have noticed a crow's foot or so at the corner of the Chief's keen
falcon-eyes. To-day, their hazel brightness undiminished, they looked
at Life from a network of fine criss-crossed lines. But Time, the
spider, had spun no web in the fine alert brain, and the man's heart was
free from crow's feet or wrinkles. Fresh and evergreen, it was as it
would always be, an oasis of kindness for the downhearted or weary,
watered by the twin wells of sympathy and enthusiasm. He said, speaking
to Saxham of the invisible Sherbrand:
"I wish we had a million like him!"
Saxham answered:
"I wish we had several millions. He is a fine, energetic type. A bit
of a hero-worshipper--a bit of a philosopher, a bit of a stoic: '_He
hath seen men rise to authority without envy, and schooled himself to
endure adversity, that he might bear himself the better when his time
should come to rule._'"
"His time is coming, or I am no judge of capability. And you quoted
from the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus, I think? I've always found good
reading-meat in that and the _Discourses_. Used to carry a little
sixpenny copy about in my pocket, until I wore it to rags."
"I have often seen and noted its raggedness, and its uncompromising
Isabella-hue!"
"It was negroid in complexion before the Relief of Gueldersdorp.
Perhaps you won't be astonished when I tell you I have got it now." The
Chief's smiling eyes narrowed in laughter. "My wife has bound it
gorgeously, and with other volumes of my Siege library, it occupies a
special and most sacred shelf near my writing-desk at home."
He went on:
"This fine fellow Sherbrand is an old correspondent of mine. He would
say I might tell you the story, and I think it's worth hearing, in a
way. It must be eight years ago, when he would be about seventeen, that
he wrote to me from an engineering college at Newcastle, to say he had
read some papers of mine on the subject of scouting, and proposed--if I
thought it would not be presumption on his part--save the mark!--to
enrol and organise a troop on the lines laid down. He wanted a definite
code of Scout law to work on, and Rules and so forth, all of which I
supplied him, you may be sure. Busy as I was drilling and cub-licking
the North British Territorials, I couldn't find time to spare to run up
and see the boy. So he commandeered a holiday and motor-cycled to
Headquarters. Rode all through one night in pelters of rain, and caught
me in my 5 A.M. tub."
"He meant business."
"Business--and it was up to me to encourage such grittiness and
enthusiasm. So I ordered coffee for two, and bacon and eggs for half a
dozen, and when I had fed him I talked. My book wasn't published, but I
lent him some proof-sheets. He thanked me, but before he took them he
had to disburden his mind."
The fine sunburnt hand went thoughtfully to the grizzled moustache, worn
rather longer than of old.
"He had got something on his mind. He had been reading that old
bogey-book, _Hales on Mental Heredity_, and the theory of the
transmission of base or criminal tendencies from the parents to the
children, had haunted him night and day. He said to me, standing up
before me, looking about as long and thin as a fathom of pump-water: 'My
father was dismissed from the Army in War-time, for not backing up his
C.O. Is there a kink in _my_ brain or a bacillus lying waiting in _my_
body that will one day make a slacker of me?"
Saxham's square face was ashen, but the Chief's eyes were elsewhere.
"And you told him----?"
"I told him, that whilst physical disease and deformity are
transmissible from the unhealthy parents to their unlucky offspring, no
sensible Christian regarded the theory of inherited vice or crime, as
anything but the most pernicious lie that the devil ever invented to
spread as a net for the catching of bodies and souls. That seemed to
buck him up!"
"I do not doubt it!" said Saxham. He breathed more freely, and his face
had regained its natural hue.
"I reminded him," went on the Chief, "that our Army and our Fleet are
indebted for thousands of the finest men, morally and physically
speaking, to Reformatories and Industrial Schools and Homes. 'Think of
the character borne by Barnardo's boys,' I told him, 'and grind the
scorpion lie to pulp under your boot-heel, whenever and wherever you
find it cocking up its damnable tail!'"
"So he went back," said Saxham, "cheered and strengthened by your
sympathy, as--other men have been before now!"
"So he went back to the College, fortified by my bit of nervous English,
and worked at his troop for all he was worth. Raked in seventy in the
first month, and kept on raking. He is dandy at drill and organisation,
is Sherbrand. When he left the College they mustered three hundred
strong." The speaker struck his stick upon the turf and said
emphatically: "How it grows!--how the Movement spreads and gathers and
ramifies! Do you know Saxham, that there are moments in my life when I
am tempted to be proud. When rank upon rank of young, fresh, fearless
faces with bright eyes are turned to me. When thousands of active,
lithe, healthy young bodies run out into the open and rally about the
Chief Scout."
There was a mist in the bright eyes that his manliness was not ashamed
of.
"Years ago, when the officer in command of a certain beleaguered
garrison was doing his best to defend it, a great Fear came upon him in
the watches of a particularly anxious night. Perhaps you will guess
what I mean, Saxham? The man had not slept for more weeks than I like to
remember, and the hours of rest in the day-time were hot-eyed staring
horrors of insomnia. He was--up against it! The shrunken lids would
not shut down over his bursting eyeballs, and his jaws were clamped so
that he could not yawn. Then, on this night, his Fear rose up and mopped
and mowed at him, and it had the kind of face that madhouse doctors and
keepers know. He wasn't ordinarily a 'fearful man,' like Kipling's
immortal Bengali, but now he was horribly, sickeningly afraid!"
"I guessed it," said Saxham. "I realised what you were suffering, but I
did not dare to hint my knowledge to you. There was no danger of
madness. But you were certainly on the verge of mental and physical
breakdown."
"And being in such desperate case," said the other, "I prayed to God in
my extremity. I promised Him if He would help me to carry out my duty
to Him, as to my earthly superiors, and those men and women and children
who looked to me as their protector and guide, that I would one day, if
He spared me, build Him a big Temple, made of the little temples that
are the work of His Hands."
"And to-day the Temple is a reality!"
"A grand reality. East, West, North, and South, it spreads and widens
and towers. It is built of boys. Clean-limbed, clean-minded,
self-respecting fellows, scorning vices, eager for service, sensitive in
Honour, chivalrous, patriotic, keen for Truth and Right. It frightens
me, Saxham, when I think what a leaven is working through these boys of
mine, potential fathers of sons in the ripeness of Time, for the
ultimate regeneration of this vicious, degenerate world. It makes me
understand how near old Coleridge got to the live heart of things when
he wrote the _Ancient Mariner_. The service of Almighty God is the love
of your fellow-man. But why to me, and not to another worthier, should
God have given this wonderful, glorious thing to bring about? ..."
"Because you are worthy of doing His work for Him. Has He not used you
as His instrument in my own case? Should I not own to this, I who owe
everything to you?"
The other laid a hand on the great shoulder of the Dop Doctor.
"If ever you owed me anything, Saxham, you paid me long ago!"
He was silent a moment and said in a lighter tone: "I am not quite clear
yet as to how you met my whilom Scoutmaster."
"Our acquaintance dates from a cross-Channel flight he made in the end
of June."
"I know." The Chief prodded the turf with his walking-stick. "A French
pilot-officer of their Service Aeronautique, a certain Commandant
Raymond, who flew here in the contest for the Ivor International Cup in
May, had heard of Sherbrand and his inventions from Lamond of the
Central Flying School. He took a shine to the aerial stabiliser and got
his Chiefs to give it a trial. That came off on the Grand Prix Sunday,
when Paris went wild over the Sarajevo affair."
"And scenting War in the air," said Saxham, "Sherbrand promptly took
wing for England without waiting for the decision of the judges who were
present at the test."
"Did he? He has keen scent."
"Better now," said Saxham laughing, "than when he came to me--on the
recommendation of an old patient--suffering from an aggravated form of
nasal catarrh. He had had it at intervals for years, and suspected it
to be owing to what he described, in the language of the
engineering-shop, as "a defect in the air-intake." He proved to be
right--and I sent him into the Hospital, where Berry Boyle performed a
slight minor operation which removed the trouble, and left him capitally
fit. Then, when he came out of the Hospital, he found a letter from the
French Consul waiting at his office----"
The Chief interpolated:
"Ah yes. The aerial stabiliser had gained the suffrages of Messieurs
the Chiefs of the Aeronautique Francaise. I hope M. Jourdain's report
to his Government will induce them to buy the patent. For, judging by
the interest that the representatives of another Power seem to take
in----"
The Chief broke off. The smiling lines about his eyes and mouth had
vanished as he queried: "Who is the lady my Scout over there is
squiring? A superbly-shaped young woman, with hair of the fashionable
terra-cotta shade. But for the hair, I should have said it was your
niece, Patrine."
Saxham's eyes followed the direction of the Chief's glance. He said, and
his face looked hard as a mask of stone:
"Your memory for faces is correct as usual. The lady with the
terra-cotta hair is my late brother's daughter, Patrine."
The Chief's familiar whistle filled in a space of silence, with a
pensive little fragment of Delius' _Spring Song_, while Saxham's frown
grew deeper and his jaw thrust out more angrily. Then the well-known
voice said:
"I am sorry that Miss Patrine has been tempted to follow the fashion.
But I regret still more her choice of friends! I refer to the German
officer in whose company your niece arrived here, in a yellow Darracq
car, about half-an-hour ago." The speaker made sure, with a rapid
glance to right and left, that no listener was standing near them, and
added: "I know that I may trust you as myself in any private or official
matter. Between ourselves frankly, I am here to-day for the purpose
of--keeping an eye on this particular man!"
The Doctor's vivid blue eyes darted rapier-points at the other, from
caves that had suddenly been dug about them. The General went on:
"The man himself is no common spy, though he may on occasion act as an
agent or post-box for Secret Intelligence communications. He is an
extraordinarily able young officer, a squadron captain in their Field
Flying Service, with some astonishing records to his credit, though he
was an Engineer Lieutenant in 1907 when he came to England as
chauffeur-officer attached to the Kaiser's Personal Staff. For a
comprehensible reason his superiors desired him to improve his knowledge
of the topography of the British Isles. He certainly did so, but"--the
keen eyes twinkled--"the record runs accomplished by von Herrnung with
the All Highest as passenger, were not unattended, or unobserved by us.
That he is well-born and well-looking is undeniable, and these
advantages, with other social gifts, may easily attract your niece, like
any other of Eve's daughters. But to say the least it is inadvisable
that she should encourage the advances of this man, or of any other
German officer,--when the next forty-eight hours may see Britain and
Germany at grips in War."
"That is your opinion?"
"It is my plain, unvarnished opinion, speaking as one of those who are
admitted behind the scenes. Not that I am infallible, but the Signs and
the Tokens all lead one way." He lifted his lean brown hand and pointed
eastwards. "For years they have been making ready, but now--what a
frenzy of ordered preparation. What secret councils, what reiteration
of orders, what accumulations of stores, what roaring of electric
furnaces--I'd give my little finger to know what chemical they're making
in huge bulk at the Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik, and hundreds of
other dye and bleaching-powder works in Germany and Austria!--every one
backed up by the German Imperial State or the Dual Monarchy on the
understanding that at the signal, they are to turn to and turn
out--what? Benzine for phenol, phenol for picric, and toluene for
Super-Explosive, that's understood. But this stuff puzzles me. Do you
see the Senile Arc in my eyes yet, Saxham? It must be that I'm getting
old!"
He smiled his whimsical smile and went on:
"A day or two after the burial of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
morganatic partner, murdered by some fanatics among the Greater Serbs, a
huge majority among the German military and naval officers doing duty in
their Colonies, or on political service in Africa, were recalled by
Wireless. Leave has been stopped. Rolling-stock in inconceivable
masses is being concentrated on the greater strategic railways, while
the official and semi-official Press prates and gabbles of peace and
neighbourly goodwill!" He shrugged. "Things were safer when they
yelled and foamed in convulsions of Anglophobia. Then one doubted....
Now one is sure! ... Ah, I thought I wasn't mistaken. Here's Sherbrand
coming down!"
*CHAPTER XXVIII*
*THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE*
The dazzling turquoise of the sky was now streaked with milky bands of
haziness. Dappled golden-white cloudlets at the zenith made what is
known as mackerel sky. Trails of rounded stratus floated low in the
east and south-east. Long shadows of hangars, pylons, semaphore and
electric searchlight-stations, stretched over the turf from westwards,
crossed by perambulatory shadows of people moving about. These became
stationary, betokening that popular interest was newly awakened.
Umbrellas and sticks flourished towards the sky. Bawne gave a little
crow of delight as the whitish-brown, shining shape of the monoplane
dived down out of the empyrean, travelling with a bold, beautiful
swooping glide that took away the gazer's breath.
"Look, oh look!" Bawne gasped, leaning against Patrine. Now her tardy
interest was genuinely awakened. Reaching the end of its glide, the
monoplane had regained the horizontal position. As she flattened out
and hung well-nigh motionless in mid-air with the sunlight beating on
and drenching her fragile, lacy structure, she was a thing of beauty and
of wonder. The humming of her tractor came to you mingled with the
buzzing of her gyroscopic hoverer, like the incessant vibration of
living, sentient wings.
She seemed to tire of hanging between earth and heaven, ceased buzzing,
tilted a wing sharply and began to frolic after it as a kitten runs
after its tail on a hearthrug, or as a swallow gambols on a chase after
gnats, always turning towards the West, whilst her greyish shadow danced
and skipped upon the gold-white cloud-surfaces to eastwards a long way
below her, like the ghost of an aeroplane. All the time she was
gobbling up distance, steadily descending. She presently reversed her
sun-worshipping tactics, dived, and spiralled, banking, from west to
east. You saw plainly the helmeted heads and slightly hunched shoulders
of the pilot at the controls and the mechanic strapped in the forward
cockpit.
Soon she hovered again and swooped, so suddenly that Patrine nipped
Bawne's shoulder, saying "Great Scott!" under her breath. Another long
sweeping glide brought her close to the green turf of the aerodrome.
Then, with an adroit flexing of the wing-tips, she balanced, flattened,
and landed lightly within the huge white circle, rocking a little on her
tyred wheels.
The man with the stop-watch checked the mechanism, the bearded man with
the big binoculars lowered and closed them, scribbled in a
memorandum-book and came down the judge's stand. The Bird of War's
mechanic stayed in his place, the pilot unhitched his body-strap, pushed
up his goggled visor, threw a long leg over the fuselage and jumped
lightly to the ground. He staggered as he reached it, recovered himself
and stood breathing quickly, as a man overcoming giddiness, or other
physical sensation of distress.
Tall, young, and lightly built, with long active limbs and a physique
suggestive of youth and courage and enterprise, as he stood motionless,
his eared and goggled cap now in hand, the play of sunlight upon his
thin brown waterproof gabardine and overalls made him look like a statue
of Mercury wrought in pale new bronze. And with a lifting of her sick
heart as though it had suddenly spread wings, and soared into a region
of unlimited space and glorious freedom, Patrine recognised her Flying
Man of the Jardin des Milles Plaisirs.
From what airt, of what world unknown, did it blow, that cool, fragrant
wind that then and always heralded for Patrine his coming? It took her
by surprise; lapped her delicately about; enveloped her from head to
foot in its pure invisible waves. The hot, sore places in her heart
were bathed and healed, the deep caverns filled, the little thirsty
rock-pools set awash and brimming. When the sough of it was no longer
in her ears or the tug and flutter of it among the folds of her
garments; when she ceased to be conscious of the cool resilient pressure
upon cheek and neck and forehead--her brief sweet hour of joy was over.
Sherbrand had gone away again.
"_Cela ira-t-il, monsieur? Je suis pret a faire une nouvelle
demonstration si vous n'etes pas satisfait._"
His clear, strong voice speaking in laborious public school French gave
her a delicious shock of pleasure. He was addressing the stout, bearded
Frenchman who, accompanied by the thinner man who had timed Sherbrand by
the stop-watch, now walked across the turf to shake the aviator's hand.
As Sherbrand spoke, he drew a white handkerchief from the sleeve of his
gabardine and wiped from the corners of his mouth some little blobs of
foam, slightly bloodstained. The stout, friendly Frenchman glanced at
him, and uttered an exclamation. Sherbrand shook his head in vigorous
protest and laughed, repeating his offer to demonstrate again. Upon
which the bearded man, who had also a moustache with thick, stiff waxed
ends, and wore a large checked-pattern summer suit with a white drill
waistcoat, a low collar and a necktie with flowing ends, and was topped
with a high-crowned straw hat that suggested Trouville in mid-season,
negatived the proposal with a vivacious gesture, pouring forth a stream
of words:
"_Au contraire, Monsieur, je suis convaincu que vous avez une idee
superbe. Nous vous avons observe avec la lunette Zeiss, pendant votre
vol, et nous avons constate le temps tres soigneusement: vous avez
maintenu le bruit et la stabilite pendant cinq minutes de plus que les
vingt-cinq minutes stipulees. Permettez moi comme une simple formalite
de voir votre altimetre?_"
"By all means!" Sherbrand returned.
They went back to the aeroplane together, and Sherbrand reached over and
unhooked the altimeter from a board in the pilot's cockpit, and the
bearded man examined it, and then cordially shook hands.
