That Which Hath Wings 6That Which Hath Wings (part 6)
18
Literature · Romance
That Which Hath Wings 6
That Which Hath Wings (part 6)
DehanEnglish
Patrine listened in stony silence. Rhona chattered on. "Of course the work she does amongst those unlucky wretches--young girls and women who've come to grief--is topping. But why waste herself rescuing prostitutes and street-walkers? Aren't any of us good enough--or bad enough to interest her? I'm going to ask her that when you introduce me--remember you've promised to!"
Patrine said in a voice jarred and harsh with anger:
"Since your declared intention is to be offensive to Mrs. Saxham, whose shoes neither you nor myself, nor any woman of our set is worthy to unlace, I take back the promise, if it was ever given!"
"What's up?" Rhona turned and stared. "I say!--but you look fearfully seedy! Worried about Margot, is that it?" She was off on another tack, carried by the light shifting breeze of her imagination. "Poor little Margot!--in spite of good advice and top-hole mascots--booked for the Nursery Handicap--and out of the running for a year!"
"Who told you--that?--about Margot?"
"Melts--the head housemaid here--had it from Kittum's maid Pauline, who dropped in to fetch away some stored luggage of her ladyship's.... They've furnished a house at Cadogan Place--Margot and her Franky-wanky. West End enough, and quite exquie inside, but not as convee as the dear old Club. But--I believe I'm boring you." Her nimble glance left Patrine's face, and darted in the direction of von Herrnung. "Who's the big, good-looking, carroty man, gobbling you up with his eyes while he's talking piffle to Cynthia and Trix? Now I remember--I have heard some hints of your going over to the Common Enemy." Rhona's sharp light eyes sparkled like polished gold-stones. "Is that the reason why you've bleached your hair? What a putrid shame of you! And the Enemy's a foreigner--a German! Did he give you that gorgeous ring?"
Upon the third finger of Patrine's left hand was the magpie pearl set in platinum, gleaming to its wearer's fevered fancy, like some malignant demon's eye. Rhona caught the hand, and uttered a little squeak as Patrine wrenched it away. She--Patrine--was driven beyond endurance: her self-command was breaking. Her hair seemed to creep upon her tingling scalp. Down her spine and along the muscles of her thighs passed slow recurrent waves of physical anguish. She could have screamed aloud, torn her garments, set her teeth in her own flesh. But she mastered herself sufficiently to say:
"I won the ring over a bet in Paris. You can see for yourself I don't wear it on the engagement left. Do not despair of me. At this moment I do not particularly esteem women. But on the other hand, I absolutely abominate men!"
"Hope for you then, politically speaking," said the misanthropic Rhona. "What, are you going?"
Patrine had thrown aside her paper and risen, towering over her. She nodded without speaking, and went out of the smoking-room, crumpling the letter she had written in her strong white hand. She would not post it, she told herself as she passed through the outer lounge. She would go and look up Uncle Owen at Harley Street. She spoke a word to an agile hall-boy in the vestibule and he skipped out, and signalled a taxi-cab.
A handsome Darracq four-seater, enamelled bright yellow and fitted in ebonized steel, was waiting by the kerbstone. As the taxi manoeuvred to get round it, von Herrnung's voice said, speaking behind Patrine:
"Stop the boy, that machine will not be wanted.... I have here a car that is lent me by a friend."
She turned and saw him, standing hat in hand. His tone was pleasant, and he was smiling. He went on:
"He--my friend--is a Secretary of our German Embassy. He has three automobiles--why should he not lend me one?" He replaced his hat and pulled a curved gold cigar-case out of the breast-pocket of his waistcoat asking: "I may light a zigarre after these stupid cigarettes I have been smoking? It will not be unpleasant to gnaediges Fraeulein?"
His courtesy insulted. His smile was an outrage. She controlled the trembling of her lips with difficulty. Whether he observed or not was uncertain, he seemed to busy himself solely with the selection and kindling of his cigar.
"Pardon that I get in first, as I shall be driving!" he said, and threw away the smoking vesta, pushed back the hall-boy who was wrestling with the door-handle, got in and took his place at the steering-wheel, beckoning to Patrine.
"Thanks, but I cannot.... I am going to Berkeley Square."
"I will drop you at Berkeley Square." He met her eyes hardily. "You will not refuse me this pleasure, when I have not seen you since--" The slight significant pause stabbed as it had been meant to. He saw her wince, and finished: "Since two days. Will you not get in?"
She took the seat beside him. He stretched his arm across her knees and shut the door neatly. She leaned back to avoid his touch, and he smiled, feeling her shudder. Her eyes were on his gloved left hand as he drew it back.
He manipulated the electrical starter and the yellow Darracq moved up and out of Short Street. Patrine stared before her, sitting rigid in her place. Not once did her glance visit him. But every skilful movement of his hands upon the steering-wheel, every creak of the springy leather cushion under his great body, every tightening of his mouth or twitch of his thick red eyebrows, were photographed upon her brain.
He was irreproachably got up in thin, loose grey tweed morning clothes, cut by a West End tailor, and his feather-weight grey felt hat testified to the make of Scott. His knitted silk tie, a combination of electric blue and vivid yellow, was a discordant note. Patrine was certain it must have been the work of some other woman in Berlin. The heavy flat gold ring through which the ends were drawn was set with a ruby and two diamonds, another false note that jarred her painfully. But he was looking strong and well and in admirable condition. His blue eyes were bright, his red hair and his tightly-rolled moustache glittered in the sunshine, there was a bloom of perfect health upon his florid skin.
If Patrine did not look at von Herrnung, his eyes were less abstemious with regard to her. Under cover of their short red eyelashes, they scrutinised her from time to time. There was unbridled curiosity in their regard, and also a retrospective vanity, admiration, and resentment as well. She rode the high horse. She was hellishly sure of herself. Sure of von Herrnung, it might be. This passed in his mind as he said to her:
"Do you know that this car has had the honour to carry the Emperor of Germany? When Seine Majestaet paid a visit to England in the year 1907, he used it every day."
Patrine returned indifferently:
"It seems to go smoothly."
Von Herrnung said, as the car obeyed every motion of his practised hands upon the steering-wheel:
"It is a wonderful traveller. It has been fitted with a Heinz motor, three times more powerful to its weight than any other known petrol-engine. Some journeys, I can tell you, it has had with the All Highest. Travelling incognito, driven always by a--certain young Prussian officer; then of Engineers--attached to the Personal Staff specially for this work."
"I daresay you mean yourself?"
