The Dop Doctor Part 77

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 sounding 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 will soon be over for Beauvayse. Yet she has not come. And Saxham looks at his 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 behind its blankly-staring eyes is thinking:

"Those paragraphs.... In black and white the thing looked d.a.m.nable. 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!"

He has uttered these last words audibly; they pierce to the heart's core of the mute, impa.s.sive watcher. Strong antipathy is as clairvoyant as strong sympathy, and with 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 dwindles. 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 s.h.i.+vers 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 Beauvayse says weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice that wooed and won her:

"Thought it was Wrynche. Where is----"

The question ends in a groan.

Saxham the man shrinks from him with unutterable loathing. But Saxham the surgeon stoops over him, saying, in distinct, even tones:

"Captain Wrynche was here. He has been recalled to Hotchkiss Outpost North. Drink this." This is a little measure of brandy-and-water, in which some tabloids of morphia 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 G.o.d."

There is a pause. The faint, almost breathless whisper asks:

"It's night, isn't it?"

"It is dark and stormy night."

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 G.o.d ... 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 frightfully 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 effort with a fluttering sob. And the square white face with the burning eyes under the lowering brows opposes itself to his. Words are crowding to Saxham's lips:

"_I 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!_"

He does not utter the words, nor does his rugged, unconquerable sincerity admit of his taking the hand. He fights with his hatred 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 want 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 uncertainties. The blue lips dabbled with foam can frame no more coherent words. Only the brain behind the dying eyes is alive to understand when Saxham approaches his own livid face and blazing eyes to the face upon the pillow, and says:

"Do not try to speak. Close your eyes when you mean 'Yes.' 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 affirmative 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 Mildare? Signal if I am right."

The dying eyes are br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.sion 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. Knowing 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 ... d.a.m.ned 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 comfortless 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 ceased to be perceptible. The sheet above the labouring breast rises and falls with those panting, 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. He thinks that what is the barely perceptible 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 hors.e.m.e.n of the Advance ride out of it, and cl.u.s.tering enemies that have rallied again to the attack waver, and disperse, and scatter....

"Hurrah! They're running--running for their lives! Give it 'em with shrapnel! Oh, pepper 'em like h.e.l.l! The Relief! The Relief! Hurrah!"

It is all over with the opening of the day-eye in the east. When they leave him, beautiful, and stern, and calm in that deep slumber from which only the Angel with the Trumpet may awaken him, and pa.s.s 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 Irregulars, 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: