danced with delight under her hat-brim. Her breath came quick, her red
lips curled, and a sweet faint pink showed under her creamy skin.
"You're a knight of the skies hot from a fray with two flying
dragons--and you were going without saying a word! What do you think we
Englishwomen are made of?"
"Very desirable flesh, some of you, at least, Mademoiselle," occurred to
Raymond, but he suppressed the equivoque and answered with professional
brevity:
"Mademoiselle, I regret there is but little to tell you. The enemy
possesses an aerial organisation of great effectiveness which is being
chiefly employed in the killing of harmless civilians and the
destruction of unfortified towns. But small success has hitherto
attended his efforts in the Channel. Your British Expedition was
conveyed across the water without the loss of one _piou-piou_, or any
damage received by the explosion of a German bomb. As for the German
aviators of whom I speak, their attitude towards myself and my pilot was
modest. Flying their double-seated military Taubes, of which the wings
and tail resemble those of the dove after which they have been named,
they pursued our biplane half-way from Calais to Dover before deciding
to attack."
"Then--" She hesitated, softly clapping her palms together and dimpling
like a big child over the telling of a new fairy tale.
"Then one climbed, possessing the advantage of a powerful engine, and
dropped a bomb from a height of some 600 _metres_ which exploded without
hitting us and went to the bottom of the sea. While the second aviator,
who was armed with a repeating-carbine, wounded my pilot so severely
that it was only by a miracle of endurance he preserved consciousness
long enough to land without a crash. So I left him at Dover and--with a
pilot mechanic from the Air Station, completed my passage, descending at
Brooklands at twelve _demie_."
"Was your pilot hurt very badly? Will he be able to fly back to
France?"
"Mademoiselle, being a pious Catholic, he has already flown to Heaven."
"He is dead.... And you can joke!" Patrine reproached him. His face
was very wrinkled as he smiled.
"Mademoiselle, if a soldier could not jest at Death upon occasion, Life
for a soldier would be impossible! Of verity, the loss of a good
pilot-_aviateur_ is not a thing to joke about, but fortunately I have
your friend to fill his place."
"_Alan_! You must not--I will never consent to it!"
All taken aback, her colour banished, she fixed Sherbrand with blazing
imperative eyes. He reddened to the hair and his mouth shut firmly.
For the first time there was a clash of wills between the pair.
"Alan, why didn't you ask me?"
He was redder than ever.
"Because it wasn't for you to say. It is an order from my Chiefs--don't
you understand?"
She did not care that the French officer was smiling. She would have
liked to have struck him in his merrily-crinkled face. Wretch! to have
blurted the truth at her that Alan had hidden. What was he saying:
"Permit, Mademoiselle, that I make my _adieux_. I go to secure an
apartment where I may repose myself." He looked at Sherbrand, saying in
his cool tone of authority: "The Aldebaran,--that is in the next street
and a good hotel, is it not so? A little sleep will not come amiss
after a cutlet and a _demi-bouteille_. And whilst I eat we will settle
our _affaires_. Eh, mon lieutenant?"
His gloved hand took Sherbrand neatly by the elbow. He was skilfully
steering him towards the doorway when Patrine, white and flaming, placed
herself in their path.
"My affairs come first!" she was beginning.
"_Shut up!_" came from Sherbrand, in an exasperated aside whisper. "My
duty comes before you--or anything in the world. It should come first
for you if you cared a damn for me!"
No one but Raymond had overheard the curious, fierce colloquy. She felt
literally scorched by the hot look of anger. She knew an agony like the
tearing of the tissues of the flesh when Sherbrand passed her and went
out with that gloved hand of authority upon his arm.
"Women are the devil!" he thought bitterly, as he opened the door of the
runabout Ford to admit the French Staff Officer. "She'd had a shock in
being told the news so suddenly; but to ballyrag me--to make me look
such a thundering idiot before _him_!"
He swung the crank with violence and wrenched angrily at the levers when
he took the driving-seat. A gloved hand patted his arm, and Raymond's
voice said in his ear:
"Bah! You are chagrined, my friend, because a handsome woman has made
you a little drama. Think no more of it! I have forgotten, for my
part." He added, as they got out at the Aldebaran: "I propose to detain
you but a little while, _mon ami_. When we have completed arrangements
for the start to-morrow, you will be free to return and make your peace
with Mademoiselle."
"Thank you, sir. She was rattled at my telling her so suddenly about my
Commission," said Sherbrand, still beclouded. "Women are all like that,
I suppose?"