"That is a clever piece of guessing; I congratulate you, gnaediges Fraeulein. Well, it is now no secret. I do not object to admit having been the young Leutnant in the case. So now you know how I gained my flair for English scenery and my violent penchant for English beauty. A weakness of which I am rather proud, since it is one the Emperor shares."
The final sentence might have conveyed a jeer. But Patrine was not listening. She called to her companion: "You are driving in the wrong direction for Berkeley Square, but it does not matter. Please put me down just here at the corner of Harley Street. I can leave this letter at a house there instead of putting it in the pillar-post."
"You are not getting out, gnaediges Fraeulein. You are coming with me to Hendon. I have there a little business which will occupy an hour." He added with a familiarity that stung, looking at the tense white profile and the black brows knitted in anger: "You are yourself to blame that I cannot part with you. You are really as magnificent by day as by evening--with your so-gloriously-coloured hair. May I also congratulate you on the effective costume? Black and white are our Prussian colours. I take that as a personal compliment."
"Take it as you like, it will not make it one."
"Sehr gutig. I do not need telling. When I want things I take them. It is a habit of mine."
He spoke sheer, brutal truth. Oh God! what of Patrine's had he not coveted and taken, only two horrible days ago. "So," he went on, "you will have to post your letter. I will stop at a Postammt and drop it in for you. You see, I am greedy of your society. At any moment I may be recalled to Germany. One must catch the Bird of Happiness and hold it while one can. Now tell me, is not that a pretty speech?"
"Extremely, but it does not alter the situation. I have a particular appointment. I cannot go to Hendon with you."
"I have already told you that we are going there. Grosse Gott!" His tone was savage. "How is it that you are so confoundedly stubborn? Do you think such behaviour sensible--or wise?"
"I am certainly wiser than I was two days ago."
He slewed his head round to look at her with a greedy curiosity. He saw the lines of face and figure grow rigid, and her bare hands clench themselves together in her lap.
He glanced at her ringed hand, then transferred his regard to his own left hand, the glove upon which he had retained at the Club. The soft dressed suede bulged as though a bandage were concealed underneath. She averted her eyes hastily as though she shunned some ugly, sickening, spectacle. He said:
"I see that you honour me by wearing my mascot. The magpie pearl most excellently becomes your beautiful hand, my dear!"
They had reached Regents Park Square and were turning into the Broad Walk. She plucked the ring from her bare finger, and held it out to him, saying in a low tone:
"Please take it back!"
"I am to take it back? ... You are in earnest?"
She repeated her words, holding out the bauble. He released his gloved left hand from the steering-wheel to take it. His eyes were on the road ahead and his face was hard as pink stone. But she heard him give a little sigh of relief as he slipped the ring into an inside coat-pocket. He said, as though to excuse the sigh:
"It was given me in April, when I made my raid on Paris from Hanover, landing my Albatros once only during two days' flight. The weather was magnificent. My engine gave no trouble. That is why I call the ring my mascot, you understand. Now that it has been worn by you, it is more precious than when I first received it. Whenever I look at it, it will speak to me of you."
"Don't let it!"
"Why should it not speak of you? Isis! My heart's Queen!"
"I have told you--don't revolt me with--piffle of that kind. And don't touch me, unless you want me to jump out of the car!"
A voice that he barely knew had issued from the face she turned on him--a face all violet shadows and haggard drawn lines, under the burning splendour of the dead beech-leaf hair. She vibrated like an electrified wire, and round her pale pinched mouth and about her blue-veined temples were little points of moisture, fine and glittering as diamond-dust.
"Am I to understand that my touch is unpleasant to you? That you are angry with me? That you do not love me any more?"
"Love...."
She laughed out harshly, hugely disconcerting him.
"Lady Wathe said at that Grand Prix night dinner in Paris that you were without a sense of humour. But you must have a grain or so--to talk of love to me!"
She turned her face away, and the exquisite beauty of her small white ear appealed to him provokingly. He ground his teeth. He could have thrown his arm about her, and crushed the tall, full, womanly figure against him. How superb she was in her mood of hate. The strapped-up wound in his left hand was throbbing and smarting, just as when she had writhed her head free from his furious kisses and bitten him to the bone.
He had made her pay richly for her bite. He hugged himself as he remembered.... Now the sting of desire was renewed in him and he eyed her with greediness. Presently he stooped and said in her ear, coaxingly:
"Let us be friends! Dine with me at the Rocroy to-night. We will have a box at the Alhambra, and sup again at the Upas. Say you will come, loved one! Will you not, Patrine?"
"No!"
"No? But I think you mean Yes! Do you not?"
"I have said No! Is that not enough?"
"You are mad!" he blustered at her--"mad as a March hare!"
She answered him:
"I have been mad, but I am sane now and I stay so."
He said scoffingly:
"You may not always remain as you are now!"
If he launched a poisoned dart, its meaning glanced aside from her.
"Shall you not write to me when I am back in Germany? Not one line? Not one single word? Yet I have a few little notes from you that I particularly value...."
"Make the most of them. I shall write no more." And suddenly her hate and loathing of him reached boiling point and ran over. "My God! Can't you understand that I ask nothing better than never to see nor hear of you again!"
"Grossartig! You are hellishly conciliatory." His voice was thick and shook with anger. His smile mocked and the look in his eyes was hateful as he pursued in a tone that was now quite gentle and purring: "Just think a bit, my dear! Because--to burn one's boats behind one--that is not prudent at all!"
She did not answer, and he drove on to Hendon, planning fresh assaults upon this unconquerable woman's pride.
*CHAPTER XXV*
*THREE MEN IN A CAR*
When the yellow Darracq car turned in under the archway that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School in three-foot capitals, the name revived no associations in the mind of Patrine. She had never visited the aerodrome upon an afternoon in the mid-week, when as in the present instance practice and instruction were being carried on. The cafes, no longer crowded by smart people, were thinly patronised by bronzed young men in overalls, not innocent of lubricating medium, thirstily drinking ginger swizzle or sucking iced-lemon squashes through yellow straws. Business-looking middle-aged men discussed the market-prices of steels and timbers, dope and fabrics, over bitter beer and ham-sandwiches, while experimenting amateurs, male and female, discussed in loud, relieved voices the experiences of the premier flight. These, having been previously warned not to experiment upon a crowded system, were now ravenously putting in the solid, three-course lunches they had foregone.
It was a perfect July day, hot and blue and green and golden. To the nor'-west, you glimpsed the elms and oaks and beeches of Boreham Wood, westward the chestnuts of Bushey and Stanmore in fullest summer foliage. The hawthorns of New Barnet were already browning in the sun. Hill and common were plumy with the brake-fern. Heather and ling were purpling into bloom.
