Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  The two friends walked down the stairs and turned along the road, Hillyard still debating what was, after all, the value of Sir Chichester Splay to the Senga mess. It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not wished for further questions on the balcony, but, now that the two were alone, he asked:

  “I don’t see it,” he said; and Luttrell stopped abruptly and turned to him.

  “Don’t you, Martin?” he asked gently. All the merriment had gone from his face and voice. “If you were with us for a week you would. It’s just the value of a little familiar joke always on tap. Here are a handful of us. We eat together, morning, noon, and night; we work together; we play polo together — we can never get away from each other. And in consequence we get on each other’s nerves, especially in the months of hot weather. Ill-temper comes to the top. We quarrel. Irreparable things might be said. That’s where Sir Chichester Splay comes in. When the quarrel’s getting bitter, we refer it to his arbitration. And, since he has no opinions, we laugh and are saved.” Luttrell resumed his walk to the Governor’s house.

  “Yes, I see now,” said Hillyard.

  “You had an instance to-night,” Luttrell added, as they went in at the door. “It’s a serious matter — the order of a Province and a great many lives, and the cost of troops from Khartum, and the careers of all of us are at stake. I think that I am right, and it is for me to say. They disagree. Yes, Sir Chichester Splay saved us to-night, and” — a smile suddenly broke upon his serious face— “I really should like to meet him.”

  “I will arrange it when we are both in London,” Hillyard returned.

  He did not forget that promise. But he was often afterwards to recall this moment when he made it — the silent hall, the door open upon the hot, still night, the moon just beginning to gild the dark sky, and the two men standing together, neither with a suspicion of the life-long consequences which were to spring from the casual suggestion and the careless assent.

  “You are over there,” said Luttrell, pointing to the other side of the hall. He turned towards his own quarters, but a question from Hillyard arrested him.

  “What about that message for me?”

  “I know nothing about it,” Luttrell answered, “beyond what I wrote. The telegram came from Khartum. No doubt they can tell you more at Government House. Good night!”

  CHAPTER VII

  In the Garden of Eden

  JUST OUTSIDE SENGA to the north, in open country, stands a great walled zareba, and the space enclosed is the nearest approach to the Garden of Eden which this wicked world can produce. The Zoological Gardens of Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages from Senga. But there are no cages at Senga, and only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the elephant, the wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and feed and sleep together. Nor do they trouble, after three days’ residence in that pleasant sanctuary, about man — except that specimen of man who brings them food.

  All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men to-day, and why they don’t come along with the buns and sugar. Once within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you. If he succeeds he will land you one. And one is enough.

  Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning. Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in Senga. He kicked the honey-badger’s tub in his little reed-house and brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to within an inch of his own calves.

  “Charming little beast, isn’t he? See the buffalo in the middle? The little elephant came in a week ago from just south of the Khor Galagu. You had something private to say to me? Now’s your time. Mind the ostrich, that’s all. He looks a little ruffled.”

  They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes had fallen in behind and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard’s side, the ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle’s message. But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case. He had seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now rolled between those two.

  “On the first night of my play, ‘The Dark Tower,’” he began, and suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.

  “Yes!” said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently. “That animal’s a brute, isn’t he?”

  He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if it really didn’t matter to him where he took his morning walk.

  “Yes?” Luttrell repeated.

  “I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman.”

  “Oh?”

  Luttrell’s voice was careless enough. But his eyes went watchfully to Hillyard’s face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of his own.

  “Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours.”

  Luttrell nodded.

  “Mrs. Croyle?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was well?”

  “In health, yes!”

  “I am very glad.” Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself audible in Luttrell’s voice. “It would have troubled me if you had brought me any other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled me very much. I should not have been able to forget it,” he said slowly.

  “But she is unhappy.”

  Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead contracted, a look of trouble came into his face. Yet he had an eye all the while for the movements of the animals in the zareba. At last he halted, struck out at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of helplessness.

  “But what can one do — except the single thing one can’t do?”

  “She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you,” answered Hillyard.

  Luttrell’s face hardened perceptibly.

  “Let me hear it, Martin.”

  “She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from time to time she would like to have a little line from you.”

  “That was all?”

  “Yes.”

  Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He walked back with Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company, now on this side, now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars outside a restaurant. The two friends walked back towards the town in an air shimmering with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks like so many ribands of molten steel. They were close upon the house before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle’s message.

  “All that,” he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping something behind him, “all that happened in another age when I was another man.”

  The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful. He was not a man exasperated by a woman’s unseasonable importunity, but angry with the grim, hard, cruel facts of life.

  “It’s no good, Martin,” he added, with a smile. “Not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men — —”

  Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to the house in the Bayswater Road. The traditions of his house and of his regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages? Martin Hillyard might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with advantage, just because they came out of the blue. But the men of tradition, no! The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their fathers’ houses before ever they were born.

  At the door of the Governor’s house Harry Luttrell stopped.

  “I expect you’ll want to do some marketing,
and I shall be busy, and to-night we shall have the others with us. So I’ll say now,” and his face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, “it has been really good to see you again.”

  Certain excellent memories were busy with them both — Nuneham and Sanford Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded from his vision.

  “I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin,” he said. “Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning. Can you manage it?”

  “Why, of course,” answered Hillyard in surprise.

  “You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here. I think it’ll go off all right, but since it’s no concern of yours, I would just as soon you were out of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then.”

