tendernesses to it, stroking its red-gold beauty with fingers and lips.
Not until now those bread white strands amongst the reddish-gold
conveyed their sinister meaning. When it came it was like a blow
delivered full between the eyes. She swayed forwards and fell upon her
knees beside the table, her forehead resting on the clenched hand that
held the boy's hair. All that was maternal in her fierce, undisciplined
nature urged her now to make the sacrifice. Remorse for having
forgotten the child in her absorbing love for Sherbrand, was a scourge
of fiery scorpions that urged her to the leap.
Its uselessness, the certainty that von Herrnung would keep no hinted
promise to restore the hostage, would have been no argument to deter
her. Sherbrand's influence might have counterpoised, but she had sent
away Sherbrand for his own sake. Now she would go to Bawne, buy him
back with body and soul, if need be, from the hands of the torturer, or
at least share his agony and die by his side.
Madness was near enough that night to sweep her tattered robe before the
eyes of Patrine, and beckon enticingly with her sceptre of plaited
straw. She was alone and she had borne so much, and nothing else could
save Lynette's boy--unless it were a miracle! Where was God--where was
God now? Upon that July night of the child's spiriting away Sherbrand
had bidden her pray that Bawne might be restored to them. She had
petitioned in a perfunctory way when she had thanked God for taking away
von Herrnung--that the child might be traced and brought back. Now she
clenched her hands until the nails dug into their palms, and groaned
out, as the dry sobs racked her body, words that sensed after this
fashion:
"Save him, save him! For Christ's love save him--and give him back!
For the dear sakes of those to whom I have been so ungrateful! hear
me--only hear me! and I will--be different. I will serve Thee, O God,
who have ignored Thee! I will confess Thee, I who have denied! ..."
Mean, base, said her pride, to kneel and entreat Him whom you have
neglected and insulted. Even though He heard, do you think that He
would answer now? But with desperate effort she thrust away the thought
from her. The Hound of Heaven had leaped upon her, flying. She felt his
teeth in her garments, holding her back from the invisible hands that
dragged at her. She knew that unseen forces of Good and Evil were
engaged in furious battle for her soul.... And strangling, she gasped
out incoherent sentences, wild appeals to the Divine Pity.... In the
midst of these, startling her like a thunderclap, came a hurried
knocking at the door.
"Miss Pat!"
It was the voice of Mrs. Keyse, and as Patrine stumbled to her feet and
stood wild-eyed and shaking, the little, matronly figure in the black
silk gown of housekeeperly dignity appeared upon the threshold of the
room.
"You--wanted me, Mrs. Keyse? Is it about the--the yellow car? Have
they----"
The hoarse voice and the white, wrung face conveyed to an ardent lover
of Patrine that something was wrong with her Doctor's niece. Tragedy
was in the air--but Discretion is the better Part of Value, and nobody
knew better than Emrigation Jane what fierce passions could boil in the
Saxham blood.
"No, Miss Pat. It's not the car, yet, though I fancied I 'eard one stop
here a minute back. It's the telephone in the consultin' room ringin',
and ringin',--and Chewse gone to bed," Chewse being the trained maid who
admitted patients and received messages. "And me with the best will in
the world never could make 'ead or tail of them tellermessages--except
the 'ulloing! And pre'aps you'd come and write down for the Doctor
whatever it is they've got to say...."
"Very well. Don't wait, I'm coming directly!"
Mrs. Keyse vanished, and with that dreamlike sense of unreality upon
her, Patrine followed downstairs and passed along the silent corridor.
The electric lamp above the Doctor's table had been switched on. She
took the Doctor's chair and rang-up and waited, sitting where Saxham had
sat when Lynette's sweet lips first touched his forehead--where the big
man had planned self-murder in the darkest hour of his despair. The
frayed patch on the Persian rug beneath her feet had been worn by
Saxham's usage. The triptych frame that held the portraits of Lynette
and Bawne drew Patrine's eyes as she sat waiting, and the clench of her
big white hand upon the table-ledge, the bend of her black brows and the
stern sorrow stamped upon her face made her likeness to the Doctor more
than ever apparent now.
"Halloa!" she called, and the brusque harshness of her own voice was
startlingly like Saxham's. A sense of Destiny oppressed her. She felt
as one stifling in a vacuum--drowning for lack of air. Her prayers had
rolled back upon her soul unanswered. The sense of spiritual desolation
intensified her desperate loneliness. No good to pray and cling until
you broke your nails to that great Rock that upholds the Crucifix.
Better let go, and be carried away by the torrent. Signs and wonders
are not wrought in these days!--said that other Patrine within
Patrine--and if any were, there would be no miracle. You fool, you
fool, to dream of one!
She was sorry for herself as she sat there waiting. This little duty
done, she would rise and obey that sinister summons from the outer
darkness. Nothing on earth nor in Heaven could help or prevent. The
sudden tinkle of the bell came at this juncture. The call was in Sir
Roland's well-known voice.
"Halloa! ... Is that you, Saxham?"
"Halloa!" she called back in that voice so strangely like _his_ and
unlike her own.
"Good! Well, my true friend and faithful coadjutor of old time," said
the crisp voice, shaken a little as though by some irrepressible emotion
or excitement, "some news has been communicated to us by Wireless that
will lift up your heart and your wife's. Are you listening? ... To-day,
about six P.M., near Langebeke, north-west of Ypres, at the moment of
the White Flag ruse that cost the Deershire Regiment two hundred men, a
two-seater Taube, flying low, as though something were the matter with
her engine, came wobbling over the British lines. Nobody shot at
her--she had just given our side sufficient reason for consideration by
dropping a highly-effective bomb on a wasp's nest of German
machine-gunners--and she crashed to ground behind a battery of First
Corps R.F.A. Her German pilot had been frightfully wounded. His
passenger, who sat in his lap to steer--and dropped the bomb!--escaped
with a shake-up. You've got the story? Then, here's the tag of it.
WE'VE GOT YOUR BOY! Bawne was the lucky fellow who only got a shaking.
He arrives at Charing Cross to-night at twelve sharp!"
He added, as a stifled cry travelled over the wire:
"Congratulations with all my heart, to you and Mrs. Saxham. And to Miss
Pat, though I'm afraid she pays, poor girl, in sorrow for your joy.
There is a report that Sherbrand's Bird of War No. 2 has been shot down
by a Zeppelin he encountered returning to the Front from England to-day,
to supply the place of an R.F.C. pilot--killed while on
observation-service near St. Yves--for Callenby's Cavalry Corps."
There was a stifled sound of interrogation or an exclamation. The Chief
continued:
"He had no bombs. It was madness to attack with only a Maxim and their
magazine-revolvers, but glorious madness worth a thousand sane,
reasonable acts. As it is, the Zeppelin--supposed to have been on her
way from Ostend to bomb St. O--was badly crippled and compelled to turn
back. It was a shell from one of her Q.F.'s that exploded Sherbrand's
petrol-tank and set the Bird on fire. The machine was seen to fall in
flames near Dixschoote--held by the Germans. Sherbrand and his observer
must be prisoners--that is, supposing they're alive. Hard luck! Break
it gently to the poor girl! Good-night!"
There was no answering Good-night, only a faint thud and rustle. Sir
Roland did not guess what he had done as he rang off and hung the
receiver up. And Lynette, coming into the consulting-room, noiselessly
as a pale moonbeam, found a big galumphing girl she loved lying huddled
between the chair and table, with her white face pressed against the
spot worn threadbare by the Doctor's feet.
Coincidence, you say, perhaps. Well, but what is Coincidence? Is it a
Dust-wind careering over the Desert in the neighbourhood of the
Pyramids, playing with straw and twigs and dead locusts' wings, and one
stray fragment of printed paper, as a Mounted Division of the British
Expeditionary Force encamped upon the slope not far from Gizeh, ride out
with the dawn to exercise their horses on the plain that is partly
flooded by the Nile? Or is it the ragged quarter-sheet torn from an
English newspaper, that wraps itself about the spurred ankle of the big
blond young Englishman who rides the vicious chestnut mare?
Long lines of horses marching in threes for miles, black and
coffee-coloured natives in flowing jubbehs mixed up with tanned young
British Centaurs in sun-helmets and khaki shorts--and the rag of paper
clings to the leg of the one man there whom its news concerns. She who
is dearer than all save Honour is once more a free woman,--and his faith
and constancy are to meet their reward. His letter lies before me; a
sentence pencilled more blackly than the rest stands out upon the
yellowish paper:
"_If this be accident it is incredible. If Design, it is miraculous.
And I had rather thank Heaven for a miracle vouchsafed than owe even
such happiness--to Chance._"
When the deep swoon gave place to semi-consciousness, the pale lips
uttered nothing but broken words. Locked away safely behind them was
the glorious news that would have changed two people's lives. Thus
Lynette was still ignorant of her own great happiness, when having
helped Patrine upstairs to her room and put her tenderly to bed, she
dismissed Mrs. Keyse to her own slumbers, and took her place beside
Patrine's pillow, listening to the sighing breaths that were growing
deeper and fuller, keenly alert for the sound of the Doctor's latch-key
and the Doctor's step in the hall.
It was close upon the smallest hour. Something had detained Saxham.
Sitting in the darkened room beside the long prone shape beneath the
coverings, Lynette was free to lean her head against the back of the
chair she sat in and yield herself to the bitter sweetness of memories
of her lost boy.
What the sorrow of Shakespeare wrought in deathless lines no halting pen
like mine dare strive to portray. Enough that the beloved little ghost
that haunted the woman whose heart was breaking, was closer than ever to
Lynette on this night. All day the sweet obsession had thrust itself
between Bawne's mother and solid, tangible things. The red-gold sheen
of the boyish head, the gay blue challenge of the laughing eyes, the
coaxing tones of the treble voice had tortured the senses they deceived.
She had thrust him away with both hands, for ordinary, commonplace
duties claimed, and yielding led the way to madness. He had come back
again and again, to be driven away once more. Now that her hands lay
idle in her lap--now that she was withdrawn from the world and its
realities, the beloved little ghost returned and had his will with her.
Sitting in the haunted gloom, a strange conviction came to Lynette.
This was not Grief, travestying in the figure of the absent, but a
visitation from the World Unseen.... Bawne was dead, and had been
dragged back from the threshold of the Beyond by her own unbridled
yearnings. Could there be a punishment more terrible than this? Only
those who have loved and lost, and clinging to their faith in a Future
Life, strive to bear patiently the burden of bereavement, can comprehend
the torture of this woman in this hour.
The Presence grew more torturingly tangible. The empty shell of the
house that had been Bawne's home was full of his callings, his
movements, his play, his laughter. She heard his quick soft breathing
behind her chair in the darkness. Once she could have vowed that a hard
little boyish hand brushed against her cheek. Then she was alone once
more, except for the unconscious sleeper. And then the torture began
all over again.
Bawne was coming home, late, from the Hendon Flying Ground. The long
months of misery--the horror of the War--had been a dreadful dream. She
heard the long _br'r'_ of the electric hall-bell under the impetuous
insistent finger--the small scurry of his entrance, a squawk from the
maid who answered night-calls--a whispered word or two, and the clumping
of the heavy little brogues upon the stairs. Would he trip at the
corner where he always stubbed his toe? she wondered--and she plainly
heard him stumble. Then her hair stiffened upon her head, and a long
shudder rippled through her. The little clumping brogues had stopped
before Patrine's bedroom door.
"_Mother!_"
His voice called, and his well-known thump came on the door-panel. The
handle clicked. She controlled her shuddering and forced her stiffened
tongue to speech.
"_Come in, my own!_"
The tall door swung slowly inwards. A wedge of brightness from the
lighted landing threw his shadow over the white-enamelled door-post....
The darkness of the room soaked it greedily up. Then the doorway was a
square of radiance with a little ghostly figure framed in it. All the
light was behind him. She could not see his face, but she felt his eyes
upon her.... Then the voice that her ears were sick for said with a
quaver in its treble:
"It's dark, but I can hear you breathing! ... Mother, why didn't you and
Father come? I thought when I got there I'd be sure to see you! ... But
amongst all those faces and faces not one was yours--and--Man alive!--I
wanted to blub a bit! I'm not quite sure that I didn't, you know!"
She stretched her arms to the beloved little ghost, whispering:
"My poor, poor love, my baby, my treasure! Mother knows how much it
hurt. But be patient a little longer. Soon--soon--your father and
I----"
The woe-wave rose and swelled in her bosom, tears began to run over her
stiff white face. The clasped hands she stretched to him were
quivering, but she controlled them like the trembling of her voice.
"Go back to Paradise, my little son! Wait patiently, my love, my Angel!
I have been wrong, but I will grieve no more! I will be patient:--O!
believe----"
A man's footsteps sounded on the staircase and the great shadowy figure
of the Doctor appeared behind Bawne's little shape. With a swift
movement Saxham caught up the bewildered boy, made one long stride
across the threshold, and put the warm, living treasure into the
mother's outstretched arms...
