Coincidence, you say, perhaps. Well, but what is Coincidence? Is it a Dust-wind careering over the Desert in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, playing with straw and twigs and dead locusts' wings, and one stray fragment of printed paper, as a Mounted Division of the British Expeditionary Force encamped upon the slope not far from Gizeh, ride out with the dawn to exercise their horses on the plain that is partly flooded by the Nile? Or is it the ragged quarter-sheet torn from an English newspaper, that wraps itself about the spurred ankle of the big blond young Englishman who rides the vicious chestnut mare?Long lines of horses marching in threes for miles, black and coffee-coloured natives in flowing jubbehs mixed up with tanned young British Centaurs in sun-helmets and khaki shorts—and the rag of paper clings to the leg of the one man there whom its news concerns. She who is dearer than all save Honour is once more a free woman,—and his faith and constancy are to meet their reward. His letter lies before me; a sentence pencilled more blackly than the rest stands out upon the yellowish paper:"If this be accident it is incredible. If Design, it is miraculous. And I had rather thank Heaven for a miracle vouchsafed than owe even such happiness—to Chance."When the deep swoon gave place to semi-consciousness, the pale lips uttered nothing but broken words. Locked away safely behind them was the glorious news that would have changed two people's lives. Thus Lynette was still ignorant of her own great happiness, when having helped Patrine upstairs to her room and put her tenderly to bed, she dismissed Mrs. Keyse to her own slumbers, and took her place beside Patrine's pillow, listening to the sighing breaths that were growing deeper and fuller, keenly alert for the sound of the Doctor's latch-key and the Doctor's step in the hall.It was close upon the smallest hour. Something had detained Saxham. Sitting in the darkened room beside the long prone shape beneath the coverings, Lynette was free to lean her head against the back of the chair she sat in and yield herself to the bitter sweetness of memories of her lost boy.What the sorrow of Shakespeare wrought in deathless lines no halting pen like mine dare strive to portray. Enough that the beloved little ghost that haunted the woman whose heart was breaking, was closer than ever to Lynette on this night. All day the sweet obsession had thrust itself between Bawne's mother and solid, tangible things. The red-gold sheen of the boyish head, the gay blue challenge of the laughing eyes, the coaxing tones of the treble voice had tortured the senses they deceived. She had thrust him away with both hands, for ordinary, commonplace duties claimed, and yielding led the way to madness. He had come back again and again, to be driven away once more. Now that her hands lay idle in her lap—now that she was withdrawn from the world and its realities, the beloved little ghost returned and had his will with her.Sitting in the haunted gloom, a strange conviction came to Lynette. This was not Grief, travestying in the figure of the absent, but a visitation from the World Unseen.... Bawne was dead, and had been dragged back from the threshold of the Beyond by her own unbridled yearnings. Could there be a punishment more terrible than this? Only those who have loved and lost, and clinging to their faith in a Future Life, strive to bear patiently the burden of bereavement, can comprehend the torture of this woman in this hour.The Presence grew more torturingly tangible. The empty shell of the house that had been Bawne's home was full of his callings, his movements, his play, his laughter. She heard his quick soft breathing behind her chair in the darkness. Once she could have vowed that a hard little boyish hand brushed against her cheek. Then she was alone once more, except for the unconscious sleeper. And then the torture began all over again.Bawne was coming home, late, from the Hendon Flying Ground. The long months of misery—the horror of the War—had been a dreadful dream. She heard the longbr'r'of the electric hall-bell under the impetuous insistent finger—the small scurry of his entrance, a squawk from the maid who answered night-calls—a whispered word or two, and the clumping of the heavy little brogues upon the stairs. Would he trip at the corner where he always stubbed his toe? she wondered—and she plainly heard him stumble. Then her hair stiffened upon her head, and a long shudder rippled through her. The little clumping brogues had stopped before Patrine's bedroom door."Mother!"His voice called, and his well-known thump came on the door-panel. The handle clicked. She controlled her shuddering and forced her stiffened tongue to speech."Come in, my own!"The tall door swung slowly inwards. A wedge of brightness from the lighted landing threw his shadow over the white-enamelled door-post.... The darkness of the room soaked it greedily up. Then the doorway was a square of radiance with a little ghostly figure framed in it. All the light was behind him. She could not see his face, but she felt his eyes upon her.... Then the voice that her ears were sick for said with a quaver in its treble:"It's dark, but I can hear you breathing! ... Mother, why didn't you and Father come? I thought when I got there I'd be sure to see you! ... But amongst all those faces and faces not one was yours—and—Man alive!—I wanted to blub a bit! I'm not quite sure that I didn't, you know!"She stretched her arms to the beloved little ghost, whispering:"My poor, poor love, my baby, my treasure! Mother knows how much it hurt. But be patient a little longer. Soon—soon—your father and I——"The woe-wave rose and swelled in her bosom, tears began to run over her stiff white face. The clasped hands she stretched to him were quivering, but she controlled them like the trembling of her voice."Go back to Paradise, my little son! Wait patiently, my love, my Angel! I have been wrong, but I will grieve no more! I will be patient:—O! believe——"A man's footsteps sounded on the staircase and the great shadowy figure of the Doctor appeared behind Bawne's little shape. With a swift movement Saxham caught up the bewildered boy, made one long stride across the threshold, and put the warm, living treasure into the mother's outstretched arms...Once again big black-lettered contents-bills shrieked from the railings and were worn after the fashion of heralds' tabards by the vendors of newspapers, and the editions were snapped up as fast as they came out. Here are some of the headlines:"THRILLING ESCAPE OF KIDNAPPED BOY SCOUT FROM THE HANDS OF THE HUN. YOUNG HERO OF NORTH SEA ADVENTURE LANDS BEHIND BRITISH LINES AT LANGEBEKE IN TAUBE WITH A BOCHE PRISONER. FULL STORY OF HOW SCOUT WHO SAVED THE CLANRONALD PAPERS BOMBED THE GERMAN MACHINE-GUNS. DECORATION OF SCOUT SAXHAM WITH 'GOLDEN WOLF' BADGE BY ROYAL PRESIDENT AT ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS. PROBABLE TESTIMONIAL FROM BRITISH PUBLIC. AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE WAR MINISTER AT WHITEHALL. EXPECTED INVESTITURE WITH EDWARDIAN ORDER OF MERIT. WHAT YOU GET BY BEING PREPARED!"And again:"SPLENDID PLUCK OF BRITISH AVIATOR. FIGHTS ZEPPELIN ON WAY TO BOMB BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. AIRSHIP CRIPPLED. SHERBRAND R.F.C. KILLED. FALLS IN FLAMES OVER GERMAN LINES. HEROIC END OF SOLE REMAINING