"Within two days, at latest. Possibly sooner!" Patrine heard the
straw-hatted, bearded gentleman say in English, pronounced with a strong
French accent. "Believe me," he added, "I shall represent most strongly
the usefulness of your invention to the Chief of the Etat de l'Aviation.
_Au revoir, Monsieur, et encore mes felicitations!_"
Then he went away with the small dark man who had used the stop-watch,
and who carried the Zeiss binoculars slung in their case.
During this business interview Patrine had felt Bawne panting and
wriggling close beside her, like an excited, but well-mannered
fox-terrier waiting to be whistled for. But Sherbrand, though he
glanced at the boy smilingly, had turned aside to engage in conversation
with Saxham, and the Chief Scout, whom Sherbrand saluted in orthodox
Scout fashion, flushing red under the clear sunburn that darkened his
fair skin.
"He's one of Us!" Bawne whispered to Patrine, his own young face alight
with pleasure. "He was Scoutmaster of a troop in the North, he told me,
and I know he must have been a splendid one. He's the kind of chap
who'd be prepared for anything. Don't you think he looks like that?"
Patrine did not answer. She was feeling "cheap," as Lady Beauvayse
would have expressed it. She had put the man out of her thoughts
because she had taken it for granted that Fanshaw's instructor could not
be a gentleman. Now, as she watched Sherbrand in conversation with the
elder man, his manner of quiet, well-bred deference, mingled with a
pleasant courtesy, showed her beyond all doubt that his place was above
the salt.
He had looked towards her, when he had smiled at Bawne, and his glance
had swept over her without recognition. She would have known him
anywhere, while he----! She had forgotten her preposterously-coloured
hair.
How sweet the breeze was, bringing from the west the smell of
strawberry-fields and red and white clover. Yet she had not noticed it
until now. Her mood had changed. She had put away the thing she most
hated to remember. She felt almost like the Patrine of two days ago.
"Miss Saxham!"
It was von Herrnung's voice speaking behind her, and with a shock of
loathing horror she remembered all. She turned to see his tall figure
approaching. The first impression was that he was ill; the next, that
he was furiously angry. His florid complexion had bleached to an ugly,
greenish pallor, even the blue of his eyes had faded to a curious lilac
hue. He carried in his gloved left hand, and with evident care, a flat
strapped wallet of brown leather, fastened with two Bramah locks and a
lock-strap. He said to Patrine in a jarring voice of resentment and
impatience:
"I have been looking for you. Could one not leave you for a minute but
you must go off by yourself? _Sapperlot_! Whom has one here? Where did
you pick up the boy?"
Her heart swelled as Bawne looked up at her in astonishment, then
transferred his stare to von Herrnung, puckering his brows in
disapproval of the rude, strange man. She answered as calmly as was
possible:
"This is my cousin, Bawne Saxham, Count von Herrnung."
"Why did you leave me?" von Herrnung grumbled as Bawne stiffly saluted,
and she told him:
"Because I saw you occupied in conversation with your German friends."
"Women are incomprehensible creatures! ... How do you know that they
were German? At any rate, whether they were or not, they have gone away
now! You find me annoyed. It is because they are--what shall I call
it?--perhaps a little exigent. Now I will have a smoke. I suppose you
do not mind?"
He had not freed his hand from the brown leather satchel to remove his
hat when he had mopped his perspiring forehead, with a big cambric
handkerchief scented with the _tres persistent_ perfume that always
clung about his clothes. Nor did he relinquish it to help himself to a
cigar, but opened the gold case containing the weeds with the hand that
drew it from his pocket, extracted a cigar with his teeth, and returned
the case to his pocket; then produced a matchbox, opened it in the same
way, picked out a match, shut the box, and struck the match upon it,
saying to Bawne, as he blew out the first mouthful of smoke: "What do
you think of that, my fine fellow? Should I not make a famous
one-handed man?" But Bawne's suffrages remained unwon, although the
dexterity of the thing had secretly pleased him. He remained doggedly
silent, scowling with his reddish-fair brows, thrusting out his chin.
"Should I not? Tell me!" von Herrnung persisted. "Or is it that British
boys are cowards and afraid to answer when they are spoken to?"
"I am not afraid--of anything or anybody!"
Bawne reddened and looked the taunting big man between the eyes,
squarely. The look added--_And least of all of anybody like you_! He
went on:
"But I think it takes more than--that kind of being clever--to make a
famous man."