Still looking westwards, you snatched a glimpse of Windsor. Eastwards, a diamond set in emeralds, was the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Across the whitish-grey scarp of Highgate and the verdant shoulder of heathy Hampstead you saw the dun-coloured haze that is the breath of London, the huge, black, formidable and formless monster, as, sprawling on her ancient River, she keeps her envied place in the Sun.
At the cafe end of Fanshaw's enclosure the Frogged Roumanian String Orchestra were playing the "Dance Rhapsody" of Delius. From a rival establishment came the brazen strains of a German band in a death-wrestle with ragtime. Behind a straggling crowd of visitors, where the cars that had brought them were parked in a double row, von Herrnung stopped the yellow Darracq, leaned across Patrine's unwilling knees and opened the car-door.
As Patrine was getting out, a large hand in a white leather glove was thrust forwards for her assistance. The owner of the hand was a square-faced, fair-haired, soldierly-looking servant of the somewhat hybrid type that has replaced the carriage-groom. He wore a dark blue livery overcoat with silver braid upon collar, belt, and shoulder-straps, black knee-boots, and a white topped cap with silver braid, a shiny black peak and an enamel front badge in black, white, and red. Looking past Patrine, he saluted in military fashion and spoke to von Herrnung in German, of which language Patrine possessed a smattering:
"Will the Herr Hauptmann speak to the Herrschaft? Upon business. Er ist sehr wichtig."
Von Herrnung, at the first sound of the messenger's voice, had stiffened to rigidity. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction pointed out by the big hand in the white glove, and answered:
"Say to the Herrschaft that I come!"
The groom vanished. Von Herrnung jumped out of the yellow Darracq and went quickly over to the machine that had been indicated, a large, superbly-finished F.I.A.T. touring-car of the landau-limousine type, enamelled dark blue with a narrow silver line of finish. The top was open. A white-capped chauffeur in dark blue and silver livery sat immovable at the steering-wheel, and three men, only one of whom was plainly visible to Patrine, occupied the roomy body of the car.
The visible man, sitting in the forward seat with his back to the motor, his baldness topped, in deference to the weather, with a white felt Newmarket, was a long-bodied, broad-shouldered personage, certainly over seventy; clean-shaven, with staring eyes of light grey tinged with bilious yellow, and skin of a prevailing yellow-grey doughiness, with a huge wart in the middle of the cheekbone on the side next to Patrine. His clothes were of yellowish-grey like his eyes and skin, his linen had a yellow line in it and a huge, crumpled vest of buff nankeen threw into relief a flaming crimson satin necktie confined within bounds by a flat jewelled ring. He had the air of an old actor of character parts, or of a libertine monk who has foregone the cord and cowled habit. Of the two men sitting facing him little could be seen beyond the peak of a gold-banded white yachting-cap pulled rather low over a bronzed and rather aquiline profile with an upward-turned moustache and slightly-grizzled beard of reddish-brown, and a Homburg straw with a broad black ribbon and a slouched brim, overshadowing the face of the man who sat on White Cap's left hand. An astute and cunning face, his; long and sallow, with narrow, blinking eyes, a drooping nose, and a drooping black moustache. With this its owner played constantly, twisting and pulling it with a delicate white hand that wore a diamond solitaire. He never looked up, when addressed by either of his companions, but raised his eyes to the speaker, and pivoted, without lifting his head.
Von Herrnung's friends were nothing to Patrine, and von Herrnung's person was by now intolerable, yet her eyes unwillingly followed the tall, soldierly figure as he drew himself up, clicked his heels and uncovered. A brown hand went up to the peak of the white yachting-cap, the wearers of the straw Homburg and the felt Newmarket slightly raised their hats. Von Herrnung did not speak first, he waited bareheaded to be spoken to. When the door of the big blue car was opened by the servant at an imperious signal from the sallow man, von Herrnung got inside, and sat down beside the personage with the wart on his cheek,--leaning forwards deferentially to be addressed by the bearded wearer of the white yachting-cap, who made great play with a brown right hand that sported a heavy gold curb-chain watch-bracelet. Once the hand clenched and shook in vivacious threat or warning, very close to von Herrnung's handsome nose. That made Patrine laugh, and instantly she was angry with herself for laughing. She put up her long-sticked sunshade, turned her back upon the blue F.I.A.T. car and moved away towards the part of the enclosure where the visitors sat or promenaded, drawing eyes as she went with her spangled silver headgear twinkling in the sunshine, and its black cock's plume waving over her strangely coloured hair.
So changed, so changed. She was sensible of an alteration even in her gait and gestures. A sickness of the soul weighed on her body as though she walked in invisible fetters of lead. The free space, the fresh air, seemed to yield no physical stimulus. She had bitten deep into the apple of Knowledge, and found bitterness and ashes at the core.
*CHAPTER XXVI*
*A PAIR OF PALS*
Among a dozen pairs of masculine eyes that followed the gallant womanly figure, crowned by the plumed hat of silver spangles and displayed in the frank unreticence of fashion by the semi-transparent sheath of glistening white, a pair very blue, very shiningly alert and interested, drew nearer until the elongated shadow of a small boy in Scout's uniform mingled upon the sunlit turf with the longer shadow of Patrine.
His thumping heart had said to him: "You know her!" It was Pat and yet not Pat. Her tall, rounded figure. Her walk. The same face--and another woman's hair. The white gown and the long stole of black cock's feathers he had seen before, and the hat had previously fascinated him. He had asked Pat if it were not made of the twinkly stuff with which they covered the Bobby-dazzlers on Christmas trees? She had cried "Yes!" and assured him that she would always hereafter call it her "Bobby-dazzler chapper." ... And his Cousin Irma, whom Bawne secretly abominated, had said it was too bad to talk costermonger slang to the child. "The child." ... A man must be ready to pardon an insult from the unpunchable female. But Bawne found himself wishing that Cousin Irma had been a boy.
He loved Pat. You had to love a person who could keep secrets as faithfully as Dad or Mother, and play tennis and hockey better than a great many grown-up fellows. Bowl you out at cricket, too, middle bail, before you could wink. She could cycle all day without getting knocked up, and swim a mile, easily. For these reasons Bawne knew he loved her. But he loved her most for the reasons that he did not understand.
"Pat!"
He had screwed up his courage to touch his crusher felt and speak the name, but the tall lady with the electrifying hair did not seem to hear. Her long eyes looked at him in a blind way without seeing him. He had never kissed this frozen, stranger's face.
