as you happen to know my flying record"--he shrugged his great shoulders
and smoothed his tight red roll of moustache with a well-manicured
finger-tip--"that it is possible you would have sufficient confidence to
allow me to test your gyroscopic hoverer myself?" He laughed again
pleasantly as he finished: "Whatever else I may do, I give you my word
of honour I shall not pile up your machine. Will you consent? It may
lead--supposing you do not close with the French offer--to big
business--done with my friends!"
Sherbrand had looked doubtful, only for an instant. Before the
twelve-year-old eavesdropper had recovered from the shock that had set
his brain spinning and his heart thumping, the situation had been
accepted by the owner of the Bird of War. He held out his left hand,
and von Herrnung gripped and wrenched it, noting with inward amusement
that his grip had brought fresh lines of blood creeping about the edges
of Sherbrand's finger-nails.
"You shake hands with the left," he commented, smiling. "Not for the
first time have I noticed the peculiarity in Englishmen of the younger
breed."
"It is a custom," Sherbrand answered, "with--members of an organisation
to which I had, and still have, the honour to belong."
His eyes, in speaking, went to the bright-haired boy in Scout's uniform
standing near them, but von Herrnung's glance had not followed his. The
boy was staring wistfully at the round-faced clock on the front gable of
the cafe restaurant--ten minutes to the half-hour and no sign of the
Chief's returning. Bawne's courage began to ooze away at the ends of
his fingers and toes.
"Then," von Herrnung was beginning impatiently, when a sallow,
undersized young man, whose hollow chest and inky paper cuffs advertised
his clerical employment, came up, touched a pen sticking out from behind
his ear, and said as Sherbrand turned to him:
"Beg pardon, sir, but the telegraph-cabin is locked up proper, and Mr.
Macrombie 'as carried orf the key."
"Out of sorts to-day, is he?" Sherbrand asked meaningly, and the
telegraph-clerk answered:
"I've never seen 'im so bad before--in the middle of the month!"
As Fate would have it, Macrombie, ex-Petty Officer Telegraphist of the
R.N.--from whose sleeve the golden Crown and thunderbolt had been reft
by reason of his anti-teetotal habits, had received a visit that morning
from a friend who had repaid a debt. Hence the licensed operator of
Fanshaw's experimental and educational Wireless-station had succumbed to
an attack of his intermittent complaint.
Hear Macrombie's assistant continuing the recital:
"He's left the aerial connected to the transmitter and gone out for
lemon-squashes four times since one o'clock grub. 'That's the drink for
men who have souls to save, ye little fag-eater!' he says to me;
'Salvation for soul and body, sucked through a straw! If thae deboshed
and hopeless drunkards at the Admiralty could be induced to swear off
their cursed alcohol and take to it, I wad no longer be deaved to the
point of steeping my tongue in profanity, by the kind o' eediots'
gibberish that is yammering at my lugs!'"
"He'd been raking a lot of Admiralty strays in?" Sherbrand queried. Von
Herrnung, who had been grinding his heel into the turf and gnawing his
lip with ill-concealed impatience, turned his head sharply, and listened
to the colloquy with all his ears.
"Not so much X's as definites, sir," responded Macrombie's assistant.
"He was upset about ten minutes before he broke out by getting an
'Urgent' without a Preparative Call. Then comes 'Important' in
International Code, and 'Administration' and 'Emergency.' Then 'War
Office,' and 'Documents,' and 'Enforcement of the Law.' By that time 'e
was purple in the face and 'arf crazy. 'If I had my way wi' you, ye
bung-nosed intemperates,' he says, groaning-like--'I wad keep ye on
grits an' caller watter for a fortnicht! Oh, that men, as auld Hosea
says in the inspired Screeptures'--an' I 'appen to know myself it was
Shakespeare--'should pit an enemy intil their mooths to steal awa' their
brains!' An' 'e snatches off the telephone 'ead-band and chucks it into
the corner, and just as my own instrument starts to tick out a call, he
ketches me by the neck as if I'd bin a tame rabbit, an' slings me out o'
the office an' locks the door. 'Out o' this!' 'e says, puttin' the
cabin key in 'is pocket. 'I will no' have your lugs, dirr-ty as they
are, polluted by the unclean counsels o' the wicked. I'm awa' to cool
the wrath o' the righteous wi' anither lemon squash!' An' the winder is
blocked by the Morse key instrument, an' even if it wasn't, it's too
small for me to get in through!" Macrombie's victim ended, with an
injured sniff.