"Except in France," said the agreeable voice of Raymond, "where the love
of Country is stronger in our women than the love of lover or even of
child. It was so before 1870. They have remembered through the
centuries, as their sisters of Britain have not. They--the women of
England are patriotic--oh yes! but patriotism is not yet a religion to
them. It will cost millions of lives, and of blood an ocean to kindle
that flame within their souls. Then, they also will hold the bayonet to
the grindstone with their soft white hands and say: 'Become sharp, to
drink the blood of Germans!' And they will mend the soldier's ragged
breeches and clean the soldier's dirty rifle, and when they do they will
not be less womanly. No, by my faith! nor less beloved by men. Try one
of these. You will not find them too bad."
He offered Sherbrand a cigarette and took a light from him as they stood
under the Aldebaran's tall Corinthian portico.
"One should always be accurate. When I told you that in France there
lived no woman who was not patriotic, I was in error. Such a woman
existed since three or four days."
He blew out a puff of smoke and watched its mounting spiral. Then he
resumed:
"She was very young, very pretty, the bride of a month, and passionately
enamoured. When her husband received orders to proceed with his
Regiment of Chasseurs to the Belgian Front, she made him a scene of
desperation. She would do this and that mad thing if he did not take
her. Then she became calmer. She had exacted a promise from her doting
cavalryman. She should visit him at the Front at a suitable
opportunity. She chose her own moment, my faith!--and what a moment!
She appeared in her husband's quarters in the French cavalry camp near
Antoineville when the Germans were attacking Dinant. When the Cavalry
Division of the Prussian Guards, and the Cavalry of their First
Division, with some infantry battalions and machine-gun companies
crossed the Meuse, and we were to attack, she was lying in his arms, the
little idiot! He told her to go and she would not. Then he entreated
her--a fatal error that!"
The cigarette was burning crookedly, forgotten between Raymond's
fingers.
"Then he commanded her. She laughed, and kissed him. He gave back the
kiss, drew his revolver and shot her dead. Then he ran out--in time to
mount and wheel to his place as second in command of his squadron,
before the Regiment swept on to the charge. Fate was kind to him. He
charged like a Centaur, and died like a soldier of France the Beloved.
Tell the story to Mademoiselle Saxham. She is magnificently handsome,
but forgive me! not a patriot. And a woman without patriotism is--an
altar without a Sacred Host and a lamp without a flame."
They went into the hotel. When the Frenchman had secured a quiet
bedroom on the fourth floor, and intimated that no German was to serve
him, they went together into the dining-room.
"_Pfui_! It smells of soot, and petrol, and drainage, this London air
of yours," said Raymond, as he chose a table in a quiet corner. "You
will eat with me? No! Then smoke and share my wine." He ordered
cutlets, _petit pois_, a sweet omelette, and a bottle of Beaujolais,
and, filling his own glass and one for Sherbrand, touched brims gaily
and said with a smile: "To France and her Allies, Victory! On earth," a
clink, "by sea," a clink, "under the sea," another clink, "and in the
Air!"
He clinked three times, and emptied the glass thirstily. Sherbrand
asked:
"Was the battle near Dinant a big affair?"
"Not big." He broke a roll and munched bread. "Not on the grand scale.
A _spectacle tres interessante_, regarded from the--archaic point of
view. An example of the ancient _mode de bataille_ that will be dead as
the Dodo in three months. _Chasseurs a cheval_ and German Imperial
Guard Regiments charging and meeting with shocks like thunder. Much
slaughter. So fierce was the onslaught upon our side that the Germans
were driven back across the Meuse. Many missed the bridge and were
drowned. One French regiment followed them in pursuit for several
_kilometres_. They were led by the man of whom I have told you. A
glass to his memory--and _hers_!"
They touched full glasses and drank. Raymond went on.
"My Flying Centre was near Maubeuge on the 16th. Some _escadrilles_ of
my command were engaged that day near Dinant. My faith! those
_cotellettes_ are slow in arriving." He munched more bread, and his
blue eyes narrowed smilingly. "We had only the little bombs we used in
Morocco, but yes!--we did some good work with the _balles-bon_. Flying
low, at ordered distances--for to make War by Air successfully the
science of tactics must assist the aviator.... What says your great
Field Marshal, who has bent his neck to the collar-work of
Administration--who has conjured an Army of trained soldiers out of your
shops and counting-houses, and playing-fields,--and will make another
and another when the time comes?"
Sherbrand quoted the words uttered by the great voice now quenched for
ever in the bitter waters of the North Sea.