"I thought you knew me! I most awfully beg your pardon!" he stammered, in scarlet anguish, and the dull eyes suddenly came to life, and the stiff lips smiled:
"It's Bawne. My sweet, I'm glad! How did you come here?"
"Dad brought me because he'd promised," the boy said joyously as they shook hands.
"Where is Uncle Owen?"
"Over there." Bawne pointed to two men talking apart beyond the straggling line of spectators, and Patrine recognised the great frame and scholarly stoop of the Doctor, standing with his side-face towards her, a half-consumed cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his stick, a weighty ivory-topped Malacca, loosely gripped in both hands behind his back.
"And the man he is talking to? Why--of course! It's Sir Roland--how is it I didn't recognise him?"
"The Chief Scout!" Bawne's tone was one of incredulous wonder. "But you couldn't have forgotten him! It--isn't possible!"
Nor even to a stranger did he appear a personality to be easily forgotten, the bright-eyed, falcon-beaked, middle-aged man, whose feather-weight crusher felt was worn at an inimitable angle, and whose slight, active figure set off his well-cut morning suit of thin blue serge in a way to arouse envy in a military dandy of twenty-five.
"You see," Bawne explained, "he was talking business with Father, so I just took myself out of the way." He added: "They hadn't told me to, but they might have forgotten. And so"--the big word came out of the childish mouth quaintly--"I acted on my initiative--you understand?"
"I understand." The formal handshake once over, their fingers had not separated. She held in her large, strong, womanly palm the hand that was little, and hard, and boyish. It squeezed her fingers, and the squeeze was an apology. It said:
"I'd like you to have kissed me if there hadn't been lots of people looking. For, of course, you know I love you, Pat!"
"And I love you, Bawne. We'll always love each other, whatever happens," said the answering pressure. Her spoken utterance was:
"So these are your holidays! ... How did you leave them all at Charterhouse? And--are you still tremendous pals with young Roddy Wrynche?"
He said, with a naive, adorable gravity:
"Boys don't squabble like girls--and Wrynche is a frightfully decent fellow. We passed together from Shell into Under Fourth, and we've promised always to stand by each other!"
"Good egg! And now, how is it you're here? Has Uncle Owen given in at last about the flying?"
"Really and truly! Man alive!"--Bawne's characteristic expletive--"I've been up to-day in the air-'bus and--wasn't it first-class!"
"Honour?"
"Honour! Twice round the aerodrome with the Instructor--and presently I'm to have a longer flight with Mr. Sherbrand in his monoplane."
"'Mr. Sherbrand' ..." Patrine repeated rather vaguely. "Sherbrand" had somehow a ring that was familiar. Bawne explained:
"He's a great friend of Father's. He's splendid. A regularly topping chap!"
"And you've actually flown?"
"I've flewed--and I mean to go on with it." He repeated the assurance more sedately: "It's the profession I have chosen. They say you've got to begin young. And my legs wobbled and the ground rocked a bit when I got down on it. But I wasn't air-sick at all."
"Air-sick.... Are people...?"
Bawne said from the pedestal of superior knowledge:
"Oh, aren't they just, like anything! The Calais-Dover steamer-crossing's nothing to it sometimes--the Instructor told me."
Patrine laughed. The latest circulating-library novel, Love in the Clouds, had omitted to mention this fact. The heroine had donned an aviator's cap and pneumatic jacket, and "leapt nimbly on board" the aeroplane in half a gale of wind. As the machine dipped and rose gracefully upon the heaving element that cradled it, Enid had experienced merely a delicious exhilaration. Then a crisp moustache had brushed her rosy ear. The voice of Hubert, attuned to deepest melody of passion, had murmured in the shell-like organ of hearing: "Little girl. At last I have you! ... Mine, mine, my bride of the swan-path!--mine for ever and aye!"
Bawne continued, innocently discounting further statements on the part of the author of Love in the Clouds:
"He told me before we went up, you know. Of course, when you're flying you can't hear anything but the racket of the propeller. It goes roaring through you till your bones buzz, and the very ends of your teeth hum. So the other man has to yell at you through a trumpet, or write to you on bits of paper, unless he's switched off the engine for diving, and then you don't feel like talking--that's if you're a beginner, you know.... But man alive! it's splendid. You must try it, Pat!"
She declared, laughingly:
"While a single flight costs a brace of my hard-earned guineas, the sport is not for me! Why haven't I got a pal like your wonderful Mr. Sherbrand? I'm getting envious--you lucky infant, you!"
It didn't hurt to be called an infant by Pat, because she never would have done it in a stranger's hearing. And it was ripping to have her here, sharing his hour of joy.
He told her: "Father brought me here as a reward for making a model aeroplane. Reminds me!--I've got to tell you all about that. But it's only a toy and this is the Real Thing. There's nothing worth having in the whole world," added the unconscious philosopher "unless it's real and true!"
"Am I not real?" Patrine asked, squeezing his shoulder.
"Now you are!" He said it with an effort of candour. "But when I saw you a minute ago, I wasn't--quite sure." He glanced up at her and asked shyly: "Why are you different since you have been away in Paris?"
"Different, how different?" She whipped her hand from his shoulder. Her black eyebrows knitted, and her face stiffened into the strange mask that had puzzled him, under the scrutiny of his clear blue eyes. "Do I seem changed?" she queried. And Bawne answered:
"A little. I was afraid at first you were somebody else, because of"--he said it shyly--"because of your hair."
"My hair?" she repeated blankly, and then said awkwardly: "The air of Paris did that, darling, but it will soon be its old colour again!"
"Will it ever be just like it was before?" asked Bawne, looking innocently up at her, and something broke in Patrine's heart just then. She gave a sudden gasping sigh, and a sudden spate of tears rolled over her thick underlids, streamed down her pale cheeks, and fell upon her broad bosom, heaving under its thin covering of filmy white voile.
"Pat! You're--crying!" Bawne had never yet seen his friend weep, and he was wrung between pity and bewilderment. "Who has vexed you? Who has been hurting you?" he begged, and she answered brokenly:
"No one! ... Someone.... It doesn't matter!" adding: "Would you punch him, if anyone had--done as you say?"
"Wouldn't I?"
"My sweet!" Her arm went round his slight, square shoulders. She doted on the little amber freckles on his pure, healthy skin, the little drake's tail of silky red-brown hair at the nape of his brown neck, the half-shy, half-bold curve of his mouth as he smiled, the blue sparkle of his eye glancing sidewise up at her. She found in the pure warmth and sweetness of the slight young body leaning against her, a healing, comforting balm.
"Why aren't you my little brother, Bawne?" she said, hugging him closer. He answered after an instant's thought:
"If my mother could be your mother too, it would be jolly! Not unless! ..."
He was not going to take on Mildred for anybody. Patrine sighed pensively.
"That's what I used to cry for when I was a little pig-tailed girl, my sonny. More than anything I wanted to belong to Aunt Lynette. But she's so young--only thirty-three. She couldn't be my mother."
"No." His eyes considered her face gravely. "Of course not. You're far too old. How old are you, Cousin Pat?"
"How old am I?" A shudder went through her. "Nineteen in August. And I feel about a hundred and one."
"That's 'cos you're not well!" His eyes were anxious and a little pucker showed between his reddish eyebrows. "You're not going to be ill--are you?" he asked in alarm.
"Not I!" She murmured it caressingly in her deep, soft voice. "My pet, don't worry. Everything's all right with me!--perfectly all right and O.K.! Only talk to me. Don't let me keep on thinking. Things are never so--bally rotten if you can stop brooding over them."
Why did she look like that? What had somebody done to hurt her? His boyish hand clenched, the thumb well turned in over the knuckles. Instinctively Bawne knew that the Enemy, who had stamped that dreadful look of frozen misery on the face of his beloved, white as ivory or old snow in its strange setting of flaming tresses--was of his own sex.
All the while, ever since Patrine had entered the gates of Panshaw's, the song of the air-screw had not been absent from her ears. The tractor of the practice-engine roared fitfully, like a tiger being prodded in its den by a spiteful keeper's meat-fork. The propellers of the double-engined passenger-buses kept up a steady droning as Fanshaw's pilots followed the pointing arms of the red, white, and blue pylons marking the limits of the air-circuit, or were silent as the machines dropped to earth within the huge white circles where a giant T indicated "Land."
This was not a show day when visitors' half-crowns rattled unceasingly into the boxes at the turnstile. The rows of green-painted chairs behind the whitewashed iron railings of the spectators' enclosure were but thinly patronised by friends of people taking passenger-flights. No man with a megaphone announced events forthcoming or imminent. No white flag fell for the start, no pistol cracked signifying the conclusion of a race.
Three men occupied the Judge's stand behind the Committee enclosure. One, small and dapper, in a frock-coat and topper, kept his eye on what was probably a stop-watch. Another, stout, bearded, and straw-hatted, was absorbedly gazing at the sky through a big pair of Zeiss binoculars. The third, in the uniform of a commissionaire, was an employe of the School. No one manifested any particular interest in them or their occupation. The sparse general public were not enlightened as to the reason of their presence on the Judge's stand.
"Talk," Patrine said, clinging to Bawne, her slender plank in moral shipwreck. "Tell me what Sir Roland and the Doctor are waiting to see. What is that thin man doing with the stop-watch and the note-book? And the fat gentleman beside him, who never leaves off staring at the sky through those big field-glasses. Nothing is billed to happen--there are no numbers up on the pylons--yet something seems to be going on!"
"Rather!"
The boy broke into a little gurgle of excited laughter, and began to dance up and down under the arm that rested on his neck.
"Rather! Didn't you know? How funny! Why, man alive, we're waiting for him!"
"For him?"
"For Mr. Sherbrand. Father's friend. The Flying Man I've told you about."
"Mr.---- Where is he?" Patrine asked vaguely, looking all about her. In the tumult of her thoughts the name that had been upon a crumpled card suggested no association with that so rapturously uttered by the boy.
"There!" Bawne pointed upwards with another of the excited laughs. "Carrying out a hovering-test. The man with the stop-watch is timing him, and the other with the binnocs is observing him. He's French--no end of an official swell! The French Government sent him," went on the boy, with infinite relish, "to see Mr. Sherbrand test his invention. He thought they didn't catch on, but the hoverer has fetched them. If he hovers for twenty minutes, ten thousand feet up, his fortune's made!--I heard a fellow say so to the Instructor. Man alive! isn't it topping that you and I should be here to-day!"
*CHAPTER XXVII*
*SIR ROLAND TELLS A STORY*
While yet the Bird of War hovered invisible at ten thousand feet of altitude, and the lungs of the men aboard her toiled and laboured, and foam gathered about their nostrils and lips, Saxham stood talking with the man who in his eyes ranked above all others, the tried and trusty friend of fourteen years.
In those unforgettable months of the Siege of Gueldersdorp you might have noticed a crow's foot or so at the corner of the Chief's keen falcon-eyes. To-day, their hazel brightness undiminished, they looked at Life from a network of fine criss-crossed lines. But Time, the spider, had spun no web in the fine alert brain, and the man's heart was free from crow's feet or wrinkles. Fresh and evergreen, it was as it would always be, an oasis of kindness for the downhearted or weary, watered by the twin wells of sympathy and enthusiasm. He said, speaking to Saxham of the invisible Sherbrand:
"I wish we had a million like him!"
Saxham answered:
"I wish we had several millions. He is a fine, energetic type. A bit of a hero-worshipper--a bit of a philosopher, a bit of a stoic: 'He hath seen men rise to authority without envy, and schooled himself to endure adversity, that he might bear himself the better when his time should come to rule.'"
"His time is coming, or I am no judge of capability. And you quoted from the Encheiridion of Epictetus, I think? I've always found good reading-meat in that and the Discourses. Used to carry a little sixpenny copy about in my pocket, until I wore it to rags."
"I have often seen and noted its raggedness, and its uncompromising Isabella-hue!"
"It was negroid in complexion before the Relief of Gueldersdorp. Perhaps you won't be astonished when I tell you I have got it now." The Chief's smiling eyes narrowed in laughter. "My wife has bound it gorgeously, and with other volumes of my Siege library, it occupies a special and most sacred shelf near my writing-desk at home."
He went on:
"This fine fellow Sherbrand is an old correspondent of mine. He would say I might tell you the story, and I think it's worth hearing, in a way. It must be eight years ago, when he would be about seventeen, that he wrote to me from an engineering college at Newcastle, to say he had read some papers of mine on the subject of scouting, and proposed--if I thought it would not be presumption on his part--save the mark!--to enrol and organise a troop on the lines laid down. He wanted a definite code of Scout law to work on, and Rules and so forth, all of which I supplied him, you may be sure. Busy as I was drilling and cub-licking the North British Territorials, I couldn't find time to spare to run up and see the boy. So he commandeered a holiday and motor-cycled to Headquarters. Rode all through one night in pelters of rain, and caught me in my 5 A.M. tub."
"He meant business."
"Business--and it was up to me to encourage such grittiness and enthusiasm. So I ordered coffee for two, and bacon and eggs for half a dozen, and when I had fed him I talked. My book wasn't published, but I lent him some proof-sheets. He thanked me, but before he took them he had to disburden his mind."
The fine sunburnt hand went thoughtfully to the grizzled moustache, worn rather longer than of old.
"He had got something on his mind. He had been reading that old bogey-book, Hales on Mental Heredity, and the theory of the transmission of base or criminal tendencies from the parents to the children, had haunted him night and day. He said to me, standing up before me, looking about as long and thin as a fathom of pump-water: 'My father was dismissed from the Army in War-time, for not backing up his C.O. Is there a kink in my brain or a bacillus lying waiting in my body that will one day make a slacker of me?"
Saxham's square face was ashen, but the Chief's eyes were elsewhere.
"And you told him----?"
"I told him, that whilst physical disease and deformity are transmissible from the unhealthy parents to their unlucky offspring, no sensible Christian regarded the theory of inherited vice or crime, as anything but the most pernicious lie that the devil ever invented to spread as a net for the catching of bodies and souls. That seemed to buck him up!"
"I do not doubt it!" said Saxham. He breathed more freely, and his face had regained its natural hue.
"I reminded him," went on the Chief, "that our Army and our Fleet are indebted for thousands of the finest men, morally and physically speaking, to Reformatories and Industrial Schools and Homes. 'Think of the character borne by Barnardo's boys,' I told him, 'and grind the scorpion lie to pulp under your boot-heel, whenever and wherever you find it cocking up its damnable tail!'"
"So he went back," said Saxham, "cheered and strengthened by your sympathy, as--other men have been before now!"
"So he went back to the College, fortified by my bit of nervous English, and worked at his troop for all he was worth. Raked in seventy in the first month, and kept on raking. He is dandy at drill and organisation, is Sherbrand. When he left the College they mustered three hundred strong." The speaker struck his stick upon the turf and said emphatically: "How it grows!--how the Movement spreads and gathers and ramifies! Do you know Saxham, that there are moments in my life when I am tempted to be proud. When rank upon rank of young, fresh, fearless faces with bright eyes are turned to me. When thousands of active, lithe, healthy young bodies run out into the open and rally about the Chief Scout."
There was a mist in the bright eyes that his manliness was not ashamed of.
"Years ago, when the officer in command of a certain beleaguered garrison was doing his best to defend it, a great Fear came upon him in the watches of a particularly anxious night. Perhaps you will guess what I mean, Saxham? The man had not slept for more weeks than I like to remember, and the hours of rest in the day-time were hot-eyed staring horrors of insomnia. He was--up against it! The shrunken lids would not shut down over his bursting eyeballs, and his jaws were clamped so that he could not yawn. Then, on this night, his Fear rose up and mopped and mowed at him, and it had the kind of face that madhouse doctors and keepers know. He wasn't ordinarily a 'fearful man,' like Kipling's immortal Bengali, but now he was horribly, sickeningly afraid!"
"I guessed it," said Saxham. "I realised what you were suffering, but I did not dare to hint my knowledge to you. There was no danger of madness. But you were certainly on the verge of mental and physical breakdown."
"And being in such desperate case," said the other, "I prayed to God in my extremity. I promised Him if He would help me to carry out my duty to Him, as to my earthly superiors, and those men and women and children who looked to me as their protector and guide, that I would one day, if He spared me, build Him a big Temple, made of the little temples that are the work of His Hands."
"And to-day the Temple is a reality!"
"A grand reality. East, West, North, and South, it spreads and widens and towers. It is built of boys. Clean-limbed, clean-minded, self-respecting fellows, scorning vices, eager for service, sensitive in Honour, chivalrous, patriotic, keen for Truth and Right. It frightens me, Saxham, when I think what a leaven is working through these boys of mine, potential fathers of sons in the ripeness of Time, for the ultimate regeneration of this vicious, degenerate world. It makes me understand how near old Coleridge got to the live heart of things when he wrote the Ancient Mariner. The service of Almighty God is the love of your fellow-man. But why to me, and not to another worthier, should God have given this wonderful, glorious thing to bring about? ..."
"Because you are worthy of doing His work for Him. Has He not used you as His instrument in my own case? Should I not own to this, I who owe everything to you?"
The other laid a hand on the great shoulder of the Dop Doctor.
"If ever you owed me anything, Saxham, you paid me long ago!"
He was silent a moment and said in a lighter tone: "I am not quite clear yet as to how you met my whilom Scoutmaster."
"Our acquaintance dates from a cross-Channel flight he made in the end of June."
"I know." The Chief prodded the turf with his walking-stick. "A French pilot-officer of their Service Aeronautique, a certain Commandant Raymond, who flew here in the contest for the Ivor International Cup in May, had heard of Sherbrand and his inventions from Lamond of the Central Flying School. He took a shine to the aerial stabiliser and got his Chiefs to give it a trial. That came off on the Grand Prix Sunday, when Paris went wild over the Sarajevo affair."
"And scenting War in the air," said Saxham, "Sherbrand promptly took wing for England without waiting for the decision of the judges who were present at the test."
"Did he? He has keen scent."
"Better now," said Saxham laughing, "than when he came to me--on the recommendation of an old patient--suffering from an aggravated form of nasal catarrh. He had had it at intervals for years, and suspected it to be owing to what he described, in the language of the engineering-shop, as "a defect in the air-intake." He proved to be right--and I sent him into the Hospital, where Berry Boyle performed a slight minor operation which removed the trouble, and left him capitally fit. Then, when he came out of the Hospital, he found a letter from the French Consul waiting at his office----"
The Chief interpolated:
"Ah yes. The aerial stabiliser had gained the suffrages of Messieurs the Chiefs of the Aeronautique Francaise. I hope M. Jourdain's report to his Government will induce them to buy the patent. For, judging by the interest that the representatives of another Power seem to take in----"
The Chief broke off. The smiling lines about his eyes and mouth had vanished as he queried: "Who is the lady my Scout over there is squiring? A superbly-shaped young woman, with hair of the fashionable terra-cotta shade. But for the hair, I should have said it was your niece, Patrine."
Saxham's eyes followed the direction of the Chief's glance. He said, and his face looked hard as a mask of stone:
"Your memory for faces is correct as usual. The lady with the terra-cotta hair is my late brother's daughter, Patrine."
The Chief's familiar whistle filled in a space of silence, with a pensive little fragment of Delius' Spring Song, while Saxham's frown grew deeper and his jaw thrust out more angrily. Then the well-known voice said:
"I am sorry that Miss Patrine has been tempted to follow the fashion. But I regret still more her choice of friends! I refer to the German officer in whose company your niece arrived here, in a yellow Darracq car, about half-an-hour ago." The speaker made sure, with a rapid glance to right and left, that no listener was standing near them, and added: "I know that I may trust you as myself in any private or official matter. Between ourselves frankly, I am here to-day for the purpose of--keeping an eye on this particular man!"
The Doctor's vivid blue eyes darted rapier-points at the other, from caves that had suddenly been dug about them. The General went on:
"The man himself is no common spy, though he may on occasion act as an agent or post-box for Secret Intelligence communications. He is an extraordinarily able young officer, a squadron captain in their Field Flying Service, with some astonishing records to his credit, though he was an Engineer Lieutenant in 1907 when he came to England as chauffeur-officer attached to the Kaiser's Personal Staff. For a comprehensible reason his superiors desired him to improve his knowledge of the topography of the British Isles. He certainly did so, but"--the keen eyes twinkled--"the record runs accomplished by von Herrnung with the All Highest as passenger, were not unattended, or unobserved by us. That he is well-born and well-looking is undeniable, and these advantages, with other social gifts, may easily attract your niece, like any other of Eve's daughters. But to say the least it is inadvisable that she should encourage the advances of this man, or of any other German officer,--when the next forty-eight hours may see Britain and Germany at grips in War."
"That is your opinion?"
"It is my plain, unvarnished opinion, speaking as one of those who are admitted behind the scenes. Not that I am infallible, but the Signs and the Tokens all lead one way." He lifted his lean brown hand and pointed eastwards. "For years they have been making ready, but now--what a frenzy of ordered preparation. What secret councils, what reiteration of orders, what accumulations of stores, what roaring of electric furnaces--I'd give my little finger to know what chemical they're making in huge bulk at the Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik, and hundreds of other dye and bleaching-powder works in Germany and Austria!--every one backed up by the German Imperial State or the Dual Monarchy on the understanding that at the signal, they are to turn to and turn out--what? Benzine for phenol, phenol for picric, and toluene for Super-Explosive, that's understood. But this stuff puzzles me. Do you see the Senile Arc in my eyes yet, Saxham? It must be that I'm getting old!"
He smiled his whimsical smile and went on:
"A day or two after the burial of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic partner, murdered by some fanatics among the Greater Serbs, a huge majority among the German military and naval officers doing duty in their Colonies, or on political service in Africa, were recalled by Wireless. Leave has been stopped. Rolling-stock in inconceivable masses is being concentrated on the greater strategic railways, while the official and semi-official Press prates and gabbles of peace and neighbourly goodwill!" He shrugged. "Things were safer when they yelled and foamed in convulsions of Anglophobia. Then one doubted.... Now one is sure! ... Ah, I thought I wasn't mistaken. Here's Sherbrand coming down!"
*CHAPTER XXVIII*
*THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE*
The dazzling turquoise of the sky was now streaked with milky bands of haziness. Dappled golden-white cloudlets at the zenith made what is known as mackerel sky. Trails of rounded stratus floated low in the east and south-east. Long shadows of hangars, pylons, semaphore and electric searchlight-stations, stretched over the turf from westwards, crossed by perambulatory shadows of people moving about. These became stationary, betokening that popular interest was newly awakened. Umbrellas and sticks flourished towards the sky. Bawne gave a little crow of delight as the whitish-brown, shining shape of the monoplane dived down out of the empyrean, travelling with a bold, beautiful swooping glide that took away the gazer's breath.
"Look, oh look!" Bawne gasped, leaning against Patrine. Now her tardy interest was genuinely awakened. Reaching the end of its glide, the monoplane had regained the horizontal position. As she flattened out and hung well-nigh motionless in mid-air with the sunlight beating on and drenching her fragile, lacy structure, she was a thing of beauty and of wonder. The humming of her tractor came to you mingled with the buzzing of her gyroscopic hoverer, like the incessant vibration of living, sentient wings.
She seemed to tire of hanging between earth and heaven, ceased buzzing, tilted a wing sharply and began to frolic after it as a kitten runs after its tail on a hearthrug, or as a swallow gambols on a chase after gnats, always turning towards the West, whilst her greyish shadow danced and skipped upon the gold-white cloud-surfaces to eastwards a long way below her, like the ghost of an aeroplane. All the time she was gobbling up distance, steadily descending. She presently reversed her sun-worshipping tactics, dived, and spiralled, banking, from west to east. You saw plainly the helmeted heads and slightly hunched shoulders of the pilot at the controls and the mechanic strapped in the forward cockpit.
Soon she hovered again and swooped, so suddenly that Patrine nipped Bawne's shoulder, saying "Great Scott!" under her breath. Another long sweeping glide brought her close to the green turf of the aerodrome. Then, with an adroit flexing of the wing-tips, she balanced, flattened, and landed lightly within the huge white circle, rocking a little on her tyred wheels.
The man with the stop-watch checked the mechanism, the bearded man with the big binoculars lowered and closed them, scribbled in a memorandum-book and came down the judge's stand. The Bird of War's mechanic stayed in his place, the pilot unhitched his body-strap, pushed up his goggled visor, threw a long leg over the fuselage and jumped lightly to the ground. He staggered as he reached it, recovered himself and stood breathing quickly, as a man overcoming giddiness, or other physical sensation of distress.
Tall, young, and lightly built, with long active limbs and a physique suggestive of youth and courage and enterprise, as he stood motionless, his eared and goggled cap now in hand, the play of sunlight upon his thin brown waterproof gabardine and overalls made him look like a statue of Mercury wrought in pale new bronze. And with a lifting of her sick heart as though it had suddenly spread wings, and soared into a region of unlimited space and glorious freedom, Patrine recognised her Flying Man of the Jardin des Milles Plaisirs.
From what airt, of what world unknown, did it blow, that cool, fragrant wind that then and always heralded for Patrine his coming? It took her by surprise; lapped her delicately about; enveloped her from head to foot in its pure invisible waves. The hot, sore places in her heart were bathed and healed, the deep caverns filled, the little thirsty rock-pools set awash and brimming. When the sough of it was no longer in her ears or the tug and flutter of it among the folds of her garments; when she ceased to be conscious of the cool resilient pressure upon cheek and neck and forehead--her brief sweet hour of joy was over. Sherbrand had gone away again.
"Cela ira-t-il, monsieur? Je suis pret a faire une nouvelle demonstration si vous n'etes pas satisfait."
