THE "FINIS" MESSAGE
The storm had not decreased its violence when, three minutes later, Salt
stood unperceived on the broad coping outside an upper storey of the
tower, and, sinking forward into the teeth of the gale, was borne
upwards with rigid wings as a kite ascends.
In accordance with his instructions the two searchlights had turned
their beams steadily earthward for the time, and in the absolute
blackness of the upper air he could pass over the firing lines of
friends and foes in comparative safety. As he rose higher and higher
before turning to scud before the wind, he saw, as on a plan, the whole
field of operations, just distinguishable in its masses of grey and
black, with the points of interest revealing themselves by an occasional
flash. Immediately beneath him, beneath him at first, but every second
drawing away to the south-west as he drifted in the gale he breasted,
lay Hanwood, with its three outer lines of defence. From above it seemed
as though a very bright needle was every now and then thrust out from
the walls into the dark night and drawn back again. On each of the
platforms D and E two 4.7-inch quick-firing guns appeared to be rocking
slightly in the wind. By all the indication there was of smoke or noise,
or even flame, the gunners might have been standing idly behind their
shields; but over the steep scarp of the little hill, a mile and a half
away, shells were being planted every ten yards or so, with the
methodical regularity of a farmer dropping potatoes along a furrow.
Salt might not have quite expected that there would be the necessity to
fire those guns when, a year before, he had obtained for Hanwood its
complement of the finest artillery that the world produced, but when the
necessity did arise, there was no need for the League gunners to use
black powder.
When he had reached the height he required, simply leaning against the
wind, Salt moved a pinion slightly and bore heavily towards the right.
It was the supreme moment for the trial of skill, as the long flight
that followed it was the trial of endurance. If his nerve had failed, if
a limb had lost its tension for the fraction of a second, his brain
reeled amidst that tearing fury of the element, or a single ring or
swivel not answered to its work, he would have been crumpled up
hopelessly, beyond the chance of recovery, and flung headlong to the
earth. As it was, the wind swept him round in a great half circle, but
it was the wind his servant, not his master, and he turned its lusty
violence to serve his ends. He caught a passing glimpse of the coppice
whence the attack had first been opened; he saw beneath him the line of
guns ensconced behind the hill, one already overturned and centred in
confusion; and then the sweeping arc reached its limit, and he came, as
it seemed, to anchor in mid-air, with the earth slipping away beneath
him as the banks glide past a smoothly-moving train, and a thousand
weights and forces dragging at his aching arms.
He had nothing to do but to maintain a perfect balance among the
conflicting cross winds that shot in from above and below, and from
north and south, and to point his course towards the glow in the sky
that marked the Capital. A dozen words could express it, but it required
the skill of the practised wingman, the highest development of every
virile quality, and the spur of a necessity not less than life and
death, to dignify the attempt above the foolhardy. Whether beyond all
that the accomplishment lay within the bounds of human endurance was a
further step. It would at that time have been impossible to pronounce
either way with any authority, for not only had the attempt never been
made, but nothing approaching the attempt had been made. A breeze that
ran five miles an hour was considered enough for any purpose; to take to
the air when the anemometer indicated fifteen miles an hour was not
allowed at the practice grounds, and the record in this direction lay
with an expert who had accomplished a straight flight in a wind that
travelled a little less than thirty miles an hour. The storm on the
night of the 15th of January tore across the face of the land with a
general velocity of fifty or sixty miles an hour, rising at times even
higher.
Under the racking agony of every straining tendon and the heady pressure
of the wind, a sense of mundane unreality began to settle upon the
flier. He saw the earth and its landmarks being drawn smoothly and
swiftly from beneath him with the detachment of a half-conscious dream.
He saw--for he remembered afterwards--the Thames lying before him like a
whip flicked carelessly across the plain. A town loomed up, black and
inchoate, on his right, developed into streets and terraces, and slid
away into the past. It was Richmond. The river, never far away, now
slipped beneath him at right angles, reappeared to hold a parallel
course upon his left, and flung a horse-shoe coil two miles ahead. A
colony of strange shining roofs and domes next challenged recognition.
They were the conservatories at Kew, looking little more than garden
frames, and they were scarcely lost to view before he was over the
winding line of Brentford's quaint old High Street, now, as it appeared,
packed with a dense, moving crowd. The irresistible pounding of the gale
was edging the glow of London further and further to his right.
Instinctively he threw more weight into the lighter scale, and slowly
and certainly the point of his destination swung round before his face
again.