  He turned and went into the house and to his own work. Martin Hillyard walked down the road along the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was sure and was glad, though Stella’s tear-stained face would rise up between his eyes and the water of the Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would come home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry amongst his own people; and a new generation of Luttrells would hold their commissions in the Clayfords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.

  But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the morning, when he had bestridden his donkey and given the order for his caravan to march, he was hailed by Luttrell’s voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down in his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.

  “Good luck,” he said, and he patted the donkey’s neck. “Good luck, old man. We’ll meet in England some time.”

  “Yes,” said Hillyard.

  It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell had risen, after wishing him good-bye the night before. So he waited.

  Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey’s neck.

  “You’ll remember me to our honorary member, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  Nor was it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard still waited, and at last the words came, jerkily.

  “One thing you said yesterday.... I was very glad to hear it. That Stella was well — quite well. You meant that, didn’t you? It’s the truth?”

  “Yes, it’s the truth.”

  “Thank you ... I was a little afraid ... thank you!”

  He took his hand from the donkey’s neck, and Hillyard rode forward on the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and Senaar.

  For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone. This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded him.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Hillyard Hears News of an Old Friend

  AT KHARTUM, HOWEVER, disappointment awaited him. He was received without excitement by a young aide-de-camp at the Palace.

  “I heard that you had come in last night. A good trip? Dine with me to-night and you shall show me your heads. The Governor-General’s in England.”

  “There’s a telegram.”

  “Oh yes. It came up to us from Cairo. Some one wanted to know where you were. They’ll know about it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you know,” said the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired his heads, arranged for his sleeping compartment, and assured him that the execution had gone off “very nicely” at Senga.

  “Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop worked as well as anything in Pentonville, and every one went home cheered up and comfortable. Luttrell’s a good man.”

  Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood. Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance. A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage disappeared towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried, “Well, that’s that,” like a man who has discharged one task at all events of the many left to his supervision.

  One consequence of Hillyard’s new humility was that he now loitered on his journey. He stayed a few days at Assouan and yet another few in Luxor, in spite of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the Government had moved to Alexandria. Hillyard was in two minds whether to go straight home, but in the end he wandered down to the summer seat of government.

  If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast, Alexandria was chillier. It was civil and polite to Hillyard and made him a member of the Club. But it was concerned with the government of Egypt, and gently allowed Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had at all events stated “There is a cablegram.” At Alexandria the statement became a question: “Is there a cablegram?” In the end a weary and indifferent gentleman unearthed it. He did not show it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.

  “Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking about. It is for us, you know” — this with a patient smile as Hillyard’s impatient hand reached out for it. “Do you know a man called Bendish — Paul Bendish?”

  “Bendish?” cried Hillyard. “He was my tutor at Oxford.”

  “Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish has a friend who needs your help in London.”

  Hillyard stared.

  “Do you mean to say that I was sent for from the borders of Abyssinia because Bendish has a friend in London who wants my help?”

  The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.

  “It certainly looks like it, doesn’t it? But I do hope that you didn’t cut your expedition short on that account.” He looked remorsefully into Hillyard’s face. “In any case, the rainy season was coming on, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, my expedition was really ended when the message reached me,” Hillyard was forced to admit.

  “That’s good,” said the indifferent gentleman, brightening. “You will see Bendish, of course, in England. By what ship do you sail? It’s not very pleasant here, is it?”

  “I shall sail on the Himalaya in a week’s time.”

  “Right!” said the official, and he nodded farewell and dipped his nose once more into his papers.

  Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he looked the fool he felt himself to be. But at the door he turned in a sort of exasperation.

  “Can’t you tell me at all why Bendish’s friend wants my help?” he asked.

  It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman had the inspiration of his life.

  “I haven’t an idea, Mr. Hillyard,” he replied. “Perhaps he has got into difficulties in the writing of a revue.”

  The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room without another word. He stood outside the door purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard neither overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged away from the buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder River in order to be told that he was a writer of revues. No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.

  Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards the outer door, but not so fast but that a youth passed him with a sheet of paper in his hand. The youth went into the room where Government cablegrams were coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand was inscribed with a message that Martin Hillyard would leave Alexandria in
a week’s time on the s.s. Himalaya. And the message strangely enough was not addressed to Paul Bendish at all. It was headed, “For Commodore Graham. Admiralty.” The great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard knew it not.

  He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He started from Alexandria after half the month of June had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of Biscay on that historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia Duchess of Hohenberg, were murdered in the streets of Saravejo. London, when he reached it, was a choir of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of one. It was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often over the port wine, should really be bursting at last. Mediation will find a way. Not this time; the moment has been chosen. And what will England do? Ride safe in the calm centre of the hurricane? No ship ever did, and England won’t.

  A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and cried that all was over — they knew.

  Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid and two generations back a German, held forth in the hall of Hillyard’s club.

  “German organisation, German thoroughness and German brains — we are no match for them. The country’s thick with spies — wonderful men. Where shall we find their equals?”

  A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a chair by Hillyard’s side.

  “You take no part in these discussions? The crackling of thorns — what?”

  “I have been a long time away.”

  “Thought so,” continued the sailor. “A man was inquiring for you yesterday — a man of the name of Graham.”

  Hillyard shook his head.

  “I don’t know him.”

  “No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours.”

  Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days in London, and the engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.

  “The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish,” he said stiffly.

  “Think that was the name. Graham’s the man I am speaking of,” and the sailor paused. “Commodore Graham,” he added.