"Well, well! Better hang about the cabin a bit and possess your soul in
patience. If any pupils drop along, tell them they'll have to wait!
Perhaps Macrombie'll turn up sober enough to take them on by-and-by. As
for the message in transmission, I daresay it will keep. Mr. Fanshaw's
not expecting any particularly important communication that I know of.
Oh, hang it!" Sherbrand whistled dismally. "I'd forgotten. That's
just what I am!"
"Shall I go and see if I can find Rumball?" suggested Macrombie's
assistant helpfully. "He's at the engine-sheds. He's been a locksmith.
'Twouldn't take him more than a sec. to open the office door!"
"Cut then!" acceded Sherbrand, and the telegraph-clerk touched his
pen--discovering by a jab of the inky nib that he was wearing it--and
set off at a trot in the direction of the engine-sheds.
You are to suppose that von Herrnung's sharp ears had gathered the pith
of the communication. Some meaning in the isolated words the clerk had
repeated had had a palpable effect upon his nerves. His face looked
bluish-grey and streaky, as he said to Sherbrand, stammering in his
eagerness:
"So then, it is agreed about my flying your machine?"
"I see no objection."
"_Gut!_" Von Herrnung went on, concealing a huge joy under a careless
camaraderie: "Can you lend me a cap and coat and a pair of
_Schulzbrille_? Goggles you call them, yes! The coat should better to
be a large one"--he stumbled in his English now through sheer
excitement--"I am so much a bigger man than you!"
"Certainly. We keep Flying rigs in all manner of sizes. It's in the way
of business," Sherbrand said. Then his glance fell upon Davis, whose
little black-avised countenance wore an expression of sulky resentment,
and he uttered a slight exclamation. "I forgot, Davis! I really am
very sorry!" He turned to von Herrnung and explained in a tone of
finality that enraged the hearer: "This is Davis's afternoon off. I
cannot ask him to repeat the climb."
"It is hellishly annoying! But see! Listen, my fellow!" He addressed
himself to little grimy Davis, unhelmeted and unbuttoned, leaning
against the Bird's flank with his hands in the pockets of his oily
overalls, chewing a blade of grass; "You will go up with me if I tip
you? A sovereign! Come then! The gold does it! You will go up with
me, will you not, yes?"
Davis spat out grass and delivered himself:
"Not even for my young guv'nor--and a Bank of England finnup, do I do
the soaring heagle hact again this blooming Wednesday."
Welsh Davis had come to London from a mountain farm in Merioneth,
speaking nothing but his native Cymric, and had culled his Sassenach
from Cockney lips. Von Herrnung bid another sovereign, and then two
more, ineffectually.
"Naow!" Davis was rock. "I've done my day's stunt an' I'm nuffy.
D'yer tumble? Nuffy! Yer knaows wot that means--if you're a Flying
Bloke!"
"Damn you, I will gif you ten pounds!" Von Herrnung's face was wrung
and streaked with passion. He breathed hard, and the brown leather
satchel jumped and wobbled in his shaking hand.
"It isn't any use," said Sherbrand, "really! Money doesn't count with
Davis where his off-time's concerned. Davis doesn't want to go up again,
and I've not another man of his weight available. What do you turn the
scale at? I should guess 16 stone or thereabouts?"
"I weigh 16 st. 8 lbs. in my ordinary clothes."
"Well, I tot 11 st. 6 lbs. in the fullest of flying-rig, and Davis only
8 st. 5 lbs. And the Bird is built to carry in addition to her
engine--what with the instruments, so forth, and man-freight, a cargo of
something like 22 stone. You see, even with Davis, you'd load the
machine a good bit over her"--he smiled at the conceit--"her Plimsoll
mark. Again, I'm sorry. It's your luck! No flying for you to-day!"
"It is damnably annoying! But"--von Herrnung's red-lashed blue eyes
were busily scanning Bawne's face and figure--"but suppose I could get a
boy of 6 stone to go up with me? Merely as ballast, for I do not
require an assistant--the difficulty might be got over in this way?
What you say, my little English fellow?" He turned on the boy with a
great air of jovial patronage. "Are you plucky enough? Shall we go for
a voyage together in the sky?"
"Yes--please!"
The dark blue eyes met the hard light ones bravely, though every vestige
of colour had sunk out of the young face. Then back to lips and cheeks
the banished colour came racing. Bawne flushed crimson, as von Herrnung
held up a bright bit of gold, and sharply shook his head.
"_Was_? Will you not take the sovereign?" von Herrnung demanded. "Are
you a faint-heart after all?"
