A cry from Patrine prodded Sherbrand to active sympathy. So at last they had told her. She knew all. And true to her type she was raging at the Doctor and the Chief like a very termagant; upbraiding them with a spate of words rushing over her writhing lips and lioness-frenzy in her blazing eyes."I begged you not to let him go!" This was to the Doctor. "Faint! Do you take me for a bally idiot—to faint when there's something to be done! Follow that man and get him back! If he takes him away to Germany—don't you know we shall never see Bawne again! Oh! why—why can't I make you understand!"The raging voice grew hoarse with sobs, though her furious eyes were dry as enamel. She added with an inflection that made Sherbrand blink and gulp:"Don't you know—don't youknowit will kill Aunt Lynette? And I shall be guilty—I who love them so! Oh, God, I must do something or die raving mad!"The Doctor's great arm held her firmly round the body. Saxham was strong as an oak-tree, but who can control a woman in the frenzy of hysteria, standing six feet tall in high-heeled No. 7 shoes? She wrestled and fought, and her tawdry hat of silver spangles tumbled off, and her superb hair shed its pins of tortoiseshell, and rolled, yellow-tawny as a South African torrent in flood-time, down over her heaving shoulders, over the supple back and writhing loins, reaching nearly to her knees. Then her strength went from her, and her tears came. She dropped into a chair Sherbrand had got her, and crumpled up there, crying bitterly.CHAPTER XXXVIIPATRINE CONFESSESWith her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl, pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a dismal blast upon the nose."Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric upon her."Th—thank you, Uncle Owen!"She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet."Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way."I—think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!""Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply."Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her she did not know.She drew a sobbing breath, and looked about her vaguely, and suddenly a mist rolled away from her brain. The net of Tragedy whirled high and fell upon her, and the steel trident was driven deep between her ribs again:"I—had forgotten!" She stared upon them. "What must you all think of me?"Saxham's arm came round her, and Saxham's voice answered:"Nothing, my dear, but that you are human, and have had a tremendous shock!"She leaned against the Doctor's great shoulder, sighing:"Thank you! ... I'm all right now! Not going to cry any more.... But Bawne! If we wait long enough there will be news of him? We—shall get him back?"She felt Saxham's iron muscles jerk, and his ribs heave as though the trident had found a home between them. Perhaps he could not find his voice, for it was the Chief who said:"We are doing everything possible. Mr. Sherbrand is helping. He has been good enough to place the telegraph installation at our disposal and the Wireless also. A call, Burgin?"The undersized clerk had waved a hand from the threshold of the cabin. The Chief vanished. Patrine sighed:"Oh, if there should be news!""You are too sensible to be bowled over if there happens to be no news," said the Doctor's voice. But his arm was tense about her waist and she felt the beating of his heart."Uncle Owen!"Sherbrand had withdrawn out of earshot. She squeezed the kind responsive hand, turned her mouth towards the Doctor's ear, and whispered tremulously:"Uncle Owen! You don't knowhimas I do. That's why I am so—horribly afraid for Bawne! He would be cruel to anyone you liked, if he hated you. And he is furious with me! I have thwarted him in—something he wishes! He is bad!—dangerous!—do you understand?""He cannot be a bad pilot with such a record. And in such calm weather there is little danger of an accident. We must be patient; there is nothing else to do at the moment, but wait!"Saxham had feigned to misunderstand her, for very pity, you can conceive. Blurting out her miserable secret in this moment of unselfish sorrow, his heart was wrung in him to an anguish of compassion for Patrine. But no less was he wrung by the truth her words conveyed. His son and Lynette's was in the power of an evil man! What was David's daughter saying?"Uncle Owen!" The tall figure of Sherbrand had moved away into the reddish twilight, and a wild desire of confession spurred on the girl to desperate frankness of speech. She hurried on, nerving herself to the change that would presently show in Saxham. "Uncle Owen! I think you had better know! Since I methimin Paris I——""Stop!" said Saxham. But she would not stop. She had his blood in her, and went on, though to have set her naked foot on glowing iron would have been easier than to tell."I have flirted with him!—gone alone with him to restaurants and music-halls!—let him take me to the Upas!"—there was a tightness like knotted whipcord about her throat; "That's—not the worst!""I guessed it. Stop!" Saxham repeated:"Who told?"—she faltered brokenly, and shivered at the deep stern whisper:"No one told, but the reputation of the—man is known to me. His type does not hesitate where a woman's virtue is concerned."A great sigh burst from her. "And you can speak to me and touch me kindly—you don't hate the sight of me?""No, my poor girl, God forbid!""How good!—" she began, broke off and said, shuddering: "But—Aunt Lynette! How could I bear it, if she were ever to know——"Saxham said harshly:"She shall not know! Who do you dream will tell her? Not I! So set your mind at rest, my girl. You are a girl—though you talk like a woman of thirty!"She said with a miserable catch in her throat:"Nineteenisrather young, isn't it? Perhaps things would have been different if only Dada had lived!"The utterance was as inapposite as it was sentimental. If David had still been in existence his daughter would have had no less cause for regret. But Saxham, inwardly quivering and wrung with pity, could only acquiesce:"Perhaps things would! What you have got to do now is—Forget! Do you hear me? I order you, and I will be obeyed! And I will have you leave this titled lady who employs you, and who is all kindness and no discretion. Resign your post to-morrow! You need not return to your mother. My house is your home!" He went on in his rare tone of tenderness, "You need no telling that I care for you as a daughter. Come to me, and to Lynette who loves you dearly. She will want comfort—now that—" His voice broke and his mouth twisted. He fought with his anguish, in silence, turning his grim white face away."Who will tell Aunt Lynette? Oh! who will tell her?" he heard Patrine whisper. He commanded himself to answer:"For the present, I have telephoned her that we may be detained here until late. Suppose you twist up your hair now, and put your hat on. Sherbrand!"A sweet, manly voice answered out of the dimness of the Flying Ground: "Here, Doctor! You called me?"In the madder and umber light of the dying sunset Sherbrand's tall brown shape came towards them. Saxham said as Patrine swept her tawny tresses into one rough rope:"I am going to ask you to find out whether the people at the refreshment-place could give my niece something by way of substitute for dinner. A cup of coffee, or cocoa with milk, a roll and butter, and a slice of cold beef or ham?"Sherbrand said eagerly:"I am sure Miss Saxham can get anything like that. Mrs. Durrant keeps open house till nine o'clock, or later, if there is reason. She caters for the School Staff, respectably, by contract. I lodge—a very decent berth—over the dining-room, where I have my grub. Noisy by day but quiet enough at night-time. Will you come this way, Miss Saxham? You too, Doctor?"Saxham declined. They left him standing there, in the wide expanse that was filling up with brooding shadows, with his back to the dying rose of the sunset, looking fixedly to the north.CHAPTER XXXVIIITHE REBOUNDPatrine, that magnificent animal, had passed unknowingly through the painful ordeal which accompanies in the human the evolution of a soul. No doubt she had had one before without suspecting it. Now she was conscious of the presence of the guest.Through the big barbaric halls of her nature, glittering with tinsel over plaster backed with canvas, thronged with vanities, appetites, desires, and ambitions, jostling at the glittering fountains, buying at the tawdry counters, flocking to the dubious restaurants, swooping down the water-chutes, wandering through the painted landscapes, drinking in the dubious atmosphere, had passed a ray of light, pure, vivifying and cleansing, had blown a breeze of crystal mountain air. And through the blare of brass a note had sounded that would never cease to vibrate in Patrine's ears. Having partially confessed, she experienced a disproportionate rebound of spirits. Her fears for Bawne weighed on her less heavily, Saxham's reference to cold ham had awakened in her the pangs of healthy appetite. The proximity of Sherbrand was a vividly keen pleasure. She had always wished for a brother, and here was the verybeau idealof one! She meant to ask him if he had sisters—she was sure they would be awfully nice girls!One or two electric lights were switched on in the big room full of little white-covered tables, with the counter at the far end piled high with thick white plates. The big nickel urns were cold and empty, but Mrs. Durrant, the stout and smiling proprietress of the restaurant, produced hot coffee and milk in a twinkling, bread and butter, the cold ham, and a cold pigeon-pie.With her own very fat, very pink hands Mrs. Durrant ministered, voluble the while in sympathy.... The lady had been upset because the dear little boy hadn't come back. People were sometimes kept for hours through a Loose Nut, or a Slack Wire, or a Carburetter, or some little thing or another going wrong."You remember when Under-Instructor Davis took Mr. Durrant for an Air Beano all the way to Upavon, Mr. Sherbrand? Flares burning 'alfway through the night, and pore me!—new to the Flying then—wasn't I, Mr. Sherbrand?—going from one fit of astericks into another, and running out to meet Durrant, when he dropped down calmly 'Ome at four in the mornin', with my hair all untidy and hangin' about me—" Patrine swiftly put up a hand to assure herself that her own tawny coils were securely fastened—"for all the world like an Indian Squawk.""Wives had their feelings, it was only to be expected," said Mrs. Durrant. Mothers had also theirs, and, that was natural too! Patrine found the idea of her own maternal relationship to Bawne so firmly fixed in the mind of Mrs. Durrant, it was barely worth the trouble to endeavour to explain it away. Mrs. Durrant had none of her own, worse luck! but here, just coming with the salad and some fried potatoes, was Mr. Durrant's married niece, Ellen Agnes, and nobody knew better what it was to lose a darling child.Ellen Agnes, wan-eyed, anæmic, slipshod, and overworked, supported the statement. Only in April it 'ad 'appened, and Ellen Agnes 'ad never 'eld 'er 'ead up properly since. And little Elbert the 'ealthiest of children. Rising three and never a nillness till the pewmonia carried 'im orf. 'Ad only 'ad 'im phortographed three days before it 'appened! with 'is lovely little limbs and body naked, sitting on a fur rug, the blessed dear!Ellen Agnes not appearing to recognise any connecting link between the nude pose and the pneumonia, Patrine suppressed the obvious suggestion. Both women meant well, but their talkative sympathy oppressed her. She imagined how, when Sherbrand ate alone, the stout aunt and the thin niece would hover round his table, assailing his ears with their Cockney voices, making their common, vulgar comments on the happenings of the day.Perhaps her disrelish showed, for the kind women presently slackened their attentions. There was nothing then to divert Sherbrand's attention from his guest, beyond the undeniable attractions of the hastily spread board.So they ate the pie, all of it. Patrine cried, in frank astonishment at the evaporation of her second plateful:"But I am a wolf or something. No! Not even salad. What must you think of me? Crying my eyes out one minute and stodging pigeon-pie the next! Do the rest of the friends you feed here behave as badly as that?"Sherbrand returned, ignoring the mention of other guests:"Now, what should I think? Nothing but that you wanted something to buck you, and I was pretty ravenous myself. It was pretty parky up there at 10,000." He answered to her question how high that was: "Why, comparatively, you might imagine it about nine times as high as the top of St. Paul's Cross from the level of the ground."Little the speaker dreamed then of aërial battles to be fought at 20,000. She asked whether he had "felt giddy" and he shook his head, saying:"If I had felt inclined to giddiness I should have put off climbing until I felt fitter. I sympathise with Opera Stars who disappoint full houses, because some high C or lower G is a hairsbreadth off the bull. The singer can't afford a false note. It's death to a reputation. And the Flying Man can't risk brain-swim, because it means possibly nose-dive and smash. So I stay out of my sky unless I'm sure of myself. There's nothing on earth like being sure."He had a way of saying "my sky" that was queer and rather beautiful. Just as though he had been a lark, occurred to Patrine. And indeed, in the beaky, jutting nose, and the full, bright eyes set forward and flush with the wide orbital arches, there was some resemblance between the man and the bird.Patrine sunned herself in the lighter moment. She who had lain through the night sleepless—had risen still a bond-slave—realized that her fetters were broken now that her evil genius had flown. Taking with him her beloved, she fully believed in malice. Piercing though that knowledge was, it could not mar the blissful sense of freedom, mental and physical.Bawne would be brought back. Meanwhile, one's blood sang through one's being, mere living was riotous ecstasy, mere breathing sheerest delight. The joy of life radiated from her. And to Sherbrand, sitting opposite at the little coarse-clothed table, she grew momentarily more and more like the girl of the Milles Plaisirs.True, instead of cloudy black, her hair vied in tone with the banner of coppery flame that streams from the crater of an active volcano, or burns above some giant crucible of molten metal ready to be poured forth. Her long eyes under her wide level brows looked the colour of peat-water, in the electric light that contracted their pupils to pin-heads, and brought out against the yellow-distempered walls the creamy whiteness of her wonderful skin. When she leaned her round elbows on the table-cloth and smiled at him, it was the frank, generous smile that had warmed his heart when he stood solitary and unfriended on the rose-pink carpet near the gilt turnstile on the Upper Promenade.He would put it to the test. He beckoned the pallid Ellen Agnes, asked for the bill, slipped his hand into a breast-pocket and drew from it a tiny white silk purse."Oh! You found ..."With an indescribable emotion, half pain, half pleasure, she saw her missing property in the broad extended palm. He said:"It flashed on me, even as I blackguarded Davis, that you must have paid that Commissionaire-fellow at the turnstile or he'd have been breathing vengeance at my back. So I ran back to find you and ask for an address where I might send the money. You were gone! He had got this purse in his hand. So I—bluffed the brute for all I was worth, and got him to give it me!—a stroke of luck—for I'd no money left to bribe him with! Be kind and tell me how much you gave the fellow!"The deep dimple Sherbrand remembered showed in the full oval of one of her white cheeks. Slowly the pale rose-flush sweetened and warmed the whiteness. Her eyes were dusky stars under the barbaric wealth of beech-leaf tresses. A slow smile curved her mouth, the scarlet lips parted widely, showing two perfect rows of gleaming teeth."Two half-jimmies!" said the rich, mellow woman's baritone. Why did it talk such awful slang? "Half my screw for one whole week of letter-writing, running errands, doing shopping, and generally sheepdogging for my friend, Lady Beauvayse!""Then please take this!" This was a fat bright sovereign. "And be kind and say that I may stick to the purse?""If you care to—" Patrine began, dubiously."I care—most awfully!" He went on quickly. "Lady Beauvayse—your friend—I've seen her—if she's very pretty and tremendously American?"She nodded."You've spotted her! That's Lady Beau—the dear thing! But she only talks Yankee Doodle to bounders or fogies, or people who seem to expect it from her. Her English is as good as mine.""You don't mean it!" His keen face crinkled with laughter. She was superbly unconscious of its cause. He went on, rather ashamed of having made fun of her: "That accounts for the Old Kent Road-cum-Whitechapel I've heard from the august lips of British duchesses. At cricket-matches when Eton and Harrow were playing 'Varsity.""Does it? I think not! The duchesses weren't amusing themselves, or trying to snub swankers. They were just mothers—realmothers—trying to talk cricket to their boys. And the boys—the sweets!—grinning up their blessed young sleeves, and saying 'Yes'm!' and 'No'm!' How I do love boys! Don't you?" Her smile contracted with a spasm of anguish. "And I'm sitting here, gobbling and gabbling, when my darling!—" She rose taller than ever, from the little table, caught up her feather stole from a chairback near and slung it vigorously round her, straightened the tinsel hat with a side-glance at the strip of a looking-glass nailed in a frame of cheap gilt beading on the matchboarded wall at her right hand, picked up the vanity-bag and the long-sticked sunshade, and declared herself ready to go.CHAPTER XXXIXA NIGHT IN JULYShe reached the door before him. He had turned to say considerately to the good woman of the restaurant:"We shall be late.... Frightfully, I expect! Promise me you won't sit up!""Oh! but I can't promise! One never knows! Best to have people up an' ready when there might be need of 'em!" Patrine heard, as she wrenched at the handle of the green curtained glass door."No—no! Let me!"His hand touched hers and she drew it away, not before a keen, sharp thrill had traversed her. "Vile, hateful creature!" she said to the Patrine von Herrnung knew—the other woman within her, whom she loathed. "Is not it enough that you have done what you have done?" Then as she passed out into the night, feeling beneath her feet the roughness of the gravel walk that led between grass-plats studded with green painted chairs and little iron tables, a strange roaring filled her ears and hellish tongues of fire licked a sky of vivid blackness. She recoiled, saying in awed and shaken tones:"Why! What has happened? What does it mean? ... How horrible!"The door had shut behind them. Now the round dome of the sky showed not black, but velvety purple. Away in the south-east a fierce red moon drifted like some derelict vessel burning away to embers on a waveless midnight sea. And sheaves of dazzling blue-white flames, leaping and roaring, fenced in, or seemed to fence, a dreadful lake of Stygian darkness, upon the surface of which figures—were they men or devils?—moved...."Don't be scared, Miss Saxham! It's nothing ... though I ought to have wanted you...!"Not with intent, her heaving shoulder pressed against the breast of the man who had followed her. Perhaps the contact thrilled him, for his voice was unsteady as he went on:"I was rather a brute to forget! ... It's a night-flare to guide—possible home-comers! ... Wads of tow dipped in petrol, burning in iron buckets round our landing-place.'"I ought to have guessed," she said ruefully. "Forgive me for being such an idiot!"His answer was unexpected."On condition that you'll leave off saying 'Great Scott!' and things like that.""All right! But what's the matter with the expression, anyhow?" she demanded. "Do you always get riled when women use slang?"They had been standing within the gate that led upon the Flying Ground, still girdled by its Valkyr-ring of leaping flame. He said, holding open the gate to let her pass through:"I use slang myself, habitually, like every other man I know. But I don't know a man who really likes to hear his wife or sweetheart copy him in that respect. For myself who have neither wife, sweetheart, nor even sister, I can only say what I feel. It is—that a beautiful woman should use beautiful language. One of the old Greek poets put the whole thing into two lines. I've forgotten the original, but the translation runs like this:"From the goddess the speech of Olympus,From the herd-maid the language of the cows.""I'm no goddess, God knows!" said Patrine, sorrowfully and sincerely.Then a light scorching flame seemed to envelop her whole body. She felt Sherbrand's breath upon her cheek.... He said, speaking swiftly, and close to her ear:"No, you are not a goddess, but something far better! You are a woman one could worship! You could hate magnificently and forgive greatly, and love to the very verge of death! That was said to me of the Doctor, and you are like him!""Don't!" she said, wincing. "You don't know me!"He answered firmly:"But I do know you! I knew you the moment I saw you in Paris. You're the girl I have been waiting for ever since I read Morris's 'Eredwellers'. You're The Friend! Now I've found you I shall never let you go again!"What midsummer madness was this, prompting him to sweet audacity? His, "I shall never let you go!" had a convincing, manly ring. She quickened her steps, wading through a shallow sea of shadows, through which the warm short turf came up to meet her feet. He kept by her side, and together they moved towards the Valkyr-ring of fire, changing as they advanced into isolated pillars of towering flame outlining the huge white oval of Fanshaw's landing-place. Here and there the goblin-like shapes moved, stirring the flares with rods, feeding the blaze with something from vessels they carried. And two other figures stood in talk by the telegraph-hut, recognisable, outlined against the oblong of electric radiance framed by the doorway, as Saxham and the Chief."This is a bit previous, you think? Headlong—ill-considered on my part—to have spoken like this to a girl I've only met once before? You must understand—a man who follows a risky profession gets into the way of not waiting for to-morrow, because to-day may be the wind-up. Say you are not angry!" Sherbrand pleaded."No, you poor dear boy! But you're so awfully mistaken!" There was a rich and exquisite tenderness, it seemed to Sherbrand, in the deep, full, breathy tones. "I'm not a bit what you think me! There is nothing worthy of worship in a woman like me," said Patrine.He asked, as they walked side by side from patches of brilliant blue-white light into deep oases of shadow:"May I say more? May I tell you that I've thought of you ever since that Paris night.... What things I've called myself—if you only knew!—for not getting your address. But I swore I'd find you somehow, and I would have! I'd know your voice among a thousand. If I were blind, and forgot other people's faces, I should always see yours painted against the dark. At night—now! when I shut my eyes ... there it is! You are not angry?""No—I'm only sorry for you!" she said in her deepest, sweetest tone."Sorry?" There was keen anxiety in the face that was illuminated by the petrol-flare they were passing. "You're not—married—or going to be?" he asked."Neither!""Thank God!" said Sherbrand simply and sincerely. "Now I'll go on! My rank bad luck gives me a kind of right. This morning I got up solid in the conviction that you and I were meant for one another; that we should somehow be brought together; that the French Government would make it possible for me to marry you by buying my hawk-hoverer—for with only the two hundred a year my uncle left me, and the two hundred my Instructorship here brings me—how could I possibly have the nerve to ask you to be my wife? And—" He caught his breath, "And everything I'd dreamed came real. The test succeeded! I dived down out of my sky to find You! Miracle of miracles. And not twenty minutes later—I found myself nearly, if not quite—a ruined man. For if my invention has been swiped off to Germany, France will never buy, for money—what her neighbour gets for nought!""I understand. My poor Flying Man, you've been plucked of some of your wing-feathers!""I don't care, if you'll wait for me until they grow again!"How grim a day had been followed by this night of wonder! Woven of the shining stuff of dreams it seemed, then and for long years after, to Patrine. Their intimacy grew and ripened like a magic beanstalk in the light of the red moon and the fierce blue petrol-flares. She said with a catch in her breath—like Sherbrand's:"You must be serious!""I never was more so!"She amended:"We must be sensible! Oh! but this has been a close-packed day!""Hasn't it!" Sherbrand agreed, as they moved on side by side, from islands of raw, glaring light into broad pools of lustreless darkness, their tall heads level, for Patrine carried her hat of silver spangles swinging from the top of the sunshade with the lengthy stick. "Sometimes, for weeks, the days slip by smoothly as the beads of a Rosary over a baby's finger. Then—bang-bang-bang! they explode—like a rocket fired by a signal-pistol—until things fizzle out into dulness again.""It's true!" Her bosom rose in a sigh. "But it's possible to get awfully fed up with banging and fizzling. One can learn to long—just for a little dulness, as long as it means quiet and rest, and peace of mind."That Patrine should voice such an aspiration was incredible even to the speaker. "How changed I must be!" she said to herself, as Sherbrand answered her:"With heathery moors and towering scaurs, and galloping trout-rivers brabbling over lichened boulders—and Somebody one loves to talk to—one calls that kind of dulness a happy honeymoon!"She thrilled as his hand, swinging freely by his hip, touched hers, lightly, enclosed, and then released it. He was no tardy lover, this Flying Man. He knew a thousand times better than von Herrnung how a girl should be courted and wooed. For, with her heart in joyful tumult, and her usually pale cheeks warmed and rosy with shy blushes, it was a girl who walked beside Alan Sherbrand that night. I am sorry she could forget so easily the slip that had led her over the frontier line, the Rubicon that can never be recrossed. But in fact she did forget, just as a young man would have forgotten. Though she was to remember as only a woman can remember, and to suffer as only a woman can.In the midst of the new, wonderful happiness, so strangely threaded not only for Patrine, with bitter loss and tragic possibilities, she suffered a quite intolerable twinge of memory in the sudden recollection of the boldly-scrutinising look cast upon her by the bearded man in the white Naval uniform. She did not realise that an imperious gesture of the brown hand, whose wrist had sported a massive gold watch-bracelet, had whisked von Herrnung off the scene. But she guessed that the huge red-haired Prussian, bowing at the side of the big blue F.I.A.T., had clicked his heels before a master who could break him at his will.He had boasted.... Theyknew! Not only the bearded man whose look had stung so, but the close-shaven old Colossus with the tortoiseshell-mounted pince-nez on his thick heavy nose and the huge wart on his yellow cheek. And the sallow diplomat in the Homburg hat shadowing the sly glance and the moustache tucked up by a sinister smile under his drooping Oriental nose. They all knew.... Even the servant had worn the leer that is born of knowledge, as he said in his Teutonic gutturals:"The lady is a friend of the gentleman who brought her here..."Horrible! But she would not remember. She banished the hateful, knowing faces with a gallant effort and turned to Sherbrand, asking whether he had been an Eton, or Rugby, or Harrow boy?For had her Flying Man borne the cachet of the Public School Patrine Saxham would have infinitely preferred it. That it is possible to be a snob even in the most tragic or romantic moment of one's existence, she had not realised before she discovered herself to herself in this way."Downside was my school," he said quite proudly. Patrine had no acquaintance with Downside. "My father would have liked me to go to Harrow; but my uncle—my mother's brother—who paid for my education!—being a Catholic, naturally preferred the place where the Faith was taught. And my mother—as naturally—shared his preference. I was happy at Downside. The Fathers were thundering good to me. I worked hard—and I played hard—and when it wasn't Swot, or cricket, or football, or fives, or boxing, it was the making of flying-sticks, just shaved laths with paper wings, at first—and then a dodge much more ambitious, a model Wright in varnished card, with a propeller worked by a rubber release.... My father was pleased at my being a chip of the old block in my turn for mechanics. But when I wouldn't go up for Woolwich—when I entered at Strongitharm's College of Engineering on Tyneside, and spent two years at Folsom's Works at Sunderland—he rather gave me up, I fancy, as a low-minded kind of cad."He shook himself as though to shake off the adverse paternal judgment."I had my reasons for not going in for the Army, though I love it. They weren't easy to explain, and so I didn't try. But my father never liked the idea of my being a civil engineer. Even my mother, and my uncle—dear old fellow—he understands me better now!""Why?""Because he's dead!" said Sherbrand simply, "and the Holy Souls know everything!""The Holy Souls?" By the glare of the flare-light her puzzled eyes questioned him."The Holy Souls in Purgatory. They're privileged to help us. We help them—by praying for them. It's—a spiritual intercommunication—a kind of endless chain. A circuit of influence, received and transmitted, not by etheric flashes, but by a medium more subtle. Prayer—in a word!"His bright-winged intellect had outstripped her heavier, duller intelligence. She suddenly felt like a caterpillar on a cabbage-leaf, slow-moving, groping, but dimly conscious of a distant affinity with the jewel-winged butterfly hovering high in golden air...."Prayer," she repeated dully, "do you believe in prayer?""Naturally!" said Sherbrand—"since I believe in God. Do not you? ...""I hardly——"In the ensuing pause Patrine had a brief retrospective vision of the curate who had prepared her for Confirmation, and who had talked of the Almighty as though He were a crotchety but benevolent old man. And last time she had been to Church—a fashionably attended High Church in the West End—another curate in a black cassock and tufted biretta had preached about the 'Par of Card, the baptismal dar of Grace, the bar of flars,' in which our first parents dwelt in Eden, 'the fatal ar' in which they sinned, and the 'shar of tars' with which Eve lamented her fall."No," she said bluntly, "I don't think I believe in God at all now, though it sometimes seems as though there must be Somebody behind things!—Somebody who punishes—Somebody who laughs! As for a religion, I don't suppose I've ever had one. Oh, yes!—my religion is Aunt Lynette!"A mental picture of Lynette, years ago in the Harley Street nursery, teaching a curly-headed baby Bawne to say his evening prayer, while a great galumphing girl stood in the doorway and looked and listened, rose up and brought with it the horrible choking sensation. She fought with it as Sherbrand said:"I think you are speaking of Mrs. Saxham? Well, one must have a star to hitch one's waggon to. And she is a star—if ever I saw one! A woman with a face like a Donatello Madonna, or a tall lily growing in the garden-cloisters of some Italian mountain-convent, and who has the Faith,—ought to be able to teach you to believe in God! Why not ask her? I once knelt in a Church near her, and saw her praying. She seemed—very close to what Norman or someone else called the Eternal Verities.""She will be nearer still," said Patrine with sudden, savage roughness, "if anything happens—if Bawne is killed! She will die of a broken heart!""Then why not pray," argued Sherbrand, "that she may get him back again? Why not try it? There's nothing else that helps so well!""Pray!" The tall girl stopped short and swung round on him, facing him. A moment since they had walked like lovers. Now the spell was broken—at all events, for the time."Pray—pray!" she mocked. "Am I a sneak?—to pray when I don't believe in prayer! And if I did believe, God—if He exists—would not hear me. Even the parsons own He has His favourites. I am not one of them.... I am one of His forgets!"CHAPTER XLMACROMBIE IS SACKEDTall, lithe, vigorous, masterful, they confronted each other across the gulf that suddenly opened between them—the bottomless chasm that yawns between Faith and Unbelief.In the fitful uncanny light, the darker side of Patrine started into sinister prominence. Her defiant face was masked by shadow, but the fierce vibrating voice and towering shape had something of the fallen angel. Had wide sable pinions sprung and bannered from her shoulders, Sherbrand would hardly have been surprised."Let us draw the line at that. If we are to be friends—and I would like us to be!—agree to it! But since you have what I have not—you would call it Faith, no doubt," he guessed the wide mouth curving in a jeering smile, "there is nothing to preventyoufrom praying for Aunt Lynette and for Bawne too! Unless you are the kind of physician who draws the line at taking his own drugs!"If she had thought to disconcert Sherbrand she erred. He said instantly:"I give you my word of Honour that I will pray for them! But there is one other person much dearer to me than either. You don't ask me forher, but all the same...""You kind, dear boy! Pray for me all you want to!"She was his big, smiling girl of the Milles Plaisirs, and the Pat young Bawne worshipped, as she stretched out her beautiful, massive arm and offered him a cordial hand."Shake, Mister! Making love to me one minute and bally-ragging me the next! ... Great Scott! Ah!—I've said it again—and I gave you my word I'd not!"He took the hand in a close grasp, sought for the other and took it also...."Thank you! Why, how you're shivering! You have nothing but that feather thing over your thin gown! Wait half a minute—I'll get you a wrap!"He was gone in an instant, leaving her standing on the border-line of one of the oases of black-velvet shadow, swayed by the violence of her emotion as some tall young birch might have been shaken by the fury of a south-west gale.His touch.... She had not dreamed.... Her head drooped, and a long sigh went fluttering after him into the darkness, like some night-moth whose wings are wrought of hues more gorgeous than the peacock butterfly's, whose scent is on the alert, and whose diamond eyes pierce the blackest midnight in search of the partner of its kind.
A cry from Patrine prodded Sherbrand to active sympathy. So at last they had told her. She knew all. And true to her type she was raging at the Doctor and the Chief like a very termagant; upbraiding them with a spate of words rushing over her writhing lips and lioness-frenzy in her blazing eyes.
"I begged you not to let him go!" This was to the Doctor. "Faint! Do you take me for a bally idiot—to faint when there's something to be done! Follow that man and get him back! If he takes him away to Germany—don't you know we shall never see Bawne again! Oh! why—why can't I make you understand!"
The raging voice grew hoarse with sobs, though her furious eyes were dry as enamel. She added with an inflection that made Sherbrand blink and gulp:
"Don't you know—don't youknowit will kill Aunt Lynette? And I shall be guilty—I who love them so! Oh, God, I must do something or die raving mad!"
The Doctor's great arm held her firmly round the body. Saxham was strong as an oak-tree, but who can control a woman in the frenzy of hysteria, standing six feet tall in high-heeled No. 7 shoes? She wrestled and fought, and her tawdry hat of silver spangles tumbled off, and her superb hair shed its pins of tortoiseshell, and rolled, yellow-tawny as a South African torrent in flood-time, down over her heaving shoulders, over the supple back and writhing loins, reaching nearly to her knees. Then her strength went from her, and her tears came. She dropped into a chair Sherbrand had got her, and crumpled up there, crying bitterly.
CHAPTER XXXVII
PATRINE CONFESSES
With her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl, pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a dismal blast upon the nose.
"Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric upon her.
"Th—thank you, Uncle Owen!"
She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.
A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet.
"Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way.
"I—think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:
"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!"
"Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply.
"Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her she did not know.
She drew a sobbing breath, and looked about her vaguely, and suddenly a mist rolled away from her brain. The net of Tragedy whirled high and fell upon her, and the steel trident was driven deep between her ribs again:
"I—had forgotten!" She stared upon them. "What must you all think of me?"
Saxham's arm came round her, and Saxham's voice answered:
"Nothing, my dear, but that you are human, and have had a tremendous shock!"
She leaned against the Doctor's great shoulder, sighing:
"Thank you! ... I'm all right now! Not going to cry any more.... But Bawne! If we wait long enough there will be news of him? We—shall get him back?"
She felt Saxham's iron muscles jerk, and his ribs heave as though the trident had found a home between them. Perhaps he could not find his voice, for it was the Chief who said:
"We are doing everything possible. Mr. Sherbrand is helping. He has been good enough to place the telegraph installation at our disposal and the Wireless also. A call, Burgin?"
The undersized clerk had waved a hand from the threshold of the cabin. The Chief vanished. Patrine sighed:
"Oh, if there should be news!"
"You are too sensible to be bowled over if there happens to be no news," said the Doctor's voice. But his arm was tense about her waist and she felt the beating of his heart.
"Uncle Owen!"
Sherbrand had withdrawn out of earshot. She squeezed the kind responsive hand, turned her mouth towards the Doctor's ear, and whispered tremulously:
"Uncle Owen! You don't knowhimas I do. That's why I am so—horribly afraid for Bawne! He would be cruel to anyone you liked, if he hated you. And he is furious with me! I have thwarted him in—something he wishes! He is bad!—dangerous!—do you understand?"
"He cannot be a bad pilot with such a record. And in such calm weather there is little danger of an accident. We must be patient; there is nothing else to do at the moment, but wait!"
Saxham had feigned to misunderstand her, for very pity, you can conceive. Blurting out her miserable secret in this moment of unselfish sorrow, his heart was wrung in him to an anguish of compassion for Patrine. But no less was he wrung by the truth her words conveyed. His son and Lynette's was in the power of an evil man! What was David's daughter saying?
"Uncle Owen!" The tall figure of Sherbrand had moved away into the reddish twilight, and a wild desire of confession spurred on the girl to desperate frankness of speech. She hurried on, nerving herself to the change that would presently show in Saxham. "Uncle Owen! I think you had better know! Since I methimin Paris I——"
"Stop!" said Saxham. But she would not stop. She had his blood in her, and went on, though to have set her naked foot on glowing iron would have been easier than to tell.
"I have flirted with him!—gone alone with him to restaurants and music-halls!—let him take me to the Upas!"—there was a tightness like knotted whipcord about her throat; "That's—not the worst!"
"I guessed it. Stop!" Saxham repeated:
"Who told?"—she faltered brokenly, and shivered at the deep stern whisper:
"No one told, but the reputation of the—man is known to me. His type does not hesitate where a woman's virtue is concerned."
A great sigh burst from her. "And you can speak to me and touch me kindly—you don't hate the sight of me?"
"No, my poor girl, God forbid!"
"How good!—" she began, broke off and said, shuddering: "But—Aunt Lynette! How could I bear it, if she were ever to know——"
Saxham said harshly:
"She shall not know! Who do you dream will tell her? Not I! So set your mind at rest, my girl. You are a girl—though you talk like a woman of thirty!"
She said with a miserable catch in her throat:
"Nineteenisrather young, isn't it? Perhaps things would have been different if only Dada had lived!"
The utterance was as inapposite as it was sentimental. If David had still been in existence his daughter would have had no less cause for regret. But Saxham, inwardly quivering and wrung with pity, could only acquiesce:
"Perhaps things would! What you have got to do now is—Forget! Do you hear me? I order you, and I will be obeyed! And I will have you leave this titled lady who employs you, and who is all kindness and no discretion. Resign your post to-morrow! You need not return to your mother. My house is your home!" He went on in his rare tone of tenderness, "You need no telling that I care for you as a daughter. Come to me, and to Lynette who loves you dearly. She will want comfort—now that—" His voice broke and his mouth twisted. He fought with his anguish, in silence, turning his grim white face away.
"Who will tell Aunt Lynette? Oh! who will tell her?" he heard Patrine whisper. He commanded himself to answer:
"For the present, I have telephoned her that we may be detained here until late. Suppose you twist up your hair now, and put your hat on. Sherbrand!"
A sweet, manly voice answered out of the dimness of the Flying Ground: "Here, Doctor! You called me?"
In the madder and umber light of the dying sunset Sherbrand's tall brown shape came towards them. Saxham said as Patrine swept her tawny tresses into one rough rope:
"I am going to ask you to find out whether the people at the refreshment-place could give my niece something by way of substitute for dinner. A cup of coffee, or cocoa with milk, a roll and butter, and a slice of cold beef or ham?"
Sherbrand said eagerly:
"I am sure Miss Saxham can get anything like that. Mrs. Durrant keeps open house till nine o'clock, or later, if there is reason. She caters for the School Staff, respectably, by contract. I lodge—a very decent berth—over the dining-room, where I have my grub. Noisy by day but quiet enough at night-time. Will you come this way, Miss Saxham? You too, Doctor?"
Saxham declined. They left him standing there, in the wide expanse that was filling up with brooding shadows, with his back to the dying rose of the sunset, looking fixedly to the north.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE REBOUND
Patrine, that magnificent animal, had passed unknowingly through the painful ordeal which accompanies in the human the evolution of a soul. No doubt she had had one before without suspecting it. Now she was conscious of the presence of the guest.
Through the big barbaric halls of her nature, glittering with tinsel over plaster backed with canvas, thronged with vanities, appetites, desires, and ambitions, jostling at the glittering fountains, buying at the tawdry counters, flocking to the dubious restaurants, swooping down the water-chutes, wandering through the painted landscapes, drinking in the dubious atmosphere, had passed a ray of light, pure, vivifying and cleansing, had blown a breeze of crystal mountain air. And through the blare of brass a note had sounded that would never cease to vibrate in Patrine's ears. Having partially confessed, she experienced a disproportionate rebound of spirits. Her fears for Bawne weighed on her less heavily, Saxham's reference to cold ham had awakened in her the pangs of healthy appetite. The proximity of Sherbrand was a vividly keen pleasure. She had always wished for a brother, and here was the verybeau idealof one! She meant to ask him if he had sisters—she was sure they would be awfully nice girls!
One or two electric lights were switched on in the big room full of little white-covered tables, with the counter at the far end piled high with thick white plates. The big nickel urns were cold and empty, but Mrs. Durrant, the stout and smiling proprietress of the restaurant, produced hot coffee and milk in a twinkling, bread and butter, the cold ham, and a cold pigeon-pie.
With her own very fat, very pink hands Mrs. Durrant ministered, voluble the while in sympathy.... The lady had been upset because the dear little boy hadn't come back. People were sometimes kept for hours through a Loose Nut, or a Slack Wire, or a Carburetter, or some little thing or another going wrong.
"You remember when Under-Instructor Davis took Mr. Durrant for an Air Beano all the way to Upavon, Mr. Sherbrand? Flares burning 'alfway through the night, and pore me!—new to the Flying then—wasn't I, Mr. Sherbrand?—going from one fit of astericks into another, and running out to meet Durrant, when he dropped down calmly 'Ome at four in the mornin', with my hair all untidy and hangin' about me—" Patrine swiftly put up a hand to assure herself that her own tawny coils were securely fastened—"for all the world like an Indian Squawk."
"Wives had their feelings, it was only to be expected," said Mrs. Durrant. Mothers had also theirs, and, that was natural too! Patrine found the idea of her own maternal relationship to Bawne so firmly fixed in the mind of Mrs. Durrant, it was barely worth the trouble to endeavour to explain it away. Mrs. Durrant had none of her own, worse luck! but here, just coming with the salad and some fried potatoes, was Mr. Durrant's married niece, Ellen Agnes, and nobody knew better what it was to lose a darling child.
Ellen Agnes, wan-eyed, anæmic, slipshod, and overworked, supported the statement. Only in April it 'ad 'appened, and Ellen Agnes 'ad never 'eld 'er 'ead up properly since. And little Elbert the 'ealthiest of children. Rising three and never a nillness till the pewmonia carried 'im orf. 'Ad only 'ad 'im phortographed three days before it 'appened! with 'is lovely little limbs and body naked, sitting on a fur rug, the blessed dear!
Ellen Agnes not appearing to recognise any connecting link between the nude pose and the pneumonia, Patrine suppressed the obvious suggestion. Both women meant well, but their talkative sympathy oppressed her. She imagined how, when Sherbrand ate alone, the stout aunt and the thin niece would hover round his table, assailing his ears with their Cockney voices, making their common, vulgar comments on the happenings of the day.
Perhaps her disrelish showed, for the kind women presently slackened their attentions. There was nothing then to divert Sherbrand's attention from his guest, beyond the undeniable attractions of the hastily spread board.
So they ate the pie, all of it. Patrine cried, in frank astonishment at the evaporation of her second plateful:
"But I am a wolf or something. No! Not even salad. What must you think of me? Crying my eyes out one minute and stodging pigeon-pie the next! Do the rest of the friends you feed here behave as badly as that?"
Sherbrand returned, ignoring the mention of other guests:
"Now, what should I think? Nothing but that you wanted something to buck you, and I was pretty ravenous myself. It was pretty parky up there at 10,000." He answered to her question how high that was: "Why, comparatively, you might imagine it about nine times as high as the top of St. Paul's Cross from the level of the ground."
Little the speaker dreamed then of aërial battles to be fought at 20,000. She asked whether he had "felt giddy" and he shook his head, saying:
"If I had felt inclined to giddiness I should have put off climbing until I felt fitter. I sympathise with Opera Stars who disappoint full houses, because some high C or lower G is a hairsbreadth off the bull. The singer can't afford a false note. It's death to a reputation. And the Flying Man can't risk brain-swim, because it means possibly nose-dive and smash. So I stay out of my sky unless I'm sure of myself. There's nothing on earth like being sure."
He had a way of saying "my sky" that was queer and rather beautiful. Just as though he had been a lark, occurred to Patrine. And indeed, in the beaky, jutting nose, and the full, bright eyes set forward and flush with the wide orbital arches, there was some resemblance between the man and the bird.
Patrine sunned herself in the lighter moment. She who had lain through the night sleepless—had risen still a bond-slave—realized that her fetters were broken now that her evil genius had flown. Taking with him her beloved, she fully believed in malice. Piercing though that knowledge was, it could not mar the blissful sense of freedom, mental and physical.
Bawne would be brought back. Meanwhile, one's blood sang through one's being, mere living was riotous ecstasy, mere breathing sheerest delight. The joy of life radiated from her. And to Sherbrand, sitting opposite at the little coarse-clothed table, she grew momentarily more and more like the girl of the Milles Plaisirs.
True, instead of cloudy black, her hair vied in tone with the banner of coppery flame that streams from the crater of an active volcano, or burns above some giant crucible of molten metal ready to be poured forth. Her long eyes under her wide level brows looked the colour of peat-water, in the electric light that contracted their pupils to pin-heads, and brought out against the yellow-distempered walls the creamy whiteness of her wonderful skin. When she leaned her round elbows on the table-cloth and smiled at him, it was the frank, generous smile that had warmed his heart when he stood solitary and unfriended on the rose-pink carpet near the gilt turnstile on the Upper Promenade.
He would put it to the test. He beckoned the pallid Ellen Agnes, asked for the bill, slipped his hand into a breast-pocket and drew from it a tiny white silk purse.
"Oh! You found ..."
With an indescribable emotion, half pain, half pleasure, she saw her missing property in the broad extended palm. He said:
"It flashed on me, even as I blackguarded Davis, that you must have paid that Commissionaire-fellow at the turnstile or he'd have been breathing vengeance at my back. So I ran back to find you and ask for an address where I might send the money. You were gone! He had got this purse in his hand. So I—bluffed the brute for all I was worth, and got him to give it me!—a stroke of luck—for I'd no money left to bribe him with! Be kind and tell me how much you gave the fellow!"
The deep dimple Sherbrand remembered showed in the full oval of one of her white cheeks. Slowly the pale rose-flush sweetened and warmed the whiteness. Her eyes were dusky stars under the barbaric wealth of beech-leaf tresses. A slow smile curved her mouth, the scarlet lips parted widely, showing two perfect rows of gleaming teeth.
"Two half-jimmies!" said the rich, mellow woman's baritone. Why did it talk such awful slang? "Half my screw for one whole week of letter-writing, running errands, doing shopping, and generally sheepdogging for my friend, Lady Beauvayse!"
"Then please take this!" This was a fat bright sovereign. "And be kind and say that I may stick to the purse?"
"If you care to—" Patrine began, dubiously.
"I care—most awfully!" He went on quickly. "Lady Beauvayse—your friend—I've seen her—if she's very pretty and tremendously American?"
She nodded.
"You've spotted her! That's Lady Beau—the dear thing! But she only talks Yankee Doodle to bounders or fogies, or people who seem to expect it from her. Her English is as good as mine."
"You don't mean it!" His keen face crinkled with laughter. She was superbly unconscious of its cause. He went on, rather ashamed of having made fun of her: "That accounts for the Old Kent Road-cum-Whitechapel I've heard from the august lips of British duchesses. At cricket-matches when Eton and Harrow were playing 'Varsity."
"Does it? I think not! The duchesses weren't amusing themselves, or trying to snub swankers. They were just mothers—realmothers—trying to talk cricket to their boys. And the boys—the sweets!—grinning up their blessed young sleeves, and saying 'Yes'm!' and 'No'm!' How I do love boys! Don't you?" Her smile contracted with a spasm of anguish. "And I'm sitting here, gobbling and gabbling, when my darling!—" She rose taller than ever, from the little table, caught up her feather stole from a chairback near and slung it vigorously round her, straightened the tinsel hat with a side-glance at the strip of a looking-glass nailed in a frame of cheap gilt beading on the matchboarded wall at her right hand, picked up the vanity-bag and the long-sticked sunshade, and declared herself ready to go.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A NIGHT IN JULY
She reached the door before him. He had turned to say considerately to the good woman of the restaurant:
"We shall be late.... Frightfully, I expect! Promise me you won't sit up!"
"Oh! but I can't promise! One never knows! Best to have people up an' ready when there might be need of 'em!" Patrine heard, as she wrenched at the handle of the green curtained glass door.
"No—no! Let me!"
His hand touched hers and she drew it away, not before a keen, sharp thrill had traversed her. "Vile, hateful creature!" she said to the Patrine von Herrnung knew—the other woman within her, whom she loathed. "Is not it enough that you have done what you have done?" Then as she passed out into the night, feeling beneath her feet the roughness of the gravel walk that led between grass-plats studded with green painted chairs and little iron tables, a strange roaring filled her ears and hellish tongues of fire licked a sky of vivid blackness. She recoiled, saying in awed and shaken tones:
"Why! What has happened? What does it mean? ... How horrible!"
The door had shut behind them. Now the round dome of the sky showed not black, but velvety purple. Away in the south-east a fierce red moon drifted like some derelict vessel burning away to embers on a waveless midnight sea. And sheaves of dazzling blue-white flames, leaping and roaring, fenced in, or seemed to fence, a dreadful lake of Stygian darkness, upon the surface of which figures—were they men or devils?—moved....
"Don't be scared, Miss Saxham! It's nothing ... though I ought to have wanted you...!"
Not with intent, her heaving shoulder pressed against the breast of the man who had followed her. Perhaps the contact thrilled him, for his voice was unsteady as he went on:
"I was rather a brute to forget! ... It's a night-flare to guide—possible home-comers! ... Wads of tow dipped in petrol, burning in iron buckets round our landing-place.'
"I ought to have guessed," she said ruefully. "Forgive me for being such an idiot!"
His answer was unexpected.
"On condition that you'll leave off saying 'Great Scott!' and things like that."
"All right! But what's the matter with the expression, anyhow?" she demanded. "Do you always get riled when women use slang?"
They had been standing within the gate that led upon the Flying Ground, still girdled by its Valkyr-ring of leaping flame. He said, holding open the gate to let her pass through:
"I use slang myself, habitually, like every other man I know. But I don't know a man who really likes to hear his wife or sweetheart copy him in that respect. For myself who have neither wife, sweetheart, nor even sister, I can only say what I feel. It is—that a beautiful woman should use beautiful language. One of the old Greek poets put the whole thing into two lines. I've forgotten the original, but the translation runs like this:
"From the goddess the speech of Olympus,From the herd-maid the language of the cows."
"From the goddess the speech of Olympus,From the herd-maid the language of the cows."
"From the goddess the speech of Olympus,
From the herd-maid the language of the cows."
"I'm no goddess, God knows!" said Patrine, sorrowfully and sincerely.
Then a light scorching flame seemed to envelop her whole body. She felt Sherbrand's breath upon her cheek.... He said, speaking swiftly, and close to her ear:
"No, you are not a goddess, but something far better! You are a woman one could worship! You could hate magnificently and forgive greatly, and love to the very verge of death! That was said to me of the Doctor, and you are like him!"
"Don't!" she said, wincing. "You don't know me!"
He answered firmly:
"But I do know you! I knew you the moment I saw you in Paris. You're the girl I have been waiting for ever since I read Morris's 'Eredwellers'. You're The Friend! Now I've found you I shall never let you go again!"
What midsummer madness was this, prompting him to sweet audacity? His, "I shall never let you go!" had a convincing, manly ring. She quickened her steps, wading through a shallow sea of shadows, through which the warm short turf came up to meet her feet. He kept by her side, and together they moved towards the Valkyr-ring of fire, changing as they advanced into isolated pillars of towering flame outlining the huge white oval of Fanshaw's landing-place. Here and there the goblin-like shapes moved, stirring the flares with rods, feeding the blaze with something from vessels they carried. And two other figures stood in talk by the telegraph-hut, recognisable, outlined against the oblong of electric radiance framed by the doorway, as Saxham and the Chief.
"This is a bit previous, you think? Headlong—ill-considered on my part—to have spoken like this to a girl I've only met once before? You must understand—a man who follows a risky profession gets into the way of not waiting for to-morrow, because to-day may be the wind-up. Say you are not angry!" Sherbrand pleaded.
"No, you poor dear boy! But you're so awfully mistaken!" There was a rich and exquisite tenderness, it seemed to Sherbrand, in the deep, full, breathy tones. "I'm not a bit what you think me! There is nothing worthy of worship in a woman like me," said Patrine.
He asked, as they walked side by side from patches of brilliant blue-white light into deep oases of shadow:
"May I say more? May I tell you that I've thought of you ever since that Paris night.... What things I've called myself—if you only knew!—for not getting your address. But I swore I'd find you somehow, and I would have! I'd know your voice among a thousand. If I were blind, and forgot other people's faces, I should always see yours painted against the dark. At night—now! when I shut my eyes ... there it is! You are not angry?"
"No—I'm only sorry for you!" she said in her deepest, sweetest tone.
"Sorry?" There was keen anxiety in the face that was illuminated by the petrol-flare they were passing. "You're not—married—or going to be?" he asked.
"Neither!"
"Thank God!" said Sherbrand simply and sincerely. "Now I'll go on! My rank bad luck gives me a kind of right. This morning I got up solid in the conviction that you and I were meant for one another; that we should somehow be brought together; that the French Government would make it possible for me to marry you by buying my hawk-hoverer—for with only the two hundred a year my uncle left me, and the two hundred my Instructorship here brings me—how could I possibly have the nerve to ask you to be my wife? And—" He caught his breath, "And everything I'd dreamed came real. The test succeeded! I dived down out of my sky to find You! Miracle of miracles. And not twenty minutes later—I found myself nearly, if not quite—a ruined man. For if my invention has been swiped off to Germany, France will never buy, for money—what her neighbour gets for nought!"
"I understand. My poor Flying Man, you've been plucked of some of your wing-feathers!"
"I don't care, if you'll wait for me until they grow again!"
How grim a day had been followed by this night of wonder! Woven of the shining stuff of dreams it seemed, then and for long years after, to Patrine. Their intimacy grew and ripened like a magic beanstalk in the light of the red moon and the fierce blue petrol-flares. She said with a catch in her breath—like Sherbrand's:
"You must be serious!"
"I never was more so!"
She amended:
"We must be sensible! Oh! but this has been a close-packed day!"
"Hasn't it!" Sherbrand agreed, as they moved on side by side, from islands of raw, glaring light into broad pools of lustreless darkness, their tall heads level, for Patrine carried her hat of silver spangles swinging from the top of the sunshade with the lengthy stick. "Sometimes, for weeks, the days slip by smoothly as the beads of a Rosary over a baby's finger. Then—bang-bang-bang! they explode—like a rocket fired by a signal-pistol—until things fizzle out into dulness again."
"It's true!" Her bosom rose in a sigh. "But it's possible to get awfully fed up with banging and fizzling. One can learn to long—just for a little dulness, as long as it means quiet and rest, and peace of mind."
That Patrine should voice such an aspiration was incredible even to the speaker. "How changed I must be!" she said to herself, as Sherbrand answered her:
"With heathery moors and towering scaurs, and galloping trout-rivers brabbling over lichened boulders—and Somebody one loves to talk to—one calls that kind of dulness a happy honeymoon!"
She thrilled as his hand, swinging freely by his hip, touched hers, lightly, enclosed, and then released it. He was no tardy lover, this Flying Man. He knew a thousand times better than von Herrnung how a girl should be courted and wooed. For, with her heart in joyful tumult, and her usually pale cheeks warmed and rosy with shy blushes, it was a girl who walked beside Alan Sherbrand that night. I am sorry she could forget so easily the slip that had led her over the frontier line, the Rubicon that can never be recrossed. But in fact she did forget, just as a young man would have forgotten. Though she was to remember as only a woman can remember, and to suffer as only a woman can.
