Book the Second: THE SENDING

I

John Benn Hazel lived with his mother, and Maurice, his younger brother, at Campden Hill Terrace. Mrs. Hazel was a widow of long standing; well-to-do, well-preserved, well-powdered, dyed and corseted, and experienced in the ways of the world. Formerly, as she admitted, "a frightful flirt," she was still prone to recurrent attacks of the milder kind of friskiness. Of her two sons, she was chiefly mother to the more gifted Maurice—an illustrator of books of the exotic, precious, subtle type—and periodicals of the same pale cerulean hue. Before the War Maurice possessed a Marcelle wave and a Beardsley Line—both attained by infinite perseverance. Later he acquired the certificate of a Pilot-Aviator, and flew a Handley-Page bomber on the Western Front.

Mother and sons agreed marvellously, unless when one of Mrs. Hazel's elderly adorers, persons of ripe years and desirable financial solidity, endeavoured to persuade her to forsake her widowed state. The most favoured of these was a certain Mr. Herman Van Ost, London partner and representative of a thriving and long-established firm of Dutch bulb-merchants. As a stepfather John Hazel would have regarded the Dutchman with more or less placidity. But Maurice found the idea intolerable, and thus the bulb of Van Ost's hopes remained in the shop window; showing a pale green spike at intervals, in earnest of latent possibilities in the flowering line,—but never achieving more.

All three Hazels were members of the same mixed Club,—(who does not know "The Tubs" in Werkeley Street, W.)—and firmly believed the Parish of St. James's the hub of the civilised world. All three were ardent votaries of Bridge; all yearned to be admitted into the inner circles of Society, but were content to grasp at the outer fringe. All three adored Russian Ballet, Musical Comedy, Film Plays and up-to-date Revues. Each revelled in the Tango and thought no fashion in modes, colours, coiffures, furniture, manners and morals, so quite too frightfully fetching as the last. They were of sport, sporting; but their talk turned chiefly upon things of the theatre theatrical; and they always knew to a thousand how much the last Big Production had cost the Syndicate running such-and-such a West End house.

Sometimes they disagreed as to the exact weight of the gloves worn by the French pugilistic champion, and So-and-so, the hope of England—in their classical contest at the Punching Club; or as to the precise source whence Didi Debée obtained her celebrated strings of pearls, or grew warm over the rival merits of famous exponents of the Tango; or contradicted one another touching the precise terms in which Betty Ballorme had notified the Duke of Blankshire that a less economical nobleman would be more welcome in her flat. But if they quarrelled they made friends again over some more recent item of gossip. Jimmy Greggson had got a new gag, or a fresh wheeze in the Second Act of "The Filberts" at Riley's Theatre, just before the famous 'Dance of The Varalette.' Or a new supper-dish or a fresh dance-step would have appeared upon the menu of some eclectic restaurant cum-night-club, run by managers who catered for every variety of taste.

It will be seen that the sons of Mrs. Hazel were happy in their parent, whose business gift was not to be despised. In partnership with a peeress of somewhat clouded reputation she ran a millinery and flower-shop at a double frontage in Dove Street, Piccadilly: adding to her annual life-interest on her late husband's not inconsiderable fortune, a really handsome sum.

Probably her elder son inherited Mrs. Hazel's business aptitude though such a legacy is more usually held to be derived from the paternal side. The product of one of the lesser public schools (Loamborough may be quoted) and graduate of Brazingham University, he decided that it was possible to do Big Things without a string of piffling letters tacked on to your name. So, the City of London happening to beckon at that juncture, he leaped gladly to her grimy embrace, and his thirty-second birthday, occurring on the third of July, 1914, found him formally received and accredited as Junior Partner in the thriving firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, insurance-brokers of Cornhill. He was engaged to Beryl Lee-Levyson. He looked forward—under the summer sky fast blackening with fearful presages of tempest—not exactly with rapture, but with content—to their approaching marriage; a house in Eaton Terrace, S.W.,—Eaton Square being the address of the Lee-Levysons—having been inspected and approved, a week before the gates of Terror opened and the world grew pale with dread. In that first fierce spate of blood the elder son of Lee-Levyson, a promising young lieutenant in a crack Hussar regiment, was overwhelmed and swept away. The favourite grandson of Dannahill, Head of the Firm, a Sergeant in a London Territorial Regiment, later rendered distinguished service, and died gloriously on the thirteenth day of the First Battle of the Aisne. That September evening John Hazel got home to Campden Hill unusually late for dinner, bringing with him a clumsy parcel which contained:

Item: one coat highly polished at the elbows, kept for office night-work.

Item: a silver inkstand, a birthday present, inscribed: "From S. and M.H." (Sara and Maurice Hazel) "to J.B.H., July 6th, 1914."

Item: a tinted photograph of Beryl Lee-Levyson, a tall, willowy young woman in narrow diaphanous garments, with tightly-banded hair of pale gold, a bluish-pink complexion, a straight nose with a ripple in the bridge, large and well-opened light grey eyes, and the kind of smile that advertises an excellent set of teeth. It bore the inscription:

"From Girlie, with Love to Her Best Boy."

A box of cigars, a silver cigarette box, some well-browned meerschaum holders, and a burned briar-root pipe, completed the inventory of the property contained in the shapeless parcel which John Hazel lugged up to his room, and dumped upon his bed.

"What are these things?" asked his mother, coming in to tell John not to wait to dress, as she and Maury were going to look in at Riley's to see the 'Dance of the Varalette' once again before Jimmy Greggson went to the Front....

"Of course; good old Jimmy's a London Terrier! ... Did you ask about those? ..." said John, who stood at the looking-glass in shirt-sleeves, brushing his coarse strong curly hair with two big ivory-backed brushes, and meeting the maternal eyes in the mirror with something not unlike a scowl. All the principles instilled at Loamborough, by dint of many poundings, forbade him to embrace his mother and weep; yet strange wild impulses urged him to commit this sin against the Code of Correct British behaviour. He went on, looking at her in the glass, deepening his scowl and speaking gruffly: "They'd be frightfully in the way at the office.... I rather thought you'd look after them until I get back from the Front!"

There was a moment's pregnant silence in the room, while Mrs. Hazel with a wildly thumping heart, was realising how awfully she had dreaded that it would be Maurice who would have to go! ... Then she rustled over to John's side, reached up on tiptoe, though she was a tall woman, and giving him two little pecking kisses on the angle of his blue-shaven brown jaw, murmured something about getting up some champagne to-night to make up for the tinned entrées at dinner, and rustled out of the room—John knew—to tell the news downstairs.

"What? Old J. going? ... Good for him!" was Maurice's languidly-approving comment on the intelligence.

Nobody grumbled, though John did delay to change, and came down arrayed in the gladdest rags his well-supplied wardrobe boasted, to tell his mother and Maurice of Sam Dannahill's glorious death. Such a frightful knock for the Firm, coming on the heels of the bad news about Beauchamp Lee-Levyson!—and how the Boss had taken the grim wire from the War Office "like a regular First Class Old Brick."

Ah, if in that bad quarter of an hour succeeding the opening of the telegram John could have looked through the fortunately opaque glass of the door with "Senior Partner" painted on it,—he would have seen no dignified white-haired City Insurance-broker, telling with a dry eye but a trembling lip how bravely Sam had died! but a frantic old grandsire, tearing his hair and beard, and crying even as David in the high gate-chamber: "My child!—my hope and comfort! O if it had been granted that I might die for thee, my boy, my beloved one!"

Pray observe John Benn Hazel, standing on the Daghestani hearthrug, with his back to the fern-filled fireplace in the Briton's customary style.

You saw him as a broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, deep-chested young man of thirty-two, six feet three in his stockings and proportionately powerful. His huge frame of bone, knit with solid muscle, was sparingly padded with tough hard flesh, covered with dull, dry brown skin that looked as though it needed to be soaked in blazing sunshine to become sleek and soft. Coarse, wiry, curly hair, densely black as the broad beetling brows and the deep-set eyes under them, closely capped his high dome-topped skull, and grew low upon his forehead,—tinged with blue where it was most closely clipped on the temples and about the ears,—and at the nape of the long thick neck, that needed the razor's frequent application even as the strong jaws, the long, deeply-channelled upper-lip, and the chin, quite abnormally long, with a dent in its squared end. His was a huge salient nose, thick and boldly curved, with mobile nostrils; and a large, rather loose-lipped mouth, purplish-red and frankly sensual, with a quirk of humour at the deeply-cut corners, and displaying a formidable array of big white teeth when he laughed. His large, well-shaped ears did not lie sufficiently close to his head for beauty, and the prominent Adam's apple of his muscular brown throat was the despair of City collar-makers; while no glove that hosier ever supplied could be got to button over his great wrist,—the joint of the ulna, Maurice bragged,—being as big as a pony's pastern. His feet were huge and clumsy as his hands, a fact too well known of Mrs. Hazel's Pomeranian. His excellent opinion of himself was much evident when he talked in his loud, deep, booming voice, or laughed at jokes of his own manufacture, which appealed to him more than others. When his sense of humour was really touched, his guffaw was an outrage on the nerves of other people, and fragile articles within reach of his lengthy arms were wont to be swept from shelves or stands. But Maurice was not driven to put his fingers in his ears, on this particular evening; nor was Mrs. Hazel to glance even once in apprehension at her Dresden china shepherdesses simpering on the mantel-shelf.

She came into John's room again that night, long after they had parted, with an excuse about being anxious to make sure,—in case he should not yet have switched off the electric lights,—that his blinds were closely drawn down behind the open windows, and the new curtains of green casement-cloth properly closed. The police had warned householders all along the Terrace. Not in the least deceived, John sat up in bed, looming bigly in a blatant suit of pink-striped silk pyjamas, conscious that upon his pillow was a big wet patch of which a Briton's hardy eyes ought to have been ashamed. The mother looked absurdly young, it seemed to her son,—with her still abundant auburn hair, as yet only lightly crisped with grey,—hanging in a thick loose plait down the back of her pale blue crêpe dressing-gown, as she retreated from the window,—to examine the War-arrangements of which she had had to switch on the light:—pecked him again—upon his forehead this time—and said with elaborate casualness:

"You told us—among other amusing things—to-night at supper"—John was pleased to find that he had been amusing—"about the papers you had had to fill at the Army Recruiting place." ...

