BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD.The undertaker had recommended the text to the widow because it contained the right number of letters required to fit in at the bottom. But did it fit in, Patrine had sometimes wondered, quite so appropriately, at the close of her father's life?She treasured his portrait, taken at the age of thirty, the tinted presentment of a handsome, stupid young officer, resplendent in the gold and blue and scarlet of a crack Dragoon regiment. It had fallen to her keeping when her mother had re-married. But she cherished no illusions regarding the original. How often, since her own eyes had been opened to the fact of their existence, had she not screened David's vices from strangers' eyes.She had made him her ideal, and Mildred had revealed him to her as vicious, unprincipled. She could not forgive her mother for telling her those horrors, she, Mildred—seemed to forget whenever she was pleased. But Patrine had never forgotten. She would wake at night even now with the dry sobs shaking her.... To have been able to believe in that dead father as noble, chivalrous, good, would have been so sweet; she had shed big surreptitious tears in sympathy with the anguish of Jammes, who would have so loved to believe in the existence of Almighty God, and the dear little Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and the holy Angels, because Faith is so restful,si paisible....CHAPTER XVTHE BITE IN THE KISSBut von Herrnung was saying, as they moved with a straggling procession of similar pleasure-seekers, over smooth sanded pathways between beds of geranium and verbena and lobelia, ivy-leaved geranium and gaily coloured foliage-plants, bordered with little twinkling lamps:"Shall I tell you what I have just heard as those people passed us? The tall man with the white moustache, and the chic little woman in the Spanishmantilla. She told her friend that we make a handsome couple. Perhaps that makes you a little angry? ... Shall I make you still more angry? Well then, listen? ... If we were really a couple you would not have that so-black hair....""Why not?" He had roused her curiosity. She put away the little damp, laced handkerchief. "Would your cruel usage of me have turned it white?""Not that, but you would have added the one touch that makes perfection. You are too sombre—too much like a night in October with all that cloudy blackness.... You would have bleached and dyed your hair—not yellow, nor yet orange—nor even flame.... The colour of beech-leaves in winter, as one sees them burning against a snow-bank. And—all the women would be crazy with jealousy—and all the men would be dying at your feet! For you would be Isis then—you would be the Sphinx-woman of whom La Forgue wrote and Colette has sung to us. You would be hellishly, divinely beautiful!""Hellish again." She gave her low, deep laugh, prolonging it a trifle stagily. "What do you bet me I don't—do what you said?""Bleach and dye...?""That's it." She nodded. "To the colour of—what was it? 'Beech-leaves in winter.' ...""Against a snow-bank." He added: "The snow is your wonderful skin. And I will bet you four hundred and twenty marks—that is twenty pounds English. Is it agreed? ... Do you not say—Done? ...""Twenty pounds...." She shrugged her big white shoulders. "My dear man, I haven't got twenty pounds in this blessed old world!"He hesitated; finally said with reluctance:"I will lend you twenty pounds—it will cost you twenty pounds to have your hair done here in Paris.... But you will besehr schön—the money will be well spent. No? ..."—for she had shaken her head, frowning. "It is offered—why will you not accept?""Because I won't.... There are some things I draw the line at. Borrowing money's one of them.""Then I will bet you my magpie pearl—you may have seen it"—he displayed the ornamented little finger—"against that not-very-good diamond you wear on your left hand."She burst out laughing and repeated through her laughter: "'Not very good.' I call that insulting.... When it cost me fifteen francs in the Palais Royal. Well, done with you!""It is done! But you have not done with me." Von Herrnung's tone had a new note of triumph. He urged: "You go back to London—when? ... The day after to-morrow....Gut!... I have myself to visit London upon business—I shall see Isis with her beautiful new hair. One thing more. An address where I may call and see it. Be quick! We turn down here! ..."Patrine protested, peering with narrowed eyes through the dusk-blue twinkling semi-darkness. "But no! ... That big marquee-thing at the end of this avenue—with all the festoons of lights and the ring of promenade about it—surely that's thePavilion de la Danse?""Halt den Mund!" His hand closed peremptorily on her arm: he hurried her down the trellised vine walk that invited on the left of them, as light measured footsteps padded on the gravel, and a man ran past calling, as it seemed, to somebody ahead:"Miss Saxham ahoy! ... Lady Beauvayse——""He's calling me. It's Captain Courtley...." Patrine persisted."Let him call! Are you not with me?" Von Herrnung's tone was masterful. "You shall go to him when you have given me that London address!"She was amused and yet annoyed by his persistency."Oh, all right! 'The Ladies' Social Club, Short Street, Piccadilly, West.' That's where I'm generally to be found when I'm in town.""Sehr gut! Tell me once again, then I shall not forget, no!""Write it on your cuff!""It is written in a safer place," he told her. "We Prussian officers are trained to remember without writing things down. A face, an address, a conversation, the outlines of a country. Though forreconnaissancethere is nothing likedie Photographie." He added: "When we meet in London I shall be able to tell you everything you wore to-night.""Really! ... How flattering! ... You've made a mental inventory?"They were retracing their steps to the avenue recently quitted. He walked with noiseless strides behind the tall, supple figure as it moved between the trellised vines and roses, gowned with its flaunting diadem, robed in the insincere splendours of the opera-mantle already described."As you say. I shall be able to tell you that the back of yourmantelwas cut in a V-shape nearly reaching to your waist-line. Shall I tell you why?""If you're keen to...." She felt a scorching breath between her shoulders and quickened her pace, making for the avenue. But he moved with her, his voice came thickly: "Because your back is so superbly beautiful you cannot bear to hide it from men!""Ah-h!"She whirled about, glaring like an angry leopardess, her strong white arm upraised to strike. Face, throat, and bosom glowed with painful crimson. Between her violated, insulted shoulders, his furious kiss still burned and stung."How dare you touch me!" she gasped. But he had shot past her even as she turned. He was running towards the avenue, calling gaily:"Were you looking for us, Lady Beauvayse? Here we are!""Cad, cad!" she stammered. "Insufferable! beastly!" Then, because a scene was quite out of the question, she went forward with head held high, and resentment heaving her broad bosom, to meet Lady Beauvayse."Pat! You needle in a haystack," cried her friend, "where did you get to?""Nowhere. We missed you at the Café Concert," Patrine began."And then," von Herrnung explained, "we happened to take the wrong turn. But we have not gone far before we are recalled.""—To the path of probity," suggested Lady Beauvayse, adding: "And in this instance the path of probity leads to thePavilion de Chahut." She explained to Patrine: "Chahutis the modern version of thecan-can—famous in the days of the Second Empire; when the great cocodettes of the Court of the Tuileries—rivals of Cora Pearl and Skittles and other naughty persons—did high-kicking under the rose here, and they called the place Mabille."It was not easy to get near the Pavilion, so dense and variegated a crowd had congregated before its illuminated entrance. But the entrance fee was doubled. Gold must be paid to see the famous São Paulo dance. Thus many would-be pleasure-seekers of the less affluent kind turned back disappointed from the row of gilt turnstiles under the blazing archway, compelled to content themselves with the outer promenade.Breasting the human eddy caused by these, Patrine and her party passed the barrier, climbed a flight of shallow gilt marble stairs carpeted with pink plush and decorated with roses and tree-ferns and reached the elevated promenade. Set within the circumference of the outer one, it commanded a complete view of the circular ball-room, to whose level descended from it at intervals yet other flights of broad gilt stairs, similarly carpeted and flower-decked for the convenience of those who wished to join the dancers, or return from the ball-room to the level of the promenade.The revels were in full swing. Standing upon the brink, looking down as into a cockpit, you saw Patrine, superb in her false diadem and mock ermines, leaning her bare white hand upon a velvet-covered rail. At first she could only make out a giddying whirl of arms and heads and shoulders. Presently, the picture began to clear.To the wail, clang and clash of strange, discordant, exotic music, rendered by an orchestra of coloured performers, two wide circles of dancers rhythmically spun. The floors they danced on were set at different levels, and rotated automatically,—each floor revolving in a different direction. Coloured lights, flung at intervals from reflectors in the ceiling, conveyed to Patrine the impression of staring down upon the whirling planes of a huge gyroscopic top.Only the central space of shining parquet was void within the double circle of gyrating dancers. A crash from the orchestra and three couples, oddly costumed, leaped suddenly out upon the floor. Patrine could not make out where they had come from. They appeared, and there was a slight commotion. A hedge of applauding spectators, four or five deep, formed about the central, stationary patch of parquet. The music changed, the six Brazilians began the famous dance.They were not beautiful to look at it seemed to Patrine, the men, familiarly styled by voices in the crowd as Lauro, Pedro, and Herculano, being undersized, sleek-headed, lithe and sallow, attired in faultlessly fitting evening dress-coats, white vests, black satin knee-breeches, black silks, and buckled pumps. They wore shallow collars of curious cut, lawn-frilled shirts and wide black neckties. Their female companions were swarthy as Indians, even through their paint, and plain of feature. But their superb hair and eyes, the rounded grace of hip and waist and limb, the slenderness of throat and wrist and ankle, testified, like their tiny feet and high-arched insteps, to a strain of Spanish blood."La Rivadavia, Alexandrina, and Silvana," the eager spectators named them. They wore transparent sheaths, and brief, oddlybouffanteoverskirts, like flounced muslin lamp-shades with a boldly suggestive forward tilt. They began the dance with some familiar Tango figures. The poses, the approaches, the hesitations, were well known to Patrine."Nothing very new.... But—the music made by those buck niggers! 