * you'll spot her by her little feet and hands, and her 
 slender shape, and her big eyes, like yellow diamonds, 
 and her hair, the colour of dried tobaoco-leaf in the 
 sun. . . .' " 
 
 She quivered in every limb, and longed to shut her eyea 
 and bar out the intolerable bight of him, leering and lying 
 there. Had she not interrupted, she must have cried out. 
 She said : 
 
 " You tell me this man Bough is at Diamond Towti !"
 
 492 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " I said he was there when I left. The young woman he 
 talked of was brought up at his place in Orange River 
 Colony, a nice respectable boarding-house and hotel for 
 travelling families on the veld between Driepoort and 
 Kroonfontein. Bough was good to the girl, and so was 
 his wife, that's dead since. Uncommon ! Not that they 
 had much of the dibs to spend in those days. But, being 
 an honest Christian man. Bough treated the girl like his 
 own. And right down bad she served him." 
 
 He licked his thick lips again, and the flattish, light-hued 
 adder-eyes glittered. 
 
 " There was a bloke that used to hang around the place — 
 kind of coloured loafer, with Dutch blood, overgiven to 
 Squareface and whisky. He got going gay with the 
 girl " 
 
 She stood like a statue of ebony and ivory. Only by 
 the deep breaths that heaved her broad bosom could you 
 tell she lived — by that, and by the unswerving watchfulness 
 of those burning eyes. 
 
 " And Bough, when he caught them together, got mad, 
 being a respectable man, and let her taste the sjambok. 
 Then she ran away." 
 
 He coughed, and shifted again from one foot to the other. 
 He would have preferred a woman who had loaded him 
 with invectives, and told him that he lied like hell. 
 
 " The man that had left her to Bough's guardianship 
 was a sort of broken-down English ofiicer by the name of 
 Mildare " 
 
 Her bosom heaved more stormily, but her intense and 
 scorching regard of him never wavered. 
 
 " — Mildare. He left a hundred pounds with Bough, 
 to be kept for her till she was twenty. There was a waggon 
 and team Bough was to have had to sell, and use the 
 money for the girl's keep, but a thief of a Dutch driver 
 waltzed with them — took 'em up Johannesburg way, and 
 melted 'em into dollars. Bough got nothing for all his 
 kindness — ^not a tikkie. But he's ready to hand over the 
 hundred, her being so nigh come to age. There's a locket 
 with a picture in it, and briUiauts round, that may be 
 worth seventy pounds more. All Bough wants is to do 
 the square thing. This is the message he sends her now.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 493 
 
 The money and the Jewels will be handed over, as in duty 
 bound ; and, since she's turned respectable and got educa- 
 tion, I was to say there's an honest man — ^widower now, and 
 well off — that's ready to hang up his hat for her, and wipe 
 all old scores off the slate in the regular proper way. . . ." 
 
 She said in tones that were of ice : 
 
 " Bough is the honest man ?...'* 
 
 " Just Bough. ... ' Maybe, in my decent anger at her 
 goings on,' he says, * I went a bit too far. Well ! I'm 
 ready to make amends by making her my wife.' " 
 
 The lioness crouched and leapt. 
 
 " You are Bough ! You are the evil man, the servant 
 of Satan, who wrought abomination upon a helpless child !" 
 
 The onslaught came so suddenly that he was staggered. 
 Then he swore. 
 
 " Not me, by G !" 
 
 She pointed her long arm at him, and some strange force 
 seemed to be wielded by that unweaponed woman-hand 
 that struck him and pierced him through flesh, and bone 
 and marrow. . . . 
 
 " You are the man !" She stretched her arms to the 
 wild, hurrying clouds that looked in upon her through the 
 yawning rifts in the roof, and called upon her Maker for 
 vengeance. " How long wUt Thou delay, Lord, righteous 
 in judgment ? Fulfil Thy promise ! Bind Thou Thy mill- 
 stone about the neck of this wretch, hated and accursed of 
 Thee, and let it drag him down to the uttermost depths 
 of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow and howl 
 throughout Eternity ! '* 
 
 She was infinitely more terrible than the lioness who 
 has licked her murdered cubs. No Pythoness at the 
 dizziest height of the sacred frenzy, no Demeter wrought 
 to delirium by maternal bereavement, was ever imagined 
 by poet or painter as half so grand, and terrible, and awe- 
 inspiring, as this furious cursing nun. 
 
 " —Belay not Thou, Lord !" she prayed. . . . 
 
 Rain fell in a curtain of gleaming crystal rods between 
 them. Seen through it, she appeared supernaturally tall, 
 her garments streaming like black flames, her face a \\ liite- 
 hot furnace, her eyes intolerable, merciless, grey lightnings, 
 her voice a fiery sword that cleft the guilty to the soiil.
 
 494 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The voice of Conscience was dumb in him. He knew 
 no remorse, and made a Jest of God. But bis callous heart 
 had been filled from the veins of generajiions of Irish 
 Catholic peasants, and, in spite of himself, the blood in 
 his veins ran cold with superstitious fear. 
 
 Yet, when no palpable answer came from that Heaven to 
 which she cried, he rallied, remembering t^at, after all, 
 she was a woman, and alone with him in t)^ plg-ce. She 
 had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. 
 Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish ; 
 she looked as though about to swoou. Pofigh hailed the 
 symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to 
 caving in, with the women he knew. But whepi he stirred, 
 her eyes were wide and preterniq.tuj"i^yy bright, and held 
 him. He snarled : 
 
 " You'll not take the girl my message, then ?" 
 
 She reared up her tall form, and laughed awfully. 
 
 " Did you dream I would defile her ears with it ? Now 
 that I know you, you will be wise to leave this place ; for 
 it is a spot where your sins may find you out !" 
 
 He jeered : 
 
 " That flash bounce doesn't go down with me. The 
 trouble '11 be at your end of the house, unless you listen to 
 reason and stop giving off hot air. What's to hinder me 
 making a clean breast to that swell toff she's wheedled 
 into asking her to marry Ijim ? What's to hinder me from 
 standing up before the whole mob, saying as I've repented 
 what I done years back, and I've come to ^lake an honest 
 girl of her at last ?" 
 
 The whirling waters of bitterness in her breast were 
 rising, drowning her. . . . He realised her momentary 
 weakness, and moved a step or two nearer, keeping well 
 between the woman and the door. 
 
 " What's to hinder me, I say ?" 
 
 Her rapier of keen womanly intuition flashed out at him 
 again, and drew the blood. 
 
 " Your fear will hinder you. You are here in an assumed 
 character, and under a false name." The long arm shot 
 out, the white hand pointed at him again. " You never 
 came here from J^iamond Town. That letter was a forgery. 
 You have papers on you now that would proye you to be ^
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 495 
 
 spy, if you were taken. Ah, I can see it written in your 
 coward's face !" 
 
 The devil was at the woman's ear, prompting her. Or 
 
 was it ? Bough's dark, full-blooded face bleached to 
 
 muddy-pale as her terrible voice rang through the desolate 
 place, and echoed among the broken rafters, 
 
 " You boast yourself ready to admit your infamy. You 
 shall be compelled ! Everything shall be made known ! 
 I will go to Lord Beauvayse now, and tell him all — all ! 
 And if he loves her, he will marry her. And you who have 
 secrets upon your soul even more perilous, if less vile and 
 hideous " — again the terrible hand pointed, and that 
 sense of a supernatural force that it wielded knocked his 
 knees together and dried up his mouth — " I see the mill- 
 stone round your neck ! . . ." 
 
 The clarion voice mounted on a great note of triumph. 
 With her inspired face, and with her floating veil, she 
 looked like a Prophetess of old. '" The Lord is not mocked I 
 He will avenge His little one as He has promised ! Move 
 aside, you lost, and branded, and miserable wretch ! 
 Do you dare to dream you can hinder Me from doing what 
 I have said ?" 
 
 He was at the bottom of the altar-steps as the tall, 
 imperious figure came sweeping down. The curtain of 
 rain no longer fell between them, but behind him. He 
 must silence that railing voice that cried in the house- 
 top — put out the light of those intolerable eyes. . . . 
 
 He drew out his revolver with a blasphemous oath. At 
 the gleam of steel in the thickening t\\'ilight she dropped 
 her upraised arms, and made a swift rush to the rope of 
 the bell, and set it clanging. Two double strokes rang out ; 
 the third was broken in the middle. . . . For as she swung 
 round, panting and tugging at the rope, he shot her in the 
 back above the line of the white wimpK' from which the veil 
 streamed aside, and ran to the door as she cried out and 
 swayed forward, still clinging to the vibrating rope, and 
 turned there and lired a second shot, that struck her in the 
 body. 
 
 Then he was gone, and the walls were crowding in on 
 her to crush her, and then recedijog to immeasurable dis- 
 tances, and the blood and air from her pierced lungs
 
 496 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 bubbled through the bullet- holes in the serge stuff and the 
 scorched linen. 
 
 She stumbled a few steps blindly, then fell and lay 
 choking, with that strange gurgling and whispering in her 
 ears, the rushing blood mingling with the water of the 
 puddles that the rain had made upon the littered floor. 
 She faltered out the name of her Master and Spouse, and 
 commended her pure soul to Him in utter humility. Death 
 would have been a welcome loosing of her bonds but for 
 the Beloved left behind, at the mercy of the merciless. 
 
 The stab of that remembrance lent her strength to 
 struggle up upon her knees. Ah, cruel ! cruel ! . . . But she 
 must submit. Was it not the Holy Will ? She signed the 
 Cross upon her bosom, with fingers already growing stiff, 
 and made a piteous little act of charity, forgiving the sin 
 of the man against herself, but not his crime against dead 
 Richard's child. And she stretched out long black-sleeved 
 arms gropingly in the thick, numbing darkness that 
 hemmed her in, and moaned to the Mother of the mother- 
 less to have pity ! . . . pity ! . . . 
 
 She swayed forwards then, like a stately falling column, 
 and lay with outspread arms upon the altar-step. 
 
 " Jesu. . . . Mary. . . . The child ! . . ." 
 
 The sacred names were stifled in her blood. The last 
 two words were nearly her last sigh. Thenceforward there 
 was no sound at all in the Convent chapel, save the dull 
 splash of rain, falling through the holes in the broken roof 
 upon the sodden floor, where the dead woman lay, face 
 downwards. 
 
 Ln 
 
 No one had heeded the revolver-shot. The detonation of a 
 cartridge or so when a bombardment is going on, what does 
 it count for ? And yet, when the burly figure of the runner 
 froHi Diamond Town slipped out of the Convent doorway 
 and stole across the shrapnel-httered garden, and crossed 
 the veld towards the native town, it had been barely 
 twilight — a twihght of heavy, drenching rain, to be sure. 
 Still, in it he had encountered those who might have sus- 
 pected afterwards. . . .
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 497 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better had he stopped in 
 Gueldersdorp and mugged it out. But that sharp, prompt, 
 s'O'ift, unsparing thing called Martial Law is not a power to 
 play with with impunity, and of the man who wielded it in 
 Gueldersdorp, Bough had conceived a wholesome dread. 
 Best that he had fled, although his going tagged him with 
 suspicion. That cursed stupid game of his with the tele- 
 phone at the Headquarters of the Baraland Rifles might 
 cost him more than the bit of twist with which he had 
 bribed the orderly, left for a moment in sole charge, and 
 demoralised by the sight of tobacco. 
 
 Opium played you tricks like that, when, for the grati- 
 fication of a sinister whim, a grotesque fancy, bom and 
 bred of the stufi, you would risk everything. In exce?^. it 
 played hell wdth the nerves. That was why those eyes of 
 hers. . . . Damn them ! Why couldn't a man put them 
 out of mind and out of sight ? 
 
 It was not to be done. The obsession held him. A 
 black shadow on the floor would be the long body, lying 
 face downwards on the altar-steps, with outspread, crucifled 
 arms. He heard her stifled crying upon the Name, and 
 the gurgling outrush of mingled air and blood that followed 
 each deep sob for breath. . . . 
 
 And then he would be running through the lashing, 
 bucketing wet, circumventing the sentry-posts, wriggling 
 over the veld on his belly like a snake. He would be 
 pushing through the dripping covert of the north bank of 
 the river — for that, he had decided, was the safest way cut 
 or in — leaving fragments of his garments on the thorny 
 cacti that grabbed at him with their green hands. And 
 then he would find himself lying doggo between two great 
 stones, waiting for it to be quite dark before he essayed to 
 pass the rifle-pits that angled across either shore. Two hours 
 he had lain so, and it had hailed, and sheet Lightning had 
 smitten greenish-blue glares from the hissing, clattering 
 whiteness, and he had remembered with a shudder those 
 eyes. . . . 
 
 Then it had been dark enough to risk passing between 
 the angles of the rifle-pits, where lay men who kept their 
 eyes skinned and their weapons handy by day and night. 
 AnH again Bough had wriggled like a snake, but through 
 
 32
 
 498 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 shallow water instead of grass and red nmd. Ho had swum 
 the deep pools, and once got entangled in barbed- wire, 
 and went under, gurgling and drowning, three times before 
 he wrenched liimself loose. It had seemed as though a 
 dead woman's hands had seized him, and were dragging 
 him down. But he tore free and passed safely. There 
 was not a single shot — the Devil was so obliging ! And 
 then, lest Brounckers' pickets should mistake a friend in 
 the darkness, he waited for light in a little thorny kloof 
 beyond their advanced outposts ; and the dawn came, 
 with an awful gush of crimson dyeing all the eastern sky, 
 so that the pools about his feet — even the drops of wet 
 upon the stones and bushes — caught the ruddy reflection, 
 and all the world seemed dripping with new-shed blood. 
 
 Then up had rushed the sun, and smitten a glorious 
 rainbow out of fog and vapour, and one end of it seemed 
 to be in Gueldersdorp, resting in a golden mist upon the 
 Convent's shattered roof, while the other vanished in mid- 
 heaven. It had seemed to the murderer like a ladder by 
 which the dead woman's soul went climbing, up and up, 
 to tell his crime to God. . . . 
 
 He had killed her, that woman in black, to stop her from 
 blowing on him. Who would have dreamed a meek, sober 
 nun could be transformed like that ? A lioness whose cub 
 has been shot, straightway becomes a beast-devil. She, 
 standing on the naked steps of the bare altar, with up- 
 raised, black-sleeved arms and black funereal robes, 
 demanding Heaven's vengeance for that deed of old, calling 
 down the judgment of God upon its doer, had been infinitely 
 more terrible than the lioness. Lightning had flashed from 
 her great eyes, and subtle electric forces had darted from 
 her outspread finger-tips. While she looked at him and 
 8p<;ke she enmeshed him, helpless, in a net of terror. It 
 was only when she had turned her back that Bough had 
 had the nerve to shoot. And he was no novice in blood- 
 shed — not he. There were things safely hidden and put 
 away and buried, that might some day put a rope round 
 some man's neck. But the man would never be Bough. 
 There had always been a scapegoat to suffer until now. 
 
 He ate more opium now than ever, because he could not 
 forget that woman's awful eyes. He would see them look-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 499 
 
 ing at him in the dark, when he could not sleep. Her voice 
 haunted him, terrible in its clarion-note of wrath, its organ- 
 roll of denunciation. The hand that had pointed to the 
 millstone about his neck had conjured it there. He felt 
 it dragging him down. 
 
 Maar — that was the gold ! You can cayry a goodly amount 
 of the precious metal upon your single person, if you are 
 clever enough to stow it and muscular enough to walk 
 lightly under the weight. And a great deal of the yellow 
 stuff, gathered and stored by the mining companies, leaked 
 about this time out of the hiding-places skilfully contrived 
 for it into the pockets of Van Busch and his pals. It is 
 weighty, as well as precious, stuff, and when you inter it, 
 there must be bearers as well as a gravedigger, and when 
 you carry away a great deal of it at a time, confederates 
 must aid you. 
 
 Oom Paul, when, like some elderly black humble-bee. 
 with crooked thighs deep laden with the metallic yellow 
 pollen, he buzzed heavily off for Loren90 Marques, deplored 
 the deceitfulness of riches less bitterly than their non- 
 portableness. 
 
 Van Busch, by a series of clever expedients, overcame 
 that difficulty. The cartridges that weighed do^^'n his 
 bandolier were of cast gold, cleverly painted ; the gun he 
 carried was a hollow sham packed with raw gold ; also, his 
 garments were lined and padded with the same material. 
 At Cape Town he would disburden himself, and one of the 
 women who were his confederates would take the stuff to 
 England, and sell it in London, and bank the money in 
 the name of Van Busch. He so managed that there was 
 always a woman coming and a woman going. Women had 
 been his tools, and his slaves, and his victims, ever since 
 he had been bom. When the old were worn out and use- 
 less, he shook them off, and fresh instruments rose up to 
 take their places. 
 
 He never trusted men in money matters. He knew too 
 much of the power of that yeUow pollen that bre<.'ds mad- 
 ness in the male. But there is one thing that most womcQ 
 desire more than the possession of much money, and that 
 is absolute possession of one man. 
 
 Bough understood women of a qertain class. He had 
 
 32—2
 
 600 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 moulded them to his will, and bent them to his whim, all 
 his life long. He was a man of manifold experience as 
 regards the sex. 
 
 Lately he had added to his stock. He had stood face 
 to face with a woman, unarmed and in a lonely place, and 
 had tasted Fear. He had seen — from afar off — a woman 
 whose slight, vivid beauty had roused in him a desire 
 that was torture. 
 
 It was as though the Minotaur v, ere in love with Ariadne ; 
 it was Caliban thirsting for the beauty of IMiranda. 
 Prospero had not come in time ; the satyr had surfeited 
 upon the unripe grapes, and now was ahungered for the 
 purple cluster, tied up out of reach of those gross, greedy, 
 wicked hands. 
 
 The locket \vith a picture in it and brilliants round, " that 
 might be worth seventy," the dainty, pearly miniature on 
 ivory by Daudin, of the dead woman who lay buried under 
 the Little Kopje, and which Bough had taken from the 
 body of the English traveller, together with the signet-ring 
 and everything else of value that Richard Mildare had 
 owned, possessed a strange fascination for the thief. It 
 was extraordinarily like. . . . He hung it by its slender gold 
 chain about his thick neck, and gloated over and grudged 
 the beauty that it recalled. 
 
 It is horrible to speak of love in connection with the man 
 Bough, but if ever he had known it, it was now. His 
 victim of old time had become his tyrant. Replete with 
 vile pleasures, he longed for her the more. 
 
 He even became sentimental at times, telling himself that 
 all ho had sought was to repair the wrong, and make an 
 honest woman of the Kid. She should have been lapped 
 in luxury, worn jewels equalling any Duchess's. He was 
 a man of money now. A Httle delay, to become yet more 
 rich, and arrange for the safe burying of Bough — then Van 
 Busch, of Johannesburg, capitalist and financier, would 
 descend upon London in a shower of gold, furnish a house 
 in Hyde Park or Mayfair in topping style ; own four-in- 
 hands, and motor-cars, and opera- boxes, and see all Society 
 fluttering to his feet to pick up scattered crumbs of the 
 golden pudding. 
 
 It really seemed as though the dream would be realised.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 501 
 
 The gross, squarely-built man with the bushy wMskers and 
 the Hght strange eyes, found success attend his every enter- 
 prise from that hour in which he had spilt hfe upon the 
 pavement of the Convent chapel. The tarantula-pounce 
 never missed a prey. Every knavish venture brought in 
 money or money's worth, every base plot was carried 
 through triumphantly. Bough, alia,s Van Busch, was not 
 ordinarily a superstitious man, but liis run of luck made him 
 almost afraid at times. 
 
 He scented the ReUef before the besiegers, undertook to 
 scout for Young Eybel in the direction of Diamond Town, 
 and ingeniously warned Colonel Culliugs of a Boer plan 
 for cutting off the Flying Column on the scorching western 
 plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads 
 of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers — a 
 most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the 
 British Force intercepted telegrams which threw invaluable 
 light on Dutch moves. No more siugle-minded, ingenuous, 
 and patriotic British South African ever drew breath than 
 Mr. Van Busch, of Johannesburg. And verily he reaped 
 his reward, in an officially countersigned railway pass, which 
 would enable the patriot to render some further services 
 to British arms, and a great many more to Van Busch, of 
 Johannesburg. 
 
 He had his knavish headquarters still at the Border 
 homestead known as Haargrond Plaats. Something diew 
 him back to the place, and kept on drawing him. From 
 thence he could observe and conduct his operations, and 
 gather news of the besieged in Gueldersdorp. He was 
 there at the time when the Division — Irregular Horse and 
 Baraland Rifles, with a half battaUon of Town Guards, 
 converted into mounted infantry by the simple process of 
 puttuig beasts underneath men who could ride them — 
 marched out of Gueldersdorp en route for Frostenberg. 
 
 The slatternly Dutchwoman and the coloured man who 
 had charge of the Plaats were too surely his creatures to 
 betray Bough Van Busch. " Let the dugs smell around the 
 place," he thought, when by the sounds that reached liim 
 in his hiding-place he knew the Advance had halted. 
 " They'll tire of the game before they smell out me !" 
 
 His hiding-place was a safe retreat and storehouse for
 
 802 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 stuff that it was necessary to conceal. No one knew of it 
 save Bough Van Busch and the draggle-tailed woman. It 
 was in the great stone-built chimney of the disused, half- 
 ruined farmhouse kitchen, a solid cube of masonry reared 
 by the stout hands of the old voortrekkers of 1836, its 
 walls, three feet in thickness, embracing the wide hearth 
 about which the family life of the homestead had concen- 
 trated itself in the past. 
 
 There may have been a mill on the farm in the old days. 
 Or possibly, meaning to build one, those robtist pioneers 
 of the Second Exodus had dragged the two huge stones into 
 the wilderness, and then abandoned their plan. The lower 
 millstone paved the hearth, the upper, the diameter of its 
 shaft-hole increased by chipping to the size of a musk- 
 melon, had been set by some freak of the farmer-architect's 
 heavy fancy as a coping on the top of the big stone shaft. 
 From thence, as Lady Hannah Wrynche had said in one 
 of her descriptive letters, dated from " My Headquarters 
 at the Seat of War," it dominated the landscape as a 
 Brobdiagnagian stone mushroom might have done. 
 
 The wide black throat of the chimney half-way up was 
 choked by a platform of beams and masonry, reaching not 
 quite across, so that even a bulky man who had climbed up 
 — divers rusty iron stanchions driven in between the 
 stones, and certain chinks affording secure foothold — might 
 wriggle between the platform and the chimney-wall, and 
 so he hid securely. Through the hole in the round stone 
 above came air and light. Crevices cunningly enlarged 
 afforded opportunities for viewing the surrounding country, 
 as for seeing without being seen, and hearing also all that 
 took place in the low-walled courtyard that was used as a 
 cattle-kiaal. You had also a bird's-eye view of the lower 
 end of the farm kitchen, where the wall had cracked, and 
 bulged, and spit out some of its stones. 
 
 To this eyrie Bough Van Busch retreated when the wall 
 of dust to the south-west gave up the dim shapes of the 
 Advance, and the beat of many iron-shod hoofs, and the 
 roll of many iron-shod wheels made distant thunder, 
 coming nearer, always nearer. . . . 
 
 Maar ! How the trot of the squsuiron-columns, the roll 
 of the oncoming batteries, shook the crazy buildiag. The
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 603 
 
 Advance rode into the yard, dismounted, and began to ask 
 questions of the coloured man and the slipshod woman. 
 Neither knew anything. The woman cursed the English- 
 men freely, at which they laughed, and lighted fresh 
 cigarettes. The man was dumb as stone. 
 
 The Division snaked out of the dust presently, a huge 
 brown centipede that had been chopped in bits, and moved 
 with intervals between its travelling sections. There was 
 no halt ; it rolled on, a vision of iimumerable moving legs 
 and tanned, wearied faces, over the greening veld to the 
 north-east. The dust grew hotter and thicker, and more 
 stifling, as it rolled. 
 
 It drifted in through every chink and cranny in the ^ceat 
 chimney, with the smell of hot human flesh and sweating 
 horsehide, and Bough Van Busch longed to, but dared not 
 sneeze. Bits of mortar fell about him, and dislodged 
 tarantulas g&llopexi over his boots. He shook the loath- 
 some, hairy, bright-eyed iiisectri ojff, shuddering at thum 
 with a horror somewhat misplaced, considering the affinity 
 between his own methods and theirs. 
 
 Roll, roll, roll ! The English voices of the chatting men 
 crouched upon their beasts' withers or sprawling on the 
 Umbers, the trampling and snorting of the horses, the sharp 
 signal-whistles of the leaders, the curt utterances of com- 
 mand, mingled with the stream of thoiight that raced 
 through the busy brain of Bough Van Busch. It had struck 
 him when the Colonel and his Staff rode up and halted by 
 the gateway of the littered courtyard, that here would be a 
 chance for a nervy man, with a set purpose, to vc\ ture 
 back, cleverly disguised, to Gueldersdorp. He knew he 
 would be risking his neck, but the sting of desire galled him 
 to hardihood. She was there. Red mist gathered in his 
 brain, red sparks snapped before his eyes, the thick red 
 blood surged fiercely through his veins—drummed deafei:- 
 ingly in his gross ears at the thought of seeing her again. . . . 
 And the tail of the Division was going by. A Field 
 Telegraph Company, a searchlight company, the Ambu- 
 lances, and a train of transport-waggons, with the mounted 
 infantry, brought up the rear. The Advance had galloptd 
 forwards in haste, the grouj) at the gate Imgered. A vdioft 
 rang out clearly, giving some order. It said :
 
 504 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 '■ And if abandoned, carry out instructions, previously 
 warning the inmates of the farm to retire out of " 
 
 The lean, eagle-eyed, keen-faced Colonel bent lower in 
 the saddle to reach the ear of the dismounted officer of 
 Royal Engineers, who stood with one dogskin gloved hand 
 resting on the sweating withers of the brown Waler. Ho 
 answered, saluted, and drew away. Then the Staff rode on, 
 into the ginger yellow dust-cloud, leaving the officer of 
 Engineers standing in the beaten tracks of many iron-shod 
 hoofs and many iron-shod wheels. 
 
 He was not left alone. A little cluster of mounted Cape 
 Police had detached itself from the rear of the Division. 
 They were deeply-burned, hard-bitten men, emaciated to a 
 curious uniformity, mounted on horses as gaunt as their 
 riders, A sergeant was in command of the party, and a 
 drab-painted wooden cart drawn by a high-rumped, goose- 
 necked chestnut mare, pitifully lame on the near fore, had 
 an Engineer for driver. His mate sat on the rear locker, 
 and a mounted comrade rode by the mare's lame side. The 
 rider's stirrup-leather was lashed about the cart-shaft, and 
 thus the mare was helped along. 
 
 Obeying some order unheard of the man who was hiding 
 in the old stone chimney, the party of Cape Police divided 
 into two. One half patrolled the outward precincts of the 
 homestead. The rest, dismounting in the courtyard, 
 thoroughly searched the place. The Engineer officer took 
 no part in the search. He stood by the stone-coloured cart, 
 busy at the locker, the sapper who had sat upon it being his 
 aid. Very soon he returned to the yard, and stood in the 
 middle of the litter motionless as a little figure of pale,dusty 
 bronze, holding a cigar-box carefully in both his dogskin- 
 gloved hands. In spite of his patched khaki and ragged 
 puttees there was sometliing dandified about him. His red 
 moustache, waxed to a fine point, jutted like the whiskers 
 of a watchful cat, the whites of his eyes gleamed like silvei 
 as he turned them this way and that, following the move- 
 ments of the men who went in and out of the farm-buildings 
 as directed by their sergeant. The sergeant was an expert 
 in his business, and yet, after a hasty glance up the black 
 yawning gullet of the chimney where Bough Van Busch 
 ay perdu, he had gone out of the dismantled kitchen
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 505 
 
 whistling a tune. Two of his men remained lomiging near 
 the threshold. Like the sergeant they had stooped, hands 
 on spread knees, necks twisted awry in the effort to pierce 
 the thick mirk beneath the ragged arch of masonry that 
 spanned the wide hearth where the ashes of long-dead fires 
 lay in powdery grey drifts, and, like the sergeant, they had 
 seen nothing. When you covered the man-hole between the 
 platform-edge and the chimney-wall with the sooty board 
 and the old sack, it was impossible for anyone below to see 
 anything. The inside of the old chimney was as black as hell. 
 
 The inquisition ended. The khaki-clad figures came 
 hurrying out of the house, pursued by the Dutchwoman's 
 shrill recriminations. The non-commissioned officer made 
 a report to the officer of Engineers. The men who had been 
 deputed to search mounted at an order, and fell in with the 
 patrol, and sat upon their saddles outside the courtyard 
 wall exchanging furtive winks as the mevrouw devoted 
 their souls and bodies to everlasting perdition. 
 
 A quiet utterance from the little red-haired officer checked 
 the torrent of the woman's anger. She screeched in dismay, 
 raising thick hands to heaven. The coloured man's stolid 
 silence was suddenly swept away in a spate of oaths and 
 protestations. Suddenly, looking in the officer's unmoved 
 face, they realised the uselessness of words, turned and ran 
 between the gateless posts, out upon, away over, the dusty, 
 hoof -tracked, wheel-scored veld. And their ungainly hurry 
 and awkward gestures of terror somehow reminded the 
 peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seen by 
 chance in a Dopper Bible, in Avhich Lot and hia two 
 daughters, fearfully foreshortened by the artist, scuttled in 
 as grotesque an insect hurry from the doomed vicinity of 
 Sodom, Queen City of the Plain. 
 
 The officer of Engineers hardly glanced after the retreat- 
 ing couple. He stepped across the threshold of the disused 
 farm-kitchen, holding the little wooden box carefully in 
 both his dogskin-gloved hands. He crossed to the iu-arth, 
 stubbing his toe against a jutting floor-brick, and as he did 
 80 he caught his breath. Then he stepped down under the 
 yawning gape of the chimney, and seemed to grope and 
 fumble at the back of the hearth. He raised himself then, 
 stepped back, and called out sharply in the Taal ;
 
 606 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Wie is daar ?" 
 
 The man's voice dropped back dead out of the choked-up 
 chinmey-throat. A little sooty dust fell. There was no 
 other answer. The voice was lifted again, speaking this 
 time in English : 
 
 " Is anyone hiding here ?" 
 
 No one replied, and the little oflScer seemed to give up. 
 He lingered a moment longer, struck a match as though to 
 light a cigarette, then went quickly out of the kitchen. An 
 orderly waited with his horse outside the gateway. Bough 
 Van Busch, listening with strained ears, heard the clink of 
 spur against stirnip, the creak of the saddle receiving a 
 rider's weight. There was a short sharp whistle, followed 
 by the sound of cantering hoofs, and the rattle of hurrying 
 wheels dying out over the veld to the north-east. The 
 unwelcome intruders had gone. Bough Van Busch, after a 
 cautious interval, deemed it safe to descend. 
 
 He was red-smeared with veld dust and white-smeared 
 with mortar, and black with old soot. His bulky body 
 oscillated as he let himself doAvn from beam to stanchion, 
 finding sure foothold in the crevices, and hand-grip in the 
 stout iron hooks from which plump mutton-hams and beef 
 sausages had hung ripening in the pungent smoke of burning 
 wood and dried dung. There was a smell in his nostrils Uke 
 charring wool and saltpetre. He hung over the wide hearth 
 now. A short drop of not more than a foot or two would 
 bring him safely to the ground. 
 
 Van Busch did not drop. He dangled by the hands and 
 sweated. He blasphemed in an agony of terror, though it 
 seemed to him that he prayed. 
 
 For the dandy little Engineer officer had left the cigar- 
 box lying empty among the powdery ashes in the wide, old- 
 world hearthplace. An innocent- looking parcel it had 
 contained, wrapped in a bit of old canvas, and, further 
 secured with copper wire and string, was wedged in a chink 
 between the blackened stones at the back of the heaith. 
 From it a fuse hung down ; a short length nearly consumed 
 by the crepitating fiery spark at its loose end. It burned 
 with a little purring sound, as though it liked the business 
 it was engaged upon. Bough Van Busch knew that in 
 another moment the detonation would tak ^ place, . . . 
 
 1
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 507 
 
 He heard nothing of it when it came. . . . Nor did he 
 know it when the walls of Cyclopean masonry bulged and 
 opened about him like the petals of a flowering lily. He 
 was beyond all that. His gross body, headless, rent aud 
 torn as though the devils it had housed had wreaked their 
 fury on their dwelling, lay sandwiched between the 
 wreckage of the great chimney and the millstone that had 
 paved its hearth, now a yawning cavity, some six feet deep. 
 Leaning on its side in a trench its own weight had dug in 
 the stony earth of the diity com-tyard was the huge stone 
 that had topped the shaft. Something ugly was wedged 
 in the central hole that had been made bigger to let out the 
 smoke. And the murderer's soul, light as a dried leaf 
 fluttering through the illimitable spaces of Eternity, went 
 wandering on its way to the Balances of God. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The party of Cape Police who had searched Haargrond 
 Plaats, with the drab-painted cart, the three Engineers, and 
 the dandified little ofiicer, had only ridden to a safe dis- 
 tance. They halted, and, concealed from observation by a 
 fold of the grassy veld, waited for the explosion of the 
 dynamite cartridge. When it came, the Engineer officer 
 shut his binoculars, and gave the signal to return. 
 
 LIII 
 
 There weio two funerals in the Cemetery at Gtieldersdorp, 
 upon a J ;ght that no one will forget who stood in the 
 packed tnrong of shadowy mourners about each of those 
 open graves. The wind blew soft from the west, and the 
 vault of heaven might have been hollowed out of the 
 darkling depths of an amethyst of inconceivable splendour 
 and planetary size. Myriads of stars, dazzlingly wliite, 
 swung under this, the Mother's fitting canopy, shared with 
 another, not like her holy, not noble or unselfish or devoted, 
 but like her in that he was brave and much beloved. 
 
 Beloved undoubtedly. You could not look at the crowd- 
 ing faces about tke harrow open trench where the Reverend 
 Julius Fraithom read the Burial Setvice by lantern-light 
 without being sure of that. Men's eyes were wet, and
 
 508 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 women sobbed unrestrainedly. He had been so beautiful 
 and so merry and cheerful always, said the wet-eyed 
 women ; the men praised him for having been such a swords- 
 man, horseman, shot. Everyone spoke of him as the life 
 and soul of the garrison, the idol of his brother- ofl&cers, and 
 worsliipped by the men under his command. Everyone 
 had something to tell of dead Beauvayse that was pleasant 
 to hear. 
 
 But the great bulk of the crowd was massed behind the 
 black-robed, white-coiffed figures of the Sisters, kneeling 
 rigid and immovable about the second open grave, where 
 the Mother-Superior lay in her snow-white cofi&n, fully 
 habited and mantled, her Rosary in the marble hand on 
 which the plain gold ring of her Divine espousals shone, the 
 parchment formula of the vows she took when admitted to 
 her Order nineteen years before, lying under those meekly- 
 folded hands upon her breast. So she had lain, feet to the 
 altar, in the Convent chapel that her daughters in Religion 
 had draped and decked for her, keeping their loving vigils 
 about her from twilight to dawn, from dawn to twilight, 
 until this hour when they must yield all that was mortal 
 of her to Earth's guardianship and the unsleeping watch- 
 fulness of God. 
 
 Suffocatingly dense the throng about this grave, and 
 strangely quiet. The women's faces white and haggard 
 and tearless, the men's drawn and deeply lined. Not even 
 muffled groans or sighs of pity broke the profound silence 
 as the solemn rite drew to its singularly simple and impres- 
 sive close. As the fragrant incense rose from the censer 
 and the holy water sprinkled the snow-white pall that bore 
 the Red Cross, one dreadful word lurked sinister in every 
 thought : 
 
 Murdered ! . . . 
 
 Their friend, helper, nurse, consoler, the woman whose 
 hands had staunched the bleeding wounds of many present, 
 whose arm had lifted and pillowed the dying heads of 
 others dear to them ; who had stood through long nights of 
 fever and delirium beside their Hospital pallets, minister- 
 ing as a very Angel from Heaven to tortured bodies and 
 suffering souls — murdered ! 
 
 The tender Mother, the wise virgin, who watched con-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 609 
 
 tinually with her lamp prepared, that at the first summons 
 of the Heavenly Bridegroom she might enter with Him into 
 the marriage chamber, could it be that His signal had 
 come to her by the bloodstained hand of an assassin ? It 
 was so. And — ah ! the horror of it ! 
 
 The aged priest sobbed as, followed by the server, he 
 moved round the grave within the enclosing wall of kneeling 
 Sisters. But no answering sob came from the vast assem- 
 blage. They were as dumb — stricken to stone. They could 
 not yet contemplate the felicity of the pure soul of the 
 martyred saint, carried by God's Angels into the Land of 
 the ever-living, admitted to the unspeakable reward of the 
 Beatific Vision. They could only realise that somebody had 
 killed her. 
 
 But when the solemn strophes of the Litany for the Dead 
 broke in upon a profound silence, the responses of the multi- 
 tude surged upwards like giant billows shattering their 
 forces in hollow thunder upon Arctic heights. And when, in 
 due pursuance of the symbolic rite of Rome, the vested 
 priest and her whole Sisterhood suddenly withdrew from 
 the grave, and left her earthly body, how wonderful in its 
 marble, hushed, close-folded, mysterious beauty none who 
 had looked upon it ever could forget, waiting for the second 
 coming of her Master and her Lord, a great sob mounted, 
 and broke from every breast, and every face wa.s drenched 
 with sudden tears. Perhaps God let her see how much they 
 loved her in that parting hour. And then the bugle 
 sounded " Last Post " over both the open graves, softly for 
 fear of Brounckers' German gunners, and the great crood 
 melted away, and all was done and over. 
 
 I have said that all the people wept. There was a girl in 
 white, for she would not let the Sisters put black garments 
 on her, kneeling between Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda- 
 Antony. This girl did not weep at all. Chief mourner at 
 both these funerals, she was not conscious of the fact. She 
 knew that Beauvayso was on duty at Maxim Outpost 
 South, and could not get away, and that the Reverend 
 Mother was vexed with her, and was hiding at the Convent, 
 pretending that she had gone somewhere, and would never 
 come back. 
 
 She was especially clear of mind when she thought all
 
 610 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 this. At other times she was not Lynette, and kpew no 
 one, and had never known anybody of the name. She was 
 the ragged Kid, crouching on the Little Kopje in the gather- 
 ing twilight or on the long mound that ita eastward shadow 
 covered. Or she was lying under the tattered horse-blanket 
 on the foul straw pallet in the outhouse, waiting for the 
 Lady to come with the great, kind, covering dark. 
 
 Or she was sitting in the bar-parlour on an upturned 
 cube-sugar box beside the green rep sofa where Boiigh lolled 
 oxx wet days or stormy nights, her great eyes wild with 
 apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained with terror 
 of the master in his condescending moods, when he would 
 make pretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks 
 and hangers on the greasy slate that usually hung below the 
 glass-and-bottle shelf. Or — and at these times the Sisters 
 foimd her difficult to manage — she was crouching upon one 
 side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feeling its 
 way into the keyhole on the other side, and the man who 
 manipulated it laughed as the agile pliers nipped the end of 
 the key and turned it in the wards of the lock. . . . 
 
 And then she would be ruiming through the night, any- 
 where, nowhere, and Bough would be riding after. She 
 could hear the short wheezing gallop of the tired pony when 
 she laid her ear to the ground. And then the sjambok, 
 wielded by a strong and brutal hand, would bite into the 
 quivering flesh of the child, and she would shriek for mercy, 
 and presently fall upon the ground and lie there like one dead 
 — acting that old tragedy over and over again. 
 
 God was very kind to you. Reverend Mother, if He hid 
 that sight from one to whom she was so dear. But if His 
 Blessed in Heaven have cognisance of what takes place in 
 this dull, distant speck of Earth, I think some salt tears 
 must needs have fallen from the starry eyes of one of Christ's 
 saintly maiden-spouses, glorious under the dual crown of 
 Virginity and Martyrdom, and yet a mother as truly as 
 His Own. 
 
 That swift unerring Judgment of Saxham's had pointed, 
 months ago, to some such mental and physical collapse, as 
 the resxilt of shock, crowning long-continued nervous over- 
 strain. He had said to the Mother that such a result would 
 be easier to avert than to deal with. 
 
 i
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 611 
 
 There was not an ounce of energy the man possessed that 
 he did not employ in dealing -wath it now. 
 
 Let Sister Tobias tell us, as she t^old Saxham then, the 
 story of the Finding. She was always a plain woman of few 
 words. 
 
 " The last charge the Mother laid on us — Sister Hjlda- 
 Antony and me — was to keep our eyes upon the child. The 
 very day it was done she told us, and 1 saw that something 
 had made her anxious by the look that was in her eyes." 
 She dried her own mth a coarse blue cotton handkerchief 
 before she took up her tale. " She went alone to the Head 
 Hospital that day. None of us were to be surprised, she 
 said, if she came home extra late. Sister Hilda- Antony and 
 me were on duty at the Railway Institute. We took 
 Lynette with us. — There ! . . . Didn't she look up, Just for 
 the one second, as if she remembered her name ?" 
 
 She had not done so at all. She was sitting on her stool 
 in her old corner of the Convent bombproof, but she did not 
 heed the shattering crashes of the bombardment any more. 
 She had only moved to push out of her eyes the dulled and 
 faded hair that the Sisters could not keep pinned up, and 
 bent over her little slate again. Before that, and a pencil had 
 been given her she had been restless and uneasy. Now she 
 would be occupied for long hours, making rude attempts at 
 drawing houses and figures such as a child represents, with 
 round " O's " of different sizes for heads and bodies, and 
 pitchforks for legs and arms. . . . 
 
 Sister Tobias went on : " The Siege Gazette had come out 
 that day, with the news of " — she dropped her voice to a 
 whisper — " of her being likely to be married before long to 
 him that's gone. May Our Lord give him rest !" Sister 
 Tobias's well-accustomed fingers pattered over the bib of 
 her blue-checked apron, maldng the Sign. " And Sister 
 Hilda- Antony and me had the world's work with all the 
 people who stopped us in the street and came ^-ound us at the 
 Institute to say how glad they were. Talk of a stone 
 plopped in a duckp<md ! You'd have thought by the crazy 
 way folks carried on that two pretty yovmg people htul never 
 went and got engaged before." Sister Tobias was never 
 coldly grammatical in speech. " But the child was happy, 
 poor dear, in hearing even strangers praise him ; and when
 
 512 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the firing stopped and we were on our way home, she begged 
 us to turn out of it and call in at the Convent, where he'd 
 begged her to meet him, if only for a minute, not having 
 seen her since the Sunday when " 
 
 " Yes— yes !" 
 
 Saxham, who writhed inwardly, remembering that 
 Sunday, nodded, bending his heavy brows. His ears were 
 given to Sister Tobias, his eyes to the slight figure that 
 somehow, in the skirt some impatient movement had 
 wrenched from the gathers and the shirt-bodice that was 
 buttoned awry, had the air of a ragged, neglected child. 
 And she held up her scrawled slate to ward off his look, and 
 peeped at him round the side of it. 
 
 Big strong men like that could be cruel when they were 
 angry. The Ivid knew that so well. 
 
 " We went to the Convent with the child," Sister Tobias 
 continued : " We hadn't the heart to deny her, though we 
 thought the Mother might be vexed that we hadn't come 
 straight home. A queer thing happened as we crossed the 
 road and went up along the fence towards the gates with 
 the child between us. . . . A big, heavy man, dressed as 
 the miners dress, with a great black beard and his hat 
 pulled down over his eyes, came along in such a hurry 
 that he knocked Sister Hilda- Antony off the kerb into the 
 road, and brushed close up against her " 
 
 " Against Miss IMildare ? Did it occur to you that the 
 man had come out of the Convent enclosure ?" Saxham 
 asked quickly. 
 
 Sister Tobias shook her head. 
 
 " No ; but I did think he meant stopping and speaking to 
 the child, and then changed his mind and hurried on. 
 ' Did he hurt you, dearie V I asked her, seeing her shaking 
 and quite flustered-like. And she answers, * I don't 
 know. . . .' And ' Was it anN'one you knew ?' I puts to her 
 again, and ' I can't tell,' says she, like as if she was answer- 
 ing in her sleep. Do you thinks she understands we're 
 talking about her, poor lamb ?" 
 
 They both looked at her, and she, having been taught by 
 painful experience that to be the object of simultaneous 
 observation on the part of the man and woman meant 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 513 
 
 punishment involving stripes, began to tremble and hung her 
 head. From under her tangled hair she peeped from side to 
 side, wondering what it was she had left undone ? Ah ! — tha 
 broom, standing in the comer. She had forgotten to sweep 
 out the house-place and the bar. When the dreaded eyes 
 turned from her, she got up and went softly to the corner 
 where Sister Tobias's besom stood, and took it and began to 
 sweep, casting terrified glances through her hair at her two 
 Fates. 
 
 Something gripped Saxham by the heart and wrung it. 
 The scalding tears were bitter in his throat. Bo what he 
 would to keep them free, his eyes were dimmed and blinded, 
 and Sister Tobias wiped her own openly with the blue cotton 
 handkerchief. 
 
 " We thought the young gentleman would be waiting 
 near the Convent," said Sister Tobias, " or in one of the 
 ground-floor rooms, but he wasn't there. Me and Sister 
 Hilda- Antony looked at one another. ' Early days for a 
 young girl's sweetheart to be late at the meeting-place !' 
 eays Sister Hilda- Antony's eyes to me, and mine said back, 
 ' The Lord grant no harm's come to him !' We waited five 
 minutes by the school clock, that's never been let run down, 
 and then another five, and still he didn't come. He had 
 got iiis death- wound, though we didn't know it, hours 
 before." 
 
 " The Angel of Death had spread his wings over the 
 Convent. Both me and Sister Hilda-Antony felt there was 
 a strange and awful stillness and solemnness about the 
 place. At last me and her told the child that go we must. 
 We'd wait no longer. But she, knowing we'd never leave 
 without her, ran upstairs. W^e heard her light feet going 
 over the wet matting and down the long passage to the 
 chapel door. Then " 
 
 Sister Tobias sobbed for another moment in the blue 
 handkerchief. The child, who had been diligLntly sweep- 
 ing, looked at the woman and at the big man who had made 
 her cry, with great dilated eyes of fear. She put the broom 
 back noiselessly in its comer, and stole back to her stool. 
 Who knew what might happen next ? 
 
 " Then," said Sister Tobias, " we heard the drea<ilullcst 

 
 6U THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 scream. ' Mother !' just once, an(J after it dead silence. 
 Then — I don't know how we got there, it was so like a cruel 
 dream — but we were in the chapel, trying to raise them up. 
 That dear Saint — may the Peace of God and the Bliss of 
 His Vision be upon her for ever ! — lay dead on the altar- 
 steps where the wicked, murdering hand had shot her 
 down. . . . And the child lay across her, just where she had 
 dropped in trying to lift her. And the strength of me and 
 the Sister, and the strength of them that came after, wasn't 
 equal to unloose those slender little hands you're watching." 
 
 The slender little hands were busy \n*th the slate and 
 pencil as Saxham looked at them. 
 
 " Those that came and helped us had been sent on from 
 the Convent bombproof, where they'd been to look for her " 
 — Sister Tobias glanced sorrowfully at the o\\Tier of those 
 little busy hands — " with an Ambulance chair and a story 
 of more trouble. But Our Lady had had pity on the child. 
 She was past understanding why they'd come to fetch 
 her. . . . The brain can soak up trouble till it won't hold a 
 drop more. But she was quiet and happy kneeling by that 
 blessed Saint, waiting till the Lady should wake up, she 
 said. . . . And, 'deed and 'deed, but it looked like the 
 blessedest sleep " 
 
 Sister Tobias broke dowTi and cried outright. The 
 child eyed her half suspiciously, half wonderingly. Her 
 groat terrified eyes had not seen the man strike, but he 
 must have hurt the woman. Therefore, she looked sharply 
 at the man between tjie tangled masses of the hair that 
 could not be liept pinned up, and saw two great slow tears 
 ooze over his thick underlids, and glitter as they hung there, 
 and then fall. Others followed them, tumbling down the 
 square white face, and the stern mouth was wrenched with 
 a strange spasm, and the grim, chin trembled curiously. . . . 
 
 Somebody had hurt the man. ... It is not possible to 
 follow up the workings of the disordered intelhgence, and 
 spell out the blurred letters of the confused mind. It is 
 enough that her terror of him abated. She sUpped from 
 her stool to the floor, under the pretence of picking up her 
 slate-pencil, threw back the hair that prevented her seeing 
 clearly, nnd peered up in that working face of Saxham's 
 with curiosity, crouching near. She did not recoil violently 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 616 
 
 when the strange, sorrowful face bent towards her ; she 
 only shrank back as Saxham asked : 
 
 " You remember me ? You know my name ?" 
 
 She nodded, eyeing him warily. If his hand had moved, 
 she would have sprung backwards. But it did not stir. 
 
 " Tell me who I am, then ?" 
 
 " Man." 
 
 Her Ups shaped the word. Her voice was barely audible. 
 His heart beat thickly as he went on : 
 
 " Quite right, but something else besides a man. A 
 man with a name. Tell me the name, or shall I tell it 
 you ?" 
 
 She nodded, and her eyes were great and timorous, but 
 there was no terror of him in them now. 
 
 " My name is Saxham — Owen Saxham. Say the name 
 after me." 
 
 For a wonder she obeyed. Sister Tobias caught a breath 
 of surprise, but her subdued exclamation was silenced in 
 mid-utterance by Saxham's look, 
 
 " Dr. Owen Saxham — Doctor because I try to cure sick 
 people. You have seen me trying at the hospitals. You 
 have helped me many times " 
 
 She puckered her dehcate, bewildered brows, and held 
 her head on one side. To be made to think, and recall, 
 and remember, hurt. 
 
 " — Many times, and the sick people were grateful. 
 They often ask me now. How is Miss Mildare ?" 
 
 Her attention had wandered to the bronzed buttons on 
 the Doctor's khald coat. She was trying to count them, 
 it seemed, by the movement of her lips. Saxham went on 
 with inexorable patience : 
 
 " Never mind the l^uttons. Look at me. Think of the 
 patients at the Hospital who are asking when Lynette 
 Mildare is coming back again. Tell mo what I am to 
 say to them, Lynette ?" 
 
 His voice shook over the beloved name. La spite of his 
 glim effort to fight down the overmastering emotion, his eyes 
 brimmed over, and a drop splashed, hot and heavy, upon 
 the wandering hand that crept out to finger tho buttons 
 that would not let themselves be counted right. She 
 looked up at the eyes that wept for her, and their mingled 
 
 53—2
 
 516 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 love and anguish touched even her dulled mind to pity. 
 She held her slender hand up against the light, and looked 
 at the splash of wet upon it. 
 
 " You— cry ?" 
 
 There was a gUmmer of something in the eyes that re- 
 deemed their vagueness. A rushlight seen shicdng through 
 a night of mist upon a desolate mountain-side might have 
 meant as little or as much to eyes that saw it. Saxham 
 saw it, and it meant much to him. His great chest lifted 
 on a wave of hope as he answered her : 
 
 " I cry for somebody who cannot cry for herself. Shall 
 I tell you her name ? It is Lynette Mildare. When tears 
 come to her, then it will be for those who love her to cry 
 again for Joy, for she will be given back to them. . . ." 
 
 " Lord grant it !" breathed Sister Tobias behind them. 
 But Saxham had forgotten her. The fountains of his deep 
 were broken up and words came rushing from him. 
 
 " I think that day will come, Lynette. I believe that 
 day will come," he said, holding the beautiful vague gaze 
 \vith his. " If every drop in these veins of mine, poured out, 
 could bring it more quickly, it should be hastened so ; 
 if every faculty of my body, every cell in my brain, bent 
 to the achievement of one end, expended to the last unit of 
 energy, in the restoration of what is infinitely dearer to me 
 than life — than a hundred lives, if I had them to devote ! — 
 could insure its dawning, and bring the Ught of Reason 
 and Memory and Hope into these beloved eyes again " 
 
 A sob tore its way through the Doctor's great frame. 
 He rose up abruptly and hurried away. 
 
 LIV 
 
 A DEADLY lassitude, both physical and mental, had settled 
 down upon the men and women of the garrison. They 
 knew that Brounckers had gone south, leaving General 
 Huysmans in command of the investing forces. They 
 knew that the rainy season brought them fever, for they 
 shivered and burned with it, and they knew that the scanty 
 rations of coarse and unpalatable food were getting smaller 
 every day. 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 617 
 
 But they were conscious of these things in a dull way, 
 and as though they affected people who were a long distance 
 off. One day, when for the thousandth time word came 
 that the advance-guard of the Relief was in sight, when 
 the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a 
 poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there 
 was a brief flicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out 
 in force, guns were limbered up and galloped out north 
 and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention, and give 
 Grumer, conjectured to be waiting for it, the opportunity 
 for an eagle-like swoop down upon the harassed tortoise 
 sprawling on her sand-hills. But the rainy dark came 
 down upon the clatter of artiller5% and the shining dawn 
 crept up and brought the cruel news that the allies had 
 really been beaten back ; and if there was any doubt of that, 
 it was dissipated at the day's end when one of the Red 
 Cross waggons came rumbling back out of the sloppy 
 twilight, bringing Three Messengers to confirm the tale. 
 
 They M'ere eloquent enough, even in their speechlessness, 
 those three dead troopers, whose boots and coats were 
 missing, and whose pockets had been turned inside out. 
 Not a man of them was known to any member of the 
 beleaguered garrison. Yet every man and woman there 
 was the poorer by three friends and one more hope. 
 
 We know what was happening while Gueldersdorp ate 
 her patient heart out. It has been Avritten in the History 
 of Successful Strategy how Lord WilUams of Afghanistan, 
 landLQg at Cape Town in January, found Muller on his way 
 from Port Christmas, Whittaker at Bergstorm, Parria 
 at Kooisberg, Ruthven on the Brodder, and everybody 
 and everything at a deadlock. And being too old and 
 wise to disdain the wisdom of others, the keen old brain 
 under the frosty thatch recalled to mind the story of Stone- 
 wall Jackson, collected what forces he could muster, shppcd 
 in between two of the columns held immovable, and having 
 established his lines of communication to the south, 
 launched himself on Groenfontein, and created the necessary 
 diversion. A mighty wave rolled back to prot*>ct the 
 menaced Free State capital, the paralysed columns moved 
 again. Diamond Town was relieved by Sir George Parris. and 
 Commandant Selig Brounckers was captured at Pijlberg.
 
 618 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Doubtless he was a bully and a tyrant, that roaring- voiced, 
 truculent man. But those angry, red- veined grey eyes of 
 his could look Death squarely in the face, and the brain 
 behind them could conceive and plan stratagems and 
 tactics that were masterly, and devise works that were 
 marvels of Defensive Art. And the heavy hand that patted 
 Mevrouw Brounckers' head, as that devoted woman sat 
 disconsolate in the river-bed, surrounded by her children, 
 and pots, and bundles, and the roaring voice that softened 
 to speak words of consolation, even as the trap so in- 
 geniously set to catch a Tartar closed in — North, South, 
 East, West — belonged to a man who knew not only how 
 to fight and win and how to fight and lose, but how to love 
 and pity. 
 
 There came the faint dawn of a day in May when the 
 plan of that bright young man Schenk Eybel was tried, and 
 
 tried successfully The fine between two forts that lay 
 
 far apart on the south and south-west was pierced, while 
 the incessant roll of rifies made a mile-long fringe of Jagged 
 yellowish flame along the enemy's eastern trenches. Even 
 before the feint sputtered out the rush had been made, 
 the stratagem had developed, and at the bidding of twenty 
 incendiary torches, the daub-and-wattle huts of the Barala 
 town leaped skyward in one roaring conflagration. 
 
 We know the glorious, unlooked-for ending of that 
 day of fire and blood. It is marked \vith a white stone in 
 the History of the Siege of Gueldersdorp, and the chapter 
 is headed " The Turning of the Tables." It gives a spirited 
 description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans, 
 the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and 
 winds up with d. pen-and-ink sketch of BroUnckers' bright 
 boy brealdng the chaff-bread of captivity in the quartera 
 of that slim duyvel, the Engelsch Commandant. 
 
 But while the Boer was yet top-dog in the scuffle, and 
 held the Barala stad, and the fort that had lately done 
 duty as headquarters for the Irregulars, holding captive 
 their commanding ofiicer, several of his juniors, and some 
 fifteen troopers, Avith a handful of Town Guards ; and all the 
 fighting men who could be spared from the trenches were 
 being posted between the menacing danger and the town, and 
 h couple of field-guiis were being hurried into position, and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 519 
 
 It had ildt yet occurred to Commandant Schenk Eybel that 
 the cautious Huysmans might leave him in the lurch, things 
 looked very bad indeed for the doughty defenders of little 
 Gueldersdorp — certainly up to afternoon-tea time, when a 
 couple of Scotch girls crossed the two hundred yards of 
 veld that lay between the Fort and the town, carrying cans 
 of steaming tea for the parching Britons penned up there. 
 
 You are to see those calm, unconscious heroines start, 
 fixing their hairpinned braids with quick, deft touches, 
 pinning up their skirts as for the crossing of a wimpling 
 bum rather than for the fording of Death's black river. 
 They measured the distance with cool, keen eyes, took up a 
 can in each hand, exchanged a word, and started. The re- 
 maining can they left behind, saying they would come back 
 for it. And they meant to, and would have, but for a pale 
 young woman in curling-phis, crowned by the deplorable 
 wreck of a large and flowery hat, and wearing a pink cotton 
 gown of deplorable limpness, through the washed-out 
 material of which her sharpened collar-bones and thin 
 shoulders threatened to pierce. For 'ow are you to take 
 to call a proper pride in yourself when you 'aven't got no 
 'art for anytlnnk any more 1 
 
 You are to understand that Emigration Jane 'ad bin 
 'in 'Orspital along of what the doctors called the Triphoid 
 Fever, months an' months ; and 'ad bin orful bad, an' 
 sent back again after beiag discharged, on accounts of an 
 Elapse, and kep' a dreadful time at the Women's Com- 
 balescent, through her blood being nothink but water — 
 and now you may guesa the reason of that fruitless search 
 on the part of W. Keyse. 
 
 She tried to run at first, but the can was full and heavy, 
 and her knees shook under her at the screaming of the 
 bullets over that cross-swept field. Her pore 'art beat 
 somethink crooil, and there was a horrible kiad of swishing 
 in her years, but to give up, and chuck away the can, and 
 scuttle back to cover, wdth Them Two stepping along in 
 front as cool — and more than halfway over, was what 
 Emigration Jane could not demean herself to do. And 
 at last they passed her coming back, and the Fort loomed 
 up before her, as suddenly as though it had sprouted up 
 mushroom-fashion under her dazzled eyee. And gritny
 
 620 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 men were leaning over the sandbag-parapet applauding 
 her, and blackened hands attached to hairy arms reached 
 down and grabbed the can, and it was taken up into the 
 air and vanished, she never knew how. And then she was 
 staring up into the lean, brickdust-coloured face of a Cor- 
 poral of the Town Guard, whose head was swathed in a 
 bloody bandage, and in all the world there was only Her 
 and Him. 
 
 " You fust-class little Nailer. You Al bit o' frock " 
 
 W. Keyse began. Then his pale eyes bolted and his Jaw 
 fell, and his overwhelming joy and relief took on the aspect 
 of horrified consternation. 
 
 " Watto !" he was beginning weakly, but she tore her 
 gaze from his, and with a rending sob, covered her face 
 with her hands, and ran blindly. He remained petrified 
 and staring. And then a bullet struck him full in the face, 
 and he screamed like a shot rock-rabbit, and threw up his 
 arms and fell back, smothering in his own blood, behind the 
 breastwork. And she never knew the cruel trick that 
 Fate had played her, as she ran. . . . 
 
 She learned it later, when Young Eybel and his party 
 were marched prisoners into town, and cheer upon cheer 
 went up from British throats, and bells were ringing Joy- 
 fully, and " God Save the Queen !" bellowed in every 
 imaginable key, was heard from every possible quarter. 
 
 It was while the Barala were wailing over their suffocated 
 women and piccaninns, and the acrid fumes of burning 
 yet himg heavy in the powder- tainted air, and the R.A.M.C, 
 men and their volunteer helpers were bringing in the wounded 
 and the dead, that Emigration Jane saw a face upon a 
 stretcher that was being carried through the rejoicing 
 orowd, and screamed at the sight, and fell tooth and nail 
 upon the human barrier that interposed between herself 
 and it, and got through — how, she never could 'a' told you. 
 
 Rather a dreadful face it was, with -wide-open, staring 
 eyes protruding through a stiffening mask of gore. The 
 teeth grinned, revealed by the livid, drawn-back lips, and 
 how she knew him again in such a orful styte she couldn't 
 tell you — not if you offered her pounds and pounds to 
 Bay 
 
 She was only Emigration Jane, but when the bearers 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 621 
 
 halted with the stretcher, it was in obedience to the gesture 
 and the look of a young woman who had risen above herself 
 into the keen and piercing atmosphere of High Tragedy. 
 
 " Put that down, you two blokes. Wot for ?" Her thin 
 throat swelled visibly before the scream came : " 'Cos *e 
 belongs to me ! 'Ain't that enough ? Then— I belongs to 
 'im ! Dead or livin' — oh, my darlin' ! my darlin' !" 
 
 The bearers interchanged a look as they laid their 
 burden down. It was not heavy, for Corporal W. Keyse, 
 even when not living under conditions of semi-starvation, 
 was a short man and a spare. Had been, one was tempted 
 to say, in regard to his condition : " For," said one of the 
 R.A.M.C. men to a sympathetic bystander, " the chap has 
 had a tremendous wipe over the head with a revolver-butt 
 or a gun-stock, and he has been shot in the face besides. 
 There's the hole plain where the bullet went in under his 
 near nostril, and came out at the left-hand corner of his 
 off eye. And unless a kind o' miracle happens, I should 
 say, myself, that it would be a saving of time to carry him 
 straight to the Cemetery." 
 
 *' Don't let the poor girl hear you !" said the sympathetic 
 bystander. But Emigration Jane was past hearing or 
 seeing anything but the damaged head upon the canvas 
 pad, as she beat her breast and cried out to it wildly, 
 dropping on her knees beside it : 
 
 " O my own, own, try an' know me ! Come back for 
 long enough to s'y one word ! O Gawd, if You let 'im, I'll 
 pray to You all my days. pore, pore darlin' 'ead that 
 wicked men 'ave 'urt so crooil " 
 
 It was a lover's bosom that she drew it to, panting under 
 the limp and shabby cotton print gown. And the voice 
 that called W. Keyse to come back from the very threshold 
 of the Otherwhere was the voice of true, true love. 
 
 It worked the kind o' miracle, for one of the Corporal's 
 stiflFened eyelids quivered and came do\vTi halfway, and 
 the martial spirit of its owner flickered up long enough for 
 W. Keyse to sputter out : 
 
 " Cripps, it's 'Er ! Am I dead an' got to 'Eaven — on 
 somebody else's pass ?" 
 
 " Bom to be hung, I should say," commented the 
 R.A.M.C. man aside to his mate. " Chuck some water over
 
 622 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the young woman, one of you," he added, as the stretcher 
 was lifted. " And tell her, when she comes to, that we've 
 taken her sweetheart to Hospital instead of to the other 
 place." 
 
 " Rum critters, women," commented another bystander, 
 not untender in his maimer of sprinkling the dubious liquid 
 known in Gueldersdorp as water out of a cracked tin dipper 
 over the face of the young woman who sat upon the ground 
 in the centre of a circular palisade of interested human 
 legs. " Look at this one, for instance. Lively as a vink 
 as long as she believes her chap a corpse, and does a solid 
 flop as soon as she finds out he has a kick in him. Help 
 her up, you on the other side. Do you think you could 
 walk now, miss, if you tried to ?" 
 
 She made a faltering attempt, but her knees shook imder 
 her. Her clasped hands shook, too, as she held them out, 
 beseeching those about her to be pitiful, and tell her where 
 " they " had taken him. Then, when she was told, and 
 because she was too weak and dazed to walk, she ran all the 
 way to the Hospital, and volunteered to nurse him. 
 
 Saxham stitched up the spht scalp of W. Keyse, and 
 grimly congratulated him upon the thickness of the skull 
 beneath it. The bullet had, as has already been indicated, 
 gone in under the left nostril, and emerged below the inner 
 corner of the right eye, gaining the recipient of the wound 
 notoriety as well as a strong temporary snuffle and a slight 
 permanent cast. . . . 
 
 " You shall git well, deer," Emigration Jane would tell 
 her patient twenty times a day. " You carn't 'elp it, 
 becos I means to myke you." 
 
 " A' right," her hero would snuffle. One dtty he added, 
 with a weakly swoop of one lean arm in the direction of her 
 waist : '* Mend me an' marry me. That's wot I call a Fair 
 Division o' Labour. Twig ?" 
 
 She crimsoned, gasping : 
 
 " You don't never mean it ?" 
 
 " Stryte I mean it," declared W. Keyse. " Wot d'yoU 
 tyke me for ?" 
 
 His bed was in a comer, and a screen baffled prying eyes. 
 She hung over him, trembling, ardent, doubting, joyful, 
 faltering :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 623 
 
 '* S'y it agyne, darlin' ! Upon yer solemn natural " 
 
 He said it with the lean arm round her. 
 
 " An' it's me — me wot you wants — an' not that Other 
 One ? " 
 
 He swore it. 
 
 " You and not that Other One. So help me Jiminy 
 Cripps !" 
 
 " An' you've forgiven me — abart them letters ?** Her 
 face was coming close. ... 
 
 " Every time I blooming well kissed *em, arter I bin an' 
 picked 'em up," he declared. 
 
 " You did — that ?" she quavered, marvelling at the 
 greatness of his nature. 
 
 " Look in me jacket pocket if you think Fm spiimin' 
 you fairy ones." His close arm slackened a little. " Now 
 there's somethin' I got to up an' tell, if you never tips me 
 the 'Ow Do no more." 
 
 " Wot is it, deer ?" Her heart beat painfully. Was 
 this something the reason why he had not yet kissed her ? 
 
 " It's got to do with the Dutchy wot landed me this 
 clip over the cokernut " — he indicated some plaster strap- 
 pings that decorated the seat of intelUgence — "with a 
 revolver-butt, when they rushed the Fort. After 'e'd 
 plugged at me wiv' 'is last cartridge an' missed." The 
 Adam's apple in his thin throat worked up above the collar 
 of the grey flannel Hospital jacket. "I — I outed'im!" 
 said W. Keyse. 
 
 " O' course you did, deer." Her heart thrilled with 
 pride in her hero. " An' serve 'im glad — the narsty, 
 blood-thirsty, murderin' " 
 
 He interrupted : 
 
 "'Old'ard! Wait till you knows 'oo it was." Ho gulped, 
 and the Adam's apple jerked in the old way. " That 'ulldn' 
 big Dopper you was walkin' out along of, when I " 
 
 " Walt ! It was— Walt ?" 
 
 She shuddered and grew pale. 
 
 " That's the bloke I means. I 'ad to *ave 'im," explained 
 W. Keyse, " or 'e'd 'ave 'ad me. 80 I sent 'im in. With 
 my one, two, tin' the Haymaker's Lift. Right in the 
 middle of 'is dirty weskit. VS. !" He blew a sigh. *' Now 
 it'8 out, an' I suppo^ie you 'ates me V
 
 524 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 She panted. 
 
 " It's 'orrible, deer, but — but — you 'ad fco. An' — an' — 
 if I 'ave to s'y it, I'd a bloomin' sight rather it was 'Im 
 than You !" 
 
 " I'll 'ave my kiss now," said the lordly W. Keyse. And 
 took it from her willing lips. 
 
 LV 
 
 There was no perceptible change in Lynette, either at 
 the time of young Eybel's frustrated coup, or for long after. 
 She was to Live as much as possible in the open air, Saxham 
 had insisted, and so you would find the girl, with a Sister 
 in charge of her, sitting in the Cemetery, where the crop 
 of little white crosses thickened every day. The little 
 blue and wliite irises had bloomed upon those two graves 
 where her adopted mother and her brave young lover lay, 
 before the dawning of that day the nuns prayed and 
 Saxham hoped for. 
 
 It was his bitter-sweet joy to be with her constantly, 
 striving with all his splendid powers of brain and body 
 to brace the shattered nerves, and restore the exhausted 
 strength, and lead the darkened mind back gently and by 
 degrees towards the light. 
 
 She did not shrink from him now, but would answer his 
 questions submissively, and give him her hand mechanically 
 at meeting and parting. Saxham had not the magnetic 
 influence over shy and backward children that another man 
 possessed. She would smile and brighten when she saw the 
 Colonel coming, upright and alert as ever, though bearing 
 heavy traces now in the haggard lines and deep hollows of 
 his face, in the greying hairs above his temples and in the 
 close-clipped brown moustache, as in the Quixote-like 
 gauntness of the figure that had never carried much flesh, 
 of the long struggle of close on seven months' duration. 
 
 The pleasant little whistle would die upon his lips when 
 he saw her sitting by the Mother's grave, plaiting grasses 
 while the Sister sewed, or making clumsy babyish attempts 
 at drawing on her little slate. From this she disliked to be 
 parted, so her gentle nurses fastened it to one end of a
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 525 
 
 long ribbon, and its pencil to the other, and tied the ribbon 
 about her waist. 
 
 One day, as the Colonel stooped to speak to her, his keen 
 glance noted that the wavering outline of a house stood 
 upon the little slate. The living descendant of the primi- 
 tive savage who had outlined the forms of men and beasts 
 upon the flank of the great boulder when this old world 
 was young, would have scorned the drawing, and with good 
 reason. It was so feeble and wavering an attempt to 
 convey, in outline, the idea of a white man's dwelling. 
 
 The roof sagged wonderfully, and the chimneys were 
 at frenzied angles with the sides of the irregular cube, with 
 its four windows of impossibly varjdng size, and the oblong 
 patch that meant a door between them. Above the door 
 was another oblong, set transversely, and rather suggesting 
 a tavern-sign. 
 
 There were some clumsily indicated buildings, possibly 
 sheds and stables of daub and wattle, eking out the ram- 
 shackle house. Behind it and to the left of it were scrawls 
 that might have been meant for trees. An enclosiu-e of 
 spiky lines might have indicated an orchard-hedge. And 
 there were things in the middle distance, also to the left, 
 that you might accept as beehives or as native kraals. 
 The man who looked at them knew they were native 
 kraals. He drew in his breath sharply, and the fold be- 
 tween his eyebrows deepened, as he scanned the clumsy 
 drawing on the slate. Without those rude lines in the 
 foreground to the right of the house, enclosing a little 
 kopje of boulders and a low, irregular grave-mound, the 
 drawing would have meant nothing at all, even to the eye 
 of a practised scout, except a tavern on the lonely veld. 
 The grave at the foot of the little kopje located the spot. 
 
 " A veld hotel in the Orange Free State — a \vretched 
 shanty of the usual corrugated-iron and mud-wall type, 
 in the grass country between Driepoort and Kroon- 
 fontein." 
 
 He heard the wraith of his own voice speaking to the 
 dead woman who lay under the blossoming' irises at hi.s feet. 
 He saw her \vith the mental vision quite clearly. Her groat 
 purple-grey eyes were bent on his from their superior level,
 
 628 THE DOP BOOTOR 
 
 and they were inscrutable in their strange, secret defiance, 
 and indomitable in the determination of their regard. 
 
 Why had she been so bent upon hiding the trail ? Why 
 had she distrusted him ? 
 
 He bent upon one knee in the grass beside the slender, 
 shrinking figure, woman's and yet child's, and held out the 
 little slate to her, and said, with the smile that even back- 
 ward children could not resist : 
 
 " Did you draw this ?" 
 
 She nodded, with great wistful eyes, looking shyly up 
 at him from under their sweeping black lashes. He went 
 on, pointing with a slender grass-blade to each object as 
 he named it : 
 
 " It is a house, and these are sheds and stables, and this 
 is an orchard, and here the Kafl&rs live. But who lives in 
 the house ?" 
 
 She whispered, with a look of secret fear : 
 
 " The man livas there. And the woman." 
 
 " Tell me the man's name." 
 
 She breathed, after a hesitation that was full of troubled 
 apprehension : 
 
 '• Bough." 
 
 A red flush mounted in his thin cheek, and he drew his 
 breath in sharply. He asked : 
 
 " Does anyone else live in the house 1" 
 
 She reflected with a knitted brow. He helped her. 
 
 " I do not moan the travellers — the men and women 
 who come driving up in Cape-carts and transport- waggons. 
 and drive away again, but someone who lives with Bough 
 and the woman. She has been at the tavern a long, long 
 time, though she is so young and so httle. Try to remember 
 her name." 
 
 The knitted brow relaxed, and the beautiful dim eyes 
 had almost a smile in them. 
 
 " It is ' the I^d.' " 
 
 " Try and think. Has she no other name ?" 
 
 She shook her head. He gave up that trail as lost, and 
 moved the grass- blade to another part of the drawing on 
 the slate. 
 
 " Tell me what this ia 1" 
 
 She answered at ono« :
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 527 
 
 " It is the Little Kopje. The EngUsh traveller made it 
 when he put the dead woman in the ground." 
 
 His heart beat heavily, and the hand that pointed with 
 the grass-blade shook a little. 
 
 " Where is the man who buried the dead woman and 
 built the Little Kopje ?" 
 
 She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a 
 grave. 
 
 " There." The slender finger climbed the heap of 
 boulders. " And there is where the Kid sits when she 
 is a bad girl and runs away." She peeped up in his face 
 almost slyly. " Then they call her : ' You Kid, come here ! 
 Dirty Httle slut, take the broom and sweep out the bar ! 
 Idle little devil, fetch water for the kitchen !' " Her smile 
 was peaked and elfish. She laid a cunning finger beside 
 her pursed-up lips. " But though they scold and call bad 
 names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little 
 Kopje. Beat her when she comes in, and serve her right, 
 the impudent little scum ! But never come near the 
 Little Kopje, because of the spook the Barala boy saw 
 there one night when the moon was big and shining." 
 
 He said, with infinite pity in his tone, and a compas- 
 sionate mist rising in those keen bright eyes of his : 
 
 " They are cruel to the Kad, both Bough and the woman ?" 
 
 She began to shake. The guardian Sister, who sat sew- 
 ing a httle way behind her, looked up anxiously at her 
 charge. He pacified her wdth a glance, and, taking one 
 of the slender trembling hands in a firm, kind clasp, re- 
 peated his question : 
 
 " Always cruel, cruel ! But Bough " 
 
 A spasm contracted her face. At the base of the slender 
 throat something throbbed and throbbed. She whispered 
 brokenly : 
 
 " When the woman went away " 
 
 Her slender fingers closed desperately upon his. Her 
 heart shook her, and Fear was in her eyes. Her voice 
 vibrated and shuddered at her white Ups as a catight moth 
 vibrates and shudders in a spider-web. She began again : 
 
 " When the woman went away. Bough " 
 
 Her eyes quailed and flickered ; her pale and quivering 
 face was convulsed by a sudden opasm of a^vful fear. The
 
 528 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 muscles of her whole body stiffened in the immovable rigor 
 of terror. Only her head Jerked from side to side, like 
 that of some timid creature of the wilds held captive in 
 crushing folds or crunching fangs. And he comprehended 
 all ; and understood all, in one lightning leap of intuition, 
 as he saw. 
 
 " Hush !" He stopped her with his authoritative eyes 
 and the firm, reassuring pressure of his hand. " Forget 
 that — speak of it no more. Try and tell me who lies here, 
 under these grasses and flowers that you water every day ?" 
 
 He moved the hand he held to touch the grave, and the 
 spasm that contracted her features relaxed, and the terror 
 died out of her eyes, as though some soothing, healing virtue 
 were conveyed to her by the mere contact with that sacred 
 earth. He went on : 
 
 " She was very noble, very pure, and very beautiful. 
 Everyone loved her, and her life was spent in doing good. 
 You were dear to her — inexpressibly dear to her. She used 
 to call you her beloved daughter. Tell me who she was ?" 
 
 Her face quivered, and in the depths of her dim, vague 
 eyes a beam of the golden hght of old was rekindled. 
 
 " She was the Lady. When will she come again ?" 
 
 He raised his hand and pointed to the sky. 
 
 " When that is rolled away, and the Sign of the Cross 
 shines from the east to the west, and from the north to 
 the south, and the King of Glory comes with His Angels 
 and His Saints, we shall see her again, Lynette " 
 
 His voice broke. He laid the cool, delicate, nerveless 
 hand back upon her knee, and rose, for the Sister was 
 folding up her sewing. He looked long after the girlish 
 figure as it was led away. 
 
 He understood everything now. He knew why the 
 mother-plover had trailed her wing in the dust, striving to 
 lead the footsteps of the stranger aside from the hidden nest. 
 He stooped and gathered a blade or two of grass, and a few 
 crumbs of red, sandy earth, from the grave at his feet, and 
 kissed them, and folded them reverently in an envelope, 
 and hid the httle packet in his breast before he went. 
 
 That evening there were pillars and banks of dust on 
 the north-west horizon, and the flashes of lyddite and the 
 booming of artillery told patient Gueldersdorp that the 
 
 1
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 52« 
 
 hour of deliverance was near. A few hours later the Relief 
 had lamp-signalled brief details of the battle with Huys- 
 mans, ending with " Good-night " and the promise to fight 
 a way in next morning. Later still, eight troopers in khaki, 
 Jaunty ostrich-tips in their smasher hats, rode into the 
 little battered village town that huddled on the low , sandy 
 mound, and all the waiting world was gladdened with the 
 news. And London called on a quiet elderly lady, to tell 
 her what the man, her boy, had done. 
 
 The name of that little hamlet town has, cruelly enough, 
 passed into a byword — a synonym for everything that is 
 rowdy, vulgar, apish in the English character, with the 
 dregs stirred up. But yet it will ring down the silver 
 grooves of Time as long as Time shall be. 
 
 Do I wander from the thread of my story — I who have 
 dressed my puppets in the brave deeds of those who strove 
 and endured and suffered, to what a glorious end ? 
 
 Great writers lay down plans, formulate elaborate 
 synopses. Not so I, who, out of all the wreaths that 
 Fame holds yet in her lap to give away, shall never call 
 one laurel mine. . . . 
 
 A wandering wind came sighing past my ears one night 
 upon the Links at Herion, burdened with this story it had 
 to tell. Before then it had only blo%^Ti in fitful gusts. 
 Then again it blew steadily. I had caught some whispers 
 from it years before. On the deck of the great, populous, 
 electric-hghted ocean-hotel that was hurrying me across 
 the Atlantic, racing the porpoise-schools to get to New 
 York City ; and later at Washington, when the red sunset 
 fires burned low behind the Capitol, it spoke to me in the 
 wonderful, beloved voice I shall never hear on earth any 
 more. Yet once more the -ndnd came faintly sighing, in 
 the giant blue shadow of Table Mountain ; i*-. blew at 
 Johannesburg, six thousand feet above sea-level, in a raging 
 cyclone of red gritty dust. Again it came, stirring the 
 celadon-green carpet of veld that is spread at the feet of 
 the Magahesberg Ranges, that were turquoise-blue as the 
 Bcillas growing in the South Welsh garden that lies before 
 the window where I write, this variable spring day. But 
 it blew with a most insistent note on the dumpy moimd 
 where they have rebuilt the ridiculous, glorious village that 
 
 34
 
 530 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 gave birth to deeds worthy of the Age Heroic, about whose 
 sand-bagged defences nightly patrolled a Sentinel who 
 never slept. 
 
 Gueldersdorp tumbled out of bed at three-thirty, to see 
 the troops march in by the cold white morning moonlight 
 that painted long indigo-blue shadows of marching horse- 
 men and rolling guns, drawn by many horses, and huge- 
 teamed baggage-waggons, eastward over the bleached dust. 
 I dare not attempt to describe the indescribable. Zulu 
 and Barala, Celestial and Hindu, welcomed the Relief each 
 after his own manner, and were glad and rejoiced. But 
 of these haggard men and emaciated women of British 
 race I can but say that in them human joy attained the 
 climax of a sacred frenzy — that human gratitude and 
 enthusiasm, loyalty and patriotism, reached the pitch at 
 which the mercury in the thermometer of human emotion 
 ceases to record altitudes. 
 
 At its height, when the last fort had fallen to England 
 and the flag of the United Republics had fluttered down 
 from the tree whence it had waved so long, and the Union 
 Jack went up to frantic cheering, and the retreating cloud 
 of dust on the horizon told of the exit of the enemy from 
 the Theatre of War, Saxham played his one trump card 
 in the game that meant life and death to him, and life, and 
 everything that made life worth living, to one other. 
 * * ♦ ♦ ♦ 
 
 You are to see the hulking Doctor with the square- 
 cut face, his grim under-jaw more squarely set than ever, 
 his blue eyes smouldering anxiety under their glooming 
 brows, trying to coax a pale, bewildered girl to take a walk 
 with him. She would at length, provided Sister Tobias 
 walked on '^.he other side and held her hand. So this party 
 of three plunged into the boiling whirlpool of joyous 
 Gueldersdorp. 
 
 People were singing " Grod Save the Queen," and " The 
 Red, White, and Blue," " Auld Lang Syne " and " Rule, 
 Britannia," all at once and all together, and playing the 
 times of them on mouth-organs and concertinas. They were 
 shaking hands with one another and everybody else, and 
 shedding tears of Joy, and borrowing the pocket-handker- 
 chiefs of sympathetic strangers k) dry ihem, or leaving
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 631 
 
 Ihem undried. They were crowding the Government 
 kitchens, drinking the healths of the officers and men of 
 Great Britain's Union Brigade in hot soup and hot coffee. 
 They were clustered like bees upon the most cHmbable 
 house-tops, watching those retiring dust-clouds in the dis- 
 tance, and the nearer movements of their friends and allies ; 
 they were hearing the experiences of dust-stained and 
 travel- worn Imperialists, and telling their own ; and one 
 and all, they were thanking God Who had led them, 
 through bodily fear, and mental anguish, and bitter 
 privations, to hail the dawn of this most blessed day. 
 
 The electrical atmosphere, the surge of the multitude, the 
 roar of thousands of voices, the gaze of thousands of eyes, 
 had its effect upon the girl. vShe trembled and flushed 
 and paled. Her breath came quick and short. She threw 
 back her head and gasped for air. But she did not wish 
 to be taken back to the Convent bombproof. She shook her 
 head when Sister Tobias suggested that they should return. 
 
 And then some of the women whom she had helped to 
 nurse in hospital saw her, and recognised her, and came 
 about her with pitiful words and compassionate looks — not 
 only for her own sake, but for that dead woman's whose 
 adopted daughter they knew her to have been. 
 
 " You poor, blessed, innocent lamb !" They crowded 
 about her, kissing her hands and her dress, and Sister 
 Tobias's shabby black habit. " Lord help you !" they 
 mourned over her. " Christ pity you, and bring you to 
 yourself again !" 
 
 " Why are you so sorry ?" Lynette asked them, knitting 
 her delicate brows, and peering curiously in their tearful 
 smiling faces. " No !" she corrected herself ; " I mean why 
 are you so glad ?" 
 
 " Glad is ut, honey !" screamed a huge Irishwoman, 
 throwing a brawny red arm about the shrinking figure and 
 hugging it. '* Begob, wid the Holy Souls dancin' Jigs in 
 Purgatory, an' the Blessed Saints clappin' their ban's in 
 Heaven, we have rayson to be glad ! Whirroosh ! Ould 
 Erin for ever — an' God save the Cornel !" 
 
 She yelled with all the power of her Celtic lungs, plucked 
 off her downtrodden shoes, slapped their soles together 
 ■martly, and, with a gestvire of royal prodigaUty, tossed 
 
 34—2
 
 532 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 them right and left into the air, performed a caper of 
 surprising agility on elephantine, blue -yam- stocking - 
 covered feet, and was carried away by a roaring surge of 
 the joyous crowd, vociferating. 
 
 Saxham felt the slender hand of his charge tighten upon 
 his arm, and his heart leaped as he noted the working of 
 the sensitive face and the heaving of the small, nymph-like 
 bosom under the thin material of her dress. He hoped, he 
 believed that a change was taking place in her. He said 
 to himself that the delicate mechanism of her brain, clogged 
 and paralysed by a great mental shock, was revitalising, 
 storing energy, gaining power ; that the lesion was healing ; 
 that she would recover — must recover. 
 
 Then his quick eye saw fatigue in her. They took her 
 back out of the dust and the clamour and the crowd, back 
 to the quiet of the Cemetery. 
 
 It happened there. For as she stood again beside the 
 long, low mound beneath which the heart that had cherished 
 her lay mouldering, they saw that the tears were running 
 down her face, and that her whole body was shaken with 
 sobbing. And then, as a wild tornado of cheering, mingled 
 with drifts of martial music, swept northwards from Market 
 Square, she fell upon her knees beside the grave, and cried 
 as if to living ears : 
 
 " Mother ;— oh ! Mother, the Relief ! They're here ! Oh, 
 my own darling — to be glad without you ! . . ." 
 
 She lay there prone, and wept as though all the tears 
 pent up in her since that numbing double stroke of the 
 Death Angel's sword were flowing from her now. And 
 Sister Tobias, glancing doubtfully up at Saxham's face, saw 
 it transfigured and irradiated with a great and speechless 
 Joy. For he knew that the light had come back to the 
 beautiful eyes he loved, and that the Future might yield its 
 harvest of Joy yet, even yet, for the Dop Doctor, he believed 
 in his own blindness. 
 
 LVI 
 
 They were standing together in the same place two months 
 later when he told her all, and asked her to be his wife in 
 his own brusque characteristic way. 
 
 4
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 633 
 
 " You have been so good, so kind," she said, in rather 
 formal phrase, but with her sweet eyes shining through 
 tears and her sensitive lips trembling. " You have shown 
 yourself to be so noble in your unselfish care for others, in 
 your unsparing efforts for the good and benefit of every- 
 one " 
 
 " Put that by," said Saxham rather roughly, " and please 
 to look at me. Miss Mildare." 
 
 He had never called her Lynette since her recovery, or 
 touched the pretty hand he coveted unless in formal 
 greeting. 
 
 " Put all that by. You see me to-day as you have seen 
 me for months past, conscientious and cleanly, sober and 
 sane, in body as in mind, discharging my duty at the 
 Hospital and elsewhere as well as any other man possessing 
 the special qualifications it demands. Pray understand 
 that I am not a philanthropist, and have never posed as 
 one. For the sake, first of a man who believed in me, and 
 secondly of a woman whom I love — and you are she — I 
 have done what I have." 
 
 He squared his great shoulders and stood up before her, 
 and, though his face had never had any charm for her, its 
 power went home to her and its passion thrilled. 
 
 " I play no part. The man I seem to be I am. But up 
 to seven months ago, before the siege began, I was known 
 in this town, and with reason, as the Dop Doctor." 
 
 He saw recollection waken in her eyes, and nerved himself 
 to the sharp ordeal of changing it to repulsion and 
 disgust. 
 
 " You have heard that name applied to me. It conveyed 
 nothing loathsome to your innocent mind. You once 
 repeated it to me, and were about to ask its meaning. I 
 had it in my mind then to enlighten you, and for the mean 
 and cowardly baseness that shrank from the exposure I 
 have to pay now in the "—a muscle in his pale face 
 twitched — " the exquisite pain it is to me to tell you 
 to-day." 
 
 " Then do not tell me." She said it almost in a whisper. 
 " Dr. Saxham, I beg you most earnestly to spare yourself," 
 She dropped her eyes under the fierce earnestness of his, 
 and knitted her oold little hands in one another. " Please
 
 634 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 leave the rest unsaid," she begged, without looking at 
 him. 
 
 " It cannot be," said Saxham. " Miss IVlildare, the Dop 
 Doctor was only another nickname for the Town Drunkard. 
 And now you know what you should have known before if 
 I had not been a coward and a knave." 
 
 She turned her eyes softly upon hiiH, and they could not 
 rest, it seemed to her, upon a man of braver and more lofty 
 bearing. 
 
 " I was the Town Drunkard," Saxham went on, in the 
 cold, clear voice that cut like a knife to the intelligence. 
 '* Known in every liquor-saloon, and familiar to every 
 constable, and a standing butt for the clumsy Jests tliat the 
 most utter dolt of a Police Magistrate might splutter from 
 the Bench." His Jarring laugh hurt lier. " The Man in 
 the Street, and tlie Woman of the Street, for that matter — 
 pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truth must be told 
 — were my godfather and my godmother, and they gave 
 me that name between them. You are trembling, Miss 
 Mildaro. Sit down upon that balk, and I will finish." 
 
 There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been 
 used in the construction of a gun- mounting. She moved to 
 it and sat down, and the Doctor went on : 
 
 " I am not going to weary you with the story of how I 
 came to be — what I have told you. But that I had lived 
 a clean and honourable and temperate life up to thirty 
 years of age — when my world caved in with me — I swear is 
 the very truth !" 
 
 She said gently : " I can believe it. Dr. Saxham." 
 
 " Even if you could not it would not alter the fact. And 
 then, at the lieight of my success, and on the Ijrink of a 
 marriage tliat I dreamed would bring me the fulfilment of 
 every hope a man may cherish, one impulse of pity and 
 charity towards a wretched little woman brought me ruin, 
 ruin, ruin !" 
 
 Pity for a wretched woman had brought it all about. 
 She was glad to see the Saxham of her knowledge in that 
 Saxham whom she had not known. He folded his great 
 arms upon his broad breast and went on : 
 
 " Nothing was left to me. Everything was gone. Re- 
 habilitation in the eyes of the Law — for I gained that
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 636 
 
 much — did not clear me in the eyes of Society— that hugs 
 the guilt-stained criminal to its lieart in tlie full conscious- 
 ness of what his deeds are, and shudders at tlie innocent 
 man upon whom has once fallen the shadow of that grim 
 and bloody Idol that civilisation misnames Justice. I was 
 cast out. Even by the brother I had trusted and the 
 woman I had loved. I had in a vague way believed in God 
 tintil then ; I know I used to pray to Him to bless those I 
 loved, and help me to achieve great things for their sakes. 
 But nothing at all was left of that except a dull aching 
 desire to throw back in the face of the Deity the little He 
 had left to me. My health, and my intellectual powers, and 
 my self-respect. . . ." 
 
 Her voice came to his ears in the half-whispered words : 
 
 " Had He left you so little, after all ?" 
 
 " Little enough," said Saxham doggedly, " compajed 
 with whfilt I had lost. And as it is the privilege of the 
 Christian to blame either the Almighty or the devil for what 
 ever ills are brought on him by his own blind, reckless 
 challenging of the Inevitable — termed Fate and Destiny 
 by classical Paganism, — so I found myself at odds with 
 One I had been taught to call my Maker." 
 
 In His own acre, close to her beloved dead, with all those 
 little white crosses marking where other dust that had once 
 praised Him with the human voice lay waiting for the sum- 
 mons of the Resurrection, it was incredibly awful to her to 
 hear Him thus denied. She. grew pale and shuddered, and 
 Saxham saw. 
 
 " You see that I wish to be honest with you, and open 
 and above-board. I would not ever have you say to your- 
 self, ' This man deceived — this man misled me, wisliing mo 
 to think him better than he was.' Tliere is not much more 
 to tell you — save that I took what money remained to me 
 at the bank and from the sale of my last possessions — 
 about a thousand pounds — and ihook the dust off from 
 my shoes, and came out here, drunk, to carry out my 
 purpose of self-degradation to the uttermost. And 1 
 became a foul beast among beasts that were even fouler, but 
 less vile and less sliameful because their mental and moral 
 standard was infinitely lower than my own. And they 
 gave me the name you know of." His voice had the ring
 
 630 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 of steel smitten on steel. He drew himself up with a move- 
 ment of almost savage pride, and the knotted veins swelled 
 on his broad white foreliead, and his blue eyes blazed under 
 his thunderous smudge of black eyebrows. 
 
 " The name you know. It used to be called after me 
 when I reeled the streets — they whispered it afterw ards as 
 I rode by. To-day it is forgotten." His nostrils quivered, 
 and he threw out his hands as if with that action he tossed 
 something worthless to the winds. " Miss Mildare, I have 
 not touched Drink — the stuff that was my nourishment 
 and my sustenance, my comfort and my bane, my deadliest 
 enemy and my only friend — since that hour when with the 
 last effort of my will I rallied all my mental and bodily 
 forces to resist its base allurement." 
 
 " I know it, Dr. Saxham. I am sure of it." She rose and 
 held out her hands to him, but he foldedhis arms more closely 
 over his starving, famished heart, and would not see them yet. 
 
 '* You can be sure of it. Alcohol is no longer my master 
 and my god. I stand before you a free man, because I 
 willed to be free." There was a little blob of foam at one 
 corner of his mouth, but the square pale face was composed, 
 even impassive. *' Once, not so long ago, I filled a place of 
 standing in the professions of Surgery and Medicine ; I 
 knew what it was to be esteemed and respected by the 
 world. For your dear sake I promise to regain what I have 
 lost ; be even more than I used to be, achieve greater things 
 than are done by other men of equal powers with mine. I 
 am not a man to pledge my word lightly, Miss Mildare. . . ." 
 His voice shook now and his blue eyes glistened. " If you 
 would be so — so unutterably kind as to become my wife, 
 I promise you a worthy husband. I swear to you upon 
 what I hold dearest and most sacred — your own life, your 
 own honour, your own happiness, never to give you cause 
 to regret marrying me ! For I may die, indeed, but living 
 I will never fail you !" 
 
 There was a lump in her throat choking her. Her eyes 
 had gone to that other grave some fifty paces distant from 
 the Catholic portion of the Cemetery. There were freshly- 
 gathered flowers upon it, as upon the grave that lay so 
 near, and two gorgeous butterflies were hovering about the 
 blooms, in mingled dalliance and greediness.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 637 
 
 " You loved him," said Saxham, following the Journey 
 of her wistful eyes. " Love him still ; remember him for 
 every trait and quality of his that was worthy of love from 
 you. But give me the hope of one day gaining from you 
 some shadow of — of return for what I feel for you. Is it 
 Passion ? I hardly know. Whether it is Love, in the 
 sense in which that word is employed by many of the women 
 and nearly all the men I have met, I do not know either. 
 But that it is the life of my life to me and the breath of my 
 being — you cannot look at me and doubt !'* 
 
 She was not looking at him. Her eyes were on the little 
 white cross above the Mother's grave ; there was an anxious 
 fold between the slender dark eyebrows. 
 