HEIR TO PENINSULAR WAR EARLDOM, AND INVENTOR OF THE HAWK-HOVERER THAT SOLVES PROBLEM OF STABILITY. WILL WAR OFFICE ADOPT GREAT INVENTION, EMPLOYED BY ALLIES' FLYING SERVICES?"Three days later:"SHERBRAND R.F.C. RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS HONOURS FROM FRANCE AND BELGIUM. CROIX D'HONNEUR AND ORDER OF LEOPOLD. WHY NOT BRITISH D.S.O.?"CHAPTER LXXA LOVER'S JOURNEYThe crossing—in this Arctic April weather when all of Britain and Belgium and North-West France lay under snowdrifts—had been calm and smooth enough for the worst sea-stomachs on the steamer. The tall young woman in the Navy blue felt hat with the well-known V.A.D. ribbon, and the long blue serge coat with the Red Cross shield-badge on the left breast, seemed used to travelling alone in War-time. She had secured a dry chair, set in the shelter of the after-deck-saloon, and a lifebelt as stipulated by the authorities, and tucked herself in her travelling-rug with her suit-case under her feet before the lights went out. Thus she had remained throughout the passage, with her dark eyes looking seawards, as deaf to occasional bursts of uproarious song from a draft of returning Blighties packed on the lower-deck, as to the siren's raucous shrieks.Courteous fellow-passengers, chiefly British and Belgian officers returning from leave, would have been ready enough to have chatted with the young woman who was going to the Front. Such attentions as they offered her she accepted frankly. One got her tea and sandwiches, another offered chocolate, another a foot-warmer. Yet another insisted on lending her an unnecessary extra rug. They pointed out the hovering Fleet hydroplanes, and the diligently-scouting searchlights of the destroyers guarding the sea-way, and the Hull-bound Dutch liner whose neutrality was proclaimed in illuminated side-letters, blazing like a sea-Alhambra upon the east horizon, and the Hospital ship that passed close, coming from Boulogne laden with wounded, the huge Red Cross upon her flank picked out with blazing green lights.One and all united in assuring the wearer of the V.A.D. uniform that there was no danger. Though when the red and green eyes on the ends of the East and West jetties winked into sight over the coal-black shining water, her fellow-passengers congratulated Patrine as heartily as though some peril had been escaped."Nothing more doing, Pinkums, old thing!" said an experienced youngster of twenty to a susceptible senior whom Patrine's unprotected condition had roused to a strong sense of responsibility. "She's got enough passes from British and French Headquarters to make a poker-hand. I saw her showin' 'em to the authorities at Folkestone. Besides, have heart, there's a Red Tab here to meet her. We'd better hence it before we're snubbed."And they saluted, and clattered down the crowded gangway, grabbing their valises and buttoning up their British warms, and hurried away to get into trench-kit, webbings, and waders, and swell the crowd in the railway-station—waiting to go up to the Front and carry on with the hourly, momentary game of touch-and-go with Death.While Patrine looked eagerly about her, listening to the hum of the vast human beehive. This was not the big rambling, old-fashioned French seaport one had known so well before the War. Under sky-blind arc-lights and red, green, and white lamps, every form of activity imaginable in connection with the running of that now huge and complicated machine, the British Field Army, seemed even at this hour to be in full swing. The rumble of steam-cranes and the roar of dynamos, the panting of pneumatic hold-dischargers, the clank of couplings, and the shrieks of locomotives mingled with the tinny voices of gramophones from the recreation-rooms at the great packed barracks and crowded camps, and the sounds of song and laughter and applause from music-halls and picture-palaces."Yes, it goes on most of the time," said the Red Tab who had come to meet Patrine, an officer upon the Staff of the Commandant of a Headquarters not far from—a certain place where Miss Saxham wished to go. "The Army's got to be rationed and equipped and horsed and foraged, and timbered and coaled and petroled and munitioned, as well as cobbled and engineered and patched and tinkered and nursed—don't you follow me? And these Base Ports are jolly useful. Nobody goes to bed much, I fancy. Perhaps they'll make up the sleep they've lost by-and-by, after the War.""What-ho, Nubbins! Back from the Old Shop? Sorry!—didn't happen to see you weren't alone!"The station had vomited a flood of khaki, tumbling down the half-lit quays to take later boats by storm. A tall, lanky officer of Gunners had hailed Red Tab effusively; then, seeing him to be engaged with a lady, hurried on with apologies and a salute for Patrine."Don't mind me! Do call back your friend," she urged. "He seemed so glad to see you.""Thanks much. If you don't mind. Whewip! Whewip!"And the other, recalled by a shrill whistle, wheeled and came back upon his stride, to grasp the offered hand. Whereupon, ensued the following strictly private duologue:"How goes the Battery?""First class. And your crowd?""Crawling along as per, usual. Congrats on the Oudstyde affair!""Thanks frightfully! But the whole thing was a bit of a fluke—everyone knows that.Theyhad thrown down a gas-attack and the wind went about-face. So we stayed where we were and shelled them through their chlorine. Then they got their Reserves up and came on in lumps—the old Zulu formation—and Pyers and his Engineers got to work with the"—the speaker's voice dropped to an undertone—"what Pyers calls the 'Piffbozzler.'""The rose by any other name——" quoted Red Tab, and went on: "I'd have given a tenner to have been there!—and as for old Clanronald—I wonder if he got leave from—wherever he is—to see the stunt that day?"Said the Gunner:"If he did—and had such a thing as a stomach about him, he must have simply—vomited! Pyers says he felt like the Angel with the Flaming Sword—when he didn't feel like an Indian jeweller with a blowpipe—frizzling a column of white ants marching over the floor. You've seen how the things come on and on——""Yahgh!" remarked Red Tab expressively."But—just for once—we didn't happen to be on the frizzled side. The C. in C. has laughed to the verge of hysterics over a leader in the BerlinLokal Anzeiger, with reference to the realised dream of the 'homicidal maniac' Clanronald. 