'Bizzarramente' isn't the word for it. One expects to see gombos covered with serpent-skin, trumpets of elephant-tusk, skull-rattles, and all the paraphernalia of Obeah in the orchestra, instead of those huge, superb brass wind-instruments, cymbals as big as table-tops and ten-foot silver trumpets, like poor de Souza's.... Raised in the States, but wasn't he a Brazilian by birth?" It was the voice of Lady Beauvayse, and von Herrnung's answered from behind Patrine:"It may be so. But theBlechinstrumenteand theBlasinstrumente—for the biggest of those they have to go to Germany. Nowhere else can they be made as there.... Bravo! ...Bis—bis!"He applauded.... Everybody was applauding. The gyroscopic whirl of dancers had become stationary. All now were eager spectators. And the three couples from São Paulo had reached the culminating point of a uniquely curious and exotic figure. Savage and violent, sinuous and creeping; suggestive of the nocturnal gambols of enamoured jaguars, in the deep primeval forests of Brazil."Horrid! One expects them to lash tails and roar.... I've got what Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch called 'cold clams walking up my backbone.'" Lady Beauvayse shuddered and made a pretty grimace. "All the same I think I'll go down and look at them a little closer. Ah-h! ... Good grapes! Why, he simply picked her up by the scruff of the neck with his teeth and shook her.... I've justgotto see that done over again!"She was gone, with a whisk of the emerald bird of paradise and a waft ofparfum très persistant. Captain Courtley vanished in her wake. Patrine made no motion to follow them.The tense excitement, the pungent exhalations rising from the crowded ball-room were affecting her brain. She felt giddy, and the steady pressure of the crowd behind her was thrusting her to the very verge of the promenade. She yielded automatically, unconscious of danger near.You are to see her there, poised on the verge of the rose-carpeted precipice, her hand gripping the velvet-covered railing, her wide nostrils distended, her broad bosom heaving as she inhaled the sultry, vitiated atmosphere, heavy with a myriad perfumes, tainted by a thousand breaths. Her stare, lifeless as the enamelled, glittering regard of some Princess-mummy of Old Egypt, was fixed upon the artists, of whom two couples had retired, as though in despair of competition with the chief favourites, leaving La Rivadavia and her comrade Herculano in possession of the floor.And the passions expressed by the rhythmical, sinuous movements of these dancers grew moment by moment less human, and more bestial. Art of the most consummate was displayed and degraded. Beauty and Truth shone pre-eminent in the hideous display. Now the woman sank towards the ground, with supple limbs outstretched and her wild head thrown back in fierce surrender. Her white fangs gleamed, her dumb mouth seemed to roar. And as her conqueror crept stealthily towards her, the play of his great muscles could be seen beneath his civilised attire, as though his supple body had been clothed with the tawny-golden, black-dappled hide of the Brazilian jaguar.As Herculano crouched and sprang, La Rivadavia's muscles visibly tightened. She bounded high, turned in the act.... Their gleaming fangs clashed in mid-air. And from the massed spectators came a hiss of excitement, "Th-h-h!..." like the hissing of a thousand snakes."Great Scott!" Patrine heard herself saying. "Great—Scott!"She no longer heard von Herrnung harshly breathing behind her.... He had moved to the leftward. His tall, broad-shouldered figure now stood against the railing some dozen feet away. His well-cut face, seen in profile, was purplish-red to the crisp, scarlet waves topping his high square forehead. The big white hands that held the glasses glued to his eyes, jerked, and as he pressed against the railing Patrine knew that he was shuddering. Now he looked at her, and his ravaged face was terrifying to the girl."Will you not..." he began, thickly.She quivered, cast a look about; saw the ugly emotion under which he laboured reflected in every face within her range of vision, as round after round of plaudits rose to the roof of the pavilion, escaping through the wide-open spaces between its gilded, rose-twined pillars into the night. The rafters vibrated with demands for a repetition of the popular sensation. The dancers accepted the encore.If von Herrnung beckoned now, asking Patrine to go down with him amongst the acrid exhalations of that cockpit of variegated lights, thronged with excited men and strangely-bedizened women, rent by devastating emotions, drunk with strange excitements, would Patrine say Yes or No? ...Ouf!but it was hot. How thick the air was with those illusion perfumes. And from whence was that cool breeze blowing that suddenly freshened the heavy air? ...CHAPTER XVITHE WIND OF JOYPatrine drew back from the edge of the promenade. A stout, swarthy Frenchman, a Southerner evidently, whose full brown face streamed with little rills of perspiration, stepped nimbly into her vacated place. His female companion instantly took his. The same movement was repeated—the packed bodies seemed to melt before her. In a few more steps she had merged from the crowd, upon the outer edge of the elevated promenade.There was another velvet railing there, and steps leading down to the promenade upon the ground-level. Against the background of starlit sky and illuminated gardens stood the tall figure of a man. He was broad-shouldered and lightly built, the poise and balance of his figure admirable. But for the gleam of his living eyes in his tanned face, and the movements of his head as he turned it from side to side, evidently seeking somebody, he might have been a statue of Mercury cast in light-hued bronze.For he wore loose, waist-high leggings strapped at the ankles, and a belted gabardine of thin light brown material, while a cap with an upturned brim and ear-flaps dangled from his sunburnt hand. And a uniformed official, all lacquered moustaches and gold-laced blue cloth, stood gesticulating a few paces from him, keen on defending from so unceremonious an intruder the integrity of the Upper Promenade."Monsieur cannot possibly descend into the ball-room ... the costume of Monsieur is not appropriate. It offends against good taste. It outrages the proprieties.... It ispeu convenableeven that Monsieur should be here."Patrine heard the protest, saw it driven home by swift expressive Gallic gestures, caught a gleam of mirth in the eyes of the oddly-garbed intruder, and the quirk of a smile at the corners of his mouth. No doubt the suggestion of the proprieties in connection with the traditions of Mabille had evoked it. She liked his face; it was lean and hard and rather hatchety, with a brave outlook of clear light eyes under the marked eyebrows, thick and straight and silvery-fair against his sunburnt skin. To her woman's eyes, Fatigue was stamped upon it and anxiety, and a kind of rueful impatience, as he apologised for the necessity of the intrusion in fragmentary but excellently accentuated French. He came in search of a friend, who was here and must be found; it was imperative..."There is to-morrow!