Hear Macrombie's assistant continuing the recital:"He's left the aërial connected to the transmitter and gone out for lemon-squashes four times since one o'clock grub. 'That's the drink for men who have souls to save, ye little fag-eater!' he says to me; 'Salvation for soul and body, sucked through a straw! If thae deboshed and hopeless drunkards at the Admiralty could be induced to swear off their cursed alcohol and take to it, I wad no longer be deaved to the point of steeping my tongue in profanity, by the kind o' eediots' gibberish that is yammering at my lugs!'""He'd been raking a lot of Admiralty strays in?" Sherbrand queried. Von Herrnung, who had been grinding his heel into the turf and gnawing his lip with ill-concealed impatience, turned his head sharply, and listened to the colloquy with all his ears."Not so much X's as definites, sir," responded Macrombie's assistant. "He was upset about ten minutes before he broke out by getting an 'Urgent' without a Preparative Call. Then comes 'Important' in International Code, and 'Administration' and 'Emergency.' Then 'War Office,' and 'Documents,' and 'Enforcement of the Law.' By that time 'e was purple in the face and 'arf crazy. 'If I had my way wi' you, ye bung-nosed intemperates,' he says, groaning-like—'I wad keep ye on grits an' caller watter for a fortnicht! Oh, that men, as auld Hosea says in the inspired Screeptures'—an' I 'appen to know myself it was Shakespeare—'should pit an enemy intil their mooths to steal awa' their brains!' An' 'e snatches off the telephone 'ead-band and chucks it into the corner, and just as my own instrument starts to tick out a call, he ketches me by the neck as if I'd bin a tame rabbit, an' slings me out o' the office an' locks the door. 'Out o' this!' 'e says, puttin' the cabin key in 'is pocket. 'I will no' have your lugs, dirr-ty as they are, polluted by the unclean counsels o' the wicked. I'm awa' to cool the wrath o' the righteous wi' anither lemon squash!' An' the winder is blocked by the Morse key instrument, an' even if it wasn't, it's too small for me to get in through!" Macrombie's victim ended, with an injured sniff."Well, well! Better hang about the cabin a bit and possess your soul in patience. If any pupils drop along, tell them they'll have to wait! Perhaps Macrombie'll turn up sober enough to take them on by-and-by. As for the message in transmission, I daresay it will keep. Mr. Fanshaw's not expecting any particularly important communication that I know of. Oh, hang it!" Sherbrand whistled dismally. "I'd forgotten. That's just what I am!""Shall I go and see if I can find Rumball?" suggested Macrombie's assistant helpfully. "He's at the engine-sheds. He's been a locksmith. 'Twouldn't take him more than a sec. to open the office door!""Cut then!" acceded Sherbrand, and the telegraph-clerk touched his pen—discovering by a jab of the inky nib that he was wearing it—and set off at a trot in the direction of the engine-sheds.You are to suppose that von Herrnung's sharp ears had gathered the pith of the communication. Some meaning in the isolated words the clerk had repeated had had a palpable effect upon his nerves. His face looked bluish-grey and streaky, as he said to Sherbrand, stammering in his eagerness:"So then, it is agreed about my flying your machine?""I see no objection.""Gut!" Von Herrnung went on, concealing a huge joy under a careless camaraderie: "Can you lend me a cap and coat and a pair ofSchulzbrille? Goggles you call them, yes! The coat should better to be a large one"—he stumbled in his English now through sheer excitement—"I am so much a bigger man than you!""Certainly. We keep Flying rigs in all manner of sizes. It's in the way of business," Sherbrand said. Then his glance fell upon Davis, whose little black-avised countenance wore an expression of sulky resentment, and he uttered a slight exclamation. "I forgot, Davis! I really am very sorry!" He turned to von Herrnung and explained in a tone of finality that enraged the hearer: "This is Davis's afternoon off. I cannot ask him to repeat the climb.""It is hellishly annoying! But see! Listen, my fellow!" He addressed himself to little grimy Davis, unhelmeted and unbuttoned, leaning against the Bird's flank with his hands in the pockets of his oily overalls, chewing a blade of grass; "You will go up with me if I tip you? A sovereign! Come then! The gold does it! You will go up with me, will you not, yes?"Davis spat out grass and delivered himself:"Not even for my young guv'nor—and a Bank of England finnup, do I do the soaring heagle hact again this blooming Wednesday."Welsh Davis had come to London from a mountain farm in Merioneth, speaking nothing but his native Cymric, and had culled his Sassenach from Cockney lips. Von Herrnung bid another sovereign, and then two more, ineffectually."Naow!" Davis was rock. "I've done my day's stunt an' I'm nuffy. D'yer tumble? Nuffy! Yer knaows wot that means—if you're a Flying Bloke!""Damn you, I will gif you ten pounds!" Von Herrnung's face was wrung and streaked with passion. He breathed hard, and the brown leather satchel jumped and wobbled in his shaking hand."It isn't any use," said Sherbrand, "really! Money doesn't count with Davis where his off-time's concerned. Davis doesn't want to go up again, and I've not another man of his weight available. What do you turn the scale at? I should guess 16 stone or thereabouts?""I weigh 16 st. 8 lbs. in my ordinary clothes.""Well, I tot 11 st. 6 lbs. in the fullest of flying-rig, and Davis only 8 st. 5 lbs. And the Bird is built to carry in addition to her engine—what with the instruments, so forth, and man-freight, a cargo of something like 22 stone. You see, even with Davis, you'd load the machine a good bit over her"—he smiled at the conceit—"her Plimsoll mark. Again, I'm sorry. It's your luck! No flying for you to-day!""It is damnably annoying! But"—von Herrnung's red-lashed blue eyes were busily scanning Bawne's face and figure—"but suppose I could get a boy of 6 stone to go up with me? Merely as ballast, for I do not require an assistant—the difficulty might be got over in this way? What you say, my little English fellow?" He turned on the boy with a great air of jovial patronage. "Are you plucky enough? Shall we go for a voyage together in the sky?""Yes—please!"The dark blue eyes met the hard light ones bravely, though every vestige of colour had sunk out of the young face. Then back to lips and cheeks the banished colour came racing. Bawne flushed crimson, as von Herrnung held up a bright bit of gold, and sharply shook his head."Was? Will you not take the sovereign?" von Herrnung demanded. "Are you a faint-heart after all?"The boy bit his lip and said, clenching his small fists desperately:"It's against the rule for Scouts to take tips. So I don't want the money. But I'm ready to come with you!""Look here, old fellow!" Sherbrand was beginning anxiously. The boy stopped him with:"Really and truly I'm not funky—and you said I was to have another flight.""So I did, and so you shall," agreed Sherbrand. "But this won't be just a 'bus trip around the aërodrome. It will be climbing and spiralling and hovering, and all the rest!"Bawne persisted:"You could strap me in. And I'm not afraid—really!""And," von Herrnung interposed, "I shall not ascend higher than three thousand. Probably less will do for my purpose. The boy will be quite safe. Surely you are able to trust him with me?"Sherbrand hesitated, then said to Bawne in a relieved tone: "Well, there's the Doctor talking to a tall lady in white with a hat that glitters. Run across to your father and ask him whether you may go?""I'd rather you asked him—if you must—and let me stop here!""Gut! Sehr gut!" Von Herrnung's tautened nerves would have been relieved by some hard Prussian swearing. He jangled out a laugh instead. He caught hold of the boy under the armpits and lifted him high above his head. "What is your weight? Six stone? Come now, have I not guessed nearly!" He had not relinquished his grip on the leather satchel, and as it banged against his ribs, Bawne realised that it was quite light."Papers inside!" he said to himself. Something quite hard was under the leather at the corners, perhaps the thinnest of metal plates. Its contact with the boy's body seemed to sober von Herrnung's exultation. He dropped Bawne unceremoniously, and straightened himself again."How much petrol has been used?" he asked hastily of Davis, going over to the Bird and mounting on the landing-carriage to look at the gauges. "Because when I fly I never take risks. You will have to fill up the tank again. Do you hear, my fellow?""If Mr. Sherbrand orders me," Davis spat out another piece of grass, "dessay I shall do it!" He eyed von Herrnung with surly disapproval as he craned over the Bird's fuselage, while audibly commenting to an acquaintance who had strolled up:"Sheer blinders, I call 'em, these ere Fritzies! Walk into Buckingham Pallis next minute and ask to look into the Privy Puss. 