That Which Hath Wings 17That Which Hath Wings (part 17)
18
Literature · Romance
That Which Hath Wings 17
That Which Hath Wings (part 17)
DehanEnglish
They were strangely quiet, under the spell of the beautiful voice, and the eyes that were luminous and deep with tenderness:
"There are faithful Christians among you; brave earnest souls who have prayed to GOD for guidance among the difficulties that beset the way for working-women, and weaker souls have been maddened to frenzy and plunged into unbelief by the intolerance and the injustice, the shrieking wrongs and the unpurged evils that Man, who enters upon his heritage the world, by the Gate of Motherhood, has ignorantly accumulated upon the shoulders of the sex he professes to respect."
There was a murmur of approval at this. She lifted a hand, and they were silent.
"I say to those who have despaired, 'Despair no longer!' I say to those who have prayed--'Your prayer is answered!' Take up the work that has dropped from the hands that are busy with the rifle. Prove your right to the Parliamentary Franchise. Take your place amongst the World's Workers, for good and for all. The Vote will be granted: it cannot be denied! But if you had it now, passionately as you desire it, and the choice were offered you--Oh! my sisters!--would you not yield it up with gladness to bring those dead men back to life again?"
And after a pause of unbroken silence she added:
"For they have fought even better than they knew. They have re-conquered Woman. Freely and willingly as comrade and helper she takes her place and her share of the burden. Peace is proclaimed. The War between the sexes is at an end!"
We know how truly the speaker prophesied. Quietly as the vast Atlantic flows into and fills a labyrinth of empty, echoing, rock-caverns, the vast body of unemployed women took the places of the male workers called away to the Front. They had clicked into the slots before the world was well aware of it, or they themselves understood that a miracle had been wrought.
Said the breeched and gaitered lady-conductor of a North-West tram the other day:
"Now the ones that was brought up active has got their chance to do a bit, and the ones that was brought up idle 'ave found out that they like work, will they ever be content to sit and twiddle their thumbs again? I don't think!" She clipped pink tickets with zeal, and when a red-nosed, watery-eyed elderly man who had offered her a pewter shilling cursed her venomously as she thrust the coin back on him: "'Ere you! ... 'Op it!" she said to the offender, and caught him neatly by the scruff, hauled him down the cork-screw stairway, and deposited him in the Camden Road without turning a hair.
*CHAPTER LXVIII*
*THE DEVIL-EGG*
Von Herrnung had quitted the earth sober, to discover at the height of a thousand metres that his potations had dulled his brain. As he ceased to climb and brought down the nose of the Taube to the level, he realised that he was dizzy, and that at the pit of his stomach squatted the aviator's deadly foe, the demon of nausea. He pictured it as a yellow, frog-like thing with frothing leathery lips and green eyes that squinted. This image vexed him, and would not be driven away.
He switched on the hawk-hoverer and sensed the drag of the twin horizontal flanged screws against the thrust of the propeller, adding to its drone the vibration of the endless travelling-chains running in their sheath of transparent talc. To make room for its long groove in the floor of the bird-body, the thick glass port beneath the pilot's feet had been removed by the sergeant-mechanic of the Flight Squadron. Now there were two ports, one on either side. Through these the German looked down upon the shell-pounded ruins of the village-town, its roofless homes and broken enclosures giving the effect of a wild-bees' nest laid open by the gardener's shovel after the gardener has smoked out the bees. As von Herrnung located the baker's house by aid of his recently acquired binoculars, another swirl of sickness took him, and he shuddered and spat bile over the side.
Those distant voices of guns had not ceased their sullen calling. In the rose-flushed south towards which the Taube faced as it hovered above the ruins of the village, black columns of vapour swelled and towered, and acrid flashes stabbed through the murkiness. One should be there, his manlier self said to him. Better to be a brave German bird dodging Death amongst the puffs of shrapnel, dropping devil-eggs on the British batteries, winning back the forfeited Cross and the lost Imperial favour, than to be here, hanging like a carrion-vulture over the maimed body of a dying man.
Perhaps. But one had promised oneself revenge for the scorn that had stung like fire. And one had bragged to the English boy of what one meant to do. He looked back, and called through the speaking-tube that traversed the canvas over-deck between the pilot's seat and the passenger's:
"Unstrap yourself and come to me and take the control-stick. Schnell--do you hear? What is that you say?" He put the voice-tube to his ear and heard the shrill pipe answer through it. "You think it best to tell me that you take back your parole?" The big teeth grinned under the red moustache. "All right!" said the Enemy. "While we are in the air, you are free to jump out if you like, and run away. When we get to the ground again, that is another matter. Come now, sit in front of me and take over the controls!"
And as the boy obeyed, creeping beneath the intervening deck and under the canvas partition, the Enemy moved back upon the pilot-seat, keeping his feet on the lower controls, and separating his knees so as to leave a ledge for Bawne to occupy. Still laughing, he took spare safety-straps that hung on each side against the bulwarks, and clipped the patent pneumatic studs to the belt that girt the boy.
It did not do to run risks. Some day, it might occur to the Emperor to order von Herrnung to deliver up his captive. And--the little devil was useful--hellishly! He had come into the world, twelve years ago--possessed of the Flying Gift. He had taken to the air as naturally as a young crow or pigeon. A tap on the shoulder, a word shouted in his ear--and he knew what you wanted! He understood now why his overlord required the unrestricted use of his arms at this moment. The small hands twitched as they gripped the lever, and shudders convulsed the slender frame. Noting this von Herrnung grinned. His qualms had left him for the present, he was once more master of his stomach and lord of his cool and steady brain. Through the back of his head the boy could see him--leaning his big body sidewise--craning his neck over the edge of the fuselage--his hand hovering over the bomb hanging near in its wire holder, his keen hard eyes calculating distance--his red brows knitted, his full mouth smiling under its thatch of red hair. The devil-egg would burst upon its impact with a roof or with the ground, a thousand metres under the Taube. How many times since the red dawning of the Aggressor's Day had he, von Herrnung, not plucked out the pin and lifted the latch, and sent Death and Destruction speeding earthwards! Why should this particular devil-egg have exploded five seconds after its release?
The detonating mechanism had been wrongly set, or the explosive had suffered some chemical deterioration. With the volcanic upburst of flaming gases and the fierce blizzard of rending steel splinters, the Taube was shot upwards like the cork from a bottle of champagne. The Enemy had cut out the hovering-gear when he had dropped the devil-egg, and the thrust of the tractor had sent the Taube rushing on. Thus, though she had been bumped about on waves of rising gases--though daylight shone through holes in her wings and body,--a wheel had dropped like a stone from her under-carriage--and a piece of her tail had gone fluttering and swerving earthwards, no serious damage had been done to the machine.
Bawne's cheek was bleeding from the scratch of a splinter, but he stuck manfully to the controls. "Steer south," he had been told, "when I switch off the hoverer," and he had waited, his teeth set, his brows knitted, his eyes on the compass, and his heart crying out to God to save his new-found friend.
He knew it was because he had prayed so hard that the bomb had exploded prematurely. Would the Enemy try again with the one that yet remained? But the Enemy made no sign. One dared not look round or speak to him. Was he in a fit, or sick, or merely shamming? One could feel the big body heaving at one's back as it lay huddled against the canvas partition, with rolling head and arms spread wide, and knees that straddled and sagged.
Jerk! The Taube heaved her after-part as a cow gets up, and nose-dived. Von Herrnung's feet had slipped from the controls, and her rudder was flapping free. As Bawne toed the bar and gripped the guide-wheel, and brought the keel to a level, the blood in his veins tingled and he knew a thrill of joy.
One had borne a lot, but--Man alive!--a moment like this was worth it. What Boy Scout could deny the greatness of this boy's reward? To be master of this giant Bird, rushing at the speed of an express-train over woods and fields and villages, diminished to the patches on a crazy-quilt by the height at which one sped. To hear the shrill breeze harping in the wires and the roar of the flashing tractor, and change the din at a finger-touch to the silence of a glide.