Thenceforward it was all town. Gunnersbury became Chiswick, Chiswick
merged into Hammersmith, Kensington succeeded, in ceaseless waves of
houses that ran north and south, and long vistas of roofs that stretched
east and west. It was a kaleidoscope of contrasts. Scenes of saturnalian
gaiety, where ant-like beings danced in mad abandonment round fires that
blocked the road, or seemed to gyrate by companies in meaningless
confusion, bounded districts plunged into an unnatural gloom and
solitude, where for street after street neither the footstep of a
wayfarer nor the light of a public lamp broke the uncanny spell.
Immediately beyond, by the glare of the flambeaux which they carried, an
orderly concourse might be marching eastward, and fringing on their
route a garish gutter mart, where busy costermongers drove their roaring
trade and frugal housewives did their marketing with less outward
concern than if the crisis in the State had been a crisis in the price
of butter.
The multitudinous sounds beat on his ears through the plunging gale like
a babel of revelry heard between the intermittent swinging of an
unlatched door. The sights in their grotesque perspective began to melt
together lazily. The upper air grew very cold. The weights hung heavier
every mile, the contending forces pulled more resistlessly. Strange
fancies began to assail him as the brain shrank beneath the strain;
doubts and despairs to gather round like dark birds of the night with
hopeless foreboding in the dull measure of their funereal wings. In that
moment mind and body almost failed to contend against the crushing odds;
nothing but his unconquerable heart flogged on his dying limbs.
It was scarcely more than half an hour after she had written her
despairing message that from her post at the head of the broad stone
staircase Irene Lisle heard a noise in the garret storey above that sent
her flying back to her stronghold. It was the last point from which she
had expected an attack. Through the keyhole of the door behind which she
had taken refuge, she saw a strangely outlined figure groping his way
cumbrously down the stairs, and then, without a word or cry, but with a
face whiter than the paper that had summoned him, she threw open the
door to admit Salt.
He walked heavily along the corridor and turned into his own room, while
she relocked the door and followed him. There was mute enquiry in her
eyes, but she did not speak.
A powerful oil-stove stood upon the hearth-stone, throwing its beams
across the room. He stood over it while the beaded ice melted from his
hair and fell hissing on the iron. He opened his mouth, and the sound of
his voice was like the thin piping of a reed. She caught a word, and
began to unbuckle the frozen straps of his gear. When he was free he
tried to raise his hand to a pocket of his coat, but the effort was
beyond the power of the cramped limb. Irene interpreted the action, and,
finding there a flask, filled the cup and held it to his lips.
She got a blue, half-frozen smile of thanks over the edge of the cup.
"Ah," he said, beginning to find his voice again, and stamping about the
room, "we owe Wynchley Slocombe a monument, you and I, Miss Lisle. Now
you must write a telescript for me, please; for I cannot."
"If you will remain here, where it is warmer, I will bring the
materials," she suggested.
He thanked her and allowed her to go, watching her with thoughtful eyes
that were coming back to life. She paused a moment at the top of the
stairs to listen down the shaft, and then sped quickly through the smoke
to the instrument room on the floor beneath.
Salt glanced round the office. On and about his desk all the books and
papers that might be turned to a hostile purpose had been stacked in
readiness, and by them stood the can of oil that was to ensure their
complete destruction. He stepped up to the window and looked out
cautiously. Every pane of glass was broken--every pane of glass in
Trafalgar Chambers was broken, for that matter--but it was not easy for
an unprepared mob to force an entrance. When the Unity League had taken
over the whole block of building in its expansion many alterations had
been carried out, and among these had been to fix railings that sprang
from the street and formed an arch, not only over the basement, but over
the ground floor windows also. If the shutters on the windows had been
closed in time, the assailants would have been baffled at another point,
but the shutters had been overlooked, and the mob, after lighting great
fires in the street, was now flinging the blazing billets through the
lower windows.
In a very brief minute Irene was back again with the telescribe
accessories. She seated herself at a table, dipped her pen into the ink,
and looked up without a word.
"TRAFALGAR CHAMBERS.
"6.25 P.M.," dictated Salt. "Most of the miners drawn off and
passing through Brentford. Over Barfold Rise half battery of
18-pounders, one out of action. In Spring Coppice and Welland
Wood about four companies regulars each. Reconnoitre third
position assuming same proportion. Act."
He stood considering whether there was anything more to add usefully.
The sound of Irene's agate pen tapping persistently against the table
caught his ear.
"You are not very much afraid?" he asked with kindly reassurance in his
voice as he looked at her hand.
"No, not now," she replied; but as she wrote she had to still the
violent trembling of her right hand with the left.
"All going well here. Send messenger Hampden with report
immediately after engagement," he concluded.
"I will try to sign it myself." He succeeded in sprawling a recognisable
"George Salt" across the paper, and after it wrote "Finis," which
happened to be the pass-word for the day.
"Your message came through; this may possibly do the same," he remarked.