The boy bit his lip and said, clenching his small fists desperately:
"It's against the rule for Scouts to take tips. So I don't want the
money. But I'm ready to come with you!"
"Look here, old fellow!" Sherbrand was beginning anxiously. The boy
stopped him with:
"Really and truly I'm not funky--and you said I was to have another
flight."
"So I did, and so you shall," agreed Sherbrand. "But this won't be just
a 'bus trip around the aerodrome. It will be climbing and spiralling
and hovering, and all the rest!"
Bawne persisted:
"You could strap me in. And I'm not afraid--really!"
"And," von Herrnung interposed, "I shall not ascend higher than three
thousand. Probably less will do for my purpose. The boy will be quite
safe. Surely you are able to trust him with me?"
Sherbrand hesitated, then said to Bawne in a relieved tone: "Well,
there's the Doctor talking to a tall lady in white with a hat that
glitters. Run across to your father and ask him whether you may go?"
"I'd rather you asked him--if you must--and let me stop here!"
"_Gut! Sehr gut!_" Von Herrnung's tautened nerves would have been
relieved by some hard Prussian swearing. He jangled out a laugh instead.
He caught hold of the boy under the armpits and lifted him high above
his head. "What is your weight? Six stone? Come now, have I not
guessed nearly!" He had not relinquished his grip on the leather
satchel, and as it banged against his ribs, Bawne realised that it was
quite light.
"Papers inside!" he said to himself. Something quite hard was under the
leather at the corners, perhaps the thinnest of metal plates. Its
contact with the boy's body seemed to sober von Herrnung's exultation.
He dropped Bawne unceremoniously, and straightened himself again.
"How much petrol has been used?" he asked hastily of Davis, going over
to the Bird and mounting on the landing-carriage to look at the gauges.
"Because when I fly I never take risks. You will have to fill up the
tank again. Do you hear, my fellow?"
"If Mr. Sherbrand orders me," Davis spat out another piece of grass,
"dessay I shall do it!" He eyed von Herrnung with surly disapproval as
he craned over the Bird's fuselage, while audibly commenting to an
acquaintance who had strolled up:
"Sheer blinders, I call 'em, these ere Fritzies! Walk into Buckingham
Pallis next minute and ask to look into the Privy Puss. 'Ope the
Governor comes back before 'e gits Nosey Parkerin' into the 'orizontal
'overing gear! Perish me if I ever met a bloke with such a nerve!
Watto, old sonny?" He addressed himself to the boy. "Ain't you feelin'
up to the posh?"
"I am quite all right, thank you!" Bawne responded, while his heart
bumped against his ribs. In his brain words and sentences kept forming:
"I'm only a little chap. And this is--a Big thing! Bigger than the
Chief expected, perhaps! And he said he'd be back in half an hour."
Half an hour meant thirty minutes. He glanced at the big round
white-faced clock above the entrance of the cafe restaurant. More than
fifteen minutes of the half-hour had gone.
To stick to the big, brutal German was his--Bawne's--Secret Mission.
And the inspiring, uplifting voice that thousands of boy-hearts thrill
to all the big world over had said to him:
"Quit yourself like a man!"
*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE REAPING*
To Patrine, when the shadow of the familiar figure of the Doctor mingled
with hers upon the dry green grass, and Saxham's voice called her by her
name, it was as though his presence had a weight that physically
oppressed her, and his scrutiny seared her flesh like the approach of
white-hot iron.
Through her mind passed swift sentences: "_Yet another of us has
disgraced him! My father and mother are not the only traitors of our
name!_" In the rawness of her mental anguish every sense was
unnaturally exaggerated. The ticking of Saxham's watch, that the
furious beating of her heart could not drown, tormented by its
iteration. And worst of all, was the consciousness of defilement in the
physical sense.
"Did not your mother give you my message?"
Always pale, her pallor did not demand particular attention, save that
under their ruddy salve the edges of her lips showed white. She
answered, forcing the lips to smile, compelling her eyes to meet
Saxham's.
"About coming to see you?" She remembered and drew from her gilt-chain
vanity bag the letter she had not posted: "This was written to you
to-day. Then I thought I would have been able to look in at Harley
Street, and in the end----"
"In the end you neither paid the visit nor posted the excuse. Well, be
more considerate in future to those who love you. Sincere, clean love
does not grow on every gooseberry bush, my dear!"
