Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Illustration: "His arm was round her, her cheek was pressed to his, her
bosom heaved against him."]
*THAT WHICH HATH
WINGS*
A NOVEL OF THE DAY
BY
RICHARD DEHAN
AUTHOR OF "THE DOP DOCTOR," "BETWEEN TWO THIEVES," ETC.
"_For a bird of the air shall carry the voice,
and that which hath wings shall
tell the matter._"--ECCLESIAS. x., 20.
S. B. GUNDY
TORONTO
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
THESE LEAVES IN
DEAR REMEMBRANCE
FOR YOUR GRAVE
ACROSS THE SEA.
SIDMOUTH, DEVON,
_January_, 1918.
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I.--PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE
II.--DAME NATURE INTERVENES
III.--FAIR ROSAMOND'S CHOICE
IV.--RAYMOND OF THE S. AE. F.
V.--THE BIRD OF WAR
VI.--SHERBRAND
VII.--THE CONSOLATRIX
VIII.--MONSEIGNEUR
IX.--SIR THOMAS ENTERTAINS
X.--A SUPERMAN
XI.--PATRINE SAXHAM
XII.--THE GATHERING OF THE STORM
XIII.--THE SUPERMAN
XIV.--A PARIS DANCE-GARDEN
XV.--THE BITE IN THE KISS
XVI.--THE WIND OF JOY
XVII.--INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND
XVIII.--SAXHAM PAYS
XIX.--BAWNE
XX.--THE MODERN HIPPOCRATES
XXI.--MARGOT LOOKS IN
XXII.--MARGOT IS SQUARE
XXIII.--A MODERN CLUB
XXIV.--DISILLUSION
XXV.--THREE MEN IN A CAR
XXVI.--A PAIR OF PALS
XXVII.--SIR ROLAND TELLS A STORY
XXVIII.--THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE
XXIX.--A SECRET MISSION
XXX.--THE REAPING
XXXI.--VON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOK
XXXII.--ADVENTURE IN THE AIR
XXXIII.--BAWNE LEARNS THE TRUTH
XXXIV.--THE BROWN SATCHEL
XXXV.--NUMBER EIGHTEEN
XXXVI.--HUE AND CRY
XXXVII.--PATRINE CONFESSES
XXXVIII.--THE REBOUND
XXXIX.--A NIGHT IN JULY
XL.--MACROMBIE IS SACKED
XLI.--SAXHAM LIES
XLII.--SAXHAM BREAKS THE NEWS
XLIII.--THE PLUNDERED NEST
XLIV.--PATRINE REMEMBERS
XLV.--FLOTSAM FROM THE NORTH SEA
XLVI.--AT NORDEICH WIRELESS
XLVII.--THE MAN OF "THE DAY"
XLVIII.--PATRINE IS ENGAGED
XLIX.--THE WAR CLOUD BREAKS
L.--THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON
LI.--THE INWARD VOICE
LII.--KHAKI
LIII.--FRANKY GOES TO THE FRONT
LIV.--OFFICIAL RETICENCE
LV.--NEWS OF BAWNE
LVI.--LA BRABANCONNE
LVII.--THE BELGIAN WIFE
LVIII.--SHERBRAND BUYS THE LICENCE
LIX.--THE WOE-WAVE BREAKS
LX.--KULTUR!
LXI.--LYNETTE DREAMS
LXII.--WOUNDED FROM THE FRONT
LXIII.--BAWNE FINDS A FRIEND
LXIV.--AT SEASHEERE
LXV.--GOOD-BYE, DEAR LOVE, GOOD-BYE!
LXVI.--MORE KULTUR
LXVII.--THE QUESTION
LXVIII.--THE DEVIL-EGG
LXIX.--A MENACE; AND GOOD NEWS
LXX.--A LOVER'S JOURNEY
LXXI.--LIVING AND DEAD
LXXII.--LOVE THAT HAS WINGS
*That Which Hath Wings*
*CHAPTER I*
*PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE*
In January, 1914, Francis Athelstan Sherbrand, Viscount Norwater, only
son of that fine old warrior, General the Right Honourable Roger
Sherbrand, V.C., K.C.B., first Earl of Mitchelborough, married Margot
Mountjohn, otherwise known as "Kittums," and found that she was
wonderfully innocent--for a girl who knew so much.
It was a genuine love-match, Franky being a comparatively poor
Guardsman, with only two thousand a year in addition to his pay as a
Second Lieutenant in the Royal Bearskins Plain, and Margot a mere
Cinderella in comparison with heiresses of the American canned-provision
and cereal kind.
It had seemed to Franky, standing with patent-leathered feet at the
Rubicon dividing bachelorhood from Benedictism, that all his wooing had
been done at Margot's Club. True, he had actually proposed to Margot at
the Royal Naval and Military Tournament of the previous June, and
Margot, hysterical with sheer ecstasy, as the horses gravely played at
push-ball, had pinched his arm and gasped out:
"_Yes_, but don't take my mind off the game just now; these dear beasts
are so _heavenly_! ..."
And theatres, film-picture-shows and variety halls, race-meetings,
receptions, balls and kettledrums, polo and croquet-clubs, had fostered
the courtship of Franky and Margot; but all their love-making had been
carried out to the accompanying hum of conversation and the tinkle of
crystal and silver-plate in the dining-room of the "Ladies' Social,"
where Margot had her favourite table in the glass-screened corner by the
fire-place; or in the circular smoking-room with the Persian divan and
green-glass dome, that Margot had given the Club on her nineteenth
birthday; or in the boudoir belonging to the suite she had decorated for
herself on the condition that no other member got the rooms if Margot
wanted them, which Margot nearly always did....