'Ope the Governor comes back before 'e gits Nosey Parkerin' into the 'orizontal 'overing gear! Perish me if I ever met a bloke with such a nerve! Watto, old sonny?" He addressed himself to the boy. "Ain't you feelin' up to the posh?""I am quite all right, thank you!" Bawne responded, while his heart bumped against his ribs. In his brain words and sentences kept forming:"I'm only a little chap. And this is—a Big thing! Bigger than the Chief expected, perhaps! And he said he'd be back in half an hour." Half an hour meant thirty minutes. He glanced at the big round white-faced clock above the entrance of the café restaurant. More than fifteen minutes of the half-hour had gone.To stick to the big, brutal German was his—Bawne's—Secret Mission. And the inspiring, uplifting voice that thousands of boy-hearts thrill to all the big world over had said to him:"Quit yourself like a man!"CHAPTER XXXTHE REAPINGTo Patrine, when the shadow of the familiar figure of the Doctor mingled with hers upon the dry green grass, and Saxham's voice called her by her name, it was as though his presence had a weight that physically oppressed her, and his scrutiny seared her flesh like the approach of white-hot iron.Through her mind passed swift sentences: "Yet another of us has disgraced him! My father and mother are not the only traitors of our name!" In the rawness of her mental anguish every sense was unnaturally exaggerated. The ticking of Saxham's watch, that the furious beating of her heart could not drown, tormented by its iteration. And worst of all, was the consciousness of defilement in the physical sense."Did not your mother give you my message?"Always pale, her pallor did not demand particular attention, save that under their ruddy salve the edges of her lips showed white. She answered, forcing the lips to smile, compelling her eyes to meet Saxham's."About coming to see you?" She remembered and drew from her gilt-chain vanity bag the letter she had not posted: "This was written to you to-day. Then I thought I would have been able to look in at Harley Street, and in the end——""In the end you neither paid the visit nor posted the excuse. Well, be more considerate in future to those who love you. Sincere, clean love does not grow on every gooseberry bush, my dear!"The curt speech, made in the Doctor's brusquest tone, conveyed to Patrine an impression of exquisite kindness. So many boons, so many benefits had been conferred in that grim, curt way. She had wept and would not weep again, but her hard bright eyes grew misty as she thanked him, and asked after Lynette, with a touch of wistfulness that recalled to the Doctor that unforgettable time when greedy Death had threatened to rob him of his joy. He answered her cheerfully, and they found themselves chatting of familiar, everyday matters across the gulf that yawned between. And then, warned by some swift change of expression in her face, Saxham glanced up to see Sherbrand approaching."Doctor!" he called. "Sorry to interrupt, but would you listen a minute?"The tall, lightly-built, lightly moving figure came swinging towards them. He still carried the eared cap with the goggled visor, his thick, silvery-blonde hair was darkened at the temples with the dampness generated under the close covering of waterproof. His light grey-blue eyes were smiling, yet there was a pucker of anxiety between his eyebrows, as he put von Herrnung's case."So," he ended, "instead of taking a second flight in the Bird with me as we arranged, would you trust your boy to this foreign crack who's in a hole for a passenger? He is Captain von Herrnung of the German Flying Service—winner of the two-days' flight from Hanover to Paris in April—a famous run!" He added, "I need hardly say that with such a record as von Herrnung holds you cannot be apprehensive of any rashness or neglect on his part. But I'll own I would rather take Bawne up another day myself. Still, von Herrnung——""I am aware of the reputation held by the person you mention. I am going now to speak to him."The Doctor's face was devoid of all expression. But he battled, as he spoke, with a masterful desire to forbid Bawne the expedition. To assert parental authority on this point would have been the mode of dealing approved by one of the two men who dwelt within the Dop Doctor. The other Saxham said "Hold!"Dare you place your paternal love, that other Saxham asked—between your son and his duty? Because it would be so easy to do it, is the reason why you should refrain! The Doctor had walked a few paces towards the object of his troubled reflections. He wheeled abruptly, returned, and presented Sherbrand to his niece.A faint blush rose in Patrine's white cheeks as her eyes met those of the tall young aviator. They looked at her without any sign of recognition, and the conviction, "He has forgotten!" shot stingingly across her mind. "He did not think me worth remembering" came next. And then she could have laughed, recalling that she had dismissed him from her own thoughts on the discovery of his connection with Fanshaw's. She had made so certain that a teacher of Flying couldn't be a gentleman.Now, face to face with him again, in his upright easy bearing, in his straight and fearless regard, in the pleasant well-bred voice that addressed her in a brief conventional sentence or so, she read his patent of gentlehood.From whatever root it sprang, the flower was noble. Her swift eyes shot a glance at the bigger figure in grey. What a hoggish knight of the dunghill, what a high-born clown had she not distinguished by her choice and selection. The smile of scorn that curved her mouth was suddenly banished by the sudden recollection of Bawne."Uncle Owen, you have not yet told Mr. Sherbrand whether Bawne may go up again or not. I am sure—if you won't think me—if you don't mind my saying so!—that he has had enough for to-day! I think it would be better if you would not——"It was not the deep warm voice of Patrine's characteristic utterance, but a weaker, thinner voice that hesitated and faltered and trailed away. It recalled nothing to Sherbrand. He looked at her and transferred his gaze to Saxham, who asked:"Does this German officer intend climbing to any high altitude, or perpetrating anything in the nature of a display?"Sherbrand explained:"He does not want to go higher than three thousand. Just to try the hoverer, regarding which some business friends of his are bitten with curiosity. My mechanic is not able to go up with him, and he wants a light-weight passenger. He is over sixteen stone himself, and the Bird has been built to carry me with Davis. I calculated her wing-area to——"Sherbrand travelled into the realm of technicalities, using terms that were Volapuk and Esperanto to Patrine. He had supple, finely-shaped hands, and used them as he talked with vivid illustrative gestures."So," he ended, "as your plucky youngster asked to go, it seemed a way out of the difficulty, provided you weren't dead against the thing. Of course we'll swadd the little chap in a sweater or so under the pneumatic jacket. It'll be a bit parky, even at three thousand, now the sun's beginning to down."He added:"I'll see to the strapping myself. You may rely upon it, Doctor."Saxham said with a look of kindness at the handsome face with the clear candid eyes:"I am sure of that!" He added, mastering that inward impulse: "I shall not forbid the flight if Bawne is set on it. But first, I must speak to him!"And the great form with the stern thoughtful face and scholar's stoop moved across the greensward, followed by the tall young figures of Sherbrand and Patrine. Of the two, the man was by a bare inch the taller. This Patrine realised in a swift side-glance. Certain featural characteristics of him, personal impressions received half-unconsciously, retained their clear sharpness then and for many days....The silvery-yellow hair toning into the pale brown skin. The powerful sweep of the brows over eyes set flush with their large orbits, prominent, brilliant, mobile as the eyes of a bird of flight. The nose, arched and jutting like a kite's beak, with large sensitive nostrils, the somewhat sunken cheek and the sharply-angled jaw, the little ear and the rounded skull superbly set upon the full muscular neck rising out of the collar of the gabardine, made up a portrait upon which some happy woman might well dote and dream.It was five o'clock and the breeze that smelt of heather and clover-hay and strawberries blew more strongly, straight from under the westering sun. Patrine drank in deep draughts of the buoyant sweetness. The leaden gyves had fallen from her limbs, the leaden weight had lifted from her bosom. She had recovered something of her old, elastic grace of movement, that even the sheath-skirt could not spoil. Looking at her, Sherbrand said to himself:"She walks like a Highland hill-woman or a native girl of the Philippines. And—did Heaven or a Bond Street specialist give her that extraordinary hair? I rather hate it, and yet I have to go on looking at it. Does she know? I wonder if she knows?"She felt his eyes on her. And the buoyant sense of well-being that his presence brought to her was mingled with an agony of apprehension. Her heart clamoured, like a brooding thrush attacked by the owl, that Bawne should not be permitted to risk himself with von Herrnung. "Does any other living being know him as I know him?" she asked herself. "If by some misadventure it came to a question of one life or the other, would he scruple—no! he would not scruple for an instant to sacrifice the child?"Three words to Uncle Owen—if one only dared to speak them—would have put the thing out of the question. But at the thought of the dreadful avowal to which such an utterance might lead, Patrine was stricken dumb. She could not face the music. This was one little ear of wild oats out of the full field that waited for her reaping, sown in the hours that lie between the midnight of pleasure and the dawn of the Day of Remorse.Perhaps she and Sherbrand had walked more slowly than it had seemed to her. She saw Saxham and his son meet, heard, indistinctly the exchange of a few brief sentences, and then the boy, with a jump to hug his father round the neck, ran to her as she came up."Cousin Pat, I'm going to get into my flying-kit in a minute." His heart was thumping so that it shook him, and the short upper lip with the gold-brown dust of freckles on it quivered, hard as he tried to keep it stiff: "One doesn't do it before people generally—but I'd rather like you to kiss me now!""My precious, a dozen times!"She said it impetuously in the deep womanly baritone that Bawne loved, and Sherbrand started as he heard it. She dropped her tall-sticked sunshade, and caught the little boyish figure to her broad womanly bosom, hugged him until he panted, and kissed his pale cheeks red. You do not need to be reminded that Patrine was a galumpher. "Don't go! don't go!" she whispered in her darling's neck. "I hate your going! and I don't believe Uncle Owen likes it.... Say you've been up once and you're 'nuffy! Pretend you funk it. Do, for my sake!""I—can't. Ouch! You tickle! Please let me go. This is business!" He squirmed, and she burst out laughing, and released him. The act was a wrench that tore her bleeding heart anew.He bounded instantly after Sherbrand, seeing him go forward to join von Herrnung, who was standing watching Davis fill the Bird's tank with petrol, and her reservoir with oil.There was no spurring these lazy devils of English into movement.... The accursed pig-dogs, the stupid sheep's heads! If that fragmentary Wireless message had really to do withthe business, within the next ten minutes everything might be ruined. One walked perilously, as amongst pebbles, holding a watch-glass of High Explosive in one's hand. Here came the man and the boy. He joined them with a noisy burst of forced laughter. Presently you saw all three moving in the direction of a building where the "flying-kits of all sorts and shapes and sizes," of which Sherbrand had boasted, were kept for the use of the patrons