 " You — you wish to marry a Catholic — you, who tell me 
 that you were once a Christian and are now Agnostic V* 
 
 " If I have not what is called Faith," said Saxham, " I 
 may at least lay claim to the quality of reverence. And I 
 honour the religion that has made you what you are. 
 Cleave to your Church, child — hold to your pure beliefs, 
 and keep a little love back, Lynette, from your Holy Family 
 and your Saints in Heaven, to give to a poor devil who needs 
 it desperately !" 
 
 The sweet colour flushed her, and her face was more than 
 beautiful in its compassion. She said : 
 
 " I pray for you now, and I will always. And one day 
 our Lord will give you back the faith that you have lost." 
 
 *' Thank you, dear !" said Saxliam humbly. She was 
 opening her lips to speak again when he lifted his hand and 
 stopped her, 
 
 " There is one other thing I should like to make clear. 
 I — am not rich. But neither am I absolutely poor. 
 Letters that I have received from a firm of solicitors acting 
 for the trustees and executors of — a near relative deceased, 
 will prove to you that lara possessed of some small property, 
 bringing in an annual income of something like two hundred 
 pounds, and funds sufficient to settle a few thousands upon 
 my wife by way of marriage-jointure. Believe me," he 
 added, in answer to her look, " I know you to be incapable 
 of a mercenary thought. But what I should have ex- 
 plained to " — he pointed to the grave that lay so near — " to 
 her, I must make clear to you. It could not be otherwise."
 
 638 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 She went over to the grave and knelt beside it, and laid 
 her pure cheek upon it, and spoke to the Dead in a low, 
 murmuring tone. Saxham knew as he watched her, 
 breathing heavily, that the consent of the Mother would 
 never have been given to the marriage he proposed. That 
 other obstacle in the road of his desire, the lover who had 
 deceived, had been swept away, ^^ith the stem and tender 
 guardian, in one cataclysm of Fate. He went back in 
 thought to the ending of his long shooting-match d outrance 
 with Father Noah, and remembered how he had promised 
 himself that all should go well with Saxham provided 
 Saxliam's bullet got home first. 
 
 Were not things going better than he had hoped ? She 
 had not even recoiled from him when he had told her of 
 those degraded days of wastrelhood. Surely things were 
 going well for Saxham, he said, as he waited with his hun- 
 gering eyes upon his heart's desire. What it cost him not 
 to step over to her, snatch her from the ground, and crush 
 her upon his heart with hot and passionate kisses and wild 
 words of worship, he knew quite well. But iti that he tras 
 able to exercise such a mastery over himself and keep that 
 other Saxham down, Saxham gave praise to that strange 
 god he had set up, and worshipped, and bowed down before, 
 calling it The Omnipotent Human Will. 
 
 She rose by-and-by, and stood with clasped hands, 
 thinking. It was very still, and the air was sweet and 
 balmy, and beyond the lines of the defence-works miles upon 
 miles of sunht veld rolled away to the hills that were mantled 
 in clear hyacinth-colour and hooded with pale rose. 
 
 " If I married you, you would take me away from this 
 country and these people who have killed her ?" 
 
 She had the thought of ^another in her heart and the 
 name of another upon her lips. But only her eyes spoke, 
 travelling to that more distant grave where the butterflies 
 were hovering above the flowers, as Saxham answered : 
 
 " I would take you away, if you wished it." 
 
 " To England ?" 
 
 " Back to England." 
 
 " I should see London, and the hotise whetia Mother 
 lived. ..." She seemed to have forgotten Saxham, and to 
 be uttering her thoughts aloud. " I might even see the 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 639 
 
 green mountains of Conriemara in Ireland — her own moun- 
 tains she used to call them. I might one day meet people 
 who are of her blood and name— — " 
 
 " And of Ai«," thought Saxham, following her eyes' 
 wistful Journey to that other grave. 
 
 " But," she went on, " it would all depend " — she 
 breathed with agitation and knitted her slim white fingers 
 together, and looked round at him with that anxious 
 wrinkle between her fine eyebrows — " upon how much you 
 
 asked of me! Suppose I " His intent and burning ej^es 
 
 confused her, and she dropped her own beneath them. " If 
 I were to marry you, would you leave me absolutely free 1" 
 
 " Absolutely," said Saxham. " With the most com- 
 plete freedom a wife could possibly desire." 
 
 " I meant — a different kind of freedom from a wife's." 
 She knitted and unknitted her hands. " It is difficult to 
 explain. Would you be willing to ask nothing of me that 
 a friend or a sister might not give 1 Would you be 
 content " 
 
 Her transparent skin glowed crimson with the rush of 
 blood. Her bosom laboured with the hurry of her breathing. 
 Her white lids veiled her eyes, or the sudden terrible change 
 in Saxham'a face might have wrung from her a cry of 
 terror and alarm. But he mastered the raging jealousy that 
 tore him, and said, with a jarring note of savage irony in 
 the voice that had always spoken to her gently until then : 
 
 " Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, 
 into a marriage that should be practically no marriage at 
 all — a formal contract that is not wedlock ? That might 
 never change; as Time went on, and alter into the close union 
 that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and 
 women who love ? Is that what you tisk me, Miss Mildare?" 
 
 She looked at him full and bent her head. And the 
 man's heart, that had throbbed so wildly, stopped beating 
 with a sudden jerk, and the divine fire that burned and 
 tingled in his blood died out, and the cold sickness of 
 baffled hope weighed on him like a mantle of lead. And 
 the voice that had whispered to him so alluringly, telling 
 him that it was not too late, that he might even yet win 
 this virginal pure, sweetly- budding maiden, and know the 
 bliss of being loved at last, sank into silence. His face waa
 
 640 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 set like granite, and as grey. His eyes burned darkly 
 under his heavy brows. He waited, sombrely and hope- 
 lessly, for her to speak again. 
 
 " There are such marriages ?" 
 
 The question was diffidently and timidly put. He 
 answered : 
 
 " Assuredly there are. But not between those who are — 
 physically and mentally, sane and healthy men and women, 
 — at least, in my experience. One case, of three I am at 
 liberty to quote, was that of an aged and wealthy woman 
 of position and a young and rising public man." 
 
 " Were — weren't they happy ?" 
 
 The face of the inward, unseen Saxham was twisted in a 
 miserable grin, but the outward man preserved immobility. 
 
 " He enjoyed life. She sat by, and saw, every day 
 coming nearer, her death, that was to leave him free." 
 
 " And the others ?" 
 
 She asked it with an indrawn breath of anxiety. 
 
 " The second case was that of a man, middle-aged and 
 helplessly paralysed by an accident in the hunting-field, 
 and of a beautiful and high-spirited young woman — 
 almost a girl. She took a romantic interest in him — talked 
 of his ruined career and blighted life, and all that sort of 
 thing. And — they married, and she found her bondage 
 intolerable. ... It ended in his divorcing her. The decree 
 nisi was made absolute a few days before I left London. 
 The third case bears more analogy to yours and mine." 
 
 " Please go on." 
 
 " There was no great disparity of age between these two 
 people. They were sympathetic, cultured, independent 
 both. Their views upon many subjects — including the 
 sex question — were identical," said Saxham slowly. " And 
 they entered into a bond of union that had for its ultimate 
 aim the culture of the intellect and the development of 
 what they called the Soul. The Flesh had nothing in it ; 
 the Body," said Saxham, with a grating sarcasm, " was 
 utterly ignored. I forget whether they were Agnostics, 
 Buddhists, or Christians. They certainly suffered for 
 their creed. But " — his voice softened and deepened — 
 " at any rate, the woman suffered most !" 
 
 Her lips parted, her eyes were intent upon him.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 641 
 
 " You have lived with Sisters of Mercy in a Convent," 
 went on Saxham. " You know of their lives even more 
 than I — ^greatly to my advantage — have learned. Ener- 
 getic, useful, stirring, active, never complaining, always 
 ready to make the best of the world as they find it, and 
 help others to do the same ; always regarding it as the 
 preparatory school or training-college for a state of being 
 infinitely greater, nobler, and more glorious than anything 
 the merely mundane imagination can conceive — you can 
 realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast 
 between them and the laywomen of Society, peevish, 
 hysterical, neurotic, sensual, and bored. But before these 
 chastened, temperate bodies, these serene and well-balanced 
 minds attained the state of self-control and crossed the 
 Rubicon of resignation, what struggles their owners must 
 have undergone ! — what ordeals of anguish they must have 
 endured ! Did that never strike you ?" 
 
 Her lips were pale, and there were shadows under her 
 eyes. She bent her head. 
 
 " The woman, who was not a nun, did for the sake of 
 a man what the nun feels supematurally called upon to 
 do for her God," said Saxham. " She thrust her hand 
 deep into her woman's bosom, and dragged out her 
 woman's heart, and wrung from it every natural human 
 yearning, and purged it — or thought she purged it — of 
 every earthly desire, before she laid the pulseless, emptied 
 thing down before his feet for him to tread upon. And 
 that is what ho did !" 
 
 He heard her pant softly, and saw her hand move up- 
 ward to her beating heart. His deadly earnestness appalled 
 her. Was he not fighting for what was more than life 
 to him 1 He folded his arms over his great chest, and said : 
 
 " For ten years he and she lived together in a imion 
 called ideal by ignorant enthusiasts and high-minded 
 cranks. Then she drooped and died — victim of the revolt 
 of outraged Nature. A little before the end they sent for 
 me. I said to the man : ' A child would have saved her !' 
 And he — I can hear him now, answering : ' Ah ! but that 
 would have nullified all the use and purpose of our example 
 for humanity.' The idiot — the abortive, impossible, dreary 
 idiot ! And if ever there was a woman intended by whole-
 
 542 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 some Nature to bear and nurture babes, it was that woman, 
 who died to prove the possibility of carrying on the business 
 of living according to his damned theories." 
 
 His broad chest heaved ; a mist came before his eyes ; his 
 deep vibrating voice had in it a passionate appeal to her. 
 
 " The nun would tell you that in the lofty, mystical 
 sense marriage and motherhood are hers, ' Christ being her 
 Spouse.' I echo this in no spirit of mockery. But this 
 woman of whom I have told you knew no vocation and took 
 no vow. She merely tried to ignore the fundamental truth 
 that every normal woman of healthy instincts was meant 
 to be a mother." 
 
 He added : 
 
 " And every husband who loves his wife sees his manhood 
 proved and perfected in her. She was dear and beloved 
 before ; she is holy, sacred — worshipped in his eyes, when 
 they look upon his child in her arms, at her breast." 
 
 Something like a sob broke from him. His heart cried : 
 
 " Lynette ! have pity upon yourself and upon me !" 
 
 He stood and waited for her reply. She was so ex- 
 quisite and so full of womanly allure, and yet so crystal- 
 cold and passionless, that he knew his arguments thrown 
 away, his entreaties mere dust upon the wind. 
 
 " Tell me," he said at length, " do I inspire you with anti- 
 pathy ? Am I physically repulsive to you, or disagree- 
 able ? Answer me frankly, for in that case I would — cease 
 to urge my suit with you, and go upon my way, wherever 
 it might lead me." 
 
 She looked at him, and there was no shrinking in her 
 regard — only a gentle friendliness, as far removed from the 
 feeling he would have roused in her as the North is from 
 the South. 
 
 ■' I will tell you exactly how I feel towards you." He 
 writhed under the knowledge that it was possible to her to 
 analyse and to explain. " I like you. Dr. Saxham. I am 
 deeply grateful to you " 
 
 " Gratitude !" He shrugged his shoulders. " You owe 
 me none ; and oven if you did, what use is gratitude to a 
 man who asks for love ?" 
 
 " I trust you ; I rely upon you," she said. " It is — 
 pleasant to me to know that you are near." A line of per-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 543 
 
 plexity came between the dark fine eyebrows ; the Bweet 
 colour in her face wavered and sank. " But — if you were to 
 touch me — to take me in your arms — I " She shivered. 
 
 " You need not say more !" If she was pale, Saxham's 
 stern, square face was ashen. His eyes glowered and fell 
 under hers, and a purple vein swelled in the middle of his 
 broad white forehead. " I understand !" 
 
 " You do not understand quite yet." She moved away 
 from the Mother's grave, saying to him with a slight beckon- 
 ing gesture of the hand, " Please come ! . . ." 
 
 Saxham followed her, hearing the harsh, Jeering laughter 
 of that other Saxham above the faint rustle of her dress. 
 His covetous, despairing eyes dwelt on her and clung about 
 her. Ah ! the exquisite poise of the little head, with its 
 red-brown waves and coils ; the upright, slender elegance 
 of shape, like a young palm-tree ; the long, smooth, un- 
 dulating step with which she moved between the graves, 
 picking her way with sedulous, delicate care among the 
 little crowding white-painted crosses ; the atmosphere of 
 girlish charm and womanly alliuement that breathed from 
 her and environed her ! . . . 
 
 His torpid pulses throbbed again. The voice began 
 again its whispering at his ear. 
 
 " You cannot live without her. Accept her conditions. 
 Better to be unhappy in the sight and sound and touch of 
 her, unpossessed, than to be desperate, lacking her. Accept 
 her conditions with a mental reservation. Trust to Time, 
 the healer, to bring change and forgetfulneas. Or, break 
 your promise to that dead man, and tell her — as he would 
 have had you tell her, remember ! — as he would have had 
 you tell her ! — that when he asked her hand in marriage, 
 he was the wedded husband of the dancer, Lessie Lavigne 1" 
 
 He knew where she was leading him — to Beauvayse's 
 grave. The voice kept whispering, urging as they went. 
 He saw and heard as a man sees and hears in a dream the 
 pair of butterflies that hovered yet about the fresh flowers 
 her hands had gathered and placed there. One Jewel- 
 winged, diamond-eyed insect rose languidly and wavered 
 away as Lynette's light footsteps drew near. The other 
 remained, poised upon the lip of a honeyed, waxen blossom, 
 with closed, vertically-held wings and quivering autenne,
 
 544 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 sucking its sweet Juices as greedily as the dead man had 
 drunk of the Joy of life. 
 
 Now she was speaking : 
 
 " Dr. Saxham, I have brought you here because I have 
 something to tell you that he " — her face quivered— 
 " should have been told. When you spoke a little while 
 ago of openness and candour — when you said that you 
 would never mislead or deceive me for your own advantage, 
 that I should know the worst of you together with the 
 best — you held up before me, quite unknowingly, an 
 example that showed me — that proved to me " — her voice 
 wavered and broke — " how much I am your inferior in 
 honesty and truth !" 
 
 " You my inferior !" Saxham almost laughed. " / an 
 example of Hght and leading, elevated for your guidance ! 
 If you were capable of irony " 
 
 He broke off, for she went on as though he had not spoken : 
 
 " When first we met — I mean yourself and me — I re- 
 member telUng you, upon a sudden impulse of confidence 
 and trust in you, what I had determined my life-work was 
 to be " 
 
 " Dear, innocent- wise enthusiast," thought Saxham, 
 " dreaming over your impossible plan for regenerating the 
 world ! Beloved child- Quixote, tilting at the Black Wind- 
 mills, how dare I, who was once the Dop Doctor of 
 Gueldersdorp, love you and seek you for my own ? Mad- 
 ness — madness on the face of it !" But, madness or 
 sanity, he could not choose but love her. 
 
 " Yoiu: life-work ! . . . It was to be carried out among 
 those others whose voices you heard calling you. See," lie 
 said, with the shadow of a smile, " how I remember 
 everything you say, or have ever said, in my hearing !" 
 
 " You think too well of me," she broke out, with sudden 
 energy. 
 
 ■■ It is not possible to think too well of you !" 
 
 " You think so now, perhaps, but when you know " 
 
 Her eyes brimmed and the tears welled over her white 
 under-lidfl. She put up both her Uttle hands, and rubbed 
 the salt drops away with her knuckles, Uke a child. 
 
 " When I have told you, you will alter — ^you cannot help 
 but alter your opinion !"
 
 THE DOP DOOrOR 545 
 
 " No !" denied Saxham ; and the monosyllable seemed 
 to drop from his grim lips like a stone. Her bosom heaved 
 with short, quick sobs. 
 
 " I meant to go out into the world, and meet those 
 women who think and work for women, and hear all they 
 have to say, and leam all they have to teach. Then " 
 
 She was Beatrice again, as she turned her face full on 
 Saxham, and once more the virginal veil fell, and he was con- 
 scious of strange abysses of knowledge opening in those 
 eyes. 
 
 " — Then I meant to seek out those women and girls and 
 children of whom I spoke to you, those who lie fettered 
 with chains that wicked men have riveted, in the dark 
 dungeons that their tyrants and torturers have quarried 
 out of the living rock, out of the reach of fresh air and sun- 
 shine, beyond the reach of those who would pity and help. . . 
 I meant to go down to them, and comfort them, and raise 
 them up. I meant to have said : ' Trust me, believe me, 
 listen to me, follow me ! For my sorrow is your sorrow, 
 and my wrong your wrong, and my shame yours — ! my 
 poor, poor unhappy sisters ! . . ." 
 
 There was a great drumming and surging of the blood 
 in Saxham' s ears. His heart beat in heavy laboured, 
 measvu-ed strokes, like the tolling of a death-bell. He saw 
 her cover her face with her hands, and drop upon her knees 
 amongst the grasses that greenly clothed the red soil. He 
 saw the butterfly, startled from its feast, rise and waver 
 away. And he saw, too, his veiled nymph, his virginal 
 white goddess, his chaste, veiled maiden Artemis, toppled 
 from her pedestal and lying in the gutter. 
 
 Her sorrow the sorrow of those spotted ones ! her wrong 
 theirs, and theirs her shame ! . . . So this was the sordid 
 secret that haunted the depths of those eyes — the eyes of 
 Beatrice ! He turned his head away, so as not to look 
 upon her, and his face grew dark \nth the rush of blood. 
 But still he heard her speaking, as a man hears in a dream. 
 " At school all the older girls thought and talked of 
 nothing but Love, and most of the younger ones did the 
 same. . . . And I, who knew the dreadful, cruel, hideous 
 side of the thing that eaxjh of them set up and worshipped — 
 I who shuddered when a man's breath, and a man's voice, 
 
 35
 
 546 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 and a man's face came near — I said in my heart that Love 
 should never find a dupe and a slave and a tool in me. 
 I meant to live for the Mother, and be to those poor sisters 
 of mine what she was — oh, my darling ! my darling ! — to 
 me ! And all the while Love was co min g nearer and 
 nearer, and at last " 
 
 She swept the tears from her face with the paJms of her 
 slight open hands, and drew a deep, shuddering breath, 
 and went on brokenly, with sobs between the gasped-out 
 sentences : 
 
 " — At last it came. I never tried to struggle against 
 it ; it tiTapped me in a net of exquisite sweet softness, that 
 held me like a cage of steel. I gave myself up to the blissful- 
 ness and the joy of it. I was unfaithful to those others — I 
 forgot them for Beauvayse ! Oh, why should Love make 
 it so easy to do unlovely things ? to be unworthy, to break 
 promises, and to be false to vows ? You are in earnest 
 when you make them . . . you are proud to be so sure 
 that nothing shall change or turn you. . . . Then eyes 
 that are like strange jewels look deep into yours. A voice 
 that is like no other voice whispers at your ear. It says 
 strange, sweet, secret tilings — things that come back and 
 burn you — and his breath upon your cheek drowns out your 
 scruples in wave upon wave of magical, thrilling, wonderful 
 sensation ! . . ." She shuddered. " And everything else 
 is blotted out, and no one else matters ! You are not even 
 sorry that you have left off caring. . . . Love has made 
 you indifferent as well as unkind !" 
 
 She looked up at Saxham from where she ctoilched 
 down at his feet among the grasses, and her distress melted 
 some of the ice that was closing round his heart. 
 
 " Love cannot be good. It brings no peace, no happi- 
 ness — nothing but restless misery and burning pain. It 
 makes j'^ou even willing to deceive him." Her lids fluttered 
 and she caught her breath. " When another to whom I 
 was dear, and who knew, said, ' Never tell him ! I com- 
 mand you never to tell him !' I pretended to myself that 
 the words had not been spoken out of pity, because my 
 darling loved me too well to see me suffer ; and I told myself 
 that it was right to obey." 
 
 Saxham, following the yearning look that wen* back to
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 547 
 
 that other's giave, heard the unforgettable voice uttering 
 the command. 
 
 " He never dreamed of my miserable secret. He was so 
 free, so frank, so open himself. He had nothing to hide — 
 he was incapable of deceit ! It never occurred to hJTn — oh, 
 Beau ! Beau !" 
 
 Saxham's face waa set like a mask carved in granite, 
 but that other Saxham, within the man she saw through 
 her tears, was wrung and twisted and wrenched in spasms 
 and gusts of insane, imcontrollable, helpless laughter. 
 
 " Nothing to hide — incapable of deceit /" It seemed to 
 him that the dead man, all that way down under the red 
 earth and the grass and the flowers, must be laughing, too, 
 at the Dop Doctor who was fool enough not to speak out 
 and end the farce for ever. 
 
 Should he ? Why not ? But for what reason now, and to 
 what end, since his virginal-pure, dew-pearled. Convent Uly 
 lay trodden in the mire 1 And yet, to look in those eyes 
 
 They did not falter or droop under his again, as she told 
 him in few and simple words the story of what had hap- 
 pened in the tavern on the veld. 
 
 " Now you know all !" she said ; " now you understand ! 
 . . . Sister Tobias knows, too, and there is one other. . . . 
 I do not speak of . . ." — she shuddered and grew pale — 
 " but of a man whom all of us here have learned to look up 
 to, and believe in, and trust. No confidence has ever passed 
 between us. I cannot give you any reason for this beUef 
 of mine in his knowledge of my story. I only feel that it 
 is no secret to the Colonel, whenever he looks at me with 
 those wise, kind, pitying eyes." 
 
 There was a look in Saxham's eyes that was not pity. 
 The sunbeam that shone through the loose plait of her 
 coarse straw hat, and gilded the edges of the red-brown 
 hair-waves, aureoled again for him the head of Beatrice. 
 
 " I have no faith left, but I am capable of reverence," 
 ho had said to her. 
 
 Now, as he knelt down in the grass before the little 
 brown shoes, and lifted the hem of her linen gown and 
 kissed it, the hulking-shouJdered Doctor proved his posses- 
 sion of the quaUty. Devouring desire, riotous passion, were, 
 if not killed in him, at least quelled and overthrown and 
 
 35—2
 
 548 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 bound. Pure pity and tenderness awakened in him. And 
 Chivalry, all cap-d-jne in silver mail, rose up to do battle 
 for her against the world and against that other Saxham. 
 " I accept the trust you are willing should be mine. Take 
 my name — take all I have to give ! I make no reservations. 
 I stipulate no conditions. I ask for nothing in return, 
 except the right to be your brother and guardian and 
 defender. Trust me ! The life-work you have chosen 
 shall be yours ; as far as lies in my power, I will help you in 
 it. Your pure ends and noble aims shall never be thwarted 
 or hindered. And have no fear of me, my sweet saint, my 
 little sister. For I may die," said Saxham once again, 
 " but, living, I will never fail you .»*' 
 
 LVII 
 
 Saxham, of St. Stephen's, had long ago faded from the 
 recollection of London Society, but Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., 
 Late Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and frequently 
 mentioned in Despatches from that bit of debatable soil, 
 while it was in process of debating, was distinctly a person 
 to cultivate. Not that it was in the least easy — the man 
 was almost quite a bear, but his brevity of speech and 
 brusqueness of manner gave him a cachet that Society 
 found distinguished. He was married, too — so romantic ! 
 married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp 
 all through the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't 
 you know ? and with maimers that really suggested the 
 Faubourg St. Germain. Where she got her style — brought 
 up among Boers and blacks — was to be wondered at, but 
 these problems made people all the more interesting. And 
 one met her with her husband at all the best houses since 
 the Castleclares had taken them up. Indeed, Mrs. Saxham 
 was a relative — was it a cousin ? No — now it all came 
 back ! Adopted daughter, that was it, of an aunt — ^no, a 
 step-sister of Lord Castleclare, that ineffable Uttle prig of 
 twenty- two, who as a Peer and Privy Councillor of L-eland, 
 and a Lord-in- Waiting to boot, was nevertheless a personage 
 to be deferred to. 
 
 One had heard, hadn't one, ages ago, of the famous
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 549 
 
 beauty, Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne ? Well, that was the 
 very person, who had been Abbess, or Prioress, or some- 
 thing-else-ess of a Roman Catholic Sisterhood at Guelders- 
 dorp, and died of pneumonia during the Siege, or did she 
 get shot ? That was it, poor dear thing, and how quite too 
 horrid for her ! 
 
 We may know that that belated letter of the Mother's — 
 written to her kinswoman when the first mutterings of the 
 storm were yet dulled by distance, and the threatening 
 clouds were beginning to build their blue-black bastions and 
 frowning ramparts on the horizon — had got through at last. 
 The Bawnes, true to their hereditary quality of generous 
 loyalty, threw open their doors and their hearts to dead 
 Bridget-Mary's darling ; and Saxham was undisguisedly 
 grateful when he saw how she warmed to them. But he 
 gave no encouragement, verbal, written, or tacit to their 
 desire to fulfil the dead woman's wishes in the settlement 
 of a sum of money upon L3mette. He had made such 
 provision for her himself as his means permitted. His books 
 had been selling steadily for the past six years, his pub- 
 lishers had paid him a handsome sum in royalties, and a 
 thousand guineas for the copyright of a new work. Plas 
 Bendigaid was secured to his wife ; and Saxham's life was 
 heavily insured, and the bulk of the sum remaining from 
 the purchase of the furniture and fixtures of the house in 
 Harley Street, with the practice of the physician who was 
 gi\-ing up tenancy, had been invested in her name with the 
 other funds. Why should strangers interfere with his 
 sole privilege of working for her ? 
 
 " I should prefer that the decision should be left entirely 
 to my wife," he said, when the Head of the House of 
 Bawne, with the pompous solemnity distinctive of a young 
 man who takes himself and his position seriously, formally 
 broached the subject. 
 
 " Lady Castleclare has — arah ! — already approached 
 Mrs. Saxham on the question," said Lord Castleclare, 
 tapping the shiny surface of the leather-covered writing- 
 table near which he sa^j with the long, thin, ivory-hued 
 fingers, ending in long, narrow, bluish-tinted nails, that had 
 descended to him — with the peculiar sniffing drawl that pro- 
 longed and punctuated his verl)al utterance — from his late
 
 550 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 father. " And I regret to hear from Lady Castleclare that 
 Mrs. Saxham gave no encouragement to the suggestion. I 
 confess myself disappointed equally with my wife and my 
 elder step-sister, the Duchess of Broads, to whom the letter 
 was written — the letter that you will understand conveys to 
 the family I represent, the last wishes of one whose memory 
 we hold in the most sacred love and reverence " 
 
 The Right Honourable Privy C!ouncillor had here to stop 
 and dry his eyes, that were frankly overflowing. Though 
 short, and not at all distinguished of appearance, having 
 derived from his mother, the Dowager Countess, nee Miss 
 Nancy Mclleev^y, of Mclleevystown, County Down, certain 
 personal disadvantages to counterbalance the immense 
 fortune amassed by her uncle, the brewer, this little 
 gentleman of great affairs possessed the kindly heart, and 
 the quick and sensitive nature of the paternal stock. Now 
 he continued : 
 
 " — Under the circumstances you will permit me to renew 
 the proposal with a slight modification. The sum we pro- 
 posed to invest ia Government securities for Mrs. Saxham' s 
 benefit, carrying out a charge that we regard it as a privilege 
 to — to have received — is not large, merely five thousand 
 pounds." He coughed. " Well, now it has occurred to 
 me that Mrs. Saxham's objection to receive what she seems 
 to regard as a gift from people upon whom she has no 
 claim — that is how she expressed herself to Lady Castle- 
 clare — might be got over — if I may employ the expression, 
 by our settling the money upon your children 1" 
 
 " Upon our children " 
 
 They were sitting in Lord Castleclare's library at Bawne 
 House, Grosvenor Square. Great books in gilded bindings 
 gleamed from their covered and latticed shelves, and the 
 perfume of Russia leather and cedar mingled with the aroma 
 of rare tobacco in the air. A thin fog hung over the West 
 End, deadening the sound of traffic, and dimming the polish 
 of the tall plate-glass windows. The fire burned red behind 
 bars of silvered steel, the ashes fell with a Uttle cUcking 
 whisper. It seemed to Saxham that he could hear his 
 pierced heart bleeding, drip, drip, drip ! But he sat like 
 a man of stone, his white, firm, supple hand clenched upon 
 the carved knob of the chair-arm. Then he said, Jookingr the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 551 
 
 Right Honourable Privy Councillor full in the face with 
 those gentian-blue eyes of his, now sunk in caves that grew 
 deeper day by day : 
 
 " Let it be so, my lord. I am willing, if my wife consents, 
 that the money should be settled upon — her children." 
 
 He prescribed, at Lord Castleclare's request, for a political 
 dyspepsia, and took leave in his brusque, characteristic 
 way, and sent away his waiting motor-brougham, and 
 walked home, thinking, by that new light that had flashed 
 upon him. 
 
 It was January, the London January of whirling dust 
 clouds below, and racing, murky vapours above. They had 
 been settled in the Harley Street house four months. It 
 seemed to Saxham as though they had lived there for years. 
 The routine of professional life was closing in upon him 
 once again. Patients thronged to his door ; Hospitals, and 
 Societies, and Institutions were open to him as of old ; 
 Society courted and flattered him, and gushed about the 
 beauty of Mrs. Saxham. It was as though that celebrated 
 Criminal Case, The CrowTi t?. Saxham, had never developed 
 into ugly, sinister shape xinder the dirty skylight of the 
 Old Bailey. 
 
 He crossed Grosvenor Square, and turned down Brook 
 Street, thinking as he went. Pretty women in furs, their 
 make-up subdued by silk-gauze veils, nodded to him from 
 motor-broughams and victorias. 
 
 Though the horse-drawn hansom yet plied for hire, 
 petrol was driving brute-power off the streets. The hooting 
 and clanking of the motor-omnibus made Oxford Street 
 hideous. And that St. Vitus's Dance of the 'l\\he Railway 
 swept under the pavement beneath Saxham's tread as he 
 had passed up New Bond Street. Certainly London was 
 not more beautiful or pleasanter to live in for the six years 
 that had gone by. 
 
 The Tube Works were responsible for much. The 
 Companies were linking up the North with the West, and 
 strings of trolleys, coupled together like railway-trucks, 
 and laden with yellow clay or great balks of timber, or 
 giant scales of bored armour- plating, or moleskin-clad. 
 ])rawny navvies, progressed incessantly and at all hours 
 through the thoroughfares of the metropolis behind huge,
 
 552 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 giraffe-necked, splay- wheeled, smoke- vomiting traction- 
 engines. Houses and other buildings were being pulled 
 down to make stations ; great hoardings were up, enclosing 
 spaces where work went on all day, amidst clankings and 
 groanings of machinery, and clouds of oily-smelling steam, 
 and where work went on all night, wdth more groanings and 
 more clankings, deplorable shrieks of steam-sirens and 
 hellish flares that might have been reflections from a 
 burning Tophet, cast upon yet bigger and denser clouds of 
 the oily-smelling steam. 
 
 Yes ! the big black opulent city was greatly changed. 
 But the change in the people, affecting all ranks and every 
 class, was even greater. There were compensations, if you 
 could balance against the decay of good manners the 
 improvements in sanitation, or set against the crop of evil 
 sown by the dissemination of the vilest literature in the 
 cheapest printed forms, the attainability, by the poorest, 
 of the noblest productions of literary genius. Or if in 
 congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of 
 Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, 
 you could condone the degradation of the English language 
 in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and country- 
 women by the use of American slang phrases, common, 
 vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled 
 from the vocabulary of the East End costermonger. 
 
 Privacy and reticence had become unfashionable, 
 impossible in this, the era of the guinea- hunting Press- 
 Interviewer. The barriers of social exclusiveness had given 
 way before the push of the plutocrat. The Rubicon be- 
 tween good Society and bad Society had become invisible. 
 Racial suicide and sexual licence most hideously prevailed, 
 spreading like some vile disease from rank to rank, and 
 class to class. Woman had become less womanly, man 
 more effeminate. Home was a word that had no longer 
 any meaning. Religion had decayed ; the fear of God 
 had been forgotten. But Socialism was springing up, a 
 rank and lusty weed, in crude neglected soil that might 
 have been tilled to good purpose ; and a cheap and rowdy 
 form of patriotism was in a very healthy state, although 
 the Union Jack had not yet replaced the Bible in the 
 Board Schoola.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 653 
 
 Yes, things had changed, and not for the better ! There 
 was a tang upon the moral atmosphere that made the 
 material petrol-fumes of the motor-omnibus almost accept- 
 able by comparison. The air of Gueldersdorp had been 
 cleaner, even with that taint from the crowded trenches 
 heavy on it. Things had changed ; and in the midst of all 
 these changes, the last sands of the Great Victorian Age 
 were running out of the glass. 
 
 That wonderful life was drawing to its simple, peaceful, 
 noble, profoundly touching close, this January of 1901. 
 And its ending had been hastened by the War. 
 
 Truly of her it has been said, and shall be ; even when 
 scholars of another race and another civilisation, springing 
 from the ashes of this, wrest from the reUcs of a history 
 of to-day the secrets of an ancient Past : 
 
 " She was not only the Sovereign, but the Mother of her 
 people." 
 
 * * « • • 
 
 Saxham turned into Cavendish Square, and was in 
 Harley Street. The white-enamelled door of a prosperous- 
 looking corner-house bore a soHd brass plate with his name. 
 He thought, as he opened the door with his Yale key, how 
 strange it was that this, the very house he had planned 
 to live in with Mildred, and had leased, and beautified, and 
 decorated for her, should have been offered for his inspection 
 by the first West End house-agent he applied to upon 
 returning to London, whose dust he had shaken ofi the 
 soles of his feet forever, barely six years before. 
 
 The practitioner who occupied the house — not the 
 same man who had taken over the lease and fittings from 
 Saxham — was ready to give it up, with all its costly appur- 
 tenances and up-to-date appointments, together with the 
 practice, for quite a moderate slice of that legacy of 
 thousands that had come to Saxham from Mildred's dead 
 boy. Saxham, diagnosing the man's fever to realise 
 and depart, wondered what secret, desperate motive lay at 
 the back of his hurry ? The reason was soon evident. Like 
 thousands of other men, professional and private, the 
 physician had been a dabbler on the Stock Exchange, and 
 had gone in heavily for South African mining-stock, and 
 had been ruined by the War.
 
 554 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 It was a year of ruin. Society, led by Messrs. Washing- 
 ton P. Jukes and Themistocles K. Mombasa, six-foot, full- 
 blooded buck niggers, elegantly scented, white-gloved, and 
 arrayed in evening garments of Bond Street cut, danced the 
 newly-imported Cake Walk through its ball-rooms and 
 reception-saloons, with laughter on its reddened lips, and 
 paste imitations of its family jewels in its waved coiffure and 
 on its powdered bosom, and Ruin in its heart. 
 
 Great manufacturing enterprises, paralysed by lack of 
 funds and lack of hands, were ruined. Managers producing 
 plays to empty houses were ruined. Publishers publishing 
 books that nobody cared any longer to buy, were ruined. 
 Painters expending time, and money, and toil, upon pictures 
 that no longer foiind purchasers were ruined. ]\Iillions of 
 smaller folks were ruined by the ruin of their betters. 
 Only the great Mourning Warehouses prospered exceed- 
 ingly, like the Liquor Trade and the Drug Trade. And the 
 Remount and Forage Trades, and the Army-Contractors, 
 flourished as the green bay-tree. 
 
 Saxham's motor-brougham had gone on in advance, 
 twisting knowingly in and out of various corkscrew 
 thoroughfares. It was waiting outside the house in Lower 
 Harley Street as the Doctor reached the door. The 
 chauifeur, a spare, short young man, punctiliously buttoned 
 up in a long dark green, white-faced livery overcoat, a cap 
 with a white-glazed peak shading a lean, brickdust-coloured 
 face, with ugly, honest eyes that are familiar to the reader, 
 cocked one of the eyes inquii'ingly at his employer, and 
 receiving a sign implying that his services would not be 
 required for some space of time to come, pulled up the lever, 
 moved on, and turned down the side-street where were the 
 entrance-gates of the stable-yard that had been turned 
 into a garage. He had been in Saxham's employment 
 nearly two months. 
 
 W. Keyse, late Corporal, Gueldersdorp Town Guards, 
 had learned to clean, manage, and drive a motor-car belong- 
 ing to an officer of the Garrison in spare hours during the 
 Siege. This accomplishment, with some other learning 
 gained in those strenuous and bracing times, had Justified 
 him in answering a Times advertisement for a sober, active, 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 655 
 
 and intelligent young man, possessing the requisite know- 
 ledge of London — " Cripps !" said W. Keyse, " as if I 
 couldn't pick my way about the Bally Old Dustbin blind- 
 folded !" — to act in the capacity of chauffeur to a West End 
 medical practitioner. 
 
 An acquaintance who was a waiter at a Pall Mall Club 
 gave him the tip, and the chance came in the nick of time, 
 for Mr. and Mrs. W. Keyse were up against it, and no gay 
 old error. " If you was to offer to blooming-well work for 
 people for nothing," said Mrs, Keyse, " my belief is, they 
 wouldn't 'ave you at the price !" 
 
 The Old Shop, as W. Keyse affectionately called his 
 native island, had drawn the exiles home. Good-bye to the 
 bronzed, ungirdled vastness of veld and karroo, and the 
 clear, dark, distant blue of level-topped mountains bathed 
 in the pure stimulating atmosphere that braces like cham 
 pagne. Old England called with a voice there was no 
 resisting, great draggle-tailed, grimy London beckoned to 
 her boy and girl, as the big grey liner, with the scarlet 
 smoke-stacks, engulfed her mails and passengers, dipped 
 the Red Ensign in farewell to Table Mountain, and sped 
 homewards on even keel over the heaving sappliire plain. 
 
 Southampton Dock was a pure delight to Mr. and ^Ira. W. 
 Keyse. The Waterloo Arrival platform sent thrills through 
 their boot-soles to the roots of their hair. They sat in the 
 Pit at the Oxford that night, and there was a South African 
 sketch on with two of the chronic-est jossers you ever see, 
 gassing away in khaki behind earthworks of sacks stuffed 
 with straw, and standing up to chuck sentimental and 
 patriotic ballads off their chests, while the Enemy, who had 
 kept up an intermittent rifle-practice at the wing, left off — 
 presumably to listen. " After being used to the Reel Thing," 
 W. Keyse said, " it was enough to make you up and blub !" 
 
 That was the first disillusion. Others followed. The 
 aunt who had inhabited one of the ginger- brick almshouses 
 over aginst 'Ighgyte Cemetery was dead when they took 
 her a whole pound of tea and three-quarters of best cooked 
 ham, and the delicacies had to be given to the old woman 
 next door, with whom the deceased had always had words. 
 You couldn't 'ave expected the old gaJ to last much longer, 
 but still it was a blow.
 
 556 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lobster had long ago given 'Melia the go-by, they 
 learned, in return for the ham and the tea ; and they got her 
 address and hunted her up in a back-street behind the 
 Queen's Crescent, and W. Keyse failed to recognise his 
 charmer of old in a red-nosed, frowsy slattern, married to 
 a sweated German in the baking-trade and mother of two 
 
 of the dirtiest kids you ever ! And Mrs. Keyse, to 
 
 whom her William had expatiated upon the subject of his 
 family, maintained a portentous dumbness, punctuated 
 with ringing sniffs, during the visit, and was sarcastic on 
 the bus, and tearfully penitent when they got back to the 
 Waterloo Road lodging that was cheap at the weekly rent, 
 she said, if you were paying for dirt and live-stock. 
 
 You couldn't spend your time enjoying yourself for ever, 
 she added a little later on, as their small Joint purse of 
 savings dwindled and that pale ghost that men call Want 
 began to hover about their hired bolster. W. Keyse had 
 thought of soliciting a re-engagement at the fried-fish shop 
 in the High Street, Camden Town, but it had been swept 
 away in favour of an establishment where they mended 
 your boots while you waited. So he sought elsewhere. 
 The War had drained away so many men, one would have 
 thought employment could be had by any chap who took 
 the trouble to walk about and look for it. But the soles of 
 W. Keyse's boots were worn to their last thickness of brown 
 paper, and all his clothes and Emigration Jane's, with the 
 exception of the things him and her had on, had been 
 pawned before it occurred to the man that that kind of 
 walking ended in the Workhouse. The woman had known 
 it from the very beginning. The valorous deeds of W. 
 Keyse stood him in no good stead. London was stiff with 
 liars who boasted of having been through the Siege, and their 
 lies were more ornamental and sparkling than his truths. 
 
 Mrs. W. Keyse would have took a situation as General, 
 and glad, but there were family reasons against that. She 
 had broke down and cried somethink dreadful on her 
 William's shabby tweed shoulder the morning he went out 
 to answer the West End Doctor's advertisement. He 
 kissed her and told her to keep her hair on, but she was so 
 hysterical that he was fair afryde to leave 'er. So he took 
 lier along, and his good Angel must have suggested thai.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 557 
 
 Cripps ! — when the manservant in plain clothes said, 
 " Step this way, upstairs please " — W. Keyse and wife 
 having applied at the area-door — " and Dr. Saxham will see 
 you." the name, not having been mentioned in the adver- 
 tisement, which gave only the address and an initial, im- 
 parted to both an electrical shock of surprise. They had 
 looked a very small and very shabby and very lost and 
 lonely little couple under those high-moulded ceilings and 
 upon the Turkey carpets that covered the polished parquet 
 of the handsomely-furnished and well-appointed consulting- 
 room that the practitioner who had caved in through South 
 African Gold-Mines had considered an adequate setting for 
 his bald-browed and portly presence. Now both curved 
 backbones assumed the perpendicular, and their wide 
 Cockney mouths were wreathed in joyful smiles. 
 
 The man sitting in the Sheraton armchair at the writing- 
 table that matched it, the man with the black head and 
 square pale face and heavy muscular shoulders, who looked 
 up from among his papers and notebooks with the receiver 
 of a telephone at his ear, rose to his feet, and came to them 
 with a kind, outstretched hand. Saxham never wasted a 
 word or forgot a face. And here were two faces from 
 Gueldersdorp. He shook the hands that belonged to them, 
 and said in his curt way : 
 
 " How are you, Mrs. Keyse ? And you, Keyse ? You 
 may guess when I heard that somebody had called to 
 answer my advertisement I hardly imagined that two old 
 patients had dropped down on me from the skies !" 
 
 The young woman stared at Saxham with her mouth 
 agape and the tears trickling do\^Ti her hollow cheeks. The 
 young man swallowed something with a violent effort, and 
 blurted out : 
 
 " Lumme, Doctor ! it's more by 'arf like bein' shot up out 
 of the Other Shop — an' landin' in tlie middle of New Jeru- 
 salem ! Weeks along " — he picked up the shabby bowler 
 that had dropped upon the Turkey carpet — " for weeks 
 along I've been tryin' to find out what was the matter wi' 
 me ! Now I knows ! I've bin 'omesick — fair old 'ome- 
 sick for a sniffer of the very plyce I was 'oppin' with 'appi- 
 ness to git away out of four months back. Good old 
 Gueldersdorp !" He winked the wet out of his eyes and
 
 558 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 pointed to Mrs. Keyse with his elbow. " An' look at 'er ! 
 Doin' a blub on the strength of it ! That's wot it is to be a 
 woman ! Ain't it, sir ?" 
 
 Saxham's keen glance took in the altered shape of the 
 thin girl in the mended Jacket and the large and feathered 
 hat that topped the colossal structure of fair, frizzled hair, 
 even as she dried her eyes with a twopenny handkerchief 
 edged with cotton lace, and tried to laugh. He took the 
 lean chin of W. Keyse between his white, strong, supple 
 fingers, and turned the triangular, hollow-cheeked face to 
 the light, and said, touching the little round blue scar left 
 by the enemy's bullet at the angle of the wide left nostril 
 and the other mark of its egress below the inner comer of 
 the right eye : 
 
 " You found out what a woman can be, my man, when 
 she helped to nurse you at the Hospital." 
 
 " Gawd knows I did !" affirmed W. Keyse. " An' since 
 
 she's bin' my wife " The prominent Adam's apple in 
 
 his thin throat jerked. He gulped a ^^ob down as he looked 
 at her. And the red flew up in her pale cheeks, and in her 
 eyes, as she returned the look of him, her master and her 
 mate, there shone the answering light of love. And Sax- 
 ham's face dark3ned with angry blood, and his strong, 
 supple surgeon's hand clenched with the savage impulse to 
 dash itself in the face of this ragged, seedy, out-at-elbows 
 Millionaire who flaunted riches in the face of his owti 
 beggary. 
 
 Never, never would a woman's eyes kindle with that 
 sweet fire in answer to the challenge of his own ! Empty, 
 empty the heart whose chambers were swept and decked 
 and garlanded for a guest who never came ! Lonely, lonely, 
 desolate this life lived within sound of her, sight of her, 
 touch of her — dearer inexpressibly than ever woman was 
 yet to man ! 
 
 He had said to her : " But come to me, and I shall be 
 content — even happy. Live under my roof, take the shelter 
 of my name — I ask no more !" 
 
 He asked more in the lonely nights that would never be 
 companioned, in the silence that would never be broken by 
 Love's whisper or Love's kiss. He was not content ; his 
 craving for her fretted the flesh from his bones and gnawed
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 659 
 
 his heart like some voracious, sharp-ianged, predatory 
 animal. Happy — was he ? Happy as one who sits beside 
 a stream of living water and yet must perish of drought. 
 He could only imagine one greater misery, one more ex- 
 cruciating torture, one more exquisite unhappiness than 
 this happiness she had conferred upon him — and that was 
 to be without her. 
 
 He drew a deep breath, and drove back his fierce, snarling 
 misery, and kicked it into its kennel, and befriended the 
 absurd little couple. W. Keyse was tested, proved capable 
 of manipulating the steering-wheel, duly certificated, and 
 engaged. There were a couple of living-rooms over the 
 coach-house that was now a garage. Saxham sent in some 
 plain furniture, and behold an Eden ! Pots of ferns pur- 
 chased from a street hawker showed gieenly behind the tidiest 
 muslin blinds you ever sor ! and Mrs. William Keyse, ex- 
 pectant mother of a potential Briton, sat behind them, and 
 as she patched the shirts that had been taken out of pawn — 
 and whether they're let out on hire to parties wanting such 
 things or whether the mice eat 'oles in 'em, who can say ? 
 but the styte in wliich they come back from Them Plyces 
 is something chronic ! — she sang, sometimes " Come, Buy 
 My Coloured 'Erring," which they learned you along of the 
 Tonic Sofa at the Board School in Kentish Towti ; and some- 
 times " The Land Where Dreams Come True !" 
 
 This was a fulfilled dream, this little, cheap home of two 
 rooms — one of them opening upon nothing by a loft-door — 
 over a garage tliat had been a coach-house, at the end of the 
 paved yard looking towards the rear of the tall, drab- 
 stuccoed house whose high double plate-glass windows 
 were shielded from plebeian eyes by softly-quilled screens 
 of silk muslin rurming on polished brass rods. But when 
 the electric lights were switched on, before the inner blinds 
 were drawn down, you could see quite plain into the con- 
 sulting-room, a little below your level, where the Doctor sat 
 at his big writing-table tliat was heaped with notebooks and 
 papers and had a telephone on it, and all sorts of mysterious 
 instruments in shining brass and silver, as brightly polished 
 as the gleaming thing with a lid, shaped like a violin-case 
 and with a spirit-lamp underneath it, in which all sorts of 
 wicked-looking knives and forceps were boiled when they
 
 560 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 were taken out of the black bag ; or into Mrs. Saxham's 
 bedroom, that was on the floor above, and was done up in 
 the loveliest style you ever ! " Not that Missis W. Keyse 
 would exchange 'er present quarters for Buckin'am Palace," 
 she declared, pouring out her William's tea, " if invited to 
 do so by 'er Majesty the Queen 'erself." 
 