There was a big, rambling, ancient red-brick Hall, stone-faced in the
Early Jacobean manner, standing with its rare old gardens and
glass-houses, lawns and shrubberies, about it, within sight and sound of
the Channel, amidst pine and beech-woods carpeted with bilberry-bushes,
heathery moors, and coverts neck-high in July with the _Osmunda regalis_
fern. The Hall belonged to Margot, though you never found her there
except for a week or two in September and three days at Christmas-tide.
The first fortnight with the birds was well enough, but those three days
at Christmas marked the limit. Of human endurance Margot meant,
possibly. She never vouchsafed to explain.
She also possessed a house in town, but just as her deceased father's
spinster sister lived at the Hall in Devonshire, so did her dead
mother's brother Derek, with his collection of European moths and
butterflies and other _Lepidoptera_, inhabit the fine old mansion in
Hanover Square. Devonshire at Christmas marked the limit of dulness, but
Hanover Square all the London season through beat the band for sheer
ghastly boredom.... Not that there were any flies on little old
London.... Paris and Ostend were ripping places, and you could put in a
clinking good time at Monte Carlo.... Margot had tried New York and
liked it, except for the place itself, which made you think of
illustrations to weird Dunsany legends in which towering temples climb
up unendingly upon each other into black star-speckled skies. But the
Club and London, with Unlimited Bridge and Tango, constituted Margot's
idea of earthly happiness. She never had dreamed of marrying
anybody--until Franky had arrived on the scene.
Perhaps you can see Franky, with the wholesome tan of the Autumn
Manoeuvres yet upon him. Twenty-seven, well-made and muscular, if with
somewhat sloping shoulders and legs of the type that look better in
Bedford cords and puttees, or leathers and hunting-tops, than in tweed
knickers and woollen stockings, or Court knee-breeches and silks.
Observe his well-shaped feet and slight strong hands with pointed
fingers, like those of his ancestors, painted by Vandyke; his brown
eyes--distinctly good if not glowing with the fire of intellect, his
forehead too steep and narrow; his moustache of the regulation
tooth-brush kind, adorning the upper-lip that will not shut down firmly
over his white, rather prominent, front teeth. Cap the small rounded
skull of him with bright brown hair, brushed and anointed to astonishing
sleekness, dress him in the full uniform of a Second Lieutenant in the
Bearskins Plain, and you have Franky on his wedding-day.
Photographs of the happy couple published in the _Daily Wire_, the
_Weekly Silhouette_, the _Lady's Dictatorial_, and the _Photographic
Smile_, hardly do the bridegroom justice. In that without the busby his
features are fixed in a painful grin, while in the other there are no
features at all. But Margot--Margot in a hobble-skirt of satin and
chiffon, with a tulle turban-veil, starred with orange-flowers in pearls
and diamonds, and a long serpent-tail train of silver brocade, hung from
her shoulders by ropes of pearls, was "almost too swee," to quote
Margot's Club friends. Search had been made, amongst the said friends,
many of whom were married, for a pair of five-year-old pages to carry
the bride's train; but there being, for some reason, a dearth of babies
among Margot's wedded intimates, the idea had to be given up.
The wedding was quite the prettiest function of the season. The eight
bridesmaids walked in moss-green _crepe de Chine_ veiled with
silver-spotted chiffon. On their heads were skull-caps of silver
tissue, each having a thirty-inch-high aigrette supported by a thin
_bandeau_ of gold, set with crystals and olivines, the gift of the
bride.... Their stockings were of white lace openwork, the left knee of
each being clasped by the bridegroom's souvenir, a garter of gold,
crystal, and olivines. Silver slippers with four-inch heels completed
the ravishing effect.
_O Perfect Love!_ was sung before the Bishop's Address, and the ceremony
concluded with _The Voice that Breathed_ and Stainer's _Sevenfold Amen_.
The bridal-party passed down the nave to the strains of the Wedding
Chorus from _Lohengrin_. And there was a reception at the Werkeley
Square house of one of the dearest of Margot's innumerable dearest
friends, and the happy pair left in their beautiful brand-new
Winston-Beeston touring car _en route_ for the old red-brick Hall in
Devonshire. Decidedly the honeymoon might have been termed ideal--and
four subsequent months of married life proved tolerably cloudless--until
Fate sent a stinging hailstorm to strip the roses from the bridal bower.
An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the
_Grande Semaine_, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It
utterly ruined--for two people--the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks
the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its
four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and
gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the
chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the
creations of the greatest _couturiers_.
Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion.... You will
recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 _were_ astonishing; the
autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet,
and the Brothers Paillot. Skirts--already as short and as narrow as
possible--were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection
would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving
before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk _lisse_,
embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found--to her horror and
consternation----
Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential,
unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame
Fashion _re_ the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet
spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy
curves of its maternity.
*CHAPTER II*
*DAME NATURE INTERVENES*
"I can't bear it!--I won't bear it!" Margot reiterated. With her tumbled
hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin
that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly
babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn't
drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate.
"None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!" she asserted.
She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of
imperious appeal. "Not Tota Stannus, or Cynthia Charterhouse, or Joan
Delabrand, or anybody! Then, why me? That's what I want to know? After
all the mascots I've worn and carried about with me.... Gojo and
Jollikins and the jade tree-frog, and the rest! ... Every single one
given me by a different woman who'd been married for years and never had
a baby! This very day I'll smash the whole lot!"