of Fanshaw's School. As they went in, Bawne cast a wistful glance up at the clock on the front gable of the café restaurant, now supplying afternoon tea served in brown teapots, and rolls and butter on thick white platters, to a thin sprinkling of customers."Three minutes to the half-hour," said the clock.Would the Chief come, or must this thing be carried out by a small boy whose heart lay, a palpable lump of cold lead in the pit of his stomach, and whose knees were turning to jelly as he went?If Cousin Pat, when she begged him not to go, had known how badly he, Bawne, had wanted to hold her round the neck and beg her not to let him, he would at this moment have been unheroically safe.She was so big. He had most dreadfully wanted to cling to her and cry—imagine a fellow of twelve doing anything so kiddish. But he had swallowed the unmanly tears, and wriggled out of her strong protecting arms.He looked back and saw her tall white figure, standing near the hulking black-clad shape of the Doctor, who had pulled his hat-brim low down over his eyes, and did not seem to be talking or laughing at all. Davis was doing something with a spanner to the Bird's under-carriage, and the long, thin shadow of her in combination with the squat shadow of the little stooping Welshman, stretched eastwards over the dry green grass.He heaved a big sigh and followed his man in. Von Herrnung was already trying on pneumatic coats, swearing in nervous German when they were not big enough. At last he was caparisoned, in a heavy suit of flannel-lined Carberrys and a buttonless hooded jacket. He had stripped the burst glove from his wounded hand, thrown it away, and replaced the magpie pearl ring upon his little finger. He had put on a woollen helmet and tied over that a flapped cap with goggles and ear-pieces. While he attended to his outfit, the leather satchel lay at his feet, or sometimes between them, or he would keep a boot-toe on a corner of it. And his hard blue eyes were vigilantly watchful against surprise.Sherbrand and the dresser—who presided over a long room of shelves and pegs laden with queer garments, and who looked like a washed mechanic in spotless blue overalls—put Bawne into a woollen sweater, and added to the panoply he had worn already that morning, and which consisted of leggings, slip-strapped to a webbing waistbelt, a pneumatic jacket, a knitted helmet such as von Herrnung wore, and a pair of goggles. They looked like the Eskimo hunter and his little boy in the "Book of The Arctic"—a volume specially beloved of Saxham's small son.It was five minutes past the half-hour when they emerged from the dressing-shed. Saxham came to meet them, turned and walked by his son's side. Davis, whose weakness as regards the sex we know, had pinched from the visitor's enclosure a green-painted iron chair for Patrine. She half-rose, stung by an impulse of escape, when she saw von Herrnung approaching, and then controlled herself and sat down again.Nothing escaped her long eyes. They saw Sherbrand glance from Saxham to von Herrnung, and read the intention of an introduction in his look. He had just begun:"Doctor, I don't think you have met Captain——" when von Herrnung lengthened his long stride, outstripped his companions, and went over swiftly and stood beside Patrine.CHAPTER XXXIVON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOKShe knew that he had interpreted her movement as an invitation.He saluted her and said, speaking thickly:"It is necessary that I have a word with you. Walk with me for one moment. I shall not keep you more!"He bulked huge in his rig-out, but looked thoroughly at home, and deadly workmanlike. He pushed up his goggles as though conscious that they discounted his personal attractions, and his blue eyes were stony and glittering, and his full mouth showed pale and hard-set under the scarlet roll of his moustache."I shall not see you again to-day, and I have something important to tell you." He spoke rapidly and his breathing was harsh and loud. "I have been recalled by my Chiefs and return to Germany in—another two or three days. That we do not meet again before I leave is possible, therefore I wish to give you my address."She did not look up. A white hand with red hairs growing thick on the back of it offered her a pencilled card. She made no movement to take it. He said, thrusting the card underneath her eyes:"It is printed here in German letters. You read and speak my language badly, so I will translate for you—'Squadron-Captain-Pilot Count Theodor von Herrnung, Imperial Field Flying Service, Flight Station XXX., Taubefeld, near Diebrich, West Hessen, Germany.' Write your letter to me in English. The address copy from this. Will you not take the card?""There is no need to. I do not mean to write to you!""Danke. You are candid," he said, "at least. You give me to understand that whatever happens—" he repeated the words with a singular inflection "whatever happens!—you will have no more to do with me?""Have I not told you so twice already?"He gritted his teeth and said, controlling furious anger:"Erklären Sie!Was giebt es? Why are you so—rottenly furious with me? You have yourself to thank for—what has happened! You led me on. You made me crazy about you. And the devil of it is I am so still! The sight of you maddens me! Listen! Do not be stupid—unkind to yourself and to me! In three days from now, you will get an envelope at your Club with plenty of money. Join me at my headquarters at Taubefeld and then—you will see! We will be happy—you shall have plenty of money to throw about when we visit Berlin and other big cities, and jewels, dresses, pleasure, admiration—everything a beautiful woman wants!Grosse Gott! Can I offer anything more tempting? What are you saying? 'Yes!' or 'No!'"Her narrowed eyes looked like long black slits in her white face. The pale lips barely moved to answer:"Neither! Are you proposing to marry me?"He laughed woodenly, and repeated:"Marry you! Ha, ha! Whatverdammtnonsense are you talking? What has love to do with getting married? Nothing that I have ever heard! Of course I shall marry—my family have arranged all that for me. But my Countess will not interfere with my mistress—that I promise you! Come, be kind, my beautiful Isis! Whisper now that you agree!"He bent his head to hear. The whisper came from the pale lips:"I will see you in Hell first!"He started, taken aback. Her own utterance had shocked her. "Am I a street-walker already," she asked herself, "that I begin to curse and swear?"A whistle trilled. He started and said:"So then, all is over between us?"She bent her head assentingly, and her glance fell guiltily on Bawne who was standing near. Von Herrnung, aware of him at the same instant, turned on him with a scowl and the harsh demand:"What is this? Do little English boys pry and listen?"Bawne returned, looking at the other squarely:"Beg pardon, but Mr. Sherbrand's calling you. He says it's getting jolly late.""So!" Von Herrnung glanced at his wrist-watch, in the act lifting the brown leather satchel into fullest view. The boy queried with open-eyed innocent curiosity:"Shall I carry that? Are you going to take it with you?""Es mag wohl sein," von Herrnung answered. Then he clicked his heels and bowed formally, and kissed Patrine's cold and heavy hand. She felt his teeth grit as he did it. She knew he was swearing in his way."Adieu, then," he said, smiling at her maliciously. "Will you not wish meAngenehme Reise?""Certainly. A pleasant voyage, and a safe landing!" Her eyes fell on Bawne's little, oddly garbed figure and her woman's heart spoke in spite of her. "Take care of my dearest!" broke from her, and von Herrnung answered:"He is your dearest? Ah yes! I will certainly take very good care of him!"He bowed, wheeled about and walked from her with his long strides, and the boy, with a face all flushed and quivering, suddenly jumped at her neck and hugged her; bringing with the rough little embrace the queer scent of water-proofed material and dubbined leather, knocking the silver-spangled hat awry, loosening divers tortoiseshell hairpins and an amethyst slide-buckle holding up the heavy tresses of the dead beech-leaf coloured hair, as he whispered:"Remember I love you, Pat. Don't mind!"And she shuddered as he freed her, and ran from her, asking herself: How much had the child overheard of von Herrnung's proposal? What had he comprehended of what he had heard?Next, she was aware of the pleasant voice of Sherbrand calling, and saw von Herrnung imperiously beckoning. A cold sickness of dread assailed her, and her knees trembled underneath her weight. A mechanic came running past, carrying away the chair Davis had brought her. He set it down at a safe distance from the aëroplane, and she staggered to it, leaning on the long staff of her sunshade, and sat heavily down, feeling chilly and old....Saxham had squeezed Bawne's shoulder and kissed him, and then withdrawn to a distance whence he could see all that took place. He watched Davis and Sherbrand help the boy into the forward cockpit, and fasten about him the safety belt attached to the fuselage on either side of the fixed bamboo seat."You are sure you really want to fly again? Mind, I believe you're as safe with him as houses, but if you don't want to go, say the word, and you shan't!"Sherbrand whispered the words as he busied himself with the boy. And Bawne set his small teeth and squared his sturdy boyish shoulders, registering an unspoken vow to go in spite of all....One had been told to drop a word to Sherbrand if one found oneself in a tight place. But could one ever hold up one's head again before the Patrol, if one did this? To share one's Mission with another when the Chief had said "I'd rather you'd carry through on your own" wasn't to be thought of. Mother—he swallowed hard at the thought of her—would say so too.It troubled his faithful little soul that he could no longer see von Herrnung. He heard him talking in his guttural English, to Davis, whom Bawne could not see either—as he stood near the nose of the machine, in readiness to start the tractor—any more than the two mechanics who steadied the Bird, pressing each a toe on the axle of the under-carriage as they held on to a steel rod that ran along under the rearward edges of her single plane.His final directions sharply given, von Herrnung stepped up on the under-carriage, threw a long leg over the bulwark of the fuselage, and stepped into the pilot's pit. Bawne screwed his head round and saw, through and over a low talc