"Saying how old I am, and where I was born,—and what my father's nationality was—and what my religion is," John told her with a cheerful grin: adding as she lingered, apparently in expectation: "But the really funny things—regular howlers!—were on the spoiled papers lying about." His big body shook with a chuckle that was not genuine.

"Never mind the funny things just now! How did you answer that question about your father? ... What nationality did you say his was?" Her blue-grey eyes, still brilliant and effective, sparkled feverishly under knitted eyebrows. Her voice was sharp and strained, in the ears of her son. He answered with a dull flush darkening his heavy features:

"I said he was British. Isn't that good enough?" He added as he hugged his great bony knees, and stared over their barrier at the worried face of his mother: "You don't suppose I'd be ass enough to make a false declaration, even though the Pater's governor happens to be a Palestine Jew! Is the old chap still alive, by the way? If so, he must be getting on for a hundred!"

"He was sixty-nine when I saw him at Malta thirty years ago, and taller and broader than any of his sons—as upright as a column. You've a look of him—there are times when I see it!—but you take after your father more! ..."

"At any rate my father was naturalised an Englishman, and Hazel sounds English enough," said John.

"Yes—oh, yes!"

As she drummed on the foot-rail of the bedstead, imparting a rather unpleasant vibration to the tautened nerves of her elder son, John coughed a deep hollow cough to cover his embarrassment, and said gruffly;

"What's the matter with your telling me about my father and his people? I've never asked before, but I think I'd better know!"

"His first name was John, like yours, but the name is really Hazaël. The Hazaëls were wealthy merchants, exporters of produce from the Mediterranean Coast—and wines—chiefly from vineyards of their own."

"That stuff I've seen advertised—Palestine Port, Tokay and Muscatel,—sound and nourishing, twenty-five years old?"

"It's very good—and your father has often told me that even before the Colonies were founded in 1827,—when I've heard there were only ten Jews at Jaffa—his father's father's great grandfather was a vine-grower and exporter of wine. The business originally started in Egypt—they have a business house to-day at Alexandria—and another at Jaffa and a branch at Malta—where your father and I first met."

"Stop! ... What about you?"

"Me.... Oh—well! I was sixteen, and frightfully romantic, and supposed to be going in for what people called 'a decline.' ... Anæmia would be the proper name for it in these days: and Hull, where your grandfather had his place of business, was cold and gloomy; and Malta was supposed to be the cure.... I loved Malta! What girl wouldn't? All sunshine and flowery gardens, and violet sea, and turquoise skies. And all the fruit and' flowers one wanted—and a handsome man to squire one about! For your father was quite charming. He spoke beautiful English, and French like a native; he had been educated at Paris, they said, and when my father told me of John's intentions, I was ready to jump over the moon!"

She broke off, and John roused himself to say:

"Anyway, if the Pater was a Syrian Jew, your governor was British enough! ... Of course I never saw him, as the old man was dead and buried before we went to live with my grandmother. But Symons does sound like a good old English name!"

"That's why your grandmother persuaded your grandfather to adopt it. His real name was Simonoff, and she never liked it! She was a Yorkshire Isaacson!"

There was a pregnant silence before John asked in muffled accents:

"Was my grandfather on your side a Russian?" and was clubbed by the reply:

"He was a Russian Jew from Moscow."

"Oh, come! Don't rub it in!" The bedstead creaked protestingly.

"Dearie, you must have guessed! You've always known that he did business in hides and tallow and tar, between Hamburg and Hull."

"I remember Hull when I was a kid, and the warehouse, and Old Mendel, who used to bring me peppermint-rock when he came to see my grandmother. He managed the business for her, didn't he, until my Uncle Ben took it over? But—my grandfather a Russian Jew! Let's bless our stars he wasn't a German! Where were you married to my father?"

"In a Maltese Synagogue. We lived at Malta until your father brought us to England, to establish a business-branch at Southampton. And we had hardly been settled there a year—you were only three when John died.... Pneumonia—this climate never really suited him! And I went home to mother with you and Maury, a baby of six months old. There was no bother about money. You know your father left us comfortably off!"

John cleared his throat and nodded. The bitterness of the last pill Fate had administered puckered his palate yet. Between the Jew of Palestine and the Jew of Russia, he had been wrought all Jewish. Not a single globule of British blood mingled with the Oriental tide that galloped through his veins. He asked, not wanting to know particularly:

"Did my father's people drop you, after he died, or was it you who decided to drop them?"

His mother returned with a sprightlier air—she was now sitting on the bedside.

"Oh!—well!—it was like this. While John was alive, his father, old Mr. Hazaël, sent me kind messages very often in his letters,—always written to John in Hebrew, by Amos the eldest son. For John came third in the family. Amos and Isaac had been years married and had heaps of children before John met with me. And after John died and we went to live at Hull, the letters kept on coming. It was my father's head-clerk who always translated them—Old Mendel was a learned man!—and wrote back the answers I dictated. Then my father died—poor father!—he never could forgive me for being only a daughter!—and Cousin Ben took the business over—and mother and I, with you and Maury—came here to London to live. Do you think I did wrong in dropping the correspondence? You know how your father's fortune was settled on you two children, with a life-interest for me; we need not go into that! There was nothing more to come to us—under any circumstances! And I wanted my two boys to be brought up as English gentlemen, and I don't think I've done quite so badly—do you?"

Her tone was almost pleading. John reached out a lengthy arm and hugged his mother warmly:

"Not by half, Old Thing! On the contrary. You thought it would be best for me and Maury to be British, and you rubbed it into us that we were, from the time we began to talk.... I remember at Loamborough, a Fifth Form fellow said to me over some rotten boggle of mine at Sunday Ques: 'With that bally big nose of yours, Hazel major, you ought to know all about the Children of Israel—' And, by George! I welted the beggar until he apologised. Later on, when I knew more about the Pater, I told myself that the English strain came from the mother's side. Now you've exploded that idea; I don't know that I mind much! ... Lots of people we're friendly with are as much Hebrews as ourselves,—and taking us in the lump, I call us a loyal lot!" He dug his long chin into the bedclothes covering the big knees he hugged; and went on speaking: "And Jewish blood is strong red stuff to have in one's veins, mind you! Great lawyers, great financiers, great actors, singers, painters, writers—people who are things and do things!—people who count—how many of them have got it!—in bulk or else diluted. And some of the prettiest women—and girls—"

"You're thinking of Beryl!"

"Well, I was thinking of Beryl...—Lee Levyson may belong to a Yorkshire family. He says so, and I've no wish to contradict him. And Dannahill blows a frightful lot about his good old English ancestors. But all the same—" He broke off to smile at his mother, who,—not as a rule demonstrative towards her elder son,—was stroking his big wrist, and half-absently trying to span it with the inadequate measure of her thumb and middle-finger; and ended: "You can take it from me that there ain't a single member of the Firm who oughtn't—if the truth were worth telling—to have a capital 'J' on his disc."

"His disc?"

"Well, I was speaking metaphorically. I mean the round tin identification-tag that's sewn inside of Tommy's khaki jacket, and worn on a chain soldered round his wrist when he's going to the Front. Mine'll be 'Private J.B. Hazel, No. 000, X Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London (Fenchurch Street) Royal Fusiliers.'"

"Do they put all that?"

"I rather think so, with letters for your religious denomination. Con. for Congregationalist, Wes. for Wesleyan, Meth. for Methodist, Bap. for Baptist, P.B. for Plymouth Brethren, C.S. for Christian Scientist, Mug. for Muggletonian, C.E., Church of England, R.C., Roman Catholic; J. for Jew, and Nil if you aren't of any religion. And I'd put down 'Nil' for mine!"

"What made you do that? Why not Church of England?"

"But I'm not Church of anything, any more than you and Maurice or the Lee-Levysons—or anybody!—belonging to the set of people we visit and meet and dine.... Nice, pleasant, sociable heathens—that's what we are, every one of us! We have plum-pudding at Christmas; and salt-fish with egg-and-oyster sauce on Good Fridays; and we drop in at Westminster Abbey to hear the Carols; and at Westminster Cathedral or Farm Street for the Passion Music;—or the Greek Church near the Russian Embassy, because the singing is worth hearing,—and other people go! And we scrum into St. Paul's for a Public Thanksgiving—or a Day of Humiliation, or a big Funeral or any other kind of Function.... And St. George's Hanover Square for Society weddings,—or the Brompton Oratory.... But religion.... Have any of us got it? ... 'You can search me!' as the American fellow says in the revue.... Still, if you'd like me to alter the letters on my disc I don't mind doing it. Only—instead of 'Nil' there'll be a big 'J' for Jew!"

She waxed shrill, driven beyond herself, used words long forgotten:

"But you're not one. You've never even set foot inside a Synagogue. We don't observe the Shabbos—I mean the Sunday!—we eat triphah meat like Gentiles. We're Meshumad—apostates, don't you understand? Orthodox Jews wouldn't even speak to us!—aren't we well enough as we are?"

"Would my grandfathers have thought so? Or my father?" ...

She caught her breath and clutched at her bosom, the deep, slow voice was so unlike the younger John's. Unobservant of the consternation in her face, he went on speaking, gradually recovering the manner and tone most usual with him:

"Alive, they'd have disowned us. Not being alive—what we observe or don't observe, can't affect them! The notion of a dead man stretching out a hand from the grave, and grabbing hold of his son by the scruff to drive the unlucky beggar on in the ancient ruts of his own prehistoric prejudices is exploded. For the dead are DEAD. There's no getting over that! And to let their thoughts, feelings, desires, convictions, influence us in Anything is to my mind, sheer sentimental piffle." John blew himself out importantly and waved away the subject, but came back, having something more to say: "I'm an ambitious chap in my way.... I'd like to make enough money on the Stock Exchange to buy the freehold of Covent Garden; and turn the Market,—the Arcades,—the shops and the Opera House into a Pleasure City,—run on American lines. But I've no ambition to live after I'm dead,—that I know of! ... If I get wiped out at the Front it won't make any difference to me whether they stick a cross over me—or a shield with some Hebrew letters painted on a white deal board.... Beryl can get married the day after if she wants to! ... I shan't ever know she's being kissed by another man. Nor shall I be one jot worse or better off because of the Good or Bad marks set against me. It matters how you live your life, because Morality is necessary—to preserve Health and maintain Decency, and so uphold the Law. But when one dies one's done with!—and the wisest rule of existence is, to live as long as possible, and enjoy things while one can! To succeed, to become famous, that's the only immortality—and to leave a son to carry on your name is a way of cheating Death!" He ended this confession of his creed by saying rather wistfully: "I meant to ask you.... Do you—do you think there's any chance of Beryl's marrying me before I go?"

"To the Front! ... Why shouldn't there be? Why not ask her?" ...

"Thanks awfully for the tip. I will!"

He was cheered by her absolute belief that he could not but prevail. For if she had forgotten her faith, and turned her back upon her people; she was a mother and a loving one. There was motherhood in her face and in her voice as she asked John:

"Haven't you even told Beryl—what you—where you're going, dear?"

"No! so if she's got a white feather keeping up her sleeve for me, she'll be disappointed, that's all! My hat!—listen to that clock striking! Do you understand it's gone two! You won't have any beauty-sleep,—and I've got to be at Regimental Headquarters at ten sharp to-morrow, to get my kit with the rest of the Fourth Battalion, and weigh in at Eaton Square at 11.30 to break the great news and show myself to the girl."

But when Mrs. Hazel had finally departed, John got out of bed, switched on a light and searched on the shelf that contained his private library, for a fat one-volume Encyclopædia that had been a School Prize. After some delving in this mine of knowledge, he emerged the wiser by the information appended:

"JEWS, an Asiatic race (Semitic), descended from the Hebrew Patriarch Abraham. Original stock migrated 2,000 B.C. from Ur in Chaldea, an important centre of civilisation, to the land of Canaan (Phœnicia) and from thence in time of scarcity to the rich pasture-lands of Egypt; from whence tradition has it that their leader and lawgiver, Moses, was divinely inspired to lead them, by way of the Red Sea Gulf and the Sinaitic Wilderness. Through his teachings they renounced polytheism and adopted a monotheistic form of worship. Language, Hebrew, a variant of the Canaanitish branch of the Semitic Group, approximating closely to Phœnician or Moabite."

The richer by this gem, John put back the book, switched off the light and got back into bed.

Sleep delayed in coming. As he stared wide-eyed into the darkness, fragmentary recollections of that long-dead father formed fresh pictures in his brain. He saw a room, with a table laid for dinner with white napery and glittering silver, the high child's chair by which he stood, a chubby boy in petticoats, waiting for strong, gentle arms to lift him to the seat. While the owner of the arms, a tall man, dark and grave, washed his hands at a shining metal laver hanging on the dining-room wall beside the door. The tall man wore his hat during this ceremony, and the towel he used was long and narrow, and had embroidered ends....

A similar laver had hung on the wall in his grandmother's private sitting-room, John remembered; carefully dusted, but never used by anybody as far as he had known. And over the laver had hung a plaque of metal, embossed with Hebrew characters: such a mezusah as one saw affixed to doorposts in the City: thickening as one got nearer to Houndsditch: becoming dense in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel Road and the Commercial Road, E....

He was destined to enjoy no beauty-sleep that night.

For this materialistic, hard-headed, commonplace young City insurance-broker was loyal of nature, capable of warm attachments; faithful in friendship and honourable; according to his somewhat narrow Code. And the country in which he had been reared, the home in which Life had unfolded for his infant consciousness, the associations amongst which he had developed from a gawky boy into a tall young man, were English: and he had not known previously how much that meant to him.

England was John Hazel's England, the City of London his by choice and adoption; the Tom Tiddler's Ground where he, a citizen and a patriot, had meant to pick up as much of the good stuff Money as he possibly could get. He loved Great Britain, her history, traditions, rulers and institutions with a love blind, instinctive, and deeply rooted, that embraced her Colonies and the Dominions Beyond the Seas. He had never lumbered up on his huge feet to do honour to the National Anthem; or cheered the King and Queen and the Prince of Wales, and other notabilities passing in procession to the Guildhall or elsewhere,—or listened to a patriotic speech at a City dinner,—or a West End public charity-function, without a big lump rising in his throat.

And since the blizzard of War had burst upon this, his mother-country, and the new, strange, dreadful life had replaced the pleasant, easy-going old one, his love for England had become a rage. The tramp of martial boots going through the darkened streets; the heavy roll of guns, ammunition and baggage-lorries; the columns of bronzed faces under khaki cap-peaks, streaming under arches of railway stations; the dreadful news bruited by the newspapers, shouted in the streets, clubbing you when you opened your Latest Edition;—the mourning weeds on the backs of strangers and friends; the darkness of streets and restaurants and public places; the thickly-curtained windows of one's own home and one's neighbours' houses; the Spy Scare—and the hovering, haunting menace of Invasion by Aircraft—increased his patriotic fever day by day. Great tears had splashed upon the dirty drab paper he had signed when he enlisted. And they were the tears of an Asiatic;—a Semite whose ancestors had come out of Ur in Chaldea—and whose native language was a variant of the Canaanitish thingumbob. Perhaps no genuine Englishman would have shed them. And yet, some pathetic parting-scenes at Railway Stations had removed John's previous impression that hefty, hardy, masculine Britons are never known to cry.

One is sorrowful to remember that beyond the narrow range of this young man's prejudices, and the stultifying influences of his environment, extended boundless vistas of which a more liberal and comprehensive range of reading;—fuel for the engines of the winged chariot of Thought and Imagination—might have made John Hazel free....

But he lay prone, dull and unimaginative; staring over the bedclothes at the pale watery gleam of the dressing-mirror opposite, while out of the mighty Past—reverberating and flashing to this hour with the thunders and lightnings of Sinai,—Patriarchs, Law-giver, Judges, Prophets and Sages, Poets, Kings, Statesmen, Patriots, Preachers, Warriors, Artificers and Craftsmen of vanished Israel and living Judæa—dominated by One Figure, unspeakably more benign and glorious—looked down in solemn pitying wonder on the young City insurance-broker, who was depressed by the sudden discovery, that not only on the father's side but on the mother's,—he had been born a Jew.

"Never mind, Old J.B.H.!" he told himself encouragingly. "Even if your ancestors did come out of Egypt with Moses, you're a pup of the Big Bull Bitch. And I'll tell you what, my boy! Good old England may count herself thundering lucky, if she gets a few hundred thousand others of the same breed to fight for her in this War!"

II

Panoplied for battle, in shoddy—misnamed khaki—of a deadly stale-mustard hue, bound with braid of whitey-yellow, garnished with the customary brass badges, buttons and buckles, and completed with the brown leather belt, bayonet-sling and bandolier; Private John Hazel—with a wire stiffener in the crown of his cap, and his pampered flesh wincing from the contact of the single Army rasper supplied him (for which, in the first flush of patriotism he had discarded his customary underwear)—presented himself before Beryl, his betrothed.

"Oh, come now, Bur'l!" expostulated Muriel, Beryl's younger sister, compassionate of John's immense discomfiture, as Beryl subsided on the Rossmore couch in tears; and her unlucky lover, standing huge and awkward in the middle of the Wilton carpet, opposing his own full-length reflection in a wall-mirror, realised that the collar of his tunic was strangling, that his hands were bigger than he could have believed them; and that the boots supplied by a grateful country would have comfortably fitted a Brontosaur.

"Tell him," moaned Beryl, "to leave me to my misery!"

"She never used to mind poor Beechy in kharks," the chagrined lover somewhat heatedly protested, on being banished from the drawing-room.

"Beauchamp was so handsome," said Beryl's sister Muriel, with her dancing dark eyes suddenly softening in tears, "and then you know,—he was an Officer of Regular Cavalry—and you're only a Common Tommy. Of course at the bottom of her heart Bur'l loves and respects you—but that's what's the matter, John, old thing! Wangle a Commission as soon as you can manage it"—the term "wangle" was coming into use just then—"do something Frightfully Distinguished—and she'll be as right as rain with you, really she will!"

"Think so? ..." said John, with obviously artificial lightness. "Well, say good-bye to her for me for now, will you! And—my crowd were guarding the line of the South Western until a day or so back—and if I'd screwed myself up to the point of joining up before,—I might have wangled a D.C.M. by dropping on a German in the act of laying a time-fuse bomb in a tunnel. Now they've sent 'em out to Malta to train, and yours truly and a band of other Brave Hearts—late washouts!—are being sent after 'em! So by-by, little girlie—for I've got to buy a Cardigan jacket and a few other things I want. You might tell me Beryl's full Christian name—it's got to go down in my Will, naturally!—and be entered for reference with the Nearest of Kin, at the War Office—so that they can let the old thing know if I get wiped out!"

John felt in a baggy front-pocket for a pigskin note-book, a parting gift from Maurice, and produced it, with a gold-mounted fountain-pen. Muriel dimpled again roguishly, and said with her bright eyes daringly challenging his own:

"We've only one first name apiece—but they're not 'Beryl' and 'Muriel'; nor are they particularly Christian, that I'm aware...." Then the consciousness of their recent loss, and her new black lisse, displaying a generous amount of slender black silk-stockinged leg, failed to subdue her girlish sense of humour. She clapped her hands and broke into a fit of laughter while John stared at her uncomprehendingly, the fountain-pen suspended over the memorandum-book. "Oh, don't goggle at me like that!" cried the girl. "You're too killing for anything! And so is your mother, and so is Maury—and so are Dad and Mater, and nearly every one in our set. And yet I'm Miriam—and Beryl is Rebekah—and poor darling Beauchamp was Benjamin—though they aren't going to have it on his memorial card, or stone! Do we really forget we're Jews—or do we all pretend until it's second nature? And why do we pretend—unless we're ashamed!—and why on earth should we be ashamed, that's what I want to know?"

Thus Muriel, confessedly Miriam; and John had found no better answer than:

"Why you or any of us should be ashamed I'm hanged if I know myself! But if ever I find out I'll write and tell you."

"Don't forget!" said Muriel-Miriam. "I'm coming to the door to see you off. Good-bye for now, J. old Bean! Put one for Bur'l here;—" the tip of a pretty, well-manicured finger indicated a particularly peachy place on Muriel-Miriam's right cheek,—"and another of the same on this side, for me. Ta-ta! I'll send you lots of cigs, when I know where you're training—and parcels no end when you get out to the Front! And tell me you'll go in for a Commission, and get a V.C. or something,—just to brisk old Bur'l up!"

"Oh! Tell her," said John with somewhat forced and clumsy humour, masking the slowly-kindling resentment in his heart, "that I mean to finish up my service in this War a private in the ranks—where I began it. And that when I—if I come back, she'll hear me singing: 'They've All Got a Sam Browne But Me,'—long before I come in sight."

"I shall listen for you!" said Muriel-Miriam, bursting with laughter, "but you don't think I'm going to give that message, I hope!"

She did not pass it on; but her younger sister Ida, a sharp child aged thirteen, who happened to be lingering in the neighbourhood of the umbrella-stand, communicated to Beryl her lover's parting message; to which,—or to the superior attractions of a certain Captain Hawtin-Billson (back from the Front with a shattered left arm and a Mention in Despatches) may be attributed Beryl's subsequent breakage of the engagement between herself and John Hazel, and the return of his ruby and diamond ring....

During the strenuous period of training that followed on John Hazel's joining up, his large reserve-fund of conceit was lowered by the merciless chaff of the ranks, and the vigorous language of his platoon-Sergeant, whose little red-veined eyes, glaring into his own, reflected in their muddiness his puny insignificance.

He learned to put on his puttees properly, clean his accoutrements, make his bed and condense his pack to regulation limits, under the instruction of one Lance Corporal Harris,—an ex-Boy Scout of appalling efficiency—as well as to gulp down his morning mug of tea, in defiance of the probability of the fluid containing in solution an ounce of Epsom salts. And by the time the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Fusiliers quitted their training-quarters at Malta, replaced there by a Fifth Battalion created in the interval—and were transferred to the fighting-line in Flanders; he had acquired the soldier's much-prized gift of summoning sleep at will. Also, he had learned to dispense with sleep, were the sacrifice required.... After months of bitter fighting at the Front he had learned to go unshaven, unwashed, and with unchanged linen,—endure the plagues of vermin in a crowded, unventilated dugout—share a fag with a man who had none; smoke the Army gasper in lieu of anything better,—and consume biscuit and bully mingled with dirt, and washed down with burnt-bread coffee; or Pimmington's Perfect Soup Substitute, boiled in a rusty jam-tin over a Tommy's Cooker,—with a gastronomic rapture that a dinner at the Carlton, the Ritz or the Savoy had previously failed to evoke.

Also, John Hazel had learned to hold the Battalion in limitless esteem; to regard the Regiment he had once despised as a mob of clerks, shop-boys and warehousemen—as the pick and pride of the Territorial Forces, and to graft on the slang of the modern Londoner, the polyglottic argot of the War.

Finally, and subsequently to Beryl's defection, he had reconstituted his standard of the Ideal in Woman, after what fashion and under what circumstances may now be set forth.

III

In the April of 1915, east of "that mad place called Ypres,"—a city of ruinous white towers reddened by an angry sunrise, lying ahead and to the left. A grim grey road leading from Divisional Headquarters to the battle-front, a double crescent of blown-in trenches ankle-deep in water, and bottomed with West Flanders mud. A road fanged with the stumps of trees shattered by H.E. and scarred by iron-shod wheels; pitted with shell-holes, and generally knee-deep in sludge of an adhesive character. A road along which progressed, under cover of the darkness, long columns of men, guns and Army-lorries; A.S.C. cars and motor-cycles carrying ammunition, supplies, mails and despatches for the advanced trenches; unless German star-shell or searchlights made it daylight, when traffic stopped dead, to move on when the menace passed.

Day found the road deserted as a rule, though German hate played on it regularly at intervals, with rifle and machine-guns and clouds of poison-gas. But sometimes under the leaden scowl of a rainy day, or the brassy glare of a sunny one, the road displayed a double moving line. This, when one of the myriad little wars, presently to be merged in Warfare,—demanded the attainment of some objective infinitely insignificant,—at the cost of some great sacrifice of human life.

On this particular April day, what time the British line from Ypres southwards was strengthened—in default of missing sandbags—with tins of uneatable jam of the apple-blackberry brand, and equally bad corned-beef: columns of muddy Londoners and Scotsmen with helmets and gas-respirators at the alert, were going up to Support-trenches. Afoot now,—having disembarked at a marked danger-point from the grey Army lorries—or green and yellow motor 'buses that had carried many of the Londoners to business in the days that seemed so dim and so far off. And as they went, though shrapnel burst about them, and High Explosive dug new craters beside old, and wiped out a platoon or so in doing it,—they sang to the accompaniment of mouth-organs; "Keep the Home Fires Burning," or "Piccadilly," or "I Love a Lassie," or excruciatingly-parodied hymns.

But the troops that were coming down from the fighting-line to rest-billets (mostly Canadians, red with rust, muddy to the eyebrows, marching raggedly in companies or jumbled up anyhow in the lorries), did not sing "The Maple Leaf" or "My Little Grey Home." Many wore First Aid bandages smeared with iodine; nine out of ten hobbled and coughed and vomited; and the mucus they wrenched from their labouring lungs was yellow and mingled not infrequently with blood. It was their first experience of a German gas-attack, and the horror of the strange and evil thing was upon them; and the reek of it was in their clothes and breath. Yet those who could—called out cheerfully to recognised friends; or grinned with their cracked and swollen mouths in answer to cheery hails. Their reddened eyes of sleeplessness stared out of haggard, unshaved faces, and their muddy shoulders humped under their muddy kit-packs, as though the muddy ground were drawing them to lie down upon it and sleep. And every now and then one would falter in his stride and smile stupidly; and heavily and soggily collapse in the gluey mush. A comrade who had energy enough left in him would kick and shake such a sleeper into temporary wakefulness; or one of the men who perched beside the drivers of the Hospital cars and ambulances,—R.A.M.C. orderlies or Red Cross bearers, would play the Samaritan thus, when the subject would stagger on, to fall again. Or room would be made for him in some omnibus or lorry where lightly-wounded or badly-gassed men were packed like bloaters in a barrel, and so the game went on.

Private John Hazel, crunching a muddy apple, trudged through the sticky mud as part of a somewhat straggling route-column representing the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Regiment. One novel sensation had that morning thrilled the Terriers, stale with the deadly boredom of life in the rear lines. Necks were yet being twisted to get the last of it, and joyous comments tossed it from tongue to tongue. A cow,—hidden away for months by an ancient peasant in some subterranean stable in No Man's Land (whence her milk had been retailed at the price of Veuve Cliquot to the Canadians in the firing-line)—was being brought down to the rear by her proprietor; her late lodgings having been discovered and thoroughly spring-cleaned by a German H.E. shell....

"Moi hoi, if it be-ant a cow!" said a voice that had the roll and twang of Berkshire. "Coosh-coosh, Snowdrop, ole beauty!"

"My Gawd, she don't 'arf look natural, do 'er?" came from a Cockney tongue....

Not a human unit of all those trudging columns but had slewed his head to stare at Crummy, and sniff the homely odours of hay and farmyard-muck that shook from her muddy flanks as she kloop-klooped by. What though she had raw patches of mange upon her withers—testifying to the poorness of her diet and the closeness of her quarters! To men who had not seen a cow, pig, cock or hen for weeks, moving upon that devastated country of once prosperous farms, productive fields, fruitful orchards, and stately rural mansions, the sight was comforting; bringing reassurance that in regions as yet unscathed by the frightfulness of War, yet were to be found quiet and order, laughter and pleasure, savoury food, sleep in one's own bed, and the humble, harmless things of everyday use, that make life sweet by their very homeliness.

Another sensation was in store that day, and though the novelty of it wore off with retrospection, John Hazel's keen enjoyment of the episode never blunted....

Down through the return-traffic on his left hand side, came a stately fleet of motor-waggon ambulances of the Red Cross, British and American; escorted by a train of Auxiliary Army Service cars of all imaginable makes, nationalities and sizes, from the aristocratic Rolls-Royce to the runabout Ford; from the Mercedes-Daimler of the Parisian boulevards to the roomy Schneider touring-car,—bringing wounded from the advanced dressing-stations down to the clearing-hospitals six miles back of the Reserve Lines.

The grey ambulances passed, in a mingled whiff of carbolic and iodoform: leaving a sense of grey paint, mystery and merciful swiftness. The cars, mostly carrying sitting-cases—flowed after them; steering neatly among the shell-holes, picking their way with practised smoothness among the various obstacles encumbering the road. And they left behind an impression of still figures wrapped in brown Army blankets: and grey-green or livid faces with closed or staring eyes, shaded by sacking-covered steel hats or bloody bandages: of an even stronger blast of carbolic and iodoform, and of Beauty, calm, alert, composed and eminently practical.

For all these auxiliary ambulance-cars were driven by women: in the black leather overcoats of Foreign Service, with D.B. Kitchener collars, and plain shoulder-straps with the button of the Red Cross Society's V.A.D. The pick and pride of the Old Country they seemed,—all young, or in the splendour of the early thirties. The best blood in Britain, John Hazel could have sworn,—raced under the sunburn of those quiet clear-cut faces, topped by peaked storm-caps of Navy blue cloth. He saw the neck of the lieutenant leading his platoon blaze red between his sweat-blackened collar and the edge of his tin hat, and the muddy glove swing up in the salute, as a clear voice rang out gaily from a driving-seat:

"He knows one of 'em. Lucky beast! I wonder—" John had reached thus far in his conjecture when a pip-squeak burst overhead with three sharp crashes; and a shell from a German howitzer dropped in an ancient neighbouring shellpit, considerably enlarging it—and producing the fantastic smoke-effect known as "Woolly Bear."

John Hazel bolted the core of his muddy apple, and mechanically made sure that "they" had not got him this time. The head under his tin hat was ringing, his eyes and lungs were full of acrid vapour: but no shrapnel was located in any portion of his frame. The cars were running by as smoothly as ever.... You could see through the thinning fumes the faces of the drivers, set like rock to confront War's risks and chances: and a blatant pride in them surged up in John Hazel and he caught his breath... They were his countrywomen.... Then Wallis, his front-file man, suddenly fell back upon him, knocking him breathless with his pack, and cutting his top lip badly with the edge of his shrapnel hat. With blood running over his long chin, blue and stubbly with bad shaving, John held up Wallis, who was making queer, clucking, farmyard noises:

"Auch—auch—auch! ..."

"The bloody 'Uns," growled John's left-hand man to his neighbour, "'as copped pore Ginger!" and the lieutenant ahead looked around. Wallis had ceased clucking by now; and the hand of John's supporting arm, where it went round across his cartridge-belt under his tunic-pockets, was wet with the usual warm, sticky stuff. And a voice that was clear-cut and ringing called out something, and a car slowed down its speed, and those behind it swept round and on.... And the lieutenant was shouting through the myriad noises of traffic: "If you can, it would be topping of you.... This isn't a healthy road to stop on. Thanks frightfully! ... You, Hazel, hoist him in and catch us up after! ... Forward. March! ..."

The V.A.D. driver had never quite stopped her car, John Hazel remembered. She had checked it to a crawl and he had kept pace with it, carrying the now rapidly-buckling Wallis—whose head had dropped forward, and whose helmet had fallen off—at the full stretch of his long arms since he stripped the pack from him. A Red Cross orderly had taken it together with Wallis's rifle.

"No room behind!" came in the ringing, feminine tones. "We're four over the proper load already! ... This seat beside me ... the orderly can sit on the step. You'll be all right there, won't you, Martynside? Now please lift when I give the word; Go! ... Don't worry about the blood. Lean your head against my shoulder!" She added for the cheer of Wallis, who was trying to say something apologetic: "Quite all right, if you're careful of my steering arm.... Comfortable? ... All right, Martynside! And—don't be too anxious about your friend. We shall look after him!"

Perhaps something in the comrade's gaunt brown face, a flare of wistfulness burning in his big hollow black eyes had drawn the attention of the speaker. As a matter of fact, the way in which her strong womanly shoulder had swayed to meet Wallis's limply sagging head, had given John Hazel a sensation as of plucking at the heartstrings. And—where had he heard that voice before? ... She went on, answering the hungry look in the gaunt black eyes that met hers:

"You shall hear of him, if news can possibly be got to you. I'll send a post-card if you'll give me your name. 'Private John Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London Regiment, Support Trenches, Ypres.' That's quite all right! ... Your Reserve is at St. Jean.... Hang on to this!" This being a thick, squat packet of Dundee Butterscotch. "Good-bye and good luck! ... You'll be coming down this way in a week or two."

"If I don't get gassed or wounded.... Good-bye and thanks tremendously!"

John grinned, showing his big white teeth with the effect of a sudden illumination in his gaunt brown face; and there and then,—with a snort from the now rapidly-moving car, and a nod and smile from the driver,—the little episode had ended. Leaving John Hazel with a pleasanter flavour upon his mental palate than the sour American apple had left in his mouth. Something that was sweet with the aromatic sweetness of the ripe gold-and-crimson pippin whose rich juices have been perfected by the lightest touch of frost. And She had had the frankest and most candid eyes, of the clearest cairngorm golden-brown, that John had ever seen in a woman's head, and a wide, kind, charming mouth, that had shown two rows of dazzling teeth in a parting smile that had crinkled the eyes deliciously at the corners.... And so they had parted; going east and south-west, the V.A.D. to her clearing-hospital, the Londoner with a new, strange warmth about the heart, catching up his Company on the edge of a new-made crater, in time to take over the duty of Harris, now platoon-Sergeant, killed with three other men by a shell from "Silent Lizzie," the terrible 5.9 German Navy gun.

Thus the mantle of heroism had been transferred to the broad, unwilling shoulders of John Hazel, from those of the energetic young N.C.O. who had been to him as a thorn in the flesh. He had loathed Harris, with his pink and white complexion, his auburn quiff, and his appalling, crushing efficiency. And Harris, who as a Boy Scout had passed every imaginable test of ability and gained every badge obtainable,—had warmly abhorred John, as the shrieking example of everything a British soldier should not be....

"It's for your good I keep on what you call nagging at you, Hazel!" would be the introduction to every exordium: "A dirty soldier is a disgrace to his King and Country, and that's what you'd be if you couldn't afford to bribe men you consider your inferiors to wind your puttees tight, and fasten 'em properly, and keep your straps and buckles clean."

Or:

"It's for your good I follow you up, as you express it; and when you're able to make a fire out of mud and rotten beet-leaves, and an 'ot meal out of bully beef, ration-biscuit and an onion, more like an Egyptian 'All professor of ledgerdemang than a British Tommy'—which is like your nerve to use such language, so much the better it'll be for you! Don't tell me you can't keep your puttees from trailin' about your legs like snakes and the rust from disguising the metal on your 'coutrements. Don't say you can put up with 'ardships, and that you mean to stick it, ... To make Bad Better is your duty! and to 'unker like an 'og in the slush of Belgium, when you could sit on a faggot and keep reasonable dryish: and shiver when you could 'eat yourself inside and out by a bit of forethought—is your disgrace and not your praise!"

And Harris would light the fire and set the stew going, or thrust on his unwilling subordinate a portion of his own; and depart cheerfully whistling, and ostentatiously in possession of the equable temper which a Scout must never, never lose!—leaving the prodded object of his zealousness frothing with impotent rage.

Small wonder that the alert personality of Harris, his observant glance, unsparing criticism and unfailing Preparedness in every emergency were,—with his orange quiff and the trench-rings on his little fingers—by Private Hazel utterly abhorred.

After the clubbing of a certain German prisoner who had treacherously shot a comrade of John's, Harris did not hesitate to denounce Private Hazel as "a butcherly brute." Yet dying on the edge of the big new crater hollowed at the roadside by "Silent 'Lizzie," he used his last forces to faintly shout in the stooped ear of his platoon-lieutenant:

"Let Hazel carry on in my place, Sir! He's a filthy fighter—but the best man we've got!"

So, ex-Scout Harris died, true to the last to his ideals, having played the game for his side right up to the end.... And within twenty-four hours of reaching the second-line trenches, Harris's reluctant deputy, saddled with the necessity of keeping up Harris's reputation as a daredevil, had led a company to the support of the front line in the place of a lieutenant wounded—and had won the D.C.M. by a single-handed bomb-attack upon an enemy machine-gun position,—which enabled our London Terriers to charge over the parapet and clear out the wasp's nest. Had been offered and respectfully declined promotion—on the grounds that he didn't like responsibility!—and had subsequently, in the act of drinking tea at the door of the platoon dug-out—been knocked out of action by a splinter of shell.

Thus, adhering in death as in life to his policy of well-meant aggravation, Sergeant Harris came between his bugbear and the promised, longed-for post-card. For if indeed it had been sent, it had never reached John.... Damn Harris! But what good was there in damning Sergeant Harris? Hell wasn't the place you'd catch that efficient young beggar going to. Hadn't he, assiduously as he kept his body, looked after his cocky little soul! In the gusts of fever that shook his brain as he lay in his cot at the Receiving Hospital, John pictured Harris with his quiff all curled and shiny,—dressed in the spruce white clothing of the righteous—heard him with the ears of imagination, shouting hymns that went with a marching swing.

The fever subsided by and by, and, after four months of bitter fighting, Private John Benn Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, (subsequently to a brief sojourn at a French Base Hospital) found himself back in Blighty, well pleased to be alive. He ended his final period of residence as a patient at the Auxiliary Military War Hospital of Colthill in Middlesex, in the July when German South-west Africa surrendered to Smuts and Botha: and was pronounced convalescent by the C.M.O. in the first week of December, 1915; the self-same raw, bleak and nipping day that saw the Fenchurch Streets'—with other British forces transferred to the Egyptian Expeditionary—embark for Salonika.

IV

The bit of shrapnel irritating his left lung,—located there by the X-Ray, but deemed by the surgeons unreachable, had ceased to bother much; and the gas-bronchitis—another souvenir of that mad place called Ypres—had quieted down to a wheezy cough. John was lying back, rather damp and exhausted after an access of this cough, when the Ward Sister in charge that afternoon looked round the screen—there had been three; but two of them had been taken away because the patient was getting on so nicely,—to say that a visitor wished to speak to him, Number Forty—if he felt well enough?

"Tell the old girl they won't allow me to eat anything but apples or Brazil-nuts,—and that I'm not to smoke more than two cigarettes at a time!"

John's homely effort at wit evoked an approving nod and smile from the Sister. She vanished as the Hospital porter, a one-armed ex-Guardsman who previously to Mons had been a famous Regimental pugilist—came stepping lightly as a cat over the highly-polished floor, carrying a 200-weight coal-bucket. As the replenished fire began to crackle and blaze, the Ward Sister returned, ushering a little, frail, bent old man, with flowing hair and a patriarchal beard of the white that has passed into straw-colour; sharp twinkling eyes under penthouse eyebrows lighting a face of innumerable wrinkles, reddish-pink and leathery like a marmoset's. He carried a tall hat in one hand and a brown leather bag in the other, and wore a black velvet skull-cap, greasy with faithful wear. A round-collared, single-breasted overcoat of brown cloth, with yellow horn buttons, revealed the bottoms of shiny black trousers, ending in square-toed, black cloth-topped boots. The boots were clogged with Middlesex mud, as though he had walked from the station. A purple woollen comforter and mitts to match, defied the December blasts.

Firelight played bo-peep on the white ceiling, and chased dodging shadows in and out between the neat beds, ranged along the creamy walls of the long, cheerful ward, and winked in the dark polish of the boards, and was reflected in the glass-topped tables supporting pots of hyacinths and daffodils as well as big blue-glass stoppered bottles of Perox: Hydro: and Mercurial Sol:. But the unexpected appearance of his ancient visitor had cast a glamour over Number Forty. His body lay in bed in Colthill War Hospital. But in spirit he stood in his Grandfather Simonoff's Hull counting-house, a boy of three in diamond socks, strap-shoes and a blue jean round-about, straining his sharp young ears for the rustling of a paper bag.

Peppermint rock, brown or white, was John Hazel's darling weakness. His letters Home, during his sojourn in the trenches, had invariably ended with a prayer for more peppermint rock. And the sight of this queer old man evoked all sorts of pungent memories connected with the favourite sweet stuff. His big black eyes and the sharp little red-veined old eyes met, and something like an electric shock passed between them. And the shaggy penthouse eyebrows of the old man came down, and then shot up to meet his velvet skull-cap—or the cap came down to meet them,—and at the same moment his ears wagged, and John Hazel knew him again. Twenty-seven years were temporarily blotted out, and he was once more a five-year-old—and old Mendel was feeling in the pocket that bulged—and John Hazel found himself licking his lips—but nothing but a blue-spotted cotton handkerchief came out of the bulgy pocket. With this, Mendel—had he ever had another name?—loudly blew his nose, and as the Ward Sister placed a chair, and vanished with a whisk of cotton-print skirts (notably shorter in this December of 1915 than the previous uniform pattern), he uttered something in a strange, unknown and yet familiar tongue:

"Shalôm—shalôm!" He added as he met the astonished stare of John's gaunt black eyes. "You are like your father as pea is like pea; and yet—when I wish peace to you in the Holy Tongue, you don't understand me! A shame and a sin!—but I'm not here to reproach you for being a Meshumad! That's not my affair! You're not my grandson,—the Holy One be praised!"

"Mr. Bartoth—" John had exhumed the other name by a strenuous effort of memory: "whether you are pleased to see me or not, I'm very glad to see you! Do you object to shaking hands?"

"Behold!" Mendel blew his nose again loudly, and said as he restored the blue-spotted handkerchief to the bulgy pocket; "I am 'Mr. Bartoth' to the child I dandled.... You have not kept the good way, but there is a good heart in you.... You sit there with your medal on your breast—" a famous Divisional Commander, visiting Blighty to enjoy a brief leave, had looked in at the Hospital on the day previous, and conferred on Private Hazel—with some laudatory expressions, the Medal for Distinguished Conduct in the Field—"and you're not too proud to offer your hand to Old Mendel—nor you've not forgotten his name! Yet you were a babe of three years when your father died, peace be upon him! and but four when we lost your grandfather, peace be upon him! and too young to say Kaddish; and now that your grandfather and your uncles and your cousins are dead, peace be upon them! you, a grown man of thirty-three, are ignorant as a babe. Shaigatz! But it's no use to be angry. Besides, I must get back to London in time to catch the four o'clock Express from St. Pancras. I came by the 5.48 from Hull and got in at two o'clock noon."

"Haven't you had anything to eat?—Won't you—" John was beginning when the old man, who had sunk upon the chair with a boneless limpness eloquently expressive of his weariness, silenced him with a gesture of fierce abhorrence, and he was fain to hold his tongue.

"I have had all I want. Do you think my wife sent me forth upon this journey without provision for my necessities?" He had unbuttoned the brown coat and was fumbling in an inner pocket, from which he finally drew forth a little packet and a key. "Here—this belongs to you. It comes from your grandfather Eli Hazaël—peace be upon him! and may his soul be bound up in the Bundle of Life!"

John received in his big palm a small but heavy something rolled up in tissue-paper and tied with a little wisp of black floss silk. Without opening, he sat staring at it, while Mendel boggled about opening the shabby brown bag with a tarnished Bramah key.

"How did my grandfather and my uncles and my cousins die?" he queried, rousing himself from a state of mental stupefaction accompanied by a profound physical weariness, a singing in his ears, and a familiar sweetish-saltish taste at the back of his throat. And Mendel looked up from rummaging in the now open bag with his veinous, knotted, shaky old hands, to say resentfully:

"How does any one die in these days except through the War? ... The people of all the nations of the earth are tearing at each other's throats—and not only the young fighting-men, but the children and the aged, both men and women!—these must suffer also.... Soon after the Ashkenazim—" John knew he meant the Germans—"invaded Belgium, the Turkish Army was—what is the word?"

"Mobilised. Yes, the dirty beggars!" said John, employing a less savoury term than beggar, "they've been stuffed up with lies about the Kaiser being a Mohammedan, and they're ready to back him for all they're worth. At Abu Zenima and at Tor they gave us plenty of trouble; and they nearly rushed Aden, last summer, when our best brigades and batteries serving on the Suez Canal had been sent to the Dardanelles. Lucky we gave them a gruelling at Serapeum—and stopped their little game at mining the waterways of the Canal. As it was they jabbed up the Grand Senussi to make Western Egypt hot for us. His Bedwân are sniping at British troops like blazes—our black garrison at Port Sollum are just sitting on their thumbs. But anyhow we're keeping up our end at Anzac and Gallipoli, and my crowd will be helping, I expect, pretty soon. They've—damn this beastly cough! They've—"

"Tsch—tsch!"

John stared as Mendel, who raised himself from stooping nearly double over the bag, gesticulated at him violently with papers in his withered claws.

"Tschah! ... Have I time to hear you tell of what is in the newspapers these three weeks back? ... What I have to do is to make known to you what the British Press thinks not worth telling—the griefs of our people—and the manner of their deaths. The idolaters—accursed be they! mobilised after the Invasion. As their Young Turk Constitution of 1909 made Arabs, Christians and Jews equally liable to military service, your cousins,—like all other young men of the district,—were marched to the recruiting office by the Turkish soldiers who accompanied the mouchtar who came with the lists. They were not allowed to return home for food, or money, or clothing,—or to obtain the blessing of their parents,—but hurried off to the Hân, locked up like animals with hundreds of filthy Arabs: and sent from thence like prisoners—bare-footed and half-naked—to reinforce the garrisons in Northern Galilee. And your grandfather—he was living at the house of his son Isaac, a country place near Haffêd—for years were growing heavy on Eli Hazaël.... Even the strong back bows under the burden of ninety-nine! And the spirit of Prophecy came on him as he watched the young men Elias and Jacob departing,—and he turned to his son Isaac and said: 'They will not return, they are gone from us for ever, and you and your brother will be the next to go!' This was on the 8th of August of the Christian Era 1914, or, as we say, the 30th Ab of 5674.... Meanwhile the German Consul at Haifa is going about the country, preaching to the Arabs how Germans are not Christians like the French or British, but Children of Mohammed the camel-driver, and worshippers of the Black Stone. And that their Kaiser is the Messiah of Islam:—and in all their Mosques prayers are made for the Sultan and Hadji—"

"Bill! ... Haw-haw!" John guffawed, pleased and tickled by his own apt joke.

"Peace, boy! and let me finish. This is no chine to set a Schlemihl grinning. There is blood in it and anguish, and tears! For Jewish and Christian recruits at the training-camps were disarmed and stripped of their uniforms,—(khaki and enveriehs which most had bought new at Turkish value for fear of getting infected garments),—and put to labour under the whips of Turkish gang-masters in the taboor amlieh. Those are the working-corps that are building a new railway-branch of the Central Palestine from El Tineh in Philistia southwest to Gaza and southward to Beersheba—and making military roads for the Turks between Saffed and Tiberias—in case the railways should be cut off by the British by and by! And others are sent to labour at construction-camps at Hebron and Samaria. While at home in the other towns of Palestine and the villages of the Colonies—the goods of Christians and Jews were requisitioned, and silver and gold and jewels plundered; fences torn up and olive-groves cut down, and evil worked in many ways. Worse than all, shame has been brought upon the matrons and daughters of Israel, even such as Esther, the only daughter of your Uncle Isaac, a virgin of eighteen years!"

John flushed dark purple under his mahogany skin and rapped out an ugly epithet:

"Who was the ——— hound?"

"He is one Hamid Bey, a Colonel of Turkish gendarmerie, Vali of the labour-camps near Nazareth—high in the confidence of the Turkish commander of their Eighth Army Corps, and, like all the rest of the idolaters, lustful as an ape. And she—Achi Nebbich! she was as a rose of Sharon! And word came to her brother Jacob, who was working with the road-gangs at Tiberias, his cousin Elias being a labourer on the railway near Beersheba—peace be upon them! Therefore, Jacob, with one Reuben Ephraim—their playmate from childhood, and a fellow-labourer—who had an affection for Esther—as she unto him, poor creature!—broke out of camp and struck across the hills to Nazareth—careless of peril, raging like furious wolves."

"Wish I'd had the chance to make one of the party!" John murmured. Old Mendel's croaking voice went on:

"Now these two had determined to purchase exemption from service,—notwithstanding that they were already enrolled,—for such things can be done where the officers are Turks!—and they brought with them the money, forty gold pieces of twenty francs for each,—that is eighty pieces!—meaning to buy with them the honour of the girl! They found out where Hamid Bey was quartered—in the large new Khân near the Hammâm that is at the north-east end of Nazareth, looking towards the fig-orchards and vineyards and olive-groves that are as a green fringe upon the borders of the Tiberias Road. News had come through that Turkey was at War, and there was terror in the hearts of the people.... First, the French Christian Orphanage—then the Scotch Medical Mission—then every hospital, school, convent or mission in the town had been taken over by the Turkish Army Corps' Commander for military uses—and Jewish and European houses were gutted by the score. The streets were full of howling rioters—there was concealment in such confusion,—so the young men lurked in the gardens through the day, and Jacob kept close to the sentry-posts and heard the password—thus when dusk fell they passed the sentries, and came into the lower part of the Khân. And with cunning they made their way up to the Bey's apartment—and found him there with Esther. Achi Nebbich!"

Mendel's parchment forehead was wet with perspiration. He mopped it and went on, screwing up his nose and blinking:

"When she leaped from the divan shrieking and fell upon her face at the feet of her brother and lover, the Bey's eyes barely followed her,—he was already weary of his toy. He covered the boys with his big German Army revolver—his companion even in pleasure—and told them that he was willing to hear what they had to say.... They said it, and offered the money—as the price—not of Esther's honour—for she was ruined already!—but to purchase her deliverance from slavery with him."

The veins on John's forehead were swollen and blackening. Mendel's voice had sunk to a penetrating hiss.

"The Turk—may Fire from Heaven consume him!—was immovable by arguments and deaf to prayers. He would take the eighty gold pieces—what Turk can resist money!—but his Jewish concubine he would keep also. Then Jacob asked to speak to Esther apart. No farther than the end of the room, distant from the door and windows.... To this the Bey agreed, smiling, turning his tongue between his lips, and—keeping the German Army revolver—they all have them—and Zeiss binoculars!—ready in his hand. Then—Reuben says:—"

"Was it he who told you?"

"Of that presently! Then Jacob embraced Esther and Reuben as one that taketh farewell for a journey—while Reuben watched them shudderingly, knowing what should come! The Turk signed that Jacob should hand him the bag of money—and this Jacob did. Bowing obsequiously before the son of Satan—who, thrusting the revolver in its pouch—gripped the bag, with one hand—and with the other patted the youth upon the cheek that was as fair as Esther's—and touched with the first growth of the black silken down...."

John would have said "Go on," but he couldn't. The little, eyes like glowing embers held him spellbound, as they burned into his own....

"Suddenly Jacob sprang like a leopard on the revolver, wrenched it away and leapt to his feet. The Bey set his whistle to his lips and blew,—and his servants and orderlies came running in tumultuously. But not so quickly but that two shots had cracked out—and the room was ringing!—and the brown cordite smoke hung under the ceiling in a thin cloud, smelling of aniseed, and mingled with the smell of scorched flesh and hair. For—Jacob—peace be upon him!—had thrust the pistol-muzzle close against the girl's temple when he shot her—and fired the next bullet into his own mouth!"

"How on earth did Reuben get off?"

"He cannot tell me. The Lord knoweth! But he found himself running through the night like a deer,—with shots and shouts dying out upon the distance—and when he ran into the dawn of the mild November day, lo! there was blood upon his naked feet! Esther's and Jacob's! ... But why should there have been blood upon his hands, and a dagger in one of them—bloody also? ... He does not know! ... A frenzy was upon him. The country was searched for him, but he had found a friend who kept him well hidden. He was the American Consul at Jaffa, and in the safety of his shadow Reuben dwelt for many days. Then he found means to communicate with his family. From them he learned that Elias—the cousin of Jacob and Esther who was working on the Beersheba Railway,—had suffered the punishment of the falagy. Why? For abetting his cousin—of whose deed he knew not!—in an attempt upon the life of the Bey at Nazareth—"

"What is the falagy?"

"The bastinado. Beating with green rods—asâyisi."

"On the soles of the feet. Oh—well! One's often heard of that, hasn't one?"

"Schlemihl! Are there not beatings and beatings? The asâyisi to punish—the asâyisi to maim and torture! The asâyisi until there is no shape of humanity left in the body, and even the mother of the man would not know the putrid mass of bloody flesh for the child she bore and bred! So thy cousin Elias died. And after that there was no peace for the house of thy grandfather Eli. His son Amos, and Shemuel,—the second son of Amos,—were mobilised to go south with Labour Corps of Jews and Syrians.... Digging trenches for the Turks to hold the railway at El Arish, they dug their own graves, upon them be peace! The two sons of their sister Sara were taken prisoner by the British at Kantara, and related their story, and were kindly used. They joined the Zion Mule Corps and went to Gallipoli. Perhaps they live, perhaps they met their deaths—carrying ammunition under shell-fire on the Peninsula! But they are the sons of daughters—not the sons of sons! To make an end—being warned that the vengeance of Hamid was to fall upon his house, thy Uncle Isaac—the father of Esther and Jacob—took the child that remained to him, even Benjamin, his darling—who was not of age to serve,—and with money and papers hidden upon them, the two escaped in disguise. I will not tell you after what fashion—but wives and mothers are cunning at these deceits when their dear ones are in danger!—and father and son arrived in safety at Beirut."

"And did they get away?"

"Woe, woe! Isaac was recognised by the Turkish wharf-inspector even as he lifted the boy into the boat that was to take them to the American steamer. They were dragged to prison—they died in prison, and that last blow slew your grandfather. Peace,—peace upon them all! The wives of Amos and Isaac live still, and two of Amos's daughters; but what are women to a house that needs sons that are begotten of sons! Now that the old man's white hairs have been brought to the grave by sorrow, the house of Eli Hazaël is represented by whom?" Mendel blew his nose sonorously and finished: "Whom but your brother Maurice and yourself!"

John was conscious at the back of his mind of a tingle of eager—let us call it expectation. He asked, carefully divesting his tone of excitement in any undue degree.

"Do I understand that—there's money in this business?"

"There is much property, both in land south of Mount Carmel, and in the export business-houses at Alexandria, and at Jaffa and elsewhere. There is money lying at the Crédit Lyonnais," John's black eyes kindled. "Also at the Deütsche Palästina Bank Branch at Jaffa,"—John whistled dismally—"and the Anglo-Palestine Banking Co."—John blew a sigh of relief. "And there is the stewardship of the olive-groves and vineyards of Kir Saba—the title-deeds of which property (the original mortgage on it having now expired, and the sum lent having been recovered, with the interest)—must—this is the word of your grandfather!—be formally given over to those to whom it rightfully belongs. Here! Take the documents! Thou hast the ring aready!"

Mendel jumped up quite briskly, and deposited a double-handful of documents, account-books and bank pass-books of foreign appearance and exotic odour, in the hollow where the coverlet dipped between John Hazel's knees.

"A copy of your grandfather's Will is with them—" He picked out a long, tough, yellow envelope, directed in a round Levantine banking-house handwriting to "John Ben Hazaël, Esquire, London, England," and resumed: "This is it. The original is in the keeping of the old gentleman's solicitors, 'Abel Manasseh, Ephraim & Co., Rue Jerusalem, Jaffa.' Reuben,—who brought the news and the papers!—is the junior partner in the firm. There's a holograph letter from your grandfather, peace be upon him! written in Hebrew—and a sheet with a translation I have made for you, seeing that you, Eli Hazaël's heir, know nothing of the Holy Tongue!"

"His heir! ... Look here! ... You ain't talking through your hat when you say there's a goodish property?"

"Your English slang sounds unto me as Hebrew to you, a mere gibberish without sense or meaning!"—Mendel shook off the large, loose grip of the young man from his arm. "The Sons of Perdition—the Turks!—have wasted and spoiled much land that lay under cultivation; and the wine-vaults of the Colonies have been gutted, by those of them who break the Law of their Prophet,—and also by their German Allies. Also, of the money in the Deütsche Palästina little, if any, may be recovered now. But, despite this, and the provision for the females living—there is still a great property! Supposing three hundred and eighty thousand pounds British," the glowing eyes were watching John's face narrowly: "is enough to make it worth your while to live as a good Jew?"

V

"What? ... Who? ... Me! ... Great Moses in the Bulrushes!" ...

"Profane not the name of the Lawgiver," said Mendel sternly. "Is it not reasonable that the father of your father should desire you to cast off your Epicureanism, take upon you the Yoke of the Torah, and cease to become a sinner in Israel?"

"Reasonable—from his point of view! But—Me kiss a Mezuzah nailed on the doorpost, and reel off long prayers in a synagogue with my hat on—and my head wrapped in a shawl!"

"The Orthodox would respect instead of despising you."

"But my own set! What price they, I should like to know?"

"Their price—do you ask their price?" The fierce eyes flashed, the beaky nose looked capable of pecking. "For half of the great sum that is in question, there are not three among your associates—lewd men and loose women!—that would not kiss the buttocks of the Goat of Mendes, and spit upon the Cross! For they are not even Christians. They are as the brutes that perish. And you—another brute!—plant your hoofs and lay your ears back—and bite at the hand that tries to pluck you by the garment back from the brink of the bottomless Abyss!"

"Look here! ..."

Under the accusing glare of Mendel's little red-hot eyes, various deviations from the straight path of morality condoned by John as natural and even pardonable,—assumed a much less harmless character, and even took on an ugly and sinister hue....

Since John Hazel had left school at the age of eighteen, a string of young women of garish attractions and uncommonly easy virtue,—flaunting blossoms plucked by the wayside—in the City or the West End—had succeeded one another in his temporary affections. There had been several more or less quite serious entanglements, one of which had threatened to effloresce in a Divorce Case, but fortunately had not. There had been—previous to John's engagement—numberless rather rowdy jaunts; all-night Launch Parties; excursions to Pleasure Resorts: Seaside-hotel, Thames-side-hostelry-Saturday-to-Mondays,—enjoyed by John as member of an association, small, select, eclectic, expensive; rather artistic, decidedly sporting; semi-literary, slightly theatrical and wholly Bohemian in character,—rejoicing in the title of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club.

Not so out-and-out Improper, these gay and giddy galas.... Of course you couldn't take your mother to them! but you could, with a little careful editing, tell her amusing stories about them—now and then.

It was at a symposium of Club members, assembled at a riverside hostelry in the summer of 1913, that John had encountered Birdie Bright. Ostensibly a Beauty of the Chorus, Birdie, a young person of lowly origin, pronounced good looks, accommodating affections and expensive tastes in jewelry, furs, sweets and lingerie, had played the part of Zobeide to John's Harûn Er Raschid—practically until the arrival of Beryl on the scene.

She had vowed herself "broaken harted" in several despairing letters, written in an immense angular hand in ink of vivid green, upon sheets of pink ribbed note. But John had been generous—even Birdie admitted it!—as she took his advice, and put away the consolatory wad of crisp ten-pound notes that had sweetened the bitterness of parting, carefully in the Brixton Branch of a solid and reliable Bank.

Since Beryl's heartless breakage of her betrothal vows, the image of Miss Birdie Bright, previously effaced from the surface of John's heart, had revived in all its pristine charm through the whitewash that had coated it. To a letter from John in Hospital, Birdie had effusively responded—in passionate purple ink this time,—and in a bigger hand-writing than ever. The telegram appointing a day and an hour for her visit to her erstwhile lover's bedside was written, and wrapped round a half-crown in the pocket of his pyjama-jacket, in readiness for despatch.

That wire would have been sent an hour ago—had not the convalescent Sapper of Engineers—to whom belonged the next bed—gone off in such a hurry to the Pictures with his young woman that he forgot—and now Birdie would never get it! Nor would the letter enclosing John's cheque, soliciting from the Secretary of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club, re-election as a member of that interesting association, ever be posted now....