In the midst of the new, wonderful happiness, so strangely threaded not only for Patrine, with bitter loss and tragic possibilities, she suffered a quite intolerable twinge of memory in the sudden recollection of the boldly-scrutinising look cast upon her by the bearded man in the white Naval uniform. She did not realise that an imperious gesture of the brown hand, whose wrist had sported a massive gold watch-bracelet, had whisked von Herrnung off the scene. But she guessed that the huge red-haired Prussian, bowing at the side of the big blue F.I.A.T., had clicked his heels before a master who could break him at his will.
He had boasted.... Theyknew! Not only the bearded man whose look had stung so, but the close-shaven old Colossus with the tortoiseshell-mounted pince-nez on his thick heavy nose and the huge wart on his yellow cheek. And the sallow diplomat in the Homburg hat shadowing the sly glance and the moustache tucked up by a sinister smile under his drooping Oriental nose. They all knew.... Even the servant had worn the leer that is born of knowledge, as he said in his Teutonic gutturals:
"The lady is a friend of the gentleman who brought her here..."
Horrible! But she would not remember. She banished the hateful, knowing faces with a gallant effort and turned to Sherbrand, asking whether he had been an Eton, or Rugby, or Harrow boy?
For had her Flying Man borne the cachet of the Public School Patrine Saxham would have infinitely preferred it. That it is possible to be a snob even in the most tragic or romantic moment of one's existence, she had not realised before she discovered herself to herself in this way.
"Downside was my school," he said quite proudly. Patrine had no acquaintance with Downside. "My father would have liked me to go to Harrow; but my uncle—my mother's brother—who paid for my education!—being a Catholic, naturally preferred the place where the Faith was taught. And my mother—as naturally—shared his preference. I was happy at Downside. The Fathers were thundering good to me. I worked hard—and I played hard—and when it wasn't Swot, or cricket, or football, or fives, or boxing, it was the making of flying-sticks, just shaved laths with paper wings, at first—and then a dodge much more ambitious, a model Wright in varnished card, with a propeller worked by a rubber release.... My father was pleased at my being a chip of the old block in my turn for mechanics. But when I wouldn't go up for Woolwich—when I entered at Strongitharm's College of Engineering on Tyneside, and spent two years at Folsom's Works at Sunderland—he rather gave me up, I fancy, as a low-minded kind of cad."
He shook himself as though to shake off the adverse paternal judgment.
"I had my reasons for not going in for the Army, though I love it. They weren't easy to explain, and so I didn't try. But my father never liked the idea of my being a civil engineer. Even my mother, and my uncle—dear old fellow—he understands me better now!"
"Why?"
"Because he's dead!" said Sherbrand simply, "and the Holy Souls know everything!"
"The Holy Souls?" By the glare of the flare-light her puzzled eyes questioned him.
"The Holy Souls in Purgatory. They're privileged to help us. We help them—by praying for them. It's—a spiritual intercommunication—a kind of endless chain. A circuit of influence, received and transmitted, not by etheric flashes, but by a medium more subtle. Prayer—in a word!"
His bright-winged intellect had outstripped her heavier, duller intelligence. She suddenly felt like a caterpillar on a cabbage-leaf, slow-moving, groping, but dimly conscious of a distant affinity with the jewel-winged butterfly hovering high in golden air....
"Prayer," she repeated dully, "do you believe in prayer?"
"Naturally!" said Sherbrand—"since I believe in God. Do not you? ..."
"I hardly——"
In the ensuing pause Patrine had a brief retrospective vision of the curate who had prepared her for Confirmation, and who had talked of the Almighty as though He were a crotchety but benevolent old man. And last time she had been to Church—a fashionably attended High Church in the West End—another curate in a black cassock and tufted biretta had preached about the 'Par of Card, the baptismal dar of Grace, the bar of flars,' in which our first parents dwelt in Eden, 'the fatal ar' in which they sinned, and the 'shar of tars' with which Eve lamented her fall.
"No," she said bluntly, "I don't think I believe in God at all now, though it sometimes seems as though there must be Somebody behind things!—Somebody who punishes—Somebody who laughs! As for a religion, I don't suppose I've ever had one. Oh, yes!—my religion is Aunt Lynette!"
A mental picture of Lynette, years ago in the Harley Street nursery, teaching a curly-headed baby Bawne to say his evening prayer, while a great galumphing girl stood in the doorway and looked and listened, rose up and brought with it the horrible choking sensation. She fought with it as Sherbrand said:
"I think you are speaking of Mrs. Saxham? Well, one must have a star to hitch one's waggon to. And she is a star—if ever I saw one! A woman with a face like a Donatello Madonna, or a tall lily growing in the garden-cloisters of some Italian mountain-convent, and who has the Faith,—ought to be able to teach you to believe in God! Why not ask her? I once knelt in a Church near her, and saw her praying. She seemed—very close to what Norman or someone else called the Eternal Verities."
"She will be nearer still," said Patrine with sudden, savage roughness, "if anything happens—if Bawne is killed! She will die of a broken heart!"
"Then why not pray," argued Sherbrand, "that she may get him back again? Why not try it? There's nothing else that helps so well!"
"Pray!" The tall girl stopped short and swung round on him, facing him. A moment since they had walked like lovers. Now the spell was broken—at all events, for the time.
"Pray—pray!" she mocked. "Am I a sneak?—to pray when I don't believe in prayer! And if I did believe, God—if He exists—would not hear me. Even the parsons own He has His favourites. I am not one of them.... I am one of His forgets!"
CHAPTER XL
MACROMBIE IS SACKED
Tall, lithe, vigorous, masterful, they confronted each other across the gulf that suddenly opened between them—the bottomless chasm that yawns between Faith and Unbelief.
In the fitful uncanny light, the darker side of Patrine started into sinister prominence. Her defiant face was masked by shadow, but the fierce vibrating voice and towering shape had something of the fallen angel. Had wide sable pinions sprung and bannered from her shoulders, Sherbrand would hardly have been surprised.
"Let us draw the line at that. If we are to be friends—and I would like us to be!—agree to it! But since you have what I have not—you would call it Faith, no doubt," he guessed the wide mouth curving in a jeering smile, "there is nothing to preventyoufrom praying for Aunt Lynette and for Bawne too! Unless you are the kind of physician who draws the line at taking his own drugs!"
If she had thought to disconcert Sherbrand she erred. He said instantly:
"I give you my word of Honour that I will pray for them! But there is one other person much dearer to me than either. You don't ask me forher, but all the same..."
"You kind, dear boy! Pray for me all you want to!"
She was his big, smiling girl of the Milles Plaisirs, and the Pat young Bawne worshipped, as she stretched out her beautiful, massive arm and offered him a cordial hand.
"Shake, Mister! Making love to me one minute and bally-ragging me the next! ... Great Scott! Ah!—I've said it again—and I gave you my word I'd not!"
He took the hand in a close grasp, sought for the other and took it also....
"Thank you! Why, how you're shivering! You have nothing but that feather thing over your thin gown! Wait half a minute—I'll get you a wrap!"
He was gone in an instant, leaving her standing on the border-line of one of the oases of black-velvet shadow, swayed by the violence of her emotion as some tall young birch might have been shaken by the fury of a south-west gale.
His touch.... She had not dreamed.... Her head drooped, and a long sigh went fluttering after him into the darkness, like some night-moth whose wings are wrought of hues more gorgeous than the peacock butterfly's, whose scent is on the alert, and whose diamond eyes pierce the blackest midnight in search of the partner of its kind.