—there is always to-morrow!" the official stated with a wave."That's just the point.... To-morrow! ..." The stranger's forehead was ploughed with lines of anxiety. He spoke in English now—the well-bred, modern, clipped English of the public school and the University. "No! you don't understand"—for the official had vigorously disclaimed all knowledge of the strange, barbarous tongue in which the other addressed him. "And I don't believe I'd ever make you. If I could only hammer into you what sort of a hat I'm in!"He knitted his brows; pulled himself together for a crowning effort. Patrine spoke, not as a stranger yielding to a sudden, helpful impulse, but quite simply, with a little, joyful catching of her breath:"Could I explain for you, do you suppose?""A—thanks! You're awfully good!"He turned to her eagerly, if with a certain embarrassment."If you would.... There is a man here I have to get word to. And—what French I have is simply technical.... You hardly find it in modern dictionaries—the argot of the engine-shop and the Flying School.""Now I understand...." She smiled in his perplexed face, drinking in deep breaths of the fresh fragrant air that blew about them as they stood together behind the thick wall of bodies that hid the cockpit from their view. A deep dimple von Herrnung had never seen showed low down in one of her pale cheeks. Their whiteness was slightly tinged with delicate pale rose. And her eyes had lost their brilliant enamelled hardness. They shone like dusky stars as she went on: "Now I know why I thought of wide green spaces and a breeze blowing to me over gorse and heather as I looked at you. Sub-conscious memories of Hendon and Brooklands and Upavon. For you're a Flying Man!""Just that!" His ruefulness was banished. "And now you know how I come to be in Paris with the clothes I stand up in and not another rag.... Two of us flew the Channel yesterday morning.... If the weather holds decent, we should be on the wing again by four A.M. And my mechanic's given me the slip. To say he's taken French leave would be appropriate under the circumstances. Left a line—the cool—beggar!—to say I'd find him here.""Too bad!" she said, as fresh furrows dug themselves into the tanned forehead. "Not fair to leave you in the cart like that. No wonder you followed—hot upon his track.""Combed the whole place—everywhere they'll let me in. But my aviator's kit's against me. I've seen some rummy get-ups. But they draw the line at Carberry's overalls."One hand rested easily on his hip, in the other hand he swung the eared cap with goggles. A pedestal in the moonlight would have suited him. It occurred to her to ask:"What was he like—your runaway mechanic?""I hardly ... Oh! ... Little black-avised Welshman—barely tips the scale at eight stone. Has to be a light-weight, because I weigh all of eleven. And with the hovering-gear—but that can't interest you.""Indeed it does. What of the hovering-gear?"His face darkened and hardened. He said:"It's an invention of mine. And after no end trying—our own people at Whitehall simply wouldn't have anything to do with me—the chiefs of the French Service Aëronautique consented to give it a test.""Sporting of them, wasn't it?"He agreed:"No end sporting. So I bucked the tiger over the Channel with Davis—to find that an officer and mechanic of the S. A. were told off to try the hoverer over the selected area. For us to engineer the thing ourselves wasn't 'l'etiquette militaire.' That's the French for Government red-tape.""Bother etiquette! I'm beginning to sympathise with Davis!"His vexation broke up in laughter."That's whatshedid. She sympathised with Davis and carried him off here."Patrine said, a light breaking in on her:"Why, of course, there would be a girl.... He'd hardly come to a place like this alone, would he?"Some query in his look made her add hastily:"What was she like?""Like.... The girl who's carried off Davis? ..." He reflected a moment. "Pretty and plump and fluffy, with a pair of goo-goo eyes! She's daughter or niece or something"—he boggled the explanation rather—"to the German chap who hired us the hangar at Drancy—if you can give that name to a ramshackle shed in a waste building-lot! And Davis—thundering good man, but once on a spree..." He whistled dismally. "If I could only get my claws on him! ..."Here the uniformed official returned to the charge:"Monsieur has found his friend—Monsieur has explained the situation. To enter theSalon de Dansewith Madame is not permissible—in the costume Monsieur displays. No doubt Madame will understand!"Patrine said, with a slight catch in her breath, as though some drops of chilly pleasant perfume had been suddenly sprayed on her:"He supposes ... he thinks ... that I'm ... your friend!""I'll explain." He reddened, turning to the official, saying in the French of the British schoolboy, laborious, devoid of colloquialisms:"Monsieur, vous n'avez pas compris. Madame elle—elle n'êtes qu'une étrangère. Pour mon ami, je ne lui vois. Si vous permettre d'entrer, peut-être——""Rototo! Voyez, man blousier, j'connais bien la sorte! Sufficit! Assez! Ça m' fait suer, comprends?" The gold-braided arm described a magnificent sweep, the large white kid-covered hand indicated remote distance—"Sortez!..."The Briton, thus invited to retire, looked at Patrine."I can't quite follow, but it's plain he's telling me to hook it. The rest is—pretty—strong?"She nodded, biting her lip."Frightfully rude. Not that I know much Paris slang. But a friend of mine—" She broke off to listen, as from under the functionary's waxed moustache rattled another sentence:"A l'instant, ou j'appelle l' sergent d'ville!""He's talking about sending for the police now!" She added hastily: "Don't let him do that! Offer him a tip!"The magic word must have been comprehended of the braided functionary. He ceased to fulminate. He waited, his avid eye upon the pair. The lean hatchety face of the aviator had flamed at Patrine's suggestion. He said:"Don't you think I'd have tipped him in the beginning—if I'd had the wherewithal? But expenses have been frightful!—the waste lot with the shed I've stalled the machine in costs as much as a suite of rooms at a decent middle-class hotel would. Had to fork rent in advance too. Proprietor's a German as well as a jerry-builder, and when I've paid his goo-goo girl for our coffee and rolls to-morrow morning"—the speaker exhibited a disc of shiny metal bearing the classical capped and oak-wreathed head of the Republic, value exactly twopence-halfpenny—"I'll have just one of these blessed tin things left.""How rotten!" In the gilt metal vanity-bag, Patrine's inseparable adjunct, lurked, in the company of a mirror, powder-puff, and note-book, a tiny white silk purse. In the purse nestled two plump British half sovereigns, the moiety of Patrine's salary for the previous week. "Would you jump down my throat if I asked you to let me finance you?" she pleaded, an eager hand in the depths of the receptacle. "Why not?""Because I'm a decent man!" If he had been previously crimson he was now scarlet as a boiled lobster. "Thanks all the same, though! I can't wait here, even to catch Davis.... I must bike back to Drancy, where I've left the Bird—the machine—in the German's shed... Not a soul to keep an eye on her! ... My heart's in my mouth when I think of what might hap—" He bit off the end of the sentence and went on: "But if you'd be so awfully kind as to take charge of this, in case you ... There's a message written on it...." He offered her a soiled, bent card."I understand. If I should chance to come across your Davis.... A little man ... looking like a Welshman.... But you haven't told me whether he's dark or fair!""Black as a crow," he told her. "Not dressed like me!" His well-cut mouth began to twist upwards at the corners."Quite a swell, in a silk-faced frock-coat, white vest and striped accompaniments. A silk hat, too, rather curly brimmed, but still, a topper. I suppose a friend of the lady's rented Davis the kit.""Of the lady's? ..." She remembered. "Yes, yes! Of course! ... The German's appendage.... Why! ... Look! ... Those two people who have just passed the turn-stile at the other end of the Promenade.... If there's anything in description, here comes Davis with the goo-goo girl!""By—gum! You've nailed me the pair of them." As the aviator's long strides bore him down in the direction of the little sallow, black-avised mechanic in the capacious silk-faced frock-coat, and his high-bosomed, florid, flaxen-haired enchantress, and before the moustached guardian of the Promenade could renew his indignant protest, Patrine had dropped the little sovereign-purse in his deep, rapacious hand. And at that instant the music ended with a crashing succession of barbaric chords. The São Paulo dance was done."Merci millefois, Madame!..."Patrine turned from the hireling's thanks to see the high head and powerful square shoulders of von Herrnung forging towards her, towering above the polyglot, variegated crowd. He hailed her with:"So you met a friend? Is that why I found myself deserted?"She answered coldly:"I did not desert you—and I did not meet a friend."His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had revelled in the final thrill. He persisted:"Was? But what means it? I have lost you.... I think you must have gone down into the ball-room after your friend.... I follow and you are not there. I come back to find you.... Who was that dirty bounder I saw you talking to?""He wasn't a dirty bounder!" His rudeness enraged her. "He was a nice, clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!"He sneered:"'Boy' ... Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies. You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class.""Then I'll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English—from the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes.""How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of him?" He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers.She answered:"Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday—with Davis—to test his invention—and he has got to be on the wing for home at four.""So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even? Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?"She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the carpet."Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said."I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary, and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse."Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so's Herculano could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she's got vim enough for a nest of rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren't, you look it!" The speaker yawned prettily: "I'm about ready to be taken back to by-by, though it's only two o'clock."Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred to walk, as the car was closed."Pardon! ..." His voice had arrested Morris on the point of starting the Rolls-Royce. His handsome face had appeared in the frame of the car-window. "Excuses! but this belongs to Miss Saxham!" His cuff shone white in the semi-darkness, the great magpie pearl on his little finger gleamed maliciously as he dropped the missing card upon Patrine's lap, and drew back, uncovered and smiling, as the car moved away. Later on, when she was safe in her room, she looked at the card, and read upon it in plain black lettering:+———————————————————————-+| || ALAN SHERBRAND, || || PILOT-INSTRUCTOR AND BUILDER OF AËROPLANES, || FANSHAW'S SCHOOL OF FLYING. || || THE AËRODROME, || COLLINGWOOD AVENUE, || HENDON, N. W. || |+———————————————————————-+Something was scrawled in violet pencil on the upper blank space. Being a girl with notions about squareness, Patrine would not at first read, remembering that it was his private message to Davis, whom Chance had brought within his master's reach. But later still, or earlier, when, after a brief interval of silence, the traffic of Paris began to roll over the asphalt, principle yielded to impulse. She switched on the electric light above her pillow and read:"This Sarajevo business spells War. Must get back at once to Hendon. I trust to your Honour not to fail me. You know what this means to"A. S."So the young Mercury in gabardine and overalls was a professional, a teacher; a pilot who helped men to qualify for the certificate given by the Royal Aëro Club without breaking too many bones. She had seen the big painted sign in the Collingwood Avenue, Hendon, that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School."I trust to your Honour," he had written to his mechanic. The word would have seemed big, and awful, and imposing, spelt like that, with a capital "H," if the writer had been a gentleman.Disillusioned, she tore the card into little pieces and sank into a heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows. And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them. She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the Société Aëronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honoré. It was brief enough."That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised is—'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged."Devotedly,"T. v. H."CHAPTER XVIIINTRODUCES AN OLD FRIENDSaxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of the Harley Street corner house.The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff, H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war slump in South African mining-stocks.The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset. Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He was harsh and unconciliatory in manner—a perfect bear, according to Society—but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival had outrun him in the race.Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face, with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation that tinged with violet a plump face coated with the latest complexion-cream."How very charming your wife is—still!"The speaker, her recent character of patient now merged in that of visitor, plucked down her veil of violet gauze with a gesture that betrayed her wrath. But her voice was carefully honeyed to match her smile—as she continued:"You have been married quite an age, haven't you?"The anniversary of her own second honeymoon was due next week. She went on answering her own query:"Nearly fourteen years, I think?"Saxham answered, not glancing at the silver table-almanac but at the threefold photograph frame:"To be precise, just fourteen years and six weeks. We were married on the 6th of June, 1900.""You have a good memory—for some things!"The undisguised resentment in her tone pulled Saxham's head round. He surveyed her with genuine surprise. She bit her lips and tossed her head, waggling her tall feather, jingling her strings of turquoise and amber, coral and onyx, kunzite and olivine, big blocks of which semi-precious stones were being worn just then, strung on the thinnest of gold chains. Each movement evoked a whiff of perfume from the scanty folds of her bizarre attire. Her frankly double chin quivered, and her redundant bosom, already liberally displayed through its transparent covering of embroidered chiffon, threatened to burst its confining bands of baby-ribbon, as the Doctor said:"Is it not natural that I should have a particularly clear recollection of the greatest day of all my life—save one?""You're quite too killing, Owen!"She laughed tunelessly, clanking her precious pebbles."Of course, we all know you're fearfully swanky about your wife's beauty. I saw her yesterday at Lord's—sitting under the awning on the sunny side, with the Duchess of Broads and Lady Castleclare. Your boy was with them, jumping out of his skin over Naumann's bowling for Oxford. Really marvellous! Your poor dear Cambridge hadn't a chance! Tremendously like you he grows—I mean Bawne. Really, your very image!""I should prefer," said Saxham, stiffly, "that my son resembled his mother.""Ha, ha, ha! How quite too romantic!" She threw back her head, its henna-dyed hair plastered closely about it and fastened with buckles of jade, set with knobs of turquoise. A kind of stove-pipe of enamel green velvet crowning her, was trimmed with a band of miniature silk roses in addition to the towering violet plume. The plume, carefully dishevelled so as to convey the impression of a recent wetting, threatened the electric globe-lamp springing from a standard near. Her crossed legs liberally revealed her stockings of white silk openwork, patterned with extra-sized dragon-flies in black chenille, and her laugh rattled about Saxham's vexed ears like Harlequin's painted bladder, full of little pebbles or dried peas. "In love with your wife—and after fourteen years and six weeks!" Her fleshy shoulders shook, and her opulent bosom heaved stormily. She passed a little filmy perfumed handkerchief under her