'A deplorable example of the perversion ofDie Wissenschaftat the murderous hands of English military chemists,' they called it. Pretty neat from Boches who've been pumping burning paraffin into our trenches, and suffocating platoons of men with asphyxiating gases, ever since May.""And particularly appropriate from people who bribed a crack Professor of Literature to engage as librarian at Gwyll Castle—set the Library Wing on fire and steal the portfolio with the plans of the 'homicidal maniac' three weeks before the War—when Prinz Heinrich and old Moltke were stopping in London. They'd promised their agent twelve million marks if he succeeded. Wonder what he got from them when the plot fizzled out? Well, so-long! Any message for Edith?'"Tell her you saw me topping, and remember me to your wife!"And they gripped hands and parted, and Red Tab hurried back to the tall young woman waiting on the flagstones under a blue shaded arc-lamp, saying:"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No—we go out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded railway-carriage—unless you'd have preferred going by train?"The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat."In case of barbed wire—strung across country roads," explained Red Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated—travelling fast at night—or in foggy weather—without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee—and sandwiches in a box. Don't restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at intervals, and rather faintly. Fact—I've heard 'em in the South of England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O—, twenty-eight miles from the Front—they're loud enough at times—though there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No—thanks, I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck up and go to by-by!"The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the wintry roads ahead of it—or horse-drawn transport waggons—or droves of animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a cloud—or bodies of men in heavy marching order—French and British soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,—shaped after the fashion of Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass."Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This is the Ursuline Convent of St. O—, where we've arranged for you to billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady, and my uncle—I mean Sir Roland—thought you'd be more cushy with the Sisters than at a common hotel!""Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon the pavement to warm his frozen feet."Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters—twenty-five miles from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain—and a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him—and he said he'd be delighted to look after you. Don't get down—it's frightfully slippery!"But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and narrowing long eyes—"queer eyes" he mentally termed them—to see the better through her veil."What glorious stars!"He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila—I rather fancy—lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of their famous Abbey——""Great Scott!""Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said——""I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again—" She pointed as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately bulk and the huddled housetops."Those are Boche fireworks!""Fireworks?""Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting? Oh, pretty busy north—as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassée. French on our right—French and Belgians on the left of us. More French holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming now!"Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements. The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England! Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and souptrès chaudnot only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur. Madamela Supérieurewould never permit that either should proceed without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious, full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment, containing aprie-dieuand a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed with fadedDirectoirecurtains, a minute washstand,—a faint smell of scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of acalorifère, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a stitched border of yellowimmortellesand faded laurel-leaves, that had been green and fresh six months before....Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful—or because she had never stayed in a convent before.She was going to Sherbrand—her Flying Man—who had been supposed to be dead and found to be living,—and who had written to say that he did not want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest arrived.CHAPTER LXXILIVING AND DEAD"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER. RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy—an unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him, nor even tears and sighs.She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "Let me come to you!" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man."April, 1915."You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"—the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine—"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented—I am neither—quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,"Yours most sincerely,"A. S."A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter—but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,—all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters—a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in theConfiteorandCredo. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached."Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,—her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified—the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you—whatever may be his nationality,—who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War—then the War has been a blessing—to him—and not a curse! Acts have been performed—and are repeated hourly—acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,—not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace—ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in his mobile face and quick utterance:"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the presence of Him who is the Light."He turned away and began theCredo. As the deep chorus of male voices followed, Patrine found herself agreeing with the preacher's discourse."What was it," she asked herself, "that led me out from overheated, crowded rooms, oppressive with the scent of flowers and perfumes of triple extract—where the Tango and the Turkey Trot were being danced by half-clad, painted women and effeminate young men—and set my feet upon a mountain-slope with the free winds of heaven blowing upon me? I must answer—It was the War!"As the great waves of theCredosurged and beat against the old brown rafters she went on thinking:"What has made me quicken to the call of Humanity—awakened me to the knowledge of my sisterhood with my fellow-women? What has taught me how to live without dissipation and do without useless luxuries? Again—the War! And oh! what has taught me the meaning of Love in all its fulness, and set within the shrine of my heart this great sacred sorrow, and kindled in my soul the pure altar-flame of Faith? The War, the terrible War!"She prayed for Sherbrand at the Commemoration of the Living! A somewhat incoherent petition that her Flying Man might be helped to bear his blindness, and find some happiness in her unchanged love. And the thought of the dead Agnostic haunted her. Who was the man, and what had brought about his ending? Was he a patient in the Ursuline Hospital?A French, an English, or a German soldier? By a subtle change in her mental purview, recollections of von Herrnung began to occupy her mind."I will not think of him!—I will not!" she said to herself desperately. Then the obsession assumed an acute form. All that she most wished to forget in her relations with the Kaiser's Flying Man was being revived in her memory. Scene by scene, sentence by sentence, she was forced to live over the hated Past again.She must have risen from her knees and left the chapel, so unbearable became the torment, but that the sacring bell rang its triples, the deep tones of theSanctusanswered from the turret, and the Host was lifted up. Then her tense nerves relaxed. The almost tangible presence of evil withdrew itself. She breathed more freely, and peace flowed in balmy waves upon her stormy soul. In prayer for herself and those who were most dear to her, she lost the sense of the unseen hands plucking at her garments and the soundless voice whispering at her ear. And presently at theIpsis Domine, when supplication is made by priests and people for the departed, she prayed for the soul of the Denier—that the Divine Mercy might reach and enfold him, and lead him yet into the Way of Peace."Christ is risen who created all things, and who hath had pity upon mankind.... Purchased people, declare His virtues, alleluia! Who hath called you out of darkness into His admirable light."To Patrine the Call had come.It was Easter Week and there were many communicants. The nuns and the French and English Red Cross nurses helped the lame to reach the Altar-rails and guided the blind. When a tall, blond young English Officer with bandaged eyes and an empty sleeve was led up to his Master's Table, Patrine was grateful that the chapel was so dusk.She was to meet the Chaplain of the Pophereele Stationary Hospital after Mass, the Mother Superioress had said. Thus, guided by an Ursuline Sister, she passed from the chapel into a long, whitewashed cloister looking on the garden, its open arches facing the doors of what had been class-rooms, and now were wards. Another Ursuline, the Sister Superintendent of the Hospital, with a young, gentle face framed in her close white guimpe and flowing black veil, sat writing in a big book at a plain deal table. Near her were some shelves with rows of bottles and a chest of drawers with measuring-glasses upon it, and a pestle and mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix hung against the whitewashed wall."This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat.She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering:"HIER RUHT IM GOTTEIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER.""That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished—he has only gone away for a moment to get some morecérusefrom Mother Madeleine."Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the register:"That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows hisrang militaire. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is apetit déjeuner."And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed withpistoletsand coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later. Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to takedéjeunerwith M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting the English Mademoiselle.Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped against the wall."That is for him?"The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst ring."For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had been addressed."Dieu veuille avoir son âme!"The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross."His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch. "Why, might one demand?""The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be no name—by desire of the deceased!""He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a blue checked handkerchief. "The Père Aumonier tells me," his startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his injuries, he might have recovered—that his death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly.""But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "Thecoup d'obushad spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured—M. le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult—but we could understand him—unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us. But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted—he who has painted the headboard for the grave.""He—the German officer—was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired Monseigneur of the Aumonier.The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who answered in her clear and gentle voice:"Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then—he suffered so terribly, in mind as in body—one could not be angry at anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an object of horror to women—women who had worshipped him almost as a god!""Chut—chut! Eh—well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women," observed Monseigneur."Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak of women. You are only nuns.'""But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur."Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most miserable he found relief in saying things—abusive—outrageous—about nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him—poor Number Twenty! But the French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment—he has been an officer's servant—and is active and useful, even though he has lost a leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!""And then? A change?—a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur."A change. He became more gloomy—more violent after a letter arrived for him from England at theJour des morts. Since two days comes another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his agents—the injustice of his Emperor—the revenge upon the Englishwoman that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on the night-table and a pencilbilletfor me. I am to send a ring he always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was hisfiancée, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have been able to do for him!—he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness.... He wishes no name upon his grave—but to be forgotten.... Poor broken body—poor rebellious heart—poor stubborn, desperate soul!""You think, then, that—he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with directness."I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look, Monseigneur!—this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under the pearl, which lifts up—is a little box for something.... A relic perhaps—or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair.""It might serve as a reliquary—at need, my child," said Monseigneur, examining the platinum setting. He gave one swift glance at the unsuspicious Aumonier and another at the innocent nun. He peered again narrowly at the empty hiding-place, to the shallow sides of which a few atoms of glittering grey dust were adhering. He lifted the ring to his nose and sniffed, tapped the little box on his thumb-nail, and touched his tongue to one of the glittering grey specks. Then he hastily spat in his handkerchief, and thunder-clouds sat on the furrowed forehead over the great hooked beak."Listen!"The nun started and grew paler still. She hurried to the glazed doors opening on the garden and threw them wide apart. As the chill outer air rushed in, sporting with the scant white locks of M. l'Aumonier, fluttering the purple lappets at the throat of Monseigneur, and tugging as with invisible hands at the Sister's thin black veil, approaching footsteps crunched over the sloppy gravel of the cloister walk.