His clear, strong voice speaking in laborious public school French gave her a delicious shock of pleasure. He was addressing the stout, bearded Frenchman who, accompanied by the thinner man who had timed Sherbrand by the stop-watch, now walked across the turf to shake the aviator's hand. As Sherbrand spoke, he drew a white handkerchief from the sleeve of his gabardine and wiped from the corners of his mouth some little blobs of foam, slightly bloodstained. The stout, friendly Frenchman glanced at him, and uttered an exclamation. Sherbrand shook his head in vigorous protest and laughed, repeating his offer to demonstrate again. Upon which the bearded man, who had also a moustache with thick, stiff waxed ends, and wore a large checked-pattern summer suit with a white drill waistcoat, a low collar and a necktie with flowing ends, and was topped with a high-crowned straw hat that suggested Trouville in mid-season, negatived the proposal with a vivacious gesture, pouring forth a stream of words:
"Au contraire, Monsieur, je suis convaincu que vous avez une idee superbe. Nous vous avons observe avec la lunette Zeiss, pendant votre vol, et nous avons constate le temps tres soigneusement: vous avez maintenu le bruit et la stabilite pendant cinq minutes de plus que les vingt-cinq minutes stipulees. Permettez moi comme une simple formalite de voir votre altimetre?"
"By all means!" Sherbrand returned.
They went back to the aeroplane together, and Sherbrand reached over and unhooked the altimeter from a board in the pilot's cockpit, and the bearded man examined it, and then cordially shook hands.
"Within two days, at latest. Possibly sooner!" Patrine heard the straw-hatted, bearded gentleman say in English, pronounced with a strong French accent. "Believe me," he added, "I shall represent most strongly the usefulness of your invention to the Chief of the Etat de l'Aviation. Au revoir, Monsieur, et encore mes felicitations!"
Then he went away with the small dark man who had used the stop-watch, and who carried the Zeiss binoculars slung in their case.
During this business interview Patrine had felt Bawne panting and wriggling close beside her, like an excited, but well-mannered fox-terrier waiting to be whistled for. But Sherbrand, though he glanced at the boy smilingly, had turned aside to engage in conversation with Saxham, and the Chief Scout, whom Sherbrand saluted in orthodox Scout fashion, flushing red under the clear sunburn that darkened his fair skin.
"He's one of Us!" Bawne whispered to Patrine, his own young face alight with pleasure. "He was Scoutmaster of a troop in the North, he told me, and I know he must have been a splendid one. He's the kind of chap who'd be prepared for anything. Don't you think he looks like that?"
Patrine did not answer. She was feeling "cheap," as Lady Beauvayse would have expressed it. She had put the man out of her thoughts because she had taken it for granted that Fanshaw's instructor could not be a gentleman. Now, as she watched Sherbrand in conversation with the elder man, his manner of quiet, well-bred deference, mingled with a pleasant courtesy, showed her beyond all doubt that his place was above the salt.
He had looked towards her, when he had smiled at Bawne, and his glance had swept over her without recognition. She would have known him anywhere, while he----! She had forgotten her preposterously-coloured hair.
How sweet the breeze was, bringing from the west the smell of strawberry-fields and red and white clover. Yet she had not noticed it until now. Her mood had changed. She had put away the thing she most hated to remember. She felt almost like the Patrine of two days ago.
"Miss Saxham!"
It was von Herrnung's voice speaking behind her, and with a shock of loathing horror she remembered all. She turned to see his tall figure approaching. The first impression was that he was ill; the next, that he was furiously angry. His florid complexion had bleached to an ugly, greenish pallor, even the blue of his eyes had faded to a curious lilac hue. He carried in his gloved left hand, and with evident care, a flat strapped wallet of brown leather, fastened with two Bramah locks and a lock-strap. He said to Patrine in a jarring voice of resentment and impatience:
"I have been looking for you. Could one not leave you for a minute but you must go off by yourself? Sapperlot! Whom has one here? Where did you pick up the boy?"
Her heart swelled as Bawne looked up at her in astonishment, then transferred his stare to von Herrnung, puckering his brows in disapproval of the rude, strange man. She answered as calmly as was possible:
"This is my cousin, Bawne Saxham, Count von Herrnung."
"Why did you leave me?" von Herrnung grumbled as Bawne stiffly saluted, and she told him:
"Because I saw you occupied in conversation with your German friends."
"Women are incomprehensible creatures! ... How do you know that they were German? At any rate, whether they were or not, they have gone away now! You find me annoyed. It is because they are--what shall I call it?--perhaps a little exigent. Now I will have a smoke. I suppose you do not mind?"
He had not freed his hand from the brown leather satchel to remove his hat when he had mopped his perspiring forehead, with a big cambric handkerchief scented with the tres persistent perfume that always clung about his clothes. Nor did he relinquish it to help himself to a cigar, but opened the gold case containing the weeds with the hand that drew it from his pocket, extracted a cigar with his teeth, and returned the case to his pocket; then produced a matchbox, opened it in the same way, picked out a match, shut the box, and struck the match upon it, saying to Bawne, as he blew out the first mouthful of smoke: "What do you think of that, my fine fellow? Should I not make a famous one-handed man?" But Bawne's suffrages remained unwon, although the dexterity of the thing had secretly pleased him. He remained doggedly silent, scowling with his reddish-fair brows, thrusting out his chin.
"Should I not? Tell me!" von Herrnung persisted. "Or is it that British boys are cowards and afraid to answer when they are spoken to?"
"I am not afraid--of anything or anybody!"
Bawne reddened and looked the taunting big man between the eyes, squarely. The look added--And least of all of anybody like you! He went on:
"But I think it takes more than--that kind of being clever--to make a famous man."
"Nicht so schlimm!" Von Herrnung nodded. "But all the same these little tricks are worth knowing. You might be bound with ropes to a post, or tree, or waggon by the enemy, and if he happened to have left your matches on you--and you could get one hand free--there is no knot man could tie that I could not wriggle myself out of!--you might burn the rope and get away! I did that once when I was a gunner-boy of seventeen in South Africa----"
Von Herrnung stopped short. Bawne asked simply, and with the same straight look between the eyes:
"Did you fight with the Boers against us in the War?"
Von Herrnung did not seem to have heard. He had caught the drift of a sentence spoken by Sherbrand, who was answering to a question of the Chief Scout.
"Oh yes! I live here--have quarters over Mrs. Dunlett's restaurant--you could communicate with me practically at any time. We've the 'phone and a private telegraph-office, and the wireless--under the usual licence from the Postmaster-General."
He pointed towards the well-known tall posts with the short cross-pieces, china insulators and lines of thick wire, standing beside the telegraph-cabin, over the roof of which straddled the wireless installation's tall, latticed steel mast.