West, where the sun was setting in red fire were signs by now familiar. Linked specks that were big grey German troop-trains ran over the shining gossamer-lines of the railways, going south. Where the shining lines looked like scattered pins, the railways had been blown up by the Belgians, or the British. Things like caterpillars crawling over the white ribbons of the highways were German motor-lorries dragging great howitzers, or Army Supply and Transport, or marching columns of robust, bullet-headed German infantrymen.
A blot of grey upon a town was where a Division rested. Strings of grey spiders hurrying south, would be brigades of cyclist telegraphists or sharpshooters, and processions of drab beetles scuttling along, Field Ambulances, or Staff motor-cars. One would have said that a green-grey blight had fallen upon Belgium, swiftly advancing, stayed by nothing, devouring as it moved.
East, where the shadow of the Taube raced beside her like a carriage-dog, black streaks that were barges still crawled on the canals, and peasants' carts crept over the roads--and there were no columns of troops in view, nor uglier tokens of the War. Though the red and brown towns showed scant signs of life, late root-crops were being harvested; plough-teams were breaking up the stubbles, factory chimneys were smoking, and acres of linen-web yet spread to bleach along the river-banks.
Later in the month the grey-green blight was to sweep over all this region as the Boche retreated before the thrust of the 1st and 4th British Army Corps, from Houthulst Forest to Menin-on-Lys.
Those voices of the guns were nearer now. They talked on incessantly. You felt the air that carried you vibrating as you flew. The solid earth heaved up in waves under the dusty golden smoke-drifts veiling the south horizon. Black pillars of smoke and debris climbed and collapsed against the dusty gold. Grey Imperial Staff cars were parked in the courtyard of a chateau with pepper-box towers. Officers sat at tables on the vine-covered terrace, while a farm close by was doing duty as a casualty-clearing station. You could pick out the flutter of the Red Cross Flag on a broken tree beside the gateway--and the come and go of the bearers carrying laden or empty stretchers--and the white armlets of the Sanitaetskorps men who drove the ambulance-cars. To have seen over and over again what grown folks learned from newspapers was to be a man seasoned in War, whilst yet one's bones were young. Well worth the hardships one had borne, this sheaf of ripe experience. Good to know one had obeyed the Chief who said, "Quit yourself like a man!"
So Bawne flew on. The fiery chrism of a strange second baptism was on his forehead. Gates of wonder seemed opening on the horizon towards which he hastened, guided by the big broad arrow of the reinforced compass and the thudding of those nearing guns.
Some perception of great issues at stake and marvellous impending changes, ushering in the revival of the forgotten days of Chivalry, may have come at this hour to the child so strangely caught and whirled into the dizzy circles of the maelstrom of International War. Did a voice whisper to him that as of old by his Pagan forefathers, babes were sacrificed to Bel and Odin--so for the cleansing of the sick world of to-day from the War-madness begotten by greed and materialism a torrent of rich, warm, generous blood was to be shed from the veins of the young? Could he dream that the lower mankind sank, the higher men were to rise--mounting on stepping-stones of obedience and courage, to those heights where the human may walk with the Divine? That through long years to come, bright boys in myriads would drain the wine of Death from the chalice of Self-Sacrifice, and pass to God who kindled in those clean young souls the fire that made Him burn to die for men.
The Enemy was rousing from his doze or dwam, or swoon, or whatever had been the matter with him. The big body was heaving into an upright posture, the big foot was knocking in Morse on the bottom of the fuselage. The boy looked down and saw blood running there--or was it the red of the sunset?
"Shut--off--and--look--at me," rapped the foot, and its thrall obeyed and shrieked at the sight of the horror he was strapped to, glaring with wild eyes, and spitting unintelligible sentences with bloody splinters of shattered teeth and red rags of palate and tongue.
"I am damaged, is it not so? Something hit me when the bomb exploded." Something like this came in strange sounds from that inhuman face. And the boy shrieked again and again, straining at the belt that bound him to his terrible companion, conscious of nothing but overmastering fear--
"Quit yourself like a man!"
He heard the words through the drumming in his ears and his heart left off leaping. His brain cleared. He realised that the Taube was diving to the ground. He switched on power and brought down her tail and pulled up her nose gamely. They passed through a suffocating mist of burned chemicals that deposited red powder on your hands and face, and the glass of your flying-goggles, and parched your lungs like burning Cayenne pepper--and were over the battle-zone.
As far as the eye could take it in the face of earth was moving. Death, like a many-handed mole, seemed working underground. Huge geysers of dirt and mud and stones heaved up in thick black smoke and vapour. The air shook incessantly with reduplicated concussions. Buildings tottered and sank away, and railway bridges melted, and spurts of blinding fire leaped from invisible mouths of guns.
The revolutions were slowing down. The Taube travelled painfully. Beneath her bobbed a row of sausage-shaped observation-balloons straining at their spidery cables, beyond these were the third and second German lines--whitish furrows stretching East and West, with little zig-zags, that were communicating-trenches, between. A thin blue haze of rifle and machine-gun fire hung over the pitted ground. The Advanced lines behind their smear of rust-red barbed wire might have been sixty yards from the parapet of the British trenches. Friend and foe were dying there--and over the hurly-burly, dodging Death in puffs of woolly vapour, belched from vertical mobile muzzles, directing fire, signalling, wirelessing, scouting, fighting others who assailed signallers or scouters--wheeled and circled the Birds of War. Their sharp eyes picked him out flying far down beneath them.
"There goes a Hun somebody's shrapbozzled!" said the pilot of a R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to speak to his observer.
"Going to crash in a minute," said the observer of the Bleriot Experimental. "Where, do you suppose?"
"If he keeps on at that angle," said the pilot from behind his glasses, "he'll pass over that nest of Hun machine-guns in the big shell-pit behind the German Advanced Line, at about a hundred and fifty--and pile in that ploughfield behind our Gunners."
The Taube was flying low and crookedly--the high crescendo whine of shell passed over it--heavy metal sent from German batteries--and other shells from British guns were crashing and bursting near. The wind was getting up in the west, and the drift of the machine was trending eastwards, in spite of anything Bawne could do. Could one keep flying long enough to pass the first line of British trenches? And how would one come to the ground, knowing nothing about landing--and with a bomb on board!
One must get rid of the devil-egg. Should one drop it on the enemy's trenches? As he flew towards them a rag of white fluttered, and Bawne caught his breath. A long line of grey-green men were jumping like grasshoppers over the parapet. They went forwards with their hands up, waving a White Flag, and from the British trenches came men in khaki doubling out to take their prisoners....
Rat-tat-tatt!
The khaki figures began to fall. The grey men were cheering.... The rat-tatt--came from the German machine-guns, pumping out jets of murderous lead. Then in a flash Bawne understood, leaned to the right, and seeing the machine-gun pit beneath him--pulled out the pin, jerked up the latch, and dropped the devil-egg. Horrible to think, it would kill Germans!--but then--to save one's own dear Englishmen----
"Good Night! Did you see that?" asked the pilot of the R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to address his observer, and immediately switching on again, for a geyser of earth and stones and fire, and bits of things that had been men and guns had spurted up from the spot where a moment since had been the gun-pit, and troubled waves of heated air reached them at 5000.
"He knows he's got to come down crash, and jettisoned the lollipop to improve his chances! ... Civil of him to drop it just when the Deershires were getting it hot and hot! ... Deserves thanks from the British C. in C., though his Kaiser won't be particularly pleased with him," reflected the R.F.C. observer, as the Taube, flying like a bird with a wounded wing, crossed the lines of the British trenches, dived staggeringly, and crashed down in the ploughed field behind the slogging guns.
*CHAPTER LXIX*
*A MENACE; AND GOOD NEWS*
Drip, drip! ...
The slow dropping of water on the carpet and the sweet, heavy fragrance of roses, brings me back as it brought Patrine. She got up and pulled down the dark blue blinds with the precaution that was becoming habitude with us at this date, in view of that often bragged-of menace from the sky. She switched up the lights and moved to the table, roughly pulled off the string that tied, and lifted the lid of the cardboard box.
A rich, sweet fragrance that was almost musky enveloped her as she lifted the thin paper. A sheaf of roses of flaming sanguine crimson, tied with black-and-white striped ribbon lay beneath. Black and white are the Prussian colours. Black, white, and red the standard of the Hohenzollern. Patrine knew that von Herrnung had sent the roses, even before she recognised his writing on a thick white envelope pinned to the ribbon binding the flowers.
"If Isis desires news of 'her dearest', she will open and read the letter. From one who does not desire to forget."
The letter contained a lock of hair, jaggedly cut--she knew from whose sweet head. Half blind with tears, she lifted the lock to her lips and kissed it passionately, before she bent herself to read the careful English sentences that revealed the man in all his vanity and lustfulness, insolence, and tyranny, as though the burin of Strang or the brush of Sargent had etched him upon copper or limned him upon canvas, to show the world what depths of infamy can be plumbed by the Superman.
"_Strong Woman of the race of moral weaklings, have you not yet learned to be proud that a Prussian soldier prized your beauty, and took it for his own? When the fierce men in the proud German Field-grey have swarmed over the soil of England,--when, amidst the squadron of night-birds whose feathers gleam mysteriously in the pale moonlight, thy lover flies onward, singing his war-song, laden with his cargo of explosives--when the Red Cock crows on the roof-trees of London's wilderness of houses and London's fire-bells, amidst terrific explosions, ring out the last battle of the century, will Isis then think of me? Revolvers, carbines, bombs, and poisoned arrows are among the gifts I shall bring thee in the hand that wears the mascot pearl of black and white. Coloured signalling-balls set in the silver of the searchlight, shall be thy tiara; for thy arms and thy white bosom there will be strings of rubies outpoured from the broken coffers of the House of Life. Our second nuptials will be celebrated by a mitred Death, amidst the smoking ruins of Westminster Abbey, to the roaring strains of the German Anthem, 'Now Praise Ye the Lord.' Till then au revoir! shall one perhaps say?_
"_Ah, were Isis of the burning beech-leaf tresses not only beautiful but wise, she would place her hand in the hand that stretches yearningly over the North Sea. I wish love more than vengeance; is not that unnatural for a Hun? A golden consciousness of happiness yet to come wells up within me. Would Isis taste that happiness, let her go to her window and open it on the night of the day that brings this letter. There are no Germans in England who are not in prison or under espionage. No, possibly! yet go to thy window! A word to him who waits there, and Isis is once more mine. But beware of turning my tenderness by scornful rejection to hatred. Cold devil!--I should then strike, and frightfully, at the head whence came this hair. Look at it well and answer. T.v.H._"
She could turn no paler, her hue was that of death already. She dropped the loathsome letter from her hand upon the roses and thrust the lock of hair into her bosom, and went to a window and touched the spring of the blind. It flew up and revealed her tall shape standing there silhouetted against the electric radiance in defiance of that boasted menace from the sky.
The street seemed empty, within the radius of her vision, save for the dark bulk of a motor-car, standing before a house on the same side some way down. Its headlights flashed, once, twice, and again, as though in answer. It slid forwards with a low hissing sound: "Ss'sh!" it said, as if in gluttonous anticipation, and stopped opposite the hall-door. Again the headlights flashed, there was a gleam of yellow enamel. She recognised the Darracq car in which von Herrnung had driven her to Fanshaw's Flying Ground on that unforgettable eighteenth of July.
Holding her breath, narrowing her long-sighted eyes for better focus, she scrutinised the driver, recognising in the thick-set figure hunched over the steering-wheel, wearing a peaked cap pulled low over his forehead, and a wide white muffler twisted round his throat, the German who had brought the message from the Three in the blue F.I.A.T. car. She was sure of him when he touched his cap, looking furtively up at the window, and switched on a small electric bulb, illuminating the clock upon the dashboard as though to afford her a view of his face. Its bloodshot pale eyes, thick broad nose, and the unwholesome, purplish colour of the complexion, barred with a big light yellowish moustache with waxed ends, had stuck in her memory as ugly personal traits will stick. Of the slenderer man beside him she had no recollection. He was buttoned up in an overcoat with a fur collar, and wore a soft felt hat. She felt the eyes it shadowed were fastened on her, and recoiled as though from the touch of something unclean and horrible, roughly dragging down the blind.
She was brave, but the sense of being almost alone in the house with those alert, observant eyes outside, spying upon her movements, made her heart beat suffocatingly, and brought chill damps of deadly terror to the surface of her skin. She moved to a chair with a clogging sense of ultimate effort--the nightmare feeling of striving against a powerful hypnotic influence, bidding her creep downstairs and open the street-door, step into the car waiting at the kerbstone, and be borne away by rushing wheels and whirling screws, or even swifter wings, perhaps, to that War-torn land where von Herrnung was waiting to exact his price for sparing the beloved head.
She drew the lock of hair from her bosom and whispered inarticulate 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.
"In case of barbed wire--strung across country roads," explained Red Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated--travelling fast at night--or in foggy weather--without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee--and sandwiches in a box. Don't restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at intervals, and rather faintly. Fact--I've heard 'em in the South of England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O--, twenty-eight miles from the Front--they're loud enough at times--though there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No--thanks, I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck up and go to by-by!"
The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the wintry roads ahead of it--or horse-drawn transport waggons--or droves of animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a cloud--or bodies of men in heavy marching order--French and British soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,--shaped after the fashion of Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.
And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.
Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.
"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This is the Ursuline Convent of St. O--, where we've arranged for you to billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady, and my uncle--I mean Sir Roland--thought you'd be more cushy with the Sisters than at a common hotel!"
"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon the pavement to warm his frozen feet.
"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters--twenty-five miles from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain--and a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him--and he said he'd be delighted to look after you. Don't get down--it's frightfully slippery!"
But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and narrowing long eyes--"queer eyes" he mentally termed them--to see the better through her veil.
"What glorious stars!"
He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:
"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila--I rather fancy--lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of their famous Abbey----"
"Great Scott!"
"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said----"
"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again--" She pointed as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately bulk and the huddled housetops.
"Those are Boche fireworks!"
"Fireworks?"
"Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting? Oh, pretty busy north--as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassee. French on our right--French and Belgians on the left of us. More French holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming now!"
Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements. The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.
Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England! Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and soup tres chaud not only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur. Madame la Superieure would never permit that either should proceed without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.
And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious, full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment, containing a prie-dieu and a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed with faded Directoire curtains, a minute washstand,--a faint smell of scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of a calorifere, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a stitched border of yellow immortelles and faded laurel-leaves, that had been green and fresh six months before....
Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful--or because she had never stayed in a convent before.
She was going to Sherbrand--her Flying Man--who had been supposed to be dead and found to be living,--and who had written to say that he did not want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest arrived.
*CHAPTER LXXI*
*LIVING AND DEAD*
"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER. RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."
The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy--an unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him, nor even tears and sighs.
She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "Let me come to you!" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.
"April, 1915.
"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"--the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine--"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented--I am neither--quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,
"Yours most sincerely,
"A. S."
A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter--but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?
There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,--all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters--a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.
The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in the Confiteor and Credo. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.
The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached.
"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,--her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified--the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you--whatever may be his nationality,--who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War--then the War has been a blessing--to him--and not a curse! Acts have been performed--and are repeated hourly--acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,--not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace--ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."
After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in his mobile face and quick utterance:
"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the presence of Him who is the Light."
