Just now the insatiable gold fountain-pen from whence our indefatigable Lady Correspondent derived her literary pseudonym, was employed in recording merest gossip, in the absence of the longed-for opportunity for its wielder to prove herself the equal, if not the superior, of Dora Corr. Dora was the woman Lady Hannah admired and envied above all others. Colonial Editor to The Thunderbolt, War Correspondent, financial expert, political leader-writer, and diplomatic go-between when Cabinet Ministers and Empire-builders would arrive at understandings, the serfdom of sex, the trammels of the petticoat, may have been said to weigh as lightly upon this thrice-fortunate spinster as though it were no drawback to be a daughter of Eve.
Oh! prayed Lady Hannah, for the chance of proving that another woman can equal this brilliant feminine Phœnix! Meanwhile her bright eyes and quick sense of humour took note of the toilettes of some of her guests, wives and daughters of notable citizens who had not hurried South at the first mutterings of the storm. The purple satin worn by the Mayoress tickled her no less than the unfeigned horror of its wearer when offered from her hostess's châtelaine cigarette-case the choicest of Sobranies. Lady Hannah's laugh was the rattling of a mischievous boy's stick across his sister's piano-wires, and the metallic jangle preceded her assurance that everybody did it – all women in Society, at least, and you were thought odd if you didn't. After dinner, in the most exclusive houses, the most rigid of hostesses invariably allowed their women guests to smoke. They knew people worth having wouldn't come if they weren't allowed to.
"Never beneath my roof!" gasped the shocked and scandalised wearer of the purple splendours demanded of the wife of a Chief Magistrate. "Never at my table!" Of course, the agitated Mayoress went on to say, one had heard of the doings of the Smart Set. But one had hoped it wasn't true, or, at least, had been very much exaggerated by "writing-people." The Mayoress, though a mild woman, had her sting.
Lady Hannah, immensely tickled to find the morals of Bayswater rampant, as she afterwards expressed it, in the centre of South Africa, cackled as she helped herself to a second liqueur-glass of Nixey's excellent apricot-brandy. Small, thin, restless, she presented a parched appearance, with bright, round, beady eyes continually roving in search of information from beneath the straggling fringe of a crumpled Pompadour transformation, for those horrors had recently become fashionable, and the whole world of women were vying with one another in the simulation of the criminal type of skull, with the Dolichocephalic Bulge.
"My dear lady, tobacco-ash is an excellent thing for killing moth in carpets, and Time, – when one is compelled to bestow it upon dull people; and a perfectly healthy, Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortable lodger. But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, it's a question how long both British institutions remain intact, with those big guns getting into position round us…" She waved her small hand, its once well-tended nails superbly ignored, its sun-cracks neglected, its load of South African diamonds coruscating magnificently in the light of Nixey's electric bulbs, and shrugged her thin, vivacious shoulders.
The entrance of the gentlemen relieved the situation. Lady Hannah jumped up and rushed at the Colonel. "As if she meant to eat the man," the Mayoress said afterwards, in the shadow of that threatened roof. But, impervious to the entreaty of the bright black eyes and the glittering hand that gesticulated with the urgent fan, he bowed, smiled, said a few pleasant words to his hostess, and walked "straight across" – as the Mayoress afterwards confided to the Mayor – to take a seat beside the large, placid, matronly figure palpitating in purple satin on an imported Maple sofa.
Pleased and flattered, she made room for him, while Lady Hannah became the gossip-centre of a knot of Mess uniforms…
"Both babies well?" It would have been unlike him not to have remembered that he had seen children at her house. "Hammy and Berta made great friends with me the other day… Tell them I haven't forgotten the promise to rummage up some odd native toys I picked up in Rhodesia – made of mud and feathers and bits of fur and queerly-shaped seed-pods – the most enchanting collection of birds and beasts that ever came out of the Ark. And the Makalaka have a legend about a big flood and a wise old man who built a house of reeds and skins that floated… The North American Indians will tell you that it was a Big Medicine Canoe, and amongst the tribes of the Nilghiri Hills you find exactly the same story that the Chaldean scribes wrote on their tablets of clay. To-day in Eastern Kurdistan they'll point you out the peak on which the Ark grounded. The Armenians hold it was Ararat… It's curious how the root-legend crops up everywhere…"
"But of course it must." Her good, calm eyes showed surprise, and her broad, white, matronly bosom was a little fluttered. "Doesn't the Bible teach us that the Deluge covered the whole earth? Even Hammy and Berta can tell you the whole story about Noah, and the raven – and the dove."
He smoothed his moustache with a palm that wiped the smile out.
"I must get them to tell it me one of these days." The twinkle in his eye was not to be repressed. "It would save such a deal of trouble to believe there was only one Noah, and only one Ark, don't you know?"
Her motherly bosom panted.
"My children shall never believe anything else!"
He was grave and sympathetic, though a muscle in his thin cheek twitched.
"I believe the toy Ark of our happy childish memories is built, if not of gopher-wood, at least upon the lines laid down in Scripture. Has Hammy ever tried to get his to float? Mine invariably used to sink – straight to the bottom of the bath. Perhaps that continually-recurrent catastrophe had something to do with the sapping of my infant faith, or the establishment of a sinking-fund of doubt regarding the veracity of the Noachian reporter?"
She leaned towards him, her placid grey eyes dilating with pity for this man.
"You ought to come and sit under our minister Mr. Oddris, on Sundays. Pray do. He would convince you if anybody could. Such an eloquent, able, well-informed man, and so truly pious and brave!"
The laugh perforce escaped him. The convincing Apostle Oddris had called on him at official headquarters that day, to inquire whether, as the said Oddris's wife and children were going to the Women's Laager, his place as a husband and father was not by their side? Being informed that able-bodied male beings were not included in the list of the defenceless, he had become importunate in the matter of at least a bomb-proof shelter to be erected in his back-yard.
"I had rather sit under Hammy and hear about Noah, with Berta on the other knee."
Her heart went out wholly to him… 'Out of the mouths of babes.' … Wasn't that one of the texts with promise?..
"You love children?"
"Bless the little beggars!" he said heartily, "they're the jolliest company in the world."
She leaned towards him, palpitating between her shyness of the Commander of the Garrison and her womanly curiosity to know more about the man.
"Hammond – the Mayor has told me – I hope it is not indiscreet to mention it – that the first thing you did, on joining your regiment in India as a young subaltern, was to gather all the European children in cantonments together and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' on the flute."
His brow grew black as thunder. The utterance came, terse and sharp.
"Ma'am, you have been gravely misinformed."
She jumped in terror.
"Oh!.. Can it be?.. Colonel, I do so beg you to forgive me! Let me assure you that neither the Mayor nor myself will ever again repeat the story."
"Ma'am, if you do …"
"But I promise, never …"
"Ma'am, if you never do, at least remember that the flute was an ocarina."
He left the good soul in an ecstasy of giggles, and crossed to Lady Hannah. She welcomed him with a glitter of eyes and teeth and discovered