The Dop Doctor

"The Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp has an orphan ward, a singularly lovely girl of nineteen or twenty, whose surname is Mildare. And it struck me just now – I don't know why now, and never before – that she might be – "

"Bough never said nothing to me about any girl. What like is this one?" Van Busch twisted the ring about his little finger, and spoke with a more sluggish lisp and slurring of the consonants than even was usual with him. "Is she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, and red cheeks and thick ankles?"

Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience of Van Busch, had not yet mastered his method of eliciting information.

"Miss Mildare is absolutely the opposite of your description," she declared. "She is quite tall, and very slight and pale, with slender hands and feet, and reddish-bronze hair, and eyes the colour of yellow topaz or old honey, with wonderful black lashes… I have never seen anything to compare – " She stopped.

What strange eyes the man had, full of lines radiating from the pin-point pupils, scintillating like a snake's… He said, in his thick, lisping way:

"A beauty, eh? And how long might the nuns have had her?"

"The Mayor's wife told me she has been under the care of the Convent ladies for some seven years."

His brown full face looked solid, and his eyes veiled themselves behind a glassy film. He was thinking, as he said:

"And her name is Mildare, eh? And you know her?"

"I have met her once. She was introduced to me as Miss Lynette Mildare. But just now I find my own affairs unpleasantly absorbing. I am suspected in this place, Mr. Van Busch, and if not actually a prisoner, am certainly under restraint. For how much money down will you undertake to extricate me from this position, and convey me back to Gueldersdorp?"

He shook his head, and for once the scent of gain did not rouse his predatory appetite. He was wondering how it should never have occurred to him before that the scared little white-faced thing might have fallen into kindly hands, and been nursed and cockered up and made a lady of? He was puzzled to account for her remembering the name that had belonged to the man whose grave was at the foot of the Little Kopje. He was conscious of an itching curiosity to find out for his friend Bough whether it really was the Kid or no? What was the little fool of a woman saying in her shrill voice?

"It would be burning your boats, I am quite aware. But if it pays to burn them – " she suggested, with her black eyes probing vainly in the shallow ones.

He roused himself.

"A thousand pounds, English. You've not the money here?"

"No."

"Or a cheque?"

Her laugh jangled contemptuously.

"Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books – upon Secret Service?"

"I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have I to tell you that? Do you suppose you are a prisoner here because I slewed on you? Wrong, by God! Perhaps I kept things back a bit for fear you would cut up, as women do, and go into screeching-fits. Sure now, that's what any man would have done." His tone of injury was excellently feigned, and his lisp was simplicity itself. "And to call me a dirty spy, when I got you first-hand information, and ran your letters through to Gueldersdorp, at the risk of my blooming neck… Well, you'll be ashamed when you get back there and see those letters, that's what you will, sure!"

"The letters got through – yes. But did they get through in time to be of use?"

The little she-devil suspected the truth. He stroked his whiskers and scraped his foot upon the floor, and said in his blandest lisp:

"They got through in useful time. I'll kiss the Book and swear it, if you want me."

How deal with a knave like this, who popped in and out of holes like a rabbit, and wriggled and writhed like a snake? Lady Hannah knew an immense yearning for the absent Bingo, husband of limited intellectual capacity, man of superior muscular development, doughty in the use of that primitive weapon of punishment, the doubled human fist.

"In useful time? Useful Gueldersdorp time or useful Tweipans time? That is what I want to get at."

"Oh, hell! how do I know?" He had turned sulky and scowling, but her blood was fairly up.

"I know that you have successfully swindled me out of five hundred pounds. I know that when I met you on the train four months back you shaped your plans and baited a trap – "

"To catch a silly woman." His scarlet lips rolled back from his tobacco-stained teeth. His jeering eyes were intolerable. "Ay, maybe I did. And what's to say now?"

"I say you are a blackguard, Mr. Bough Van Busch!"

The dark face with the light eyes underwent a murderous change. He glanced over his shoulders right and left, and took a step towards her, carrying out the movement suddenly, as a tarantula darts upon its prey. Before the thick brown muscular fingers had choked the scream that rose in her throat, the key crashed in the lock, and the door was violently kicked open, admitting …

No portrait is required of that burly, bald-browed, sharp-eyed, grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed and sun-cracked countenance, implacable under the slouch-hat with the orange-leather band. We know the old green overcoat, and coarse corduroy breeches, and roughly tanned leather boots, with heavy, old-fashioned spurs, to have been the husk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, twinned with a quiet family-man of bucolic tastes and patriarchal habits.