wind-shield, the upright torso of the German, big, hard, and indomitable, the leather satchel still gripped in his strapped-up left hand."Are you going to take that leather case along with you?" Sherbrand's voice had a note of surprise in it. "You'll find it a handicap, let me say. You can't sit on it or lean against it, and if you tried to put it under you, you'd find it dead-certain to foul the controls."To Sherbrand's voice, von Herrnung's answered harshly and rather angrily:"Surely I shall be able to carry this? It is nott-thing but a folding camera, with a telephoto lens made especially for Survey and Reconnaissance. There is still a good light. If I fly with the sun behind me, I shall be able to take quite a panorama of London North-West. It is not forbidden—no? Your Government would not object?""I don't suppose my Government would care a little hang!" Sherbrand's voice answered. "But—this isn't one of your German Army Albatros's or Kondors, and I don't see where you're to stow your camera, unless in the observer's pit. Of course the hovering installation takes up a lot of room, and I can't possibly risk your hampering the controls.""Ganz recht! Very good!" came von Herrnung's voice, giving in with simulated heartiness. In another moment his long legs, followed by his great body, came scrambling into the forward cockpit, and his hands busied themselves about the stout belt of pig-leather that secured the boy in the observer's seat."Look here, my fellow! You will take care of this for me? See, I have passed the belt-strap through the handle. Do not touch it!" The guttural whisper had menace in it. "I shall be sure to know if you touch it, or try to unbuckle the strap.""What's up?" Sherbrand's head and shoulders came thrusting over the other side of the cockpit. "Why did you unstrap him?" he demanded brusquely of von Herrnung. "Don't you know that he is my friend's son, and that it is my business to see to this?" Sherbrand's hand felt over Bawne's belts and bucklings before his head and shoulders vanished. Then von Herrnung's big body withdrew itself. His voice, sounding from the pilot's pit on the other side of the low wind-shield, gave a peremptory order, and the tractor began slowly to revolve. An instant later, with a blinding flash, it began to roar and whizz round furiously. The Bird, freed from the hands that detained her, leaped forwards, hurtling over the smooth turf at the speed of a racing motor-car. The smooth floor of the cockpit unexpectedly tilted up, and a rough cold wind buffeted Bawne about the head and shoulders, sent eddies down about his dangling feet, bellowed in his covered ears and made him gasp for breath. Then—houses and people, trees, and hangars fell suddenly away, and he knew that the Bird was rushing upwards at the bidding of its "Gnome" motor—long superseded now, but then the latest marvel in aërial engineering—towards the blue sky with its lines of gilt mackerel clouds. On each side of the roaring, flashing whirl that meant the tractor, spread North Middlesex, with its fields fast diminishing to the size of billiard tables. That patch no bigger than a garden-lawn, with a row of wooden things like dog-kennels and chicken-coops, must be—Bawne knew that it was—the aërodrome. Deafened by the noise and a little sick, for the roaring, striving, hurtling Thing in whose body he sat fastened, stank horribly of castor oil, and seemed to agonise and call on Bawne to suffer with it—he looked up and took courage from the warm, blue, beautiful, cheerful sky.He was quitting himself like a man. Nobody could say otherwise. How high, how much higher was the Bird going to climb?CHAPTER XXXIIADVENTURE IN THE AIRHe looked down, and under his feet, left of the long transparent case that housed the horizontal hovering gear, was a little steel-framed glass port. Seen through this, the ground with its trees, fields and houses, hurried along beneath him as though a comet, travelling in the opposite direction, had been harnessed to our old earth, and was towing her away.The floor of the cockpit suddenly altered its angle. It had tilted upwards. Now it tilted all to one side. Sick and dizzy, but secure, the boy hung in his straps as she lay over, and saw on his left hand a wing of the Bird rising and blotting out the heavens, while on his right hand the earth reared up so horribly that Bawne could only shut his eyes tight and hold on to the arms-straps of his seat, and gasp out a little prayer. Then the cockpit floor became more level, and the wind buffeted less. The roar of the tractor and the twanging drone of the wires made one's bones hum and tingle to the very ends of one's teeth and finger-tips. But nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing would!He drew a great breath of relief, and his heart left off bumping. His mouth was cold inside and his tongue felt dry and stiff. Only Our Lord and Our Lady and his guardian Angel had seen him funky, and for this Bawne was grateful. They understood, and—people—would not.He guessed it about a quarter to six o'clock. By the genial warmth on one cheek and shoulder, and the way his shadow stretched over the pale grained ash-wood that lined the cock-pit, he knew the west must be upon the left.He raised himself, craning his neck, and through the low wind screen behind him, against the background of a sky all flaming and boiling with molten gold and liquid amber, he saw the wide square shoulders and tall helmeted head of von Herrnung, the hard eyes staring unflinchingly through their round glass goggles, the mouth set in a straight inflexible line under the tight red roll of the moustache.The red-moustached mouth opened, and von Herrnung shouted something. Nothing reached the boy but a sort of muffled roar. He shook his head vigorously, and then—one does not wear the Signaller's Badge for nothing!—released a stiff little gloved hand from its grip on the arm-rest, and rapped out with his clenched right fist on the edge of the fuselage:"I—can't—hear!"The Code was understood. The helmeted head, some four feet distant, nodded. One of von Herrnung's gauntleted hands freed itself from the steering-bar. Its knuckles drubbed out the question:"Have you the brown satchel?"Bawne had quite forgotten the brown satchel. He screwed back his head and looked down and there it was, lying on the numb knees of him, buckled to him by the tough strap of pigskin that held him in his seat. He nodded assent, and signalled:"All right!""Good!" von Herrnung signalled back through the hurly-burly of the Bird's transit. Bawne mustered courage to knock out:"Where are we? When shall we go down?"Von Herrnung's right hand lifted itself, and described a sweeping half-circle. The brusque gesture answered Bawne's first question, bidding him look and see.The boy, impeded in his view by reason of his small proportions, wriggled in his straps so as to get his chin well over the gunwale of the Bird's fuselage and the buffetting wind that was dug up and spaded over her bows by the dizzying revolutions of the tractor, got hold of him and pummelled and buffetted him again. Her course was still north, the sun was setting in great smoking lakes of gold and sulphur on her left as she flew. Thick patches of dark green bushes that probably were woods, reddish-green blotches that might be heathy commons, shiny, square patches that he guessed at as reservoirs, toybox villages that were thriving suburban boroughs, specks that were villas, glittering ribbons that suggested canals, and one broad shiny stripe that was a river with tiny boats upon it, were swirling from right to left, sweeping along in the opposite direction, under the rushing body of the winged thing that bore him, ruled by the hand of von Herrnung upon the steering-wheel.Behind her a chaotic, formless greyness brooded on the horizon, innumerable spires rose out of it and a glittering haze hung over all. That was London, the great grimy Mother of Cities tearing away from her little son at eighty miles an hour. The shriek of an engine and the rumble of a train reduced by distance to infinite tenuity pulled the boy's eyes downwards. A weeny mechanical toy that meant one of the double-humped colossi of steam traction, dragging a string of match-box goods trucks, raced another locomotive, towing a crowded passenger-train neck and neck along the spider-fine perspective of gossamers that meant the Great Eastern Railway. Now fear was swamped in the sheer joy of the experience. This thin air that kept you perpetually gulping and swallowing saliva, made you feel more than ever how good it is to be alive.Billows and billows of green, interspersed with patches of purple heather, meant Epping Forest, though he did not know it. A great aggregation of grey walls and housetops, looking like a section of an old wasp's nest, stood for Waltham Abbey as the Bird drove on. Quite a tangle of the shiny grey-blue streaks that were rivers meant Lea and Orwell, Ouse, and their trouty tributaries. East England rolled away underneath like an endless carpet woven in irregular patches of many hues. Green and brown, grey and yellow, and innumerable shades of these, so tempting in their suggestions of good things to eat that a most unheroic hunger reminded the schoolboy of tea-time, hours and hours gone by.He looked round in search of von Herrnung, who maintained unchanged the same attitude, his shoulders level, his unseen hands steady as rock upon the wheel of the steering-pillar, his mouth shut tightly, his hard eyes ranging ahead or lowered, as he conned his course in masterly fashion by aid of the roller-map, protected by its transparent, rainproof casing, or the compass, clock, altimeter, and other instruments gimballed in the wooden frame in front of the pilot's seat."How long?" the small fist rapped out. Von Herrnung detached a hand and signalled in answer:"One hour!""When do we go home?""We go home now!" the hand signalled, and the boy settled down in his seat to wait.
Hear Macrombie's assistant continuing the recital:
"He's left the aërial connected to the transmitter and gone out for lemon-squashes four times since one o'clock grub. 'That's the drink for men who have souls to save, ye little fag-eater!' he says to me; 'Salvation for soul and body, sucked through a straw! If thae deboshed and hopeless drunkards at the Admiralty could be induced to swear off their cursed alcohol and take to it, I wad no longer be deaved to the point of steeping my tongue in profanity, by the kind o' eediots' gibberish that is yammering at my lugs!'"
"He'd been raking a lot of Admiralty strays in?" Sherbrand queried. Von Herrnung, who had been grinding his heel into the turf and gnawing his lip with ill-concealed impatience, turned his head sharply, and listened to the colloquy with all his ears.
"Not so much X's as definites, sir," responded Macrombie's assistant. "He was upset about ten minutes before he broke out by getting an 'Urgent' without a Preparative Call. Then comes 'Important' in International Code, and 'Administration' and 'Emergency.' Then 'War Office,' and 'Documents,' and 'Enforcement of the Law.' By that time 'e was purple in the face and 'arf crazy. 'If I had my way wi' you, ye bung-nosed intemperates,' he says, groaning-like—'I wad keep ye on grits an' caller watter for a fortnicht! Oh, that men, as auld Hosea says in the inspired Screeptures'—an' I 'appen to know myself it was Shakespeare—'should pit an enemy intil their mooths to steal awa' their brains!' An' 'e snatches off the telephone 'ead-band and chucks it into the corner, and just as my own instrument starts to tick out a call, he ketches me by the neck as if I'd bin a tame rabbit, an' slings me out o' the office an' locks the door. 'Out o' this!' 'e says, puttin' the cabin key in 'is pocket. 'I will no' have your lugs, dirr-ty as they are, polluted by the unclean counsels o' the wicked. I'm awa' to cool the wrath o' the righteous wi' anither lemon squash!' An' the winder is blocked by the Morse key instrument, an' even if it wasn't, it's too small for me to get in through!" Macrombie's victim ended, with an injured sniff.
"Well, well! Better hang about the cabin a bit and possess your soul in patience. If any pupils drop along, tell them they'll have to wait! Perhaps Macrombie'll turn up sober enough to take them on by-and-by. As for the message in transmission, I daresay it will keep. Mr. Fanshaw's not expecting any particularly important communication that I know of. Oh, hang it!" Sherbrand whistled dismally. "I'd forgotten. That's just what I am!"
"Shall I go and see if I can find Rumball?" suggested Macrombie's assistant helpfully. "He's at the engine-sheds. He's been a locksmith. 'Twouldn't take him more than a sec. to open the office door!"
"Cut then!" acceded Sherbrand, and the telegraph-clerk touched his pen—discovering by a jab of the inky nib that he was wearing it—and set off at a trot in the direction of the engine-sheds.
You are to suppose that von Herrnung's sharp ears had gathered the pith of the communication. Some meaning in the isolated words the clerk had repeated had had a palpable effect upon his nerves. His face looked bluish-grey and streaky, as he said to Sherbrand, stammering in his eagerness:
"So then, it is agreed about my flying your machine?"
"I see no objection."
"Gut!" Von Herrnung went on, concealing a huge joy under a careless camaraderie: "Can you lend me a cap and coat and a pair ofSchulzbrille? Goggles you call them, yes! The coat should better to be a large one"—he stumbled in his English now through sheer excitement—"I am so much a bigger man than you!"
"Certainly. We keep Flying rigs in all manner of sizes. It's in the way of business," Sherbrand said. Then his glance fell upon Davis, whose little black-avised countenance wore an expression of sulky resentment, and he uttered a slight exclamation. "I forgot, Davis! I really am very sorry!" He turned to von Herrnung and explained in a tone of finality that enraged the hearer: "This is Davis's afternoon off. I cannot ask him to repeat the climb."
"It is hellishly annoying! But see! Listen, my fellow!" He addressed himself to little grimy Davis, unhelmeted and unbuttoned, leaning against the Bird's flank with his hands in the pockets of his oily overalls, chewing a blade of grass; "You will go up with me if I tip you? A sovereign! Come then! The gold does it! You will go up with me, will you not, yes?"
Davis spat out grass and delivered himself:
"Not even for my young guv'nor—and a Bank of England finnup, do I do the soaring heagle hact again this blooming Wednesday."
Welsh Davis had come to London from a mountain farm in Merioneth, speaking nothing but his native Cymric, and had culled his Sassenach from Cockney lips. Von Herrnung bid another sovereign, and then two more, ineffectually.
"Naow!" Davis was rock. "I've done my day's stunt an' I'm nuffy. D'yer tumble? Nuffy! Yer knaows wot that means—if you're a Flying Bloke!"
"Damn you, I will gif you ten pounds!" Von Herrnung's face was wrung and streaked with passion. He breathed hard, and the brown leather satchel jumped and wobbled in his shaking hand.
"It isn't any use," said Sherbrand, "really! Money doesn't count with Davis where his off-time's concerned. Davis doesn't want to go up again, and I've not another man of his weight available. What do you turn the scale at? I should guess 16 stone or thereabouts?"
"I weigh 16 st. 8 lbs. in my ordinary clothes."
"Well, I tot 11 st. 6 lbs. in the fullest of flying-rig, and Davis only 8 st. 5 lbs. And the Bird is built to carry in addition to her engine—what with the instruments, so forth, and man-freight, a cargo of something like 22 stone. You see, even with Davis, you'd load the machine a good bit over her"—he smiled at the conceit—"her Plimsoll mark. Again, I'm sorry. It's your luck! No flying for you to-day!"
"It is damnably annoying! But"—von Herrnung's red-lashed blue eyes were busily scanning Bawne's face and figure—"but suppose I could get a boy of 6 stone to go up with me? Merely as ballast, for I do not require an assistant—the difficulty might be got over in this way? What you say, my little English fellow?" He turned on the boy with a great air of jovial patronage. "Are you plucky enough? Shall we go for a voyage together in the sky?"
"Yes—please!"
The dark blue eyes met the hard light ones bravely, though every vestige of colour had sunk out of the young face. Then back to lips and cheeks the banished colour came racing. Bawne flushed crimson, as von Herrnung held up a bright bit of gold, and sharply shook his head.
"Was? Will you not take the sovereign?" von Herrnung demanded. "Are you a faint-heart after all?"
The boy bit his lip and said, clenching his small fists desperately:
"It's against the rule for Scouts to take tips. So I don't want the money. But I'm ready to come with you!"
"Look here, old fellow!" Sherbrand was beginning anxiously. The boy stopped him with:
"Really and truly I'm not funky—and you said I was to have another flight."
"So I did, and so you shall," agreed Sherbrand. "But this won't be just a 'bus trip around the aërodrome. It will be climbing and spiralling and hovering, and all the rest!"
Bawne persisted:
"You could strap me in. And I'm not afraid—really!"
"And," von Herrnung interposed, "I shall not ascend higher than three thousand. Probably less will do for my purpose. The boy will be quite safe. Surely you are able to trust him with me?"
Sherbrand hesitated, then said to Bawne in a relieved tone: "Well, there's the Doctor talking to a tall lady in white with a hat that glitters. Run across to your father and ask him whether you may go?"
"I'd rather you asked him—if you must—and let me stop here!"
"Gut! Sehr gut!" Von Herrnung's tautened nerves would have been relieved by some hard Prussian swearing. He jangled out a laugh instead. He caught hold of the boy under the armpits and lifted him high above his head. "What is your weight? Six stone? Come now, have I not guessed nearly!" He had not relinquished his grip on the leather satchel, and as it banged against his ribs, Bawne realised that it was quite light.
"Papers inside!" he said to himself. Something quite hard was under the leather at the corners, perhaps the thinnest of metal plates. Its contact with the boy's body seemed to sober von Herrnung's exultation. He dropped Bawne unceremoniously, and straightened himself again.
"How much petrol has been used?" he asked hastily of Davis, going over to the Bird and mounting on the landing-carriage to look at the gauges. "Because when I fly I never take risks. You will have to fill up the tank again. Do you hear, my fellow?"
"If Mr. Sherbrand orders me," Davis spat out another piece of grass, "dessay I shall do it!" He eyed von Herrnung with surly disapproval as he craned over the Bird's fuselage, while audibly commenting to an acquaintance who had strolled up:
"Sheer blinders, I call 'em, these ere Fritzies! Walk into Buckingham Pallis next minute and ask to look into the Privy Puss. 'Ope the Governor comes back before 'e gits Nosey Parkerin' into the 'orizontal 'overing gear! Perish me if I ever met a bloke with such a nerve! Watto, old sonny?" He addressed himself to the boy. "Ain't you feelin' up to the posh?"
"I am quite all right, thank you!" Bawne responded, while his heart bumped against his ribs. In his brain words and sentences kept forming:
"I'm only a little chap. And this is—a Big thing! Bigger than the Chief expected, perhaps! And he said he'd be back in half an hour." Half an hour meant thirty minutes. He glanced at the big round white-faced clock above the entrance of the café restaurant. More than fifteen minutes of the half-hour had gone.
To stick to the big, brutal German was his—Bawne's—Secret Mission. And the inspiring, uplifting voice that thousands of boy-hearts thrill to all the big world over had said to him:
"Quit yourself like a man!"
CHAPTER XXX
THE REAPING
To Patrine, when the shadow of the familiar figure of the Doctor mingled with hers upon the dry green grass, and Saxham's voice called her by her name, it was as though his presence had a weight that physically oppressed her, and his scrutiny seared her flesh like the approach of white-hot iron.
Through her mind passed swift sentences: "Yet another of us has disgraced him! My father and mother are not the only traitors of our name!" In the rawness of her mental anguish every sense was unnaturally exaggerated. The ticking of Saxham's watch, that the furious beating of her heart could not drown, tormented by its iteration. And worst of all, was the consciousness of defilement in the physical sense.
"Did not your mother give you my message?"
Always pale, her pallor did not demand particular attention, save that under their ruddy salve the edges of her lips showed white. She answered, forcing the lips to smile, compelling her eyes to meet Saxham's.
"About coming to see you?" She remembered and drew from her gilt-chain vanity bag the letter she had not posted: "This was written to you to-day. Then I thought I would have been able to look in at Harley Street, and in the end——"
"In the end you neither paid the visit nor posted the excuse. Well, be more considerate in future to those who love you. Sincere, clean love does not grow on every gooseberry bush, my dear!"
The curt speech, made in the Doctor's brusquest tone, conveyed to Patrine an impression of exquisite kindness. So many boons, so many benefits had been conferred in that grim, curt way. She had wept and would not weep again, but her hard bright eyes grew misty as she thanked him, and asked after Lynette, with a touch of wistfulness that recalled to the Doctor that unforgettable time when greedy Death had threatened to rob him of his joy. He answered her cheerfully, and they found themselves chatting of familiar, everyday matters across the gulf that yawned between. And then, warned by some swift change of expression in her face, Saxham glanced up to see Sherbrand approaching.
"Doctor!" he called. "Sorry to interrupt, but would you listen a minute?"
The tall, lightly-built, lightly moving figure came swinging towards them. He still carried the eared cap with the goggled visor, his thick, silvery-blonde hair was darkened at the temples with the dampness generated under the close covering of waterproof. His light grey-blue eyes were smiling, yet there was a pucker of anxiety between his eyebrows, as he put von Herrnung's case.
"So," he ended, "instead of taking a second flight in the Bird with me as we arranged, would you trust your boy to this foreign crack who's in a hole for a passenger? He is Captain von Herrnung of the German Flying Service—winner of the two-days' flight from Hanover to Paris in April—a famous run!" He added, "I need hardly say that with such a record as von Herrnung holds you cannot be apprehensive of any rashness or neglect on his part. But I'll own I would rather take Bawne up another day myself. Still, von Herrnung——"
"I am aware of the reputation held by the person you mention. I am going now to speak to him."
The Doctor's face was devoid of all expression. But he battled, as he spoke, with a masterful desire to forbid Bawne the expedition. To assert parental authority on this point would have been the mode of dealing approved by one of the two men who dwelt within the Dop Doctor. The other Saxham said "Hold!"
Dare you place your paternal love, that other Saxham asked—between your son and his duty? Because it would be so easy to do it, is the reason why you should refrain! The Doctor had walked a few paces towards the object of his troubled reflections. He wheeled abruptly, returned, and presented Sherbrand to his niece.
A faint blush rose in Patrine's white cheeks as her eyes met those of the tall young aviator. They looked at her without any sign of recognition, and the conviction, "He has forgotten!" shot stingingly across her mind. "He did not think me worth remembering" came next. And then she could have laughed, recalling that she had dismissed him from her own thoughts on the discovery of his connection with Fanshaw's. She had made so certain that a teacher of Flying couldn't be a gentleman.
Now, face to face with him again, in his upright easy bearing, in his straight and fearless regard, in the pleasant well-bred voice that addressed her in a brief conventional sentence or so, she read his patent of gentlehood.
From whatever root it sprang, the flower was noble. Her swift eyes shot a glance at the bigger figure in grey. What a hoggish knight of the dunghill, what a high-born clown had she not distinguished by her choice and selection. The smile of scorn that curved her mouth was suddenly banished by the sudden recollection of Bawne.
"Uncle Owen, you have not yet told Mr. Sherbrand whether Bawne may go up again or not. I am sure—if you won't think me—if you don't mind my saying so!—that he has had enough for to-day! I think it would be better if you would not——"
It was not the deep warm voice of Patrine's characteristic utterance, but a weaker, thinner voice that hesitated and faltered and trailed away. It recalled nothing to Sherbrand. He looked at her and transferred his gaze to Saxham, who asked:
"Does this German officer intend climbing to any high altitude, or perpetrating anything in the nature of a display?"
Sherbrand explained:
"He does not want to go higher than three thousand. Just to try the hoverer, regarding which some business friends of his are bitten with curiosity. My mechanic is not able to go up with him, and he wants a light-weight passenger. He is over sixteen stone himself, and the Bird has been built to carry me with Davis. I calculated her wing-area to——"
Sherbrand travelled into the realm of technicalities, using terms that were Volapuk and Esperanto to Patrine. He had supple, finely-shaped hands, and used them as he talked with vivid illustrative gestures.
"So," he ended, "as your plucky youngster asked to go, it seemed a way out of the difficulty, provided you weren't dead against the thing. Of course we'll swadd the little chap in a sweater or so under the pneumatic jacket. It'll be a bit parky, even at three thousand, now the sun's beginning to down."
He added:
"I'll see to the strapping myself. You may rely upon it, Doctor."
Saxham said with a look of kindness at the handsome face with the clear candid eyes:
"I am sure of that!" He added, mastering that inward impulse: "I shall not forbid the flight if Bawne is set on it. But first, I must speak to him!"
And the great form with the stern thoughtful face and scholar's stoop moved across the greensward, followed by the tall young figures of Sherbrand and Patrine. Of the two, the man was by a bare inch the taller. This Patrine realised in a swift side-glance. Certain featural characteristics of him, personal impressions received half-unconsciously, retained their clear sharpness then and for many days....
The silvery-yellow hair toning into the pale brown skin. The powerful sweep of the brows over eyes set flush with their large orbits, prominent, brilliant, mobile as the eyes of a bird of flight. The nose, arched and jutting like a kite's beak, with large sensitive nostrils, the somewhat sunken cheek and the sharply-angled jaw, the little ear and the rounded skull superbly set upon the full muscular neck rising out of the collar of the gabardine, made up a portrait upon which some happy woman might well dote and dream.
It was five o'clock and the breeze that smelt of heather and clover-hay and strawberries blew more strongly, straight from under the westering sun. Patrine drank in deep draughts of the buoyant sweetness. The leaden gyves had fallen from her limbs, the leaden weight had lifted from her bosom. She had recovered something of her old, elastic grace of movement, that even the sheath-skirt could not spoil. Looking at her, Sherbrand said to himself:
"She walks like a Highland hill-woman or a native girl of the Philippines. And—did Heaven or a Bond Street specialist give her that extraordinary hair? I rather hate it, and yet I have to go on looking at it. Does she know? I wonder if she knows?"
She felt his eyes on her. And the buoyant sense of well-being that his presence brought to her was mingled with an agony of apprehension. Her heart clamoured, like a brooding thrush attacked by the owl, that Bawne should not be permitted to risk himself with von Herrnung. "Does any other living being know him as I know him?" she asked herself. "If by some misadventure it came to a question of one life or the other, would he scruple—no! he would not scruple for an instant to sacrifice the child?"
Three words to Uncle Owen—if one only dared to speak them—would have put the thing out of the question. But at the thought of the dreadful avowal to which such an utterance might lead, Patrine was stricken dumb. She could not face the music. This was one little ear of wild oats out of the full field that waited for her reaping, sown in the hours that lie between the midnight of pleasure and the dawn of the Day of Remorse.
Perhaps she and Sherbrand had walked more slowly than it had seemed to her. She saw Saxham and his son meet, heard, indistinctly the exchange of a few brief sentences, and then the boy, with a jump to hug his father round the neck, ran to her as she came up.
"Cousin Pat, I'm going to get into my flying-kit in a minute." His heart was thumping so that it shook him, and the short upper lip with the gold-brown dust of freckles on it quivered, hard as he tried to keep it stiff: "One doesn't do it before people generally—but I'd rather like you to kiss me now!"
"My precious, a dozen times!"
She said it impetuously in the deep womanly baritone that Bawne loved, and Sherbrand started as he heard it. She dropped her tall-sticked sunshade, and caught the little boyish figure to her broad womanly bosom, hugged him until he panted, and kissed his pale cheeks red. You do not need to be reminded that Patrine was a galumpher. "Don't go! don't go!" she whispered in her darling's neck. "I hate your going! and I don't believe Uncle Owen likes it.... Say you've been up once and you're 'nuffy! Pretend you funk it. Do, for my sake!"
"I—can't. Ouch! You tickle! Please let me go. This is business!" He squirmed, and she burst out laughing, and released him. The act was a wrench that tore her bleeding heart anew.
He bounded instantly after Sherbrand, seeing him go forward to join von Herrnung, who was standing watching Davis fill the Bird's tank with petrol, and her reservoir with oil.
There was no spurring these lazy devils of English into movement.... The accursed pig-dogs, the stupid sheep's heads! If that fragmentary Wireless message had really to do withthe business, within the next ten minutes everything might be ruined. One walked perilously, as amongst pebbles, holding a watch-glass of High Explosive in one's hand. Here came the man and the boy. He joined them with a noisy burst of forced laughter. Presently you saw all three moving in the direction of a building where the "flying-kits of all sorts and shapes and sizes," of which Sherbrand had boasted, were kept for the use of the patrons of Fanshaw's School. As they went in, Bawne cast a wistful glance up at the clock on the front gable of the café restaurant, now supplying afternoon tea served in brown teapots, and rolls and butter on thick white platters, to a thin sprinkling of customers.
"Three minutes to the half-hour," said the clock.
Would the Chief come, or must this thing be carried out by a small boy whose heart lay, a palpable lump of cold lead in the pit of his stomach, and whose knees were turning to jelly as he went?
If Cousin Pat, when she begged him not to go, had known how badly he, Bawne, had wanted to hold her round the neck and beg her not to let him, he would at this moment have been unheroically safe.
She was so big. He had most dreadfully wanted to cling to her and cry—imagine a fellow of twelve doing anything so kiddish. But he had swallowed the unmanly tears, and wriggled out of her strong protecting arms.
He looked back and saw her tall white figure, standing near the hulking black-clad shape of the Doctor, who had pulled his hat-brim low down over his eyes, and did not seem to be talking or laughing at all. Davis was doing something with a spanner to the Bird's under-carriage, and the long, thin shadow of her in combination with the squat shadow of the little stooping Welshman, stretched eastwards over the dry green grass.
He heaved a big sigh and followed his man in. Von Herrnung was already trying on pneumatic coats, swearing in nervous German when they were not big enough. At last he was caparisoned, in a heavy suit of flannel-lined Carberrys and a buttonless hooded jacket. He had stripped the burst glove from his wounded hand, thrown it away, and replaced the magpie pearl ring upon his little finger. He had put on a woollen helmet and tied over that a flapped cap with goggles and ear-pieces. While he attended to his outfit, the leather satchel lay at his feet, or sometimes between them, or he would keep a boot-toe on a corner of it. And his hard blue eyes were vigilantly watchful against surprise.
Sherbrand and the dresser—who presided over a long room of shelves and pegs laden with queer garments, and who looked like a washed mechanic in spotless blue overalls—put Bawne into a woollen sweater, and added to the panoply he had worn already that morning, and which consisted of leggings, slip-strapped to a webbing waistbelt, a pneumatic jacket, a knitted helmet such as von Herrnung wore, and a pair of goggles. They looked like the Eskimo hunter and his little boy in the "Book of The Arctic"—a volume specially beloved of Saxham's small son.
It was five minutes past the half-hour when they emerged from the dressing-shed. Saxham came to meet them, turned and walked by his son's side. Davis, whose weakness as regards the sex we know, had pinched from the visitor's enclosure a green-painted iron chair for Patrine. She half-rose, stung by an impulse of escape, when she saw von Herrnung approaching, and then controlled herself and sat down again.
Nothing escaped her long eyes. They saw Sherbrand glance from Saxham to von Herrnung, and read the intention of an introduction in his look. He had just begun:
"Doctor, I don't think you have met Captain——" when von Herrnung lengthened his long stride, outstripped his companions, and went over swiftly and stood beside Patrine.
CHAPTER XXXI
VON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOK
She knew that he had interpreted her movement as an invitation.
He saluted her and said, speaking thickly:
"It is necessary that I have a word with you. Walk with me for one moment. I shall not keep you more!"
He bulked huge in his rig-out, but looked thoroughly at home, and deadly workmanlike. He pushed up his goggles as though conscious that they discounted his personal attractions, and his blue eyes were stony and glittering, and his full mouth showed pale and hard-set under the scarlet roll of his moustache.
"I shall not see you again to-day, and I have something important to tell you." He spoke rapidly and his breathing was harsh and loud. "I have been recalled by my Chiefs and return to Germany in—another two or three days. That we do not meet again before I leave is possible, therefore I wish to give you my address."
She did not look up. A white hand with red hairs growing thick on the back of it offered her a pencilled card. She made no movement to take it. He said, thrusting the card underneath her eyes:
"It is printed here in German letters. You read and speak my language badly, so I will translate for you—'Squadron-Captain-Pilot Count Theodor von Herrnung, Imperial Field Flying Service, Flight Station XXX., Taubefeld, near Diebrich, West Hessen, Germany.' Write your letter to me in English. The address copy from this. Will you not take the card?"
"There is no need to. I do not mean to write to you!"
"Danke. You are candid," he said, "at least. You give me to understand that whatever happens—" he repeated the words with a singular inflection "whatever happens!—you will have no more to do with me?"
"Have I not told you so twice already?"
He gritted his teeth and said, controlling furious anger:
"Erklären Sie!Was giebt es? Why are you so—rottenly furious with me? You have yourself to thank for—what has happened! You led me on. You made me crazy about you. And the devil of it is I am so still! The sight of you maddens me! Listen! Do not be stupid—unkind to yourself and to me! In three days from now, you will get an envelope at your Club with plenty of money. Join me at my headquarters at Taubefeld and then—you will see! We will be happy—you shall have plenty of money to throw about when we visit Berlin and other big cities, and jewels, dresses, pleasure, admiration—everything a beautiful woman wants!Grosse Gott! Can I offer anything more tempting? What are you saying? 'Yes!' or 'No!'"
Her narrowed eyes looked like long black slits in her white face. The pale lips barely moved to answer:
"Neither! Are you proposing to marry me?"
He laughed woodenly, and repeated:
"Marry you! Ha, ha! Whatverdammtnonsense are you talking? What has love to do with getting married? Nothing that I have ever heard! Of course I shall marry—my family have arranged all that for me. But my Countess will not interfere with my mistress—that I promise you! Come, be kind, my beautiful Isis! Whisper now that you agree!"
He bent his head to hear. The whisper came from the pale lips:
"I will see you in Hell first!"
He started, taken aback. Her own utterance had shocked her. "Am I a street-walker already," she asked herself, "that I begin to curse and swear?"
A whistle trilled. He started and said:
"So then, all is over between us?"
She bent her head assentingly, and her glance fell guiltily on Bawne who was standing near. Von Herrnung, aware of him at the same instant, turned on him with a scowl and the harsh demand:
"What is this? Do little English boys pry and listen?"
Bawne returned, looking at the other squarely:
"Beg pardon, but Mr. Sherbrand's calling you. He says it's getting jolly late."
"So!" Von Herrnung glanced at his wrist-watch, in the act lifting the brown leather satchel into fullest view. The boy queried with open-eyed innocent curiosity:
"Shall I carry that? Are you going to take it with you?"
"Es mag wohl sein," von Herrnung answered. Then he clicked his heels and bowed formally, and kissed Patrine's cold and heavy hand. She felt his teeth grit as he did it. She knew he was swearing in his way.
"Adieu, then," he said, smiling at her maliciously. "Will you not wish meAngenehme Reise?"
"Certainly. A pleasant voyage, and a safe landing!" Her eyes fell on Bawne's little, oddly garbed figure and her woman's heart spoke in spite of her. "Take care of my dearest!" broke from her, and von Herrnung answered:
"He is your dearest? Ah yes! I will certainly take very good care of him!"
He bowed, wheeled about and walked from her with his long strides, and the boy, with a face all flushed and quivering, suddenly jumped at her neck and hugged her; bringing with the rough little embrace the queer scent of water-proofed material and dubbined leather, knocking the silver-spangled hat awry, loosening divers tortoiseshell hairpins and an amethyst slide-buckle holding up the heavy tresses of the dead beech-leaf coloured hair, as he whispered:
"Remember I love you, Pat. Don't mind!"
And she shuddered as he freed her, and ran from her, asking herself: How much had the child overheard of von Herrnung's proposal? What had he comprehended of what he had heard?
Next, she was aware of the pleasant voice of Sherbrand calling, and saw von Herrnung imperiously beckoning. A cold sickness of dread assailed her, and her knees trembled underneath her weight. A mechanic came running past, carrying away the chair Davis had brought her. He set it down at a safe distance from the aëroplane, and she staggered to it, leaning on the long staff of her sunshade, and sat heavily down, feeling chilly and old....
Saxham had squeezed Bawne's shoulder and kissed him, and then withdrawn to a distance whence he could see all that took place. He watched Davis and Sherbrand help the boy into the forward cockpit, and fasten about him the safety belt attached to the fuselage on either side of the fixed bamboo seat.
"You are sure you really want to fly again? Mind, I believe you're as safe with him as houses, but if you don't want to go, say the word, and you shan't!"
Sherbrand whispered the words as he busied himself with the boy. And Bawne set his small teeth and squared his sturdy boyish shoulders, registering an unspoken vow to go in spite of all....
One had been told to drop a word to Sherbrand if one found oneself in a tight place. But could one ever hold up one's head again before the Patrol, if one did this? To share one's Mission with another when the Chief had said "I'd rather you'd carry through on your own" wasn't to be thought of. Mother—he swallowed hard at the thought of her—would say so too.
