The Dop Doctor Part 58

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 consequences."

"Please, what are ve confequences?"

"Drink 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 Gueldersdorp 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 st.i.tched on the khaki jacket, and the big round eyes kept open with difficulty.

"No, please. It's about the beasts--my beasts what you gived me.

Winocewus, an' Lion, an' Tawantula, an' Tsetse, an' Black Bee--just like a weal Bee, only not so 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 ovvers. 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 exchanged 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 ladies behind, shut up in Gueldersdorp. For an officer and a gentleman must go on living and fighting while he has anything left to fight for, Hammy.

Remember that."

"Yes, Mister Colonel...." The drowsy eyes closed, the little 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 remorse 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 conditions," 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-gra.s.s, into which he had been whisked as the Mother shook out the little shawl. "I think," he said, and pocketed the horned 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 regards a woman----"

She put out her fine hand with a quick, protesting gesture, 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 make me forget what I did that day, you would apply to me in some difficulty, honour me with 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 a.s.sociations 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 sh.o.r.e beside the river, where the giant Convent kettle boiled upon a disproportionately little fire, and Sister Hilda-Antony presided in the Reverend Mother's place at the trestle-supported tray where the 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 their guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or with due precautions taken against puff-adders and tarantulas, lay upon the gra.s.s 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 dragon-fly among a bevy of homely gnats, the graceful, prettily-clad figure of Lynette showed, as she shared the Sister's hospitable 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 affected, 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 diffident entreaties that she should entrust it to him. Their voices, mingled in gay argument, were borne 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 hesitate 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 gra.s.s-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 la.s.situde and weariness against the scarred bark. But in spite of weariness she was smiling and content. The rest was delicious, 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 Fraithorn, 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 for a little while, and her kingdom of womanhood is hers, unspoiled, and the present moment is sweet, and the future she has no thought of. My poor, poor love! Let her go on forgetting, even if it is only for a day."

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 resembles strikingly."