Coincidence, you say, perhaps. Well, but what is Coincidence? Is it a Dust-wind careering over the Desert in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, playing with straw and twigs and dead locusts' wings, and one stray fragment of printed paper, as a Mounted Division of the British Expeditionary Force encamped upon the slope not far from Gizeh, ride out with the dawn to exercise their horses on the plain that is partly flooded by the Nile? Or is it the ragged quarter-sheet torn from an English newspaper, that wraps itself about the spurred ankle of the big blond young Englishman who rides the vicious chestnut mare?
Long lines of horses marching in threes for miles, black and coffee-coloured natives in flowing jubbehs mixed up with tanned young British Centaurs in sun-helmets and khaki shorts—and the rag of paper clings to the leg of the one man there whom its news concerns. She who is dearer than all save Honour is once more a free woman,—and his faith and constancy are to meet their reward. His letter lies before me; a sentence pencilled more blackly than the rest stands out upon the yellowish paper:
"If this be accident it is incredible. If Design, it is miraculous. And I had rather thank Heaven for a miracle vouchsafed than owe even such happiness—to Chance."
When the deep swoon gave place to semi-consciousness, the pale lips uttered nothing but broken words. Locked away safely behind them was the glorious news that would have changed two people's lives. Thus Lynette was still ignorant of her own great happiness, when having helped Patrine upstairs to her room and put her tenderly to bed, she dismissed Mrs. Keyse to her own slumbers, and took her place beside Patrine's pillow, listening to the sighing breaths that were growing deeper and fuller, keenly alert for the sound of the Doctor's latch-key and the Doctor's step in the hall.
It was close upon the smallest hour. Something had detained Saxham. Sitting in the darkened room beside the long prone shape beneath the coverings, Lynette was free to lean her head against the back of the chair she sat in and yield herself to the bitter sweetness of memories of her lost boy.
What the sorrow of Shakespeare wrought in deathless lines no halting pen like mine dare strive to portray. Enough that the beloved little ghost that haunted the woman whose heart was breaking, was closer than ever to Lynette on this night. All day the sweet obsession had thrust itself between Bawne's mother and solid, tangible things. The red-gold sheen of the boyish head, the gay blue challenge of the laughing eyes, the coaxing tones of the treble voice had tortured the senses they deceived. She had thrust him away with both hands, for ordinary, commonplace duties claimed, and yielding led the way to madness. He had come back again and again, to be driven away once more. Now that her hands lay idle in her lap—now that she was withdrawn from the world and its realities, the beloved little ghost returned and had his will with her.
Sitting in the haunted gloom, a strange conviction came to Lynette. This was not Grief, travestying in the figure of the absent, but a visitation from the World Unseen.... Bawne was dead, and had been dragged back from the threshold of the Beyond by her own unbridled yearnings. Could there be a punishment more terrible than this? Only those who have loved and lost, and clinging to their faith in a Future Life, strive to bear patiently the burden of bereavement, can comprehend the torture of this woman in this hour.
The Presence grew more torturingly tangible. The empty shell of the house that had been Bawne's home was full of his callings, his movements, his play, his laughter. She heard his quick soft breathing behind her chair in the darkness. Once she could have vowed that a hard little boyish hand brushed against her cheek. Then she was alone once more, except for the unconscious sleeper. And then the torture began all over again.
Bawne was coming home, late, from the Hendon Flying Ground. The long months of misery—the horror of the War—had been a dreadful dream. She heard the longbr'r'of the electric hall-bell under the impetuous insistent finger—the small scurry of his entrance, a squawk from the maid who answered night-calls—a whispered word or two, and the clumping of the heavy little brogues upon the stairs. Would he trip at the corner where he always stubbed his toe? she wondered—and she plainly heard him stumble. Then her hair stiffened upon her head, and a long shudder rippled through her. The little clumping brogues had stopped before Patrine's bedroom door.
"Mother!"
His voice called, and his well-known thump came on the door-panel. The handle clicked. She controlled her shuddering and forced her stiffened tongue to speech.
"Come in, my own!"
The tall door swung slowly inwards. A wedge of brightness from the lighted landing threw his shadow over the white-enamelled door-post.... The darkness of the room soaked it greedily up. Then the doorway was a square of radiance with a little ghostly figure framed in it. All the light was behind him. She could not see his face, but she felt his eyes upon her.... Then the voice that her ears were sick for said with a quaver in its treble:
"It's dark, but I can hear you breathing! ... Mother, why didn't you and Father come? I thought when I got there I'd be sure to see you! ... But amongst all those faces and faces not one was yours—and—Man alive!—I wanted to blub a bit! I'm not quite sure that I didn't, you know!"
She stretched her arms to the beloved little ghost, whispering:
"My poor, poor love, my baby, my treasure! Mother knows how much it hurt. But be patient a little longer. Soon—soon—your father and I——"
The woe-wave rose and swelled in her bosom, tears began to run over her stiff white face. The clasped hands she stretched to him were quivering, but she controlled them like the trembling of her voice.
"Go back to Paradise, my little son! Wait patiently, my love, my Angel! I have been wrong, but I will grieve no more! I will be patient:—O! believe——"
A man's footsteps sounded on the staircase and the great shadowy figure of the Doctor appeared behind Bawne's little shape. With a swift movement Saxham caught up the bewildered boy, made one long stride across the threshold, and put the warm, living treasure into the mother's outstretched arms...