Van Busch, broader by inches and taller by half a head, dwindled, seen in juxtaposition with this man of the iron will and the leader's temperament, to a flabby, dwarfish, and petty being. The fierce grey eyes took him in, and read him, and dropped him, and fastened on the little Englishwoman, as the great boots tramped heavily across the floor, and the great voice roared, speaking in the Taal:

"Pull up that blind! Voor den donder! Shall we be mice, that sit and squeak in the dark?"

Down came the Mevrouw Kink's square of glazed yellow calico, roller, cord, and all, at the impatient wrench of the big, heavy hand… The window was blocked with heavy bodies, topped by brown, white, or yellow faces; the street was a sea of them, all staring with greedy, curious eyes at the little Englishwoman who was a prisoner, and the big man who ruled them by Fear. His angry grey eyes blazed at the gapers, and the crowd surged back a foot or two. Then the fierce eyes darted back at pale Lady Hannah, and the roaring voice began again:

"You who came here in disguise, with a false story and false hair – "

Lady Hannah jumped in her bedroom slippers, and crimsoned to her natural coiffure, as the missing transformation, appallingly out of wave, was plucked from the baggy pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandished before her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual impulse to shriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a conscience-stricken creature in that great man's watchful eyes. His big voice shook her and shook the room as he thundered:

"Woman, you are no widow of a Duitscher drummer, but the vrouw of a field-cornet of the Army of Groot Brittanje. He holds a graafschap in Engeland" – a mistake on the part of the General's informant – "and is hand-in-glove with the Colonel Commandant at Gueldersdorp." Not so far from the truth! thought Lady Hannah. "Would he spy out the land, let him come himself next time. Boers hide not behind their wives' petticoats when there is such business to be done!"

In defence of blameless Bingo the hysterical little woman found voice to say:

"He – didn't know I was coming."

"What says she?"

Before Van Busch could bestir himself to interpret, Lady Hannah had repeated her words in faulty Dutch.

"So! Engelsch mevrouws disobey their husbands, it seems?" Were the fierce, bloodshot grey eyes really capable of a twinkle? "We Boers have a cure for that. Green reim, well laid on, after the third caution, teaches our wives to fib and deceive no more."

"You're wrong, sir."

"Wrong, do you say? Hoe?"

"What the green reim does teach them," explained Lady Hannah, secretly aghast at her own temerity, "is, not to be found out next time."

He gave a wooden chuckle, but his regard was as menacing and his voice as gruff as ever.

"I make no mouth-play with words. I talk in men and guns, and there are half a dozen among the Engelsch, niet mier, that know how to talk back. There are one or two others that are duyvels, and not men. And the worst duyvel of all" – he waved the big hand westward – "is he over there at Gueldersdorp."

She mentally registered the compliment.

"You are a woman who writes for the Engelsch newspapers that are full of shameless tales about the Boers." He spat copiously upon the floor, and the big voice became a bellow. "Lies, lies! I have had them read to me, and the people who make them should be shot. Hear you now. You shall write to them and say: 'Selig Brounckers is a merciful man and a just. He is not as zwart as he is painted. He caught me mousing round his hoofd laager at Tweipans – and what does he do?'" The pause was impressive. Then the roaring voice resumed:

"'He sends me marching down to the gaol at Groenfontein, that is packed with dirty white and dirty coloured schelms until there is not room for one more – "

He named the homely parasite hymned by Burns …

– "'Or he packs me up to Oom Paul at Pretoria, chained to the waggon-tail like the others.' …"

Lady Hannah wondered, while the stuffy room spun round her, who the others were.

"Geen, I will tell you what he does." He pitched the crumpled transformation contemptuously into the corner. "He writes to the Engelsch Commandant at Gueldersdorp and says: 'I have here a silly female thing that is no use to me. Take her you, and give me in exchange a man of mine.' …"

"And he … what does …?" She could get out nothing more.