"By the Great Brass Hat! ..."
Franky exploded before he could stop himself, and laughed until the
tears coursed down. So "Gojo," the black velvet kitten, and
"Jollikins," the fat, leering, naked thing that sat and squinted over
its pot-belly at its own huge, shapeless feet, and all the array of
gadgets and netsukis crowding Margot's toilette-table and _secretaire_,
down to "Pat-Pat," the bog-oak pig, and "Ti-Ti," the jade tree-frog,
were so many insurances against the Menace of Maternity. By Jove! women
were regular children.... And Margot ... Nothing but a baby, this poor
little Margot--going, in spite of Jollikins and Gojo, to have a baby of
her own.
"What is one to believe? Whom is one to trust in? ..."
"'Trust in.' ... My best child, you don't mean that you believed those
women when they told you that such twopenny gadgets could work charms
of--that or any other kind?"
"Indeed, indeed they do! Tota Stannus was _perfectly serious_ when she
came to my boudoir one night at the Club, about a week before our--the
wedding.... She said--I can hear her now; '_Well, old child, you're to
be married on Wednesday, and of course you know the ropes well enough
not to want any tips from me.... Still----'_"
"That wasn't overwhelmingly flattering," Franky commented, "from a
married woman twice your age. What else did she say?"
"She said I must be aware," went on Margot, "that a woman who wanted to
keep her friends and her figure, simply couldn't afford to have kids."
"And you----"
Franky no longer battled with the grin that would have infuriated
Margot. Something had wiped it from his face.
"I said she was frightfully kind, but that I was quite
well-posted--everything was O.K., and she needn't alarm herself.... And
she said, 'Oh! if you've arranged things with Franky, jolly sensible of
him! Too often a man who is open and liberal-minded before marriage
develops gerontocracie afterwards, don't you know? ...' And I told her
that you were the very reverse of narrow-minded--and she kissed me and
wished me happiness, and went away. And the maid knocked later on to
say Mrs. Stannus sent her apologies for having forgotten to leave her
little gift. And the little gift was, Jollikins. And my special pals
joined in to stand me a farewell dinner, and they drowned my enamel Club
badge in a bowl of Maraschino punch, and fished it up and gave me this
diamond and enamel one, mounted as a tie-brooch, instead. And every
married woman brought me a mascot.... I had Gojo from Joan Delabrand,
and Ti-Ti from Cynthia Charterhouse, and the jade tree-frog from Patrine
Saxham, and the carved African bean from Rhona Helvellyn, and----"
Franky objected:
"Neither Patrine Saxham nor Rhona Helvellyn happen to be married women!"
"Perhaps not; but Patrine is an Advanced Thinker, and Rhona Helvellyn is
a Militant Suffragist."
Franky commented:
"As for Suffragists, that Club of yours is stiff with 'em. Gassing about
their Cause.... I loathe the noisy crowd!"
"Then you loathe me! I share their convictions!" Margot proclaimed. "I
hold the faith that Woman's Day will dawn with the passing of the Bill
that gives us the Vote...."
"My best child, you wouldn't know what to do with the Vote if you had
it."
Margot retorted:
"I cannot expect my husband to treat me as a reasonable being while the
State classes his wife with infants and imbeciles."
It will be seen that a very pretty squabble was on the point of
developing. Fortunately, at this juncture a valet of the chambers
knocked at the door to say that a waiter from the restaurant begged to
know whether Milord and Miladi would take lunch _a la carte_, or prefer
something special in their own apartments?
"Tell him no!" wailed Miladi, to the unconcealed consternation of
Milord, who had a healthy appetite.
"Must keep up your pecker--never say die!" Franky, stimulated by the
pangs of hunger, developed an unsuspected talent for diplomacy. "Look
here! We must talk over things quietly and calmly. I'll order a taxi,
and we'll chuff to that jolly little restaurant in the Bois de
Boulogne--where you can grub in the open air under a rose-pergola--and
order something special and odd----"
Since Eve's day, this lure has never failed to catch a woman. Margot
began to dry her eyes. Then she asked Franky to ring.
"Three times, please.... That's for Pauline; I want another
handkerchief."
"Have two or three while you're about it," advised Franky, obeying,
returning, and perching on the arm of the settee. "And bathe your eyes
a bit, have a swab-over of the pinky cream-stuff, and a dab of powder."
He brushed some pale mealy traces from his right-arm sleeve and
coat-lapel, ending, "And put on your swankiest hat and come along to
Nadier's."
"Could we get anything to eat at Nadier's that we couldn't get here--or
in London, at the Tarlton or the Rocroy? ..."
"Stacks of things! For instance--_Canard a la presse_.... They squeeze
the juice out of the duck, you twig, with a silver kind of squozzer, and
cook it on a chafing-dish under your nose. Look here! ..." Franky, now
desperate, produced his watch. "All the cushiest little tables will be
taken if you don't look sharp."
"Not on the day of the Grand Prix!"
Franky retorted, spurred to maddest invention by the pangs of hunger:
"My best child, there are about a hundred thousand wealthy Americans in
Paris who don't care a red cent about racing, while with most of 'em--to
eat _canard a la presse_ at Nadier's in the Bois de Boulogne in the June
season--is a--kind of religious rite!"
So Margot disappeared to dab her eyes and apply the prescribed touches
of perfumed cream and powder, and duly reappeared, crowned with the most
marvellous hat that ever promenaded the _ateliers_ of the Maison Blin on
the head of a milliner's _mannequin_.