Once again big black-lettered contents-bills shrieked from the railings
and were worn after the fashion of heralds' tabards by the vendors of
newspapers, and the editions were snapped up as fast as they came out.
Here are some of the headlines:
"THRILLING ESCAPE OF KIDNAPPED BOY SCOUT FROM THE HANDS OF THE HUN.
YOUNG HERO OF NORTH SEA ADVENTURE LANDS BEHIND BRITISH LINES AT
LANGEBEKE IN TAUBE WITH A BOCHE PRISONER. FULL STORY OF HOW SCOUT WHO
SAVED THE CLANRONALD PAPERS BOMBED THE GERMAN MACHINE-GUNS. DECORATION
OF SCOUT SAXHAM WITH 'GOLDEN WOLF' BADGE BY ROYAL PRESIDENT AT
ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS. PROBABLE TESTIMONIAL FROM BRITISH PUBLIC.
AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE WAR MINISTER AT WHITEHALL. EXPECTED INVESTITURE
WITH EDWARDIAN ORDER OF MERIT. WHAT YOU GET BY BEING PREPARED!"
And again:
"SPLENDID PLUCK OF BRITISH AVIATOR. FIGHTS ZEPPELIN ON WAY TO BOMB
BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. AIRSHIP CRIPPLED. SHERBRAND R.F.C. KILLED. FALLS
IN FLAMES OVER GERMAN LINES. HEROIC END OF SOLE REMAINING HEIR TO
PENINSULAR WAR EARLDOM, AND INVENTOR OF THE HAWK-HOVERER THAT SOLVES
PROBLEM OF STABILITY. WILL WAR OFFICE ADOPT GREAT INVENTION, EMPLOYED
BY ALLIES' FLYING SERVICES?"
Three days later:
"SHERBRAND R.F.C. RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS HONOURS FROM FRANCE AND BELGIUM.
CROIX D'HONNEUR AND ORDER OF LEOPOLD. WHY NOT BRITISH D.S.O.?"
*CHAPTER LXX*
*A LOVER'S JOURNEY*
The crossing--in this Arctic April weather when all of Britain and
Belgium and North-West France lay under snowdrifts--had been calm and
smooth enough for the worst sea-stomachs on the steamer. The tall young
woman in the Navy blue felt hat with the well-known V.A.D. ribbon, and
the long blue serge coat with the Red Cross shield-badge on the left
breast, seemed used to travelling alone in War-time. She had secured a
dry chair, set in the shelter of the after-deck-saloon, and a lifebelt
as stipulated by the authorities, and tucked herself in her
travelling-rug with her suit-case under her feet before the lights went
out. Thus she had remained throughout the passage, with her dark eyes
looking seawards, as deaf to occasional bursts of uproarious song from a
draft of returning Blighties packed on the lower-deck, as to the siren's
raucous shrieks.
Courteous fellow-passengers, chiefly British and Belgian officers
returning from leave, would have been ready enough to have chatted with
the young woman who was going to the Front. Such attentions as they
offered her she accepted frankly. One got her tea and sandwiches,
another offered chocolate, another a foot-warmer. Yet another insisted
on lending her an unnecessary extra rug. They pointed out the hovering
Fleet hydroplanes, and the diligently-scouting searchlights of the
destroyers guarding the sea-way, and the Hull-bound Dutch liner whose
neutrality was proclaimed in illuminated side-letters, blazing like a
sea-Alhambra upon the east horizon, and the Hospital ship that passed
close, coming from Boulogne laden with wounded, the huge Red Cross upon
her flank picked out with blazing green lights.
One and all united in assuring the wearer of the V.A.D. uniform that
there was no danger. Though when the red and green eyes on the ends of
the East and West jetties winked into sight over the coal-black shining
water, her fellow-passengers congratulated Patrine as heartily as though
some peril had been escaped.
"Nothing more doing, Pinkums, old thing!" said an experienced youngster
of twenty to a susceptible senior whom Patrine's unprotected condition
had roused to a strong sense of responsibility. "She's got enough
passes from British and French Headquarters to make a poker-hand. I saw
her showin' 'em to the authorities at Folkestone. Besides, have heart,
there's a Red Tab here to meet her. We'd better hence it before we're
snubbed."
