that he took away with my machine! Not that I trouble about the Bird.
She was old, and I've got the stuff to build a new one. But my
patent--the hawk-hoverer--that's another pair of shoes!"
"The hawk--! Phee-eew!"
The Chief whistled a rueful note and his keen eyes softened in sympathy:
"I had forgotten your invention. So von Herrnung has scooped for
Germany the gyroscopic hovering-apparatus that the French War Ministry
were proposing to buy. Now I understand the something about you that has
puzzled me. You wear the look of a father, Sherbrand, bereaved of an
uncommonly promising son."
Saxham's stern face rose up in Sherbrand's thought, stamped with that
look, and his throat contracted chokingly. The Chief asked:
"What sort of man is the mechanic von Herrnung has commandeered? A
fellow easy to bribe, or intimidate? It would be worth while to know?"
"It's a boy--not a man!" broke from Sherbrand, hurriedly and hoarsely.
"General, no more unlucky thing could have happened! ... Dr. Saxham's
twelve-year-old nipper took a tremendous shine to von Herrnung,
and--and--he's gone with him! That's the news the Doctor's got to hear
by and by!"
There was a silence. The Chief's face was turned away. Then he said
quietly:
"There was no question of 'a shine.' My Scout was obeying an order.
His Chief Scout had said, 'Keep this man under observation; and if he
leaves the Flying Ground--follow him, if you can!"
Sherbrand could not speak for pity of the small white face that had
grinned at him out of the clumsy woollen helmet. He understood now, that
when he had bent to strap the safety-belt about the little body swathed
in the flannel-lined pneumatic jacket, he had felt a terrified
child-heart bumpity-bumping under his hand. And he struggled with his
grief and rage in silence, broken by an utterance from the other man.
"So he followed him into the air, seeing no other course before him. My
old friend Saxham has good reason to chortle over such a son. I said
to-day, 'I am proud of my Scouts!' Well, to-night I am ten times
prouder. I shall tell the Doctor this--when I get a private word with
him--and wind up with: 'Thanks to Bawne!'"
"Then the Doctor--" Sherbrand began, a weight lifting with the hope that
the news might not have to be broken:
"The Doctor knew. I had said to him, doggily: 'I'll give your pup a
fighting chance to prove his Saxham breed.' It's a stark breed--hard as
granite, supple as incandescent lava,--with a strain of Berserk madness,
and a dash of Oriental fatalism. They can hate magnificently and
forgive grandly, and love to the very verge of death."
Could _she_, Sherbrand wondered, letting his eyes travel to the tall
white woman standing by the Doctor, as the Chief went over to them and
grasped his old friend's hand. Then both men moved away across the
dusky ground together. Those words of thanks and praise were being
spoken. Coming from such a source they must be heartening to listen to.
But presently when their glow had paled and faded, and the boy did not
come back...
Presently, when the empty chair and the vacant bed, and the little
garments hanging in the wardrobe should be filled and occupied and worn
only by a shadow-child wrought of lovely memories. By and by, when the
silence in the house should clamour in the tortured ears of the woman
and the man...
Then, Sherbrand knew no praise of their lost darling would console
Bawne's parents.... Dry-eyed they might smile until their lips cracked,
but their hidden hearts would weep. Their tongues might be silent, but
their hearts would cry always; Did we wish our child to be heroic? Had
he been a craven we would have had him now beside us! Give us our
living boy again! O! keep your empty words!
A cry from Patrine prodded Sherbrand to active sympathy. So at last they
had told her. She knew all. And true to her type she was raging at the
Doctor and the Chief like a very termagant; upbraiding them with a spate
of words rushing over her writhing lips and lioness-frenzy in her
blazing eyes.
"I begged you not to let him go!" This was to the Doctor. "Faint! Do
you take me for a bally idiot--to faint when there's something to be
done! Follow that man and get him back! If he takes him away to
Germany--don't you know we shall never see Bawne again! Oh! why--why
can't I make you understand!"
The raging voice grew hoarse with sobs, though her furious eyes were dry
as enamel. She added with an inflection that made Sherbrand blink and
gulp:
"Don't you know--don't you _know_ it will kill Aunt Lynette? And I
shall be guilty--I who love them so! Oh, God, I must do something or
die raving mad!"