You are to imagine the tiny thing and her Franky seated--not in one of
the smart automobiles that wait for hire outside Spitz's, but in a
little red taxi, borne along with the broad double stream of traffic of
every description that ceaselessly roared east and west under the now
withering red-and-white blossoms of the chestnut-trees of the Avenue of
the Champs Elysees, inhaling the stimulating breezes--flavoured with hot
dust and petrol, Seine stink, sewer-gas, coffee, patchouli, fruit, Regie
tobacco and roses--of Paris in the end of June.
All the world and his wife might be at Longchamps, but here were people
enough and to spare. Luxurious people in costly automobiles or
carriages drawn by shiny high-steppers. People in little public taxis,
men and women on motor-bicycles and the human-power kind. People of all
stamps and classes, clustered like bees outside the big, smelly,
top-heavy auto-buses, soon to vanish from the Paris avenues and
boulevards, with the red and yellow and green-flagged taxis, to play
their part in the transport and nourishment of the Army of France.
People of all ranks and classes on foot, though as of old the
_midinette_ with her big cardboard bandbax, the military cadet, or the
student of Art or Medicine, the seminarist and the shaggy-haired and
bearded man with the deadly complexion, the slouch hat, the aged
_paletot_ and the soiled and ragged crimson necktie that distinguish the
milder breed of Anarchist, made up the crowd upon the sidewalks,
liberally peppered with the sight-seeing stranger of British, American,
or Teuton nationality--the brilliantly-complexioned, gaily-plumaged,
loudly-perfumed lady of the pavements; the gendarme and the National
Guard, and--with Marie or Jeannette proudly hanging on his
elbow--Rosalie in her black-leather scabbard dangling by his side, his
crimson _kepi_ tilted rakishly--the blue-coated, red-trousered French
infantryman, the _poilu_ whom we have learned to love.
The Bois was not seething with fashionable life as it would be towards
the sunset hour. The dandy Clubmen, the smart ladies, had gone to
Longchamps with the four-in-hands. Polo was going on near the Pont de
Suresnes, the band of a regiment of Cuirassiers was playing in the
Jardin d'Acclimatation, and Hungarian zithers and violins discoursed
sweet music on a little gilded platform at the axial point of Nadier's
open-air restaurant--which is shaped like a half-wheel, with pergolas of
shower-roses and Crimson Ramblers radiating from the gilded band-stand
to the outer circle of little white tables at which one can lunch or
dine in fine weather under a light screen of leaves and blossoms,
beneath which the green canvas awnings can be drawn when it comes on to
rain.
The tables were crowded with French people taking late _dejeuner_, and
English, Germans, and German-Americans having lunch. The gravelled
courtyard before the terrace was packed with showy automobiles.
If _canard a la presse_ did not grace the meal supplied to Franky and
Margot on Nadier's terrace, the _potage printaniere_ and _ecrevisses_
and a _blanquette d'agneau_ were exquisitely cooked and served.
Asparagus and a salad of endive followed, and by the time they had
emptied a bottle of Chateau Yquem and the _omelette soufflee_ had given
place to _Peches Melba_, Margot had smiled several times and laughed
once.
She was so dainty and sweet, so brilliant a little human humming-bird,
that the laughing, chattering, feasting crowd of smartly or
extravagantly dressed people gathered about the other trellis-screened
tables under Nadier's rose-pergola sent many a curious or admiring
glance her way. And Franky was very proud of his young wife, and theirs
had been undeniably a love-match; yet in spite of the good dishes and
the excellent Chateau Yquem, little shivers of chilly premonition
rippled over him from time to time. He had got to speak out--definitely
decline, in the interests of Posterity, to permit interference on the
part of Margot's Club circle in his private domestic affairs.... How to
do it effectively yet inoffensively was a problem that strained his
brain-capacity. Yet--again in the interests of Posterity--Franky had
never previously interested himself in Posterity--the thing had to be
done. He refused Roquefort, buttered a tiny biscuit absently, put it
down undecidedly, and as the waiter whisked his plate away--conjured
crystal bowls of tepid rose-water and other essentials from space, and
vanished in search of dessert--he spoke, assuming for the first time in
his five months' experience of connubial life the toga of marital
authority.
"I think, do you know, Kittums"--Kittums was Margot's pet name--"that it
will be best to face the music!"
"_Connu!_" Margot shrugged a little, widely opening her splendid brown
eyes, "But what music?"
"The"--Franky took the plunge--"the cradle-music, if you will have it!"
Margot's gasp of dismay, and the indignant fire of a stare that was
quenched in brine, awakened Franky to the fact of his having failed in
tactics. The return of the waiter with a pyramid of superb strawberries
and a musk-melon on cracked ice alone stemmed the outburst of the
pent-up flood of reproach. Entrenched behind the melon, Franky waited.
The waiter again effaced himself, and Margot said from behind another
handkerchief:
"Oh, how _could_ you! ... I never _dreamed_ that I should _live_ to hear
you speak to me in that way."
Over the melon, whose rough green quartered rind had delicate white
raised traceries all over it, suggesting outline maps of countries in
Fairyland, Franky curiously regarded his wife. He said:
"Why are you and all your friends so funky of--what's only a natural
phe--what do you call it? ... What do men and women marry for, if it
isn't to have--children? ... Perhaps you'll answer me?"
"What do people marry for?" Margot regarded him indignantly over the
neglected pyramid of luscious, tempting strawberries, "To--to be happy
together--to have a clinking time!" Her voice shook. "And this is to
be a gorgeous season. Balls--balls! right on from now to the end of
July--then from the autumn all through winter. Period Costume Balls,
reviving the modes, music, and manners of Ancient
Civilisations--Carthagenian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Gothic--got up and
arranged by the Committees of the Cercle Moderne, here in Paris, and in
London by the New Style Club.... Tony Guisseguignol and Paul Peigault
and their set are busy designing the dresses and decorations--nothing
like them will ever have been seen! And--Peigault says--Tango and the
Maxixe are to be chucked to the little cabbages. A new dance is coming
from Sao Paulo that will simply wipe them out.... And now--just when I
was looking forward--when everything was to have been so splendid----"
The shaking voice choked upon a note of anguish. Franky had picked up
the melon, quite unconsciously, and was balancing it. At this juncture
he gripped the green globe with both hands, and said, summoning all his
courage to meet the agonised appeal of Margot's tear-drenched eyes:
"Look here. This is--strict Bridge.... Do you loathe 'em--the
kiddies--so horribly that the idea of having any is hateful to you? Or
is it--not only the--the veto it puts on larking and kickabout and--the
temporary disfigurement--you're afraid of--but the--the--the inevitable
pain?" He glanced round cautiously and looked back again at his wife,
saying in a low voice: "Nobody's listening.... Tell me frankly...." He
waited an instant, and then said in an urgent whisper. "Answer me! ...
For God's sake, tell the frozen truth, Margot!"
*CHAPTER III*
*FAIR ROSAMOND'S CHOICE*
The terrace under Nadier's roses--dotted with little tables covered with
napery, silver, crystal, and china, surrounded with laughing, chattering
feasters--the terrace was no longer a scene out of a comedy of the
lighter side of Parisian life.... Tragedy, pale and awe-inspiring in her
ink-black mantle and purple chiton, had stepped across the gravel in her
gold-buckled leather buskins, to offer to the girlish bride--a piece of
human porcelain, prinked in the height of the fashion, and lovely--with
her wild-rose cheeks and little uptilted nose, her floss-silk hair and
wide, dark, lustrous deer-eyes--Fair Rosamond's choice, the dagger or
the bowl....
"Yes--yes.... It is the ugliness of the thing! ..." The little mouth
was pulled awry as though it had sipped of verjuice. The tiny hands
knotted themselves convulsively, and the colour fled in terror from her
face. "The grotesque ugliness.... And the"--the last two words came as
though a pang had wrung them from the pale lips--"the pain--the awful
pain! And besides--my mother died when I was born!" Margot's voice was
a fluttering, appealing whisper; her great eyes were dilated and wild
with terror. "Perhaps that is why I am so deadly afraid"--she caught her
breath--"but there are heaps, heaps, _heaps_ of married women who
fear--_that_--equally! And they arrange to escape it--I don't know how!
... For I knew--nothing--when I married you! ..." She lifted her great
eyes to Franky's, and he realised that it had been so, actually. "I've
been ashamed ever to confess that I was--ignorant about these things!
... I've talked a language--amongst other women--that I didn't
understand! ..."
There are moments when even the shallow-brained become clairvoyant.
Franky's love for her made him see clear. He looked back down the vista
of Margot's twenty years of existence, and saw her the motherless
daughter of a self-absorbed, cultivated, Art-loving valetudinarian, who
habitually spent the chillier part of each year in ranging from French
to Italian health-resorts, occupying the spring with Art in
Paris--returning to London for June and July, generally spending August
and September in Devonshire--to take flight Southwards before the
migrating swallows, at the first chill breath of October frosts.
Margot had been educated at home, down in Devonshire, by a series of
certificated female tutors. The spinster aunt, the younger sister of
her father, extended to her niece for a liberal remuneration a nominal
protection and an indifferent care.... And Mr. Mountjohn had died when
the girl was sixteen, leaving her unconditionally heiress to his
considerable fortune, and the aunt had let Margot have her head in every
imaginable way. She had allowed her to take up her residence at the
"Ladies' Social" Club three years subsequently, on the sole condition
that a responsible chaperon accompanied Margot to Society functions.
Hence, Mrs. Ponsonby Rewes, the irreproachable widow of a late King's
Messenger, was evoked from Kensington Tower Mansions upon these
occasions--by telephone--to vanish when no longer wanted, in the
discreetest and most obliging way.
"Poor little Margot! .... Poor little woman!..." Franky could see how
it all had happened by the wild light of the great deer-eyes, so like
those in the portrait of the girl's dead mother--half Irish, half Greek
by birth.
While Franky reflected, the tables had been emptying. People were
hurrying away to hear the band of the Jardin d'Acclimatation or to
fulfil other engagements of a seasonable kind. Some remained to smoke
and gossip over liqueurs and coffee. The light blue wreaths of cigar
and cigarette smoke curled up towards the awning overhead. Franky
mechanically produced his own case and lighted up. And Margot,
stretching a slender arm across the table, was saying:
"Give me one!--I've forgotten mine! ..."
"Ought you? ... Is it wise? ..." Franky was on the point of asking, but
his good Angel must have clapped a hand before his mouth. He silently
gave Margot a thick, masculine Sobranie and supplied a light; and as
their young faces neared and the red spark glowed, and the first
smoke-wreath rose between the approximating tubes of delicate
tobacco-filled paper, his wife whispered as their eyes met:
"You're hurt! But now you know--you're sorry for me, aren't you?" It
was a dragging, plaintive undertone, not at all like Margot's voice.
"Frightfully! All the more because"--Franky drew so hard at his
cigarette that it burned one-sidedly--"I can't help being
thundering--glad!"
"I--see! ..."
She breathed out the words with a thin stream of fragrant Turkish vapour
crawling over her scarlet under-lip, it seemed to Franky, like a pale
blue worm. And he bit through his Sobranie and threw it on his
dessert-plate, saying desperately:
"Not yet. Will you listen quietly to what I've got to say?"
She nodded. Franky launched himself upon the tide of revelation.
Nearly everybody who had been eating when he had come into Nadier's with
Margot had got up and gone away. And the Cuirassiers band was playing
the love-music from _Samson et Dalila_ on the terrace of the Jardin
d'Acclimatation, as melodiously as only a French military band can play.
"It's got to do with the Peerage. Only a Second Afghan War-Earldom
dating from 1879--tacked on to the Viscounty they gave my
great-grandfather after Badajos--but worth having in its way, or the Dad
wouldn't have accepted it. And, naturally enough--I want a boy to take
the Viscounty when I succeed my father, and have the Earldom when I've
absquatulated, just as the kiddy'll want one when his own time comes."
Margot was burning a strawberry-leaf on her plate with her
cigarette-end. She asked, impressing another little yellow scorched
circle on the surface of rough green:
"Would it matter so very much if there wasn't any boy?"
Franky jumped and turned red to the white, unsunned circle left by the
field-cap on the summit of his high forehead.
"It would matter--lots! For my Uncle Sherbrand, a younger brother of my
father's, would come in for the Viscounty when I succeeded the dear old
Dad. And my Uncle Sherbrand is a blackguard! Got cashiered in 1900,
when he was an Artillery officer in a gun-testing billet at Wanwich.
Kicked out of the Army--in War-time, mind you!--for not backing up his
C.O. And the brute has got a son, too, an apprentice in an engine-shop,
if he isn't actually a chauffeur. Probably the young fellow's
respectable, and of course it ain't the pup's fault he's got such a
sire. But my Dad would turn in his grave at the idea of being succeeded
by the brother who disgraced him--and as for _his_ grandfather--the
jolly old cock 'ud bally well get up and dance, I should say.... So,
you see, I can't--sympathise with you as you want me to do in this,
darling! I want you to buck up and be cheerful, and face the music like
a brick.... As for what you've told me--about your mother----" In
spite of himself, Franky gulped, and little shiny beads of sweat stood
upon his cheeks and temples. "That sort of thing doesn't run in
families, like rheumatism"--he was getting idiotic--"or Roman noses! Be
plucky--and everything will turn out all right. Can't possibly go wrong
if we call in Saxham ... Saxham of 000, Harley Street--man my sister
Trix simply swears by. Brought her boy Ronald into the world thirteen
years ago, and successfully operated on him for appendicitis only the
other day! ..."
Margot looked at Franky attentively and bent her head slightly. Had she
understood? She must have.... Had she tacitly agreed? Of course....
*CHAPTER IV*
*RAYMOND OF THE S. AE. F.*
The Masculine Will had conquered. You had only to be firm with
women--bless their hearts! and they caved directly.... Couldn't hold
out.... Not built that way.... Franky's sternly-clamped upper-lip
relaxed. He beamed as he proposed a noonday stroll in the Bois. In the
direction of the bigger Lake, by one of the narrower avenues, or if
Margot preferred a look-in at the Polo Club, another avenue,
intersecting the Allee de Longchamps and skirting the enclosure of the
Gun Club, would take them there in a jiffy, _via_ Bagatelle.
Margot assented to the latter proposition, and, with a little flutter of
the lips Franky accepted as a smile, reached for her egret stole, a
filmy feathery thing she had removed on entering Nadier's, and drew on
her long mousquetaire gloves and pulled down her veil of sunset
_chiffon_, half shaded red, merging into jonquil yellow matching the
shade of her marvellous gown. And Franky paid the bill in plump English
sovereigns (invariably exchanged as good for louis of twenty francs by
the suave and smiling waiter) and tipped the said waiter extravagantly,
and took his hat from the second waiter (who invariably starts up by the
side of the first when you are going) and tipped him, and got his stick
from the third waiter (who came forward with this, and the _en tout cas_
of Madame--a lovely thing in the latest dome-shape, of black net over
jonquil colour, with a flounce, and an ivory stick, upon the top of
which sat a green monkey in olivines, eating a ruby fruit), and lighted
another cigarette, and returned the elaborate bow of the manager with a
nod of the cheerful patronising order as he followed Margot through the
Rambler-wreathed archway leading by a flight of shallow steps from
Nadier's terrace to the wide carriage-sweep that links the broad Allee
de Longchamps with the narrower Route de Madrid. And the towering plume
of her astonishing hat brought down a shower of red rose-petals as she
passed out before him--and Franky, with some of these on his
top-hat-brim and others nestling in the front of his waistcoat, was
irresistibly reminded of their wedding-day.
Unconsciously, Franky and Margot quitted the broader, more frequented
avenue, crowded with people in carriages, people in automobiles, people
on motor-bicycles and bicyclettes, and followed narrower pathways,
stretching between green lawns adorned with shrubberies and clumps of
stately forest trees, and chiefly patronised by sweethearting couples,
nursemaids in charge of children, children in domineering but
affectionate charge of white-haired ladies, while venerable gentlemen
dozed on rustic benches over the columns of _Figaro_ or _Paris Midi_.
When even these figures became rare, it was borne in upon Franky that he
and Margot were not upon a path that led to the Grounds of the Polo
Club. Reluctantly, he admitted himself lost.
"Does it matter? ..." Margot's voice was weary. "If you're absolutely
set on it, we could ask one of those men in cocked hats and waxed
moustaches and red-and-yellow shoulder-cords to give us the straight
tip. But I don't feel the least bit keen about the Polo Club any more
than the Lakes. These alleys are quiet, and the grass is nice and
green. I vote we go on."
"Madame cannot pass this way. It is not open for strangers."
A Republican Guard, a good-looking _sous-officier_, had spoken,
comprehending the tone rather than the English words.
"Why not?" Margot's eyes suddenly brightened. She eagerly sniffed the
air of the forbidden avenue. The corporal, indicating with his
white-gloved hand other Republican Guards posted at equal distances down
the prohibited alley, and at its intersection with another some two
hundred yards distant, brought his eyes back to Margot to answer:
"Madame, for the reason that certain military operations are taking
place here to-day."
"But my husband is an English officer--" Margot was beginning, when
Franky, reddening to his hat-brim, exhorted her to be quiet, and the
Republican Guard, civilly saluting, stepped upon the grass and moved
away.
"All the same, you are an English officer," Margot persisted, "and what
use is the Entente if that doesn't count?"
"Best child, don't be a giddy goose!" Franky implored her. "You don't
suppose the Authorities care a bad tomato for an English Loot--what
they'd cotton to would have to be a British Brass Hat of the very
biggest kind. Look there!--more to your left, little battums!" He
indicated yet other Republican cocked hats strung at equal distances
down the length of a neighbouring alley, precisely outlining the farther
border of the sandwich-shaped halfacre of greensward by which their
particular avenue ran. "And there!" His professional eye had noted a
big, grey-painted military motor-lorry, numbered, and lettered "S. Ae.
F." Behind the driver's seat towered the slender T-shaped steel mast of
a Field wireless, whose spidery aerials, pegged to the turf, were in
charge of men in _kepis_ and blue overalls, while a non-commissioned
officer, wearing the telephone head-band of the operator, leaned on the
elbow-rest of the tripod supporting the apparatus, his finger on the
buzzer-key. Near him his clerk squatted, pencil and pad in readiness,
while at a respectful distance from two oblong patches of white in the
middle of the green plat of turf, several active upright figures in dark
uniforms stood conversing, or walking to and fro.
"_Officiers Aviateurs_, telegraphists and mechanics of the French
_Service Aeronautique_"--you are listening to Franky--"tremendously
well-organised compared with our little footling Flying Corps, tinkered
fourteen months ago out of the old Air Battalion of the R. E. These
chaps are Engineers--goin' by the dark red double stripes on their
overalls and their dark blue _kepis_. Some of their machines'll be out
for practice. Despatch-droppin' or bombs. Here's a man with brass on
his hat, coming our way.... Takes me for a German soger-orficer I
shouldn't wonder!--lots of 'em get their clothes cut in Bond Street.
But though you can hide Allemand legs in English trousers"--Franky was
recovering his customary cheeriness--"and some of 'em do it uncommon
cleverly--you can't deodorise an accent that hails from Berlin."
The officer approaching--a youthful, upright figure walking quickly,
with the short, springy steps of a man much in the saddle--proved to be
grey-haired and grey-moustached. The double-winged badge of his Service
was embroidered in gold upon the right sleeve of his tunic, and upon the
collar, a single wing in this case, ending in a star. He carried
binoculars suspended from his neck by a rolled-leather thong, and a
revolver in a black-leather case was attached to the belt about his
middle. There was thick white dust upon the legs and uppers of his high
polished black boots, which the grass had scoured from the toes and
soles. His bright blue-grey eyes ran over Franky as the slight
soldierly salute was exchanged. He said, speaking in excellent English:
"If Monsieur, the English officer, will obligingly mention his name,
rank, and regiment, it might be possible to allow him to continue his
promenade with Madame, the invention we are testing being the patent of
his countryman, and already familiar to the Authorities at the British
War Office."
Thus coerced, Franky produced his card, Margot dimpled into smiles, the
polite officer saluted again, introduced himself as Raymond,
Capitaine-Commandant pilot of the --th _escadrille_, wheeled and walked
away. But he returned to say, this time directly addressing Margot:
"Should Madame la Vicomtesse desire to witness the test of her
countryman's--apparatus, there can be no objection to her doing so. But
that Madame should keep clear of the vicinity of the"--he pointed to the
two oblong strips of white canvas adorning the middle of the expanse of
green,--"the signal, intended for the guidance of the aviator, is of
absolute necessity, Madame must understand!"
"There won't be any...?" Margot was beginning, nervously.
"_Mais non, Madame_. _Pas d'explosion_," the officer assured her, and
stiffened to attention facing eastwards, and scanning the sky with eyes
that blinked in the dazzling glare of early noon. For the droning whirr
of a plane just then reached them, drowning the sign of the hot south
breeze that rustled in the tops of the acacias and oaks, ilexes and
poplars, that rose about the arena of open ground....
*CHAPTER V*
*THE BIRD OF WAR*
"The _avion_ comes from Drancy." The speaker looked back at Margot as
he focussed his binoculars. "It is not one of our Army machines, but a
British monoplane built by your countryman and fitted with the invention
whose usefulness we are here to test." He continued: "Should the
_officier-pilote_ in charge of the--apparatus--and who for the time
being represents an enemy--succeed in poising"--he hesitated a bare
instant--"for a stipulated number of moments over the target--those two
lengths of white canvas approximating on the grass represent the
target--he scores a bull's-eye."