And they saluted, and clattered down the crowded gangway, grabbing their
valises and buttoning up their British warms, and hurried away to get
into trench-kit, webbings, and waders, and swell the crowd in the
railway-station--waiting to go up to the Front and carry on with the
hourly, momentary game of touch-and-go with Death.
While Patrine looked eagerly about her, listening to the hum of the vast
human beehive. This was not the big rambling, old-fashioned French
seaport one had known so well before the War. Under sky-blind
arc-lights and red, green, and white lamps, every form of activity
imaginable in connection with the running of that now huge and
complicated machine, the British Field Army, seemed even at this hour to
be in full swing. The rumble of steam-cranes and the roar of dynamos,
the panting of pneumatic hold-dischargers, the clank of couplings, and
the shrieks of locomotives mingled with the tinny voices of gramophones
from the recreation-rooms at the great packed barracks and crowded
camps, and the sounds of song and laughter and applause from music-halls
and picture-palaces.
"Yes, it goes on most of the time," said the Red Tab who had come to
meet Patrine, an officer upon the Staff of the Commandant of a
Headquarters not far from--a certain place where Miss Saxham wished to
go. "The Army's got to be rationed and equipped and horsed and foraged,
and timbered and coaled and petroled and munitioned, as well as cobbled
and engineered and patched and tinkered and nursed--don't you follow me?
And these Base Ports are jolly useful. Nobody goes to bed much, I
fancy. Perhaps they'll make up the sleep they've lost by-and-by, after
the War."
"What-ho, Nubbins! Back from the Old Shop? Sorry!--didn't happen to
see you weren't alone!"
The station had vomited a flood of khaki, tumbling down the half-lit
quays to take later boats by storm. A tall, lanky officer of Gunners
had hailed Red Tab effusively; then, seeing him to be engaged with a
lady, hurried on with apologies and a salute for Patrine.
"Don't mind me! Do call back your friend," she urged. "He seemed so
glad to see you."
"Thanks much. If you don't mind. Whewip! Whewip!"
And the other, recalled by a shrill whistle, wheeled and came back upon
his stride, to grasp the offered hand. Whereupon, ensued the following
strictly private duologue:
"How goes the Battery?"
"First class. And your crowd?"
"Crawling along as per, usual. Congrats on the Oudstyde affair!"
"Thanks frightfully! But the whole thing was a bit of a fluke--everyone
knows that. _They_ had thrown down a gas-attack and the wind went
about-face. So we stayed where we were and shelled them through their
chlorine. Then they got their Reserves up and came on in lumps--the old
Zulu formation--and Pyers and his Engineers got to work with the"--the
speaker's voice dropped to an undertone--"what Pyers calls the
'Piffbozzler.'"
"The rose by any other name----" quoted Red Tab, and went on: "I'd have
given a tenner to have been there!--and as for old Clanronald--I wonder
if he got leave from--wherever he is--to see the stunt that day?"
Said the Gunner:
"If he did--and had such a thing as a stomach about him, he must have
simply--vomited! Pyers says he felt like the Angel with the Flaming
Sword--when he didn't feel like an Indian jeweller with a
blowpipe--frizzling a column of white ants marching over the floor.
You've seen how the things come on and on----"
"Yahgh!" remarked Red Tab expressively.
"But--just for once--we didn't happen to be on the frizzled side. The
C. in C. has laughed to the verge of hysterics over a leader in the
Berlin _Lokal Anzeiger_, with reference to the realised dream of the
'homicidal maniac' Clanronald. 'A deplorable example of the perversion
of _Die Wissenschaft_ at the murderous hands of English military
chemists,' they called it. Pretty neat from Boches who've been pumping
burning paraffin into our trenches, and suffocating platoons of men with
asphyxiating gases, ever since May."
"And particularly appropriate from people who bribed a crack Professor
of Literature to engage as librarian at Gwyll Castle--set the Library
Wing on fire and steal the portfolio with the plans of the 'homicidal
maniac' three weeks before the War--when Prinz Heinrich and old Moltke
were stopping in London. They'd promised their agent twelve million
marks if he succeeded. Wonder what he got from them when the plot
fizzled out? Well, so-long! Any message for Edith?'
"Tell her you saw me topping, and remember me to your wife!"
And they gripped hands and parted, and Red Tab hurried back to the tall
young woman waiting on the flagstones under a blue shaded arc-lamp,
saying:
"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No--we go
out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded
railway-carriage--unless you'd have preferred going by train?"
The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more
unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of
razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat.