The slight figure lying so still upon the stretcher had never been remarkable for beauty of proportion. The sharpened face with its hue of old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards, with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still form.He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square, with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to his hand.The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating? Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree. The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies, through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a single oar."Is this stuff water?"The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question. Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it shining, but not dripping, thinking:"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth Æneid, when I swotted Virgil at School.""Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had answered instantly:"But if this is the Ninefold—what about the 'cold and venomous waters, consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels.'" The speaker dipped his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping, and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!""Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did I suppose—" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion, when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before.""Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of his face just now—it can be nobody but Cruse.""Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker, uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh—may Those Above reward him for an ould, bould gentleman!—that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or suchlike—to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"—the voice hesitated—"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was afther pluggin' him through the head—and himself just layin' the Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!""Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major—or Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist—who died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital. Had a touch of influenza—and would get out of bed to operate on one of the Sisters—a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in. Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover. Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!""Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was my grandfather—by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across! He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning. It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight—and he was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man went in with the mail.""Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the voice of a small girl—Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small, black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starchedguimpeand wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my Dada—who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up and burning! When me and Mummy——""Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is notconvenablethatpetites demoisellesshould interrupt their elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!""Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children. The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went on: "Right or wrong—we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is a near relation—or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In every case a supreme benefactor——""Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely, monsieur! The Helper—the Benefactor of us all!"As the keel grated on unseen bottom, she folded her hands with a beautiful devoutness, and sank upon her knees, drawing with her the child. The man of the Loyal Irish followed her example. Franky found himself kneeling with the others—and as the boat's prow ploughed into sand or shingle, and the Ferryman, shipping his oar, moved shorewards with a shepherding gesture, the voyagers rose with a thrill of expectancy, and followed with one accord.He stepped ashore—dropping the great black mantle—turned and faced them, spreading out His Arms. Beauty Divine, glory unspeakable——CHAPTER LXVIITHE QUESTION"Have I been honest?" Patrine asked herself over and over, kneeling by the open window, staring into the darkness. "Have I been just towards the man who never was a friend even when he played the lover? Did not my own attitude of cynical curiosity towards secret, hidden things, bias his line of conduct towards me? Might not even von Herrnung have respected a girl who showed no inclination to flutter moth-like, about the flaming torch of Sin? No! he would not. But I could have saved myself even from scorching—I, who approached the flame too closely, and shall carry the scars of my burning to the grave."Drip, drip, drip! Water, oozing from the box that stood upon the table, was dropping on the carpet with the small, insistent sound.... At the west end of the Catholic Church where Patrine had told her story to a priest in the Confessional there was a great black Crucifix, bearing a white thorn-crowned Figure gashed with gory-seeming wounds. She had fancied that the blood from them dripped down upon the pavement as she had sat staring at the High Altar, and wondering whether it were true that wilful sin committed by men and women for whose salvation Christ had bled and died might not cause Him suffering even now?She had been willing to sin for Sherbrand, and said so in her hour of madness. Yet the renunciation of her lover as a husband had been an act of the purest love. Perhaps God would overlook the one thing for the sake of the other? Perhaps He had really spoken by the mouth of that old priest whose tears had dropped upon his withered hands....Drip, drip, drip! Patrine began to suspect the source whence the sound proceeded. The people who had packed the roses—they must be roses—had wetted the cotton-wool too heavily, the fools! The inlaid table and the carpet would suffer if the wet were not mopped up. One ought to ring for Mrs. Keyse or Janey, or better still, see to it oneself.She half-rose with this intention, then sank down again nervelessly. It was half-past ten. The October night leaned close over London, Harley Street was muffled in velvet darkness. The veiled gleam of electric lights showed at its junction with Cavendish Square. The rumble of the tube train came from Portland Place, the faint shriek of the Northern Express sounded from Euston. A Brocken Hunt of motor-buses screeched and clanked up the Marylebone Road and faded into distance. The rumble and roar of Oxford Street showed signs of diminution. It was possible to hear stray sentences spoken by people passing upon the pavement below."I don't care!" This from the shorter of two female figures that had halted before the house. The edge of light-coloured skirt showing below her cloak, and the gleam of white cuffs framing the gloved hands with which she gestured, suggested a Hospital nurse to Patrine. "Taxation without Representation is a crying injustice—and the men will wake up to it one of these days.... And Mrs. Clash may be a noisy person—and Fanny Leaven may drop her haiches—I do myself when I get stirred up. But they're in earnest—and they've suffered—cruel!—for their convictions. Look at this Petrell—that one that always takes the Chair. She's a physical wreck—with the treatment she's had—and I know what I'm talking about! Haven't we had Suffragettes brought to the Hospital for treatment over and over—after they'd been pitched out of Political Meetings by Stewards and half-throttled by Police. What I say is—Moses! how late! ... We shall get locked out of the Home if we don't run for it!"And their light hurrying footsteps and the unmistakable frou-frou of starched print accompanying, passed away up Harley Street. They must have come from the Mass Meeting of Suffragists that had taken place at the Royal Hall.It had been a memorable evening. The atmosphere of the Royal Hall, thronged not only with the members of the W.S.S.S. but with representatives of many other Women's Unions and Associations and Societies and Leagues, was highly charged with electricity. Mrs. Petrell, resolute-lipped, quiet-eyed, clear of diction and composed of manner, knew, as she sat in her chair beside the little table in the middle of the crowded platform, and better even than the plain-clothes police among the audience—that at any moment the storm might break.She had advocated with all her much-tried strength an armistice for the War-period, involving a temporary abandonment of militant methods and inflammatory addresses, in favour of a policy of active help and practical sympathy, alike honourable to her head and heart.Other Societies, Unions, Leagues, and Associations might have followed the lead of their Presidents. But would the W.S.S.S. accept her programme? Militancy had been its motto and the breath of its nostrils through all these troubled years. Since the outbreak of War, Flaming Fanny had busily sown the whirlwind, advocating fresh Demonstrations in conjunction with a system of Unlimited Strikes. Woman must hold her hand, now that her help was needed. Man, the Oppressor of all time, must be coerced by Woman's flat refusal to take part in Relief Work, or War Work, or Work of any kind whatever, into yielding the withheld right. And Mrs. Clash sided with Fanny—and others, nearer home.Little wonder then that Pressmen, sensing the imminence of riot, had turned out in their shabbiest tweeds and left their watches and tie-pins at home. Little wonder that Medical Students, who had not already joined the Service, with betting-men and patrons of the pugilistic Prize Ring, found themselves baulked of anticipated entertainment, or that loafers and crooks, pickpockets and rowdies, disappointed of a pleasurable evening, expressed themselves in unmeasured terms regarding that Mass Meeting at the Royal Hall.A melodious speaking-voice can be a magical wand, wielded by the mouth of a plain woman. But when the woman is beautiful and intellectual, when soul breathes through her words, and strength and tenderness, then she becomes a Force to reckon with, a Power to move mountains and bring water of tears from the living rock of the hardest human heart.The officially-checked lights of the Hall shone down upon a sea of threatening faces. The electric battens over the speaker's head showed her to be a tall, fair, slender woman, dressed in filmy grey, veiling soft clinging silk of the same shade. The simplicity of her dress was unrelieved by ornaments other than a chain of pearls about her long throat. The red-brown hair seemed heavy for the little Greek head, the lovely pale face with the sensitive lips, wore a look of patient sorrow, the eyes she turned upon the audience—a seething mixture of irreconcilable elements—had in them courage, sympathy and understanding, and knowledge too. Before she spoke she had created an impression. Strangers were ingratiated by her beauty and evident refinement. Those who best knew her were among the wildest and most reckless there. They had quieted, when she had risen up in her unnoticed corner of the platform, and moved forwards to the speaker's place opposite the Chair, as though oil had been cast upon the waters of a stormy sea."When God Willed this War that we call Armageddon," she had said to them—"for without the permission of the Most High the earthly Powers that planned and prepared it could not have plucked the fruit of their desire—it came in time to prevent the declaration of a War even more terrible. War, to the Death, between Woman and Man."In a few trenchant words she painted the dire results of such hostility."That unnatural horror has been mercifully averted," she said to them. "The old sore is healed, there is no hatred nor rancour left. We women have learned what a price has to be paid for the Franchise of Manhood. It is the brave blood that is drenching the soil of Belgium and France and Poland—that will flow in rivers as wide as the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge before Peace is proclaimed again. They have answered the Call. They are pouring into the recruiting offices—in thousands of thousands—those who have given up their loved ones, their homes, their hopes of success in Arts or Sciences, professions or businesses or trades. Will women be as unselfish and as generous when their Call comes? For it will come. It is coming while I stand here!"They were strangely quiet, under the spell of the beautiful voice, and the eyes that were luminous and deep with tenderness:"There are faithful Christians among you; brave earnest souls who have prayed to GOD for guidance among the difficulties that beset the way for working-women, and weaker souls have been maddened to frenzy and plunged into unbelief by the intolerance and the injustice, the shrieking wrongs and the unpurged evils that Man, who enters upon his heritage the world, by the Gate of Motherhood, has ignorantly accumulated upon the shoulders of the sex he professes to respect."There was a murmur of approval at this. She lifted a hand, and they were silent."I say to those who have despaired, 'Despair no longer!' I say to those who have prayed—'Your prayer is answered!' Take up the work that has dropped from the hands that are busy with the rifle. Prove your right to the Parliamentary Franchise. Take your place amongst the World's Workers, for good and for all. The Vote will be granted: it cannot be denied! But if you had it now, passionately as you desire it, and the choice were offered you—Oh! my sisters!—would you not yield it up with gladness to bring those dead men back to life again?"And after a pause of unbroken silence she added:"For they have fought even better than they knew. They have re-conquered Woman. Freely and willingly as comrade and helper she takes her place and her share of the burden. Peace is proclaimed. The War between the sexes is at an end!"We know how truly the speaker prophesied. Quietly as the vast Atlantic flows into and fills a labyrinth of empty, echoing, rock-caverns, the vast body of unemployed women took the places of the male workers called away to the Front. They had clicked into the slots before the world was well aware of it, or they themselves understood that a miracle had been wrought.Said the breeched and gaitered lady-conductor of a North-West tram the other day:"Now the ones that was brought up active has got their chance to do a bit, and the ones that was brought up idle 'ave found out that they like work, will they ever be content to sit and twiddle their thumbs again? I don't think!" She clipped pink tickets with zeal, and when a red-nosed, watery-eyed elderly man who had offered her a pewter shilling cursed her venomously as she thrust the coin back on him: "'Ere you! ... 'Op it!" she said to the offender, and caught him neatly by the scruff, hauled him down the cork-screw stairway, and deposited him in the Camden Road without turning a hair.CHAPTER LXVIIITHE DEVIL-EGGVon Herrnung had quitted the earth sober, to discover at the height of a thousand metres that his potations had dulled his brain. As he ceased to climb and brought down the nose of the Taube to the level, he realised that he was dizzy, and that at the pit of his stomach squatted the aviator's deadly foe, the demon of nausea. He pictured it as a yellow, frog-like thing with frothing leathery lips and green eyes that squinted. This image vexed him, and would not be driven away.He switched on the hawk-hoverer and sensed the drag of the twin horizontal flanged screws against the thrust of the propeller, adding to its drone the vibration of the endless travelling-chains running in their sheath of transparent talc. To make room for its long groove in the floor of the bird-body, the thick glass port beneath the pilot's feet had been removed by the sergeant-mechanic of the Flight Squadron. Now there were two ports, one on either side. Through these the German looked down upon the shell-pounded ruins of the village-town, its roofless homes and broken enclosures giving the effect of a wild-bees' nest laid open by the gardener's shovel after the gardener has smoked out the bees. As von Herrnung located the baker's house by aid of his recently acquired binoculars, another swirl of sickness took him, and he shuddered and spat bile over the side.Those distant voices of guns had not ceased their sullen calling. In the rose-flushed south towards which the Taube faced as it hovered above the ruins of the village, black columns of vapour swelled and towered, and acrid flashes stabbed through the murkiness. One should be there, his manlier self said to him. Better to be a brave German bird dodging Death amongst the puffs of shrapnel, dropping devil-eggs on the British batteries, winning back the forfeited Cross and the lost Imperial favour, than to be here, hanging like a carrion-vulture over the maimed body of a dying man.Perhaps. But one had promised oneself revenge for the scorn that had stung like fire. And one had bragged to the English boy of what one meant to do. He looked back, and called through the speaking-tube that traversed the canvas over-deck between the pilot's seat and the passenger's:"Unstrap yourself and come to me and take the control-stick.Schnell—do you hear? What is that you say?" He put the voice-tube to his ear and heard the shrill pipe answer through it. "You think it best to tell me that you take back your parole?" The big teeth grinned under the red moustache. "All right!" said the Enemy. "While we are in the air, you are free to jump out if you like, and run away. When we get to the ground again, that is another matter. Come now, sit in front of me and take over the controls!"And as the boy obeyed, creeping beneath the intervening deck and under the canvas partition, the Enemy moved back upon the pilot-seat, keeping his feet on the lower controls, and separating his knees so as to leave a ledge for Bawne to occupy. Still laughing, he took spare safety-straps that hung on each side against the bulwarks, and clipped the patent pneumatic studs to the belt that girt the boy.It did not do to run risks. Some day, it might occur to the Emperor to order von Herrnung to deliver up his captive. And—the little devil was useful—hellishly! He had come into the world, twelve years ago—possessed of the Flying Gift. He had taken to the air as naturally as a young crow or pigeon. A tap on the shoulder, a word shouted in his ear—and he knew what you wanted! He understood now why his overlord required the unrestricted use of his arms at this moment. The small hands twitched as they gripped the lever, and shudders convulsed the slender frame. Noting this von Herrnung grinned. His qualms had left him for the present, he was once more master of his stomach and lord of his cool and steady brain. Through the back of his head the boy could see him—leaning his big body sidewise—craning his neck over the edge of the fuselage—his hand hovering over the bomb hanging near in its wire holder, his keen hard eyes calculating distance—his red brows knitted, his full mouth smiling under its thatch of red hair. The devil-egg would burst upon its impact with a roof or with the ground, a thousand metres under the Taube. How many times since the red dawning of the Aggressor's Day had he, von Herrnung, not plucked out the pin and lifted the latch, and sent Death and Destruction speeding earthwards! Why should this particular devil-egg have exploded five seconds after its release?The detonating mechanism had been wrongly set, or the explosive had suffered some chemical deterioration. With the volcanic upburst of flaming gases and the fierce blizzard of rending steel splinters, the Taube was shot upwards like the cork from a bottle of champagne. The Enemy had cut out the hovering-gear when he had dropped the devil-egg, and the thrust of the tractor had sent the Taube rushing on. Thus, though she had been bumped about on waves of rising gases—though daylight shone through holes in her wings and body,—a wheel had dropped like a stone from her under-carriage—and a piece of her tail had gone fluttering and swerving earthwards, no serious damage had been done to the machine.Bawne's cheek was bleeding from the scratch of a splinter, but he stuck manfully to the controls. "Steer south," he had been told, "when I switch off the hoverer," and he had waited, his teeth set, his brows knitted, his eyes on the compass, and his heart crying out to God to save his new-found friend.He knew it was because he had prayed so hard that the bomb had exploded prematurely. Would the Enemy try again with the one that yet remained? But the Enemy made no sign. One dared not look round or speak to him. Was he in a fit, or sick, or merely shamming? One could feel the big body heaving at one's back as it lay huddled against the canvas partition, with rolling head and arms spread wide, and knees that straddled and sagged.Jerk! The Taube heaved her after-part as a cow gets up, and nose-dived. Von Herrnung's feet had slipped from the controls, and her rudder was flapping free. As Bawne toed the bar and gripped the guide-wheel, and brought the keel to a level, the blood in his veins tingled and he knew a thrill of joy.One had borne a lot, but—Man alive!—a moment like this was worth it. What Boy Scout could deny the greatness of this boy's reward? To be master of this giant Bird, rushing at the speed of an express-train over woods and fields and villages, diminished to the patches on a crazy-quilt by the height at which one sped. To hear the shrill breeze harping in the wires and the roar of the flashing tractor, and change the din at a finger-touch to the silence of a glide.West, where the sun was setting in red fire were signs by now familiar. Linked specks that were big grey German troop-trains ran over the shining gossamer-lines of the railways, going south. Where the shining lines looked like scattered pins, the railways had been blown up by the Belgians, or the British. Things like caterpillars crawling over the white ribbons of the highways were German motor-lorries dragging great howitzers, or Army Supply and Transport, or marching columns of robust, bullet-headed German infantrymen.A blot of grey upon a town was where a Division rested. Strings of grey spiders hurrying south, would be brigades of cyclist telegraphists or sharpshooters, and processions of drab beetles scuttling along, Field Ambulances, or Staff motor-cars. One would have said that a green-grey blight had fallen upon Belgium, swiftly advancing, stayed by nothing, devouring as it moved.East, where the shadow of the Taube raced beside her like a carriage-dog, black streaks that were barges still crawled on the canals, and peasants' carts crept over the roads—and there were no columns of troops in view, nor uglier tokens of the War. Though the red and brown towns showed scant signs of life, late root-crops were being harvested; plough-teams were breaking up the stubbles, factory chimneys were smoking, and acres of linen-web yet spread to bleach along the river-banks.Later in the month the grey-green blight was to sweep over all this region as the Boche retreated before the thrust of the 1st and 4th British Army Corps, from Houthulst Forest to Menin-on-Lys.Those voices of the guns were nearer now. They talked on incessantly. You felt the air that carried you vibrating as you flew. The solid earth heaved up in waves under the dusty golden smoke-drifts veiling the south horizon. Black pillars of smoke anddébrisclimbed and collapsed against the dusty gold. Grey Imperial Staff cars were parked in the courtyard of a château with pepper-box towers. Officers sat at tables on the vine-covered terrace, while a farm close by was doing duty as a casualty-clearing station. You could pick out the flutter of the Red Cross Flag on a broken tree beside the gateway—and the come and go of the bearers carrying laden or empty stretchers—and the white armlets of theSanitätskorpsmen who drove the ambulance-cars. To have seen over and over again what grown folks learned from newspapers was to be a man seasoned in War, whilst yet one's bones were young. Well worth the hardships one had borne, this sheaf of ripe experience. Good to know one had obeyed the Chief who said, "Quit yourself like a man!"So Bawne flew on. The fiery chrism of a strange second baptism was on his forehead. Gates of wonder seemed opening on the horizon towards which he hastened, guided by the big broad arrow of the reinforced compass and the thudding of those nearing guns.Some perception of great issues at stake and marvellous impending changes, ushering in the revival of the forgotten days of Chivalry, may have come at this hour to the child so strangely caught and whirled into the dizzy circles of the maelstrom of International War. Did a voice whisper to him that as of old by his Pagan forefathers, babes were sacrificed to Bel and Odin—so for the cleansing of the sick world of to-day from the War-madness begotten by greed and materialism a torrent of rich, warm, generous blood was to be shed from the veins of the young? Could he dream that the lower mankind sank, the higher men were to rise—mounting on stepping-stones of obedience and courage, to those heights where the human may walk with the Divine? That through long years to come, bright boys in myriads would drain the wine of Death from the chalice of Self-Sacrifice, and pass to God who kindled in those clean young souls the fire that made Him burn to die for men.The Enemy was rousing from his doze or dwam, or swoon, or whatever had been the matter with him. The big body was heaving into an upright posture, the big foot was knocking in Morse on the bottom of the fuselage. The boy looked down and saw blood running there—or was it the red of the sunset?"Shut—off—and—look—at me," rapped the foot, and its thrall obeyed and shrieked at the sight of the horror he was strapped to, glaring with wild eyes, and spitting unintelligible sentences with bloody splinters of shattered teeth and red rags of palate and tongue."I am damaged, is it not so? Something hit me when the bomb exploded." Something like this came in strange sounds from that inhuman face. And the boy shrieked again and again, straining at the belt that bound him to his terrible companion, conscious of nothing but overmastering fear—"Quit yourself like a man!"He heard the words through the drumming in his ears and his heart left off leaping. His brain cleared. He realised that the Taube was diving to the ground. He switched on power and brought down her tail and pulled up her nose gamely. They passed through a suffocating mist of burned chemicals that deposited red powder on your hands and face, and the glass of your flying-goggles, and parched your lungs like burning Cayenne pepper—and were over the battle-zone.As far as the eye could take it in the face of earth was moving. Death, like a many-handed mole, seemed working underground. Huge geysers of dirt and mud and stones heaved up in thick black smoke and vapour. The air shook incessantly with reduplicated concussions. Buildings tottered and sank away, and railway bridges melted, and spurts of blinding fire leaped from invisible mouths of guns.The revolutions were slowing down. The Taube travelled painfully. Beneath her bobbed a row of sausage-shaped observation-balloons straining at their spidery cables, beyond these were the third and second German lines—whitish furrows stretching East and West, with little zig-zags, that were communicating-trenches, between. A thin blue haze of rifle and machine-gun fire hung over the pitted ground. The Advanced lines behind their smear of rust-red barbed wire might have been sixty yards from the parapet of the British trenches. Friend and foe were dying there—and over the hurly-burly, dodging Death in puffs of woolly vapour, belched from vertical mobile muzzles, directing fire, signalling, wirelessing, scouting, fighting others who assailed signallers or scouters—wheeled and circled the Birds of War. Their sharp eyes picked him out flying far down beneath them."There goes a Hun somebody's shrapbozzled!" said the pilot of a R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to speak to his observer."Going to crash in a minute," said the observer of the Bleriot Experimental. "Where, do you suppose?""If he keeps on at that angle," said the pilot from behind his glasses, "he'll pass over that nest of Hun machine-guns in the big shell-pit behind the German Advanced Line, at about a hundred and fifty—and pile in that ploughfield behind our Gunners."The Taube was flying low and crookedly—the high crescendo whine of shell passed over it—heavy metal sent from German batteries—and other shells from British guns were crashing and bursting near. The wind was getting up in the west, and the drift of the machine was trending eastwards, in spite of anything Bawne could do. Could one keep flying long enough to pass the first line of British trenches? And how would one come to the ground, knowing nothing about landing—and with a bomb on board!One must get rid of the devil-egg. Should one drop it on the enemy's trenches? As he flew towards them a rag of white fluttered, and Bawne caught his breath. A long line of grey-green men were jumping like grasshoppers over the parapet. They went forwards with their hands up, waving a White Flag, and from the British trenches came men in khaki doubling out to take their prisoners....Rat-tat-tatt!The khaki figures began to fall. The grey men were cheering.... Therat-tatt—came from the German machine-guns, pumping out jets of murderous lead. Then in a flash Bawne understood, leaned to the right, and seeing the machine-gun pit beneath him—pulled out the pin, jerked up the latch, and dropped the devil-egg. Horrible to think, it would kill Germans!—but then—to save one's own dear Englishmen——"Good Night! Did you see that?" asked the pilot of the R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to address his observer, and immediately switching on again, for a geyser of earth and stones and fire, and bits of things that had been men and guns had spurted up from the spot where a moment since had been the gun-pit, and troubled waves of heated air reached them at 5000."He knows he's got to come down crash, and jettisoned the lollipop to improve his chances! ... Civil of him to drop it just when the Deershires were getting it hot and hot! ... Deserves thanks from the British C. in C., though his Kaiser won't be particularly pleased with him," reflected the R.F.C. observer, as the Taube, flying like a bird with a wounded wing, crossed the lines of the British trenches, dived staggeringly, and crashed down in the ploughed field behind the slogging guns.CHAPTER LXIXA MENACE; AND GOOD NEWSDrip, drip!...The slow dropping of water on the carpet and the sweet, heavy fragrance of roses, brings me back as it brought Patrine. She got up and pulled down the dark blue blinds with the precaution that was becoming habitude with us at this date, in view of that often bragged-of menace from the sky. She switched up the lights and moved to the table, roughly pulled off the string that tied, and lifted the lid of the cardboard box.A rich, sweet fragrance that was almost musky enveloped her as she lifted the thin paper. A sheaf of roses of flaming sanguine crimson, tied with black-and-white striped ribbon lay beneath. Black and white are the Prussian colours. Black, white, and red the standard of the Hohenzollern. Patrine knew that von Herrnung had sent the roses, even before she recognised his writing on a thick white envelope pinned to the ribbon binding the flowers."If Isis desires news of 'her dearest', she will open and read the letter. From one who does not desire to forget."The letter contained a lock of hair, jaggedly cut—she knew from whose sweet head. Half blind with tears, she lifted the lock to her lips and kissed it passionately, before she bent herself to read the careful English sentences that revealed the man in all his vanity and lustfulness, insolence, and tyranny, as though the burin of Strang or the brush of Sargent had etched him upon copper or limned him upon canvas, to show the world what depths of infamy can be plumbed by the Superman."Strong Woman of the race of moral weaklings, have you not yet learned to be proud that a Prussian soldier prized your beauty, and took it for his own? When the fierce men in the proud German Field-grey have swarmed over the soil of England,—when, amidst the squadron of night-birds whose feathers gleam mysteriously in the pale moonlight, thy lover flies onward, singing his war-song, laden with his cargo of explosives—when the Red Cock crows on the roof-trees of London's wilderness of houses and London's fire-bells, amidst terrific explosions, ring out the last battle of the century, will Isis then think of me? Revolvers, carbines, bombs, and poisoned arrows are among the gifts I shall bring thee in the hand that wears the mascot pearl of black and white. Coloured signalling-balls set in the silver of the searchlight, shall be thy tiara; for thy arms and thy white bosom there will be strings of rubies outpoured from the broken coffers of the House of Life. Our second nuptials will be celebrated by a mitred Death, amidst the smoking ruins of Westminster Abbey, to the roaring strains of the German Anthem, 'Now Praise Ye the Lord.' Till then au revoir! shall one perhaps say?"Ah, were Isis of the burning beech-leaf tresses not only beautiful but wise, she would place her hand in the hand that stretches yearningly over the North Sea. I wish love more than vengeance; is not that unnatural for a Hun? A golden consciousness of happiness yet to come wells up within me. Would Isis taste that happiness, let her go to her window and open it on the night of the day that brings this letter. There are no Germans in England who are not in prison or under espionage. No, possibly! yet go to thy window! A word to him who waits there, and Isis is once more mine. But beware of turning my tenderness by scornful rejection to hatred. Cold devil!—I should then strike, and frightfully, at the head whence came this hair. Look at it well and answer. T.v.H."She could turn no paler, her hue was that of death already. She dropped the loathsome letter from her hand upon the roses and thrust the lock of hair into her bosom, and went to a window and touched the spring of the blind. It flew up and revealed her tall shape standing there silhouetted against the electric radiance in defiance of that boasted menace from the sky.The street seemed empty, within the radius of her vision, save for the dark bulk of a motor-car, standing before a house on the same side some way down. Its headlights flashed, once, twice, and again, as though in answer. It slid forwards with a low hissing sound: "Ss'sh!" it said, as if in gluttonous anticipation, and stopped opposite the hall-door. Again the headlights flashed, there was a gleam of yellow enamel. She recognised the Darracq car in which von Herrnung had driven her to Fanshaw's Flying Ground on that unforgettable eighteenth of July.Holding her breath, narrowing her long-sighted eyes for better focus, she scrutinised the driver, recognising in the thick-set figure hunched over the steering-wheel, wearing a peaked cap pulled low over his forehead, and a wide white muffler twisted round his throat, the German who had brought the message from the Three in the blue F.I.A.T. car. She was sure of him when he touched his cap, looking furtively up at the window, and switched on a small electric bulb, illuminating the clock upon the dashboard as though to afford her a view of his face. Its bloodshot pale eyes, thick broad nose, and the unwholesome, purplish colour of the complexion, barred with a big light yellowish moustache with waxed ends, had stuck in her memory as ugly personal traits will stick. Of the slenderer man beside him she had no recollection. He was buttoned up in an overcoat with a fur collar, and wore a soft felt hat. She felt the eyes it shadowed were fastened on her, and recoiled as though from the touch of something unclean and horrible, roughly dragging down the blind.She was brave, but the sense of being almost alone in the house with those alert, observant eyes outside, spying upon her movements, made her heart beat suffocatingly, and brought chill damps of deadly terror to the surface of her skin. She moved to a chair with a clogging sense of ultimate effort—the nightmare feeling of striving against a powerful hypnotic influence, bidding her creep downstairs and open the street-door, step into the car waiting at the kerbstone, and be borne away by rushing wheels and whirling screws, or even swifter wings, perhaps, to that War-torn land where von Herrnung was waiting to exact his price for sparing the beloved head.She drew the lock of hair from her bosom and whispered inarticulate tendernesses to it, stroking its red-gold beauty with fingers and lips. Not until now those bread white strands amongst the reddish-gold conveyed their sinister meaning. When it came it was like a blow delivered full between the eyes. She swayed forwards and fell upon her knees beside the table, her forehead resting on the clenched hand that held the boy's hair. All that was maternal in her fierce, undisciplined nature urged her now to make the sacrifice. Remorse for having forgotten the child in her absorbing love for Sherbrand, was a scourge of fiery scorpions that urged her to the leap.Its uselessness, the certainty that von Herrnung would keep no hinted promise to restore the hostage, would have been no argument to deter her. Sherbrand's influence might have counterpoised, but she had sent away Sherbrand for his own sake. Now she would go to Bawne, buy him back with body and soul, if need be, from the hands of the torturer, or at least share his agony and die by his side.Madness was near enough that night to sweep her tattered robe before the eyes of Patrine, and beckon enticingly with her sceptre of plaited straw. She was alone and she had borne so much, and nothing else could save Lynette's boy—unless it were a miracle! Where was God—where was God now? Upon that July night of the child's spiriting away Sherbrand had bidden her pray that Bawne might be restored to them. She had petitioned in a perfunctory way when she had thanked God for taking away von Herrnung—that the child might be traced and brought back. Now she clenched her hands until the nails dug into their palms, and groaned out, as the dry sobs racked her body, words that sensed after this fashion:"Save him, save him! For Christ's love save him—and give him back! For the dear sakes of those to whom I have been so ungrateful! hear me—only hear me! and I will—be different. I will serve Thee, O God, who have ignored Thee! I will confess Thee, I who have denied! ..."Mean, base, said her pride, to kneel and entreat Him whom you have neglected and insulted. Even though He heard, do you think that He would answer now? But with desperate effort she thrust away the thought from her. The Hound of Heaven had leaped upon her, flying. She felt his teeth in her garments, holding her back from the invisible hands that dragged at her. She knew that unseen forces of Good and Evil were engaged in furious battle for her soul.... And strangling, she gasped out incoherent sentences, wild appeals to the Divine Pity.... In the midst of these, startling her like a thunderclap, came a hurried knocking at the door."Miss Pat!"It was the voice of Mrs. Keyse, and as Patrine stumbled to her feet and stood wild-eyed and shaking, the little, matronly figure in the black silk gown of housekeeperly dignity appeared upon the threshold of the room."You—wanted me, Mrs. Keyse? Is it about the—the yellow car? Have they——"The hoarse voice and the white, wrung face conveyed to an ardent lover of Patrine that something was wrong with her Doctor's niece. Tragedy was in the air—but Discretion is the better Part of Value, and nobody knew better than Emrigation Jane what fierce passions could boil in the Saxham blood."No, Miss Pat. It's not the car, yet, though I fancied I 'eard one stop here a minute back. It's the telephone in the consultin' room ringin', and ringin',—and Chewse gone to bed," Chewse being the trained maid who admitted patients and received messages. "And me with the best will in the world never could make 'ead or tail of them tellermessages—except the 'ulloing! And pre'aps you'd come and write down for the Doctor whatever it is they've got to say....""Very well. Don't wait, I'm coming directly!"Mrs. Keyse vanished, and with that dreamlike sense of unreality upon her, Patrine followed downstairs and passed along the silent corridor. The electric lamp above the Doctor's table had been switched on. She took the Doctor's chair and rang-up and waited, sitting where Saxham had sat when Lynette's sweet lips first touched his forehead—where the big man had planned self-murder in the darkest hour of his despair. The frayed patch on the Persian rug beneath her feet had been worn by Saxham's usage. The triptych frame that held the portraits of Lynette and Bawne drew Patrine's eyes as she sat waiting, and the clench of her big white hand upon the table-ledge, the bend of her black brows and the stern sorrow stamped upon her face made her likeness to the Doctor more than ever apparent now."Halloa!" she called, and the brusque harshness of her own voice was startlingly like Saxham's. A sense of Destiny oppressed her. She felt as one stifling in a vacuum—drowning for lack of air. Her prayers had rolled back upon her soul unanswered. The sense of spiritual desolation intensified her desperate loneliness. No good to pray and cling until you broke your nails to that great Rock that upholds the Crucifix. Better let go, and be carried away by the torrent. Signs and wonders are not wrought in these days!—said that other Patrine within Patrine—and if any were, there would be no miracle. You fool, you fool, to dream of one!She was sorry for herself as she sat there waiting. This little duty done, she would rise and obey that sinister summons from the outer darkness. Nothing on earth nor in Heaven could help or prevent. The sudden tinkle of the bell came at this juncture. The call was in Sir Roland's well-known voice."Halloa! ... Is that you, Saxham?""Halloa!" she called back in that voice so strangely likehisand unlike her own."Good! Well, my true friend and faithful coadjutor of old time," said the crisp voice, shaken a little as though by some irrepressible emotion or excitement, "some news has been communicated to us by Wireless that will lift up your heart and your wife's. Are you listening? ... To-day, about six P.M., near Langebeke, north-west of Ypres, at the moment of the White Flag ruse that cost the Deershire Regiment two hundred men, a two-seater Taube, flying low, as though something were the matter with her engine, came wobbling over the British lines. Nobody shot at her—she had just given our side sufficient reason for consideration by dropping a highly-effective bomb on a wasp's nest of German machine-gunners—and she crashed to ground behind a battery of First Corps R.F.A. Her German pilot had been frightfully wounded. His passenger, who sat in his lap to steer—and dropped the bomb!—escaped with a shake-up. You've got the story? Then, here's the tag of it. WE'VE GOT YOUR BOY! Bawne was the lucky fellow who only got a shaking. He arrives at Charing Cross to-night at twelve sharp!"He added, as a stifled cry travelled over the wire:"Congratulations with all my heart, to you and Mrs. Saxham. And to Miss Pat, though I'm afraid she pays, poor girl, in sorrow for your joy. There is a report that Sherbrand's Bird of War No. 2 has been shot down by a Zeppelin he encountered returning to the Front from England to-day, to supply the place of an R.F.C. pilot—killed while on observation-service near St. Yves—for Callenby's Cavalry Corps."There was a stifled sound of interrogation or an exclamation. The Chief continued:"He had no bombs. It was madness to attack with only a Maxim and their magazine-revolvers, but glorious madness worth a thousand sane, reasonable acts. As it is, the Zeppelin—supposed to have been on her way from Ostend to bomb St. O—was badly crippled and compelled to turn back. It was a shell from one of her Q.F.'s that exploded Sherbrand's petrol-tank and set the Bird on fire. The machine was seen to fall in flames near Dixschoote—held by the Germans. Sherbrand and his observer must be prisoners—that is, supposing they're alive. Hard luck! Break it gently to the poor girl! Good-night!"There was no answering Good-night, only a faint thud and rustle. Sir Roland did not guess what he had done as he rang off and hung the receiver up. And Lynette, coming into the consulting-room, noiselessly as a pale moonbeam, found a big galumphing girl she loved lying huddled between the chair and table, with her white face pressed against the spot worn threadbare by the Doctor's feet.
The slight figure lying so still upon the stretcher had never been remarkable for beauty of proportion. The sharpened face with its hue of old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards, with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still form.
He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square, with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.
But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to his hand.
The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating? Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree. The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.
Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....
Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies, through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a single oar.
"Is this stuff water?"
The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question. Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it shining, but not dripping, thinking:
"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth Æneid, when I swotted Virgil at School."
"Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had answered instantly:
"But if this is the Ninefold—what about the 'cold and venomous waters, consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels.'" The speaker dipped his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping, and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!"
"Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did I suppose—" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion, when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before."
"Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of his face just now—it can be nobody but Cruse."
"Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker, uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh—may Those Above reward him for an ould, bould gentleman!—that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or suchlike—to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"—the voice hesitated—"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was afther pluggin' him through the head—and himself just layin' the Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!"
"Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major—or Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist—who died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital. Had a touch of influenza—and would get out of bed to operate on one of the Sisters—a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in. Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover. Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!"
"Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was my grandfather—by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across! He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning. It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight—and he was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man went in with the mail."
"Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the voice of a small girl—Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small, black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starchedguimpeand wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my Dada—who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up and burning! When me and Mummy——"
"Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is notconvenablethatpetites demoisellesshould interrupt their elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!"
"Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children. The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went on: "Right or wrong—we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is a near relation—or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In every case a supreme benefactor——"
"Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely, monsieur! The Helper—the Benefactor of us all!"
As the keel grated on unseen bottom, she folded her hands with a beautiful devoutness, and sank upon her knees, drawing with her the child. The man of the Loyal Irish followed her example. Franky found himself kneeling with the others—and as the boat's prow ploughed into sand or shingle, and the Ferryman, shipping his oar, moved shorewards with a shepherding gesture, the voyagers rose with a thrill of expectancy, and followed with one accord.
He stepped ashore—dropping the great black mantle—turned and faced them, spreading out His Arms. Beauty Divine, glory unspeakable——
CHAPTER LXVII
THE QUESTION
"Have I been honest?" Patrine asked herself over and over, kneeling by the open window, staring into the darkness. "Have I been just towards the man who never was a friend even when he played the lover? Did not my own attitude of cynical curiosity towards secret, hidden things, bias his line of conduct towards me? Might not even von Herrnung have respected a girl who showed no inclination to flutter moth-like, about the flaming torch of Sin? No! he would not. But I could have saved myself even from scorching—I, who approached the flame too closely, and shall carry the scars of my burning to the grave."
Drip, drip, drip! Water, oozing from the box that stood upon the table, was dropping on the carpet with the small, insistent sound.... At the west end of the Catholic Church where Patrine had told her story to a priest in the Confessional there was a great black Crucifix, bearing a white thorn-crowned Figure gashed with gory-seeming wounds. She had fancied that the blood from them dripped down upon the pavement as she had sat staring at the High Altar, and wondering whether it were true that wilful sin committed by men and women for whose salvation Christ had bled and died might not cause Him suffering even now?
She had been willing to sin for Sherbrand, and said so in her hour of madness. Yet the renunciation of her lover as a husband had been an act of the purest love. Perhaps God would overlook the one thing for the sake of the other? Perhaps He had really spoken by the mouth of that old priest whose tears had dropped upon his withered hands....
Drip, drip, drip! Patrine began to suspect the source whence the sound proceeded. The people who had packed the roses—they must be roses—had wetted the cotton-wool too heavily, the fools! The inlaid table and the carpet would suffer if the wet were not mopped up. One ought to ring for Mrs. Keyse or Janey, or better still, see to it oneself.
She half-rose with this intention, then sank down again nervelessly. It was half-past ten. The October night leaned close over London, Harley Street was muffled in velvet darkness. The veiled gleam of electric lights showed at its junction with Cavendish Square. The rumble of the tube train came from Portland Place, the faint shriek of the Northern Express sounded from Euston. A Brocken Hunt of motor-buses screeched and clanked up the Marylebone Road and faded into distance. The rumble and roar of Oxford Street showed signs of diminution. It was possible to hear stray sentences spoken by people passing upon the pavement below.
"I don't care!" This from the shorter of two female figures that had halted before the house. The edge of light-coloured skirt showing below her cloak, and the gleam of white cuffs framing the gloved hands with which she gestured, suggested a Hospital nurse to Patrine. "Taxation without Representation is a crying injustice—and the men will wake up to it one of these days.... And Mrs. Clash may be a noisy person—and Fanny Leaven may drop her haiches—I do myself when I get stirred up. But they're in earnest—and they've suffered—cruel!—for their convictions. Look at this Petrell—that one that always takes the Chair. She's a physical wreck—with the treatment she's had—and I know what I'm talking about! Haven't we had Suffragettes brought to the Hospital for treatment over and over—after they'd been pitched out of Political Meetings by Stewards and half-throttled by Police. What I say is—Moses! how late! ... We shall get locked out of the Home if we don't run for it!"
And their light hurrying footsteps and the unmistakable frou-frou of starched print accompanying, passed away up Harley Street. They must have come from the Mass Meeting of Suffragists that had taken place at the Royal Hall.
It had been a memorable evening. The atmosphere of the Royal Hall, thronged not only with the members of the W.S.S.S. but with representatives of many other Women's Unions and Associations and Societies and Leagues, was highly charged with electricity. Mrs. Petrell, resolute-lipped, quiet-eyed, clear of diction and composed of manner, knew, as she sat in her chair beside the little table in the middle of the crowded platform, and better even than the plain-clothes police among the audience—that at any moment the storm might break.
She had advocated with all her much-tried strength an armistice for the War-period, involving a temporary abandonment of militant methods and inflammatory addresses, in favour of a policy of active help and practical sympathy, alike honourable to her head and heart.
Other Societies, Unions, Leagues, and Associations might have followed the lead of their Presidents. But would the W.S.S.S. accept her programme? Militancy had been its motto and the breath of its nostrils through all these troubled years. Since the outbreak of War, Flaming Fanny had busily sown the whirlwind, advocating fresh Demonstrations in conjunction with a system of Unlimited Strikes. Woman must hold her hand, now that her help was needed. Man, the Oppressor of all time, must be coerced by Woman's flat refusal to take part in Relief Work, or War Work, or Work of any kind whatever, into yielding the withheld right. And Mrs. Clash sided with Fanny—and others, nearer home.
Little wonder then that Pressmen, sensing the imminence of riot, had turned out in their shabbiest tweeds and left their watches and tie-pins at home. Little wonder that Medical Students, who had not already joined the Service, with betting-men and patrons of the pugilistic Prize Ring, found themselves baulked of anticipated entertainment, or that loafers and crooks, pickpockets and rowdies, disappointed of a pleasurable evening, expressed themselves in unmeasured terms regarding that Mass Meeting at the Royal Hall.
A melodious speaking-voice can be a magical wand, wielded by the mouth of a plain woman. But when the woman is beautiful and intellectual, when soul breathes through her words, and strength and tenderness, then she becomes a Force to reckon with, a Power to move mountains and bring water of tears from the living rock of the hardest human heart.
The officially-checked lights of the Hall shone down upon a sea of threatening faces. The electric battens over the speaker's head showed her to be a tall, fair, slender woman, dressed in filmy grey, veiling soft clinging silk of the same shade. The simplicity of her dress was unrelieved by ornaments other than a chain of pearls about her long throat. The red-brown hair seemed heavy for the little Greek head, the lovely pale face with the sensitive lips, wore a look of patient sorrow, the eyes she turned upon the audience—a seething mixture of irreconcilable elements—had in them courage, sympathy and understanding, and knowledge too. Before she spoke she had created an impression. Strangers were ingratiated by her beauty and evident refinement. Those who best knew her were among the wildest and most reckless there. They had quieted, when she had risen up in her unnoticed corner of the platform, and moved forwards to the speaker's place opposite the Chair, as though oil had been cast upon the waters of a stormy sea.
"When God Willed this War that we call Armageddon," she had said to them—"for without the permission of the Most High the earthly Powers that planned and prepared it could not have plucked the fruit of their desire—it came in time to prevent the declaration of a War even more terrible. War, to the Death, between Woman and Man."
In a few trenchant words she painted the dire results of such hostility.
"That unnatural horror has been mercifully averted," she said to them. "The old sore is healed, there is no hatred nor rancour left. We women have learned what a price has to be paid for the Franchise of Manhood. It is the brave blood that is drenching the soil of Belgium and France and Poland—that will flow in rivers as wide as the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge before Peace is proclaimed again. They have answered the Call. They are pouring into the recruiting offices—in thousands of thousands—those who have given up their loved ones, their homes, their hopes of success in Arts or Sciences, professions or businesses or trades. Will women be as unselfish and as generous when their Call comes? For it will come. It is coming while I stand here!"
They were strangely quiet, under the spell of the beautiful voice, and the eyes that were luminous and deep with tenderness:
"There are faithful Christians among you; brave earnest souls who have prayed to GOD for guidance among the difficulties that beset the way for working-women, and weaker souls have been maddened to frenzy and plunged into unbelief by the intolerance and the injustice, the shrieking wrongs and the unpurged evils that Man, who enters upon his heritage the world, by the Gate of Motherhood, has ignorantly accumulated upon the shoulders of the sex he professes to respect."
There was a murmur of approval at this. She lifted a hand, and they were silent.
"I say to those who have despaired, 'Despair no longer!' I say to those who have prayed—'Your prayer is answered!' Take up the work that has dropped from the hands that are busy with the rifle. Prove your right to the Parliamentary Franchise. Take your place amongst the World's Workers, for good and for all. The Vote will be granted: it cannot be denied! But if you had it now, passionately as you desire it, and the choice were offered you—Oh! my sisters!—would you not yield it up with gladness to bring those dead men back to life again?"
And after a pause of unbroken silence she added:
"For they have fought even better than they knew. They have re-conquered Woman. Freely and willingly as comrade and helper she takes her place and her share of the burden. Peace is proclaimed. The War between the sexes is at an end!"
We know how truly the speaker prophesied. Quietly as the vast Atlantic flows into and fills a labyrinth of empty, echoing, rock-caverns, the vast body of unemployed women took the places of the male workers called away to the Front. They had clicked into the slots before the world was well aware of it, or they themselves understood that a miracle had been wrought.
Said the breeched and gaitered lady-conductor of a North-West tram the other day:
"Now the ones that was brought up active has got their chance to do a bit, and the ones that was brought up idle 'ave found out that they like work, will they ever be content to sit and twiddle their thumbs again? I don't think!" She clipped pink tickets with zeal, and when a red-nosed, watery-eyed elderly man who had offered her a pewter shilling cursed her venomously as she thrust the coin back on him: "'Ere you! ... 'Op it!" she said to the offender, and caught him neatly by the scruff, hauled him down the cork-screw stairway, and deposited him in the Camden Road without turning a hair.
CHAPTER LXVIII
THE DEVIL-EGG
Von Herrnung had quitted the earth sober, to discover at the height of a thousand metres that his potations had dulled his brain. As he ceased to climb and brought down the nose of the Taube to the level, he realised that he was dizzy, and that at the pit of his stomach squatted the aviator's deadly foe, the demon of nausea. He pictured it as a yellow, frog-like thing with frothing leathery lips and green eyes that squinted. This image vexed him, and would not be driven away.
He switched on the hawk-hoverer and sensed the drag of the twin horizontal flanged screws against the thrust of the propeller, adding to its drone the vibration of the endless travelling-chains running in their sheath of transparent talc. To make room for its long groove in the floor of the bird-body, the thick glass port beneath the pilot's feet had been removed by the sergeant-mechanic of the Flight Squadron. Now there were two ports, one on either side. Through these the German looked down upon the shell-pounded ruins of the village-town, its roofless homes and broken enclosures giving the effect of a wild-bees' nest laid open by the gardener's shovel after the gardener has smoked out the bees. As von Herrnung located the baker's house by aid of his recently acquired binoculars, another swirl of sickness took him, and he shuddered and spat bile over the side.
Those distant voices of guns had not ceased their sullen calling. In the rose-flushed south towards which the Taube faced as it hovered above the ruins of the village, black columns of vapour swelled and towered, and acrid flashes stabbed through the murkiness. One should be there, his manlier self said to him. Better to be a brave German bird dodging Death amongst the puffs of shrapnel, dropping devil-eggs on the British batteries, winning back the forfeited Cross and the lost Imperial favour, than to be here, hanging like a carrion-vulture over the maimed body of a dying man.
Perhaps. But one had promised oneself revenge for the scorn that had stung like fire. And one had bragged to the English boy of what one meant to do. He looked back, and called through the speaking-tube that traversed the canvas over-deck between the pilot's seat and the passenger's:
"Unstrap yourself and come to me and take the control-stick.Schnell—do you hear? What is that you say?" He put the voice-tube to his ear and heard the shrill pipe answer through it. "You think it best to tell me that you take back your parole?" The big teeth grinned under the red moustache. "All right!" said the Enemy. "While we are in the air, you are free to jump out if you like, and run away. When we get to the ground again, that is another matter. Come now, sit in front of me and take over the controls!"
And as the boy obeyed, creeping beneath the intervening deck and under the canvas partition, the Enemy moved back upon the pilot-seat, keeping his feet on the lower controls, and separating his knees so as to leave a ledge for Bawne to occupy. Still laughing, he took spare safety-straps that hung on each side against the bulwarks, and clipped the patent pneumatic studs to the belt that girt the boy.
It did not do to run risks. Some day, it might occur to the Emperor to order von Herrnung to deliver up his captive. And—the little devil was useful—hellishly! He had come into the world, twelve years ago—possessed of the Flying Gift. He had taken to the air as naturally as a young crow or pigeon. A tap on the shoulder, a word shouted in his ear—and he knew what you wanted! He understood now why his overlord required the unrestricted use of his arms at this moment. The small hands twitched as they gripped the lever, and shudders convulsed the slender frame. Noting this von Herrnung grinned. His qualms had left him for the present, he was once more master of his stomach and lord of his cool and steady brain. Through the back of his head the boy could see him—leaning his big body sidewise—craning his neck over the edge of the fuselage—his hand hovering over the bomb hanging near in its wire holder, his keen hard eyes calculating distance—his red brows knitted, his full mouth smiling under its thatch of red hair. The devil-egg would burst upon its impact with a roof or with the ground, a thousand metres under the Taube. How many times since the red dawning of the Aggressor's Day had he, von Herrnung, not plucked out the pin and lifted the latch, and sent Death and Destruction speeding earthwards! Why should this particular devil-egg have exploded five seconds after its release?
The detonating mechanism had been wrongly set, or the explosive had suffered some chemical deterioration. With the volcanic upburst of flaming gases and the fierce blizzard of rending steel splinters, the Taube was shot upwards like the cork from a bottle of champagne. The Enemy had cut out the hovering-gear when he had dropped the devil-egg, and the thrust of the tractor had sent the Taube rushing on. Thus, though she had been bumped about on waves of rising gases—though daylight shone through holes in her wings and body,—a wheel had dropped like a stone from her under-carriage—and a piece of her tail had gone fluttering and swerving earthwards, no serious damage had been done to the machine.
Bawne's cheek was bleeding from the scratch of a splinter, but he stuck manfully to the controls. "Steer south," he had been told, "when I switch off the hoverer," and he had waited, his teeth set, his brows knitted, his eyes on the compass, and his heart crying out to God to save his new-found friend.
He knew it was because he had prayed so hard that the bomb had exploded prematurely. Would the Enemy try again with the one that yet remained? But the Enemy made no sign. One dared not look round or speak to him. Was he in a fit, or sick, or merely shamming? One could feel the big body heaving at one's back as it lay huddled against the canvas partition, with rolling head and arms spread wide, and knees that straddled and sagged.
Jerk! The Taube heaved her after-part as a cow gets up, and nose-dived. Von Herrnung's feet had slipped from the controls, and her rudder was flapping free. As Bawne toed the bar and gripped the guide-wheel, and brought the keel to a level, the blood in his veins tingled and he knew a thrill of joy.
One had borne a lot, but—Man alive!—a moment like this was worth it. What Boy Scout could deny the greatness of this boy's reward? To be master of this giant Bird, rushing at the speed of an express-train over woods and fields and villages, diminished to the patches on a crazy-quilt by the height at which one sped. To hear the shrill breeze harping in the wires and the roar of the flashing tractor, and change the din at a finger-touch to the silence of a glide.
West, where the sun was setting in red fire were signs by now familiar. Linked specks that were big grey German troop-trains ran over the shining gossamer-lines of the railways, going south. Where the shining lines looked like scattered pins, the railways had been blown up by the Belgians, or the British. Things like caterpillars crawling over the white ribbons of the highways were German motor-lorries dragging great howitzers, or Army Supply and Transport, or marching columns of robust, bullet-headed German infantrymen.
A blot of grey upon a town was where a Division rested. Strings of grey spiders hurrying south, would be brigades of cyclist telegraphists or sharpshooters, and processions of drab beetles scuttling along, Field Ambulances, or Staff motor-cars. One would have said that a green-grey blight had fallen upon Belgium, swiftly advancing, stayed by nothing, devouring as it moved.
East, where the shadow of the Taube raced beside her like a carriage-dog, black streaks that were barges still crawled on the canals, and peasants' carts crept over the roads—and there were no columns of troops in view, nor uglier tokens of the War. Though the red and brown towns showed scant signs of life, late root-crops were being harvested; plough-teams were breaking up the stubbles, factory chimneys were smoking, and acres of linen-web yet spread to bleach along the river-banks.
Later in the month the grey-green blight was to sweep over all this region as the Boche retreated before the thrust of the 1st and 4th British Army Corps, from Houthulst Forest to Menin-on-Lys.
Those voices of the guns were nearer now. They talked on incessantly. You felt the air that carried you vibrating as you flew. The solid earth heaved up in waves under the dusty golden smoke-drifts veiling the south horizon. Black pillars of smoke anddébrisclimbed and collapsed against the dusty gold. Grey Imperial Staff cars were parked in the courtyard of a château with pepper-box towers. Officers sat at tables on the vine-covered terrace, while a farm close by was doing duty as a casualty-clearing station. You could pick out the flutter of the Red Cross Flag on a broken tree beside the gateway—and the come and go of the bearers carrying laden or empty stretchers—and the white armlets of theSanitätskorpsmen who drove the ambulance-cars. To have seen over and over again what grown folks learned from newspapers was to be a man seasoned in War, whilst yet one's bones were young. Well worth the hardships one had borne, this sheaf of ripe experience. Good to know one had obeyed the Chief who said, "Quit yourself like a man!"
So Bawne flew on. The fiery chrism of a strange second baptism was on his forehead. Gates of wonder seemed opening on the horizon towards which he hastened, guided by the big broad arrow of the reinforced compass and the thudding of those nearing guns.
Some perception of great issues at stake and marvellous impending changes, ushering in the revival of the forgotten days of Chivalry, may have come at this hour to the child so strangely caught and whirled into the dizzy circles of the maelstrom of International War. Did a voice whisper to him that as of old by his Pagan forefathers, babes were sacrificed to Bel and Odin—so for the cleansing of the sick world of to-day from the War-madness begotten by greed and materialism a torrent of rich, warm, generous blood was to be shed from the veins of the young? Could he dream that the lower mankind sank, the higher men were to rise—mounting on stepping-stones of obedience and courage, to those heights where the human may walk with the Divine? That through long years to come, bright boys in myriads would drain the wine of Death from the chalice of Self-Sacrifice, and pass to God who kindled in those clean young souls the fire that made Him burn to die for men.
The Enemy was rousing from his doze or dwam, or swoon, or whatever had been the matter with him. The big body was heaving into an upright posture, the big foot was knocking in Morse on the bottom of the fuselage. The boy looked down and saw blood running there—or was it the red of the sunset?
"Shut—off—and—look—at me," rapped the foot, and its thrall obeyed and shrieked at the sight of the horror he was strapped to, glaring with wild eyes, and spitting unintelligible sentences with bloody splinters of shattered teeth and red rags of palate and tongue.
"I am damaged, is it not so? Something hit me when the bomb exploded." Something like this came in strange sounds from that inhuman face. And the boy shrieked again and again, straining at the belt that bound him to his terrible companion, conscious of nothing but overmastering fear—
"Quit yourself like a man!"
He heard the words through the drumming in his ears and his heart left off leaping. His brain cleared. He realised that the Taube was diving to the ground. He switched on power and brought down her tail and pulled up her nose gamely. They passed through a suffocating mist of burned chemicals that deposited red powder on your hands and face, and the glass of your flying-goggles, and parched your lungs like burning Cayenne pepper—and were over the battle-zone.
As far as the eye could take it in the face of earth was moving. Death, like a many-handed mole, seemed working underground. Huge geysers of dirt and mud and stones heaved up in thick black smoke and vapour. The air shook incessantly with reduplicated concussions. Buildings tottered and sank away, and railway bridges melted, and spurts of blinding fire leaped from invisible mouths of guns.
The revolutions were slowing down. The Taube travelled painfully. Beneath her bobbed a row of sausage-shaped observation-balloons straining at their spidery cables, beyond these were the third and second German lines—whitish furrows stretching East and West, with little zig-zags, that were communicating-trenches, between. A thin blue haze of rifle and machine-gun fire hung over the pitted ground. The Advanced lines behind their smear of rust-red barbed wire might have been sixty yards from the parapet of the British trenches. Friend and foe were dying there—and over the hurly-burly, dodging Death in puffs of woolly vapour, belched from vertical mobile muzzles, directing fire, signalling, wirelessing, scouting, fighting others who assailed signallers or scouters—wheeled and circled the Birds of War. Their sharp eyes picked him out flying far down beneath them.
"There goes a Hun somebody's shrapbozzled!" said the pilot of a R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to speak to his observer.
"Going to crash in a minute," said the observer of the Bleriot Experimental. "Where, do you suppose?"
"If he keeps on at that angle," said the pilot from behind his glasses, "he'll pass over that nest of Hun machine-guns in the big shell-pit behind the German Advanced Line, at about a hundred and fifty—and pile in that ploughfield behind our Gunners."
The Taube was flying low and crookedly—the high crescendo whine of shell passed over it—heavy metal sent from German batteries—and other shells from British guns were crashing and bursting near. The wind was getting up in the west, and the drift of the machine was trending eastwards, in spite of anything Bawne could do. Could one keep flying long enough to pass the first line of British trenches? And how would one come to the ground, knowing nothing about landing—and with a bomb on board!
One must get rid of the devil-egg. Should one drop it on the enemy's trenches? As he flew towards them a rag of white fluttered, and Bawne caught his breath. A long line of grey-green men were jumping like grasshoppers over the parapet. They went forwards with their hands up, waving a White Flag, and from the British trenches came men in khaki doubling out to take their prisoners....
Rat-tat-tatt!
The khaki figures began to fall. The grey men were cheering.... Therat-tatt—came from the German machine-guns, pumping out jets of murderous lead. Then in a flash Bawne understood, leaned to the right, and seeing the machine-gun pit beneath him—pulled out the pin, jerked up the latch, and dropped the devil-egg. Horrible to think, it would kill Germans!—but then—to save one's own dear Englishmen——
"Good Night! Did you see that?" asked the pilot of the R.A.F.B.E., shutting off to address his observer, and immediately switching on again, for a geyser of earth and stones and fire, and bits of things that had been men and guns had spurted up from the spot where a moment since had been the gun-pit, and troubled waves of heated air reached them at 5000.
"He knows he's got to come down crash, and jettisoned the lollipop to improve his chances! ... Civil of him to drop it just when the Deershires were getting it hot and hot! ... Deserves thanks from the British C. in C., though his Kaiser won't be particularly pleased with him," reflected the R.F.C. observer, as the Taube, flying like a bird with a wounded wing, crossed the lines of the British trenches, dived staggeringly, and crashed down in the ploughed field behind the slogging guns.
CHAPTER LXIX
A MENACE; AND GOOD NEWS
Drip, drip!...
The slow dropping of water on the carpet and the sweet, heavy fragrance of roses, brings me back as it brought Patrine. She got up and pulled down the dark blue blinds with the precaution that was becoming habitude with us at this date, in view of that often bragged-of menace from the sky. She switched up the lights and moved to the table, roughly pulled off the string that tied, and lifted the lid of the cardboard box.
A rich, sweet fragrance that was almost musky enveloped her as she lifted the thin paper. A sheaf of roses of flaming sanguine crimson, tied with black-and-white striped ribbon lay beneath. Black and white are the Prussian colours. Black, white, and red the standard of the Hohenzollern. Patrine knew that von Herrnung had sent the roses, even before she recognised his writing on a thick white envelope pinned to the ribbon binding the flowers.
"If Isis desires news of 'her dearest', she will open and read the letter. From one who does not desire to forget."
The letter contained a lock of hair, jaggedly cut—she knew from whose sweet head. Half blind with tears, she lifted the lock to her lips and kissed it passionately, before she bent herself to read the careful English sentences that revealed the man in all his vanity and lustfulness, insolence, and tyranny, as though the burin of Strang or the brush of Sargent had etched him upon copper or limned him upon canvas, to show the world what depths of infamy can be plumbed by the Superman.
"Strong Woman of the race of moral weaklings, have you not yet learned to be proud that a Prussian soldier prized your beauty, and took it for his own? When the fierce men in the proud German Field-grey have swarmed over the soil of England,—when, amidst the squadron of night-birds whose feathers gleam mysteriously in the pale moonlight, thy lover flies onward, singing his war-song, laden with his cargo of explosives—when the Red Cock crows on the roof-trees of London's wilderness of houses and London's fire-bells, amidst terrific explosions, ring out the last battle of the century, will Isis then think of me? Revolvers, carbines, bombs, and poisoned arrows are among the gifts I shall bring thee in the hand that wears the mascot pearl of black and white. Coloured signalling-balls set in the silver of the searchlight, shall be thy tiara; for thy arms and thy white bosom there will be strings of rubies outpoured from the broken coffers of the House of Life. Our second nuptials will be celebrated by a mitred Death, amidst the smoking ruins of Westminster Abbey, to the roaring strains of the German Anthem, 'Now Praise Ye the Lord.' Till then au revoir! shall one perhaps say?
"Ah, were Isis of the burning beech-leaf tresses not only beautiful but wise, she would place her hand in the hand that stretches yearningly over the North Sea. I wish love more than vengeance; is not that unnatural for a Hun? A golden consciousness of happiness yet to come wells up within me. Would Isis taste that happiness, let her go to her window and open it on the night of the day that brings this letter. There are no Germans in England who are not in prison or under espionage. No, possibly! yet go to thy window! A word to him who waits there, and Isis is once more mine. But beware of turning my tenderness by scornful rejection to hatred. Cold devil!—I should then strike, and frightfully, at the head whence came this hair. Look at it well and answer. T.v.H."
She could turn no paler, her hue was that of death already. She dropped the loathsome letter from her hand upon the roses and thrust the lock of hair into her bosom, and went to a window and touched the spring of the blind. It flew up and revealed her tall shape standing there silhouetted against the electric radiance in defiance of that boasted menace from the sky.
The street seemed empty, within the radius of her vision, save for the dark bulk of a motor-car, standing before a house on the same side some way down. Its headlights flashed, once, twice, and again, as though in answer. It slid forwards with a low hissing sound: "Ss'sh!" it said, as if in gluttonous anticipation, and stopped opposite the hall-door. Again the headlights flashed, there was a gleam of yellow enamel. She recognised the Darracq car in which von Herrnung had driven her to Fanshaw's Flying Ground on that unforgettable eighteenth of July.
Holding her breath, narrowing her long-sighted eyes for better focus, she scrutinised the driver, recognising in the thick-set figure hunched over the steering-wheel, wearing a peaked cap pulled low over his forehead, and a wide white muffler twisted round his throat, the German who had brought the message from the Three in the blue F.I.A.T. car. She was sure of him when he touched his cap, looking furtively up at the window, and switched on a small electric bulb, illuminating the clock upon the dashboard as though to afford her a view of his face. Its bloodshot pale eyes, thick broad nose, and the unwholesome, purplish colour of the complexion, barred with a big light yellowish moustache with waxed ends, had stuck in her memory as ugly personal traits will stick. Of the slenderer man beside him she had no recollection. He was buttoned up in an overcoat with a fur collar, and wore a soft felt hat. She felt the eyes it shadowed were fastened on her, and recoiled as though from the touch of something unclean and horrible, roughly dragging down the blind.
She was brave, but the sense of being almost alone in the house with those alert, observant eyes outside, spying upon her movements, made her heart beat suffocatingly, and brought chill damps of deadly terror to the surface of her skin. She moved to a chair with a clogging sense of ultimate effort—the nightmare feeling of striving against a powerful hypnotic influence, bidding her creep downstairs and open the street-door, step into the car waiting at the kerbstone, and be borne away by rushing wheels and whirling screws, or even swifter wings, perhaps, to that War-torn land where von Herrnung was waiting to exact his price for sparing the beloved head.
She drew the lock of hair from her bosom and whispered inarticulate tendernesses to it, stroking its red-gold beauty with fingers and lips. Not until now those bread white strands amongst the reddish-gold conveyed their sinister meaning. When it came it was like a blow delivered full between the eyes. She swayed forwards and fell upon her knees beside the table, her forehead resting on the clenched hand that held the boy's hair. All that was maternal in her fierce, undisciplined nature urged her now to make the sacrifice. Remorse for having forgotten the child in her absorbing love for Sherbrand, was a scourge of fiery scorpions that urged her to the leap.
Its uselessness, the certainty that von Herrnung would keep no hinted promise to restore the hostage, would have been no argument to deter her. Sherbrand's influence might have counterpoised, but she had sent away Sherbrand for his own sake. Now she would go to Bawne, buy him back with body and soul, if need be, from the hands of the torturer, or at least share his agony and die by his side.
Madness was near enough that night to sweep her tattered robe before the eyes of Patrine, and beckon enticingly with her sceptre of plaited straw. She was alone and she had borne so much, and nothing else could save Lynette's boy—unless it were a miracle! Where was God—where was God now? Upon that July night of the child's spiriting away Sherbrand had bidden her pray that Bawne might be restored to them. She had petitioned in a perfunctory way when she had thanked God for taking away von Herrnung—that the child might be traced and brought back. Now she clenched her hands until the nails dug into their palms, and groaned out, as the dry sobs racked her body, words that sensed after this fashion:
"Save him, save him! For Christ's love save him—and give him back! For the dear sakes of those to whom I have been so ungrateful! hear me—only hear me! and I will—be different. I will serve Thee, O God, who have ignored Thee! I will confess Thee, I who have denied! ..."
Mean, base, said her pride, to kneel and entreat Him whom you have neglected and insulted. Even though He heard, do you think that He would answer now? But with desperate effort she thrust away the thought from her. The Hound of Heaven had leaped upon her, flying. She felt his teeth in her garments, holding her back from the invisible hands that dragged at her. She knew that unseen forces of Good and Evil were engaged in furious battle for her soul.... And strangling, she gasped out incoherent sentences, wild appeals to the Divine Pity.... In the midst of these, startling her like a thunderclap, came a hurried knocking at the door.
"Miss Pat!"
It was the voice of Mrs. Keyse, and as Patrine stumbled to her feet and stood wild-eyed and shaking, the little, matronly figure in the black silk gown of housekeeperly dignity appeared upon the threshold of the room.
"You—wanted me, Mrs. Keyse? Is it about the—the yellow car? Have they——"
The hoarse voice and the white, wrung face conveyed to an ardent lover of Patrine that something was wrong with her Doctor's niece. Tragedy was in the air—but Discretion is the better Part of Value, and nobody knew better than Emrigation Jane what fierce passions could boil in the Saxham blood.
"No, Miss Pat. It's not the car, yet, though I fancied I 'eard one stop here a minute back. It's the telephone in the consultin' room ringin', and ringin',—and Chewse gone to bed," Chewse being the trained maid who admitted patients and received messages. "And me with the best will in the world never could make 'ead or tail of them tellermessages—except the 'ulloing! And pre'aps you'd come and write down for the Doctor whatever it is they've got to say...."
"Very well. Don't wait, I'm coming directly!"
Mrs. Keyse vanished, and with that dreamlike sense of unreality upon her, Patrine followed downstairs and passed along the silent corridor. The electric lamp above the Doctor's table had been switched on. She took the Doctor's chair and rang-up and waited, sitting where Saxham had sat when Lynette's sweet lips first touched his forehead—where the big man had planned self-murder in the darkest hour of his despair. The frayed patch on the Persian rug beneath her feet had been worn by Saxham's usage. The triptych frame that held the portraits of Lynette and Bawne drew Patrine's eyes as she sat waiting, and the clench of her big white hand upon the table-ledge, the bend of her black brows and the stern sorrow stamped upon her face made her likeness to the Doctor more than ever apparent now.
"Halloa!" she called, and the brusque harshness of her own voice was startlingly like Saxham's. A sense of Destiny oppressed her. She felt as one stifling in a vacuum—drowning for lack of air. Her prayers had rolled back upon her soul unanswered. The sense of spiritual desolation intensified her desperate loneliness. No good to pray and cling until you broke your nails to that great Rock that upholds the Crucifix. Better let go, and be carried away by the torrent. Signs and wonders are not wrought in these days!—said that other Patrine within Patrine—and if any were, there would be no miracle. You fool, you fool, to dream of one!
She was sorry for herself as she sat there waiting. This little duty done, she would rise and obey that sinister summons from the outer darkness. Nothing on earth nor in Heaven could help or prevent. The sudden tinkle of the bell came at this juncture. The call was in Sir Roland's well-known voice.
"Halloa! ... Is that you, Saxham?"
"Halloa!" she called back in that voice so strangely likehisand unlike her own.
"Good! Well, my true friend and faithful coadjutor of old time," said the crisp voice, shaken a little as though by some irrepressible emotion or excitement, "some news has been communicated to us by Wireless that will lift up your heart and your wife's. Are you listening? ... To-day, about six P.M., near Langebeke, north-west of Ypres, at the moment of the White Flag ruse that cost the Deershire Regiment two hundred men, a two-seater Taube, flying low, as though something were the matter with her engine, came wobbling over the British lines. Nobody shot at her—she had just given our side sufficient reason for consideration by dropping a highly-effective bomb on a wasp's nest of German machine-gunners—and she crashed to ground behind a battery of First Corps R.F.A. Her German pilot had been frightfully wounded. His passenger, who sat in his lap to steer—and dropped the bomb!—escaped with a shake-up. You've got the story? Then, here's the tag of it. WE'VE GOT YOUR BOY! Bawne was the lucky fellow who only got a shaking. He arrives at Charing Cross to-night at twelve sharp!"
He added, as a stifled cry travelled over the wire:
"Congratulations with all my heart, to you and Mrs. Saxham. And to Miss Pat, though I'm afraid she pays, poor girl, in sorrow for your joy. There is a report that Sherbrand's Bird of War No. 2 has been shot down by a Zeppelin he encountered returning to the Front from England to-day, to supply the place of an R.F.C. pilot—killed while on observation-service near St. Yves—for Callenby's Cavalry Corps."
There was a stifled sound of interrogation or an exclamation. The Chief continued:
"He had no bombs. It was madness to attack with only a Maxim and their magazine-revolvers, but glorious madness worth a thousand sane, reasonable acts. As it is, the Zeppelin—supposed to have been on her way from Ostend to bomb St. O—was badly crippled and compelled to turn back. It was a shell from one of her Q.F.'s that exploded Sherbrand's petrol-tank and set the Bird on fire. The machine was seen to fall in flames near Dixschoote—held by the Germans. Sherbrand and his observer must be prisoners—that is, supposing they're alive. Hard luck! Break it gently to the poor girl! Good-night!"
There was no answering Good-night, only a faint thud and rustle. Sir Roland did not guess what he had done as he rang off and hung the receiver up. And Lynette, coming into the consulting-room, noiselessly as a pale moonbeam, found a big galumphing girl she loved lying huddled between the chair and table, with her white face pressed against the spot worn threadbare by the Doctor's feet.