The Dop Doctor Part 71

"In the act of quitting the Registrar's outer office," says the burnt-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 Beauvayse 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, "for all purposes. Can you walk there with me now? Very well"--as Julius a.s.sents--"that is arranged, then."

"What is to be done, Saxham?" Julius stumbles up. The fires that burned in him a few moments ago are quenched; his slack hand trembles irresolutely at his beautiful 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 find it best in this instance," says Saxham dourly.

"Do not--do not be tempted to use any violence, Saxham," urges the Chaplain nervously, looking at the tense muscles of the grim, square face and the purposeful right hand that hovers near the b.u.t.t of the Doctor's revolver. "For your own sake as much as for his!"

Saxham's laugh is ugly to hear.

"Do you think 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 medically certified insane, they would have taken him out and shot him."

Saxham shrugs his ma.s.sive shoulders, 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 another 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, unwearyingly, upon his ever-widening 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 returned, has knocked.

The tired but cheerful-faced young woman, in an unstarched cap and ap.r.o.n, and rumpled gown of Galatea cotton-twill, informs the Doctor that they have telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that the pa.s.sword for the day is "Honour."

"You are going to him now?" asks the Chaplain anxiously and apprehensively.

"Oddly enough, I have been sent for to attend to a sh.e.l.l 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 suppose, 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-k.n.o.b. "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 wish you to leave the task of enlightening Miss Mildare to me."

"To you. And why?"

Saxham waits for the answer, a heavy figure filling up the doorway, with scowling brows, and sullen eyes that carefully 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 coldness of the questioning voice gives him a nervous shudder. He says with an effort, looking at the thick white, black-fringed lids that bide the Doctor's queer blue eyes:

"By offering Miss Mildare the honourable protection of my name. My views, as regarding the celibacy inc.u.mbent 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 with 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 eyes blaze upon him, scorch him. He falters:

"I--I trust my purpose is pure from vulgar self-seeking? I hope my att.i.tude towards Miss Mildare is not unchivalrous--or ungenerous?"

"In manipulating her disadvantage to serve your own interests," says Saxham's terrible voice, "you would undoubtedly be playing a very low-down game."

Julius laughs, shortly and huffily.

"A low-down game!... Ha, ha, ha! You don't mince your words, Doctor!"

"I can phrase my opinion even 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, 'All's fair in Love and----'"

"Exactly. All _is_ fair," returns Saxham, squaring his dogged jaws at the other, and folding his great arms upon his deep wide chest. "And all shall be, please to understand it. It is, unfortunately, necessary that Miss Mildare 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 contemptuous--"by that--distinguished n.o.bleman 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, muscular surgeon's hand, and watching the flexions and extensions 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 hating 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 in your line of business. I don't possess a copy of the Scriptures, 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 flickering shadow of a smile, as he opens the door, and signs to the Chaplain to pa.s.s out before him:

"You observe, I have turned the weapons of your profession against you.

Exactly as--replying to your question 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 pa.s.s out before him, and locks the door upon his stuffy little sanctum whose shelves are piled with a heterogeneous confusion of tubes and bottles, books and instruments, specimens of foodstuffs under the process of a.n.a.lysis for values, and carefully-sealed watch-gla.s.ses 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 walls upon either hand, and the air is heavy with the taint of suppurating 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 relieves the swollen limb. He delays to kneel a moment beside one low pillow, and turn gently to the light a face that is ghastly, with its bristly beard and gla.s.sy, staring eyes, and its pallor that is 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 living.