 William stopped blowing at his smoking saucer. 
 
 " They s'y She's dyin' !" His face lengthened. He put 
 the saucer down. " They 'ave it in the evenin' pypers !" 
 
 Mrs. Keyse had a flash of inspiration. 
 
 " I reckon it don't seem dpn' to 'Er !" 
 
 " Wot are you gettin' at ?" asked the man in bewilder- 
 ment. 
 
 " I'm gettin' at it like this," said the lighter brain. " All 
 'er long life she's 'ad to be a queen first, £in' a wife after. 
 Now she lays there she's no more than a wife — a wife wots 
 goin' to meet 'er 'usband agin after yeers an' yeers o' 
 waitin'. For 'er Crown she leaves be'ind 'er for 'er son, 
 but 'er weddin' ring goes wiv' 'er in 'er coffin ! See ?" 
 
 " I pipe. Wonder wot 'Er an' 'Im '11 s'y to on© another 
 fust thing they meet ?" 
 
 " They won't s'y nothink," said the visionary, soberly 
 taking tea. " But I shouldn't be surprised but wot they'd 
 stand an' look in one another's fyces wivout s'yin' a word, 
 for a week or so by the Time Above, an' the tears a-runnin' 
 down an' never stoppin' !" 
 
 " Garn ! There ain't no cryin' in 'Eaven," said W. 
 Keyse, beginning on the bread-and-butter. " The Bible 
 tells you so !" 
 
 " That's right enough. But I lay Gawd lets folks do a 
 bit o' blub — Just once," said Emigration Jane, " before 'E 
 wipes their eyes, becos you don't begin to know wot 
 'appiness means until you've cried for Joy !" 
 
 " I pretty near did when the Doctor give me this chauf- 
 feur-ing Job, and so I tell you stryte," affirmed her lord 
 " D'you know I 'ad a shy at thankin' 'im agyne, an' got my 
 'ead bit orf. ' Shut your damned mouth !' — that's wot the 
 Doctor s'ys to me. Well, I 'ave shut it !" He closed his 
 Jaws upon an inch-thick slice. " But wot I s'y to myself 
 is," he continued, masticating, " that makes the Third 
 Time, an' the Third Time's the Charm !"
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 661 
 
 " Wot do you mean by the third time, deer ?" asked Mrs, 
 Keyse, putting more hot water in the teapot. 
 
 " The First," said W. Keyse, with an air of mystery, 
 " was in a saloon-bar full o' Transvaal an' Free State 
 Dutchies at Gueldersdorp." 
 
 " Lor' ! You don't ever mean " began his wife, and 
 
 stopped short. The scene of her j&rst meeting with W. 
 Keyse flashed back upon her mental vision. She saw the 
 big man waking up out of his drunken stupor and lurching 
 to the rescue of the little one. " Was it 'im ?" she panted, 
 as the teapot ran over on the clean coarse cloth. " Was 
 it Dr. Saxham ?" 
 
 " You may tyke it from me it was." W. Keyse rescued 
 the kettle, restored it to the hob, returned to his place, and 
 shook his finger at her warningly. " And if you go to 
 remind me as wot 'e were drunk when 'e done wot 'e 
 did " He looked portentous warnings. 
 
 " I never would. Oh, William !" 
 
 " Mind as you never do, that's all ! . . . I tried to thank 
 'im then," went on W. Keyse, " an' 'e wouldn't 'ave it. 
 I tried to thank 'im agyne at the Hospital — an' e' wouldn't 
 'ave it. I tried to thank 'im yesterday on 'is own doorstep, 
 an' 'e wouldn't 'ave it. So wot I'm a-going to do is — Wait ! 
 When I was a little nipper at Board School there was a 
 fairy tyle in the Third Standard Class Reader, all about a 
 Lion wot 'ad syved the life of a Louse, an' 'ow the Louse 
 laid out to do somethin' to pay the Lion back. . . ." 
 
 " I remember the tyle, deer," confirmed Mrs. Keyse. 
 " But it was a mouse " — she repressed a shudder — " an' 
 not the — thing you said." 
 
 " Mouse or Louse, it means the syme," declared W. Keyse 
 with burning eyes. " And the Doctor's goin' to find it 
 does." He held up his lean right hand and swore it. " So 
 'elp me, Jiminy Cripps !" 
 
 Lvin 
 
 Lynettb Saxham came into the consulting-room that was 
 on the ground-floor of the house in Harley Street, behind 
 the room where patients waited their turn. Her quick, 
 light step and the silken rustling of the lining of her gown 
 
 30
 
 562 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 broke the spell that had bound the man who sat motionless 
 in the armchair before the Sheraton writing-table, staring 
 with fixed eyes and gripping the arms of his chair with un- 
 conscious force. . . . 
 
 A faint, pleasant odour of Russia leather and camphor- 
 wood came from the dwarf bookcases that dadoed the walls. 
 The room was quite dark ; the two high windows, screened 
 by clear muslin blinds running on gilded rods, showed pale 
 parallelograms of cold twilight. The coachhouse and stable 
 building at the end of the paved yard showed as a cube of 
 blackness. One window in the centre of the wall \A'as 
 lighted up, and on its white cotton blind the shadows of a 
 man and woman acted a Domestic Play. 
 
 Perhaps Saxham had been watching this ? The shadow- 
 man seemed to sit at a table reading a newspaper by the 
 light of the lamp behind him, the shadow womui sat 
 nearer the window, employed upon some homely kind of 
 needlework. Her outline when she rose, showed that the 
 woman's great, mysterious ordeal, the sacrament of keenest 
 anguish by which her dearest and most sacred joy is won, 
 was very close upon her. She passed behind the man as if 
 to fetch something, stopped behind his chair, and drew her 
 arm about his neck, leaning her cheek down to his so that 
 their two shadows became one. 
 
 The starving waif outside the window of the cook-shop 
 knows no more excruciating aggravation of his pangs than 
 to look at food, and yet keeps on looking. It may have 
 been like this with Saxham, empty of all love, and gnawed 
 by the tooth of a sharper hunger than that which is merely 
 physical. He started out of his lethargy when his wife's 
 voice reached him. 
 
 " Owen ! . . . Why, you are sitting in the dark !" 
 
 Lynette heard someone moving among the shadows. The 
 electric reading-lamp upon the writing-table diffused a 
 mellow radiance under its green silk shade. Two other 
 globes sprang into shining life, and showed her, smiling, 
 and shrinking a Uttle from the sudden incursion of light, 
 as Saxham, with the quiet, unhurried, scrupulous courtesy 
 he always showed towards his wife, received the heavy 
 driving-mantle of sables that she dropped from her shoulders, 
 and laid it over a chair. A frosty breath from the outer
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 563 
 
 atmosphere clung to it, but the silkeii linin g was pene- 
 tratingly warm, and instinct with the sweetness of the 
 woman, so much so that it was agony to the man. . . . 
 
 She wore a white cloth gown of elegantly-simple cut, 
 that revealed with unostentatious art the lovely lines of 
 the slender shape. A knot of white and golden freesias, 
 exhaling a clean, delicate perfume, was fastened at her 
 breast ; her wonderful red-brown hair was shaded by a 
 broad-brimmed brown felt hat of Vandyke shape, with 
 creamy drooping plumes. The rare promise of her beauty 
 had fulfilled itself in the last six months. She was be- 
 wilderingly lovely. 
 
 She drew out the Jewelled pins that fastened her hat, 
 and threw it down, and took a favourite seat of hers beside 
 the fire, and looked across at the man who was her hus- 
 band, smiling faintly as she held her little foot, deUcately 
 shod, high-arched and slim, to the blaze of the wood-fire. 
 
 " Do I interfere with your work ? Are any patients 
 waiting ?" 
 
 "It is past my hour for seeing patients," said Saxham, 
 with a smile. " And if anyone were waiting, you are an 
 older client, and have the prior claim." 
 
 " We will have tea in here, then," she said, and touched 
 the bell, adding : " I am fond of this room." 
 
 It was Just now a place that was dear to Saxham. He 
 came across to the hearth and stirred the fire to a ruddier 
 blaze, and stood at the opposite side of it, leaning an arm 
 upon the mantelshelf. The shining mirror above it re- 
 flected a square black head that was getting grizzled, and 
 the profile of a face that was haggard and worn. 
 
 The servant came with tea, and drew down the upper 
 bhnds, shutting out that mocking shadow- play at wliich 
 Saxham had been staring. As Lynette busied herself with 
 the shining silver and deHcate Japanese porcelain, there 
 was a chance of studying, unobserved, the beloved book 
 of her face — a locked book to Saxham since that day in 
 the Cemetery at Guelder sdorp. 
 
 Ah, what a face it was ! It fascinated and held him. 
 Such long, thick, shadowy eyelashes, sweeping the white 
 cheeks ! Such a low, wide, perfectly modelled forehead 
 above them, with fine arched eyebrows, much darker than 

 
 564 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the richly rippling, parted hair that was coiled and twisted 
 and roped into a mass behind the small, delicate ears, as 
 though its owner were impatient of its luxuriance. Such 
 a close-folded, mysterious mouth, with deep-cut curves, 
 hiding the pure white, rather overlapping teeth. An 
 irregular nose, rather square-ended, with eager nostrils ; a 
 rounded chin, with a little cleft in it, went to the making of 
 the face that Saxham and many others thought so beautiful. 
 Only something was wanting to it. " Animation," the 
 physiognomist would have said. " Vitality, mobility." 
 " Health," might have thought the ordinary observer, mis- 
 taking the bluish shadows under the drooped eyelids and 
 about the mouth and nostrils for the usual signals of 
 debility. 
 
 But Saxham, when he looked into the golden-hazel eyes, 
 so often hidden by the thick white eyelids, with their deep 
 fringe of black-brown lashes, said to himself with bitterness : 
 " She is quite well. Nothing on earth is wrong with her, 
 except that she is not happy ! I can give her everything 
 else on earth, it seems, but what she needs most of all !" 
 
 Let Joy, that radiant torch of the soul, illuminate those 
 dim windows, let Happiness sink Uke sweet rain into the 
 dry heart, and the whole woman would awaken into vivid 
 glowing beauty, like the parched South African veld after 
 the spring rains. Red tulips would bloom between the 
 boulders ; exquisite glowing pelargoniums and snow-white or 
 pale-blue iris would clothe the baked earth. The ice-plant 
 would no longer be the only green thing growing in the 
 crannies of the rock. Delicate ferns and dew-gemmed 
 pitcher-plants would quiver there, and the spikes of the 
 many-coloured gladioli would thrust from the earth like 
 spears ; and the sweet-scented clematis and the passion- 
 vine would trail and blossom in rose and white and purple 
 on the edges of the kloofs and gorges, every stem and leaf 
 and bud and blossom growing and rejoicing in the balmy 
 breeze and the glorious June sunshine ; the cruel, lashing 
 rains, the devastating floods, and the burning droughts for- 
 gotten as though they had never been. 
 
 Meanwhile the heavy fringe of dark lashes drooped wearily 
 on Lynette's white cheeks, and ihe long-limbed, slight, supple 
 body letmed back in the favourite chair by the fireside
 
 THE DOP DOCTOB, 565 
 
 with a little air of languor that only added to her allure. 
 And Saxham, looking at her, said again in his heart : 
 
 " Her children — let them settle the money upon her 
 children !" 
 
 She had learned to love, and thrilled at the touch of 
 passion. Well, Beauvayse was dead, but Love would come 
 again. He would read its resurrection in the radiance of 
 those eyes. Then, exit Saxham ! Such a marriage as theirs 
 could be easily dissolved, but he would not take the easy 
 road. He had decided. His should be the strait and 
 narrow way of death. His death was a debt he owed her. 
 You are to learn why ! 
 
 While he reviewed, for the thousandth time, this deter- 
 mination of his, and told himself again how the thing 
 should be done, his tea had grown quite cold. She leaned 
 forwards and touched his sleeve in drawing his attention 
 to the neglected cup, and flushed because he started and 
 looked at her so strangely. 
 
 He never, if it could be avoided, touched her. Her old 
 shrinking from him had worn away. His companionship, 
 though he did not guess it, was to her desirable — even dear. 
 The light, firm tread of his small muscular feet, the curt, 
 decided utterance, made welcome music in her ears. She 
 would watch him without his knowledge when they went 
 abroad together. The esteem in which his peers and 
 seniors held him, the deference with which his opinions 
 were solicited and listened to gave her strange delightful 
 throbs of pride. 
 
 She had felt the first stirring of that pride in him when 
 the man who had been the thinking brain and the beating 
 heart of beleaguered Gueldersdorp had said, wTinging her 
 husband's hand : 
 
 " ' // ' you have been of any use to me. ... ' If '. , , . 
 You have been my right hand and my mainstay from first 
 to last, Saxham, and while I Uve I shall remember it !" 
 
 Brave words — heartsome words for the hearing of a 
 woman who had loved him. Lynette was almost sorry 
 that she did not. 
 
 He did not believe that he had won any hearts in Guel- 
 dersdorp. His curtness, his roughness, his harshness had 
 been unfavourably commented upon many and many a
 
 566 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 time. Yet when he left them, how the people cheered ! 
 What volumes of roaring sound from lusty throats had 
 bidden him good-bye and God-speed ! 
 
 " Hurrah for the Doctor ! Three cheers for Saxham ! 
 Don't forget us, Doc ! Come back again ! God bless you, 
 Saxham! Bravo, Saxham ! Saxham! Saxham! Hurrah!" 
 
 A woman who had loved him would have wept for Joy. 
 A pity his wife did not ! 
 
 How strangely Owen had looked at her Just now, when 
 she had brushed his sleeve lightly with her finger-tip ! 
 How curious it was that he never touched her if he could 
 help it ! She had quite forgotten having told him that, 
 while she liked to know him near, she could not endure the 
 thought of being taken by him, caressed by him, held in 
 his embrace. . . . That had been the frank, truthful 
 expression of her feelings at the time. She did not recoil 
 so from his contact now. She had not realised how deeply 
 her words had wounded the man's great, suffering, patient 
 heart. Spoken, they had passed from her memory. It is 
 so natural for a fair, sweet woman to forget ! It is so 
 impossible for a man who has been stabbed to help re- 
 membering, with the deep, bleeding wound unclosed ! 
 
 There was another thing that Saxham did not know. 
 Although, as time went on, the beloved image of the 
 Mother, cherished in the innermost shrine of her adopted 
 daughter's heart, suffered no change in the clear, firm 
 beauty of its outlines or deterioration in the richness of 
 its tender and austere and gracious colouring ; and each 
 new day supplied some fresher garland of old imperishable 
 memories to grace it with ; — that Shape with the grey-green 
 Jewel-eyes and the gay mouth that laughed had faded — 
 faded ! She would not own it even to herself, but the keen 
 edge of her grief for Beauvayse was blunted. The anniver- 
 sary of his death, occurring in the coming month of February, 
 was to be a solemn retreat of sacred prayer for her. But 
 it was the Mother's death-day also, when to the palm of 
 martyrdom had been added the Saint's crown. She was 
 going to spend three days at the Kensington Convent, 
 where the dead nun had taken the vows. She told Saxham 
 now of the arrangement she had made through Lady 
 Castleclare, who was intimate with the Superior.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 667 
 
 " It will be a little like old times," she said to Saxham, 
 " living in a Convent again. And there are many Sisters 
 there who knew Mother, and loved her '* 
 
 Her eyes swam in sudden tears. And Saxham, as he looked 
 at her, felt his heart contract in a spasm of bitter jealousy. 
 All that love for the dead, and not a crumb for the living ! 
 He saw Beauvayse, his rival still, stretching a hand from the 
 grave to keep her from him. And he could have cried 
 aloud : 
 
 " Those tears are for a trickster who cheated you 
 into loving him. Listen, now, and I, who have never 
 lied, even to win you, will show him to you as he really 
 was ! . . ." 
 
 But he did not yield to the temptation to enlighten her. 
 A vision rose up before him of a dying man on a camp- 
 bed, and he heard Ms own voice saying : 
 
 " I will never tell her ! I will not blacken any man's 
 reputation W further my own interests !" 
 
 She was speaking, telling him something. He came 
 back out of the fierce mental struggle to listen to the voice 
 that was so sweet and clear, and yet so cold, so cold. . . . 
 
 " Imagine it ! I met an old friend to-day at my dress- 
 maker's in Conduit Street. Not a man. A girl who was a 
 pupil at the Convent at Gueldersdorp — or, rather, I should 
 say a woman, for she is married." 
 
 Saxham asked : 
 
 " Is she an Englishwoman or a Colonial ?" 
 
 " She is of mingled French and Dutch blood. She was 
 a Miss Du Taine. Her father was a member of the Volks- 
 raad at Pretoria. He controls large interests on the Kand, 
 and has an estate near Johannesburg. She is married to 
 an English gentleman. He is very rich, and has a title. 
 She told it me, but I have forgotten it. She asked me 
 to drive home and lunch with her. . . ." She hesitated. 
 " I did not want to go," she said. 
 
 " Well, and what happened then ?" Saxham asked. 
 
 " I made some kind of excuse, and hailed a hansom, and 
 drove to Lady Castleclare's. I lunched with her. She is 
 always very kind. She thought the pearls were beautiful. 
 But — but surely they cost you a great deal of money 1"
 
 568 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 She touched a string of the gleaming, milky things that 
 encircled her white throat above the lace cravat. Saxham 
 said, smiling : 
 
 " They did not cost more than I could afford to pay. 
 I am glad you liked them. I told Marie to put them on 
 your dressing-table, where you would be likely to see them 
 in the morning." 
 
 " You are too good to me !" she said, with quivering 
 lips, looking at him. Her white hand wavered in the air, 
 as though she meant to stretch it out to him. 
 
 " It is not possible to be too good — to you !" said Sax- 
 ham curtly. He would not see the outstretched hand. 
 She drew it back, and faltered : 
 
 " You give me everything " 
 
 " You have given me what I most wanted in the world !" 
 he lied bravely. 
 
 "But " — she rose and stood beside him on the hearth- 
 rug, tall, and fair, and slender, and oh ! most seductively, 
 maddeningly sweet to his adoring thought — " but you take 
 nothing for yourself. That bedroom of yours at the top 
 of the house is wretchedly bare and comfortless ; and then, 
 those absurd pictures !" 
 
 She laughed ruefully, recalling the row of pictorially- 
 illustrated nursery rhymes that adorned the brown-paper 
 dado of Saxham's third-floor bedroom, the previous tenant 
 having been a family man. 
 
 " — Little Miss Muffet and Georgy Porgy ; the Four-and- 
 Twenty Blackbirds, and the Cow that jumped over the 
 Moon. How can you endure them ?" 
 
 She looked at him, and was startled by the set grimness 
 of his face and the thunderous lowering of the black smudge 
 of eyebrow. He said : 
 
 " You went to my room to-day. Why ?" 
 
 She crimsoned, and stammered : 
 
 " It was this morning, after you had gone out. I — it 
 struck me that your linen ought to be overlooked and put 
 to rights from time to time. How did you know ?" 
 
 He did not explain that the perfume of her hair, of her 
 breath, of her dress, had lingered when she had gone, to 
 tempt and taunt and torture him. He said nothing of the 
 little knot of violets that had dropped from her breast upon
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 669 
 
 fehe floor, and he had found there. His heart beat against 
 it even then. He answered : 
 
 " You told me yourself. And, as for the linen, let it be. 
 The housekeeper knows that she is expected to attend to it." 
 
 " She isn't your wife !" 
 
 - Her golden eyes flashed at him rebelliously. He was 
 provoking her, in his innocence of all intention, as a subtle 
 wooer might have planned to do. 
 
 " I am extremely glad that she is not." His mouth re- 
 laxed in a smile, and his thunderous brows smoothed them- 
 selves. " And now, don't you think you ought to go and 
 dress ? You are dining with Lady Harmah and Major 
 Wrynche at The Carlton at seven, and going on to a 
 theatre." He held his watch out. " Six-thirty now," he 
 said, and restored the chronometer to his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 " Very well." She moved a step or two in the direction 
 of the door, and turned her head as gracefully as a young 
 deer, and looked back at him. " But you are coming, 
 too ?" she said, and her eyes were very soft. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " It is impossible. I have several urgent cases to visit, 
 and there is an article for the Scientific Review." He moved 
 his hand slightly in the direction of some sheets of manu- 
 script that lay upon the blotting-paper, " I have a heavy 
 night's work before me with that alone. My excuses have 
 already been telephoned to Lady Hannah." 
 
 " Owen !" 
 
 She spoke his name in a whisper. 
 
 — " Owen !" 
 
 " Yes ?" 
 
 " Couldn't I ? — would you care to have me ? — may I 
 stay and dine at home with you ?" 
 
 " And disappoint your friends ! . . . Most certainly not. 
 Unless, indeed " — his tone warmed to interest — " unless 
 you are not feeling well ?" 
 
 " I am perfectly well, thanks !" she said coldly. 
 
 " Then go to your dinner and your play, child," said 
 Saxham, with the smile that changed and softened his 
 harsh features almost into beauty. " I will drive with you 
 to The Carlton, and fetch you from the play. Which of 
 the theatres have you decided to patronise ?"
 
 570 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Lady Hannah and the Major left the choice to me," she 
 said, wdth a little touch of girlish importance, " so I tele- 
 phoned to Nickalls in Bond Street for a box at The 
 Leicester. He had not got one ; he sent me three stalls 
 for " The Chiffon Girl " at The Variety instead. It Is a 
 revival. I don't quite know what that means," she added, 
 rather puzzled by Saxham's silence and the grimness of 
 his face. " You do not mind at all ? You do not think 
 it is the kind of play the Mother would not have liked me 
 to see ?" 
 
 " No !" said Saxham curtly, and with averted eyes. 
 
 She bent her head to him as he opened the door, and went 
 away to her own rooms on the floor above, the drawing- 
 room that was upholstered and hung with delicate, green- 
 and- white, rose-garlanded Pompadour brocade, and graceful 
 water-colours from famous hands, and furnished with every 
 luxury and elegance that the heart of woman could desire; the 
 charming boudoir, pink as a sea-shell, and full of new books 
 and old china; the bedroom, with the blue-and- white decora- 
 tions, where an ivory Crucifix that had always stood upon 
 the Mother's writing-table hung above the dainty bed. . . . 
 
 " I think he is a little hard on me at times," she said, as 
 she passed through the warm, firelit, perfumed rooms that 
 were fragrant with the narcissi and violets and lilies that 
 were sent in by his orders, and strewn with the costly, 
 pretty trifles that she, who had been used to the barrack- 
 like bareness of the Convent, delighted in like a child, and 
 the gleaming mirrors gave her back her loveliness. " He 
 treats me as if I were a stranger. And, after all, I am bis 
 wife " 
 
 Saxham's patients foimd him even curter and more 
 brusque in manner than usual that evening, and the article 
 for the Scientific Review made little way. He threw down 
 his pen at last, and leaned his head upon his hands and 
 wondered, staring at the unfinished page of manuscript with 
 eyes that saw no meaning in the sentences, whether any 
 man born of woman had ever been so great a fool as the 
 man who had written them ? 
 
 To have made that promise of secrecy to the dead traitor 
 was an act of sheer, quixotic folly. To have kept it was 
 madness, nothing less. And yet Saxham knew that he
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 671 
 
 would keep it always. That if she ever learned the truth, 
 it would be hinted by the chance remark of some stranger, 
 gathered from a paragraph in some newspaper. There 
 was a small-print line at the bottom of the quarter-column 
 devoted by the compilers of Whittinger's " Peerage " to 
 the Marquisate of Foltlebarre, which might have en- 
 hghtened her. He turned to it now, and read : 
 
 " Viscountess Beanvayse, Esther, dau: of Samuel Levah, Esq., of Fins- 
 bury, E.G., mar: June, 1899, the late John Basil Edward Tobart, Lieut. 
 Grey Hussars, 11th Viscount Beauvayse. Killed in action during the 
 defence of Gueldersdorp, Feb., 1900, while atta: as Junior aide to the 
 Staff of Colonel Commanding H.M. Forces, leaving issue one dau: The 
 Hon. Alyse Rosabel Tobart, now aged eighteen months." 
 
 At the Clubs, Service and Civil, Saxham had heard the 
 impromptu marriage of the late John Basil Edward Tobart 
 freely discussed. The story of his subsequent entangle- 
 ment " with some girl or other at Gueldersdorp " had been 
 mooted in his presence a dozen times by Society chatterers, 
 whose enjoyment of the scandal would have been pleasantly 
 stimulated by the knowledge that " Saxham, M.D., 
 r.R.C.S., late Attached Medical Staff," was married to the 
 girl. But they did not know, and she . . . 
 
 What use — what use in her knoA\ing ? Of what avail 
 could be the melting of the ice about her heart, the loosen- 
 ing of the fetters of her tongue, the quickening of her nature, 
 the miracle vouchsafed ? Of none, now, for a reason ! 
 Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his 
 bm'ning forehead on his hands and looked into the starless 
 night of his desolate soul, that he had ceased even to desire 
 that she should come to love him. Far better that she 
 should never know ! 
 
 It was growing late, and he had promised to fetch her 
 from the theatre. The silver clock upon the mantelshelf 
 chimed ten. He had stretched his hand to the telephone 
 to ring up his motor-brougham from the garage, when he 
 heard the click of her latchkey in the outer door and the 
 silken whisper of her garments passing quickly through 
 the hallway. Then came a knock at the consulting-room 
 door — sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlike Lynette's soft 
 tap. ... At the summons Saxham made two strides across 
 the carpet and opened to her, a question on his lips.
 
 572 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Why have you come back so early ? Has anything 
 happened ?" 
 
 Even as he asked, her look told why. She knew. . . . 
 
 She knew. . . . Her face was rigid, a pure white mask of 
 ivory ; there was not a trace of colour even in the set lips. 
 Her eyes burned upon him, twin flames of dark amber, 
 steady under levelled brows. She was wrapped in a long 
 ermine-caped and bordered black brocade mantle, that 
 gleamed with jet passementerie ; a scarf of white lace covered 
 her head. It hid the red-brown hair with the Clytie ripple 
 in it, and the great silken coils, transfixed by a sapphire 
 and diamond dagger, that were massed at the nape of the 
 slender neck. Seen so, she was nunlike in her chaste 
 severity, but for those stern, resentful eyes. 
 
 " I have come to tell you that I am no longer in ignorance. 
 I have found out what you have hidden from me so long — 
 what the Wrynches knew and would not tell me ; what the 
 world has known while I sat in the dark. ..." 
 
 A spasm wrung her mouth. Saxham rolled a chair 
 towards her. He said guardedly, avoiding her eyes : 
 
 " Until you acquaint me in detail with what you 
 have heard, I cannot explain or defend myself. Will 
 you not sit down ? You are looking pale and over- 
 wrought." 
 
 She laid one slight gloved hand upon the chair-back, and 
 leaned upon it. 
 
 " I would rather stand, if you have no objection, whilst I 
 tell you what I have learned to-night. I dined alone with 
 Lady Hannah at the Carlton ; we went together to the 
 theatre — ]\Iajor Wrynche had had a summons to attend at 
 Marlborough House." 
 
 She untied the knot of lace beneath her chin, and stripped 
 away the long gloves with nervous haste and impatience, 
 and tossed them with the scarf upon the chair beside her, 
 and went on : 
 
 " I had heard much of ' The Chiffon Girl.' I wanted to 
 see it. When the First Act began I wondered very much 
 why they called it a Musical Comedy, when the noise the 
 orchestra made could hardly be called music ; and there 
 was no comedy — only slang expressions and stupid jokes. 
 But the actress who sang and danced in the principal
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 573 
 
 part . . . Miss Lavigne . . ." She had loosened her mantle ; 
 now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emerging from 
 its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging, 
 creamy- white draperies ; her exquisite arms bare to the 
 shoulder, and clasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets 
 of barbaric gold, her nymph-like bosom swelling from the 
 folded draperies of the low-cut bodice like a twin- budded 
 narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweet throat 
 clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls. 
 
 " She could not sing, though the people applauded and 
 encored her " — there was a gleam of disdain in the golden 
 eyes — " but she was very pretty . . . she danced with 
 wonderful grace and lightness ... it was like a swallow 
 dipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore — 
 like a branch of red pomegranate-blossoms swayed and 
 svmng by a spring breeze. ... I admired her, and yet I 
 was sorry for her. ... To have to pose and bound and 
 whirl before all those rows and rows of staring faces night 
 after night ! . . ." 
 
 Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his 
 cheek as he said : 
 
 " She would hardly thank you for pitying her." 
 
 " She would be right to resent my pity !" L3mette burst 
 out with sudden vehemence. " She has been injured, and 
 I was the cause ! Oh ! how could you be so cruel as to let 
 me go on loving him ? Was it kind ? Was it fair to 
 yourself and me ?" 
 
 Saxham's square, pale face was perfectly expressionless. 
 He waited in silence to hear the rest. 
 
 " You know of whom I speak . . ." said Lynette. " He 
 was gay and beautiful and winning — not chivalrous, as I 
 believed him ; not honest, or sincere, or true. Months 
 before we met at Gueldersdorp he was the husband of this 
 actress — the woman I saw upon the stage to-night. And 
 you knew all this, and never told me ! You knew that liis 
 memory was sacred in my heart. A woman I was introduced 
 to here in London once tried to blacken it. She said she 
 wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I 
 laughed in her faice as I turned and left her. ' You 
 thought to make me hate him,' I said. ' You have failed 
 miserably. If it were possible to love him better — if I could
 
 574 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 honour his memory more than I do now, I would, because 
 of the evil you have spoken of my dead !' " 
 
 She heard Saxham draw breath heavily. She went on 
 with increased passion, and gathering resentment : 
 
 " All my life long I might have gone on in my blindness, 
 honouring the dishonourable, cherisliing the base, but for 
 the idle gossip of two strangers in the theatre to-night — a 
 man and a woman in the stalls behind us. They talked all 
 the louder when the lights went down. They wondered 
 ' why the Lavigne did not star on the programme as a Vis- 
 countess V but, of course, they said, ' the Foltlebarres would 
 never stand that ! They were nearly wild when that hand- 
 some scamp of theirs married her — poor Beauty Beauvayse, 
 of the Grey Hussars.' He and she had kept house together ; 
 there was a kiddie coming ; they said the little woman played 
 her cards uncommonly well ! . . . The marriage was pulled 
 off on the quiet at a Registrar's a week or so before Beau got 
 his appointment on the Staff. Straight of the fellow, but 
 afterwards, at Gueldersdorp, didn't he kick over the matri- 
 monial pole ? Somebody had seen his engagement to a 
 Miss Something-or-other announced in a Siege newspaper, 
 published the very day he got killed. . . . Poor beggar ! 
 Rough on him, and rough on the Foltlebarres, and a facer 
 for Lessie . . . and what price the girl ?' And I was the 
 girl ! . . . It was of me they were talking ! . . ." 
 
 Her lips writhed back from her white teeth. She winced 
 and shuddered. " Oh ! can't you see me sitting and listen- 
 ing, and every word vitriol, burning to the bone ?" 
 
 " Why did you remain," said Saxham, wrung by pity, 
 " to be toftuied by such prurient prattlers ? Why did you 
 not get up and leave the place ?" 
 
 " I could not move," she said. ... "I could only sit and 
 listen. Then the First Act ended, and the Ughts went up, 
 and Lady Hannah touched my arm. I knew when our 
 eyes met that she had heard as I had. She got up, saying, 
 ' I think we have had enough of this V and then we came 
 away." 
 
 She caught her breath and bit her underlip, and he saw 
 her eyes grow misty. 
 
 " She sent a Commissionaire to call a hansom. . . . She 
 took my hand as we stood waiting in the empty vestibule.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 57fl 
 
 She said : ' Those chattering pies behind us have saved me 
 some bad half -hours ! Your husband, for some reason of 
 his own, has never told you. And it has more than once 
 occurred to me that if I were the true friend I want to be 
 to both of you, I'd have proved it before now by telling 
 you myself. But I've learned to be doubtful of my own 
 inspirations ! . . .* I asked her then if all they had said was 
 true ? She shrugged her shoulders and nodded : " Pour 
 tout dire, they let Beau down rather gently. . . . But if he 
 never could tell the truth to a woman, he never went back 
 on a man ; and, after all, these things run in the blood. 
 Passons Veponge Id-dessus. Forget him, and thank your 
 good Angel you're married to an honourable man !' " 
 
 Saxham's eyes were on the carpet. He did not raise 
 them or move a muscle of his face. 
 
 " She told me to forget him. It is easier to forgive him ; 
 there are deceits that smirch the soul of the deceived no 
 less than the deceiver. He lied to the Mother — that I 
 cannot pardon ! Perhaps some day — but I do not know. 
 Lady Hannah called you honourable. ... I needed no 
 one to tell me what you are and have always been ! You 
 hide the things that other men boast of . . . . You are loyal 
 even to those you scorn. You kept his secret. I have 
 reproached you to-night for keeping it, even while I 
 honoured you in my heart !" 
 
 " Do not honour me," said Saxham harshly, ** for 
 behaving with common decency ! Can a man tell tales on 
 anotlier who is dead ? To commit murder would be a 
 crime less cowardly. I do myself mere justice when I say 
 that I am incapable of an act so vile ! Nor would I blacken 
 a living man to make myself show whiter in any man's — or 
 woman's eyes !" 
 
 She was no longer pale. A lovely colour flushed her, and 
 her eyes were wistful and very kind. Her draperies rustled 
 as she moved towards liim. " Owen ..." she said, and 
 her white hands were held out to him, and her sweet mouth 
 quivered, and her voice was a sigh, " I am alivo at last to 
 your infinite generosity. I beg you to forgive me for being 
 blind before !" 
 
 " Generosity," said Saxham, " does not enter into the 
 question. My silence has no merits whatever. What good
 
 576 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 could I have gained by telling you ?" He lifted his eyes, 
 and met hers full, dropping tlie words coldly one by one. 
 " The advantage one has ceased to desire can hardly be 
 called gain, in any sense of the word. And — I have left 
 off crying for the moon. Even were you willing to give it 
 me, I have ceased to wish for your love !" 
 
 She looked at him with piteous, incredulous wistfulness, 
 as he told the hardy lie. His mask of a face revealed 
 nothing, but he could not disguise the rage of hunger for 
 her that ravened in his famished eyes. They were upon 
 her lips, her throat, the lovely curves of her young bosom 
 even as he spoke ; she felt them as the kisses of a fierce, 
 possessive mouth, and glowed with sudden shame, and 
 something more. He saw her beauty change from the 
 pale rose to the fire-hearted crimson, tore away his eyes, 
 and mastered himself. He stepped back, and the still out- 
 stretched, quivering hands dropped nervelessly at her sides. 
 
 " You have asked me to pardon you," he said, " for 
 some fancied lack of perception. It is I who owe an 
 apology to you. Try and forgive me for having married 
 you. ... I should have known from the first that no good 
 or happiness could ever come of a contract like ours." 
 
 " Have I ever said I was unhappy ?" she demanded. 
 Her breath came quick and short. 
 
 " Your face has said so very often," returned Saxham, 
 looking at it, " though you were too considerate to tell me 
 so in words. But I ask you on this night that sees you freed 
 from an illusion, to have courage and not yield to depres- 
 sion. Your fetters may be broken sooner than you think !" 
 
 " Owen ! . . ." 
 
 She was paler than before, if that could be possible. She 
 swayed a little, and caught at the back of a chair that 
 was near, and there was terror in her darkened, dilated 
 eyes. . . . 
 
 " Do you say this to prepare me ? Have you any ill- 
 ness ? Do you mean that you are going to die ?" 
 
 " I meant nothing . . ." answered Saxham, " except that 
 men are mortal, sometimes fortunately for the women who 
 are bound to them ! Gro to bed, my child ; to sleep will do 
 you good." 
 
 ** Goodnight," she waid. and dropped her head, and
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 577 
 
 went away. He opened the door for ker, and locked it 
 after her, and went back to the writing-table, and sat in 
 his chair. He gripped the arms of it in anguish, and the 
 sweat of agony stood on the broad forehead where a woman 
 who had loved him would have laid her lips. 
 
 He had repelled her, slighted her, wounded her. , . . He 
 knew what it had cost him not to take those offered hands. 
 , . . He was tortured and wrung in body and in soul as he 
 took a key that himg upon his chain and unlocked a deep 
 drawer, and took a flask from it that gurgled as if some 
 mocking sprite had laughed aloud when he shook it close 
 to his ear. He whom she had praised as honourable was a 
 traitor no less than the dead man. He had said to her, 
 months ago in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp : 
 
 " I may die, but I will never fail you !" 
 
 He had not died, and he had failed her. The Dop 
 Doctor of Gueldersdorp was drinking hard again. 
 
 LIX 
 
 Befohe you turn away in loathing of the man whose ex- 
 perience of Life's game of football had been chiefly gained 
 from the ball's point of view, hear how it happened that 
 the work of all those months of stern self- repression and 
 strenuous denial had been rendered useless. 
 
 In the previous July, when Sir Danvers Muller was visiting 
 Lord WilHams of Afghanistan at Pretoria, Owen Saxham, 
 M.p., F.R.C.S., had been married to Lynette Bridget-Mary 
 Miidare at the Registrar's Office, Gueldersdorp, and at the 
 Catholic Church. One hour after the ceremony the happy 
 pair left by the mail for Cape Town. 
 
 Gueldersdorp turned out to do them honour. We have 
 heard the people cheer. Three days and three nights of 
 the Express, delayed in places by the wrecking of the line, 
 and then the Alpine mountain-ranges sank and dwindled 
 with the mercury in the thermometer. The little wliite 
 towns succeeded each other like pearls on a green string. 
 Humpy blue liills gave way to the flats, and then in 
 tlie shadow of Table Mountain — Babel's confusion of 
 tongues — and the stalwart flower of many nations, 
 
 37
 
 578 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 arrayed and armed for battle, and the glory, and pomp, 
 and power of War. 
 
 The grey and white transports disgorged them, ants of 
 sober, neutral colours, marching in columns to attack other 
 ants. They grew upon the vision and filled it, and the 
 sound of their feet was louder than the beating of the surf on 
 Sea Point, and although martial music beat and blew them 
 on — a brazen whirhvind dominating the mind, blaring at the 
 ears — the trampling of men's feet and the hoofs of horses, and 
 the rolling of iron-shod wheels, triumphed in the long-run. 
 
 Saxham engaged rooms at the Trafalgar Hotel, a hand- 
 some caravanserai standing in its own gardens at the top 
 of Imperial Avenue, for himself and his wife, and the savage 
 irony that can be conveyed in the terra struck him, not 
 for the first time since he had laid gold and silver on the 
 open book, and endowed a woman with the gift of liimself 
 and all liis worldly goods. 
 
 It was early in the forenoon. They were to sail next day. 
 The big building was crammed, not only with officers 
 under orders for the Front, and their \nves, who had come 
 to see them start. Society had descended like a flock of 
 chattering, gaudily-plumaged paroquets upon the sjwt 
 Avhere new and exciting sensations were to be had. For the 
 trampling feet and the rolling wheels that ceaselessly went 
 North imparted one set of thrills, and the long trains of 
 wounded and dying that met and passed them, coming down 
 as they went up, gave another kind. Amongst the poor 
 dears in the trucks, and waggons, and Ambulance-carriages 
 you might eventually find a man you knew. . . . The 
 sporting odds were given and taken on these exciting 
 chances ; and the fluttering and screaming paroquets that 
 crowded the Railway Stations, in spite of their gay feathers, 
 bore no little resemblance to carrion-feeding birds of prey. 
 
 Saxham, Recently Attached IVfedical Staff, Gueldersdorp, 
 suffered from the notoriety inseparable from the name of 
 a man who has been thrice mentioned in Despatches, and 
 has been publicly thanked by the representatives of an 
 Imperial Government. The Interviewer yapped at his 
 heels whithersoever he went, and the Correspondent strove 
 to lure him into confidences, and Society fluttered at him 
 with shrill squawkiugs, and wanted to know, don't you
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 579 
 
 know ? It must have been " devey " and " twee " to have 
 gone through all those experiences. It was the year when 
 '* devey," and " twee," and similar abbreviations first 
 became fashionable. 
 
 There were pleasanter episodes than these, when soldierly, 
 bronzed warriors and simple, unaffected men of great 
 affairs, expressed to Saxham in few words their belief that 
 he liad done his duty. The approval of these warmed liim 
 and helped to raise him higher. It was a little creature, a 
 human insect no bigger than a bar-tender, that brought 
 about the mischief. 
 
 Tliere was an American bar on the ground-floor of the 
 Trafalgar. Saxham stood upon the threshold of the place, 
 replying to the questions of a group of ColonioJ officers. 
 New South Wales Mounted Engineers and Canadian 
 Rangers, when somebody suggested Drinks, and led the 
 way in. Invited to make his choice from a long list of 
 alcoholic mixtures, beginning with Whisky Straight, and 
 ending with Bosom Caresser and Gin Sour, Saxham said 
 that he would take a glass of ice- water. 
 
 " Well, boss, since you're on the Temporance Walk," said 
 the Australian, liis would-be host, a little huffily, " you'll 
 please yourself, I suppose ?" He collected the preferences 
 of liis other guests, and gave the orders to the man behind 
 the bar. 
 
 The barman had the misfortune to be a joker of the 
 practical kind. Seeing Saxham held in conversation by 
 one of the other men, he winked portentously at the New 
 South Waler, and whispered in his ear. 
 
 The Australian understood. A reason for Saxham's 
 abstinence had been given Ixim. Tlie new made bridegroom 
 as a rule shuns Alcohol. And in p)oportion to his desii-e to 
 avoid, grows the determination of other men to compel him 
 to drink. Tlie bridegroom is fair game all the world over 
 for the Rabelaisian jest and the clown's horseplay. 
 
 The bar-tender, hoisting his eyebrows to his scollops of 
 gummed hair, winked at the New South Waler with infinite 
 meaning, and pointed to a cut-glass carafe that stood on 
 the shining nickel-plated counter. It appeared to contain 
 pure sparkling water, but the liquor it held was knock-ou» 
 whisky, a tintless drink of exceeding potency, above proof.
 
 580 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The Australian shook his head. But he laughed under his 
 neat moustache as he turned away, and the bar-tender 
 concluded to carry his joke through. He dealt out the 
 drinks to their respective owners, and with a dexterous 
 sweep of a shirt-sleeved arm brought the innocent-seeming 
 carafe and a gleaming, polished tumbler immediately 
 before the square-faced hulking doctor with the queer blue 
 eyes, whose pretty bride of three days was waiting for him 
 in their room upon the third floor of the humming, over- 
 crowded caravanserai. Saxham, absorbed by the thought 
 of her, poured out a tumblerful of the clear, sparkling stuff, 
 and had half emptied it before he realised the trick. His 
 eyes grew red with injected blood, and his hair bristled on 
 his head. He struck out once across the narrow counter. 
 The long wall-mirror behind the bar-tender cracked and 
 starred with the crashing impact of the joker's skull, and 
 the man fell senseless, bleeding from the mouth and nostrils. 
 
 Another attendant came running at the crash, and the 
 exclamations of those who had seen the swift retaliation 
 wreaked. Saxham, leaving a banknote lying on the counter, 
 wheeled abruptly, and went out of the bar. 
 
 His brain was on fire. His blood ran riot in his burning 
 veins, and the vice he had deemed dead stirred in the 
 depths of his being, lifted its slender head, and hissed, 
 quivered a forked tongue, and struck with poisoned fangs. 
 He went out into the purple night that wedded lovers would 
 have found so perfect. The great white stars winked down 
 at him jeeringly, and a little mocking breeze sniggered 
 among the mimosas and palms of the hotel gardens. He 
 passed out of them into the many-tongued Babel of the 
 streets, packed with humanity, throbbing with virile life, 
 and tramped the magnificent avenues and wide electric- 
 lighted streets of Cape Town with the thousands who had no 
 beds at all, and the ten thousand who had, but preferred not 
 to occupy them. To liis narrow couch in the dressing-room 
 adjoining Lynette's bedroom her husband dared not go. 
 
 So he wore the night out, doggedly wrestling with the 
 demon that boils the blood of strong fierce men to forgetful- 
 ness of compacts and breach of oaths. Daybreak touched 
 him with a chilly shivering finger, a hulking figure dozing 
 on one of the white-painted iron seats near the AtbJetio
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 5«] 
 
 Ground on Greenpoint Common. The last lingering star 
 throbbed itself out, a white moth dying in the marvellous 
 rose and orange fires of dawn, and the overwhelming, 
 brooding bulk of Table Mountain gleamed, an emerald and 
 sapphire splendour against the rising sun, and the two lesser 
 peaks that are the mountain's bodyguard shone glowing in 
 golden mail as Saxham got to his feet, and shook some order 
 into the disorder of his dress, and faced hotelwards. 
 
 Despair was in the heart of the Dop Doctor, and for him 
 the wonder of the dawn, the marvel of the sunrise meant no 
 more than if he had been born blind. A menial's trick had 
 wrought him confusion ; his will, in the saving strength of 
 which he had trusted, was a leaf in the wind of his desire. 
 Even now his throat and tongue were parched, his being 
 thirsted for the liquor he had abjured. 
 
 What was to bo done ? What was to happen in the future ? 
 He asked himself in vain. As Mouille Point shut its fixed 
 red eye in apparent derision, and the Greenpoint Light 
 winked a thirteen-mile wink and went out, unlike the Hope 
 that had burned in Saxham, and would be rekindled never 
 more. 
 
 LX 
 
 Pity the man now as he sat brooding alone in the con- 
 sulting-room, consumed by the thirst he shuddered at, 
 once more an unwilling slave to the habit he abhorred. 
 
 He unscrewed the large flask and drank, and his lips 
 curled back with loathing of the whisky, and his gorge rose 
 at it as it went down. Then he put the flask back and 
 locked the drawer, and laid his head down upon his folded 
 arms in silence. No help anywhere ! No hope, no joy, 
 no love ! 
 
 Death must come. Death should come, before the 
 shadow of disgrace fell upon the Beloved, of whose love 
 he knew now that he had never been worthy. Well for 
 Lynette that he had never won it ! Happy for her that she 
 had never even learned to care for him a little ! 
 
 « * * * • 
 
 A few days more, and the great Victorian Age had 
 drawn its last breath.
 
 582 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The people went about the London streets softly, as 
 though their footsteps led them through the stately, grand, 
 and solemn chamber where lay the august, illustrious Dead. 
 
 A subdued, busy hum of preparation was perceptible to 
 the ear. The eye saw the thoroughfares being covered 
 with sand, the draperies of purple rising at the bidding of 
 the pulley and the rope, the carta laden with wreaths and 
 garlands of laurel, passing from point to point, discharging 
 their loads, often renewed. 
 
 A lady was ushered into Saxham's consulting-room as 
 a long procession of those carts went creaking by. She 
 was a dainty, piquante, golden-haired, blue-eyed little 
 woman, quite beautifully dressed. Her gown was of black, 
 in deference to the national mourning, but it glittered ^vdth 
 sequins, and huge diamonds scintillated in her tiny ears, 
 and she wore a mantle of royal ermine, that reached to 
 the high heels of her little shoes. Her hat was of the 
 toque description. Ermine and lace and artificial blooms 
 from Parisian shop-window-gardens went to make up the 
 delicious effect. A titled name adorned her card, which 
 bore a Mayfair address. She seemed in radiant health. 
 As Saxham waited, leaning forward in his consulting- 
 chair, to receive the would-be patient's confidence, you can 
 imagine those blue eyes of his, once so hard and keen, 
 looking out of their hollowing caves with a sorrowful, clear 
 sympathy that was very different from their old regard. 
 To his women-patients he was exquisitely considerate. 
 Only to one class of patient was he merciless and unsparing. 
 
 Upon the woman who desired to rid herself of her 
 sex-priiilege, upon the wedded wanton who sought to 
 make of her body, designed by her Maker to be the cradle 
 of an unborn generation, its sepulchre, Saxham's glance 
 fell like a sharp curved sword. He wasted few words upon 
 her, but each sentence, as it fell from his grim mouth, 
 shrivelled and corroded, as vitriol dropped on naked human 
 flesh. He listened now in silence that grew grimmer and 
 grimmer, and as in flute-like accents, their smooth course 1 
 hampered by the very slightest diffidence, the little lady ' 
 
 explained, those heavy brows of his grew thunderous. 
 
 Ah, the tragic errand, the snaky purpose, coiled behind 
 those graceful, ambiguous forms of spe-ech ! Not new the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 583 
 
 tale to the man who sat and heard. She admired the 
 black-haired, powerful head, and the square, pale face 
 wth its short, aquiline, rather heavily-modelled features, 
 and the broad, white forehead that the single smudge of 
 eyebrow barred pleased her, a-s it did most women. Only 
 the man's vivid blue eyes were impleasantly hard and 
 fixed in their regard, and his mouth frightened her, it was 
 so stora and set. 
 
 She was not as robust as she appeared, she said. When 
 she had been manned, the family physician had mentioned 
 toher mother that it would hardly bo advisable. . . . Delay 
 for a year or two would be wise. And her husband did 
 not care for cLildren. He was quite willing. He had 
 sent her to Saxham, in fact. Of course, the Profession of 
 Surgery had made such hvige strides that risk need not 
 enter into consideration for a moment. . . . And heaps 
 of her women friends did the same. And expense was 
 absolutely no object, and would not Dr. Saxham 
 
 Saxham struck a boll that was upon his table, and rose 
 up with his piercing eyes upon h«r and crossed the room 
 in two strides. He flung the door wide. He bowed to 
 her with cool, withering, ironical courtesy as he stood 
 waiting for her to depart. 
 
 She hesitated, laughed with the ring of hysteria, fluttered 
 into speech. 
 
 " You are not, of course, aware of it, but I happen to be 
 an old schoolfellow of your wife's." Her prt-tty, inquisi- 
 tive eyes went back to the writing-table, where stood a 
 photograph of Lynette, recently taken- — an exquisite, 
 delicate, pearly-toned portrait in a heavy silver-gilt frame. 
 " We used to be great fri( nds. Du Taine was my maiden 
 name. Surely Mrs. Saxham has spoken to you of Greta 
 Du Taine ? I left GueJdersdorp at the beginning of the 
 siege. Later, we went to Cape Town. I met my hijsbaud 
 there. He is Sir Philip Atherlcij^h, Baronet." She italicised 
 the word. " He was with his regiment, going to the Front. 
 We were married almost directly. It was a case of love at 
 first sight. Now wo are staying at our town house in 
 Werkeley Square. Mrs. Saxham must visit us — my hus- 
 band is dying to know her." 
 
 "I regret that the desire cannot be gratified, madam."
 
 584 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 The angry blood darkened his face. His tone, evrn mr re 
 plainly than his words, told her that the boasted friend- 
 ship was at an end. 
 
 Greta reddened too, and her turquoise-hued eyes dealt 
 him a glance of bitter hatred. 
 
 " I did not stay long at the Convent at Gueldersdorp. 
 Nuns are good, simple creatures, and easily imposed upon. 
 And — mother did not wish me to be educated with strays 
 and foundlings — dressed up like young ladies — actually 
 allowed to mingle upon equal terms with them " 
 
 It was Cornelius Agrippa, I think, who once materialised 
 the Devil as an empty purse. The necromancer should 
 have evoked the Spirit of Evil in the shape of a spiteful 
 woman. Greta went on : 
 
 " — Such Society as there was, I should say. You were 
 at Gueldersdorp tliroughout the siege, and for some time 
 before it, I think. Dr. Saxham ?" 
 
 Two pairs of blue eyes met, the man's hard as shining 
 stones, the woman's dancing with malicious intention. 
 Saxham stiffly bent his head. But her fear of him had 
 evaporated in her triumph. Those inquisitive, turquoise 
 eyes had an excellent memory behind them. Something 
 in the shape of the square black head and hulking shoulders 
 quickened it now. 
 
 "It's odd " Her smile was a grin that showed 
 
 sharp little white teeth ready to bite, and her speech was 
 pointed with venomed meaning. " I used to go out a great 
 deal in such Society as the place possessed. Yet I do not 
 remember ever having met you !" 
 
 Saxham's cold eyes clashed with the malicious turquoises. 
 
 " I did not mingle in Society at Gueldersdorp." 
 
 He signed to the waiting manservant to open the hall- 
 door. She drew her snowy ermines about her and rustled 
 over the threshold. But in the hall she turned and dealt 
 her thrust. 
 
 " No ? You were too busy attending cases. Police- 
 Court cases. . . " 
 
 Her light laugh fluttered mockingly about his ears. 
 
 " I remember the funny headings of some of the news- 
 paper reports. . . . ' Another Rampant Drunk ! The 
 To^\Ti Painted Red Again by the Dop Doctor !' "
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 585 
 
 " Door !" said Saxham. shaping the word with stiff grey 
 lips. His face was the face of Death, who had come close 
 up and touched him. Her little ladyship went out to her 
 waiting auto- brougham, and her Ught, malignant laugh 
 fluttered back as the servant shut the hall -door. 
 
 Saxham went back into the consulting-room. The 
 Spring sunshine poured in through the tall muslin-screened 
 window. There was a cheerful play of light and colour in 
 the place. But to the man who sat there it was full of 
 shadows, dark and gloomy, threatening and grim. And 
 not the least formidable among them was the shadow of 
 the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, looming portentously 
 over that fair face within the silver-gilt frame upon the 
 wi'itiug-table, stretching out long octopus-arms to drag 
 down shame upon it, and heap ashes of humi]ia,tion vmde- 
 served upon the lovely head, and mock her with the solemn 
 altar- vows that bound her to the drunkard. 
 
 LXI 
 
 The Great Victjorian Age was laid to rest. 
 
 The great pageant of mortality had wound along the 
 officially-appointed route, under the cold grey sky, an 
 apparently endless, slowly-marching column of Infantry, 
 Artillery, and Cavalry of the Line, progressing pace by pace 
 between the immovable barriers of great-coated soldiers, 
 and the surging, restless sea of black-clad men and women 
 pent up on either hand behind them. The long rolling of 
 muffled drums, and the dull boom of cannon ; the baring 
 of men's heads ; the wail of the Funeral March, the flash 
 of suddenly whitened faces turned one way to greet Her as 
 She passed, borne to Her rest upon a gim-carriage, as fitting 
 an aged warrior Queen ; drawTi to her w edded couch within 
 tlie tomb by the willing, faitliiul hands of her sons of the 
 twin Services, who shall forget, that heard and witnessed ? 
 
 Who shall forget ? 
 
 The Royal Standard draped across the satin-white, 
 gold-fringed pall, where on rich crimson cushions rested the 
 Three Emblems of Sovereignty. The diccnified, kingly 
 figure of a man, no longer young, bowed with sorrow under
 
 586 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the Imperial heritage, preceding the splendid sombre com- 
 pany of crowned heads ; the blaze of uniforms and orders, 
 the clank of SAvord and bridle, the potent ring of steel 
 on steel, the sumptuously-trapped, shining horses pacing 
 slowly, drawing the rmurning- carriages of State, their closed 
 windows, frosted with chilly fog, yielding scant glimpses 
 of well-known faces. One most beloved, most lovely, and 
 no less so in sorrow than in joy. "'Did you set her?^^ the 
 women asked of one another, as the pageant passed and 
 vanished, and one good soul, all breathless from the crash, 
 gasped as she straightened her battered bonnet and tv/itched 
 her trodden skirt : " There never was a better than the 
 blessed soul that's gone, but there couldn't bo a sweeter nor 
 a beautifuUer Queen than the one she leaves behind her !" 
 
 The la-st wail of the Funeral March having died away 
 into silence, the last cannon-shot gone booming out, down 
 came the foggy dusk on bereaved London. A chill rime 
 settled on the swaying laurel Avreaths, and on the folds of 
 the fluttering purple draperies at the close of the dismal day. 
 The shops were shut, and many of the restaurants, but the 
 windows of the Clubs gleamed radiantly do\vn Piccadilly, 
 and every refreshment- bar and public -house was thronged 
 to bursting. Noon changed to evening, and evening length- 
 ened into night, and the pavements began to be crowded. 
 The Flesh Bazaar was being held in Piccadilly, and all up 
 Regent Street and all down the Haymarket the chaffering 
 went on for bodies and for souls. 
 
 A deadly physical and mental lassitude weighed on 
 Saxham. His soul was sick with the long, hopeless struggle. 
 He would end it. He would die, and take away the shadow 
 from Lynette's pure life, and leave her free. His will devised 
 to her everything he possessed, leaving her untrammelled. 
 Let her learn to love once more, let her marry a better man, 
 and be happy in her husband and her children. . . . 
 # * * * » 
 
 He turned in at one of the chemist's shops. One or two 
 gaudily-dressed, haggard women were at the distant end 
 of the counter, in conference with an assistant. Saxham 
 spoke to the chemist, a grey- whiskered, fatherly individual, 
 who listened, bending his sleek bald head. The chemist 
 bowed, but as he had not the honour of knowing his 
 
 1 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 587 
 
 customer, would the gentleman oblige by signing the 
 poison-book, in compliance with Schedule F of the Phar- 
 macy Act, 1868 ? 
 
 Stixham nodded. The chemist produced the register, 
 and opened it on the counter before Saxham, and supplied 
 him with pen and ink. Then he found that he had business 
 at the other end of the shop, and when he returned he 
 smartly closed the book, without even satisfying himself 
 whether the client had written down his name and address, 
 or merely pretended to. Then he filled a two-ounce vial 
 with the fragrant, deadly acid, and put on a yellow label 
 that named the poison, but not the vendor, and stoppered 
 and capsuled, and sealed, and made it into a neat little 
 parcel, and Saxham paid, and put the parcel in his inner 
 breast-pocket, and turned to leave the shop. 
 
 It was crowded now ; the roaring business of the little 
 hours was in full swing. The three assistants ran about 
 like busy ants ; the chemist joined his merry men at tlie 
 game of making money, serving alcoholic liquors, mixing 
 pick-me-ups, dispensing little bottles of tabloids and little 
 boxes of jujubes, taking cash and giving change. 
 
 The crush was terrific. Saxham, his hat pulled low over 
 his broad brows, his great chest stemming the tide of 
 humanity that incessantly rolled over the threshold, was 
 slowly making his way to the door, when he felt the 
 arresting touch of a hand up(m his arm. 
 
 The OMTier of the hand belonged, as ninety per cent, of the 
 women in the place belonged, to Fran9ois Villon's liberal 
 sisterhood. Something in the pale square face and mas- 
 sive shoulders had attracted her vagrant fancy. She had 
 quitted her comparuons — t^vo gaily-dressed, be-rouged 
 women and a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, moustached young 
 German, whose stripy tweeds, vociferously-patterned linen, 
 necktie of too obvious pattern, and higli-crowned bowler 
 bat, advertised the Berlin tailor and haberdasher and 
 hatter at their customer's expense, as Saxhum went by. 
 Now she looked up into the strange, sorrowful eyes tliat 
 were shaded by his tilted hat-brim, and twined her thin 
 htmds caressingly about his arm, asking : 
 
 " Why do you look so queer, dear ? Is anything wrong ? 
 — excuse me asking — or is it the Funeral has given you the
 
 68S THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 blue hump ? It did me ! I've not felt so bad since 
 
 mother " She broke o£E. Then as a shrill peal of 
 
 laughter from one of her female companions followed a 
 comment made by the other — " One of those . . ." — she 
 jerked her chin contemptuously, tossing an unprintable 
 epithet in the direction of her lady friends — " says you're 
 ugly. I don't think so. I like your face !" Her own was 
 cruelly, terribly young, even under the white cream of 
 zinc, the rouge, end the rice-powder. " Were you looking 
 for a friend, dear ?" she asked tightening the clasp of her 
 tliin, feverish hands. 
 
 " Yes," said Saxham, with a curious smile that made no 
 illumination in his sombre face. " For Death ! There is 
 no better friend than Death, my child, either for you 
 or me !" 
 
 Gently he unloosed the burning hands that clutched him, 
 and turned and pushed his way out through the noisy, 
 raving, chaffering, patchouli-scented crowd, and was gone, 
 swallowed up in the roaring torrent of humanity that 
 foamed down Piccadilly, leaving her frozen and stricken 
 and staring. 
 
 Lxn 
 
 Months went by. The slight overtures Lynette had made 
 towards a more familiar friendship had ceased since 
 that rebuff of Saxham's. She had never since set foot in 
 his third-floor bedroom, where Little Miss Muffet and 
 Georgy Porgy and the whole regiment of nursery-rhyme 
 characters, attired in the brilliant aniline hues adored of 
 inartistic, frankly-barbaric babyhood, adorned the top of 
 the brown-paper dado, and flourished on the fireplace-tiles. 
 
 Only a few weeks more, he said to himself, and he would 
 set her free. Before the natural craving for love, and life, 
 and happiness should brim the cup of her fair sweet woman- 
 hood to overflowing ; before her sex should rise in desperate 
 revolt against himself her gaoler. Death should unlock her 
 prison-doors ajid strike the fetters from those slender 
 wrists, and point to Hope beckoning her to cross the 
 threshold of a new life. 
 
 Soon, verv soon now. The two-ounce vial that held the
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 689 
 
 swift dismissing pang was in the locked drawer of the 
 writing-table beside the whisky-flask. When he was alone 
 and undisturbed — for Lynette seldom came to his con- 
 sulting-room now — Saxham would take it out and dandle 
 it, and hold it in his hands. 
 
 He would put the vial back presently, and lock the 
 drawer, and, it being dark, perhaps would delay to light 
 his lamp that he might torture himself with looking at that 
 pitiless shadow-play, that humble comedy-drama of sweet, 
 common, unattainable things that was every night renewed in 
 those two rooms over the garage at the bottom of the yard. 
 
 There was a third performer in the shadow-play now. 
 You could hear him roaring lustily at mom and noon and 
 milky eve. The Wonderfullest Baby you ever ! 
 
 When W. Keyse was invited by Saxham to inspect his 
 son and heir, crimson, and pulpy, and squirming in a 
 flannel wrap, the Adam's apple in the lean throat of the 
 proud father jumped, and his ugly, honest eyes blinked 
 behind salt water. The nipper had grabbed at his ear as 
 he stooped down. And that made the Fourth Time, and 
 he hadn't even thanked the Doctor yet ! 
 
 A date, he hoped, would arrive when a chalk or two of 
 that mounting score might be wiped oft" the board. He 
 said so to Mrs, Keyse, the first time she was allowed to sit 
 up and play at doing a bit of needlework. Not that she did 
 a stitch, and chaince it ! With her eyes — beautiful eyes, 
 with that new look of mother-love in them ; proud eyes, 
 with that inexhaustible store of riches all her own, — wor- 
 shipping the crinkly red snub nose and the funny moving 
 mouth, and the little downy head, and everything else 
 that goes to make up a properly-constituted Baby. 
 
 " I think the time'll come, deer. Watch out, an' one 
 d'y you'll see !" 
 
 " I'll watch it !" affirmed W, Keyse. " And wot are 
 you cranin' your neck for, tryin' to look out o' winder ? 
 Blessed if I ever see such a precious old Dutch ! " 
 
 The song was in the mouths of the people that year. 
 She laughed, and rubbed her pale check against his. 
 
 " You be my eyes, deer. Peep and see if the Doctor is 
 in '^"'^ room." 
 
 It was ten o'clock on a shining May morning, and the
 
 590 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 clouds that raced over great grimy London were white, 
 and there were patcliea of blue between. The trees in the 
 squares were dressed in new green leaves, and the irises and 
 ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen had 
 shed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths be- 
 hind the glass there were pots of tulips in bloom upon the 
 window-sills of the two rooms over the garage. And the 
 Doctor, who had been seeing patients ever since nine, was 
 sitting at the writing-table, said W. Keyse, \vith his 'ead 
 upon Ms 'ands. 
 
 " Like as if 'e was tired, deer, or un'appy ? Or tired an' 
 un'appy both ?" 
 
 " Stryte, you 'ave it !" admitted W. Keyse, after cautious 
 inspection. 
 
 " The Doctor — don't let 'im see you lookin' at 'im, dar- 
 lin', or 'e miglit think, which Good Gracious know how 
 wrong it 'ud be, as you was a kind o' Peepin' Pry — the 
 Doctor 'ave fell orf an' chynged a good deal lately — in 'is 
 looks, I mean !" said Mrs. Keyse, tucking in the corner of 
 the flannel over t'ne little downy head. " Wasted in 'is 
 flesh, like — got 'oiler round the eyes " 
 
 " So 'e 'as !" W. Keyse whistled and slapped his leg. 
 " An' I bin' noticin' it on me own for a long while back — 
 now I come to think of it. Woddyou pipe's the matter 
 
 wiv 'im ? Not ill ? Lumme ! if 'e was ill " The eyes 
 
 of W. Keyse Ijecame circular with consternation. 
 
 " No, no, deer !" She reassured him, in his ignorance 
 that the maladies of the soul are more agonising far than 
 those that afflict the body. " Down'arted, like, an' 
 'opeless an' — an' lonely " 
 
 Do\\Tihearted, and hopeless, and lonely ! The jaw of 
 W. Keyse dropped, and liis ugly eyes became circular with 
 sheer astonisliment. 
 
 " Him / Wiv a beautiful 'ouse to live in — an' Carriage 
 Toffs with Titles fair beggin' 'im to come an' feel their 
 pulses an' be pyde for it, an' Scientific Institooshuns an* 
 'Orspital Committees fightin' to git 'im on their staffs — an' 
 all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done at Guoldersdorp, 
 an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do ? an' thank you 
 
 kindly, IVIister ! — an' " W. Keyse could only suppose 
 
 that Mrs. Keyse waa playing a bit of gaff on hers truly —
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 591 
 
 " and him with a wife, too ! Married an' 'appy, an' goin' 
 to be 'appier yet !" He pointed to the httle red snub nose 
 peeping between the folds of the flannel. " When a little 
 nipper like that comes -'* 
 
 She reddened, paled, burst out crying. 
 
 " William ! William " 
 
 Her William kissed her, and dried her tears. He called 
 it mopping her dial, but you have not forgotten that, as the 
 upper house-and-parlour-maid had at first said, both Her 
 and Him were plainly descended from the Lowest Circles. 
 She had melted afterwards, on learning that Mrs. Keyse 
 had been actually mentioned in Despatches for carrying 
 tea under fire to the prisoners at the Fort ; had sought her 
 society, lent paper- patterns, and imparted, in confidence, 
 what she knew of the secret of Saxham's wedded life. 
 
 " Dear William ! My good, kind Love ! Best I should 
 *urt you, deer, if 'urt you 'ave to be. You see them three 
 large winders covered wiv lovely lace 1" 
 
 " 'Ers — Mrs. Saxham's !" He nodded, trying to look wise. 
 
 " Yes, darlin'. Mrs. Saxham's bedroom and dressin'- 
 room they belongs to. I've bin inside the bedroom wiv 
 the upper 'ouse-an'-parlour-myde, an' a Fairy Princess 
 in a Drury Lane Pantomime might 'ave a bigger place to 
 sleep in — but not a beautif uller. When the Foreign Young 
 Person come in of evenin's to git 'er lady dressed for dinner, 
 she snaps up the lights, bein' a kind soul, before slie draws 
 the blinds, to give me a charnst like, to see in." She stroked 
 the tweed sleeve. " An' once or twice Mi's. Saxham 'as 
 come in before they'd bin pull down, an' then — O William ! 
 — there Avas every thinlc in that room on (Jawd's good earth 
 a 'usband could ask for to make 'im 'appy, except the 
 wife's 'art beatin' warm and lo\iu' in the middle of it all !" 
 
 "Cripps! . . . You don't never mean . . . ?" He 
 gasped. " Wot ? Don't the Doctor make no odds to 
 'er ? A Man Like That ?" ... 
 
 She clung to the heart that loved her, and told him what 
 she had heard. . . . And if Saxham had laiown how tu<:> 
 of the unconscious actors in Ids shadow-play pitied him, 
 the knowledge would have been aj8 vitriol poured into an 
 open wound.
 
 592 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 LXin 
 
 The card of Major Bingham Wrynche, C.B., was brought 
 to Saxham one morning, as, his early-calling patients seen 
 and dismissed, the Doctor was going out to his waiting 
 motor- brougham. 
 
 Bingo, following what he was prone to call his paste- 
 board, presented himself — a large, cool, well-bred, if 
 rather stupid-looking, man, arrayed in excellently-fitting 
 clothes, saying : 
 
 '* You were goin' out ? Don't let me keep you. Look 
 in again !" — even as he deposited a tightly-rolled silk 
 umbrella in the waste-paper basket, and tenderly balanced 
 his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, and 
 chose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortably chair, as a 
 man prepared to remain. Saxham, pushing a cigar-box 
 across the consulting-room table, asked after Lady 
 Hannah. 
 
 " First-rate ! Seems to agree with her, having a one- 
 armed husband to fuss over !" 
 
 " She won't have a one-armed husband long," returned 
 Saxham, not unkindly, glancing at the bandaged and 
 strapped-up limb that had been shattered by an expanding 
 bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in the 
 shiny black sling. 
 
 " By the Living Tinker ! she's had him long enough for 
 me !" exploded Bingo, who seemed larger and fussier than 
 ever, if a thought less pink. " So'd you say if they tucked 
 a napkin imder your chin at meals, and cut your meat up 
 into dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your 
 newspaper with one hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger 
 in the street, as I did just now outside your door, and a.sk 
 him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand trouser- 
 pocket if he'd be so good ? because your idiot of a man 
 ought to have put your money in the other one." 
 
 " You're lookin' at my head," pursued the Major, " and 
 I don't wonder. She's been and given me a fringe again. 
 'Stonishing thing the Feminine Touch is. Let your servant 
 part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look a 
 filthy bounder. Your wife does it — and you hardly know
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 59? 
 
 yourself in the glass, and wonder why they didn't christen 
 you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds these, by half ! You 
 remember those cigars of Kjeil's and the thunderin' price 
 me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other 
 for fun ?" The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light 
 blue smoke-wreath, and added : " And before the last box 
 was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was ! And that chap 
 Levestre — never fit to brown his shoes — is wearing 'em ; 
 and '11 be Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man 
 goes. Queer thing, Luck is — when you come to think 
 of it ?" 
 
 Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impa- 
 tience of this large, bland, prosperous personage was grow- 
 ing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his 
 shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that as- 
 sisted his left eye ; from the pink Malmaison carnation in 
 the buttonhole of his frock-coat to the buff spats that 
 matched his expansive waistcoat in shade, the large Major 
 was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End 
 swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had 
 seen the heavy dandy under other conditions, in circum- 
 stances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then he had borne 
 himself after a simple, manly fashion. Now he had back- 
 slidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always destitute 
 of the saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon 
 the pampered son of Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the 
 Doctor's heavy smudge of black eyebrow suggested to the 
 Major that his regrets for " poor old Toby !" had been mis- 
 placed. The man who had married Miss Mildare could 
 hardly be expected to join with heartiness in deploring the 
 untimely decease of his predecessor. 
 
 " Not that it could have come to anything between poor 
 Toby and her if the dear old chap had lived," reflected 
 Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew about — about 
 Lessie ? " Bound to," he mentally decided, " if he keeps his 
 ears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a 
 brace of bounders of the worst discuss the story in all its 
 bearin's, sittin' behind my wife and Mrs. Saxham in the 
 stalls at the theatre the other night ! Everybody is dis- 
 cussin' it now that the T^oltlebarres have k>ft oil payin' 
 Lessie not to talk, and pri>%ided for her and the youngster 
 
 38
 
 594 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 out of the ^tate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat 
 in the family. . . . That family, too ! . . . Lord ! what a 
 rum thing Luck is !" 
 
 The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, 
 i-ather stupid, blonde face was perfectly stolid as he smoked 
 and stared at his host, reminding himself that Beauvayse 
 had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, 
 Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, ii the fellow knew of the 
 scratch against him, ho might force the running ; and re- 
 calling, with a tingling of the shamed blood in his expansive 
 countenance, how he — Wrynche— had let Beauvaysfe into 
 the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. He 
 wondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham 
 had ever really earned the degrading nickname that he 
 could not get quite right. The ' Peg Doctor,' was it ? — or 
 the ' Lush Doctor ?' Something in that way. . . . Not that 
 Saxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with 
 undue frequency. . . . 
 
 " — But you never know," thought experienced Bingo 
 sagely, even as, in his heavy fashion, he went pounding on : 
 " The Chief's contirmin' the Work of Pacification, and 
 acceptin' the surrender of arms — any date of manufacture 
 you lilte between the chassepot of 1870 and the leather- 
 breeched firelock of Oliver Ct-omAvell's time. The modem 
 kind, you find by emplopn' the Divinin' Rod " — the large 
 narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added — " on 
 the backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails — 
 used in that way. And — as it chances — I have a com- 
 munication to make t<'> you." 
 
 " A communication — a message — from the Chief to me V 
 
 Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened 
 curiously and pleasantly. 
 
 Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He re- 
 balanced his shiny hat upon the table comer, and said with 
 his eyes engaged in this way : 
 
 " I was to remind you — from him — that — not long before 
 the ending of the Siege, a lady who is now a near connection 
 of yours sustained a terrible bereavement through the — 
 infernally dastardly crime of a — person then unknown !" 
 
 Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag 
 out the knowledge he witliheld. But Bingo was balancing
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 595 
 
 the glossy triumph of a Bond Street hatter, and looked at 
 it and not at the Doctof , who said : 
 
 " You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the 
 Convent of the Holy Way on February the — th, 1900. And 
 you say a person then unknown. . . . Has the murderer 
 been arrested ?" 
 
 Major Bingo shook his head. 
 
 " He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You 
 remember the runner who came in from Diamond To\vn 
 with a letter for a man called Casey ? Not long after — after 
 my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers' ?" 
 
 " I did not see the man myself," returned Saxham, " but 
 I perfectly recollect his getting through." 
 
 Major Bingo said : 
 
 " 1 thought you would. Well, the letter was a blind ; the 
 bearer an agent of the firm of Huysmaus and Eybel, sent 
 to make certain of oiu: weakest points before they put in 
 the attack on the Barala town ; and — that's the man who 
 committed the murder !" 
 
 " The man who committed the murder T' 
 
 Saxham's vivid eyes were intent upon the Major's face. 
 The Major coughed, and went on : 
 
 " My wife came across that man at Tweipans under 
 curious circumstances, which I'm here to ])ut before you aa 
 plainly as may be. . . . She'd met him before the 8icge, 
 travelling up from Cape Town. He scraped acquaintance, 
 called himself a loyal Johannesburger, and an Agent of the 
 British South African VVar-IutelUgence-ljureiui. Not that 
 there ever was such a Bureau." Major Bingo blinked 
 nervously, and ran a tliick finger round the inside of his 
 collar as he added : " The beggar spoofed Lady Hannah uj) 
 hill and down dale with that, and she believed him. And 
 when she subsequently Hew the coo^j — dash thia cold of 
 mine ! . . ." 
 
 The Major drew out a very large pink cambric pocket- 
 handkercMef, and performed behind its shelter an elaborate 
 but unconvincing sneeze : 
 
 '* — When she shot the moon with NiXcy's mare and 
 spider, it waa by private arrangement with this oil}-, lying 
 blackguard, who had given her an address — a farm on the 
 Transvaal Border, known aa Haargrond Plaats — where 
 
 38—2
 
 596 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 she might communicate with him through another scoundrel 
 in the Transport Agency line, supposin' she chose to do a 
 little business on her own in Secret Intelligence " 
 
 Saxham interrupted : 
 
 " I shall say nothing to my wife of this, and I trust you 
 will impress upon Lady Hannah that it would be highly 
 inadvisable for her to do so." 
 
 '■ She won't, you may depend on it." Major Bingo 
 palpably grew warm, and mopped the dew from his large, 
 kind, rather stupid countenance with the pink cambric 
 handkerchief — " She's awfully afraid, as it is, that a word or 
 two she dropped quite innocently, to that infernal liar and 
 swindler, who'd bled her of a monkey, good English cash — 
 paid for procurin' and forwardin' items i information that 
 he took damned good care should reach us at Gueldersdorp 
 too late to be of use, led up to — to the crime ! . . . By the 
 Living Tinker ! it's out at last !" 
 
 The big man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so 
 before, fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief, and 
 turned red, and went white, and went red, and timied 
 white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of his 
 flurried pulse. 
 
 " — Out at last, Saxham, and that's why I've been gulpin' 
 and blunderin' and bogglin' for the last ten minutes. 
 Poof !" Major Bingo exhaled a vast breath of relief. 
 " Tellin' tales on a woman — and her yom* wife — even when 
 she's begged you to, isn't the sweetest job a man can 
 tackle !" 
 
 " Let me have this story in detail once and for all," said 
 Saxham, turning a stem, white face, and hard, compelling 
 eyes upon the embarrassed Major, " What utterance of 
 Lady Hannah's do you suppose to have led to the tragedy 
 in the Convent Chapel ? Upon this point I must and shall 
 be clear before you leave me !" 
 
 " You shall have things as clearly as I can put 'em. This 
 pretended Secret Agent of the War- Intelligence-Bureau that 
 never existed, and who called himseK Van Busch — a name 
 that's as common among Boers as Murphy is among Irish- 
 men — arranged to pass off my wife as his sister, a refugee 
 from Gueldersdorp, who'd married a Grerman drummer, and 
 buried him not long before. Women are so dashed fond of 
 
 I
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 697 
 
 play-actin' ! Kids, Saxham, — that's what they are m their 
 weakness for dressin' up and makin'-believe ! And my 
 wife " 
 
 The large Major was in a violent lather as he ran the 
 thick finger round inside his collar, and swallowed at the 
 lump in his throat. 
 
 " — My wife saw Van Busch at Kink's hotel at Tweipans 
 from time to time. He came, I've already explaiaed,ito sell 
 bogus information for good money. And as the boodle ran 
 low, the cloven hoof began to show, and the brute became 
 downright insolent." 
 
 " As might have been expected," said Saxham, coldly. 
 
 " — Kept his hat on in my wife's room, talked big, and 
 twiddled a signet-ring he wore," went on the Major. 
 " And, bein' quick, you know, and sharp as they make 
 'em, you know, my wife recognised the crest of an old 
 acquaintance cut upon the stone. I knew the man my- 
 self " — declared Major Bingo — " and a better never stepped 
 in leather. A brother-officer of the Chief's, too, and a 
 rippin' good fellow ! — Dicky IVIildare, of the Grey Hussars." 
 
 " Mildare !" repeated Saxham. 
 
 " You understand, Saxham, the name did it. My wife 
 had seen the present Mrs. Saxham at Gueldersdorp, and, 
 not knowin' that the surname of Mildare had been taken 
 by her at the wish of her adopted mother, supposed — got 
 the maggot into her head that the Mother-Superior's ward 
 might possibly be a — a daughter of the man the seal- 
 ring had belonged to, knowing — Lord ! what a mull I'm 
 making of it ! — that Mildare had at one time been engaged 
 to marry that " — the Major boggled horribly — " that un- 
 commonly brave and noble lady, and had, in fact, thrown 
 her over, and made a bolt of it with the wife of his Regi- 
 mental C.O., Colonel Sir George Hawtmg." 
 
 The faint staiQ of colour that had showed through 
 Saxham's dead- white skin faded. He waited with strained 
 attention for what was couiing, 
 
 " South Africa Lady Lucy and IMildare bolted to," went 
 on Bingo, " and now you know the kind of mare's-nest 
 her ladyship had scratched up. And," declared Bingo, 
 " rather than have htui to spin this yarn, I'd have faced a 
 Court-Martial of Inquiry respectin' my conduct in the Field.
 
 598 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 For my wife has a kind heart and a. keen sense of honour, 
 and rather tlian bring harm upon Miss Mildare that was, or 
 anyone connected with her, she'd have stood up to be shot ! 
 By G !" trumpeted Bingo, " I know she would !" 
 
 Saxham's face was blue-white now, and looked oddly 
 shrunken. His voice came in a rasping croak from his 
 ashen lips as he said : 
 
 " Lady Hannah mentioned my wife to this man. thinking 
 that she might prove to be the daughter of the owner of 
 the ring. What could possibly lead her to infer such a 
 relationship ?" 
 
 " You must understand that the blackguard had given 
 my wife details of Mildare's death at a farm OA^med by a 
 friend of his in Natal, and that Hannah — that my wife 
 knew poor little Lucy Hawting had had a child by IMil'are. ' 
 Major Bingo spluttered. " That was why she asked Van 
 Busch outright whether the girl with the nuns at Guelders- 
 dorp was — could be — the same cluld, grown up ? By the 
 Living Tinker ! — I never was in such a lather in my life ! 
 The better the light I try to put the thing in, the dirtier it 
 looks. And I'm not half through yet, that's the worst of it !" 
 
 He mopped and mopped, and took several violent turns 
 about the room, and subsided in a chair at length, and went 
 on, waving the large pink cambric handkerchief, now a 
 damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it. 
 
 " She says — Lady Hannah says — that the eagerness and 
 curiosity with which the brut^ snapped up the hint she'd 
 never meant to drop, warned her to shunt him off on 
 another line, and give no more information. They got on 
 money matters ; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, 
 my wife gave the welsher a bit of her mitod, and he showed 
 his teeth in a way that meant Murder. Just in time — 
 before he could wring her neck round — and he'd startexl in 
 to do it, you understand — Brounckers came stormin' and 
 bullyin' in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and 
 would be sent down to Gueldersdorp. . . . They packed 
 her back that very day. . . . And not a week after, the 
 pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the 
 bogus letter from Mrs. Casey." 
 
 Saxham had thought. He said now ; 
 
 ** This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 699 
 
 for Brounckers, was disguised as the runner ? Is that what 
 has been proved ? Did Lady Hannah see the man and 
 recognise him ?" 
 
 Bingo leaned forward to answer. 
 
 " Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond 
 Town. But the day the Siege Gazette came out, with a 
 blithering paragraph in it that never ought to have ap- 
 peared, announein' " — he coughed and crimsoned — " Lord 
 Beauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare ; — my wife 
 was rung up at the Convalescent Hospital by a caller who 
 wouldn't say where he telephoned from. And the message 
 that came througJi — couched in queer, ambiguous lan- 
 guage, and purportin' to come from an old friend — was 
 a message for the young lady who is now Mrs. Saxham !" 
 
 Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a 
 word. The Major went on : 
 
 " My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with 
 Van Busch's. She remembered the name given her as 
 that of the owner of the farm at which Mildare died, a place 
 which by rights was in what's now the Orange River 
 Colony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain : 
 * Are you So-and-So V There was no answer to the 
 question. But seven hours later the Mother-Superior was 
 shot ; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way to the 
 Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran 
 into one of the Sisters in his hurry, and nearly Icnocked 
 her down." 
 
 " That," said Saxham, ** has always been regarded as a 
 suspicious circumstance. But the man was never subse- 
 quently traced." 
 
 " No ! Because," said Bingo, " the runner from Dia 
 mond Town evaporated that night." 
 
 Saxham said, with his grim imder Jaw tlirust out : 
 
 " Surely that circumstance, when reported to tlie Officer 
 commanding the Garrison, might then have awakened his 
 suspicions V 
 
 " Naturally," agreed Bingo, " and therefore hr kept 'em 
 dark. As for my wife, the shock of the murder, accom- 
 panied with her own secret conviction that, in some indirect 
 way, she'd helped to set a malicious, lurking, watchful, 
 dangerous Force of some kind working against your wife —
 
 600 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 when she dropped that hint I've told you of — bowled her 
 over with a nervous fever." 
 
 " I remember," said Saxham, who had been called in. 
 
 " Consequently, it wasn't until some days after the 
 Relief — a bare hour or two before the Division — Irregular 
 Horse and Baraland Rifles, and a company or so of Civilian 
 Johnnies that had made believe they were genuine fightin' 
 Tommies till they couldn't get out of the notion — marched 
 out of Gueldersdorp for Frostenberg, that her ladyship got 
 a chance of makin' a clean breast to the Chief. Hold on a 
 minute, Doctor " 
 
 For Saxham would have spoken. 
 
 " — The Chief had had his own private opinion, from the 
 very first. He heard what my wife had to say. As you 
 may guess, she'd worked herself up into a regular cooker of 
 remorse and anxiety — told him she was ready to go any- 
 where and do anything — he'd only got to give her orders, 
 and all that sort of thing ! He charged her with the 
 simple but difficult role of holdin' her tongue, and keepin' 
 her oar out, and findin' him — if by good luck she'd got it 
 by her — a specimen of the handwritin' of the clever 
 scoundrel who'd played at bein' a War Intelligence Agent, 
 and waltzed with her five hundred pounds, which sample, as 
 it chanced, she was able to supply. And the fist of the man 
 who'd swindled her, and the writin' of the Mrs. Casey who'd 
 sent a letter per despatch- runner from Diamond Town to a 
 husband who didn't exist, tallied to an upstroke and the 
 crossin' of a ' < ' !" 
 
 " Is it beyond doubt that the letter from the supposed Mrs, 
 Casey was not a genuine communication ?" Saxham asked. 
 
 " Beyond doubt. As a fact, the neatly-directed envelope 
 had simply got a sheet of blank paper inside. Another odd 
 fact brought to light was, that the person who communicated 
 with my wife at the Convalescent Hospital about half-past 
 twelve on the day of the murder, rang her up on the 
 telephone belongin' to the orderly-room at the Head- 
 quarters of the Baraland Rifles. We had up the orderly, 
 and after some solid lyin', he owned that the man from 
 Diamond Town had bribed him with 'baccy to let him put 
 a message through. And that's another link in the evi- 
 dence, I take it ?" said Major Bingo. 
 
 !
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 601 
 
 " Undoubtedly !" 
 
 " There's not much more to tell, except," said Bingo, 
 " that the first march of the Division on its route to 
 Frostenberg led past the Border farm called Haargrond 
 Plaats. It looked deserted and half-ruined, with only a 
 slipshod woman and a coloured man in charge ; but some- 
 thing was known of what had gone on there, and might be 
 going on still, and the Boers are clever stage-managers, and 
 it don't do to trust to appearances ! So the Chief detached 
 a party with dynamite cartridges and express orders to 
 make the ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly 
 before they blew it up ; and hidden in a disused chimney — 
 a solid bit of old Dutch masonry big enough to accommo- 
 date a baker's dozen of sweeps — were a few things calcu- 
 lated to facilitate that search for the needle in the hay- 
 stack — you understand ? Disguises of various kinds — a suit 
 of clothes lined with chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin' 
 — a good deal of the raw stuff itself, scattered all over the 
 shop by the blow-up — and in a rusty cashbox a diary or 
 private ledger, posted up in a clumsy Idnd of thieves' cipher, 
 impossible to make out, but with the name written on it 
 of the identical man my wife suspected and the Cliief 
 believed to be the murderer of Miss Mildare's adopted 
 mother ! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct, 
 Saxham, I rather fancy ?" 
 
 Major Bingo Wrynche leaned back with an air of some 
 finality, and with some little difficulty extracted a biggish 
 square envelope from the left inner pocket of the ac- 
 curately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed the envelope 
 upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took 
 the shiny top-hat off the writing-table, fitted it with 
 peculiar care on his pinkish, sandy, close-cropped head, 
 and said, looking at Saxham with a pleasant smile : 
 
 " Perhaps you wouldn't mind thro win' your eye over the 
 contents of that envelope ? There are three photographs 
 of handwritin' inside, marked on the backs respectively." 
 He waited for Saxham to take the enclosures from the big 
 envelope, examining the polisli of his own varnished patent- 
 leather boots with a fastidious air of anxiety that was 
 extremely well assumed, if it was not strictly genuine. Hia 
 large face was as bland and expressionless as the face of
 
 602 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the grandfather-clock in the Sheraton case that ticked 
 against the wainscot behind liim, as he advised : 
 
 " Take 'em in numerical sequence. No. 1 is the photo- 
 graphed facainiile of the cover of the bogus letter to Mr. 
 Casey. No. 2 " — tlie speaker lightly touched it with a 
 large round finger-tip — " that's the replica — also photo- 
 graphed — of a card the man we're after wrote on and gave 
 to Lady Hannah, in case she found herself inclined to 
 invest a hundred or so in the kind of wares he professed 
 to supply. Photo No. 3 is a reproduction of an autograph 
 and address that's written on the inside cover of the ledger 
 — posted up in thieves' cipher — that was in the cashbox 
 found at Haargrond Plaats." He waited, screwing pain- 
 fully at the still, waxed ends of the scrubby moustache. 
 
 Saxham took the photographs in their order. The 
 envelope of the bogus letter brought by the supposed 
 runner from Diamond Town had been addressed in a big 
 bold black round hand^\ith curiously malformed capitals, to 
 
 " ]Mr. Barney Casey, 
 
 " Commercial Traveller, 
 " Gueldersdorp. 
 " Care of the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces." 
 
 " — Don't put it back in the envelope," said Major Bingo. 
 " Compare the writin' with No. 2." 
 
 No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was 
 written in ink, in the same bold hand : 
 
 " Mr. Hendryk Van Busch, 
 " C/o Mr. W. Bough, 
 
 " Transport Agent, 
 
 " Haargrond Plaats, 
 
 " Near Matambani, 
 
 " Transvaal." 
 
 LXIV 
 
 There was a silence in the consulting-room, only broken by 
 street noises filtered thin by walls and curtains, and the 
 ticking of the Sheraton grandfather clock, and the breath- 
 ing of two people. Saxham glanced at Major Bingo with f|
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 603 
 
 eyes that seemed to have been bleached of colour, and laid 
 the second calligraphic specimen beside the first, and took 
 up No. 3, and read in the same large flourishing round hand : 
 
 " W. Bough. 
 
 " Free State Hotel, 
 
 " 60 m. from Driepoort, 
 " Orange Free State." 
 
 After that the silence was intense. The clock ticked, and 
 the faint, far-off street noises came through the intervening 
 screens, but only one of the men in the room seemed to be 
 breathing. At last Saxham's grey lips moved. He said 
 in a ho)rible clicldng whi.^per : 
 
 " Van Busch and Bough are — one ?" 
 
 Major Wrynche's large face nodded in the affirmative. 
 But it was as expressionless as the grandfather clock's. 
 
 " One man ! — and that's what I may call the pith of my 
 verbal Despatch for you !" 
 
 Saxham said with hard composure : 
 
 " Van Busch is a Dutch surname that, as you say, is 
 common in South Africa. With the name of Bough, as the 
 Cliief is aware, I have — associations. It was, in fact, one 
 of the many aliases used by the Axitnesa for Regina in 
 an Old Bailey case in which I M'as concerned nearly seven 
 years ago." 
 
 The Major nodded once more, and said with brevity : 
 
 " Same man !" 
 
 Saxham seemed always to have known that the man was 
 the same man. The tense muscles of his face told nothing. 
 Bingo added : 
 
 " — But the wrong and injury done to you by Bough 
 amount to little compared with the wrong and injury 
 
 inflicted upon Mrs. Saxham ! That Good Lord ! 
 
 what's the matter ?" 
 
 For Saxham, with a madman's face, hjid leapt to his feet, 
 knocking over his cliair, and stuttered with foam on his blue 
 lips : 
 
 " What wrong ? What injury ? What — what are you 
 hinting at ? " 
 
 " Hinting !" Tlie astonishment in the Major's round 
 light blue eyes was so palpably genuine that the crazy
 
 604 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 flame died out of the Doctor's, and his clenched hand 
 dropped. " I didn't hint. I referred to the murder of 
 your wife's adopted mother by this Bough, or Van Busch, 
 that's all !" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Major !" Saxham picked up his 
 chair and sat down on it, inwardly cursing his lack of self- 
 control. " My nerves have been giving trouble of late." 
 
 Going by the evidence of the haggard fa^ce and fever- 
 bright eyes, the Doctor looked like that — uncommonly 
 like that ! And the big Major, remembering Alderman 
 Brooker's revelation, wondered, as he screwed at the stiff, 
 blunt ends of his sandy moustache, whether Saxham might 
 not have reverted to the old vice 1 " Bad for the girl he's 
 married if he has !" he thought, even as he said : 
 
 " Overworked. Get away for a bit. No thin' like 
 relievin' the tension, don't you know ? Norway in June, 
 or the Higher Austrian Tyrol. Make up your mind and go !" 
 
 " I have made up my mind," Saxham answered, smiling 
 bitterly, as he remembered the little phial with the yellow 
 label that lay beside the whisky-flask in the drawer beneath 
 his hand. " I shall go very soon now !" 
 
 " But not immediately ?" 
 
 " Not immediately." There was something strange, 
 almost exalted, in the look that accompanied the words. 
 Saxham added : " If you could give me an approximate 
 date as regards the finding of that — needle in the hay- 
 stack of South Africa, it would — facilitate my departure 
 more than you can guess !" 
 
 " Would it, by George !" Bingo slipped the thumb and 
 forefinger of the useful hand into his waistcoat-pocket. 
 Sometliing sparkled in the big pink palm he extended to 
 Saxham — something sparkled, and spurted white and green 
 and scarlet points of fire from a myriad of facets. Tiie 
 something was an oval miniature on ivory. A slender gold 
 chain, broken, dangled from its enamelled bow. From 
 within a rim of brilliants the lovely, wistful face of a young, 
 refined, high-bred woman looked out, and with all Ms iron 
 self-control Saxham could not restrain a sudden movement 
 and a stifled exclamation of mingled anger and surprise. 
 . For at the first glance the face was Lynette's. 
 
 With a dull roaring of the blood in his ears and an un-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 606 
 
 epeakable rage and horror seething in him, he took the 
 portrait from the Major's palm, and held it with a steady 
 hand, in a favourable light. 
 
 Marvellously like, but not Lynette's face ! 
 
 The eyes were larger, rounder, and of gentle blue-grey, 
 the squirrel-coloured hair of a brighter shade, the sensitive 
 mouth sensuous as well, the little chin pointed. She might 
 have been a few years under thirty ; the arrangement of 
 the hair, the cut of the bodice, might have indicated the 
 height of the latest fashion — say, twenty-two or even three 
 years back. Some delicately fine inscription was upon the 
 dull gold of the inner rim of the miniature-frame, within the 
 diamonds that surroimded it. Saxham deciphered : " Lucy, 
 to Richard Mildare. For ever ! 1879." 
 
 « * * « « 
 
 The dull, dark crimson that had stained the Dop Doctor's 
 opaque skin had given place to pallor. His face was sharp 
 and thin, and of waxen whiteness, like the fa,ce of one 
 newly dead. EKs blue eyes burned ominously in their caves 
 under the heavy bar of meeting black eyebrows. His voice 
 was very quiet as he asked : " How did you come by this ?" 
 
 " It dropped down out of the sky," said Major Bingo 
 measuredly, " with the bits of evidence I've told you of, 
 and a few others, when the big stone chimney at Haar- 
 grond Plaats blew up with a thunderin' roar. The other 
 bits of evidence were bits of a man — two men you might 
 call him ! And, by the Living Tinker, considerin' how he 
 was mixed up with the rest of the rubbish, he might have 
 been half a dozen instead of Bough Van Busch !" 
 
 " He had this upon him ? He — wore it round liis 
 neck ?" Saxham asked the question in a grating whisper, 
 dropping the clenched hand that held the diamond-set 
 miniature upon the arm of his chair. 
 
 " I should think it probable he did," said Bingo placidly, 
 " when he had a neck to boast of." He added, as he got 
 up to take his leave : " The thing has been carefully cleaned. 
 The chain is broken, and the crystal cracked in one place, 
 but otherwise it has come off wonderfully. Perhaps you'd 
 hand it over to — anybody it belongs to ? Hope I haven't 
 mulled many professional appointments. Remember me to 
 Mrs. Saxham. Thanks frightfully ! So long !"
 
 606 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 LXV 
 
 In the days that followed Saxham had a letter, writteh by a 
 man with whom he had been fairly intimate at Gu elders- 
 dorp during the stienuoua days of the Siege — tt man who 
 would undoubtedly not have lived to go through those 
 days but for the Dop Doctor. It was rather an incoherent 
 letter, written by an unsteady hand. 
 
 Saxham tore it up and dropped it into the ^(^aste-paper 
 basket with a contemptuous shrug. But he had made a 
 mental note of the address, and drove there that afternoon. 
 
 The Doctor's motor- brougham stopped at the door of 
 the grimy stucco Clergy- House that is attached to St. Mar- 
 garet's in Wendish Street, West. Saxham rang a loud 
 bell, that sent iron echoes pealing down flagged passages, 
 and brought a little bouneted woman in rusty black to 
 answer the door and the Doctor's query whether Mr. Julius 
 Fraithorn was at home and able to receive a visitor ? 
 
 The little woman, who had a nose like a preserved cherry, 
 and wore one eyebrow several inches higher than the other, 
 shook her rusty crape-trimmed bonnet discouragingly, as 
 she informed Saxham in a husky voice 8tr(mgly flavoured 
 with cloves that Father Julius 'ad befen in the Confessional 
 all the morning, it being the Eve of the Feast of the Ascen- 
 sion, and was quite wore out. If there was anything she 
 could do, she inferred, with quite a third-hand air of 
 clerical responsibility, she would be happy to oblige the 
 gentleman. 
 
 " I shall be obliged by your conveying my caM to ]\Ir. 
 Fraithorn. You see that I am a doctor," said Saxham, 
 with unsmiling gravity, " and not an ordinary caller on 
 business connected with religion." 
 
 The little cherry-nosed woman in rusty black snortnd as 
 scenting godlessness, and conducted Saxham down a 
 cream-washed, brown -distemper-dadoed passage, smelling 
 of kippered haddocks and incense, to a sitting-room at the 
 rear. It was a severe apartment, commanding a view of 
 mews, and had a parquet-patterned linoleum on the floor, 
 and a washable paper of a popular ecclesiastical design 
 suggestive of a ranunculus with its hands in its pockets.
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 607 
 
 Stained deal bookcases contained Julius's Balliol library ; 
 chromo-lithographic reproductions of Saints and Madonnas 
 by Old Masters hung above. The Philistine School of 
 Art was represented by a Zoological hearthrug ; three 
 Windsor chairs offered accommodation to the visitor ; a 
 table of the kitchen pattern was covered by a square of 
 green baize ; and a slippery hair-cloth sofa, with a knobbly 
 bolster and a patchwork cushion, supported the long, thin, 
 black clad figure of the Reverend JuUus Fraithora, who 
 was lying down. 
 
 " I have come," said Saxham, standing grimly over the 
 prone figure, a single stride having taken him to the side 
 of the sofa, " to prescribe for a man whose nerves are play- 
 ing him tricks. I have torn up your letter— the epistle 
 in which you ask me to afford you an opportunity of 
 making an avowal which will prove to what depths of 
 infamy a man may descend at the bidding of his lower 
 nature. Lower nature ! If I am any judge of a man's 
 physical condition, a lower nature is what you want !" He 
 thiew down his hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered 
 table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it do\vn 
 beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and 
 reached out and captiu-ed the thin wrist of his victim, who 
 mustered breath to stammer : 
 
 "■ There is nothing whatever the matter with my health. 
 I am well — that is, bodily." He got up from the sofa, and 
 crossed to the Zoological hearthiug, and poked the smoky 
 little file buraing in the narrow grate, for the May day was 
 wet and chilly. "I shall be better, mentally," he said, 
 with an effort, looking over his shoulder towards Saxham, 
 " when you have heard what I have to tell." He rose up, 
 and turned round, hia thin face flaming. '* Mind, I'm 
 not to be gagged by your not wanting to," for Saxham had 
 impatiently waved his hand. " Hear you shall, and mu^t !" 
 
 He ground his boot-heel into the orange-yellow lion that 
 couched on a field of aniline green hearthrug, and drove 
 his hands down deep into his pocketw, and the painful 
 scarlet surged over the rim of his Roman collar and dyed 
 his thin, sensitive, beautiful face and high, white forehead 
 to the roots of hi« dark, curling hair. 
 
 *' Perhaps you may recall an oath I Hwor<d at your insti-
 
 608 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 gation one day in your room at the Hospital at Guelders- 
 dorp ?" 
 
 " Yes — no ! What does it matter ?" said Saxham 
 thickly, with his angry, brooding eyes upon the floor. 
 
 " It matters," said Julius doggedly, " in the present case. 
 I need hardly tell you that I have kept that oath. K the 
 man had not been dead, I might have ended by breaking it 
 — who knows ? What I have to tell you is that, some two 
 months after the Relief, when your engagement to the lady 
 who is now your wife was first made pubUc, I, impelled and 
 prompted by a despicable envy of the great good-fortune 
 that had fallen — deservedly fallen — to your lot, sought out 
 Miss IMildare, and told her — something I had learned to j^our 
 detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, worthless 
 creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength 
 of a seat upon the local Bench, claimed to be informed." 
 
 Saxham's head turned stiffly. He looked at the wall 
 now instead of the floor, and breathed unevenly and 
 quickly. His right hand, resting on the table near which 
 he sat, softly closed and opened, opened and closed its 
 supple muscular fingers, with a curious, rhj^thmical move- 
 ment. He waited to hear more. And Juhus groaned out, 
 with his elbows on the painted wooden mantelshelf, and 
 his shamed face hidden : 
 
 " I knew that the man lied — on my soul, I knew it ! But 
 the opportunity he had given me of lowering your value 
 in — ^Ln another's eyes was too tempting to resist. The 
 man had told me " 
 
 " In effect, that I was a confirmed and hopeless drunkard," 
 said Saxham ; " and, as it happens, he told the truth !" 
 He added : " And what I was then I am now. There is no 
 change in me, though once I thought it !" 
 
 " Saxham ! . . . For God's sake, Saxham !" stuttered 
 JuUus. But Saxham, hunching his great shoulders, and 
 lowering his square, black head, not at all unlike the savage 
 bull of Lady Hannah Wrynche's apt comparison, went on : 
 
 "It is a drimken world we live in. Parson, for all our 
 sham of abstinence and sobriety. But there are nice 
 degrees and various grades in our drunkenness, as in our 
 other vices, and the man who is a druggard despises the 
 common drunkard ; and the sippers of ether look down
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 609 
 
 with infinite contempt — or, more ludicrous still, with 
 tender, pitying sorrow, upon the toper and the slave of 
 morphia and cocaine, and take no shame in seeing the oxy- 
 genated greyhound win the coursing-match and the oxy- 
 genated racehorse run for the Cup ! A year or so, and the 
 Transatlantic oxygen-outfit will be an indispensable equip- 
 ment of the British athlete. Even to-day the professional 
 footballer and cricketer, runner and swimmer, inhale oxygen 
 as a preliminary to effort, and bring the false energy that is 
 born of it to aid them in their trial tests of strength. The 
 man who scales an Alpine summit winds himself up with 
 a whiff or so ; the orator, inspired by oxygen, astonishes 
 the House of Commons or the Bar. And the actor, de- 
 lirious with oxygen, rushes on the stage ; and the clergy- 
 man, drunk on oxygen, mounts the pulpit to preach a 
 Temperance sermon. And the Dop Doctor of Guelders- 
 dorp prescribes palliatives for guinea-paying tipplers ; and 
 there is not an honest man to rise up and say : ' Phy- 
 sician, heal thyself !' " 
 
 The Windsor chair creaked under Saxham's heavy figure 
 as he got up. His fierce blue eyes blazed in their sunken 
 caves as he took his hat and stick from the table. 
 
 " What more have you to ' confess ' ? You did not 
 wrong me. Moralists would say that you acted con- 
 scientiously — played the part of a true friend in telling — 
 her — what you Ivnew !" 
 
 " Of my benefactor — the man who had saved my life !" 
 Julius moistened his dry lips. " Your approving moralist 
 would be the devil's advocate. But I have not forgotten 
 what your own opinion is of the man who tries to enhance 
 his own virtues in a woman's eyes by pointing out the 
 vices of a rival. And, if you will t)eli(>'e me, I was punished 
 for the attempt. Her look of surprise . . . the tone in 
 which she said, ' Did he not save your life V that was 
 enough ! . . . Then I — I lost my head, and told her that 
 I loved her — entreated her to be my wiff\ only to learn 
 
 that she never had — never could " Julius's thin 
 
 white fingers knotted themselves painfully at the back of 
 his stooped head, and his voice came in jerks between his 
 gritted teeth : " It was revolting to her — a girl reared 
 
 39
 
 610 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 among nuns in a Catholic Convent — that a man calling 
 himself a priest should speak to her of love. There was 
 absolute horror in her look as she learned the truth." He 
 groaned. " I have never met her eyes since that day 
 without seeing — or imagining I saw — some reflection of 
 that horror in them !" 
 
 " Why torture yourself uselessly with imaginations ?" 
 said Saxham, not unkindly. 
 
 He was at the door, upon the threshold of departure, 
 when Julius stopped him. 
 
 " One moment. Has — has Mrs. Saxham ever spoken to 
 you of — this that I have told you ?" 
 
 " Never !" answered Saxham, pausing at the door. 
 
 " One moment more ! Saxham, is it hopeless 1 Could 
 you not by a desperate effort break this habit that may — 
 that must— inevitably bring misery to your wife ? In the 
 name of her love for you — in the names of the children 
 that may be bom of it " 
 
 — " Unless you want me to murder you," advised Sax- 
 ham, facing the passionate emotion of the yoimger man as 
 a basalt chff might oppose a breaking wave, " you had 
 better be silent !" 
 
 " My right to speak," Julius retorted fiercely, " is better 
 than you know. When I endeavoured — unsuccessfully — 
 to injure you, I robbed myself of my belief in myself. But 
 you — ^you who gave me back my earthly life, you have 
 robbed me of my faith in the Living and Eternal God. Do 
 you know the effect of Doubt, once planted in what was a 
 faithful soul ? It is a choking fungus, a dry rot, a creeping 
 palsy ! Since that day at the Hospital at Gueldersdorp, 
 when you said to me, ' The Human Will is even more 
 omnipotent than the Deity, because it has created Him, out 
 of its own need !' I have done my daily duty as a priest to 
 the numbing burden of that utterance — I have preached 
 the Grospel with it sounding in my ears." He wrimg his 
 hands, that were wet as though they had, been dipped in 
 water. " I have tended souls as mechanically as a gar- 
 dener might water pots in which there w^ nothing but 
 dead sticks and dry earth !" 
 
 " Try to credit mo when I tell you," said Saxham, 
 wrung by the suffering in the thin young face and in the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 611 
 
 beautiful haggard eyes, " that I never meant the harm that 
 I appear to have done ! Nor can I recall that I have 
 habitually attacked your faith, or for that matter any 
 Christian man's. I remember that I was suffering, phy- 
 sically and mentally, upon the day you particularly refer 
 to, when you came upon me at the Hospital. I had seen 
 an announcement in the Siege Gazette that ... I dare say 
 you understand ?" He laughed harshly. " As to my 
 theory of the Omnipotence of Human Will, it is blown and 
 exploded, and all the King's horses and all the King's men 
 will never set it back on the pedestal it has toppled from. 
 I owe you that admission, humbling to the pride that is 
 left in me ! Of how far Will, in another man, may carry 
 him, I dare not judge or calculate. My own is a dead leaf, 
 doomed to be the sport of any wind that blows !" 
 
 He tookup the walking-stick he had leaned against a book- 
 case, and said, pulling his hat down over his sombre eyes : 
 
 " The best of us are bad in spots, Parson : the worst 
 of us are good in patches. You Churchmen don't recog- 
 nise that fact sufficiently. . . . And I think no worse of 
 you for what you have told me ! If I have anything to 
 forgive — why, it is forgiven ! Do you try, on the other 
 hand, to think leniently of a man who broke your staff of 
 faith for you, and has nothing of his own to lean upon. 
 As for my wife, in whose interests I know you to be honestly 
 soUcitous, I will tell you this much : She will be spared the 
 * inevitable misery ' of which you spoke Just now !" 
 
 " How ? Have you decided to undergo a cure ? I 
 have heard," hesitated Julius, " that these things are not 
 always successful — that they sometimes fail !" 
 
 "Mine is the only ciu-e that never fails," returned Saxham. 
 
 A vision of the little blue-glass, yellow-labelled vial that 
 held the swift dismissing pang, floated before him. He 
 shook hands with Julius, and went upon his lonely way. 
 
 LXVI 
 
 Even the saintly of this earth are prone to rare, occaaional 
 displays of temper. Saxham's white saint had proved her 
 deacenl from Eve by stamping her slender foot at her 
 
 a 0—2
 
 612 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 n 
 
 hulking Doctor ; had, after a sudden outburst of pas- 
 sionate, unreasonable upbraiding, risen from the dinner- 
 table and run out of the room, to hide a petulant, remorseful 
 shower of tears. ^1 
 
 Such a trivial thing had provoked the outburst — merely II 
 an invitation from Captain and Mrs. Saxham, who were 
 settled for the London summer season in Eaton Square, 
 for Owen and his wife to spend the scorching months of 
 August and September at the old home, perched on the 
 South Dorset clififs, among its thrush-haunted shrubberies 
 of ilex and oleander and rose — nothing more. 
 
 But Mrs. Owen Saxham had passionately resented the 
 idea. Why never occurred to Saxham. He had long ago 
 forgiven and forgotten Mildred's old treachery. If David's 
 beti'ayal had brought him shame and anguish, it had borne 
 him fruit of joy as well. And if the fruit might never be 
 gathered, if its divine juices might never solace her hus- 
 band's bitter thirst, at least, while he lived, it was his — to 
 look at and long for. He owed that cruel bliss to his brother 
 and that brother's wife. And their meeting had been, 
 upon his side, free of constraint, unshadowed by the recol- 
 lection of what had once appeared to him a base betrayal — a 
 gross, foul, unpardonable wrong. 
 
 Suppose he had married IMildred, and been uneventfully 
 happy and successful. Then, Saxham told himself, he would 
 never have seen and l^nown Lynette. She would never have 
 come to him and laid in his the slight hand whose touch 
 thrilled him to such piercing agony of yearning for the 
 little more that would have meant so much — so much. . . . 
 
 Ah, yes ! he was even grateful to MiJdred. She had not 
 worn well. She had grown thin and passee, and nervous and 
 hysterical. But she was amiable, even demonstrative in 
 her professions of admiration and enthusiasm for Owen's 
 wife. Her regard for the Doctor was elaborate in the 
 sisterliness of its expression when he was present, if in 
 his absence it was tempered by a regretful sigh — even by 
 a reference to the time : 
 
 " When poor dear Owen thought me the only vjoman 
 worth looking at in thf whole world. Ah, well ! that is 
 all over, long ago !" Mildred would say, with an inflection 
 <Jiat was meant to be tenderly reassuring. And she would
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 613 
 
 tilt her still pretty head on one side and smile with pensive 
 kindness at her successor upon the throne of poor dear 
 Owen's heart. 
 
 These gentle, retrospective references were never made 
 in the Doctor's hearing. With truly feminine tact they 
 were reserved for Mrs. Owen's delectation. And possibly 
 they might have rankled in those pretty shell-like ears, if 
 their owner had loved Saxham. 
 
 But Saxham knew that she did not ; — had even ceased 
 to wish that the miracle might be wrought. Brainy men 
 can be very dense. When she stamped her foot and cried, 
 " I decline to accept IMrs. Saxham' s invitation, either 
 with you or without you. I wonder that you should dream 
 of asking me to ! If you can forget how hideously she 
 and your brother have treated you, I cannot ! I loathe 
 treachery ! I abominate ingratitude and deceit ! And I 
 hate her — and I shall not go !" Saxham opened his eyes, 
 as well he might. He had never before seen his wife other- 
 wise than gentle and submissive. He found his own bitter 
 explanation of the sudden storm that had burst among 
 the debris of dessert on the Harley Street dinner-table. 
 Her fetters were galling her to agony, he knew ! His 
 square pale face grew more Rhadamanthine than ever, and 
 the glass he had been filling with, port overflowed unnoticed 
 on the cloth. But he kept the mask of set composure 
 before his agony of remorse. Then the frou-frou of light 
 silken draperies passed over the soft carpet. The door opened 
 and shut with a slam. Lynette had left the room. As 
 Saxham sat alone, a heavy, brooding llguro, mechanically 
 sipping at his port, and staring at the "^mpty place opposite, 
 where the overset flower-glass, and the crookedly pushcd- 
 back chair, and the serviette that made a white streak on the 
 dark crimson carpet, marked the haste and emotion of her 
 departure, he said to himself that the West End upholsterer 
 who had the contract for refurnishing Plas 13endigaid 
 must be warned to complete his work without delay. 
 
 For Plas Bendigaid, the solid, stone-built grange that had 
 been a Convent in the fifteenth century, and probably lung 
 before, the South Welsh home of his mother's girlhood, 
 perched in the shadow of Herion Castle upon a wide shelf 
 of the headland that coimuiLuds the treacheroua shoals and
 
 614 THE BOP DOCTOR 
 
 snowy shell-strewn sands and wild tumbling waters of Nant- 
 madoc Bay . . . Plas Bendigaid, with that hoarded, invested 
 money, was to be Saxham's bequest to his young widow. 
 
 Everytliing that loving care and forethought could plan 
 had already been done to make the old home pleasant and 
 charming. Nothing was needed but the upholsterer's finish- 
 ing touches. Saxham had planued that Lynette should 
 be there when he wiped out the shame of failure by keeping 
 that promise made in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, little 
 more than a year before. 
 
 He had always meant to keep it, but not when the 
 north-east gales of winter and spring should be sweeping 
 over the mountain- passes and lashing the waves to mad- 
 ness ; not when the ceaseless scurry of hunted clouds should 
 have piled the south-west horizon with scowling blue- 
 black ramparts, topped by awful towers, themselves be- 
 littled by stupendous heights built of intangible vapours, 
 and reproducing with added grandeur and terror the 
 soaring peaks and awful vales and appalling precipices of 
 snow-helmed Frore and her daughters. 
 
 When the promise of Summer should have been fulfilled 
 in sweetness, Saxham would keep his promise. When the 
 swallows should hatch out their yomig broods between the 
 huge stones that the hands of men who returned to dust 
 cycles of centuries ago hauled up with the twisted hide-rope 
 and the groaning crane, to rear with them upon the Jut of 
 the rugged headland two hundred feet above the waves that 
 now break a mile away, the Lonely Tower, now merged in 
 the huge dilapidated Edwardian keep that broods over 
 Herion. When thor~ blocks of cyclopaean masonry should 
 be tufted with the golden wallflower and the perfumed wild 
 geranium, and starred with the delicate blossom of the 
 lavender scabious and the wild marguerite, then the little 
 blue bottle that stood in the deep table-drawer near the 
 big whisky-flask sliould come into use. 
 
 When the vast pale sweep of the sandy dunes should be 
 covered for leagues by the perfumed cloth-of-gold spread 
 by the broom and tlie furze; when the innumerable little 
 yellow dwarf-roses should blossom on their prickly bushes, 
 thrusting pertly tlirough the powdery white sand, and 
 every hollow and hillock should be gay with the star con- 
 
 1
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 615 
 
 volvulus and the flaunting scarlet poppies — then Death 
 should come, borne on winged feet, and bearing the sword 
 of keenness, to sever the iron bonds of Andromeda chained 
 to the rock. And here was Summer, knocking at the door ! 
 
 Lynette did not reappear. He did not seek her out 
 and ask the reason of her strange display of emotion. 
 Only a husband could do that who had the right to take 
 her in his arms and kiss the last remaining traces of het 
 tears away. Saxham went to his consulting-room, and 
 while all the clocks of London made time, and the moon 
 veered southward, and the stars rose and set, he toiled 
 over his notes and case-books in the brilliant circle cast by 
 the shaded electric lamp upon liis writing-table, and the 
 tide in the big whisky-flask in tlie table-drawer ebbed low. 
 
 Hours hence he laid down liis pen. The flask had long 
 been emptied ; the alcohol-flare was dying out in the grey 
 chambers of his brain. Weariness of life weighed on him 
 like a leaden panoply. He had almost stretched his hand 
 to take the little blue-glass vial that sat waiting, waiting 
 in the deep table-drawer beside the drained flask before 
 sleep overcame him. His head sank against the chair- 
 back. His was a sudden, heavy lapsing into forgetfulness, 
 unmarred by dreams. 
 
 Time sped. The silver table-clock, the clock upon the 
 mantelshelf, and the grandfather clock in the comer, ran a 
 race with the chronometer in the i)ocket of the sleeping 
 man. The brilliant unwavering circle of electric light did 
 not reach the face of the Dop Doctor. It bathed his hands, 
 that hung lax over the arms of the Sheraton chair, and 
 tipped his lifted chin, leaving the strong brow and closed 
 eyes in shadow. But as the pale glinuner of dawn began 
 to outline the edges of the blinds, and stretched at length 
 a broad, pointing finger across the quiet room, the sleeping 
 face showed greyish pale and luminous as a drawing by 
 Whistler in silver-point. 
 
 The dawn had not rested on it long before there came a 
 knock upon the panel of the consulting-room door. It was 
 so faint and diffident a knock, no wonder it passed un- 
 heeded. Then the door opened timidly, and a slender
 
 616 THE BOP DOCTOR 
 
 figure in pale flowing di-aperies of creamy embroidered 
 cashmere stole upon small, noiseless, slippered feet over the 
 thick Turkey carpet. 
 
 It was Lynette. She had risen from her bed, and looked 
 out from the landing into the hall below, and, seeing the 
 light of the unextinguished lamp shining under the lintej 
 of the consulting-room door, had stolen timidly down to 
 ask Owen's jjardon. Why had she behaved so badly ? She 
 could not explain. Only she was sorry. She must tell 
 him so. His name was upon her lips, when she saw the 
 Dop Doctor sleeping in his chair. 
 
 Breathlessly silent, she crossed the room to his side. 
 And then — it was to her as though she looked upon her 
 husband's face for the first time. 
 
 There was no stain of his secret excess upon it — no 
 bloating of the features. You would have said this was a 
 sane and strong and temperate man, upon whom the 
 mighty brother of all -conquering Death had come, like one 
 armed, and overthrown in the heat and stress of the life- 
 battle. Only the sorrow of a suffering soul was written 
 as deeply on that pale mask of human flesh as though the 
 sculptor-slaves of a Pharao, dead seven thousand years 
 agone, had cut it with tools of unknown, resistless temper 
 in the diamond-hard Egyptian granite. 
 
 He breathed deeply and evenly, and not a muscle 
 twitched as Lynette bent over and looked at him. A 
 mass of her red-brown hair, heavy with the weight of its 
 own glossy luxuriance, slipped from her half- bared bosom 
 as she leaned over him, and fell upon his breast. A sudden 
 blush burned over her as it fell. He never stirred. But as 
 though the rod of Moses had touched the rock in Horeb, one 
 slow tear oozed from between Saxham's black fringed, close- 
 sealed eyelids, and hung there, a burnished, trembling point 
 of steely light. And the deep, still, manly anguish of his 
 face cried out to the reawakening womanhood in Lynette, 
 and a strange, new, overwhelming emotion seized and 
 shook her as a stream of white and liquid fire seemed to 
 pass into her veins and mingle with her blood. 
 
 She began to understand, as she pored, with beating heart 
 and bated breath, upon the living page before her eyes. 
 
 In its reticence and lonely strength of endurance, that
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 617 
 
 face of Saxham's pleaded with her. In its stem acceptance 
 of suffering and disappointment for Saxham, in its rugged 
 confrontation of the inevitable ; in its resolute long-suffering 
 and grim patience ; in its silent abnegation of any claim 
 upon her gratitude or any right to demand her tenderness, 
 the face was more than eloquent to-night. In the pride 
 that would never stoop to beg for pity — would rather die 
 hungered than accept one crumb of grudged and measured 
 love ; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to that 
 promise given to a dead man ; in the nobility of its refusal 
 to shine brighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the 
 revelation of that other man's mean baseness ; in its almost 
 paternal solicitude ; in its agony of love for her, insensible and 
 careless ; in the sick despair that had given up and left off 
 hoping : even in the pride that had — or so it seemed to her 
 — asserted itself at the last, and said, " I have left off cry- 
 ing for the moon ; I wish for your love no longer !" — it 
 pleaded — pleaded. . . . Words struggled for ajiswering 
 utterance in her, but none came. . . , She leaned nearer, 
 drawn by an irresistible fascination, and laid her lips 
 lightly upon the broad white forehead, with the bar of 
 black meeting eyebrow smudged across it, and then, with 
 a sudden leap and thrill, she knew. . . . 
 
 All that had been in the past went for nothing. Only 
 this man mattered who sat sleeping in the chair. How 
 easy to awaken him with a touch, and tell him all ! She 
 dared not, though she longed to. 
 
 He was her master as well as her mate. When he had 
 said to her that he had ceased to care, his eyes had given 
 his words the lie. He had looked at her. . . . She 
 shivered deliciously at the recollection of that look. If he 
 were to open those stern, ardent eyes now, he would know 
 her his. His — all his, to deal with as he chose ! . . . His 
 alone ! 
 
 If Saxham had awakened then. . . . But he slept on. 
 She did not dare to kiss that broad white buckler of liis 
 forehead again. She kissed the sleeve of his coat instead, 
 and, scared by a sudden sigh and movement of one of the 
 hands that hung over the chair-arms, gathered her draperies 
 around her, and stole as noiselessly as a pale sunbeam, out 
 of the room.
 
 618 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lxvn 
 
 It was barely five o'clock, and the balmiest summer day at 
 Herion is wont to waken, like a spoilt child, in a bad temper 
 of angry \vdnd and lashing rain. Lynette, who had risen 
 from her bed and thrown her dressing-gown about her, to 
 kneel on the broad window-seat and look out upon this 
 strange new world, shivered, standing barefoot on the 
 mossy carpet. Then she looked round the room, and smiled 
 with delight. For she had found it, upon her arrival of 
 the previous night, a reproduction, down to the smallest 
 detail, of her blue-and-white bedroom at Harley Street, 
 with this notable difference — that on the wall facing the 
 bed-head hung a fine copy of a Millais portrait that was 
 ,one of the treasures of Ba\vne House. Lady Bridget-Mary, 
 in the glory of her beautiful youth, shone from the canvas 
 splendid as a star. 
 
 How kind, how kind of Owen ! . . . Her eyes filled as 
 she gazed, comparing the glowang, radiant face upon the 
 canvas with the enlarged photograph of the Mother in her 
 habit that stood in an ebony and silver frame upon a little 
 table beside the bed. A worn " Garden of the Soul " lay 
 near, and the " Imitation " of inspired A Kempis. Both 
 had been the Mother's gifts. The Breviary and the Little 
 Office of Our Lady had belonged to the dead. Lynette had 
 brought these treasured possessions with her from Harley 
 Street, leaving the ivory Crucifix hanging in its place above 
 the vacant pillow. So many sleepless nights she had known 
 of late upon that pillow that there were faint bluish-shaded 
 hollows under the beautiful eyes, and wistful lines about 
 the mouth. 
 
 Since the revelation made to her by her own heart, when 
 the heavy tress of hair dropped from her bosom upon the un- 
 conscious breast above which she bent, an insurmountable 
 wall of diffidence and shyness upon her side, and of stern, 
 self-concentrated isolation on her husband's, had risen up 
 between them, dwarfiLng the barrier that was already there. 
 
 His writing-table lamp had burned through the nights, 
 but she had never ventured upon another stolen visit to 
 Saxham's consulting-room. The memory of that kiss she
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 619 
 
 had put upon the velvety-smooth space above the broad 
 meeting eyebrows stung in her like a sense of guilt, and 
 yet it had its sweetness. She had claimed her right. 
 The man was hers, though slie might never be his. . . . 
 To know it was to realise at once her riches and her poverty. 
 
 Out of a vague yearning and a formless, nameless pain 
 had come to her the knowledge of the true herb needed for 
 her healing. The unsated hunger for sympathy and love 
 and loveliness, the loneliness that gnawed him, she com- 
 prehended now. And as she looked about her at the dainty, 
 carefully-chosen furniture, and the exquisite old-world- 
 patterned chintz draperies, recognising what his care had 
 been to please her, and how every little taste and preference 
 of hers had been remembered and gratified, a sense of her 
 own ingratitude pierced her to the quick. 
 
 She had parted from Owen without one tender word, 
 without even one glance of greater kindness than she 
 would have bestowed upon a stranger. She ached Avdth 
 futile remorse at the recollection of that frigid, distant 
 good-bye at Euston Station, when Lady Hannah's shrill 
 laugh had jangled through I\Iajor Bingo's blustering 
 admonitions to perspiring porters to put the luggage in 
 one compartment, to stow canvas bags of golf -clubs and 
 fishing-rods in the racks, and to damage bicycles at their 
 personal peril, since the company evaded hability. 
 
 It had been Saxham's wish that Lady Hannah and Major 
 Wrynche should be his wife's guests at Plas Bendigaid. 
 Looking from her bedroom casements over the syringas and 
 lilacs and larches, the laburnums and hawthorns and holhoa 
 of the low-walled garden that ended at the sheer clitJ-edge, 
 from whence you looked down upon the tops of the pines 
 and chestnuts, whose green foliage hid the shining metals 
 of the iron way, and made a sea of verdure in place of the 
 salt blue waves that once had lapped and sighed there — 
 gazing across the powdery sand-dunes that were prickly 
 with sea-holly and gay with fiauuting poppies and purple 
 scabious, the pink and white convolvulus, atid the thorny 
 yellow dwarf rose, that somehow finds nourishment in the 
 pale sand of Herion Links, to the line of white breakers 
 that rose and fell more than a mile away, Lynette sighed 
 a small sigh of resignation at the prospect of long weeks to
 
 620 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 be spent in the society of these pleasant, well-bred, rather 
 fidgety people Owen had chosen to bear her company. 
 
 Of course, Owen could not leave his patients ! He had 
 explained that, and Lady Hannah and her big Major were 
 old friends of hers and his. And the little woman with 
 the jangling laugh and the snapping black eyes had known 
 the Mother in her youth. . . . 
 
 At that remembrance Lynette's eyes went lovingly to 
 the copy of the Millais portrait, and as the sun burst 
 through the streaming wind-chased clouds, and smote 
 bright diamond-rays from the dripping window-panes, the 
 film lips seemed to curve in the rare, sudden smile, the 
 great grey eyes to gleam with life and tenderness. 
 
 Ah, to spend a long, sweet summer here, alone with that 
 dearest of all companions ! Lynette's white throat swelled 
 at the thought, and a mist blotted out the noble face, 
 cro^vned with its diadem of rich black tresses. She wiped 
 the tears away, and beheld a world miraculously changed. 
 For land and sea were drenched in radiant sunshine. 
 
 She unlatched the casements and threw them wide, 
 and clean, salt, sweet air came streaming in, bringing the 
 fragrance of mignonette and wallflower and sweetbriar, and 
 the aromatic smells of the larch and pine. She leaned her 
 white arms upon the grey stone window-sill, and drank the 
 freshness and fragrance. And it seemed to her that this 
 ancient grange, perched on the cliil-ledge in the tremendous 
 shadow of Herion Castle, looking across the restless grey- 
 blue waters of Nantmadoc Bay to St. Tirlan's Roads, was 
 an ideal place to spend a honeymoon in, supposing you 
 loved the man you had married, and were loved by him ? 
 
 Her bosom heaved and her wild heart fell to throbbing. 
 A blush burned over her, and she drove the thought away. 
 It came back, whispering like a guest who wishes not to be 
 dismissed. It pleaded and urged and compelled. Some- 
 thing like a strong hand closed upon her heart and drew 
 her, drew her. ... A voice called to her in the silence 
 that was only broken by the voices of birds, and the rustling 
 of wind-stirred leaves, and the crying of the gulls above 
 the white restless breakers. And the voice was Owen's. 
 
 How strangely he had looked and spoken in that last 
 momejifc of their parting ! It came back in every detail
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 621 
 
 for the hundredth time, as she leaned her white arms upon 
 the window-sill and looked out with wistful eyes upon the 
 beauty of the blossoming world. 
 
 " Good-bye, good-bye ! Be happy — and forget !" 
 
 The train had begun to move as he uttered the words 
 He had gripped her hand painfully and released it. As he 
 drew his arm sharply away, a button, hanging loosely by 
 a thread or two, became detached from his coat-cu3, and fell 
 upon the rubber matting of the corridor. She was con- 
 scious of the button as Saxham and the crowded, grimy 
 platform receded from her view. And before she went 
 back to her seat in the compartment that had been reserved 
 for herself and her fellow-travellers, she picked up the tiny 
 disc of black horn, and secretly kissed it, and slipped it 
 into her purse. She was silent and preoccupied during the 
 eleven hours' journey, turning over and over in her mind, 
 mentally repeating wdth every shade of expression that could 
 vary their meaning, Saxham's strange words of farewell. 
 
 She repeated them now aloud. They were tossed to 
 and fro in her heart on waves of wonder and regret and 
 apprehension. Did Owen really believe that to be happy 
 she must forget him ? Did he comprehend that she had 
 long arrived at the conclusion that this loveless. Joyless 
 companionship, mocked by the name of marriage, was a 
 miserable mistake ? 
 
 He had never been under any illusion as concerned it. 
 He had accepted the iron terms of the contract she offered 
 him with open eyes and full knoAvledge. She heard his 
 voice again, as it had spoken in the Cemetery at Guelders- 
 dorp, saying : 
 
 " Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, 
 into a marriage that should be practically no marriage at 
 all — a formal contract that is not wedlock ? That might 
 never change as Time went on, and ripen into the close 
 union that physically and mentally makes happiness for 
 men and women who love ? Is that what you ask me, 
 Miss Mildare ?" 
 
 That was just what she had asked. He had accepted 
 her iron conditions, and stipulated for nothing. He had 
 given his all. What had she given him ? Nothing but 
 suffering, being rendered pitiless by the ache and stiug in Ler
 
 622 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 own bosom — absorbed, swallowed up by her agony of grief 
 for the Mother, her passion of regret for dead Beauvayse. 
 
 Beauvayse. . . . Suppose he and Owen Saxham stood 
 side by side down there on the green short grass beneath 
 her windows, which of the two men would to-day be the 
 dearer and the more desired ? The tall, soldierly young 
 figure, with the sunburnt, handsome face, the gay, amorous, 
 challenging glance, the red mouth that laughed under the 
 golden moustache, and the shallow brain under the close- 
 clipped golden curls, or the black-haired, hulking Doctor, 
 with the square-cut, powerful face and the stern blue eyes, 
 the man of heart and intellect, whose indomitable, patient 
 tenderness had led a stricken girl back from the borders of 
 that strange land where the brain-sick dwell, to wholesome 
 consciousness of common things, and renewed healthful- 
 ness of body and of mind 1 
 
 She had hardly thanked him. She realised, with tears 
 of shame, that this inestimable service she had accepted as 
 matter of course. It was the way of Saxham's world to 
 take of him and render nothing ; he who was worthy to 
 be a King among his fellow-men had been their servant as 
 long as she had known him. 
 
 To call him hard and stern, and seek his aid and sym- 
 pathy at every pinch ; to deem him cold and grudging, and 
 accept his sacrifices as matter of course — that was the way 
 of the world with grim- jawed, tender-hearted Owen Sax- 
 ham. And she, who had done like the rest, knew him 
 now, and valued him for what he was, and — loved him ! 
 
 For this was love that had come upon her like a strong 
 man armed, not as he had shown himself to her before — 
 laughing and merry, playful and sweet. . . . This was 
 no ephemeral, girlish passion, evoked by the beauty of 
 gay, wanton, grey-green jewel-eyes and a bold, smiling 
 mouth. This was a love that drew you with irresistible 
 strength, and knitted you to the soul, and the heart, and 
 the flesh of another, until his breath became your breath, 
 and his life your life. It called you with a voice that 
 plucked at the secret chords of your being, and was stem 
 and compelling rather than sweet to implore. It drew you 
 to the beloved, not with ribbons of silk, but with ropea of
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 623 
 
 tempered steel. It was potent and resistless as death, and 
 infinitely deeper than the grave. It reached out aspiring 
 hands beyond the grave, into Eternity. And, newly born 
 as it rose in the heart of this woman, it was yet as old as 
 Eden, where Heavenly Love created the earthly love, that 
 is more than half-divine. 
 
 Why, why had he sent her away, bidding her be happy 
 and forget him ? . . . The memory of his hollow eyes 
 and haggard face pierced her to the quick. He was ill — 
 he was in trouble ; he had sent her away that he might 
 bear the burden solely. ... Or ... an iron hand closed 
 upon her heart, and wrung it until points of moisture 
 started upon her fair temples under the fine tendrils of 
 her hair . . . could the reason be — another woman ? 
 
 Another woman ? . . . She set her little teeth and drove 
 the unworthy thought away. But it came again and 
 again — a persistent mental gadfly. Was Owen not worthy 
 of love ? Suppose another sweeter, gentler creature had 
 found a throne in the heart that his wife had prized so 
 lightly, would it be so very strange, after all ? Perhaps 
 that was why he had asked her to forgive him for having 
 married her a little while ago ! 
 
 She dropped her head upon her folded arms, and sobbed 
 at the thought. Then she dried her tears and rang for her 
 maid, and presently came down to breakfast with Lady 
 Hannah, smiling and composed, cheerful and attentive as 
 a hostess ought to be. But her reddened eyelids told tales. 
 
 " Misses her Doctor, no doubt," thought Lady Haimah, 
 as she commended the country eggs and butter, and was 
 enthusiastic over the thyme-scented Welsh mountain- 
 honey, and apologetic over the absence of her Bingo from 
 the board. 
 
 She would carry her nuisance Ma brt aldast with her oami 
 hands, she vowed, as he had left his man bchiad, on hearing 
 from the Doctor that the house was a small one. 
 
 " But why ?" asked Lynette. " There is Marie, my 
 maid, and the red-cheeked parlourmaid, whose name I 
 don't yet know, and Mrs. Pugh, the housekeeper . . ." 
 
 " Who was Dr. Saxham's nurse when he was a little boy, 
 and adores him. And Mrs. Pugh's husband, who is 
 gardener, and handy-man, and coachman when required."
 
 624 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lady Hannah's laugh Jangled out over the capacious 
 tray, containing the comprehensive assortment of viands 
 representing what the invalid was wont to term his 
 " brekker." " But I'm not to be deprived of my privilege, 
 for all that. Do you suppose you young married creatures 
 are the only wives who enjoy cosseting their husbands 1 
 There ! it's out, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, I 
 suppose, but I'm not. Is that collared bra^vn on the side- 
 board ? Bingo has a devouring passion for collared brawTi." 
 She added a goodly slice to the contents of the tray. 
 " I warn you, if you regard the billing and cooing of a 
 middle-aged couple as indecent," she went on, " to look 
 the other way a great deal while we're here. For I was 
 for the first time seriously smitten with my husband when 
 he rode out to meet me, returning from ignoble captivity 
 in the tents of Brounckers, eighteen months ago. When I 
 nursed him through enteric in the Hospital at Frostenberg 
 — I won't disguise it — I fell in love ! With a bag of bones, 
 for he was nothing else : but genuine passion is indifferent 
 to the personal appearance of the beloved object, though 
 I hadn't suspected it before. The wound completed my 
 conquest, and since then I'm madly Jealous if another 
 woman looks at him ! . . . I see red — green would be a 
 better colour — because he prefers to have his valet brush 
 his hair. I don't know that I didn't reduce the holding 
 capacity of this house by a storey—there's a pun for you ! 
 — so as to engineer my hated rival being left at home in 
 Wilton Place. Is that lovely murrey-coloured stuff in the 
 cut-glass Jar quince marmalade ? No ! I won't pamper 
 Bingo, if he is the idol of my soul. And please don't wait 
 for me. He likes me to take off the tops of his eggs for 
 him, and he usually eats three. . . ." 
 
 Lady Hannah tripped off with her load, and deposited 
 it before the idol, who was sitting up in a Japanese bed- 
 jacket of wadded pink satin, left-handedly reading the 
 Herion newspaper that comes out once a week, and is pub- 
 lished at St. Tirlan's, twenty miles away. 
 
 " I've made a discovery," she announced. " No, don't 
 look frightened. It's only that poor Biddy's belle trou- 
 vaille has got a heart. She's not the tinted Canova-nymph, 
 the piece of correct inanity, I honestly believed her. . . .
 
 THE DUP DOCTOK 625 
 
 She idolised Biddy— small credit, for who could help it ? 
 She submitted to be adored by that poor foolish boy who's 
 dead. . , . Now she's her black-avised Doctor's humble 
 worshipper and slave." 
 
 " Can't understand a woman worshippin' a chap with 
 a chin like the bows of an armoured Destroyer, and eye- 
 brows like another man's moustaches," Bingo objected. 
 
 " Chin or no chin, eyebrows or not a hair, what does that 
 count to a woman in love ?" She placed the laden tray 
 before him, and with a maternal air proceeded to tuck a 
 napkin under his chin. He grumbled : 
 
 '* There's no knowin' what will take the female fancy. 
 But even if you haven't harked away on a wrong scent, 
 slave's a dash too strong. Struck me they parted un- 
 common chilly and off-hand at Euston yesterday momin', 
 considerin' they've not been married much above a year ! 
 Do take this thing from round my neck ! Makes me feel 
 like Little Willie !" 
 
 Lady Haimah unpinned the napkin that framed the 
 bulldog - Jowl, and said, patting the sandy-pink bullet- 
 head : 
 
 " That's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in amatory 
 affairs. No Eyes sees two people part, ' uncommon off- 
 hand and chilly.' " She mimicked Bingo's tone. " Eyes 
 sees that and something more ! A man's coat- button 
 dropped on the floor of a railway carriage, for instance, and 
 a young woman who slyly picks it up — silly little (jage 
 d' amour — and kisses it when a considerate observer pre- 
 tends not to be looking, and hides it away ! Is that 
 evidence, Major Mole ?" 
 
 " By the Living Tinker !" he thundered, " I wouldn't 
 have believed it of her !" 
 
 *' Of course you wouldn't !" She rummaged in an open 
 suit-case. " VVhat necktie do you want to wear to-day ?" 
 
 He mumbled ruefully, eyeing her over the colTce-cup : 
 
 " Any of 'em. It don't matter which. They're all 
 alike when you've tied 'em !" 
 
 She beamed at what seemed to her a <2;allant speech. 
 
 " SaTM compliment ? You really mean it ? And you 
 won't miss Grindlay so frightfully, after alH" 
 
 He shook his head ambiguously. 
 
 40
 
 626 THE 1)0P DOCTOR 
 
 " I shan't begin really to suffer for Grindlay — not till it 
 comes to tubbin' with one fin." 
 
 " Mercy upon us !" She gasped in consternation. He 
 said, controlling his features from wreathing into tri- 
 unxphant smiles : 
 
 " You were so cast-iron certain you could fill his place, 
 you know !" 
 
 Her bright black eyes were hidden under abashed and 
 drooping eyelids. Blushes played hide-and-seek in the 
 small cheeks that were usually pale. 
 
 " In — in everything essential," she stammered, avoiding 
 his intolerable gaze. 
 
 " Then that's what it is to be Eyes and No Eyes in 
 ordinary, eveiyday affairs !" The man pursued liis ad- 
 vantage pitilessly. " Didn't you regard it as essential that 
 I sliould wash ?'' 
 
 She winked tears away, though her laugh answered him. 
 
 " Most certainly I did, and do. One of the reasons that 
 decided me on marrying you was that you were invariably 
 •propre cornme un sou neufy 
 
 " I thought, on mature reflection," said Bingo, lying 
 down under the lightened tray with a replete and satisfied 
 air, " that you would prefer a clean husband to a dirty 
 one. Therefore I engaged a bedroom for Grindlay at the 
 Herion Arms. That's his knock. Come in !" 
 
 The valet presented himself upon the threshold, backing 
 respectfully at sight of her ladyship, who gave him a gracious 
 good- morning, dissembling the intense relief experienced 
 at sight of liis smug, clean-shaven countenance. 
 
 " Good-morning, Grindlay. 1 hope the Hotel people 
 made you comfortable. And now you have arrived to take 
 responsibility off my hands," she announced, " I'll go and 
 get some breakfast." 
 
 " Haven't you . . . You're Joking !" The tray shot from 
 the bed into Grindlay's saving clutch ap Bingo suddenly 
 assumed the perpendicular. " You don't mean to say 
 that you've been starving all the time I've been gorging 
 myself like — ^like a boa-constrictor ?" he demanded 
 furiously. " Why on earth are women sucli blessed " 
 
 " — Idiots ?" she supplied, turning on the threshold to 
 launch her Parthian shaft. " Because if they were intel- 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 627 
 
 lectual, logical beings they would know better than to 
 lavish devotion upon stupid, selfish, unappreciative, heart- 
 less, dull dolts of men !" 
 
 The door slammed behind an injured woman. Grindlay's 
 face was a study in immobility. Bingo, after a little 
 more meditation, ponderingly rose and submitted himself 
 to the hands of the attendant. When the .Major's toilet had 
 reached the stage of hair-parting, he roused himself fron> 
 hi^ reflections with a sigh. 
 
 " Hold on. Put down that comb and go and ask her 
 ladyship to be good enough to step up here. Tell her that 
 your style of hairdressin' don't suit me. I want a little 
 more imagination thrown into the thing! Hurry up, will 
 you ?" 
 
 " Lord ! What a liar I am !" he murmured fervently, 
 addressing his reflection in the glass. His wife's face 
 appeared over his shoulder, bright, alert, and pleased. She 
 said, as she adroitly assumed the office vacated by tlie dis- 
 carded Grindlay, who discreetly delayed his re-entrance 
 on the scene : 
 
 " So you can't get on, it appears, without your ' blessed 
 idiot ' ?" 
 
 " Blessed angel, you mean !" said mendacious Bingo, 
 blinking under a Little Lord Fauntleroy fringe. " You 
 banged the door before I'd got out tlie word !" 
 
 " If I could believe that !" she sighed, and the ivory- 
 backed hair-bru.shes played rather a tremulous fantasia 
 upon her idol's head, " perhaps I might be induced to con- 
 fide to you a piece of genuine Secret Intelligence." 
 
 " Concemin' ?" 
 
 " Concerning your wife, Hannah Wrynche." 
 
 " Well, what of her ?" 
 
 She took him by the chin and began to part his hair. 
 But her eyes were misty, and her hand travelled unsteadily. 
 
 " This of her. She o\vned to you, months and months 
 back, that in your place she wouldn't have been one- 
 millionth part as patient with a restless, ambitious woman 
 cursed with an especial capacity for getting herself and 
 other people into hot water." She made a little affected 
 grimace that masked a genuine smart. " Not liob watet 
 
 only — boiling lava aometimes — fizzling vitriol " 
 
 40 -2
 
 628 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 He said, looking kindly up at the small mobile face and 
 quivering chin : 
 
 " Restlessness and ambition are in the blood, y' know, 
 like gout and the rest of it. You can't eradicate 'em, how- 
 ever much you try. It's like shavin' a Danish carriage- 
 dog to change his colour. You can't for nuts ; Ms spots 
 are in his skin ! See ?" 
 
 " Merci du compliment /" Her jangling laugh rang out 
 as if a stick had been smartly rattled down the keys of a 
 piano. But her eyes were wet. His own eyes reverted to 
 his reflection in the toilet-glass. Now his sudden bellow 
 made her drop tlic comb. 
 
 " My Aunt Maria ! See what you've been and done ! 
 Made a Loop Railway down the middle of my head, imless 
 my liver's making me see things curly. Don't swot at it 
 any more ; let that ass Grindlay earn his pay for once. . . . 
 By the Living Tiiilcer ! you're cryin'. Don't go and say 
 I've been a brute !" he pleaded. 
 
 " Darling ! — dearest ! — you haven't — ^you've never ! . . . 
 The boot's on the other leg, though wild horses wouldn't 
 get you to o^.v•n as much !" His strong left arm was round 
 her slight waist, her wet cheek pressed against her Major's 
 bulldog jowl. Bingo cleared his tliroat in his ponderous, 
 scraping way, admitting : 
 
 " Well, perhaps I may have dropped a briny or so — of 
 nights in bed at Nixey's, or on duty at Staff Bombproof 
 South, between ring-ups on the telephone when the off- 
 duty men were snorin', and one had nothin' on the blessed 
 earth to do but wonder whether one had a wife or not ?" 
 
 " There were people ready to tell you — ^years before we 
 saw Gueldersdorp — that the one you'd got was as good as 
 none. . . ." 
 
 " Lucky for 'em they refrained from expressin' their 
 opinions !" She felt his great muscles swell as the big liand 
 tightened on her waist. " Though, mind you, there have 
 been times when for your own sake, by Jingo ! I'd have 
 given all I was worth to have you a bit more like other 
 women " 
 
 " Who weren't dying to dabble in Diplomacy and win 
 distinction as War Correspondents. Who funk raw-head 
 and bloody bonus " — she shook with a nervous giggle — ■
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 629 
 
 " and all that sort of thing. . . . Would it please you to 
 know that the plumes of my panache of ambition have 
 been cut to the last quill — that henceforth my sole aim is 
 to rival the domestic Partlet, clucking of barnyard matters 
 in the discreet retirement of the coop ?" 
 
 " You've said as much before !" he objected. 
 
 " But now I mean it ! Put me to the test. Let the 
 house in Wilton Place — we'll live at Wrynche Rodelands, if 
 you think you won't be bored ?" 
 
 He bellowed Joyously ! 
 
 " Me bored ! With ten thousand acres arable and wood 
 and moorland to farm and preserve and shoot over, two 
 first-class packs meetin' within a fifty-mile radius of my 
 doorstep, the Committee of the local Polo Association 
 shriekin' for a President, and the whole County beggin' 
 me with tears in its eyes to take the hint a Certain Person 
 dropped when he gave me my C.B., and accept the Crown 
 Commission as Lord-Lieutenant ! * Bored ' — I like that !" 
 
 " If you would like it, be it !" she flashed. " Trust me to 
 back you up. I can and I will ! I'll help you entertain 
 the military authorities and their women, keep the Rolls, 
 sit on the Bench when you weigh in as Chief Magistrate, 
 and prompt you when you get into a hat. I'll be all things 
 to one man — and you shall be the man ! Only " — slie 
 laughed hysterically, her face hidden against his big 
 shoulder — *' I don't quite know how far these things are 
 compatible with ray new role !" 
 
 " Of domestic Henny-Penny cluckin' in the Home 
 Coop." His big hand patted her almost paternally. 
 " Leave cluckin' to hens with families. Do you suppose 
 I'm such a pachydermatous ass that I can't understand 
 that home is a make-believe to a real woman, when — when 
 there isn't even one chicken to tuck under her wing ! 
 Worse luck for me and you !" 
 
 She laughed wildly, lifting her wet, flushed face up to 
 him. Her black eyes were shining through the tears that 
 rose and brimmed over and fell. 
 
 " If I told you that the luck had changed, would that 
 make you happy ?" 
 
 He cried out with a great oath : 
 
 " Yes, by G !" and caught her to his loapinc: heart.
 
 630 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 In the weeks that followed, Lynette, in the course of many 
 interviews held with Janellan Pugh on the subject of lunch 
 and dinner, learned much anent the difficulty of obtaining 
 fresh fish in a sea-coast village, more as regards the Satanic 
 duplicity with which even a Calvinistic Methodist butcher 
 will substitute New Zealand Iamb for the native animal, 
 and still more about Saxham. 
 
 Janellan, who had been a rosy maid in the service of the 
 Doctor's grandfather, the Parson, had thought the world's 
 worth of Master Owen, from the first time she set eyes on 
 him in a white frock, with a sausage-roll curl and diamond- 
 patterned socks. She had a venerable and spotty photo- 
 graph of him as a square-headed, blinking little boy in a 
 velvet suit and lace collar, and another photograph, 
 coloured by hand, taken at the age of fourteen, and paid for 
 out of his owTQ pocket-money, to send to Janellan, who had 
 nursed him through a holiday scarlet-fever. And regularly 
 had her blessed boy remembered her and Tafydd, said 
 Janellan, until the Cruel Time came, and he was lost sight 
 of in Foreign Parts. Tlien Mrs. Saxham died, and the 
 Captain — mentioned by Janellan with the ringing sni£E that 
 speaks volumes of disparagement — had turned her and her 
 old man out of the Plas " without as much as that !" — here 
 Janellan snapped her strong thumb-nail against her re- 
 maining front tooth — in recognition of their forty years of 
 faithful service. 
 
 But Master Owen, coming to his own again,'" and 'deed 
 an' 'deed, but the Plas ought to have been his from the 
 beginning !" had sought out the old couple, living in decent 
 poverty at St. Tirlan's, and reinstated them in their old 
 home. And well might Tafydd, who was a better Judge 
 of the points of a pig than any man in Herion — or in all 
 Wales for the matter of that — well might Tafydd declare 
 that the Lord never made a better man than Dr. Owen 
 Saxham ! What grand things they had said of him in the 
 papers ! No doubt the young mistress would have plenty 
 more to tell that had not got into print ? 
 " I can tell you many things of the Doctor," said
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 631 
 
 Lynette, smiling in the black-eyed, streaky-apple face, 
 " that you and Tafydd will be proud and glad to hear." 
 
 She shunned the giving or receiving of caresses as a rule, 
 but this morning she stooped and kissed the red-veined, 
 wrinkled cheek within Janellan's white-quilled cap-border. 
 Then, her household duties done, she pinned a rough, shady 
 straw-hat upon the red-brown hair, and drew loose chamois- 
 leather gloves over the slim white exquisite hands that were 
 perhaps her greatest beauty, chose a walking-stick from 
 the hall-rack, ran down the steep cliff pathway, crossed the 
 spidery, red-nisted iron foot-bridge that spanned the 
 railway-line, descended upon the farther side of the wood 
 of chestnut and larch that made green shadows at the base 
 of the cliff, and was upon the sand-dunes, walking with the 
 free, undulating gait she had acquired from the Mother, 
 towards the restless line of white breakers that rose and 
 fell a mile away. 
 
 She was happy. A glorious secret kept her bosom-com- 
 pany ; a new hope gave her strength. She drank in long 
 draughts of the strong, salt, fragrant air, and as it filled her 
 lungs, knew her soul brimmed with fresh delight in the 
 beauty of the world. And a renewed and quickened sense 
 of the joy of life made music of the beating of her pulses 
 and the throbbing of her heart. 
 
 She was a child of the wild veld, but none the less a 
 daughter of this sea-girt Britain : the blue, restless waves 
 beyond that line of white frothing breakers washed the 
 shores of the Mother's beloved green island, Emerald 
 Airinn, set in silver foam. A few miles, St. George's 
 Chamiel spanned — then straight as the crow flies over Wick- 
 low, Queen's County, King's County, taking Calway at the 
 acute angle of the wild mallard's flight ; and tliere would 
 be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers, the grey-green 
 mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy vafleys and 
 wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castle- 
 clare rising from its mossed la%vns studded witli immemorial 
 oaks. And Loch Ivilbawne among the wild highlands, and 
 Lochs Innsa and Barre, and Ballybarron Harbour, with its 
 Titanic breakwater, and three beacons, and the dun- brown 
 islands hidden in their veil of surf-edged spindrift, shaken 
 by the voices of hidden waters roaring in their secret caveia,
 
 632 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 A faint smile played about her sensitive lips. Her golden 
 eyes dreamed as she walked on swiftly, a slender figure 
 dressed in a plain skirt of rough grey-blue, and a loose- 
 sleeved blouse of thick white silk, her slight waist belted 
 with a silver-mounted lizard-sMn girdle, a pleasant tinlde 
 of silver chatelaine appendages accompanying her steps. 
 
 And those steps were to her no longer uncompanioned. 
 It was as though the Mother were living, so enfolding a.nd 
 close was the sense of her presence to-day. God was in 
 His Heaven, and the world. His footstool, bore the visible 
 impress of His Feet. And it seemed to Lynette, who had 
 learned to see the faces of Christ and of His Mother Mary 
 through the lineaments of the earthly face that had first 
 looked love upon herself in her terrible abandonment, that 
 those Divine and glorious countenances looked down on 
 her and smiled. And her chilled faith spread quivering 
 wings, basking in their ineffable mild radiance as the little 
 blue and tortoiseshell butterflies basked in the glorious 
 sunsliine that had followed the morning's storm. 
 
 The tangible presence seemed to move beside her, through 
 the white powdery sand. Over the knotted grasses, between 
 the tufts of poppies and the prickly little yellow roses that 
 fringed tJie hollows, the garments of another seemed to 
 sweep beside her own. The folds of a thin veil upborne 
 on the elastic breeze fluttered beside her cheek, blew against 
 her lips, bringing the rare delicate fragrance — the familiar 
 perfume that clung to everything the Mother habitually 
 wore and used and touched. She did not look round, or 
 stretch out her hand. She walked along, drinking in 
 blissfulness and companionship at every pore of her thirsty 
 soul, joyfully realising that this would last ; that by-and-by 
 the great void of loneliness would not close in on her again. 
 
 Only the night before, upon the brink of the supreme 
 discovery that the dead in Christ are not only living in Him, 
 but for us also who are His, she had liesitated and doubted. 
 Before the sunrise of this glorious day she had learned to 
 doubt no more. 
 
 ♦ ♦ » » « 
 
 She had been restless and unliappy. Saxham had not 
 written for a week. She bitterly missed the short, cold, 
 kind letters in the clear, small, firm handwriting, that had
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 633 
 
 reached her at intervals of three days, to be answered bv 
 her constrained and timid notes, hoping that he was well 
 and not overworking, describing the place and her pleasure 
 in it, without mention of her loneliness ; giving details of 
 Major Wrynche's progress towards recovery, and left- 
 handed attempts at golf, winding up -^^dth messages from 
 Lady Hannah and dutiful remembrances from Tafydd and 
 JanelJan, and signed, his affectionate wife, Lynette Saxham. 
 
 Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles 
 seemed to their writer. To Saxham they were drops of 
 rain upon the parching soil of his heart, the one good that 
 life had for him in this final lap of the race. And yet he 
 had ceased to write that they might come no more. 
 
 If he had known how his own letters to her were wel- 
 comed, how tenderly they were read and re-read, how 
 sweetly kept and cherished. . . . But he did not know ! 
 He could only look ahead, and strain on to the nearing goal 
 with the great, dim., mysterious curtain hanging beyond it, 
 Jiearing the thudding of his wearied heart, and the whistling 
 of those sharp breaths in his strained lungs, and tlie mea- 
 sured sound of his own footfalls bearing him on to the end, 
 wliile night closed in on her, fevered and wakeful in her 
 bed, thinking of him, praying for him. longing for the sight 
 and sound of him. Sleep, when it came now, brought her 
 dreams less crystal than of old. Hued with the fiery rose 
 of opals some, because in these he loved her ; and that 
 shadowy woman, in whose existence she only half-believed, 
 had no part in him at all. But on the night preceding 
 the revelation she had not dreamed. 
 
 She awakened in the grey of dawn, when the thrushes 
 were calling, and lay straight and still, listening to the glad 
 bird-voices from the garden, her soft, fringed eyelids closed, 
 her white breasts gently heaving, her small feet crossed, 
 her slender, bare arms pillowing the little Greek head ; a 
 heavy plait of th^ silken wealth that crowned it drawn 
 down on either side of the sweet, pale face ;ind the pure 
 throat, intensifying their virginal beauty. The dull smart 
 of loneliness, the famished ache of loss, were gone alto- 
 gether. She felt strangely peaceful and calm and glad. 
 Then she knew she was not at Herion ; she was not even in 
 London. . . . She was back at the Convent, in the little
 
 634 "THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 wliitewashed room with the stained deal furniture — the 
 room with the pleasant outlook on the gardens that had 
 been hers from the first. Surely it was past the rising 
 hour ? Ah, yes ! but she had had a touch of fever. That 
 was why she was lying here so quietly, with the Mother 
 sitting by the bed. 
 
 There could be no doubt. . . . The light firm, pres- 
 sure that she knew of old was upon her bosom, just 
 above the beating of her heart. . . . That was always the 
 Mother's way of waking you. She sat beside you, and 
 looked at you, and touched you, and presently your eyes 
 opened, that was all ! . . . Thinking this, a streak of gold 
 glimmered between Lynette's thick dusky lashes ; her lips 
 wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, and 
 there it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand. 
 The loose sleeve of thin black serge flowed away from the 
 strong, finely moulded wrist ; the white starched yuimpe 
 showed snowy between the drooping folds of the nun's 
 veil. . . . These familiar things Lynette drank in with a 
 sense of unspeakable content and pleasure. Then — her 
 eyes opened widely, and she knew. 
 
 She was looking into eyes that had seen the Beatific 
 Vision — great grey eyes that were unfathomable lakes of 
 heavenly tenderness and love divine. And the face that 
 framed them was a radiant pale splendour, indescribable in 
 its glorious beauty, unfathomable in its fulfilled peace. Her 
 own eyes drank peace from them, deeply, insatiably, while 
 the Herion thrushes sang their dewy matins, and the scent 
 of mignonette and sweet-peaa and early roses mingled 
 with the smell of the sea, stole in at the open casement 
 where the white blind swelled out like a breeze-filled sail. 
 
 How long Lynette lay there storing up content and 
 rapture she did not know, or want to know. But at last 
 the wonder of those eyes came nearer — nearer ! She 
 felt the dear pressure of the familiar lipa upon her own. 
 A fragrance enveloped her, an exquisite Joy overbrimmed 
 her, as a voice— the beloved, unforgotten voice of match- 
 less music — spoke. It said : 
 
 " Love your husband as I loved Richard I Be to a child of 
 his what I have been to youf 
 
 # # » • •
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 635 
 
 Eyes and face and voice, white hand and flowing veil, 
 were all gone then. Lynette sat up, sobbing for joy, and 
 blindly holding out her arms, and the riaing sun looked 
 over the mountains eastward, and drew one hushing, golden 
 finger over the lips of the cold, grey, whispering sea. 
 
 LXIX 
 
 A THIN, subterraneous screech, accompanied by a whii! 
 of cinder-flavoured steam, heralded the Down Express 
 as it plimged out of the cliff-tunnel, flashed across an in- 
 tervening space, and was lost among the chestnuts and 
 larches. A metallic rattle and scroop told that the official in 
 the box on the other side of the Castle bluff had opened the 
 points. And hearing the clanking bustle of the train's 
 arrival in the station, Lynette reminded herself with a sigh 
 of relief that her maid was packing, that she would presently 
 make her excuses to Major Wrynche and Lady Hannah, and 
 that the midnight up-mail should take her home to Owen. 
 
 Her course lay clear now, pointed out by the beloved, 
 lost hand. But for this Heaven-sent light that had been 
 cast upon her way, Lynette knew that she might have 
 wandered on in doubt and darkness to the very end. 
 
 She was not of the race of hero- women, who deserve the 
 most of men, and are doomed to receive in grudging measure. 
 A pliant, dependent, essentially feminine creature, she was 
 made to lean and look up, to be swayed and influenced by 
 the stronger nature, to be guided and ruled, and led, and to 
 love the guide. 
 
 Her nature had flowered : sim and breeze and dew had 
 worked their miracle of form and fragrance and colour, 
 the ripened carpels waited, conscious of the crown of tall 
 golden-powdered anthers bending overhead. Instead of 
 the homely hive-bee a messenger had come from Heaven, 
 the air vibrated yet with the beating of celestial wings. 
 
 She was going to Saxham to ask Ixim to forgive her, lo 
 throw do^vn the pitiless barrier she had reared between them 
 in her ignorance of herself and of him. She would humble 
 herself to entreat for that rejected crown of wifehood. 
 Even though that conjectural other woman had won Owen
 
 636 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 from her, she said to herself that she would win him back 
 again. 
 
 She reached the wet, shining strip of creamy sand where 
 the frothing line of foam-borses reared and wallowed. 
 The prints of her little bro"vvn shoes were brimmed with 
 sea- water, she lifted her sldrt daintily, and went forward 
 still. Numberless delicate little winged shells were scat- 
 tered over the moist surface, tenantless homes of tiny 
 bivalves, wonderfully tinted. Rose-pink, brilliant yellow, 
 tawny-white, delicate lilac, it was as though a lapful of 
 blossoms rifled from some mermaid's deep-sea garden, 
 had been scattered by the spoiler at old Ocean's marge. 
 Lynette cried out with pleasure at their beauty, stooped 
 and gathered a palmful, then dropped them. She stood 
 a moment longer drinking in the keen, stinging freshness, 
 then turned to retrace her steps, still with that unseen 
 companion at her side. 
 
 The vast, undulating green and white expanse, save 
 for a distant golf -player with the inevitable ragged follow- 
 ing, seemed bare of human figures. The veering breeze 
 shepherded flocks of white clouds across the harebell-tinted 
 meadows of the sky. It sang a thin, sweet song in 
 Lynette's little roae-tipped ears. And innumerable larks 
 carolled, building spiral towers of melody on fields of 
 buoyant air. And suddenly a human note mingled with 
 their music and with the thick drone of the little, black- 
 and-grey humble-bees that feasted on the corn-bottles. And 
 Lynette's visionary companion was upon the instant gone. 
 
 It was a baby's cooing chuckle that arrested the little 
 brown shoes upon the verge of a deep sand hollow. Lynette 
 looked do-mi. A pearly-pale cup fringed with blazing 
 poppies held the lost treasure of some weeping mother — 
 a flaxen-headed coquette of some eighteen months old, 
 arrayed in expensive, diaphanous, now sadly crumpled 
 whiteness, the divine human peach served up in whipped 
 cream of muslin and frothy Valenciennes. Absorbed in 
 deUghtful sand-dabbling, Miss Baby crowed and gurgled ; 
 then, as a little cry of womanly delight in her beauty and 
 womanly pity for her isolation broke from Lynette, she 
 looked up and laughed roguishly in the stranger's face, 
 narrowing her eyes.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 637 
 
 Naughty, mischievous eyes of jewel-bright, grey-green, 
 long-shaped and thick-lashed ; bold red, laughing mouth — • 
 where had Lynette seen them before 1 With a strange sense 
 of renewing an experience she ran down into the hollow, 
 and dropping on her knees beside the pretty thing, caught 
 it up and kissed it soundly. 
 
 " Where do you come from, sweet ?" she asked, between 
 the kisses. " Where are mother and nurse ?" 
 
 " Ga !" said the baby. Then, with a sudden puckering 
 of pearly-golden brows, and a little querulous cry of im- 
 patience, the Hon. Alyse Rosabel Tobart squirmed out 
 of the arms that held her, exhibiting in the process the 
 most cherubic of pink legs, and the loveUest silk socks and 
 kid shoes, and wriggled back into her sandy nest. Once 
 re-established there, she answered no more questions, but 
 with truly aristocratic composure resumed her interrupted 
 task of stuffing a costly bonnet of embroidered cambric and 
 quilled lace with sand. When the bonnet would hold no more, 
 she had arranged to fill her shoe : she was perfectly clear upon 
 the point of having no other engagement so absorbing. 
 
 Smiling, Lynette abandoned the attempt to question. 
 Perhaps the missing guardians of this lost jewel were quite 
 near after all, sitting with books and work and other babies 
 in the shelter of some neighbouring hollow, from whence 
 this daring adventurer had escaped unseen. . . . She ran up 
 the steep side where the frieze of poppies nodded against the 
 sky, and the white sand streamed back from under the little 
 brown shoes that had trodden upon Saxham's heart so 
 heavily. 
 
 No one was near. Only in the distance, toiUng over the 
 dry waves of the sand-dunes towards the steep ascent by 
 which the hilly main street of Herion may be gained, went 
 a white perambulator, canopied with white, and propelled 
 by a niu'se in starched white skuts and flying white bonnet- 
 strings — a nurse who kept her head well down, and was 
 evidently reading a novel as she went. Some yards in 
 advance a red umbrella bobbed against the breeze like 
 a giant poppy on a very short stem. The lady who carried 
 the flaming object was young ; that much was plain, for 
 the flutterinc; heliotrope chiffons of her gown wore held at 
 a high, perhaps at an xmnecessarily l<iity, altitude above
 
 638 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the powdery sand, and her plumply-fillcd and gleaming 
 stockings of scarlet, fantastically barred with black, and 
 her damty little high-heeled shoes were very much in 
 evidence as thoy topped a rising crest. Then they dis- 
 appeared over the farther edge, the red umbrella followed, 
 and the nurse, in charging up the steep after her mistress, 
 discovered, perhaps by a glance of investigation under- 
 neath the canopy, prompted by a too tardy realisation of 
 the suspicious lightness of the perambulator, that the shell 
 was void of the pearl. 
 
 Lynette heard the wretched woman's piercing shriek, 
 glimpsed the red umbrella as it reappeared over the sand- 
 crest, comprehended the horrible consternation of mistress 
 and maid. She must signal to them — cry out. . . . Involun- 
 tarily she gave the call of the Kaffir herd : the shrill, pro- 
 longed ululation that carries from spitzkop to spitzkop 
 across the miles of karroo or high-grass veld between. And 
 she impinned her hat and waved it, standing amongst the 
 thickly-growing poppies and chamomile on the high crest 
 of the sand-wave, while her shadow — a squat, blue dwarf 
 with arms out of all proportion — flourished and gesticu- 
 lated at her feet. 
 
 LXX 
 
 It is Fate who comes hurrying to Lynette under the 
 becoming shadow of a red umbrella, on the starched and 
 rustling skirts of the agitated nurse, whose mouth is seen to 
 be shaping sentences long before she can be heard panting : 
 
 " Did you call, 'm ? Her ladyship thought you did, 
 and might have found . . . Oh, ma'am ! have you seen a 
 baby ? We've lost ours !" 
 
 Lynette nods and laughs reassuringly, pointing down 
 into the hollow. The nurse, -ndth a squawk of relief, leaves 
 her perambulator bogged in the sand, flutters up the powdery 
 rise like some large species of seagull, squawks again, and 
 swoops to retrieve her lost charge. Miss Baby, perfectly 
 contented until the scarlet face and whipping ribbons of 
 her attendant appear over the edge of her Paradise, throws 
 herself backwards, strikes out with kicking, dimpled legs, 
 and sets up an indignant roar.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 639 
 
 " There now — there ! 'A was a pessus !" vociferates 
 the owner of the streaming ribbons and the scarlet coun- 
 tenance. " And did she tumble out of her pram, the duck, 
 and wicked Polly never see her ? And thank Good 
 Gracious, not a bruise on her blessed Uttle body-woddy, 
 nor nothing but the very tiddiest scratch !" 
 
 " Which is not j-^oiir fault, Watkins, I am compelled 
 to say it," pronounces the Red Umbrella, arriving breath- 
 less and decidedly indignant, on the scene. " The idea 
 of a person of your class being so wrapped up in a rotten 
 penny novel that you can't even keep your eye upon the 
 darling entrusted to yom- charge is too perfectly shameful for 
 words. Baby, don't cry," she continues, as the repentant 
 Polly appears, bearing the retrieved treasure. " Come 
 to mummy and kiss her, and tell her all about it. do !" 
 
 " 1 sa-t !" bellows Baby, now keenly alive to the pathos 
 of the situation, and digging a sandy pink list into either 
 eye.. . 
 
 " Don't, then, you obstinate little pig !" returns Red 
 Umbrella, with maternal asperity. She looks up to the 
 fair vision that stands on liigh amongst the poi)pies, and 
 nods and smiles. "However I am to thank you! . . . 
 Such a turn when we missed her ! . . ." She utters these 
 incoherencies with a great deal of eye-play, pressing a small, 
 plump, jewelled hand, with short, broad fingers, and squat, 
 though elaborately rouged and poli.shed, nails, upon the 
 bountiful curve of a Parisian corsage. " My heart did a 
 double flip-flap . . . hasn't done thum})ing yet. Am I 
 pale still, Watkins ? She appeals to the recroant Watldns, 
 who is busily repacking Baby in her luxurious perambu- 
 lator. " I felt to go as white as chalk !" 
 
 " Perfect gassly, my lady !" agrees Watkins, and it occurs 
 to Lynette that the process of blanching must, ta]<mg into 
 consideration the artificial blushes that bloom so thickly 
 upon the pretty, piquante face under the red umbrella, 
 have been attended with some difliculty. 
 
 Everything in round in the coquettish face, shaded by 
 a hat that is an expensive triumj)h of Parisian millinery, 
 trimmed with a whole branch of wistaria in bloom. The 
 big brown eyes are round, so is the cherry-stained mouth, 
 so is the pert, button nose. The thick, dark eyebrows are
 
 640 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 like inky half-moons, in the middle of the httle round chin 
 a cii-cular dimple is cunningly set. Round, pinky-olive 
 shoulders and rounded arms gleam temptingly through 
 the bodice of heliotrope chiffon. Other roundnesses, 
 artfully exaggerated by the Parisian modiste, are liberally 
 suggested, as Red Umbrella gathers her frothy draperies 
 about her hips, lifting her multitudinous frills to reveal 
 black and scarlet openwork silk stockings, bedecking her 
 plump legs and tiny feet, whose high-heeled silver-buckled 
 shoes are sinking in the hot, white, powdery sand. 
 
 " Please don't go on ! I haven't half thanked you," 8h(^ 
 pleads, still pressing the podgy httle bejewelled paw upon 
 the heaving corsage. Then she sinks, with an air of grace- 
 ful languor, down upon a long, prostrate monolith of granite, 
 tho.t is thickly crusted with velvety orange lichen and grey- 
 green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers. And 
 Lynette, habitually courteous and rather amused, and 
 not at all unwilling to know a little mc>re of the affected, 
 slangy, overdressed little woman, sits do\\Ti upon the other 
 end of the sprawling stone column, and says, smiling at 
 Baby, who is clutching at a hovering butterfly with her 
 eager, dimpled hands : 
 
 " Of course, it was a terrible shock to you when you 
 missed her. She is such a darling ! Aren't you, Baby ?" 
 
 Baby, her long, grey-green eyes melting and gleaming 
 dangerously, her golden head tilted coquettishly, and a 
 o-ay, provoking laugh on the bold red mouth, makes another 
 snatch, captures the hovering blue butterfly, opens the 
 rosy hand, and with a wry face of disgust, drops the 
 crushed morsel over the edge of the perambulator. The 
 superb, unconscious cruelty of the act gives Lynette a 
 httle pang even as she goes on : 
 
 " She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon 
 be very great friends. May her nurse bring her to see me 
 sometimes ? Most babies love flowers, and there is a garden 
 full of them where I am stayiug. Do you Hve here V" 
 
 " Live here ? Gracious, no !" Red Umbrella opens the 
 round, brown eyes that Baby's are so unlike in shape and 
 expression, and shrugs her pretty shoulders as high as the 
 big ruby buttons that blaze in her pretty ears. " Me and 
 Baby are only visiting — stopping with her nurse a-nd my 

 
 THE DOP DOCTOR Ml 
 
 fcwo maids for a change at the Herion Arms— mf having 
 been recommended sea-air by the doctors for tonsils in 
 the throat. The house is advertised as an up-to-date 
 hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more 
 wretched I never struck, and you do fetch up in some queer 
 places on tour in the Provinces, let alone the States," says 
 Red Umbrella, tossing the wistaria- wreathed hat, '' \Vhich 
 may be a surprise to people who think it must be nothing 
 but jam for those ladies and gentlemen that have made 
 their mark in the Profession." 
 
 " Yes ?" 
 
 Lynette's golden eyes smile back into the laughing 
 brown ones with pleasant friendliness, combined with an 
 irritating lack of comprehension. And Red Umbrella, 
 who derives a considerable income from percentages upon 
 the sale of her photographs, and is conscious that her ce-le- 
 brated features are figuring upon several of the postcard.s 
 that hang up for sale ia the window of the only stationer 
 in Herion, is a little nettled. 
 
 " I refer to the stage, of course." She fingers a long 
 neck-chain of sapphires, and tinkles her innumerable 
 bangles wnth their load of jingling charms. " But perhaps 
 you're not a Londoner 1 Or yoii don't patronise the 
 theatre ?" 
 
 " Oh yes. We have a house in Harley Street. And I 
 am very fond of the Opera," says Lynette, smiling stiL. 
 " and of seeiag plays too ; and I often go to the theatre 
 with Lord and Lady Castleclare, or Major Wrynche and 
 Lady Hannah, when my husband is too much engaged to 
 take me. One of the last pieces we saw before we left 
 town was ' The Chiffon Girl ' at The Variety," she atlds. 
 
 " Indeed ! And how did you like ' The Chiffon (rirl '?" 
 asKS the lady of the red umbrella, with a gracious and 
 encouraging smile. Unconscious tribute rendered to one's 
 beauty and one's genius is ever well worth the having. 
 And the editor of the Keyhole, a certain weckl}^ Jouinal of 
 caterings for the curious, will gladly publish any little 
 anecdote which will serve the dual purpose of amusing 
 his readers and keeping the name of Miss Lcssio Lavigne 
 before the pubhc eye. " How did you enjoy the prrform- 
 ano« of the lady who played the part ?" 
 
 41
 
 642 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Lynette ponders, and her Gne brows knit. Vexed and 
 indignant, Red Umbrella, scanning the thoughtful face, 
 admits its youth, its high-breeding, its delicate, chiselled 
 beauty, and the slender grace of the supple figure in the 
 grey-blue serge skirt and white silk blouse ; nor is she slow 
 to appreciate the value of the diamond keeper on the slight, 
 fine, ungloved hand that rests upon the sun- hot moss between 
 them. 
 
 " I think I felt rather sorry for her," says the soft 
 cultured voice with the exquisite, precise inflections. The 
 golden eyes look dreamily out over the undulating sand- 
 dunes beyond the crisp line of foam to the silken shimmer 
 of the smoothing water. The little wind has fallen. It 
 is very still. The nurse, sitting on a hillock of bents in 
 dutiful nearness to the perambulator, has taken out her 
 paper-covered volume, and is deep in a story of blood and 
 woe. And Baby, a sleepy, pink rosebud, dozes among her 
 white embroidered pillows, undisturbed by Red Umbrella's 
 shrill exclamation : 
 
 " Sorry for her ! Why on earth should you be ?" 
 The shriek startles Lj'^mtte. She brings back her grave 
 syes from the distance, flushing faint coral pink to the red- 
 brown waves at her fair temples. 
 
 " She — she had on so few clothes !" she says. And there 
 is a profound silence, broken by Lessie's saying with icy 
 dignity : 
 
 " If the Lord Chamberlain opined I'd got enough on, 
 I expect that ought to do for you !" 
 " I — don't quite understand." 
 
 Lynette opens her golden eyes in sincere wonder at the 
 marvellous change that has been wrought in the little lady 
 who sits beside her. 
 
 " / am Miss Lessie Lavigne," says the little lady, with an 
 angry toss of the pretty head, adorned with the wistaria- 
 trimmed hat. " At least, that is the name I am known 
 by in the profession." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Lynette falters. " I did not recog- 
 nise you. I am afraid you must tliink me rather rude !" 
 
 " Oh, pray don't mention it !" cries the owner of the red 
 umbrella,. " Rude ? — not in the least !" 
 
 Mere rudeness would be preferable, infinitely, to the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 643 
 
 outrage the little lady has suffered. She, Lessie Lavigne, 
 the original exponent of the role of " The Chiffon Girl," 
 the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over the 
 hearts beating beliind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, 
 has lived to hear herself pitied — not envied, but com- 
 miserated — for the scantiness of the costume in which it is 
 alike her privilege and her joy to trill and caper seven times 
 in the week before her patrons and adorers. Small wonder 
 that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with 
 the desire to scratch and rend. 
 
 Then she reveals the chief arrow in her quiver. Not for 
 nothing is she the widow of an English nobleman. With 
 all the hereditary dignities of the Foltlebarres she will arm 
 herself, and reduce this presuming stranger to the level of 
 the dust. At the thought of the humiliation it Is in her 
 power to inflict she smiles quite pleasantly, displaying a 
 complete double row of beautifully stopped teeth. And 
 she says, as she fumbles in a chatelaine bag of golden links, 
 studded with turquoises, and with elaborately ostentatious 
 dignity produces therefrom a card-case, as precious as 
 regards material, and emblazoned with a monogram and 
 coronet, enriched with diamonds and pearls : 
 
 " I think you mentioned that you lived in the neighbour- 
 hood ? May I know who I have the a — pleasure of being 
 indebted to for finding my daughter to-day ?" 
 
 " I am Mrs. Owen Saxham. I live at that grey stone 
 house up there on the cliff. ' Plas Bendigaid,* they call 
 it," explains Lynette, a little nervously, as her reluctant 
 eyes scan the face and figure of the woman who owns the 
 legal right to beax Beauvayse's name. The encounter is 
 distasteful to her. She is painfully conscious of an acute 
 sensation of antagonism and dislike. " The house belongs 
 to my husband, and this is my first visit to Herina," she 
 adds hurriedly, " because we — my husband and I — have 
 not been very long married. But I like the place. And 
 the house is charming, and there is a liall that was once 
 the chapel, when it was a Convent. It shall be a chapel 
 again ; that is" — the u-ild-roso colour deepens on the lovely 
 face — " if my husbamd agrees ? To have it so restored 
 would make the Plas seem more like a home, because I 
 was brought up in a Convent, though n<it in England." 
 
 41—2
 
 644 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 Her eyes stray back to tlie sun-kissed beauty of Nant- 
 madoc Bay and the dotted line of white spots that indicate 
 the town of St. Tudwalls at the base of the green promon- 
 tory beyond the Roads. She forgets that this little over- 
 dressed person is Beauvayse's wife. She forgets in the 
 moment that she herself is Saxham's. She is back in the 
 beloved past with the Mother. 
 
 " It was in South Africa, my Convent . . . more than 
 a thousand miles from Cape Towti, in British Baraland, on 
 the Transvaal Border — in a little village-town, dumped 
 down in the middle of the veld." 
 
 " What on earth is the veld ?" asks the lady of the red 
 umbrella, with acerbity. "I'm sick of seeing the word 
 in the papers, and nobody seems to know what it means." 
 
 Lynette's soft voice answers : 
 
 " You can never know what it means until you have 
 lived its life, and it has become part of yours. It spreads 
 away farther than your eyes can follow it, for miles and 
 miles. It is Jade colour in spring, blue-green in early 
 summer, desolate, scorching yellow-brown in winter, with 
 dreadful black tracts of cinders, where it has been burned to 
 let the young grass grow up. There is hardly a tree ; there 
 is scarcely a bird, except a vulture, a black speck high in 
 the hot blue sky. There are flat-topped mountains and 
 cone-shaped kopjes, reddish, or pale pink, or mauve- 
 coloured, as they are nearer or farther away. And that 
 is all !" 
 
 " All ?" 
 
 " All, except the sunshine, bathing everything, soaking 
 you through and through." 
 
 " But there is not always sunshine ? It must be some- 
 times nightj?" argues Lessie, a little peevishly. 
 
 " There are deep violet nights, full of great white stars," 
 Lynette answers. " There are storms of dust and rain, 
 lightning and thunder, such as are only read of here. . . . 
 There are plots, conspiracies, raids, robberies, murders, 
 slumps and losses, plagues and massacres. There are 
 rebellions of white men, and native risings. There have 
 been wars ; there is war to-day, and there will be war 
 again in tha days that are yet to come !" 
 . She has almosi forgotten the little woman beside her, 
 
 f
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 545 
 
 staring at her with big, brown, rather animal eyes. Now 
 she turns to her with her rare and lovely smile : 
 
 " The war that is going on now began at the little village- 
 town where I was a Convent schoolgirl. V7e were shut for 
 months \vdthin the lines. But, of course, you have read 
 the newspaper accounts of the Siege of Gueldersdorp ? I 
 am only telling you what you know !" 
 
 Lessie laughs, and the laugh has the hard, unpleasant, 
 mirthless little tinkle of a toy dog's collar-bell, or bits of 
 crushed ice rattled in a champagne-glass. 
 
 " What I have good reason to know !" 
 
 Her podgy, Jewelled hands are clenching and unclenching 
 in her heliotrope chiffon lap ; there is a well-defined scowl 
 between the black arched eyebrows, and the murky light 
 of battle gleams in the eyes that no longer languish between 
 their bistred eyelids as she scans the pure pale face under 
 the sweep of her heavily blackened lashes. She would almost 
 give the ruby buttons out of her ears to see it wince and 
 quiver, and crimson into angry blushes. And yet Lessie is 
 rather amiable thtm otherwise in her attitude towards other 
 women. True, she has never before met one who had the 
 insolence to pity her to her face. 
 
 " So quite too interesting !" she says, with an exaggerated 
 affectation of amiability, and in high, fashionable accents, 
 " you having been at Gueldersdorp through the Siege and 
 all. Were you ever — I suppose you must have been some- 
 times — shot at with a gun ?" 
 
 The faintest quiver of a smile comes over the lovely 
 face her grudging eyes are trying to find a flaw in. 
 
 " Often when I have been crossing the veld between the 
 town and the Hospital, the Mauser bullets have hummed 
 past like bees, or raised little spurts of dust close by my 
 feet where they had hit the ground. And once a shell burst 
 close to us, and a splinter knocked off my hat and tore a 
 comer of her veil " 
 
 " Weren't you in a petrified fright V demands Lessie. 
 
 " I was with her !'* 
 
 " Who was she ?" 
 
 A swift change of sudden, quickening, jM)ignant emotion 
 passes over tlie still face. A sudden swelling of the white 
 throat, a rising mist in the golden eyes, suggests to Lessie
 
 d48 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 that she has been fortunate enough to touch upon a painful 
 subject, and that possibly this presumptuous young woman 
 who has pitied a Viscountess may be going to cry ! But 
 Lynette drives back the tears. 
 
 " She was the Reverend Mother, the Mother-Superior 
 of the Convent where I lived at Gueldersdorp." 
 
 '' Where is she now ?" 
 
 " She is with God." 
 
 " With " 
 
 Lessie is oddly nonplussed by the calm, direct answer. 
 People who talk in that strangely familiar way of — of 
 subjects that properly belong to parsons are rare in her 
 world. She hastens to put her next question. 
 
 " Was yours the only Convent in Gueldersdorp where 
 young ladies were taught ?" 
 
 " It is the only Convent there." 
 
 " Did you know — among the pupils — a young person by 
 the name of Mildare ?" 
 
 There is such concentrated essence of spite in Lessie' s 
 utterance of the name, that Lynette winces a little, and the 
 faint, sweet colour rises in her cheeks. 
 
 " I — know her, certainly ; as far as one can be said to 
 know oneself. My unmarried name was Mildare." 
 
 " You — don't say so ! Lord, how funny !" 
 
 The seagulls fisliing in the shallows beyond the foam- 
 line, rise up affrighted by the shrill peal of triumpliant 
 laughter with which Lessie makes her discovery. 
 
 *' Ha, ha, ha ! Talk of a situation ! . . . On the boards 
 I've never seen one to touch it !" She Jumps from the 
 boulder, with more boimce than dignity, dropping the red 
 umbrella and the Jewelled card-case, and, extending in 
 one pudgy ringed hand a highly-glazed and coroneted card, 
 " Permit me to introduce myself," she says through set 
 teeth, smiling rancorously. " My professional name, as I 
 have had the honour and pleasure of explaining to you, 
 is Lessie Lavigne, but in private " — the dignity of the 
 speaker's tone is marred by its extreme huffiness — "in 
 private I am Lady Beauvayse." 
 
 As Lynette looks in the painted, angry, piquante face she 
 is more than ever conscious of that feeling of antagonism. 
 Then her eyes, turning from it, encounter the cherub rosily 
 
 I
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 647 
 
 sleeping on embroidered pillows, and a rush of blood cf)lours 
 her to the hair. His child — Ids cliild by the dancer — this 
 dimpled creature she has clasped and Idssed ! The icy, 
 tinkling giggle of the mother breaks in upon the thought. 
 
 " Of all the queer situations I ever struck, I do call this 
 the queerest ! Me, meeting you like this, and both of us 
 getting quite pally ! All over Baby, too ! . . . Lord ! isn't 
 it enough to make you die ? Don't mind me being a bit 
 hysterical !" Lady Beauvayse dabs her tearful eyes with 
 a cobwebby square of laced cambric. " It'll be over in a 
 sec. And then, Miss Mildare — I beg pardon — Mrs. Sax- 
 ham — you and me will have it out !" 
 
 " I am afraid I must be going." Lynette rises, and stands 
 beside Lessie, looking down in painful hesitation at the 
 blinking, reddened eyelids and the working mouth. " I 
 have guests waiting for me at the Plas. And would it not 
 be wise of you to go home and lie down ?" 
 
 The words, for some obscure reason or other, convey an 
 intolerable sting. Lessie jumps in her buckled Louis 
 Quinze shoes, wheels, and confronts her newly- discovered 
 enemy with glaring eyes. 
 
 " Go home ... lie down !" she shrieks, so shrilly that 
 the sleeping cherub awakens, and adds her frightened roars 
 to the clamour that scares the gulls. " If I had lain down 
 and gone to my long home eighteen montlis ago, when you 
 were cooped up in Gueldersdorp with my husband, it would 
 have suited you both down to the ground !" She turns, 
 with a stamp of her imperious little foot, upon the scared 
 nurse, who is vainly endeavouring to still Baby. " Take 
 her away ! Carry her out of hearing ! Do what you're 
 told, you silly fool !" she orders. " And you " — she wheels 
 again upon Lynette, her wistarias nodding, her chains 
 and bangles clanking — " why do you stand there, like a 
 white deer in a park — like an image cut out of ivory ? 
 Don't you understand that I, the woman you've pitied— 
 my God ! pitied, for singing and dancing on the public 
 stage ' with so few clotiies on ' " — she savagely mimics 
 the manner and tone — " I am the lawful wife of the man 
 you tried to trap — the Right Honourable John Basil 
 Edward Tobart !" The painted lips sneer savagely. 
 " Beautiful Beau, who never went back on a man, or told
 
 648 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 the truth to a woman ! — that's Ms character, and it pretty 
 well sizes him up !" 
 
 Lessiestops, gasping and out of breath, the plump, Jewelled 
 hand clutching at her heaving bosom. The theatrical in- 
 stinct in the daughter of the footlights has led her to work 
 up the scene ; but her rage of wounded love and jealousy is 
 genuine enough, though not as real as the innocence in 
 the eyes that meet hers, less poignant than the shame and 
 indignation that drive the blood from those ivory cheeks. 
 
 " He married me on the strict QT at the Registrar's at 
 Cookham," goes on Lessie, her painted mouth twisting, " a 
 fortnight before he was ordered out on the Statf . We'd been 
 friends for over a year. There was a child coming, since 
 we're by way of being plain-spoken," says Lessie, picking 
 up the prostrate red umbrella and the Jewelled card- case, 
 possibly to conceal a blush ; " and he swore he'd never 
 look at another woman, and write by every mail. And so 
 he did at first, and I used to cry over the blooming piffle 
 he put into his letters, and wish I'd been a straighter 
 woman, for his sake. And then the Siege began, and the 
 letters stopped coming, and I cried enough to spoil my 
 voice, little thinking how my husband was playing the 
 giddy bachelor tliousands of miles away. And then came 
 the news of the Relief, and despatches, saying that he " — 
 her pretty face is distorted by the wry grimace of genuine 
 anguish — " he was killed ! And a month later I got a 
 copy of a rotten Siege newspaper, sent me by I don't know 
 who, and never shall, with a flowery paragraph in it, 
 announcing his lordship's engagement to Miss Something 
 iVIildare. Oh ! it was merry hell to know how he'd done 
 me — me that worshipped the very ground he trod ! . . . 
 Me that had made a Judy of myself in crape and weepers — 
 widow's weepers for the man that wished me dead !" 
 
 Her voice is thick with rage. Her face is convulsed. 
 Her eyes are burning coals. She has never been so nearly 
 a great actress, this meretricious little dancer and comedian, 
 as in this moment when she forgets her art. 
 
 " Picture it, you ! . . . Don't you fancy me in 'em ? 
 Don't you see me in my bedroom tearing 'em off ?" She 
 rends her flimsy cobweb of a handkerchief into tatters and 
 spurns them from her. " So ! . . . so ! . . . that's what
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 649 
 
 I did to 'em !" She snarls with a sudden access of tigerish- 
 ness. " And if that white face of yours had been within 
 reach of my ten fingers, I'd have ragged it into ribbons 
 like the blooming fallals. Don't dare tell me you'd not 
 have done the same ! Perhaps, though, you wouldn't. 
 You're a lady, bom and bred," owns Lessie grudgingly, 
 " and I was a jobbing tailor's kid, that worked to keep 
 myself and other folks as a baby imp in Pantomime, while 
 you were being coddled up and kept in cotton- wool !" 
 
 She ends with a husky laugh and a shrug of the shoulders. 
 The swollen face with the wet eyes is averted, or Lessie 
 might be roused to fresh resentment by the tenderness of 
 pity that is dawning in Lynette's. 
 
 " You have suffered cruelly. Lady Beauvayse ; but I was 
 not knowingly or wilfully to blame. Please try to believe it !" 
 
 Lessie blows her small nose with a toot of incredulity, 
 and says through an intervening wad of damp lace-edged 
 cambric : 
 
 " Go on !" 
 
 " I met Lord Beauvayse out at Gueldersdorp." The 
 voice that comes from Lynette's pale lips is singularly 
 level and quiet. " He was very handsome and very brave ; 
 he was an officer of the Colonel's Staff. He asked me to 
 marry him, and I — I believed him honourable and true, 
 and I said, ' Yes.' . . . That was one Sunday, when we 
 were sitting by the river. On Thursday he was killed, and 
 later — nearly a year after my marriage to Dr. Saxham — I 
 found out the truth." 
 
 Lessie shrugs her pretty shoulders, but the face and voice 
 of the speaker have brought conviction. She realises that if 
 she has been injured, her rival has suffered equal wrong. 
 
 " You were pretty quick in taking on another man, it 
 strikes me. But that's not my business. You say you 
 found out ?" She shows her admirably preserved teeth in 
 a little grin of sardonic contempt — " nearly a year after 
 your marriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go 
 on burning Joss-sticks to Beau's angelic memory when he 
 might have made you spit on it by telling you the truth !" 
 
 Lynette's lip curls, and she liita her little head proudly. 
 
 " He never once liinted at the truth. Nor was it through 
 him I learned ill"
 
 650 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " Ought to be kept under glass, then," comments 
 Lessie, " as a model husband. Now, my poor " 
 
 Lynette interrupts, with angry emphasis : 
 
 " I will not hear Dr. Saxham mentioned in the same 
 breath with Lord Beauvayse !" 
 
 " He's dead — let him be !" Beau's widow snarls, her 
 mouth twisting. Yet in the same breath, with another of 
 the mental pirouettes characteristic of her class and type, 
 she adds : " Do you suppose I don't know my own husband 1 
 Take him one way with another, you might have sifted the 
 world for liars, and never found the equal of Beau." 
 
 She gathers up the red umbrella and the jewelled card- 
 case with reviving briskness, and shakes out her crumpled 
 chiffons in the bright hot sun. 
 
 " Me and Baby are leaving to-morrow. I don't suppose 
 we're likely ever to come across you again. Good-bye ! 
 I forgive you for pitying me," she says frankly, holding 
 out the plump, over- Jewelled hand. "As for the other 
 grudge. . . . What, are you going to kiss me 1 . . . 
 Give Baby another before you go, dear . . . and . . . 
 forgive him when you can !" 
 
 LXXI 
 
 Lynette sat still upon the boulder, thinking, long after 
 the red umbrella had departed. While it was yet 
 visible in the white - hot distance, hovering like some 
 gaudy Brobdingnagian butterfly in advance of the white 
 perambulator pushed by the white-clad nurse, the heads of 
 two little shabbyish, yoimgish people of the unmistakable 
 Cockney tourist type rose over the edge of a pale sand- 
 crest, fringed with wild chamomile and blazing poppies. 
 And the female, a small draggled young woman in a large 
 hat, trimmed with fatigued and dusty peonies, called out 
 excitedly : 
 
 " Oh, William, it's 'er— it's 'er !" 
 
 " By Cripps, so it is !" came from the male companion of 
 the battered peonies. He advanced with a swagger that was 
 the unconvincing mask of diffidence assumed by an under- 
 sized, lean young man, in the chauffeur's doubtful- weather
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 651 
 
 panoply of black %\aterproof Jacket, breeches merging into 
 knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked 
 cap, with absurd brass ventilators, and powdered with 
 many thicknesses and shades of dust. His hair was dusty. 
 The very eyelashes of the honest, ugly light eyes, set wide 
 apart in the thin wedge-shaped, tanned face that the 
 absurd cap shaded, were dusty as a miller's ; dust lay tliick 
 in all the chinks and creases of his leading features, and a 
 large black smudge of oily grime was upon his wide upper 
 lip, impinging upon his nose. Nor was Ms companion 
 much less dusty, though the checks of a travelling ulster 
 of green and yellow plaid, adorned with huge steel buttons, 
 would have advertised the Kentish Town Ladies' Drapery 
 Establishment whence they emanated, through the medium 
 of a Fleet Street fog. 
 
 " Might we speak to you, ma'am ?" The dusty young 
 man respectfully touched the dusty peak of the cap with 
 brass ventilators, and, with a shock of surprise, Lynette 
 recognised Saxham's chauffeur. 
 
 " Keyse ! . . . It is Keyse !" She looked at him in surprise. 
 
 " Keyse, ma'am." He touched the cap again, and made a 
 not ungraceful gesture, indicating the wearer of the weather- 
 beaten peonies and the green-and-yellow ulster, who clung 
 to his thin elbow with a red, hard-working hand. " Ale 
 an' my wife, that is. Bfcin' on a sort of outin', a kind of 
 Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to 
 South Wyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' tlie 'Ow Do." 
 He breatlred hard, and rivulets of perspiration began to 
 trickle down from under the preposterous cap, converting 
 the dust that filled the haggard lines of his tliin face into 
 mud. " An' payin' our respects." His eye slewed 
 appealingly at his companion, as Icing as plainly as an eye 
 can, " What price that ?" And the glance that shot back 
 from the dusty shadow of the exhausted peonies answered, 
 " Not bad by 'arf— for you !" 
 
 Lynette smiled at the Uttle Cockney couple. The sur- 
 prise that had checked the beating of her heart had passed. 
 It was pleasant to see the^e fat;es from Harley Street. She 
 answered : 
 
 " I understand. My husband has given you a holiday. 
 Is he well V She flushed, realising that it was pain to have
 
 662 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 to ask others for the news of him that he had denied her. 
 " I mean because he has not written. ... I have been 
 feeling rather anxious. Was he quite well when you 
 left ?" 
 
 " ' Was he ' ? Yes, 'm !" W. Keyse shot out the 
 
 afSjmative with such explosive suddenness that the hand 
 upon his arm must have nipped hard. 
 
 ' 1 am so glad !" Lynette turned to the young woman 
 in the ulster, whose face betrayed no guilty knowledge of 
 the pinch. She was small, and pale, and gritty, and her 
 blue eyes had red rims to them from the fatigue of the 
 journey, or some other cause. But they were honest and 
 clear, and not unpretty eyes, looking out from a forest of 
 dusty yellowish fringe, deplorably out of curl. Yet a 
 fringe that had associations for Lynette, reaching a long 
 way from Harley Street, and back to the old days at 
 Gueldersdorp before the Siege. 
 
 " Surely I know you ? I must have known you at 
 Gueldersdorp." She added as Mrs. Keyse's eyes said "Yes " : 
 " You used to be a housemaid at the Convent. How strange 
 that I should not have remembered it until now ! And 
 your husband. ... I do not remember over having seen 
 him before he came to us at Harley Street. But his name 
 comes back to me in connection with a letter " — she 
 knitted her brows, chasing the vague, fleeting memory — 
 " a love-letter that was sent to IVIiss Du Taine inside a 
 chocolate-box. Just when school was breaking up. It was 
 you who smuggled the box in !" 
 
 " To oblige, bein' begged to by Keyse as a fyvour. 'E 
 didn't know 'is own mind — them d'ys !" explained Mrs. 
 Keyse, sweeping her husband's scorching countenance with 
 a glance of withering scorn. 
 
 " Nor did you," retorted W. Keyse, stung to defiance. 
 " Walkin' out with a Dopper you was — if it comes to that." 
 He spun round, mid-ankle deep in sand, to finish. " An* 
 you'd *ave bia Joined by a Dutch dodger and settled down 
 on a Vaal sheep-farm, if the order 'adn't come 'ummin' 
 along the wire from 'Ead quarters that said, ' Jane 'Arris, 
 you're to 'ave this bloke, and no other. Till Death do you 
 part. Everlasting — Amen !' " 
 
 There was so stroag a ilavour of Church about the final
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 663 
 
 sentence that Mrs. Keyse could not keep admiration out of 
 her eyes. 
 
 Her own eyes dancing with mirthful amusement, Lynette 
 looked from one to the other of the unexpected visitors, 
 and, tactfully changing the subject of the conversation, 
 hoped that they were enjoying their trip ? — a query which 
 so obviously failed to evoke an expression of pleased assent 
 in either of the small, thin, wearied faces that she hastened 
 to add : 
 
 " But perhaps this is the very beginning of your holiday ? 
 When did you leave London ?" 
 
 " Yes'dy mornin' at 'arf-past six," said W. Keyse, care- 
 fully avoiding her eyes. A spasm contracted the tired face 
 under the dusty peonies. Their wearer put her hand to the 
 collar of the green-and-yellow ulster, and undid a button 
 there. 
 
 " ' Yesterday morning at half-past six ' !" Lynette re- 
 peated in wonder. 
 
 " An' if the machine I *ad on 'ire from a pal o' mine — 
 chap what keeps a second-hand shop for 'em in the Portland 
 Road — 'adn't 'ad everythink 'appen to 'er wot ''.an 'appen 
 to a three-an'-a-'arf 'orse-power Baby Jimot wot 'ad seen 
 'er best d'ys before automobilin' 'ad cut its front teeth," 
 said W. Keyse, with bitterness, " we would 'ave bin 'ere 
 before ! As it is, we've left the car at a little ' Temperance 
 Tavern ' in S'rewsbury, kep' by a Methodist widder, 
 'oo thinks such new-fangled inventions sinful — an' only 
 consented to take charge on account o' the Prophet Elijer 
 a-going up to 'Eaven in a tiery chariot — an' come on 'ere 
 by tryne." 
 
 Lynette looked at the man in silence. She even re- 
 peated after him, rather dully : 
 
 " You came on here — by train ?" 
 
 " Slow Parliamentary — stoppin' at every 'arf-dozen 
 stytions," explained W. Keyse, " for collectors in vel- 
 veteens and Scotch caps to ask for tickets, plyse ? And 
 but that the porter on the 'Erion Down Platform 'ad see 
 you walkin' on the Links, and my wife knoo your dress and 
 the colour of your 'air 'arf a mile 'orf, we'd 'ave lost precious 
 time in finding tou» and giving you the — the message 
 what we've come 'ere to bring !"
 
 654 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 " From my husband ? From Dr. Saxham ?" 
 
 W. Keyse shifted from one foofc to the other, and coughed 
 an embarrassed cough. 
 
 " Not exac'Iy from Dr. Saxham." 
 
 Lynette looked at W. Keyse, and it seemed to her that 
 the little sallow Cockney face had Fa,te in it. A sudden 
 terror whitened her to the lips. She cried out in a voice 
 that had lost all its sweetness : 
 
 " You have deceived me in saying he was well. Some- 
 thing has happened to him ! He is very ill, or ?" 
 
 She could not utter the word. Instinctively her eyes went 
 past the stammering man to the woman who hung behind 
 his elbow. And the wearer of the nodding peonies cried out : 
 
 " No, no ! The Doctor isn't dead— or ill, to call ill !" 
 She turned angrily upon her husband. " See wot a turn 
 you've give 'er," she snapped. " Why couldn't you up 
 and speak out ?" 
 
 W. Keyse was plainly nonplussed. He took off the giant 
 cap vidth the brass ventilators, and turned it round and 
 round, looking carefully inside it. But he found no 
 eloquence therein. 
 
 " Why did I bring a skirt, I arsk, if I'm to do the patter ?" 
 He addressed himself in an audible aside to Mrs. Keyse. 
 " You might as well 'ave stopped at 'ome with the nipper," 
 he added, complainingly, " if I ain't to 'ave no better 'elp 
 than this !" 
 
 " You mean kindly, I know." Lynetbe tried to smile in 
 saying it. " There is trouble that you are here to break 
 to me ; I understand that very well. Please tell me with- 
 out delay, plainly what has happened ? I am very — strong ! 
 I shall not faint — if that is what you are afraid of ?" 
 
 She caught her breath, for the woman broke out into 
 dry sobbing and cried out wildly : 
 
 " Oh, come back to 'im ! Come back, if you're a woman ! 
 Gawd, Who made 'im, knows as 'ow 'e can't bear no more ! 
 Oh ! if my 'art's so vrrung by what I've seen him suffer, 
 think what he's bore these crooil weeks an' months !" 
 
 The peonies rocked in the gale of Emigration Jane's 
 emotion. Her hard- worked hands went out, entreating 
 for him ; her dowdy little figure seemed to grow tall, so 
 impreasive was the earnestness of her appeal.
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 665 
 
 " Him and you are toffs, and me and Keyse are common 
 folks. . , . Flesh and blood's the syme, though, only 
 covered wiv different skins. An' Human Nature's Human 
 Nature, 'owever you fake 'er up an' christen 'er ! An' 
 Love must 'ave give an' take of Love, or else Love's got to 
 die ! Burn a lamp wivout oil, and see wot 'appens. It 
 goes out ! — You're left in the dark !"— Her homely ges- 
 ture, illustrating the homely analogy, seemed to bring 
 down blackness. Lynette hung speechless upon her 
 fateful lips. 
 
 " — Then, like as not, you'll overturn the table gropin'. 
 ' Smashed !' you'll say, ' an' nobody but silly me to blyme ! 
 It would 'ave lighted up a 'appy 'ome if I 'adn't been a 
 barmy idiot. It would 'ave showed me the face of my 
 'usband leanin' to kLss me in our blessed marriage-bed, an' 
 my baby smilin' in its cradle-sleep 'ard by. . . . Oh ! — 
 Oh !" — She choked and clutched her bosom, and her voice 
 rose in the throaty screech of incipient hysteria — " An' 
 I've left my own sweet, unweaned boy to come and say 
 these tvords to you ! . . . An' the darlin' darlin' fightin' with 
 the bottle they're tryin' to give 'im, and roarin' for 'is 
 mam. . . . And my breasts as 'ard as stones, an' throb bin' ! 
 . . . Gawd 'elp me !" She panted and fought and choked, 
 striving for speech, 
 
 " Keep your hair on !" advised W. Keyse in a hoarse 
 whisper. She turned on him like a tigress, her eyes flaming 
 under her straightened fringe. 
 
 " Keep yours ! I've come to speak, and speak I mean 
 to — for the sake of the best man Gawd's made for a 
 'undred years. Bar one, you says, but bar none, says I, 
 an' charnce it ! Since the day 'e stood up for you in that 
 Dutch saloon-bar at Gueldersdorp, Avhat is there we don't 
 owe to 'im — you and me, and all the blooming crew of 
 us ? And because 'e'll tyke no thanks, 'o gits ingratitude — 
 the dirtiest egg the Devil ever hatched !" 
 
 " Cripps !" gasped W. Keyse, awe-stricken bj- this lofty 
 flight of rhetoric. Ignoring him. she pursued her way. 
 
 " You're a lieautiful young lydy " — her tone softened 
 from its strenuous pitch — " wot 'ave 'ad a disappyntment, 
 like many of us 'ave at the start. You'd sot 3'our 'art on 
 Another One. 'E got killed, an' you married the Doctor —
 
 658 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 but it's never bin no real marriage. You've ate 'is bread, 
 as the sayin' is, an' give 'im a stone. An' e's beat 'is pore 
 'art to bloody rags agynst it — d'y after d'y, an' night after 
 night ! I seen it, I tell you !" she shrilled—" I seen it wiv 
 me own eyes ! You pretty, silly kid ! Don't you know 
 wot 'arm you're doing ? You crooil byby ! do you 
 reckon Gawd gave you the man to torture an' break an' 
 spoil 1" 
 
 A hand, imperatively clapped over the mouth of Mrs. 
 W. Keyse, stemmed the torrent of her eloquence. 
 
 " Dry up ! You've said enough," ordered her spouse. 
 
 " Do not stop her !" Lynette said, without removing her 
 fascinated eyes from the Pythoness. " Let her tell me 
 everything that she has seen and knows." 
 
 " I seen the Doctor — many, many times," the wom:.n 
 went on, as W. Keyse reluctantly ungagged her, " watchin' 
 Keyse and me in our poor 'ome-life together — with the 
 eyes of a starvin' dog lookin' at a bone. You ought to 
 know 'ow starvin' 'urts. . . ." The strenuous voice soared 
 and quivered. " You learned that at Gueldersdorp ! Yet 
 you can see your 'usband dyin' of 'unger, an' never put out 
 your 'and ! Dyin' for want of a kiss an' a bit o' cuddle — 
 that's the kind o' dyin' I mean— dyin' for what Gawd gives 
 to the very brutes He myde ! Seems to you I talk low ! . . . 
 Well, there's nothink lower than Nature, An' She Goes Aa 
 'Igh As 'Eaven .'" said Emigration Jane. 
 
 The wide, sweeping gesture with which the shabby little 
 woman took in land and sea and sky was quite noble and 
 inspiring to witness. And now the teara were ruiming down 
 her face, and her voice lost its raucous shrillness, and be- 
 came plaintive, and even soft. 
 
 "I'm to tell you every think I've seen, an' Imow about 
 the Doctor. ... I've seen 'im age, age, a bit more every 
 d'y. I've seen 'im waste, waste, with loneliness and 
 trouble — never turnin' bitter on accounts of it — never 
 grudgin' 'elp that 'e could give to man or woman or kid. 
 Late on the night you left 'ome x see 'im come up to your 
 bedroom. 'E switched on the hght. 'E forgot the blinds 
 was up. 'E looked round, all 'aggard an' lost an' "'ild- 
 Uke, before 'e dropped down cryin' beside the bed." 
 
 She sobbed, and dropped on her own knees in the sand
 
 THE DOP DO(Tr(^Ft 65? 
 
 among the prickly yellow dwarf roses, weeping quite wildly, 
 and wringing her hands. 
 
 " The mornin' found 'im there. Six weeks ago that was ; 
 an' every night since then it's bin the syme gyme. Never 
 the blinds left up since that first time, but always light, and 
 his shadow moves about. An' in my bed I wake a-cryin' 
 so, an' don't know which of 'em I'm cry in' for — the lonely 
 shadow or the lonely man " 
 
 She could not go on, and W. Keyse took up the tale. 
 
 " She's told you true. Maybe we'd never 'ave come but 
 for the feelin' that things was workin' up to wot the pypera 
 call a Domestic Tragedy. Or at the best the break-up of 
 a 'Ome. That's wot my wife she kep' on stufl&n' into 
 me," said W. Keyse. " An' — strewth ! when the Doctor 
 sent for me an' pyde me orf . . . full wages right on up to the 
 end o' the year, an' the syme to Morris an' the 'ouse'old staff, 
 tellin' us e's goin' on a voyage, I s'ys to 'er, ' It's come !' " 
 
 " On a voyage ! Where ?" 
 
 " Oh, cam't you guess ?" cried the woman on the ground, 
 desperately looking up with tragic eyes out of a swollen, 
 tear-stained face. 
 
 A mist came before Lynette's vision, and a sudden 
 tremor shook her like a reed. She swayed as though the 
 ground had heaved beneath her, but she would not fall. 
 She choked back the cry that had risen in her throat. 
 This was the time to act, not the time to weep for him. She 
 knelt an instant by the woman on the ground, put her arms 
 round her, kissed her wet cheek, and then rose up, pale and 
 calm and collected, saying to VV. Keyse : 
 
 " Take her to the Plas. Ask for Mrs. Pugh, the house- 
 keeper. She is to prepare a room for you ; you are to 
 breakfast, and rest all day, and return to London by the 
 night mail. Good-bye ! Grod ble-aa you both ! I wa.s 
 going to him to-night at latest. ... I am going to him now. 
 . . . Pray that he is alive when I reach him ! But he will 
 be. Grod is good !" 
 
 Her face was transfigured by the new light that shone in 
 it. She was strong, salient, resourceful — no longer the sliy 
 willowy girl. She was moving from them with her long 
 swift step, when W. Key8<i recovered himself. 
 
 *' 'Old 'ard ! Beg pardon, ma'am ! but 'ave von the 
 
 42
 
 668 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 spondulios ?" He blushed at her puzzled look, and amended : 
 " 'Ave you money enough upon you to pay the railway-fare V 
 
 She lifted a little gold-netted purse attached to her neck- 
 ohain. 
 
 " Five pounds. My maid is to follow. You know Marie ? 
 You will let her travel with you ?" 
 
 ' Righto ! But you'll want a wi'ap, coat or shawl, or 
 somethink. Midnight before you gits in — if you catch this 
 next up-Express. . . . Watto ! Give us 'old o' this 'ere, 
 Missus ! You can 'ave mine instead." 
 
 " Please, no ! I need notliing . . . nothing !" She 
 stayed his savage attack on the buttons of Mrs. Keyse's 
 green-and-yellow ulster by holding out her watch. " How 
 much time have I left to catch the up-Express ?" 
 
 " Eight minutes. By Cripps ! you'll 'ave to run for it." 
 
 She waved her white hand, and was gone, swiftly as a bird 
 or a deer, 
 
 " They've signalled !" W. Keyse announced after a breath- 
 less interval, dui'ing which the slender flying figure grew 
 smaller upon the straining sight. It vanished, and a thin, 
 nearing screech announced the up-Express. His wife jumped 
 up and clutched him. 
 
 " William ! Suppose she's lost it !" 
 
 " Gam ! No fear !" scoffed W. Keyse. 
 
 As he scoffed he was full of fear. They heard the clank- 
 ing stoppage, the shrill whistle of departure. They looked 
 breathlessly towards the green wood that fringed the cliff- 
 base under the Castle head. The iron way ran through the 
 belt of trees. The Express rushed through, broke roaring 
 upon their unimpeded vision, devoured the gleaming line 
 of metals that lay between wood and tunnel, and left them 
 with the taste of cindery steam in their open mouths, and 
 the memory of a white handkerchief waved at a carriage- 
 window by a slender hand. 
 
 " It's a'right, old gal !" said W. Keyse, beaming. " Come 
 on up to the 'ouse. I could do wiv a bit o' peck, an' I lay 
 so could you. Lumme !" His triumphant face fell by 
 the fraction of an inch. " What' 11 she do when she lands 
 in 'ome, wivout a woman to git a cup o' tea for 'er ? Or 
 curl 'or 'air, or undo 'er st'yl'yces an' things V*
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 669 
 
 " She'll do wot other young wimmen does under eim'lar 
 circumstances," said Mrs. Keyse enigmatically. She 
 added : " If she 'as luck, she'll 'ave a man for' er maid, 
 an' if she 'as sense, she'll reckon the swop a good one !" 
 
 Lxxn 
 
 Until the actual moment of their parting at Euston, Sax- 
 ham had never fully realised the anguish of the last moment 
 when Lynette's face should pass for ever out of his thirsting 
 sight. 
 
 It was going. . . . He quickened his long strides to keep 
 up with it. He must have called to her, for she came 
 hurriedly to the corridor-window, her sweet cheeks suffused 
 with lovely glowing colour, her sweet eyes shining, her small 
 gloved hand held frankly out. He gripped it, uttered some 
 incoherency — what, he could not remember — was shouted 
 at by a porter with a greasy lamp-truck, cannoned heavily 
 against a man with a basket of papers, awakened with a 
 great pang to the knowledge that she was gone. And the 
 great, bare, dirty, populous glass-hive of Euston, that has 
 been the forcing-house of so many sorrowful partings, held 
 another breaking heart. 
 
 In the days that followed he saw his private patients as 
 usual, and operated upon a regular mid-week morning at 
 St. Stephen's, whose senior surgeon had recently resigned. 
 The rest of the time he spent in malcing his arrangements. 
 
 Sanely, logically, methodicall}', everything had been 
 thought out. Major Wrynche was to be her guardian, 
 co-trustee with Lord Castleclare, and executor of the Will. 
 It left her, simply and unconditionally, everything of 
 which Saxham was possessed. She would live with the 
 Wrynches until she married again. His agents were in- 
 structed to iind a tenant for the house, and privately a 
 purchaser for the practice. They wTote to him of a client 
 already found, blatters were progressing steadily. Very 
 soon now the desired end. 
 
 TTi« table-lamp burned through the nights ns he made up 
 his ledgers and settled his accounts. In Ici.suro momenta 
 he read in the intolerable book of the Past. Of all its sor- 
 
 42—2
 
 860 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 rows and failures, ifcs frantic follies and its besotted sins. 
 Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid 
 pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant 
 to turn away iiis eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved 
 by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his 
 brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is stretched 
 continually. He realised this, thinking : " Presently I will 
 cut the bow-string, and the bow shall have rest ! Even if 
 my once-boasted will-power reasserted itself — even if I rose 
 triumphant for the second time, cured of my vile craving, 
 I do not the less owe my debt to the woman I have married. 
 I promised her that I would die rather than fail her. I 
 failed her ! There is no excuse !" 
 
 LXXIII 
 
 The West End pavements were shining wet. Belated cabs 
 spun homewards with sleepy revellers. Neat motor- 
 broughams slid between the kerbs and rounded corners 
 at unrebuked excess-speeds, winking their blazing head- 
 lights at drowsy poHcemen muflfled in oilskin capes. On 
 all these accustomed things the blue- white arc-lights shone. 
 
 The most belated of all the hansom cabs in London 
 stopped at the door of the house in Harley Street as the 
 narrow strip of sky between the grim, drab-faced houses 
 began to be dappled with the leaden grey of dawn. A faint 
 moon reeled northwards, hunted by sable shapes of scream- 
 ing terror, pale Venus clinging to her tattered robe. The 
 house was all black and silent, a dead face with blinded 
 windows. Did Saxham wake behind them ? Or did he 
 sleep, not to wake again ? 
 
 Lynette tried her latchkey. The unchained door 
 swung backwards. She parsed into the house silently, a 
 tall, slender shape. A light was shining under the con- 
 sulting-room door. Her heart leaped to greet it. She 
 kissed her hand to it, and turned, moving noiselessly, and 
 put up the chain of the hall-door. She felt for the switch 
 of the electric light, and snapped it on. 
 
 She was jarred and aching and weary with her Journey ; 
 but it was a very fair woman whom she 8a\v reflected in the
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 861 
 
 hall-mirror as she unpinned her hat and tossed it upon the 
 hall-table, and passed on to the consulting-room door — a 
 woman whose face was strange to herself, with that new 
 fire, and decision, and strength of purpose in it ; a woman 
 with glowing roses of colour in her cheeks, and eager, 
 shining eyes. 
 
 All through the long hours of the journey she had pic- 
 tured him, her husband, bending over his work, sleeping 
 in his chair, or in his bed. Yet behind these pictures was 
 another image that started through their lines and colours 
 dreadfully, persistently, and the image was that of a dead 
 man. She thrust it from her for the hundredth time, as 
 the door-handle yielded to her touch. She went into the 
 room. Saxham was not there. 
 
 The lamp shed its circle of light upon the consulting-room 
 writing-table. The armchair stood aside, as though hastily 
 pushed back. . . . Signs of his recent presence were visible. 
 The fireplace was heaped high with the ashes of burned 
 papers ; the acrid smell of their burning hung still on the 
 close air. 
 
 She glanced back at the table. All its drawers stood 
 open. Ledgers and case-books stood on it, neatly arrayed. 
 A thick packet, heavily sealed, was addressed in Saxham's 
 small, firm handwTiting to Major Bingham Wrynche, Plaa 
 Bendigaid, Herion, South Wales. There were other letters 
 in an orderly pile. 
 
 She glanced at the uppermost. It bore her own name. 
 She took it and kissed it, and put it in her breast. There 
 was an enclosure, heavy, and of oval shape. She won- 
 dered what it might be ? As she did so, she looked at the 
 letter hers had covered, and read what was written on the 
 cover in the small, firm hand : 
 
 " ' To the Coroner.' . . . Merciful God ! . . ." 
 
 The cry broke from her \<athout her knowledge. The 
 room rang with it as she turned and ran. With the night- 
 mare-feeling of running up dream-stairs, of feeling nothing 
 tangible under her footsteps, with the dreadful certainty 
 that of all those crowding pictures of him soon through the 
 long hours in the racing Express, only the one that she had 
 not dared to look at was the real, true picture of Saxham now. 
 
 Higher, higher, in a series of swift rushes, she mounted
 
 662 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 like tho dream- woman in her dream. From solid cubes of 
 darkness to grey landing - glimmers. To the third-story 
 bedroom that had never been done up. In the company 
 of Little IVIiss Muffet, the Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, 
 and Georgy Porgy, would he be lying, cold and ghastly, 
 with a wound across his throat ? 
 
 But the room was unoccupied ; the bed had not been slept 
 in. Pale dawn peeping in at the corners of the scanty blinds 
 assured her of that. Where might she find him ? Where 
 seek him ? 
 
 Fool ! said a voice vtdthin her ; there is but one answer 
 to such a question ! Where has he gone night after night ? 
 Coward, you knew, and yet avoided ! . . . What threshold 
 has he crossed when the world was sleeping round him ? 
 By whose vacant pillow has his broken heart sought vain 
 relief lq tears ? 
 
 She passed downstairs, gliding noiselessly over the thick 
 carpets, and went into the room it had been his pleasure to 
 furnish and decorate as his wife's boudoir. Its seashell 
 pinkness was merged in darkness, faintly striped by the 
 grey dawn-glimmer, but the door of the bedroom that 
 opened from it was ajar. Light edged the heavy fold of the 
 portiere curtain and made a pool upon the carpet. She 
 held her breath as she stole to the door, and, trembling, 
 looked in. He was there, kneeling by the bed. His 
 heavily-shouldered black figure made a blotch upon the 
 dakity white and azure draperies ; his arms were outflung 
 upon the silken counterpane. 
 
 A rush of thanks sprang from her full heart to Heaven as 
 she heard the heavy sighing breaths that proved him 
 living yet. 
 
 She would have gone to him and touched him then, but 
 the sound of his voice took comage from her, and drew her 
 strength away. Ho spoke, lifting his face to the ivory 
 Crucifix that hung upon the wall above the bed-head. It 
 was a voice of groanings rather than the quiet voice with 
 which she was familiar. She comprehended that a soul in 
 mortal anguish was speaking aloud to God. 
 
 " I cannot live !" groaned Saxham. " I am weary, body 
 and spirit. What I have borne I have borne in the hope of 
 laying my burden down. Everytking is ready 1 Ihav©cle«ured
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 663 
 
 the way ; my loins are girded for departure. All I asked was 
 to lie down in the earth and wake again no more. All I 
 asked — and what happens ? My dead faith quickens 
 again in me. I must bow my neck once more to the yoke 
 of the Inconceivable ! I must perforce believe in Thee 
 again ! I hear the voice of the pale thorn-crowned Victim, 
 saying, ' I am Thy God who lived and suflFercd and died 
 for thee ! Live on, then, and suffer also, and pass to the 
 Life Eternal when thine hour comes !' O God ! — my God ! 
 have I not earned deliverance ? Have I not borne anguish 
 enough ?" 
 
 His fierce, upbraiding voice died out in inarticulate 
 mutterings. His head fell forwards upon his arms. Pres- 
 ently he lifted it, and cried out, as if replying to some 
 unseen speaker : 
 
 " If a self -sought death entails eternal torment, ami not 
 in hell here upon earth ? How else, when to live is to hold 
 her in bondage, knowing that she longs and pines to be 
 free ? And yet, to go out into the dark and leave her ! 
 never again to see her ! never more to feel the light of hei 
 eyes flow into me ! Never to hear her voice — to be of my 
 own deed separate from her throughout Eternity — that 
 were of all the Judgments that are Thine to scourge with 
 the most terrible that Thou couldst lay upon my soul !" 
 
 A sob tore him. He moaned out brokenly : 
 
 " Give me a sign, if Thou art indeed merciful ! Show 
 me that there is relenting in Thee ! Grant me the hope, at 
 least, that my great renunciation may open a gate by which, 
 after cycles of expiatory suffering, I may at last pass 
 through to where she dwells in Thy Brightness. Give me 
 to see her face with a smile on it — to touch her hand — 
 after all — after all ! The lips I have never kissed, may 
 they not be mine, God — mine one day in Heaven ? If 
 Thou art Love, there should be love there." 
 
 She glided over the deep carpet, stretched out a timid 
 hand, and touched his shoulder. He lifted his great 
 square head, and slowly looked round. The black hair, 
 mingled with wlxite, clung damp to the broad forehead. 
 His eyes were bloodshot, strained, and haggard, and wild 
 Sorrow was charted deep upon the haggard fiatures. 
 Amazement struck them into folly as he started up,
 
 664 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 stammering out her name, and clutching for support at the 
 brass rail that was at the foot of the bed. 
 
 " Lynette ! You. ... It is you ? . . ." He shook, 
 staring at her with dilated eyes. 
 
 " Owen, you are ill. You speak and look so strangely. 
 It is me — really me !" she said, trying to speak calmly 
 through the tumult of her heart. 
 
 " I am not ill. How is it that you are here ?" 
 
 He lifted a hand to his strained and smarting eyes and 
 moved it to and fro before them. He was staring at her 
 still, but with pupils that were less dilated, and the veins 
 upon his broad forehead were no longer purple now. 
 
 " Have I talked nonsense ? I had dozed, and you 
 startled me coming upon me. . . . Why have you ? . . ." 
 He strove to speak and look as usual. " Has anything 
 happened, that you have come back ?" 
 
 She pressed her hands together, wrestling for collected 
 thought and clear, expUcit utterance, though the room 
 rocked about her, and the floor seemed to rise and fall 
 beneath her feet. 
 
 " Somethmg happened. I have come back from Wales 
 to tell you that I ... I cannot live upon your friendship any 
 longer ! I — I must have more, or I shall die !" 
 
 He knew all. She had met the man whose look and 
 breath and touch had revealed to her her own misery. 
 Chained to her harsh yoke-fellow ; denied Love's bread and 
 wine of life ! He looked at her, and answered coldly : 
 
 " You shall not die. You shall be free ! If you had 
 waited until to-morrow " 
 
 " It is already day," she told him, and, as though to 
 confirm her, a neighbouring steeple-clock clanged twice. 
 He moved uneasily as his eyes fell on the disordered cover- 
 let, half dragged from the bed and trailing on the floor. 
 They shunned hers as he said, a dark flush rising thi-ough 
 his haggard pallor : 
 
 " I beg your pardon for the intrusion here. But you 
 
 were away I could not sleep, and the house was lonely. 
 
 ... Is your maid with you ? Surely you are not alone ?" 
 
 She bent her head with a faint smile. 
 
 " Quite alone. I did not wish for a companion." 
 
 " Xt wft8 not wise " he began, and took a step door-
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 666 
 
 wards. " I will call one of the servants," he juided, and was 
 going, when he remembered, and stopped, saying hoarsely : 
 
 " I forgot. They are gone. I have sent them all away !" 
 
 She looked at him in silence. He continued : 
 
 " I have paid and dismissed them. You will think it 
 curious — ^you will know the reason later — I have written 
 to you to explain." 
 
 " 1 found upon your table a letter addressed to me," she 
 said. He started, knitting his black brows. 
 . " You have not read it ?" he asked, breathing quickly. 
 
 " Not yet." She touched her bosom, where the letter 
 lay. " I have it here." 
 
 " Please do not open it ! Give me back the letter !" He 
 stretched out his hand to take it, and breathed more freely 
 when she drew it out and gave it to him. And a sweet ^^'ild 
 pang shot through him ; the paper was so warm and frag- 
 rant from the nest where it had lain so short a time. But 
 he mastered the emotion and tore open the envelope. He 
 took from it the enclosure, wrapped in folds of tissue-paper, 
 and put it in her hand, saying, as he thrust the letter in 
 his coat-pocket : 
 
 " There is something that by right is yours." 
 
 " Mine ? . . ." She unrolled the tissue-paper, and the 
 brilliants that were set about the miniature sent spurts of 
 white and green and rosy fire between the slender, ivory- 
 hued fingers that turned it about. She gave a little gasping 
 cry of recognition : 
 
 " It is — me ! How could you have managed ?" 
 
 Then, as the sweet grey eyes of fair deed Lucy smiled up 
 into her own : " I do not know how I am sure of it," she 
 said, with a catching in her breath, " but this must be my 
 mother !" 
 
 Saxham bent his head in answer to her look. His eyes 
 bade her question no further. She faltered : 
 
 " May 1 not know how it came into your hands ?" 
 
 " Through the death," Saxham answered, " of an evil 
 man. You know his name. He probably robbed your 
 father of that miniature with other things ; but I can only 
 surmise this. I cannot positively say." 
 
 " You speak of my father." Her face was quivering, her 
 eyes entreated. " Tell me what you know of him. and
 
 666 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 of " — she kissed the miniature, and held it to her cheek — 
 " of my mother ?" 
 
 " Your father," said Saxham, " was an officer and a 
 gentleman. The surname that you exchanged for mine, 
 poor child ! was really his. His Christian name is engraved 
 there " — he pointed to the inner rim of the band of brilliants 
 — " with that of the lady who was your mother. She was 
 beautiful ; she was tender and devoted ; she loved y'^)ur 
 father well enough to give up every social aim and every 
 worldly advantage for his sake. She died loving him. He 
 died — I should not wonder if he died of sorrow for her 
 loss. For hearts can break, though the Faculty deny it !" 
 
 He swung about to leave the room. She was murmuring 
 over her new-found treasure. 
 
 " ' Lucy to Richard ' . . . ' Richard ' . . ." she repeated. 
 A wave of roseate colour broke over her with the memory 
 of the hand that had touched and the voice that had 
 spoken to her in her Heaven-sent vision of the previous 
 morning, when the Beloved had come back from Paradise 
 to lay a charge upon her child. 
 
 " My father knew the Mother?" It was not a question, 
 it was a statement of the fact. Saxham wondered at the 
 assured tone, as he told her : 
 
 " It is true. They had been friends — in the world they 
 both gave up afterwards — the man for the love that is of 
 earth, the woman for the love of Heaven." 
 
 " She never told mo then, but she must have known who 
 I was from the beginning," Lynette ventured. " She gave 
 me the surname of Mildare because it belonged to me ! 
 Do not you think so too 1" 
 
 Saxham made no answer. He swung about to leave the 
 room. She slipped the miniature into her bosom, where 
 his letter had lain, and asked : 
 
 " Where are you going ?" 
 
 He answered, with his eyes avoiding hers : 
 
 " You have been travelling all night ; you must be tired 
 and hungry. Go to bed and try to rest, while I forage for 
 you downstairs. You shall not suffer for lack of attendance. 
 I am quite a good cook, as you shall find presently. When 
 you have eaten you must sleep, and then we will talk of 
 your returning home to your friends."
 
 THE DOP DOCTOR 667 
 
 " Are not you my chief friend ?" she asked. " Is not 
 this my home ?" 
 He avoided her look, replying awkwardly : 
 " Hardly, when there are no servants to wait upon 
 you !" 
 
 " May I not know why you sent thcra away ?" 
 He said, his haggard profile turned to her, a muscle of 
 his pale cheek twitching : 
 
 " I am going away myself : that is the reason why. All 
 debts are paid. I have completed all the arrangements, 
 entailing the minimum of annoyance upon you." 
 " May I not come with you upon your voyage ?" 
 His eyes were still averted as his grey lips answered : 
 " No ! I am going where you cannot come !" 
 " Owen, tell me where you are going ?" 
 Her tone of entreaty knocked at the door of his barred 
 heart. He winced palpably. " Excuse me," he said, and 
 took another step towards the door. She stopped him 
 with : 
 
 " You are not excused from answering my question !" 
 " I am going, first to get you some breakfast," said 
 Saxham curtly, " and then to find a woman to attend upon 
 you here." 
 
 " I need no breakfast, thanks ! I want no attendant !" 
 " You must have someone," said Saxham brusquely. 
 " I must have your answer," she said in a tone quite new 
 to him. " What is your secret purpose ? What are you 
 hiding from me in that closed hand ?" 
 
 Ho moved his left hand sUghtly, undoing the fingers and 
 giving a glimpse of the empty palm. 
 
 "Not that hand. The other!" She pointed to the 
 clenched right. How tall she had grown, and how womanly ! 
 " Love has done this !" was his aching thought. She 
 seemed a princess of faery, fresh from a bath of magic 
 waters. Her very gait was changed, her every gesture 
 seemed new. Purpose and decision and quiet self-control 
 breathed from her ; her voice had tones in it unheard of 
 him before. Her eyes were radiant as he had never yet 
 seen them, golden stars, centred and rimmed with night, 
 shining in a pale glory that was her face. . . . 
 
 All that for the other man ! Well, let him have it !" 
 
 c<
 
 668 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 thought Saxham, and involuntarily glanced at his clenched 
 right hand. 
 
 " Please open it and show me what you have there !" 
 she begged him. 
 
 Her tones were full of pleading music. His face hardened 
 grimly to withstand. His muscular fingers closed in a 
 vice-like grip over what he held. But she moved to him 
 with a whisper of soft trailing garments, and took the shut 
 hand in both her own. She bent her exquisite head and 
 kissed it, and Saxham' s fingers of iron were no more than 
 wax. Something clicked in his throat as they opened, that 
 was like the turning of a rusty lock. And the Uttle blue 
 phial, with the yellow poison-label, gave up his deadly in- 
 tention to her eyes. She cried out and snatched it, and 
 flung it away from her. It fell soundlessly on the soft 
 carpet, and rolled \inder a chair. 
 
 " Owen ! You would have . . . done that ! . . ." 
 
 Divine reproach was in her face. He snarled : 
 
 " It would have been done by now if you had not come 
 back !" 
 
 " I thank our Lord I came ! . . . It is His doing ! 
 Once He had sent me knowledge, I could not stay away. 
 For, Owen ... I have made a discovery. . . ." 
 
 " Yes." He laughed harshly. " As I knew you would 
 one day ! Never was I fool enough to doubt what would 
 come !'* 
 
 She put both her hands to her lips and kissed them, and 
 held them out to him. He cried : 
 
 " What is this ? What interlude of folly are you play- 
 ing ? It was your freedom you came to demand. You 
 have not told me who the man you love is. I do not ask — I 
 will not oven know ! He is your choice ; that is enough !" 
 
 " He is my choice !" Her bosom heaved to the measure of 
 her quickened breathing. The splendid colour rose over 
 the edge of the lace scarf that was loosely knotted about 
 her sweet throat, and surged to the pure temples, and 
 climbed to the line of the rich red-brown hair. 
 
 " You will soon be free to tell the world so. Marry 
 him," said Saxham, " and forget the dreary months dragged 
 out beside the sot ! For I who promised you I would never 
 fail you ; I who lold you so confidently that I was cured
 
 THE DOP DOCTOH 669 
 
 of the accursed liquor-crave ; I — well, I reckoned without 
 my host " 
 
 His laugh Jarred her heartstrings. She cried out hotly : 
 
 '* You did not deceive me wilfully ! You believed what 
 you said !" 
 
 " I believed . . . and the first snare set for me tripped 
 up my heels," said Saxham. " I paid the penalty of being 
 cocksure. And I had not the common decency to die then 
 and release you. True, there were reasons — they are 
 swept away now ! . . . I sent you to Wales that I might 
 be free of the sight of you, that I might end the sordid 
 comedy and have done. You have come too soon ! There's 
 no more to be said than that !" 
 
 " There is this to be said." 
 
 She came towards him, her tender eyes wooing his. Her 
 lips were parted, her breath came in sighs. 
 
 " What you have told me is sorrowful, but not hopeless. 
 You were cured once — you will be cured again ! And I 
 will help you — comfort you — suffer with you and pray for 
 you. You shall never be alone, my husband, any more !" 
 
 He was melting. His hard blue eyes had the softening 
 gleam of tears. He stretched out his hands and took hers, 
 holding them close. He stooped, and let his burning lips 
 rest on the cool, fragrant flesh, and said tenderly : 
 
 " Dear saint, sweet would-be martyr, you shall not sacri- 
 fice your long life's happiness to me. Rather than live on 
 sane and sober, to see you famishing beside me for the want 
 of Love, I would die a thousand deaths, Lynette ! Try to 
 believe it. You shall be free ! You must be free, my 
 child !" 
 
 She winced as though he had stabbed her, and cried out : 
 
 " Why do you harp continually upon your death ? I 
 will not listen to you ! If I do not desire to be 'free,' as 
 you term it, what barrier is there between us now 1" 
 
 He said, amazed : 
 
 " What barrier ? Do you ask what barrier ! Your love 
 — for that other man !" 
 
 " There is no other man !" She looked him full in the 
 eyes now, with a lovely colour dyeing her sweet cheeks, 
 and an exquisite quivering wistfulneas about her mouth. 
 She moved so near that her fragrant breath fanned warm
 
 670 THE DOP DOCTOR 
 
 upon his eyelids. " There is no man but you — fehere will 
 never be any other man ! . . . Dearest " — her hands were 
 on his shoulders ; her bosom rose and fell close to his broad 
 breast — " 1 have been very slow at learning. But — 
 Owen ! — I love you as your wife should love !" 
 
 " You cannot !" He stepped back sharply, and her 
 hands fell from him. " You shall not ! I am not worthy. 
 I thought so once. ... I know better now. Do not 
 deceive yourself. Love cannot be compelled at will, and 
 I have ceased to wish — to desire yours ! All I want now is 
 rest and silence and forgetfulness — where alone they may 
 be found !" He drew a breath of weariness. 
 
 " If you have ceased to wish for love from me, that is 
 my punishment," she said, very pale. " For without yours 
 I cannot hve ! God hears me speak the truth !" 
 
 "Lynette! . . ." 
 
 He swayed like a tree cut through and falling. She 
 caught his hands, and drew them to her heart. 
 
 " I have been blind and deaf and senseless. I am 
 changed. I am altered — I am awake at last ! I know how 
 great and precious is the love you have given me. . . . Do 
 not tell me it is mine no longer ! Owen, if you do that, it 
 is I who shall die !" 
 
 A sob tore its way through him. His great frame 
 quivered. His mask-like immobility broke up . . . was 
 gone. Her own tears falling, she stretched her arms to 
 him ; yet while his eyes devoured her, his arms hungered for 
 her, he delayed, knitting his brows. She caught a word or 
 two, whispered brokenly. He asked himself : " Can this 
 be Love ?" 
 
 " It is Love ! Owen, I kissed you one night when I 
 found you sleeping ! When will you kiss me back again ?" 
 
 He cried out wildly upon Grod, and fell down upon his 
 knees before her. He reached out groping, desperate arms, 
 and snatched her close. His deep, shuddering breaths 
 vibrated through her ; her own knees were trembling, her 
 bosom in storm. She swayed like a young palm. Nearer — 
 nearer ! he felt her hands about his neck, her tears upon 
 his face. . . . 
 
 " Dear love, dearest husband, I have a message for you 1 
 Owen, shall I tell you what it is ?"
 
 THE BOP DOCTOR 671 
 
 " Tell me, my heart's beloved," said Saxham in a whisper. 
 
 Their looks united in azure fire and golden. Their 
 breath mingled, their lips were very near. She felt his 
 strength about her ; he drank in her sweetness. The kiss, 
 the supreme boon, was as yet withheld. 
 
 She whispered. . . . 
 
 " I awakened in the light of the early morning — the 
 morning of the day I came to you. She sat beside me — 
 the Mother, Owen ! her dear hand on my heart, her dear 
 eyes waiting for mine. She stooped and kissed me ... it 
 was real ... I felt it ! She said : ' Love your husband 
 as I loved Richard ! Be to a child of his what I have been 
 to you !' " 
 
 His arms wrapped round her, gathered her, enfolded her. 
 His scalding tears wetted her white bosom as she drew the 
 square black head to rest there, and drooped her cheek 
 upon the broad brow. Her rich hair, loosed from its coils, 
 fell in a heavy silken rope upon his shoulder . . . their Ups 
 met in the nuptial, sacramental kiss. . . . 
 
 THE END 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTEKS. GIJII.DFOKD

 
 REGIONAL LIBRARY fACIUTV 
 
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