"He agrees. Mevrouw Vrynks" – "Dutch for Wrynche," thought Lady Hannah dizzily – "you will now pay the Mevrouw Kink what is owing for her amiable entertainment, and you will start for Gueldersdorp in ten minutes' time."

The roaring voice of the stern, fierce-eyed man, sounded lovelier than the swan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, with her joyful heart leaping at the gates of utterance:

"The – mare and spider. You will be so kind as to return them – ?"

His face became as a human countenance rudely carved in seasoned oak.

"I know nothing of a mare and spider," blared the great voice.

She looked him straight between the hot fierce eyes, and spoke out pluckily.

"They are not my property. I hired the trap and the trotter from a hotel-keeper at Gueldersdorp. And Mr. Van Busch tells me that they have recently been commandeered for the service of the United Forces of the Transvaal and Orange Free State."

"So!.. Well, that is what I would have done, if they were worth having. Where is Van Busch?" The angry glance pounced on that patriot in the remote corner to which he had modestly retired. Van Busch cringed forwards, hat in hand, explaining:

"The English Mevrouw mistakes, Myjnheer. Sure, now, I never told her anything of that kind. How could I, when there was no mare and no spider? Didn't I drive her and the other woman over from Haargrond, with Bough's little beast pulling in a cart of my own? Call the other woman, and she will tell you it was as I say."

Lady Hannah, supremely disdainful, turned her back upon the liar…

"So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld waggon?" demanded the bullying voice.

"I'm willing to go back in anything that isn't a coffin," she declared.

He gave the wooden chuckle, swung about and trampled to the door, calling to Van Busch in the tone of a dog's master:

"Here, you …!"

Van Busch followed, wriggling as obsequiously as the dog with a stolen mutton-chop upon his conscience. The door slammed, the key turned roughly in the lock. Lady Hannah, oblivious of the absence of outdoor footwear, flew joyously to cram a few belongings into her travelling-bag and resume her discarded hat.

Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted away upon his appearance, General Selig Brounckers was saying to Van Busch:

"It is a pity that the Engelschwoman's story was not true about that mare and spider. For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhaps have kept them for your trouble – "

– "Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant," said Van Busch in a hurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has a mouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider stands under the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let Bough know Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have them. He'll make no bones about parting then. Sure, no! he'll never dare to."

"I will send a couple of my burghers with you to take care he does not," said the Commandant, in what was for the redoubtable Brounckers an easy tone. "It is unlucky," he added less pleasantly, "that you were such a verdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I had commandeered both beast and vehicle for Republics' use. Because now I will do it, look you! No Boer's son that lives, by the Lord! will I suffer to make Selig Brounckers out a liar." He added, as Van Busch salaamed and squirmed with more than Oriental submissiveness, "Least of all a sneaking Africander schelm like you. And now, about the money?"

"Excellentie – " lisped Van Busch, smiling his oily brown face into ingratiating creases …

"I am no Excellentie… Of how much money, properly belonging to the Republics' war-chest, have you cheated this little fool of an Engelschwoman?"

"Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant," bleated Van Busch, "I had from her one hundred and fifty pounds, which I swear as an honest man has been handed over to Myjnheer Blinders – "

"He has accounted to me."

"Five weeks back – ?" Van Busch hinted.

"He has accounted for it five weeks back."

There are men who possess all the will to be rogues, but have not the requisite courage. Such a man was Blinders, who emerged plus a sweetheart, the approval of his Commandant, and the éclat of having chaffed the British Lion, out of the affair that was to prove so expensive to Mr. Van Busch.

"And" – the big voice trumpeted, as Van Busch, like a stout pinned butterfly, quivered, transfixed by the glare of the savage eyes – "you will now account to me for the rest."