He turned off the radiator as orderly as though he had reached the close
of a working day, and they went out together, locking the doors behind
them.
"They were attacking Hanwood when you left?" she asked with the tensest
interest. They had sent off the telescript, and it seemed to Irene that
they had reached the end of things.
"Yes," he replied. "But all the same," he added, as a fresh outburst of
cries rose from the street, and the light through the shattered window
attracted a renewed fusillade of missiles, "I think that we have kept
our promise to let you be in the thick of it."
She shook her head with the very faintest smile. "That seems a very long
time ago. But you, how could _you_ come? When I sent I never thought ...
I never dreamed----"
"It was possible to leave," he said. "My work is done. Yes," in reply to
her startled glance, "it has all happened!"
"You mean----?" she asked eagerly.
He took a paper from his pocket-book. It was, as she saw immediately, a
telescript from Sir John Hampden. It had reached him at Hanwood an hour
before he left.
"I have this afternoon received a deputation of Ministerialists
who have the adherence of a majority in the House without
taking the Opposition into account," she read. "The
Parliamentary Representation Committees throughout the country
are frantically insisting upon members accepting _any terms_,
if we will give an undertaking that the normal balance of trade
and labour shall be restored at once. The Cabinet is going to
pieces every hour, and the situation can no longer either be
faced or ignored by the Government. There will be a great scene
in the House to-night. The deputation will see me again
to-morrow morning with a formal decision. I have confidential
assurances that a complete acceptance is a foregone conclusion.
The arrival of the Midland colliers to-night, if not of those
from Monmouth, will precipitate matters."
Tears she could not hold back stood in her eyes as she returned to him
the paper. "Then it has not been in vain," she said softly.
"No," he replied. "Nothing has been in vain."
They stood silently for a minute, looking back over life. So might two
shipwrecked passengers have stood on a frail raft waiting for the end,
resigned but not unhopeful of a larger destiny beyond, while the
elements boiled and roared around them.
"It was very weak of me to send that message," said Irene presently;
"the message that brought you. I suppose," she added, "that it _was_ the
message that brought you?"
"Yes, thank God!" he replied.
"And if it had been impossible for you to come? If it had been an
utterly critical moment in every way, what would you have done?"
He laughed a little, quietly, as he looked at her. "The question did not
arise, fortunately," he replied.
"No," she admitted; "only I felt a little curious to know, now that
everything is over. It _is_, isn't it? There is nothing to be done?"
"Oh yes," he replied with indomitable cheerfulness. "There is always
something to be done."
"A chance?" she whispered incredulously. "A chance of escape, you mean?"
"It is possible," he said. "At least, I will go and hear what they have
to say."
"No! no!" she cried out, as a dreadful scene rose to her imagination.
"You cannot understand. Don't you hear that?... They would kill you."
"I do not suppose that I shall find myself popular," he said with a
smile, "but I will take care. You--I think you must stay here."
"Cannot I come with you?" she pleaded. "See, I am armed."
He took the tiny weapon that she drew from her dress and looked at it
with gentle amusement. It was a pretty thing of ivory and nickeled
steel, an elaborate toy. He pressed the action and shook out the
half-dozen tiny loaded caps--they were little more than that--upon his
palm.
"I would rather that you did not use this upon a mob," he said,
reloading it. "It would only exasperate, without disabling. As for
stopping a rush--why, I doubt if one of these would stop a determined
rabbit. You have better weapons than this."
"I suppose you are right. Only it gave me a little confidence. Then you
shall keep it for a memento, if you will."
"No; it might hold off a single assailant, I suppose. I should value
this much more, if I might have it." He touched a silk tie that she had
about her neck, as he spoke; it was one that she had often worn. She
held up her head for him to disengage it.
"Some day," he said, lingering a little over the simple operation, "you
will understand many things, Irene."
"I think that I understand everything now," she replied with a brave
glance. "Everything that is worth understanding."
He placed the folded tie in an inner pocket, and went down the stone
steps without another word. The well was thick with smoke, but the fire
had not yet spread beyond the lower rooms. Half-way down he encountered
a barricade of light office furniture which the girl had flung across
the stairs and drenched with oil. It was no obstacle in itself, but at
the touch of a match it would have sprung into a conflagration that
would have held the wildest mob at bay for a few precious moments. He
picked his way through it, descended the remaining stairs, and unlocked
the outer door. Beyond this was an iron curtain that had been lowered. A
little door in it opened directly on to the half-dozen steps that led
down to Seaton Street.
Salt looked through a crevice of the iron curtain, and listened long
enough to learn that there was no one on the upper steps; for the upper
steps, indeed, commanded no view of the windows, and the windows were
the centres of all interest. Satisfied on this point, he quietly
unlocked the door and stepped out.