The curt speech, made in the Doctor's brusquest tone, conveyed to
Patrine an impression of exquisite kindness. So many boons, so many
benefits had been conferred in that grim, curt way. She had wept and
would not weep again, but her hard bright eyes grew misty as she thanked
him, and asked after Lynette, with a touch of wistfulness that recalled
to the Doctor that unforgettable time when greedy Death had threatened
to rob him of his joy. He answered her cheerfully, and they found
themselves chatting of familiar, everyday matters across the gulf that
yawned between. And then, warned by some swift change of expression in
her face, Saxham glanced up to see Sherbrand approaching.
"Doctor!" he called. "Sorry to interrupt, but would you listen a
minute?"
The tall, lightly-built, lightly moving figure came swinging towards
them. He still carried the eared cap with the goggled visor, his thick,
silvery-blonde hair was darkened at the temples with the dampness
generated under the close covering of waterproof. His light grey-blue
eyes were smiling, yet there was a pucker of anxiety between his
eyebrows, as he put von Herrnung's case.
"So," he ended, "instead of taking a second flight in the Bird with me
as we arranged, would you trust your boy to this foreign crack who's in
a hole for a passenger? He is Captain von Herrnung of the German Flying
Service--winner of the two-days' flight from Hanover to Paris in
April--a famous run!" He added, "I need hardly say that with such a
record as von Herrnung holds you cannot be apprehensive of any rashness
or neglect on his part. But I'll own I would rather take Bawne up
another day myself. Still, von Herrnung----"
"I am aware of the reputation held by the person you mention. I am
going now to speak to him."
The Doctor's face was devoid of all expression. But he battled, as he
spoke, with a masterful desire to forbid Bawne the expedition. To
assert parental authority on this point would have been the mode of
dealing approved by one of the two men who dwelt within the Dop Doctor.
The other Saxham said "Hold!"
Dare you place your paternal love, that other Saxham asked--between your
son and his duty? Because it would be so easy to do it, is the reason
why you should refrain! The Doctor had walked a few paces towards the
object of his troubled reflections. He wheeled abruptly, returned, and
presented Sherbrand to his niece.
A faint blush rose in Patrine's white cheeks as her eyes met those of
the tall young aviator. They looked at her without any sign of
recognition, and the conviction, "_He has forgotten!_" shot stingingly
across her mind. "_He did not think me worth remembering_" came next.
And then she could have laughed, recalling that she had dismissed him
from her own thoughts on the discovery of his connection with Fanshaw's.
She had made so certain that a teacher of Flying couldn't be a
gentleman.
Now, face to face with him again, in his upright easy bearing, in his
straight and fearless regard, in the pleasant well-bred voice that
addressed her in a brief conventional sentence or so, she read his
patent of gentlehood.
From whatever root it sprang, the flower was noble. Her swift eyes shot
a glance at the bigger figure in grey. What a hoggish knight of the
dunghill, what a high-born clown had she not distinguished by her choice
and selection. The smile of scorn that curved her mouth was suddenly
banished by the sudden recollection of Bawne.
"Uncle Owen, you have not yet told Mr. Sherbrand whether Bawne may go up
again or not. I am sure--if you won't think me--if you don't mind my
saying so!--that he has had enough for to-day! I think it would be
better if you would not----"
It was not the deep warm voice of Patrine's characteristic utterance,
but a weaker, thinner voice that hesitated and faltered and trailed
away. It recalled nothing to Sherbrand. He looked at her and
transferred his gaze to Saxham, who asked:
"Does this German officer intend climbing to any high altitude, or
perpetrating anything in the nature of a display?"
Sherbrand explained:
"He does not want to go higher than three thousand. Just to try the
hoverer, regarding which some business friends of his are bitten with
curiosity. My mechanic is not able to go up with him, and he wants a
light-weight passenger. He is over sixteen stone himself, and the Bird
has been built to carry me with Davis. I calculated her wing-area
to----"
Sherbrand travelled into the realm of technicalities, using terms that
were Volapuk and Esperanto to Patrine. He had supple, finely-shaped
hands, and used them as he talked with vivid illustrative gestures.
"So," he ended, "as your plucky youngster asked to go, it seemed a way
out of the difficulty, provided you weren't dead against the thing. Of
course we'll swadd the little chap in a sweater or so under the
pneumatic jacket. It'll be a bit parky, even at three thousand, now the
sun's beginning to down."
He added:
"I'll see to the strapping myself. You may rely upon it, Doctor."
Saxham said with a look of kindness at the handsome face with the clear
candid eyes:
"I am sure of that!" He added, mastering that inward impulse: "I shall
not forbid the flight if Bawne is set on it. But first, I must speak to
him!"