violet gauze veil and delicately dabbed the corners of her eyes. "You remind me of my poor David. I was always theone woman on earth, in his opinion. To the last, he was jealous of the slightest reference to you!""Tome? Why should he have been?"Mildred—for this was Saxham's faithless bride-elect of more than twenty years previously—swallowed her wrath with an effort, and went on with the mulish obstinacy of her type:"Perhaps it was absurd. But men in love are unreasonable creatures, and David was perfectly mad where I was concerned. He worshipped me to the point of idolatry! He never couldquitebelieve that I did not regret my—my choice—that my heart did not sometimes escape from his keeping in dreams, and become yours again, Owen! He neverreallycared for Patrine, because she has a look of you.... Absurd, considering that she was born two years after you disappeared into South Africa.... Though of course I could not truthfully say that I did not—think of you a great deal!"It seemed to the silent man who heard, that Mildred offended against decency. His soul loathed her. She went on:"Her brother—my darling boy who died—was the very image of David!" Her tone was even womanly and tender in speaking of the dead boy. "But Patrine—a year younger—Patrine is really wonderfully like you, with her commanding figure and almost Egyptian profile, those long eyes under straight eyebrows—and all those masses of dead-black hair!" As Saxham writhed under the category she gave out her irritating laugh again. "Ah!—I forgot! When Patrine was in Paris with Lady Beauvayse for the Big Week—Lady Beau took her to the Atelier Wiber—the famous hairdresser's establishment at 000, Rue de la Paix—where they specialise inChevelures des Teintes Moderne—all the newest effects displayed by stylish mannequins—and really the change is astonishing—her sister Irma and I hardly knew Patrine when she came to see us at Kensington—looking superb, with hair—one might almost call it terra-cotta coloured—showing up her creamy-white skin.""Do you tell me that Patrine has bleached her splendid hair and stained it with one of those vile dyes that are based on aniline—or Egyptian henna at the best?"Mildred retorted acidly:"It was a very expensive process.... Five hundred francs—but I understand that Lady Beauvayse was so good as to insist on paying Wiber's charges herself."Saxham answered brusquely:"I would have given ten times the money to know my niece's hair unspoiled. Whoever paid, the process will prove an expensive one to Patrine when she finds herself excruciated by headaches, or when the colour changes—as it will by-and-by!"Mildred shrugged:"She can have it re-dipped, surely? Or let it return to its original black!""There are many chemical arguments against human hair so altered returning to its original colour," came from Saxham grimly. "As these women who have made coiffures of orange, pink, crimson, blue and green, fashionable, had previously found to their cost. Do you not realise that from mishaps of this kind resulted the chromatically tinted heads one sees at public functions? Bizarre and strange in the electric lights, hideous in the sun.""Ha, ha, ha!" Mildred's laugh rattled about the Doctor's ears like a shower of walnuts. "I shall certainly bring Patrine to call upon you, if her hair happens to turn peacock-green or pinky-crimson. I would not miss seeing your face for all the world! But seriously, my dear Owen, when a girl is as handsome as my girl and has nodotto back her, she must make herself attractive and desirable to eligible men.""By trying to make herself look like a Parisiancocotte, she renders herself neither attractive nor desirable—to the kind of man whom I should like to see married to my niece. The cleanly kind of man, with wholesome tastes, a sound constitution, and an upright character.""My dear Owen, you might be composing an advertisement for a butler or achauffeur!"Mildred ostentatiously controlled a yawn as the Doctor continued:"As to a provision for Patrine on her marriage, you know that I shall gladly give it. Of course, upon condition——""Yes, yes, I know what your condition would be!" Mildred's finger-tips, adorned with nails elaborately veneered and dyed, drummed a maddening little tattoo on the table-ledge. "That she marries the 'right kind of man, with wholesome tastes,' and all the rest of it. The question is—would Patrine be able to endure him? She is—let us say—more than a little difficult to get on with—and essentially an independent, up-to-date girl.""If Patrine would have subdued her ideas about independence and given up this idea of taking a place as salaried companion, I would have welcomed her, and so would my wife!""Patrine is—as you are very well aware—something very different to a mere companion. She is reader and secretary to Lady Beauvayse. Her Club subscription is paid, she moves there amongst gentlewomen, and is treated at Berkeley Square exactly like a favoured guest. You should see the presents Lady Beauvayse absolutely showers upon her—and she gets all her expenses and a hundred a year."Saxham was silent. Patrine might have had all this and much more, if she would have accepted the home he offered. Not only because she was his niece, but the girl was dear to him. His wife loved her, and in her strange, wild way Patrine returned some measure of Lynette's tenderness."She is worth loving," Lynette had told her husband. "She has a generous, brave, independent nature and a deep heart. She is not easily won because she is so well worth winning. Ah! if the Mother were only with us, how well she would understand and help Patrine!"But Mildred had risen to depart. Saxham rose too, not without alacrity, and taking her offered hand, pressed it and let it fall to her side."Well, good-bye. My kind regards to Captain Dyneham." He referred to the second legal possessor of Mildred's once coveted charms. "When