Seen through the stern medium of Old Mendel's spectacles, the periodical revels of the C.L.H.P. took on a tinge of hellishness—became a very Witches' Sabbat. And Birdie, viewed through the same merciless, unsparing lenses, became even as one of the harpies that devour young men and lead them in the Way of Destruction.

VI

"And what more is required of you, young man," the harsh voice went on croaking, "in return for this fortune, than to carry out the instructions of your elders: to follow cleanliness; to do justly; to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God! But I have done. Time does not avail for more. Study what is written on that paper I have pinned within the letter in Hebrew. I am old, and the fountain of my tears is dry, but mine eyes were moistened when the good old man entreated of his last descendant—even with his foot upon the threshold of Death.... Stay, I will read to you his letter. Listen to this!"

"John, son of John, my youngest and best-beloved! All thine elders being removed by the Will of the Most High, it falls to thee to take upon thee the Guardianship of the Sacred Ashes, and the Keeping of the Ancient Shrine. Thou wilt not refuse? Oh, child of my child!—the hand that pens this page, before my very eyes into the dust is crumbling. Wouldst thou live as long? Then be dutiful. Wouldst thou be happy? Happiness is the gift of Heaven, but a good conscience brings peace. Seek then the peace, and happiness will follow. If the dying prayer of an old man is granted, Those Others that have been before me may be permitted to guide thee in the Way wherein thou shouldst go. Farewell! Forget not to say Kaddish for thy father's father;—Eli Ben Hazaël."

The voice: not Old Mendel's croak, but a deep voice rolling out of the mist of centuries, wakening sub-conscious memories, thrilling along the nerves to energise long-atrophied cells in the listener's brain, ceased: and the icy thrills left off coursing down John Hazel's spinal column, and his strong, wiry hair left off bristling and lay down. The paper crackled as it was thrust once more into the envelope, and tossed back upon John's lap. John said, clearing his throat and speaking with some degree of huskiness:

"I don't quite tumble to the meaning of all this about the Guardianship of the Ashes and the Keeping of the Shrine, but, of course, I'd say Kaddish for him—like a bird—if I knew it! I'm not quite such a howling brute as you seem to think! Didn't you make me say it for my father when I was a little kid in petticoats? I seem to remember something of the kind."

"Well, if I did, was it not a good deed? But now that you are man grown you have cast off the faith of your fathers. And Kaddish cannot lawfully be said by one who is not a Jew! When you have made up your mind whether you will be a rich Jew—or a heathen no better off than many others—write to me at your uncle's Hull address!" Mendel, who had resumed his seat, snapped his mouth shut, and snapped shut the calfskin bag—and stood up and went on—in the act of buttoning the single-breasted brown great-coat. "As to the Shrine, it's at Alexandria, and the Ashes are naturally where the Shrine is—not that I've any information to give you on that point. But the other—less sacred obligation—you may discharge as soon as you see fit. The accounts and the documents touching Kir Saba—some of them are very old and should be handled carefully!—must be taken to Scotland and delivered to the representatives of the original mortgagor, whose address is there written—by no other hands than your own. A gift of five hundred pounds English has been bequeathed you by your grandfather,—without further condition than that you render him this service. The cash will be paid you by a cheque upon London as soon as I receive the receipt for the documents. You will naturally not part with them without receiving this acknowledgment. Take care! Haven't I warned you?"

John's big fingers were prying into a flat wallet of mouldy parchment sewn with something like ancient silkworm-gut, and containing an oblong of crumbly brown....

"What on earth is it? ... It looks like seaweed.... Or an old felt sole out of somebody's boot! ..."

"It is the original Title Deed of the Tower of Kirjath Saba and the lands about it, granted by the Emperor Vespasian to the Tribune Justus Martius, of the Tenth Roman Legion: on the tenth day of the month of Ab—that is, August, in the second year of his reign."

"My holy hat! That was Anno Domini 70, when the Romans under Titus took the Temple at Jerusalem and burnt—"

"Not burned but demolished, according to Josephus—the walls of the Upper City alone being left standing—to shelter the garrison chosen from the Roman Tenth Legion!—together with the three great towers built by Herod—in order to demonstrate to Posterity how glorious a city had been cast down.... Woe! for the madness and the wickedness of the Pagans. Alas! for the Sacred City, a chattel in the hands of the filthy unbeliever even to this day! Who shall restore the glory of Jerusalem, or give back life to the dead place, or cleanse the robe of snowy wool that hath been defiled by pitch?"

"I've heard you reel off things like this before, haven't I, when I was a little beggar? I say! Do you know this rotten old sheepskin is pretty well priceless? Why, it's about one thousand eight hundred and forty-five years old! Those Johnnies at the British Museum would hand over a pot of cash for it."

"Have I not told you to lose no time in returning the document to its owner? Let him deal with it as he will! There is another parchment, the original Deed of Mortgage dated in your Christian Era 1146. Money was lent by Issachar Ben Hazaël, of Joppa (they spell it 'Jaffa' in these days)—to the Mortgagor, Sir Hugh Forbys, (they write his name 'Hew'), Knight, and lord of the Strong Tower of Kir Saba, in return for the right of user of the Tower, with its groves, gardens, springs and vineyards; and all the 'purtnans' for the 'makyn of wine.' When the cash with the interest, should be recovered, the Title-Deed was to be given back to Forbys.... These later records continue unbroken up to the June of the Christian year 1914. Examine them at your leisure. They are faithfully translated and clearly typed."

John answered and said unto the aged man, not being unmindful of the bequest of £500.

"You make my head spin, chuckling about centuries as though they were marbles! But I give you my word of honour, I'll swot all the documents up. When have I to go down to hand them over to these Scotch people? ... I suppose they do have some sort of a name?" ...

"They are a family of high repute and ancient standing on the Border. The Forbis of Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, N.B. Have you at any time heard of them?"

"Never in my natural! They seem to have been thunderingly pally with us Hazels somewhere about the Bronze Age.... Do you know 'em at all?" ...

"Ask not foolish questions. What are the people to me? For a reason that the documents will clearly explain to you, they have had no intercourse with your family since the time of the Seventh Crusade."

"I wonder whether they'll be likely to know me when they see me?"

"Be not a Schlemihl! Where is the ring?"

"Which ring? You know, my head is fairly buzzing with all this business! ... You've dropped on me like a sandbag out of an Observation Rupert. Here—I've got it! Some ring!" ...

"It is a black onyx, a Greek gem of price, carved with a head of the Pagan Hercules and in an ancient setting of gold. It was given to your ancestor, Hazaël Aben Hazaël, by the Roman Prætor Philoremus Florens Fabius, at Alexandria, in the reign of the Pagan Emperors Diocletian and Maximianus—about the beginning of the fourth century of the Christian Era." Mendel added as John groaned again at this fresh evidence of antiquity, "This signet now belongs to you as head of the House of Hazaël. Let me see you put it on the third finger of your right hand!"

John obeyed. The great ring fitted the big finger as though it had been made for it. The intaglio, worn thin by time and chipped at the edges, was still beautiful, and though the tiny Greek letters at the lower left-hand corner signified nothing to its new owner—the signed work of a master-hand. John commented:

"He must have been a hefty chap, that old Hazaël!"

Mendel responded, buttoning up the brown overcoat:

"Your race have always been noted for breeding men of extraordinary strength and stature. There is a fellow-ring to this, I am given to understand, in the possession of the Forbis family. It is in high relief, this being the intaglio. Remember, you will bequeath the signet to your elder son, after you: as an heirloom which must always be in the possession of the chief male of the line."

"Carrying on as though one was Rob Roy M'Gregor," John remarked mentally. Then as Mendel made a strangle-knot in the purple woollen comforter, adjusted his mittens and was about to re-lock the brown bag:

"Here," he said suddenly, "you had better keep this for putting those papers in. Can't leave them lying about on the bed! It's a bit old, like me, and the worse for wear, like both of us. But I shan't improve, and you're getting over the wound you got"—he jerked his thumb as indicating a locality,—"over there. In the trenches. In Belgium."

John explained at some length, Mendel seeming to expect it—that the bit of shrapnel in his lung-tissue was of exceedingly small size. That the symptoms of slight pain and breathlessness which had persisted long after the healing of the chest-wound, had almost vanished under treatment which had involved absolute rest: the avoidance of talking; a sitting position maintained constantly, and small but frequent doses of morphia.

"Morphia, eh? Dangerous stuff. Done with it now, let's hope!" said Mendel jerkily. "Put back the papers in the bag when I've gone, and mind you always keep it locked! Look here!—I've left you the key. And so you're convalescent!" He went on in quite a different tone, suggesting that he had only dropped in to inquire about the patient's health about five minutes previously: "Well, well! And going out of Hospital in another week—I think you said?"

"Not quite that, I didn't say!" pronounced John in his English. "The C.M.O. pronounces me Posh, and the Military Medical Examination Board'll be sure to certify me Fit for Service. I expect to be drafted out to the Mediterranean pretty shortly—my battalion of the Regiment having got transferred to the Eastern Expeditionary Force."

"Say not to Gallipoli, that shambles whither British soldiers are sent as sheep to the slaughter! Stay, I babble foolishly! Have I not knowledge that the British forces were yesterday withdrawn?"

"The hell you have! Why, where did you get it?"

"I made no reference to the Place of Burning. As to my knowledge, it is common to the elders among our people: a nation that received enlightenment from the Most High in dreams and visions, when the naked woad-daubed savages of these British Isles were howling to the Moon.... Make not calf's eyes at me! ... Did not naked savages cry news for hundreds of miles from hill-top to hill-top in the War with the Booren!—and was not the murder of the Gentile General Gordon at Khartoum known within the hour to the idolaters in Damascus! What I tell you is—there is no doubt at all!"

"But—but—they don't say a word about it in the papers!"

"Prrtsch! Is not that what the papers are for? And now, when do you think to get back to business? I mean business in the City—not that of killing other men. Though, as to the slaying of enemies," added Mendel, with strange yellow fire burning under his shaggy eyebrows, "the Kings and warriors of Hebrew race have slain when slaying was necessary. Saul his thousands and David his tens of thousands and Joshua—who knows how many hundreds of thousands of the Amorites and Canaanites! Nay, in your own veins there runs the blood of famous men of battle. You should inherit, with your frame and muscles, a measure of their fighting blood."