The Doctor's great arm held her firmly round the body. Saxham was strong
as an oak-tree, but who can control a woman in the frenzy of hysteria,
standing six feet tall in high-heeled No. 7 shoes? She wrestled and
fought, and her tawdry hat of silver spangles tumbled off, and her
superb hair shed its pins of tortoiseshell, and rolled, yellow-tawny as
a South African torrent in flood-time, down over her heaving shoulders,
over the supple back and writhing loins, reaching nearly to her knees.
Then her strength went from her, and her tears came. She dropped into a
chair Sherbrand had got her, and crumpled up there, crying bitterly.
*CHAPTER XXXVII*
*PATRINE CONFESSES*
With her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane
tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity
vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes.
Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man
into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl,
pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her
complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping
handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a
dismal blast upon the nose.
"Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric
upon her.
"Th--thank you, Uncle Owen!"
She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different
from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and
cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.
A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held
out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet.
"Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way.
"I--think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as
tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and
Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:
"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!"
"Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply.
"Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his
eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his
young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom
she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women
were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her
she did not know.
She drew a sobbing breath, and looked about her vaguely, and suddenly a
mist rolled away from her brain. The net of Tragedy whirled high and
fell upon her, and the steel trident was driven deep between her ribs
again:
"I--had forgotten!" She stared upon them. "What must you all think of
me?"
Saxham's arm came round her, and Saxham's voice answered:
"Nothing, my dear, but that you are human, and have had a tremendous
shock!"
She leaned against the Doctor's great shoulder, sighing:
"Thank you! ... I'm all right now! Not going to cry any more.... But
Bawne! If we wait long enough there will be news of him? We--shall get
him back?"
She felt Saxham's iron muscles jerk, and his ribs heave as though the
trident had found a home between them. Perhaps he could not find his
voice, for it was the Chief who said:
"We are doing everything possible. Mr. Sherbrand is helping. He has
been good enough to place the telegraph installation at our disposal and
the Wireless also. A call, Burgin?"
The undersized clerk had waved a hand from the threshold of the cabin.
The Chief vanished. Patrine sighed:
"Oh, if there should be news!"
"You are too sensible to be bowled over if there happens to be no news,"
said the Doctor's voice. But his arm was tense about her waist and she
felt the beating of his heart.
"Uncle Owen!"
Sherbrand had withdrawn out of earshot. She squeezed the kind
responsive hand, turned her mouth towards the Doctor's ear, and
whispered tremulously:
"Uncle Owen! You don't know _him_ as I do. That's why I am
so--horribly afraid for Bawne! He would be cruel to anyone you liked,
if he hated you. And he is furious with me! I have thwarted him
in--something he wishes! He is bad!--dangerous!--do you understand?"
"He cannot be a bad pilot with such a record. And in such calm weather
there is little danger of an accident. We must be patient; there is
nothing else to do at the moment, but wait!"
Saxham had feigned to misunderstand her, for very pity, you can
conceive. Blurting out her miserable secret in this moment of unselfish
sorrow, his heart was wrung in him to an anguish of compassion for
Patrine. But no less was he wrung by the truth her words conveyed. His
son and Lynette's was in the power of an evil man! What was David's
daughter saying?
"Uncle Owen!" The tall figure of Sherbrand had moved away into the
reddish twilight, and a wild desire of confession spurred on the girl to
desperate frankness of speech. She hurried on, nerving herself to the
change that would presently show in Saxham. "Uncle Owen! I think you
had better know! Since I met _him_ in Paris I----"
"Stop!" said Saxham. But she would not stop. She had his blood in her,
and went on, though to have set her naked foot on glowing iron would
have been easier than to tell.
"I have flirted with him!--gone alone with him to restaurants and
music-halls!--let him take me to the Upas!"--there was a tightness like
knotted whipcord about her throat; "That's--not the worst!"
"I guessed it. Stop!" Saxham repeated:
"Who told?"--she faltered brokenly, and shivered at the deep stern
whisper:
"No one told, but the reputation of the--man is known to me. His type
does not hesitate where a woman's virtue is concerned."
A great sigh burst from her. "And you can speak to me and touch me
kindly--you don't hate the sight of me?"
"No, my poor girl, God forbid!"