"_Until aviators learn to fly, manoeuvre, and attack in regular
formation, the Fifth Arm will remain a useless limb._"
"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ but that goes to the point," said Raymond,
"straight and sharp as a thrust from his sword. If we possessed that man
we should make use of him. He should be Marshal of France, or President
or Emperor--all we should ask of him would be to lead us. _Notr'_
Joffre would not be jealous--they would agree like the hilt and the
hand. But I was telling you of an attack by the _flechette_.... You
may imagine how the Uhlans loved that rain of steel. It changed the
retreat to a rout. Only it spoiled so many German horses. Right
through the man, you understand, into the animal! ... Sieves on four
legs are useless as Remounts for French Chasseurs."
"And the German Field Flight?" Sherbrand interrogated.
"Their Fifth Arm was represented," said Raymond, sipping his burgundy,
"by many Taubes and Aviatiks armed with the machine-gun and some
ordinary bombs of _schrapnel_,--also a dirigible of 'Parsifal' type
dropping big bombs. We were hampered in our offensive by a prejudice
which does not trouble the Germans. To throw bombs upon friend and foe
alike--that is not our idea of War. It annoyed me, and I wasted on that
flatulent brute of a 'Parsifal' all my remaining _flechettes_ and little
Morocco bombs. Aha, the _cotelettes_!"
A waiter set them before him. He tucked his napkin under his chin, and
helped himself, and said:
"Thus, though I had damaged her steering-gear and riddled her outer
envelope, and the Flying Pig wallowed in difficulties below me, I could
not pursue the advantage I had got. When the pilot of an Aviatik
launched himself to the rescue, all the ammunition of my carabine was
exhausted. I had one cartridge left in my automatic revolver, and not a
single bomb with which to return the compliments of the German's
_mitraille_. My petrol-tank had been perforated. My single bullet
missed him. The duel was too unequal, so I withdrew from the field,
leaving him to cavalier the Flying Pig. We may meet again upon terms
more equal, when French military aviators fight with machine-guns. And
now to business. It concerns your gyroscopic stabiliser, the patent of
which my Chiefs desired to buy for the use of our _Service
Aeronautique_. You demanded, according to M. Jourdain's statement,
L8,000 and a royalty for the world-patent. We will buy it of you
outright for L12,000. Is it agreed?"
Sherbrand straightened in his chair, and said, looking the other
squarely in the eyes:
"No, sir, thank you! You see, though the War Office wouldn't have
anything to say to me----"
"It occurs to you that now you may find a market for your invention?"
_To the devil with this smug young British tradesman!_ thought Raymond
behind his knitted brows. "Come!" he said. "Another proposal. Will you
make and supply us with your hawk-hoverer? Or sell us the right to
manufacture a thousand for the sole use of the S. Ae.? Name your
price--I shall not be frightened. It is not State money, but my private
fortune that I draw upon--with the approval of my Chiefs. It has been
my whim to lavish on my _escadrille_ what other men hang in jewels upon
their mistresses. Efficiency is my vice. I have heard of worse!" He
scrawled some invisible figures with a polished finger-nail upon the
tablecloth and exclaimed, with a laugh and a shrug: "_Sapristi_! At
even a hundred pounds apiece you would soon be a millionaire, even
without the fortune you expect from your War Office! Upon occasion it
pays to be a patriot. Decide, Monsieur, lest my patience run dry before
my purse!"
"I've not asked you a hundred, sir," Sherbrand said with his disarming
simplicity. "I can make and sell the hoverers at a profit for L60.
It's the cutting and welding of the horizontal flanged screws with the
acetylene flame that eats up that money. But for the cost of the
process, hang it!--I'd have had more than seventy ready by me now."
"You have seventy, you say, laid by in readiness?"
"Laid by in grease," said Sherbrand, "at the aerodrome."
"Waiting the moment when the authorities at Whitehall awaken to the fact
that you are a genius, _mon ami_! _A la bonne heure_! We buy your
seventy equilibrisers!"
"I'll sell you ten," said the British tradesman doggedly. "And I'll give
the Belgian Government another ten, if you think they'd honour me by
accepting them?"
"_Parole d'honneur_! I can guarantee they will. And of the other
fifty?"
"They are for England to take or leave," said Sherbrand. "No doubt I'm
an ass, but a man must act according to his lights."