Van Busch faltered with a sickly smile:

"Fifty more, Myjnheer, that I was bringing you myself – "

"One hundred and fifty you have paid me, and fifty you were going to pay me. Ik wil het – but where are the other hundreds you have paid Van Busch?" bellowed the roaring voice. "Does not my old man-baboon at home pouch six walnuts for every one that his wife gets to share with her youngster? When I want to make the big thief spit them out, I squeeze him by the neck. So, voor den donder! will I do to you. Only, geloof mij, I will not do it in play. Pay Blinders the other five hundred pounds before kerk-time. If you haven't got the cash about you, he and young Schenk Eybel shall ride with you to Haargrond, where lives your friend Bough. They can bring back the money and the mare and spider, too. Moreover, Eybel, who is a bright boy, and has a head upon his shoulders, wants a slim rogue of a fellow that talks Engelsch to worm himself in over yonder" – he jerked his gnarled thumb in the direction of Gueldersdorp – "and bring back a plan of the defences on the west, where the native stad lies. Perhaps I will let you keep two hundred of that five hundred if you are the man to go… But whether you go or stay, by the Lord! you will find it best to be square with Selig Brounckers."

And the redoubtable Brounckers stumped off. Verily, in times of scarcity, when the lion is a-hungered, the jackal must lose his bone.

It would be well, thought the dispirited jackal ruefully, to remove the unfavourable impression made, by a valuable service rendered to the United Republics. It would be a good thing to stand well with Myjnheer Schenk Eybel, who would, when Brounckers went south, be left in sole command. It would be as well, also, to get a look at that girl that was living with the nuns at Gueldersdorp.

"Mildare …" That was the puzzle – her having the name so pat. But these little frightened, white-faced things were sly, and kids remembered more than you thought for…

Grown up a beauty, too, and with the manners of a lady. He swore again, the thing seemed so incredible, and spat upon the dust. A pretty green shining beetle crawled there. He set his heavy foot upon the insect, and its beauty was no more.

XXXVII

As the Captain's heavy cavalry stride shakes Nixey's roof, the upright, lightly-built soldierly figure in khâki turns and comes towards him, giving the binoculars in charge to the Sergeant-Major of Irregulars, who is his orderly of the day.

"I want a word with you, Wrynche. Rawlings will take the glasses. Come in here under cover."

He leads the way. The cover is a canvas shelter, perhaps a protection from the blazing sun, but none at all from shell and bullets. There are a couple of wooden chairs under its flimsy spread and a little table. The Chief sits down astride on one of the chairs, accepts a cigar from Captain Bingo's enormous crocodile-leather case, and says, as the first ring of blue smoke goes wavering upwards:

"You'll be glad to know that Monboia's Barala runner has got through with good news for you." The last two words are rather strongly emphasised. "Just before dawn and after Beauvayse relieved you at Staff Bombproof South."

Captain Bingo swallows violently, runs a thick finger round inside his collar, and his big face goes through several changes of complexion, ranging from boiled suet-dumpling paleness to beetroot red. He looks away and blinks before he says in a voice that wobbles:

"Then my wife's – all right?"

"Lady Hannah and her German attendant, as far back as the day before yesterday, when Monboia's man saw them, were in the enjoyment of excellent health."

"Poof!" Captain Bingo blows a genuine sigh of relief, and the latent lugubriousness departs from him. "Good hearing. I've had – call it hippopotamus on the chest this two months, and you'll about hit the mark. Uncertainty and suspense get on a man's nerves, in the long-run. Bound to. And never a word – the deuce a line – all these – Poof!" He blows again, and beams. The Colonel, watching him out of the corner of one keen eye, says, with a twitching muscle in the cheek that is turned away from him:

"My good news being told, I have a slice of bad for you. But first let me make an admission. Since Nixey's pony pulled Nixey's spider out of Gueldersdorp with Lady Hannah and her maid in it, I have had three communications from your wife."

"You're pullin' my leg, sir, ain't you?" queries Bingo doubtfully.

"Not a bit of it."

In confirmation of the statement he takes out a shabby pocket-book, fat with official documents, and, unstrapping it, selects three, and hands them to Bingo. They are flimsy sheets of tissue-paper covered with spidery characters in violet ink, and Bingo, taking them, recognises the handwriting, and is, as he states without hesitation, confoundedly flabbergasted.

"For they are in my wife's wild scrawl," he splutters at last. "How on earth did they reach you, sir?"

"The first was brought in by a native boy who said he belonged to the kraals at Tweipans," says the Chief. "Boiled small and stuffed into a quill stuck through his ear in the usual way. He trumped up a glib story about his cow having been killed and his new wife beaten by Brounckers' men, and his desire to be revenged, and oblige the English lady who'd been kind to him – "

"Umph! Native gratitude don't run to being skinned alive with sjamboks – not much!" the other comments. "Chap must have been lyin', or a kind of nigger Phœnix."

