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 truly 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 with promise?..
"You love children?"
"Bless the little beggars!" he said heartily, "they're the jolliest company in the world."
She leaned towards him, palpitating between her shyness of the Commander of the Garrison and her womanly curiosity 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 together and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' on the flute."
His brow grew black as thunder. The utterance came, terse and sharp.
"Ma'am, you have been gravely 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 confidante of a Cabinet Minister, the post of right-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 unyielding 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 firmly believed incapable of keeping a secret in which 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!"
"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 information 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 reputation 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 – with 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 stern, 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 consternation.
"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 férir, 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 breathing, and a hot spark glowed in his keen eyes, "I'd have joined you in that. But under the present circumstances – 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 corner'!"
"I did say – just that. And I meant it."
His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. 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 corrugated 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 communications 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 expectation that the schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given it to me – you and our friends out there!" She waved the dry little 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