Once again big black-lettered contents-bills shrieked from the railings and were worn after the fashion of heralds' tabards by the vendors of newspapers, and the editions were snapped up as fast as they came out. Here are some of the headlines:
"THRILLING ESCAPE OF KIDNAPPED BOY SCOUT FROM THE HANDS OF THE HUN. YOUNG HERO OF NORTH SEA ADVENTURE LANDS BEHIND BRITISH LINES AT LANGEBEKE IN TAUBE WITH A BOCHE PRISONER. FULL STORY OF HOW SCOUT WHO SAVED THE CLANRONALD PAPERS BOMBED THE GERMAN MACHINE-GUNS. DECORATION OF SCOUT SAXHAM WITH 'GOLDEN WOLF' BADGE BY ROYAL PRESIDENT AT ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS. PROBABLE TESTIMONIAL FROM BRITISH PUBLIC. AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE WAR MINISTER AT WHITEHALL. EXPECTED INVESTITURE WITH EDWARDIAN ORDER OF MERIT. WHAT YOU GET BY BEING PREPARED!"
And again:
"SPLENDID PLUCK OF BRITISH AVIATOR. FIGHTS ZEPPELIN ON WAY TO BOMB BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. AIRSHIP CRIPPLED. SHERBRAND R.F.C. KILLED. FALLS IN FLAMES OVER GERMAN LINES. HEROIC END OF SOLE REMAINING HEIR TO PENINSULAR WAR EARLDOM, AND INVENTOR OF THE HAWK-HOVERER THAT SOLVES PROBLEM OF STABILITY. WILL WAR OFFICE ADOPT GREAT INVENTION, EMPLOYED BY ALLIES' FLYING SERVICES?"
Three days later:
"SHERBRAND R.F.C. RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS HONOURS FROM FRANCE AND BELGIUM. CROIX D'HONNEUR AND ORDER OF LEOPOLD. WHY NOT BRITISH D.S.O.?"
CHAPTER LXX
A LOVER'S JOURNEY
The crossing—in this Arctic April weather when all of Britain and Belgium and North-West France lay under snowdrifts—had been calm and smooth enough for the worst sea-stomachs on the steamer. The tall young woman in the Navy blue felt hat with the well-known V.A.D. ribbon, and the long blue serge coat with the Red Cross shield-badge on the left breast, seemed used to travelling alone in War-time. She had secured a dry chair, set in the shelter of the after-deck-saloon, and a lifebelt as stipulated by the authorities, and tucked herself in her travelling-rug with her suit-case under her feet before the lights went out. Thus she had remained throughout the passage, with her dark eyes looking seawards, as deaf to occasional bursts of uproarious song from a draft of returning Blighties packed on the lower-deck, as to the siren's raucous shrieks.
Courteous fellow-passengers, chiefly British and Belgian officers returning from leave, would have been ready enough to have chatted with the young woman who was going to the Front. Such attentions as they offered her she accepted frankly. One got her tea and sandwiches, another offered chocolate, another a foot-warmer. Yet another insisted on lending her an unnecessary extra rug. They pointed out the hovering Fleet hydroplanes, and the diligently-scouting searchlights of the destroyers guarding the sea-way, and the Hull-bound Dutch liner whose neutrality was proclaimed in illuminated side-letters, blazing like a sea-Alhambra upon the east horizon, and the Hospital ship that passed close, coming from Boulogne laden with wounded, the huge Red Cross upon her flank picked out with blazing green lights.
One and all united in assuring the wearer of the V.A.D. uniform that there was no danger. Though when the red and green eyes on the ends of the East and West jetties winked into sight over the coal-black shining water, her fellow-passengers congratulated Patrine as heartily as though some peril had been escaped.
"Nothing more doing, Pinkums, old thing!" said an experienced youngster of twenty to a susceptible senior whom Patrine's unprotected condition had roused to a strong sense of responsibility. "She's got enough passes from British and French Headquarters to make a poker-hand. I saw her showin' 'em to the authorities at Folkestone. Besides, have heart, there's a Red Tab here to meet her. We'd better hence it before we're snubbed."
And they saluted, and clattered down the crowded gangway, grabbing their valises and buttoning up their British warms, and hurried away to get into trench-kit, webbings, and waders, and swell the crowd in the railway-station—waiting to go up to the Front and carry on with the hourly, momentary game of touch-and-go with Death.
While Patrine looked eagerly about her, listening to the hum of the vast human beehive. This was not the big rambling, old-fashioned French seaport one had known so well before the War. Under sky-blind arc-lights and red, green, and white lamps, every form of activity imaginable in connection with the running of that now huge and complicated machine, the British Field Army, seemed even at this hour to be in full swing. The rumble of steam-cranes and the roar of dynamos, the panting of pneumatic hold-dischargers, the clank of couplings, and the shrieks of locomotives mingled with the tinny voices of gramophones from the recreation-rooms at the great packed barracks and crowded camps, and the sounds of song and laughter and applause from music-halls and picture-palaces.
"Yes, it goes on most of the time," said the Red Tab who had come to meet Patrine, an officer upon the Staff of the Commandant of a Headquarters not far from—a certain place where Miss Saxham wished to go. "The Army's got to be rationed and equipped and horsed and foraged, and timbered and coaled and petroled and munitioned, as well as cobbled and engineered and patched and tinkered and nursed—don't you follow me? And these Base Ports are jolly useful. Nobody goes to bed much, I fancy. Perhaps they'll make up the sleep they've lost by-and-by, after the War."
"What-ho, Nubbins! Back from the Old Shop? Sorry!—didn't happen to see you weren't alone!"
The station had vomited a flood of khaki, tumbling down the half-lit quays to take later boats by storm. A tall, lanky officer of Gunners had hailed Red Tab effusively; then, seeing him to be engaged with a lady, hurried on with apologies and a salute for Patrine.
"Don't mind me! Do call back your friend," she urged. "He seemed so glad to see you."