It troubled his faithful little soul that he could no longer see von Herrnung. He heard him talking in his guttural English, to Davis, whom Bawne could not see either—as he stood near the nose of the machine, in readiness to start the tractor—any more than the two mechanics who steadied the Bird, pressing each a toe on the axle of the under-carriage as they held on to a steel rod that ran along under the rearward edges of her single plane.
His final directions sharply given, von Herrnung stepped up on the under-carriage, threw a long leg over the bulwark of the fuselage, and stepped into the pilot's pit. Bawne screwed his head round and saw, through and over a low talc wind-shield, the upright torso of the German, big, hard, and indomitable, the leather satchel still gripped in his strapped-up left hand.
"Are you going to take that leather case along with you?" Sherbrand's voice had a note of surprise in it. "You'll find it a handicap, let me say. You can't sit on it or lean against it, and if you tried to put it under you, you'd find it dead-certain to foul the controls."
To Sherbrand's voice, von Herrnung's answered harshly and rather angrily:
"Surely I shall be able to carry this? It is nott-thing but a folding camera, with a telephoto lens made especially for Survey and Reconnaissance. There is still a good light. If I fly with the sun behind me, I shall be able to take quite a panorama of London North-West. It is not forbidden—no? Your Government would not object?"
"I don't suppose my Government would care a little hang!" Sherbrand's voice answered. "But—this isn't one of your German Army Albatros's or Kondors, and I don't see where you're to stow your camera, unless in the observer's pit. Of course the hovering installation takes up a lot of room, and I can't possibly risk your hampering the controls."
"Ganz recht! Very good!" came von Herrnung's voice, giving in with simulated heartiness. In another moment his long legs, followed by his great body, came scrambling into the forward cockpit, and his hands busied themselves about the stout belt of pig-leather that secured the boy in the observer's seat.
"Look here, my fellow! You will take care of this for me? See, I have passed the belt-strap through the handle. Do not touch it!" The guttural whisper had menace in it. "I shall be sure to know if you touch it, or try to unbuckle the strap."
"What's up?" Sherbrand's head and shoulders came thrusting over the other side of the cockpit. "Why did you unstrap him?" he demanded brusquely of von Herrnung. "Don't you know that he is my friend's son, and that it is my business to see to this?" Sherbrand's hand felt over Bawne's belts and bucklings before his head and shoulders vanished. Then von Herrnung's big body withdrew itself. His voice, sounding from the pilot's pit on the other side of the low wind-shield, gave a peremptory order, and the tractor began slowly to revolve. An instant later, with a blinding flash, it began to roar and whizz round furiously. The Bird, freed from the hands that detained her, leaped forwards, hurtling over the smooth turf at the speed of a racing motor-car. The smooth floor of the cockpit unexpectedly tilted up, and a rough cold wind buffeted Bawne about the head and shoulders, sent eddies down about his dangling feet, bellowed in his covered ears and made him gasp for breath. Then—houses and people, trees, and hangars fell suddenly away, and he knew that the Bird was rushing upwards at the bidding of its "Gnome" motor—long superseded now, but then the latest marvel in aërial engineering—towards the blue sky with its lines of gilt mackerel clouds. On each side of the roaring, flashing whirl that meant the tractor, spread North Middlesex, with its fields fast diminishing to the size of billiard tables. That patch no bigger than a garden-lawn, with a row of wooden things like dog-kennels and chicken-coops, must be—Bawne knew that it was—the aërodrome. Deafened by the noise and a little sick, for the roaring, striving, hurtling Thing in whose body he sat fastened, stank horribly of castor oil, and seemed to agonise and call on Bawne to suffer with it—he looked up and took courage from the warm, blue, beautiful, cheerful sky.
He was quitting himself like a man. Nobody could say otherwise. How high, how much higher was the Bird going to climb?
CHAPTER XXXII
ADVENTURE IN THE AIR
He looked down, and under his feet, left of the long transparent case that housed the horizontal hovering gear, was a little steel-framed glass port. Seen through this, the ground with its trees, fields and houses, hurried along beneath him as though a comet, travelling in the opposite direction, had been harnessed to our old earth, and was towing her away.
The floor of the cockpit suddenly altered its angle. It had tilted upwards. Now it tilted all to one side. Sick and dizzy, but secure, the boy hung in his straps as she lay over, and saw on his left hand a wing of the Bird rising and blotting out the heavens, while on his right hand the earth reared up so horribly that Bawne could only shut his eyes tight and hold on to the arms-straps of his seat, and gasp out a little prayer. Then the cockpit floor became more level, and the wind buffeted less. The roar of the tractor and the twanging drone of the wires made one's bones hum and tingle to the very ends of one's teeth and finger-tips. But nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing would!
He drew a great breath of relief, and his heart left off bumping. His mouth was cold inside and his tongue felt dry and stiff. Only Our Lord and Our Lady and his guardian Angel had seen him funky, and for this Bawne was grateful. They understood, and—people—would not.
He guessed it about a quarter to six o'clock. By the genial warmth on one cheek and shoulder, and the way his shadow stretched over the pale grained ash-wood that lined the cock-pit, he knew the west must be upon the left.
He raised himself, craning his neck, and through the low wind screen behind him, against the background of a sky all flaming and boiling with molten gold and liquid amber, he saw the wide square shoulders and tall helmeted head of von Herrnung, the hard eyes staring unflinchingly through their round glass goggles, the mouth set in a straight inflexible line under the tight red roll of the moustache.
The red-moustached mouth opened, and von Herrnung shouted something. Nothing reached the boy but a sort of muffled roar. He shook his head vigorously, and then—one does not wear the Signaller's Badge for nothing!—released a stiff little gloved hand from its grip on the arm-rest, and rapped out with his clenched right fist on the edge of the fuselage:
"I—can't—hear!"
The Code was understood. The helmeted head, some four feet distant, nodded. One of von Herrnung's gauntleted hands freed itself from the steering-bar. Its knuckles drubbed out the question:
"Have you the brown satchel?"
Bawne had quite forgotten the brown satchel. He screwed back his head and looked down and there it was, lying on the numb knees of him, buckled to him by the tough strap of pigskin that held him in his seat. He nodded assent, and signalled:
"All right!"
"Good!" von Herrnung signalled back through the hurly-burly of the Bird's transit. Bawne mustered courage to knock out:
"Where are we? When shall we go down?"
Von Herrnung's right hand lifted itself, and described a sweeping half-circle. The brusque gesture answered Bawne's first question, bidding him look and see.
The boy, impeded in his view by reason of his small proportions, wriggled in his straps so as to get his chin well over the gunwale of the Bird's fuselage and the buffetting wind that was dug up and spaded over her bows by the dizzying revolutions of the tractor, got hold of him and pummelled and buffetted him again. Her course was still north, the sun was setting in great smoking lakes of gold and sulphur on her left as she flew. Thick patches of dark green bushes that probably were woods, reddish-green blotches that might be heathy commons, shiny, square patches that he guessed at as reservoirs, toybox villages that were thriving suburban boroughs, specks that were villas, glittering ribbons that suggested canals, and one broad shiny stripe that was a river with tiny boats upon it, were swirling from right to left, sweeping along in the opposite direction, under the rushing body of the winged thing that bore him, ruled by the hand of von Herrnung upon the steering-wheel.
Behind her a chaotic, formless greyness brooded on the horizon, innumerable spires rose out of it and a glittering haze hung over all. That was London, the great grimy Mother of Cities tearing away from her little son at eighty miles an hour. The shriek of an engine and the rumble of a train reduced by distance to infinite tenuity pulled the boy's eyes downwards. A weeny mechanical toy that meant one of the double-humped colossi of steam traction, dragging a string of match-box goods trucks, raced another locomotive, towing a crowded passenger-train neck and neck along the spider-fine perspective of gossamers that meant the Great Eastern Railway. Now fear was swamped in the sheer joy of the experience. This thin air that kept you perpetually gulping and swallowing saliva, made you feel more than ever how good it is to be alive.
Billows and billows of green, interspersed with patches of purple heather, meant Epping Forest, though he did not know it. A great aggregation of grey walls and housetops, looking like a section of an old wasp's nest, stood for Waltham Abbey as the Bird drove on. Quite a tangle of the shiny grey-blue streaks that were rivers meant Lea and Orwell, Ouse, and their trouty tributaries. East England rolled away underneath like an endless carpet woven in irregular patches of many hues. Green and brown, grey and yellow, and innumerable shades of these, so tempting in their suggestions of good things to eat that a most unheroic hunger reminded the schoolboy of tea-time, hours and hours gone by.
He looked round in search of von Herrnung, who maintained unchanged the same attitude, his shoulders level, his unseen hands steady as rock upon the wheel of the steering-pillar, his mouth shut tightly, his hard eyes ranging ahead or lowered, as he conned his course in masterly fashion by aid of the roller-map, protected by its transparent, rainproof casing, or the compass, clock, altimeter, and other instruments gimballed in the wooden frame in front of the pilot's seat.
"How long?" the small fist rapped out. Von Herrnung detached a hand and signalled in answer:
"One hour!"
"When do we go home?"
"We go home now!" the hand signalled, and the boy settled down in his seat to wait.