"They are stars, your lights," said Raymond with a crackling oath, "and
they point the path of Honour!" He pulled a cheque-book and a
fountain-pen from a pocket within his tunic and wrote a cheque on the
Credit Lyonnais for the price of the ten stabilisers, their packing,
carriage and duty, saying as he signed, and tossed the lilac slip of
paper across the tablecloth: "Your endorsement is my receipt. For the
stabilisers--they must be sent not later than to-morrow. I would give
something if I could fly back to France with a couple in my valise. But
patience! In a week at most we will give the Germans news of us.
Perhaps I shall have the good fortune of a _rencontre_ with my Boche
pilot-aviator. For--listen, lieutenant! He too possessed the device
that solves for the _avion_ the problem of stability. And--listen
well!--he carried a young boy with him in the _nacelle_. It was the man
who robbed you. Von Herrnung! Could you not have guessed before?"
It seemed to Sherbrand that he had always guessed. Raymond went on:
"When I read of the finding of the wreck of your 'Bird' in the North
Sea, I knew what _coup_ the Prussian and his confederates had carried
out. We had met in Berlin, and at the Hanover aerodrome, and at Paris.
And--I could have shot him the other day if it had not been for the
child. The legions of the modern Attila employ women and babes as
bucklers and breastworks, by their Emperor's order. Perhaps he carried
the boy for protection!" His moustache bristled like an angry cat's as
he added:
"A beastly idea, but the German Idea is bestial. Well, _au 'voir_!
To-morrow, six _demie_, we start from the aerodrome!"
He rose, whisked his napkin over his mouth, and said, giving Sherbrand a
hearty hand-grip:
"I shall be punctual. Do not forget. My compliments to Mademoiselle!"
But Sherbrand was occupied less by thoughts of his angry love than by
Raymond's story of the boy in the German warplane. He telephoned to Sir
Roland and to Saxham before he drove back to the Club thinking:
"Bawne!--It must be Bawne!--out there in the midst of all those horrors.
If I could only meet that fellow von Herrnung! ... I've owed him no
grudge because he robbed me.... But--for this--I could kill him now!"
*CHAPTER LVI*
*LA BRABANCONNE*
"You saint, Pat!" Margot, amidst Raymond's polite excuses, had
recognised Sherbrand's hatchet-face under the khaki cap. "You've stolen
a whole morning for me from your Flying Man. Why didn't you tell me
he'd come back to town? How perfectly tophole he looks in tea-leaves!
Franky and I came across that French officer who was with him, last
June, in Paris. We're been rubbing noses on the strength of having met
before. Is Alan going to the Front? My poor Pattums, it'll be your turn
to be haunted. Here's Rhona Helvellyn. Cheer, Rhona! Do tell us why
you look so smudgy? Have you been hiding up the chimney of the House of
Commons, or bombarding a Minister's front door with coal?"
She beckoned, and Rhona came stalking through the crush of marvellously
got-up members, the round, fair, freckled boy-face that topped her long
swan-neck and deceptively sloping shoulders pinched with weariness under
the wreck of a Heath hat, her usually immaculate tailor-mades covered
with the dust of what might have been a Claxton Hall conflict or a
Downing Street Demonstration, and strange fires burning in her
light-lashed eyes.
"Am I such a sweep? I feel one! But so'd you be grubby if you'd done
the crossing from Folkestone to Ostend and back again to London without
a dab of a puff. I'd an appointment here at three-thirty." Beyond
anything in life Rhona plumed herself on her punctuality. "Mrs.
Saxham--_the_ Mrs. Saxham, had promised to meet me in the Chintz Room."
The Chintz Room is the first-floor drawing-room securable for private
teas and interviews. "We got in too ravenous even to wash for lunch.
You should have seen us eat. My hat! the scrum on those boats. And the
dirt. Nothing but a Turkish bath will get me clean again. As for
Brenda, she's a nigger." Thus Rhona in her loud young accents.
"Nobody'd believe she'd been born a white girl!"
"Is she here?"
"My Christmas! I should rather hope so! Upstairs scraping off the
top-crust before I take her to Eccleston Square. Don't do to startle
the Mater. She's been frightfully off-colour with worry over her
precious youngest. You see, Brenda was due home for the Autumn holidays
from the Convent of the Dames de l'Annonciation at Huin on the Sambre,
when the War broke out. And--Huin's near Charleroi, where they say the
Germans are--and we'd nary a letter, and no answer to a hailstorm of
wires from the Mater. So I got passes and permits on the Q.T. and
skipped over to Ostend--to see what might be done."
"And you got through?"
"Did I? Not much! We don't get things properly rubbed into us--tucked
away in our blessed old island. I forgot that Belgian trains wouldn't
be running from Ostend to Brussels, now the Germans have got a grab on
there.... As for getting South-East by Courtrai and Valenciennes--all
trains were required by the Allies for military purposes. Perhaps if I'd
been a hefty War Correspondent or an Army Nursing Sister or a V.A.D. in
diamond earrings and a Red Cross armlet, I'd have had a chance. But I'm
doubtful! Transport officers, English and Belgian, keep their mouths
shut--and once they've opened them to say "No!" they never open 'em
again. And"--Rhona breathed as though she had been running--"there were
Official War News placards stuck up at the Customs Office, and on the
quays and at the Prefecture. They said that the Germans under von
Buelow have been having a scrap with the 5th French Army on the
Sambre--from Namur to Charleroi--and that the French have been beaten
back. And the hospitals are crowded with Belgian and German
wounded"--she gulped and something twinkled on her pale eyelashes--"and
trains crammed with more keep coming in and in. I've seen some sights, I
tell you, that gave me horrors. That showed me, even more than those
Ostend quays and wharves and squares and Places--packed solid with
refugees--Great Christmas!--shall I ever forget 'em!--the devilish,
hellish work of War!"
"Refugees.... Common people?" Margot was a little puzzled. Rhona
nodded and repeated:
"Refugees. Swells and mechanics, rag-pickers and shopkeepers, sweeps,
schoolgirls, lacemakers, and students. Professors, priests, and
prostitutes. Madame la Comtesse and her gardener's wife, wheeling the
babies in trams and go-carts. Dust-covered, dirty, done up, desperate,
with faces that make you think of the damned in the Tartarus scenes of
Orpheus and Eurydice. And someone squealed my name, and there was
Brenda. Just got in, with three of the Sisters, and a baker's dozen of
English pupils and a herd of other miserables, evacuated from Charleroi
and Huin. Three-and-a-half days on the journey, travelling by fits and
starts on branch-lines--tramping when trains weren't available. Eating
whenever anything was to be had, and going without when there wasn't!
Sleeping in barns and on the floors of railway-station platforms, or
waiting-rooms, when they were lucky--such a pack of tramps you never saw
in your life. But Great Scott! how thundering glad I was to get hold of
Brenda and whisk her away from that Chorus of the Damned in Orpheus,
pent up like cattle behind ropes, and moaning and stretching their arms
out to the sea!"
"Why on earth the sea?"
A foreign voice, resonant and rather nasal, startled Margot by
answering:
"Pardon, Madame. Because these most unhappy fugitives believe that
salvation and safety may be found in England, from whence come those
strong brown English soldiers who are fighting in Belgium now."
"Are there--" Margot was beginning. But Rhona was introducing the
speaker at length as Comte d'Asnay, Capitaine Commandant and Adjutant of
the Belgian General Staff, Attached to the General Staff on the Third
Division of the Belgian Army, and d'Asnay was saying with a smile:
"Mademoiselle bestows upon me all my titles, possibly because we
Belgians have so little else left."
"Except Honour," snapped Rhona.
"Except our Honour and our self-respect, and a few other non-negotiable
securities," he said, "that do not bring us much of credit on the
Bourses of Vienna and Berlin. But Madame was asking of the refugees.
Many from Liege have escaped to Antwerp or into Holland, thousands are
rushing from Namur into the bosom of France. But from Louvain and
Brussels and Tirlemont they flock to Ostend. The steamers of the Channel
service are crowded with those who have money and can obtain the
necessary _laissez-passers_. Your town of Folkestone is encumbered with
arrivals. Were stones pillows there would be a head for every stone.
But those who have neither money nor passports--and many of these were
rich a week ago--remain, as Mademoiselle has told you, to weep, and
stretch their arms towards the sea."
"They'd rush the boats," declared Rhona, "only that the Companies keep
up the gangways. I suppose," she grimaced, "the authorities at Ostend
don't want a scare. They believe--I hope they may get it!--there'll yet
be an Autumn Season. Hang these profit-hoggers! If I'd my way I'd
lower every blessed gangway and let everyone who wanted walk on board.
If Belgium hadn't faced the music there'd be Germans in England now,
murdering and burning.... They've a right to come. Let 'em all come!
Britain's big enough, I should hope!"
"_Brava, Mademoiselle. Bis!_" d'Asnay applauded noiselessly. "That is
what you said to me on the deck of the steamer. Say it again, say it
often, and the people will be let come!"