"Thanks much. If you don't mind. Whewip! Whewip!"
And the other, recalled by a shrill whistle, wheeled and came back upon his stride, to grasp the offered hand. Whereupon, ensued the following strictly private duologue:
"How goes the Battery?"
"First class. And your crowd?"
"Crawling along as per, usual. Congrats on the Oudstyde affair!"
"Thanks frightfully! But the whole thing was a bit of a fluke—everyone knows that.Theyhad thrown down a gas-attack and the wind went about-face. So we stayed where we were and shelled them through their chlorine. Then they got their Reserves up and came on in lumps—the old Zulu formation—and Pyers and his Engineers got to work with the"—the speaker's voice dropped to an undertone—"what Pyers calls the 'Piffbozzler.'"
"The rose by any other name——" quoted Red Tab, and went on: "I'd have given a tenner to have been there!—and as for old Clanronald—I wonder if he got leave from—wherever he is—to see the stunt that day?"
Said the Gunner:
"If he did—and had such a thing as a stomach about him, he must have simply—vomited! Pyers says he felt like the Angel with the Flaming Sword—when he didn't feel like an Indian jeweller with a blowpipe—frizzling a column of white ants marching over the floor. You've seen how the things come on and on——"
"Yahgh!" remarked Red Tab expressively.
"But—just for once—we didn't happen to be on the frizzled side. The C. in C. has laughed to the verge of hysterics over a leader in the BerlinLokal Anzeiger, with reference to the realised dream of the 'homicidal maniac' Clanronald. 'A deplorable example of the perversion ofDie Wissenschaftat the murderous hands of English military chemists,' they called it. Pretty neat from Boches who've been pumping burning paraffin into our trenches, and suffocating platoons of men with asphyxiating gases, ever since May."
"And particularly appropriate from people who bribed a crack Professor of Literature to engage as librarian at Gwyll Castle—set the Library Wing on fire and steal the portfolio with the plans of the 'homicidal maniac' three weeks before the War—when Prinz Heinrich and old Moltke were stopping in London. They'd promised their agent twelve million marks if he succeeded. Wonder what he got from them when the plot fizzled out? Well, so-long! Any message for Edith?'
"Tell her you saw me topping, and remember me to your wife!"
And they gripped hands and parted, and Red Tab hurried back to the tall young woman waiting on the flagstones under a blue shaded arc-lamp, saying:
"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No—we go out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded railway-carriage—unless you'd have preferred going by train?"
The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat.
"In case of barbed wire—strung across country roads," explained Red Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated—travelling fast at night—or in foggy weather—without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee—and sandwiches in a box. Don't restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at intervals, and rather faintly. Fact—I've heard 'em in the South of England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O—, twenty-eight miles from the Front—they're loud enough at times—though there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No—thanks, I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck up and go to by-by!"
The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the wintry roads ahead of it—or horse-drawn transport waggons—or droves of animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a cloud—or bodies of men in heavy marching order—French and British soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,—shaped after the fashion of Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.
And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.
Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.
"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This is the Ursuline Convent of St. O—, where we've arranged for you to billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady, and my uncle—I mean Sir Roland—thought you'd be more cushy with the Sisters than at a common hotel!"
"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon the pavement to warm his frozen feet.
"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters—twenty-five miles from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain—and a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him—and he said he'd be delighted to look after you. Don't get down—it's frightfully slippery!"
But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and narrowing long eyes—"queer eyes" he mentally termed them—to see the better through her veil.
"What glorious stars!"
He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:
"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila—I rather fancy—lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of their famous Abbey——"
"Great Scott!"
"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said——"
"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again—" She pointed as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately bulk and the huddled housetops.
"Those are Boche fireworks!"
"Fireworks?"
"Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting? Oh, pretty busy north—as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassée. French on our right—French and Belgians on the left of us. More French holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming now!"
Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements. The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.
Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England! Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and souptrès chaudnot only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur. Madamela Supérieurewould never permit that either should proceed without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.
And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious, full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment, containing aprie-dieuand a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed with fadedDirectoirecurtains, a minute washstand,—a faint smell of scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of acalorifère, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a stitched border of yellowimmortellesand faded laurel-leaves, that had been green and fresh six months before....
Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful—or because she had never stayed in a convent before.
She was going to Sherbrand—her Flying Man—who had been supposed to be dead and found to be living,—and who had written to say that he did not want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest arrived.
CHAPTER LXXI
LIVING AND DEAD
"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER. RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."
The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy—an unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him, nor even tears and sighs.
She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "Let me come to you!" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.
"April, 1915.
"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"—the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine—"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented—I am neither—quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,
"A. S."
A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter—but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?
There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,—all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters—a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.
The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in theConfiteorandCredo. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.
The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached.
"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,—her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified—the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you—whatever may be his nationality,—who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War—then the War has been a blessing—to him—and not a curse! Acts have been performed—and are repeated hourly—acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,—not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace—ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."
After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in his mobile face and quick utterance:
"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the presence of Him who is the Light."
He turned away and began theCredo. As the deep chorus of male voices followed, Patrine found herself agreeing with the preacher's discourse.
"What was it," she asked herself, "that led me out from overheated, crowded rooms, oppressive with the scent of flowers and perfumes of triple extract—where the Tango and the Turkey Trot were being danced by half-clad, painted women and effeminate young men—and set my feet upon a mountain-slope with the free winds of heaven blowing upon me? I must answer—It was the War!"