"How good!--" she began, broke off and said, shuddering: "But--Aunt
Lynette! How could I bear it, if she were ever to know----"
Saxham said harshly:
"She shall not know! Who do you dream will tell her? Not I! So set
your mind at rest, my girl. You are a girl--though you talk like a
woman of thirty!"
She said with a miserable catch in her throat:
"Nineteen _is_ rather young, isn't it? Perhaps things would have been
different if only Dada had lived!"
The utterance was as inapposite as it was sentimental. If David had
still been in existence his daughter would have had no less cause for
regret. But Saxham, inwardly quivering and wrung with pity, could only
acquiesce:
"Perhaps things would! What you have got to do now is--Forget! Do you
hear me? I order you, and I will be obeyed! And I will have you leave
this titled lady who employs you, and who is all kindness and no
discretion. Resign your post to-morrow! You need not return to your
mother. My house is your home!" He went on in his rare tone of
tenderness, "You need no telling that I care for you as a daughter.
Come to me, and to Lynette who loves you dearly. She will want
comfort--now that--" His voice broke and his mouth twisted. He fought
with his anguish, in silence, turning his grim white face away.
"Who will tell Aunt Lynette? Oh! who will tell her?" he heard Patrine
whisper. He commanded himself to answer:
"For the present, I have telephoned her that we may be detained here
until late. Suppose you twist up your hair now, and put your hat on.
Sherbrand!"
A sweet, manly voice answered out of the dimness of the Flying Ground:
"Here, Doctor! You called me?"
In the madder and umber light of the dying sunset Sherbrand's tall brown
shape came towards them. Saxham said as Patrine swept her tawny tresses
into one rough rope:
"I am going to ask you to find out whether the people at the
refreshment-place could give my niece something by way of substitute for
dinner. A cup of coffee, or cocoa with milk, a roll and butter, and a
slice of cold beef or ham?"
Sherbrand said eagerly:
"I am sure Miss Saxham can get anything like that. Mrs. Durrant keeps
open house till nine o'clock, or later, if there is reason. She caters
for the School Staff, respectably, by contract. I lodge--a very decent
berth--over the dining-room, where I have my grub. Noisy by day but
quiet enough at night-time. Will you come this way, Miss Saxham? You
too, Doctor?"
Saxham declined. They left him standing there, in the wide expanse that
was filling up with brooding shadows, with his back to the dying rose of
the sunset, looking fixedly to the north.
*CHAPTER XXXVIII*
*THE REBOUND*
Patrine, that magnificent animal, had passed unknowingly through the
painful ordeal which accompanies in the human the evolution of a soul.
No doubt she had had one before without suspecting it. Now she was
conscious of the presence of the guest.
Through the big barbaric halls of her nature, glittering with tinsel
over plaster backed with canvas, thronged with vanities, appetites,
desires, and ambitions, jostling at the glittering fountains, buying at
the tawdry counters, flocking to the dubious restaurants, swooping down
the water-chutes, wandering through the painted landscapes, drinking in
the dubious atmosphere, had passed a ray of light, pure, vivifying and
cleansing, had blown a breeze of crystal mountain air. And through the
blare of brass a note had sounded that would never cease to vibrate in
Patrine's ears. Having partially confessed, she experienced a
disproportionate rebound of spirits. Her fears for Bawne weighed on her
less heavily, Saxham's reference to cold ham had awakened in her the
pangs of healthy appetite. The proximity of Sherbrand was a vividly
keen pleasure. She had always wished for a brother, and here was the
very _beau ideal_ of one! She meant to ask him if he had sisters--she
was sure they would be awfully nice girls!
One or two electric lights were switched on in the big room full of
little white-covered tables, with the counter at the far end piled high
with thick white plates. The big nickel urns were cold and empty, but
Mrs. Durrant, the stout and smiling proprietress of the restaurant,
produced hot coffee and milk in a twinkling, bread and butter, the cold
ham, and a cold pigeon-pie.
With her own very fat, very pink hands Mrs. Durrant ministered, voluble
the while in sympathy.... The lady had been upset because the dear
little boy hadn't come back. People were sometimes kept for hours
through a Loose Nut, or a Slack Wire, or a Carburetter, or some little
thing or another going wrong.
"You remember when Under-Instructor Davis took Mr. Durrant for an Air
Beano all the way to Upavon, Mr. Sherbrand? Flares burning 'alfway
through the night, and pore me!--new to the Flying then--wasn't I, Mr.
Sherbrand?--going from one fit of astericks into another, and running
out to meet Durrant, when he dropped down calmly 'Ome at four in the
mornin', with my hair all untidy and hangin' about me--" Patrine
swiftly put up a hand to assure herself that her own tawny coils were
securely fastened--"for all the world like an Indian Squawk."
"Wives had their feelings, it was only to be expected," said Mrs.
Durrant. Mothers had also theirs, and, that was natural too! Patrine
found the idea of her own maternal relationship to Bawne so firmly fixed
in the mind of Mrs. Durrant, it was barely worth the trouble to
endeavour to explain it away. Mrs. Durrant had none of her own, worse
luck! but here, just coming with the salad and some fried potatoes, was
Mr. Durrant's married niece, Ellen Agnes, and nobody knew better what it
was to lose a darling child.
Ellen Agnes, wan-eyed, anaemic, slipshod, and overworked, supported the
statement. Only in April it 'ad 'appened, and Ellen Agnes 'ad never
'eld 'er 'ead up properly since. And little Elbert the 'ealthiest of
children. Rising three and never a nillness till the pewmonia carried
'im orf. 'Ad only 'ad 'im phortographed three days before it 'appened!
with 'is lovely little limbs and body naked, sitting on a fur rug, the
blessed dear!
Ellen Agnes not appearing to recognise any connecting link between the
nude pose and the pneumonia, Patrine suppressed the obvious suggestion.
Both women meant well, but their talkative sympathy oppressed her. She
imagined how, when Sherbrand ate alone, the stout aunt and the thin
niece would hover round his table, assailing his ears with their Cockney
voices, making their common, vulgar comments on the happenings of the
day.
Perhaps her disrelish showed, for the kind women presently slackened
their attentions. There was nothing then to divert Sherbrand's
attention from his guest, beyond the undeniable attractions of the
hastily spread board.
So they ate the pie, all of it. Patrine cried, in frank astonishment at
the evaporation of her second plateful:
"But I am a wolf or something. No! Not even salad. What must you think
of me? Crying my eyes out one minute and stodging pigeon-pie the next!
Do the rest of the friends you feed here behave as badly as that?"
Sherbrand returned, ignoring the mention of other guests:
"Now, what should I think? Nothing but that you wanted something to
buck you, and I was pretty ravenous myself. It was pretty parky up
there at 10,000." He answered to her question how high that was: "Why,
comparatively, you might imagine it about nine times as high as the top
of St. Paul's Cross from the level of the ground."
Little the speaker dreamed then of aerial battles to be fought at
20,000. She asked whether he had "felt giddy" and he shook his head,
saying:
"If I had felt inclined to giddiness I should have put off climbing
until I felt fitter. I sympathise with Opera Stars who disappoint full
houses, because some high C or lower G is a hairsbreadth off the bull.
The singer can't afford a false note. It's death to a reputation. And
the Flying Man can't risk brain-swim, because it means possibly
nose-dive and smash. So I stay out of my sky unless I'm sure of myself.
There's nothing on earth like being sure."
He had a way of saying "my sky" that was queer and rather beautiful.
Just as though he had been a lark, occurred to Patrine. And indeed, in
the beaky, jutting nose, and the full, bright eyes set forward and flush
with the wide orbital arches, there was some resemblance between the man
and the bird.
Patrine sunned herself in the lighter moment. She who had lain through
the night sleepless--had risen still a bond-slave--realized that her
fetters were broken now that her evil genius had flown. Taking with him
her beloved, she fully believed in malice. Piercing though that
knowledge was, it could not mar the blissful sense of freedom, mental
and physical.
Bawne would be brought back. Meanwhile, one's blood sang through one's
being, mere living was riotous ecstasy, mere breathing sheerest delight.
The joy of life radiated from her. And to Sherbrand, sitting opposite
at the little coarse-clothed table, she grew momentarily more and more
like the girl of the Milles Plaisirs.
True, instead of cloudy black, her hair vied in tone with the banner of
coppery flame that streams from the crater of an active volcano, or
burns above some giant crucible of molten metal ready to be poured
forth. Her long eyes under her wide level brows looked the colour of
peat-water, in the electric light that contracted their pupils to
pin-heads, and brought out against the yellow-distempered walls the
creamy whiteness of her wonderful skin. When she leaned her round
elbows on the table-cloth and smiled at him, it was the frank, generous
smile that had warmed his heart when he stood solitary and unfriended on
the rose-pink carpet near the gilt turnstile on the Upper Promenade.
He would put it to the test. He beckoned the pallid Ellen Agnes, asked
for the bill, slipped his hand into a breast-pocket and drew from it a
tiny white silk purse.
"Oh! You found ..."
With an indescribable emotion, half pain, half pleasure, she saw her
missing property in the broad extended palm. He said:
"It flashed on me, even as I blackguarded Davis, that you must have paid
that Commissionaire-fellow at the turnstile or he'd have been breathing
vengeance at my back. So I ran back to find you and ask for an address
where I might send the money. You were gone! He had got this purse in
his hand. So I--bluffed the brute for all I was worth, and got him to
give it me!--a stroke of luck--for I'd no money left to bribe him with!
Be kind and tell me how much you gave the fellow!"
The deep dimple Sherbrand remembered showed in the full oval of one of
her white cheeks. Slowly the pale rose-flush sweetened and warmed the
whiteness. Her eyes were dusky stars under the barbaric wealth of
beech-leaf tresses. A slow smile curved her mouth, the scarlet lips
parted widely, showing two perfect rows of gleaming teeth.
"Two half-jimmies!" said the rich, mellow woman's baritone. Why did it
talk such awful slang? "Half my screw for one whole week of
letter-writing, running errands, doing shopping, and generally
sheepdogging for my friend, Lady Beauvayse!"
"Then please take this!" This was a fat bright sovereign. "And be kind
and say that I may stick to the purse?"
"If you care to--" Patrine began, dubiously.
"I care--most awfully!" He went on quickly. "Lady Beauvayse--your
friend--I've seen her--if she's very pretty and tremendously American?"
She nodded.
"You've spotted her! That's Lady Beau--the dear thing! But she only
talks Yankee Doodle to bounders or fogies, or people who seem to expect
it from her. Her English is as good as mine."
"You don't mean it!" His keen face crinkled with laughter. She was
superbly unconscious of its cause. He went on, rather ashamed of having
made fun of her: "That accounts for the Old Kent Road-_cum_-Whitechapel
I've heard from the august lips of British duchesses. At
cricket-matches when Eton and Harrow were playing 'Varsity."
"Does it? I think not! The duchesses weren't amusing themselves, or
trying to snub swankers. They were just mothers--_real_ mothers--trying
to talk cricket to their boys. And the boys--the sweets!--grinning up
their blessed young sleeves, and saying 'Yes'm!' and 'No'm!' How I do
love boys! Don't you?" Her smile contracted with a spasm of anguish.
"And I'm sitting here, gobbling and gabbling, when my darling!--" She
rose taller than ever, from the little table, caught up her feather
stole from a chairback near and slung it vigorously round her,
straightened the tinsel hat with a side-glance at the strip of a
looking-glass nailed in a frame of cheap gilt beading on the
matchboarded wall at her right hand, picked up the vanity-bag and the
long-sticked sunshade, and declared herself ready to go.
*CHAPTER XXXIX*
*A NIGHT IN JULY*
She reached the door before him. He had turned to say considerately to
the good woman of the restaurant:
"We shall be late.... Frightfully, I expect! Promise me you won't sit
up!"
"Oh! but I can't promise! One never knows! Best to have people up an'
ready when there might be need of 'em!" Patrine heard, as she wrenched
at the handle of the green curtained glass door.
"No--no! Let me!"
His hand touched hers and she drew it away, not before a keen, sharp
thrill had traversed her. "_Vile, hateful creature!_" she said to the
Patrine von Herrnung knew--the other woman within her, whom she loathed.
"_Is not it enough that you have done what you have done?_" Then as she
passed out into the night, feeling beneath her feet the roughness of the
gravel walk that led between grass-plats studded with green painted
chairs and little iron tables, a strange roaring filled her ears and
hellish tongues of fire licked a sky of vivid blackness. She recoiled,
saying in awed and shaken tones:
"Why! What has happened? What does it mean? ... How horrible!"