He blinked a little, and before Franky's mental vision rose the
aggregation of Government buildings near the _Carrefour des Cascades_,
marked "_Magazins et depots_" on Baedeker's maps.
"He scores a bull's eye," resumed the speaker. "He has already paid one
visit of the requisite duration to an address near the Porte
d'Aubervilliers." Franky had a mental vision of the array of big,
bloated gasometers pertaining to the Strasbourg Railway Yards. "He has
made a similar call at a point indicated between the station of the
Batignolles and the station of the Avenue de Clichy"--the well-preserved
teeth of the officer showed under the grey moustache as he smiled, and
Franky had another vision of the huge _Gare aux Marchandises_ tucked in
the angle between the Railway of the Geinture and the Western Railway
lines, as the speaker went on suavely "and the target succeeding this
will be the last. It is situated on the Champ de Manoeuvres at Issy.
The wireless-telegraph operator of my _escadrille_ informs me that two
bull's eyes have already been registered--which for your countryman's
invention presages well."
Franky, with British plumpness, queried:
"And the invention? Some new bomb-dropping device--planned to get rid
of the way the engine always puts on 'em? If the English
inventor-fellow has done that, his goods are worth buying, I should
say!"
Raymond, _Capitaine-Commandant_, answered as the droning song from the
sky grew louder:
"Of certainty, Monsieur, if his invention prove worth buying, my
Government will undoubtedly purchase what has already been unavailingly
offered to yours. It is our custom to examine and test, closely and
exhaustively, new things that are offered. But what would you? We seek
the best for France."
"He isn't flying his aeroplane himself, is he? Or working his own
invention, whatever it may be?"
"But no, Madame! One of our* Officiers-Aviateurs* is acting as pilot, a
skilled mechanic of our Service occupies the observer's place. Despite
the Entente Cordiale--the happy relations prevailing between my country
and England--it would hardly be _convenable_ or discreet to permit even
an Englishman"--the tone of graceful, subtle irony cannot be conveyed by
pen or type--"_even_ an Englishman to fly over Paris, or any other
fortified city of France. But see! In the sky to the north-east--above
that silvery puff of vapour--arrives now the _avion_ built and
christened by your countryman."
Margot asked, narrowing her beautiful eyes as she searched out the
darkish speck upon the hot blue background:
"The plane, you mean. What does he call it?"
Raymond answered without removing his eyes from his binoculars:
"Madame, he calls it 'The Bird of War.'"
The tuff-tuff of a motor-cycle sounded faintly in the distance, as the
resonant vibrating noise of the aeroplane came more triumphantly out of
the hot blue sky. Save for a scintillating white reflection to the
north that might have been the crystal dome of the great big Palm House
in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, and that unavoidable, useful ugliness,
the gilded lantern of the Tour Eiffel, thrusting up into the middle
distance over the delicately-rounded masses of new foliage upon the
right-hand looking east, the glory and shame and magnificence and
squalor of the Queen City of Cities might have lain a hundred leagues
away, so ringed-in by delicate austere brown of serried tree-trunks,
rising above rich clumps of blossoming lilac, syringa, yellow azalea,
and pink, mauve, and snowy rhododendron, was the spacious green arena
wherein Franky and Margot were destined to play their part.
Now, followed by the wide-winged shadow that the sun of high noon threw
almost directly beneath her, darkening drifting cloud, and open city
spaces, passing over breasting tree-tops and wide stretches of municipal
greensward, the Bird of War drew nearer and more near.... And glancing
up as the portentous flying shadow suddenly blotted out the sunlight,
Franky realised that the two-seater monoplane was hovering, and buzzing
as she hovered, like a Brobdingnagian combination of kite-hawk,
dragon-fly, and bumblebee.
He pulled out a pair of vest-pocket field-glasses and scanned her as she
hung there, gleaming in the sunlight, at a height of perhaps five
hundred feet above the white cloths on the grass. He could make out the
Union Jack on her underwings, the huge black raking capitals of her name
BIRD OF WAR painted on the side of the tapering canvas-covered fuselage,
the diamond-shaped tail swaying between the pendant flaps of the huge
triangular elevators, clearly as though these features had been filmed
upon the screen. In a curious misty circle, spinning under the fuselage,
he suspected lay the secret of her kite-like poise and hover, and behind
his immaculate waistcoat he was sensible of a thrill.
If the English inventor had not solved the baffling Problem of
Stability, he had come uncommonly near it, by the Great Brass Hat! And
the dud-heads at Whitehall had shown the door to him and his invention.
"Good Christmas!--how like 'em!" reflected Franky, lowering the glasses
to chuckle, and looking round for Margot.
There she was, some twenty yards distant, planted right in the middle of
the avenue, lost to the wide in rapt contemplation of the hovering
aeroplane.
"Kitts!" he called, but she did not hear, or disdained to pay attention.
He tried to call again, but his mouth dried up and his feet seemed
rooted to the ground. For, swinging round the turf-banked corner of the
avenue at its junction with another, charging at a terrific pace down
upon the little brilliant creature, came a whity-brown figure on a
motorcycle, the frantic honking of its horn and the racket of its
engine's open throttle mingling deafeningly with the tractor's roar.
*CHAPTER VI*
*SHERBRAND*