As the great waves of theCredosurged and beat against the old brown rafters she went on thinking:
"What has made me quicken to the call of Humanity—awakened me to the knowledge of my sisterhood with my fellow-women? What has taught me how to live without dissipation and do without useless luxuries? Again—the War! And oh! what has taught me the meaning of Love in all its fulness, and set within the shrine of my heart this great sacred sorrow, and kindled in my soul the pure altar-flame of Faith? The War, the terrible War!"
She prayed for Sherbrand at the Commemoration of the Living! A somewhat incoherent petition that her Flying Man might be helped to bear his blindness, and find some happiness in her unchanged love. And the thought of the dead Agnostic haunted her. Who was the man, and what had brought about his ending? Was he a patient in the Ursuline Hospital?
A French, an English, or a German soldier? By a subtle change in her mental purview, recollections of von Herrnung began to occupy her mind.
"I will not think of him!—I will not!" she said to herself desperately. Then the obsession assumed an acute form. All that she most wished to forget in her relations with the Kaiser's Flying Man was being revived in her memory. Scene by scene, sentence by sentence, she was forced to live over the hated Past again.
She must have risen from her knees and left the chapel, so unbearable became the torment, but that the sacring bell rang its triples, the deep tones of theSanctusanswered from the turret, and the Host was lifted up. Then her tense nerves relaxed. The almost tangible presence of evil withdrew itself. She breathed more freely, and peace flowed in balmy waves upon her stormy soul. In prayer for herself and those who were most dear to her, she lost the sense of the unseen hands plucking at her garments and the soundless voice whispering at her ear. And presently at theIpsis Domine, when supplication is made by priests and people for the departed, she prayed for the soul of the Denier—that the Divine Mercy might reach and enfold him, and lead him yet into the Way of Peace.
"Christ is risen who created all things, and who hath had pity upon mankind.... Purchased people, declare His virtues, alleluia! Who hath called you out of darkness into His admirable light."
To Patrine the Call had come.
It was Easter Week and there were many communicants. The nuns and the French and English Red Cross nurses helped the lame to reach the Altar-rails and guided the blind. When a tall, blond young English Officer with bandaged eyes and an empty sleeve was led up to his Master's Table, Patrine was grateful that the chapel was so dusk.
She was to meet the Chaplain of the Pophereele Stationary Hospital after Mass, the Mother Superioress had said. Thus, guided by an Ursuline Sister, she passed from the chapel into a long, whitewashed cloister looking on the garden, its open arches facing the doors of what had been class-rooms, and now were wards. Another Ursuline, the Sister Superintendent of the Hospital, with a young, gentle face framed in her close white guimpe and flowing black veil, sat writing in a big book at a plain deal table. Near her were some shelves with rows of bottles and a chest of drawers with measuring-glasses upon it, and a pestle and mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix hung against the whitewashed wall.
"This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat.
She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTTEIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER."
"That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished—he has only gone away for a moment to get some morecérusefrom Mother Madeleine."
Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the register:
"That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows hisrang militaire. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is apetit déjeuner."
And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed withpistoletsand coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later. Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to takedéjeunerwith M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting the English Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped against the wall.
"That is for him?"
The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst ring.
"For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had been addressed.
"Dieu veuille avoir son âme!"
The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross.
"His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch. "Why, might one demand?"
"The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be no name—by desire of the deceased!"
"He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a blue checked handkerchief. "The Père Aumonier tells me," his startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his injuries, he might have recovered—that his death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly."
"But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "Thecoup d'obushad spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured—M. le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult—but we could understand him—unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us. But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted—he who has painted the headboard for the grave."
"He—the German officer—was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired Monseigneur of the Aumonier.
The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who answered in her clear and gentle voice:
"Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then—he suffered so terribly, in mind as in body—one could not be angry at anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an object of horror to women—women who had worshipped him almost as a god!"
"Chut—chut! Eh—well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women," observed Monseigneur.
"Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak of women. You are only nuns.'"
"But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur.
"Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most miserable he found relief in saying things—abusive—outrageous—about nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him—poor Number Twenty! But the French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment—he has been an officer's servant—and is active and useful, even though he has lost a leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!"
"And then? A change?—a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur.
"A change. He became more gloomy—more violent after a letter arrived for him from England at theJour des morts. Since two days comes another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his agents—the injustice of his Emperor—the revenge upon the Englishwoman that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on the night-table and a pencilbilletfor me. I am to send a ring he always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was hisfiancée, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have been able to do for him!—he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness.... He wishes no name upon his grave—but to be forgotten.... Poor broken body—poor rebellious heart—poor stubborn, desperate soul!"
"You think, then, that—he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with directness.
"I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look, Monseigneur!—this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under the pearl, which lifts up—is a little box for something.... A relic perhaps—or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair."
"It might serve as a reliquary—at need, my child," said Monseigneur, examining the platinum setting. He gave one swift glance at the unsuspicious Aumonier and another at the innocent nun. He peered again narrowly at the empty hiding-place, to the shallow sides of which a few atoms of glittering grey dust were adhering. He lifted the ring to his nose and sniffed, tapped the little box on his thumb-nail, and touched his tongue to one of the glittering grey specks. Then he hastily spat in his handkerchief, and thunder-clouds sat on the furrowed forehead over the great hooked beak.
"Listen!"
The nun started and grew paler still. She hurried to the glazed doors opening on the garden and threw them wide apart. As the chill outer air rushed in, sporting with the scant white locks of M. l'Aumonier, fluttering the purple lappets at the throat of Monseigneur, and tugging as with invisible hands at the Sister's thin black veil, approaching footsteps crunched over the sloppy gravel of the cloister walk.