And the great form with the stern thoughtful face and scholar's stoop
moved across the greensward, followed by the tall young figures of
Sherbrand and Patrine. Of the two, the man was by a bare inch the
taller. This Patrine realised in a swift side-glance. Certain featural
characteristics of him, personal impressions received
half-unconsciously, retained their clear sharpness then and for many
days....
The silvery-yellow hair toning into the pale brown skin. The powerful
sweep of the brows over eyes set flush with their large orbits,
prominent, brilliant, mobile as the eyes of a bird of flight. The nose,
arched and jutting like a kite's beak, with large sensitive nostrils,
the somewhat sunken cheek and the sharply-angled jaw, the little ear and
the rounded skull superbly set upon the full muscular neck rising out of
the collar of the gabardine, made up a portrait upon which some happy
woman might well dote and dream.
It was five o'clock and the breeze that smelt of heather and clover-hay
and strawberries blew more strongly, straight from under the westering
sun. Patrine drank in deep draughts of the buoyant sweetness. The
leaden gyves had fallen from her limbs, the leaden weight had lifted
from her bosom. She had recovered something of her old, elastic grace
of movement, that even the sheath-skirt could not spoil. Looking at
her, Sherbrand said to himself:
"She walks like a Highland hill-woman or a native girl of the
Philippines. And--did Heaven or a Bond Street specialist give her that
extraordinary hair? I rather hate it, and yet I have to go on looking
at it. Does she know? I wonder if she knows?"
She felt his eyes on her. And the buoyant sense of well-being that his
presence brought to her was mingled with an agony of apprehension. Her
heart clamoured, like a brooding thrush attacked by the owl, that Bawne
should not be permitted to risk himself with von Herrnung. "_Does any
other living being know him as I know him?_" she asked herself. "_If by
some misadventure it came to a question of one life or the other, would
he scruple--no! he would not scruple for an instant to sacrifice the
child?_"
Three words to Uncle Owen--if one only dared to speak them--would have
put the thing out of the question. But at the thought of the dreadful
avowal to which such an utterance might lead, Patrine was stricken dumb.
She could not face the music. This was one little ear of wild oats out
of the full field that waited for her reaping, sown in the hours that
lie between the midnight of pleasure and the dawn of the Day of Remorse.
Perhaps she and Sherbrand had walked more slowly than it had seemed to
her. She saw Saxham and his son meet, heard, indistinctly the exchange
of a few brief sentences, and then the boy, with a jump to hug his
father round the neck, ran to her as she came up.
"Cousin Pat, I'm going to get into my flying-kit in a minute." His
heart was thumping so that it shook him, and the short upper lip with
the gold-brown dust of freckles on it quivered, hard as he tried to keep
it stiff: "One doesn't do it before people generally--but I'd rather
like you to kiss me now!"
"My precious, a dozen times!"
She said it impetuously in the deep womanly baritone that Bawne loved,
and Sherbrand started as he heard it. She dropped her tall-sticked
sunshade, and caught the little boyish figure to her broad womanly
bosom, hugged him until he panted, and kissed his pale cheeks red. You
do not need to be reminded that Patrine was a galumpher. "Don't go!
don't go!" she whispered in her darling's neck. "I hate your going! and
I don't believe Uncle Owen likes it.... Say you've been up once and
you're 'nuffy! Pretend you funk it. Do, for my sake!"
"I--can't. Ouch! You tickle! Please let me go. This is business!"
He squirmed, and she burst out laughing, and released him. The act was
a wrench that tore her bleeding heart anew.
He bounded instantly after Sherbrand, seeing him go forward to join von
Herrnung, who was standing watching Davis fill the Bird's tank with
petrol, and her reservoir with oil.
There was no spurring these lazy devils of English into movement....
The accursed pig-dogs, the stupid sheep's heads! If that fragmentary
Wireless message had really to do with _the business_, within the next
ten minutes everything might be ruined. One walked perilously, as
amongst pebbles, holding a watch-glass of High Explosive in one's hand.
Here came the man and the boy. He joined them with a noisy burst of
forced laughter. Presently you saw all three moving in the direction of
a building where the "flying-kits of all sorts and shapes and sizes," of
which Sherbrand had boasted, were kept for the use of the patrons of
Fanshaw's School. As they went in, Bawne cast a wistful glance up at
the clock on the front gable of the cafe restaurant, now supplying
afternoon tea served in brown teapots, and rolls and butter on thick
white platters, to a thin sprinkling of customers.
"Three minutes to the half-hour," said the clock.