"Exactly. So I couldn't find it in my heart to part with him. He's on the coloured side of the gaol now, with two others, who subsequently landed in with the documents you have in hand there."

"Am I to read 'em?" Bingo queries.

His commanding officer nods, with the muscle in his lean cheek twitching.

"Certainly. Aloud, if you'll be so good."

Bingo reads, with haltings on the way, for the tissue sheets stick to his large fingers, which are damp with suppressed agitation:

"Haargrond Plaats,"Near Tweipans,"October 30th."To the Colonel Commanding Her Majesty's Forces inGueldersdorp

"Sir, – I beg to report myself arrived at the above address, twelve miles distant from the head laager of the Boer Commandant, General Brounckers. I have to inform you that an attack will be made on Maxim Kopje South by a large force of the enemy with guns in the beginning of November.

"I have the honour to be,"On Secret Service,"Yours most obediently,"H. Wrynche."

Bingo stares blankly at his Chief, the sheets of crumpled tissue wavering between his thick, agitated fingers.

"I got that letter exactly a week after the attack had been made and successfully resisted," says the Colonel's dry, quiet voice. "Read the four lines in a different hand and ink, that are underlined at the bottom, and tell me what you think of 'em."

Bingo obeyed, and read:

"Lady's information perfectly correct. We hope this intelligence will reach you in time to be useful.

"I have the honour to be, "P. Blinders,"Acting-Secretary to General"Brounckers."

"By the Living Tinker!" exploded Bingo.

"Don't be prodigal of emotion," the Colonel's quiet voice warns the excited husband. "There are two more letters following. Read 'em in the proper sequence. That one with the inky design at the top, that might be the pattern for a pair of fancy pyjamas – that's the next."

Bingo reads as follows:

"Kink's Hotel,"Tweipans,"November 28th."To the Colonel Commanding H. M. Forces in Gueldersdorp

"Sir, – I beg to report myself arrived at Tweipans. I have the honour to enclose herewith a sketch-plan of the village and the disposition of General Brounckers' laager. Trusting you may find it useful,

"I have the honour to be,"On Secret Service,"Yours most obediently,"H. Wrynche."

The sarcastic P. Blinders had appended an italicised comment:

"His Honour considers the above sketch-plan remarkably faithful. The building next the Gerevormed Kerk, indicated by an X, is the gaol. Comfortable cells at your disposal, which we are keeping vacant.

"P. Blinders."

"D-a-a – "

The Chief does not happen to be looking Bingo's way as the infuriated husband menaces with a large clenched fist an imaginary countenance attached to the conjectural personality of the sportive P. Blinders.

"Swear – it will bring the blood down from your head," advises the dry, quiet voice. "But don't tear up the papers! – they're too amusing to lose."

"Amusin'!" growls Bingo, with smarting eyes, and a lumpy throat, and a tingling in his large muscles which P. Blinders, being out of reach, can afford to provoke. "You wouldn't think it amusin', sir, if it were your wife, making herself a – a figure of fun for those Dutch bounders to shy at."

This is the third letter:

"December 23rd."To the Colonel Commanding, Gueldersdorp

"Sir, – I have to report that the sortie you have planned to take place on the morning of the 26th, for the capture of the enemy's big gun, is known to General Brounckers, and that the menaced position will be strengthened and manned to resist you.

"Obediently,"H. Wrynche."

Underneath is the sarcastic comment:

"December 27th.

"Nice if you had got this in time, eh? And we wanted those boots and badges.

"P. B."

"She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway," says Captain Bingo, blowing his nose emphatically; "and – by the Living Tinker! if it had reached us in time, we'd have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, and twenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' into the bargain."

"Perhaps," says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow on the keen, sagacious face, and both men are silent, remembering an assault the desperate, reckless valour of which deserves to be bracketed in memory with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, "If Defeat is ever shame, perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the question to each of that handful of brave men sleeping side by side over there" – he nods in the direction of the Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest has sprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses – "they would tell you it can be more glorious than victory."