can I dine with you at Kensington, do you ask? I fear I have very few opportunities for sociality. Some day! ... Tell Patrine to come and see me. Half-past one o'clock to-morrow. Lunch after my scolding—and a chat with Lynette.""You are extremely kind to Patrine." Mildred's tone was sweetly venomous. "But I fear just at present she has little time to spare. Men in love are so exacting. Dear me, what a feather-brained creature I am! ... Haven't I told you about Count von Herrnung?""You have told me nothing," said Saxham, "and you know it. Who and what is the man?"Mildred said with a great air of dignity:"He is a distinguished officer of the Prussian Flying Service, the son and heir of a high official in the German Foreign Office. He holds the rank of Count by courtesy. I assure you I never met a more agreeable young man.""Even were he all that you say, and more, and even while I regard the German Army as a marvel of organisation and efficiency—I should not, knowing the type of man that is the product of their military system, desire my niece to marry a German officer."Mildred mocked:"'Marry'—who said anything about marriage? ... When they have not known each other for a month. Not"—her tone became sentimental—"that I am a disbeliever in love at first sight. No one could doubt that Patrine is attracted, and he—the Count"—she dropped her eyelids—"is simply too fearfully gone for words. Absolutely dead-nuts!""'Gone.' ... 'Dead-nuts.' ...""I give you my word. Entangled hopelessly. 'What a captive to lead in chains,' I said to Patrine—he is quite six feet in height or over, and has the most perfect features; simply magnificent eyes, the most fascinating manner, and the build of a Greek athlete. He is staying at the 'Tarlton,' and I must say Lady Beauvayse is extremely sympathetic. For since they came back from Paris together the Count has been taking Patrine about everywhere. She can hardly have had a glimpse of my gay girl.... Dinners, theatres, the opera, and heaven knows what else, they have crowded into the week!" The smiling speaker shrugged her ample shoulders. "To say nothing of cabaret suppers and dances. He even promises to take her to the famous 'Upas Club.' Wonderful, by all accounts. They say the French Regency came nowhere near it. Dancing in the Hall of the Hundred Pillars, a simply wonderful three A.M. supper, and champagne of the most expensive brands, served up in gold-mounted crystal jugs.""Can it be possible? ..." broke from Saxham. "Are you mad, that you countenance this German in taking Patrine to such an infamous place?""'Infamous!' Really, Owen, your notions are too old-fashioned for anything." Her laughter broke out, and her chains and bangles jingled an accompaniment. "Do," she urged, "come out of your shell. Dine with us on Thursday. We have a box for the 'Ministers' Theatre. We'll go on, you and I, George and Irma, from there to the cabaret supper at the 'Rocroy.' We can't afford the 'Upas,' the subscription is too fearfully prohibitive. But the entertainment at the 'Rocroy' is reallychic—the dancing is as good—everyone says—as they have it at Maxim's. Do come! Of course, you can trust us not to blab to your wife! Mercy! how severe you look!" Her tone changed, became wheedling, her made-up eyes languished tenderly. "Odd! how we poor, silly women prefer the men who bully us. Come! One chance more. Dine Thursday and see 'Squiffed' at the 'Ministers'—try a whiff of Paris at the 'Rocroy' after midnight, 'twill buck you up like nothing else—take my word! Won't you?""I will not!""Why not?""I have told you why not. Because these places are centres of corruption, schools for the inculcation and practice of vice in every form. Men and women, young or old, those who take part in or witness one of these loathsome dances, hot and reeking from the brothels and voodoo-houses of Cuba and the Argentine are equally degraded. I had rather see my niece Patrine dead and in her coffin than know her capable of appreciating such abominable exhibitions, pernicious in their effects, as I, and others of my profession have grave reason to know!—ruinous in their results to body, mind, and soul!""Intolerable!"Her plump, middle-aged face was leaden grey beneath her violet veil as she screamed at him:"You have insulted me! Horribly—abominably! ... How dare you tell me that I frequent infamous places, and encourage my daughter to visit schools of vice! And it is not for Irma you are so rottenly scrupulous, but for Patrine, your wife's favourite! Who will do as she pleases, and marry whom she prefers without 'by your leave' or with mine! She is a mule for self-will and obstinacy—another point of resemblance to yourself! ..."He had recovered his stern self-possession. His face was granite as he said:"I have not insulted you, but if you will set no example to your daughters in avoiding these evils, it is my duty to expostulate."She reared like an angry cobra, then spat her jet of scalding venom."I take leave to think my present example quite harmless to Irma and Patrine. Now yours—of a few years ago—was certainly calculated to damage the bodily and worldly prospects of your son." She added, as Saxham silently put out his hand to touch the bell: "No! please don't ring. I know my way out. Good-morning.... Pray remember me to Bawne and your wife!"
BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD.
The undertaker had recommended the text to the widow because it contained the right number of letters required to fit in at the bottom. But did it fit in, Patrine had sometimes wondered, quite so appropriately, at the close of her father's life?
She treasured his portrait, taken at the age of thirty, the tinted presentment of a handsome, stupid young officer, resplendent in the gold and blue and scarlet of a crack Dragoon regiment. It had fallen to her keeping when her mother had re-married. But she cherished no illusions regarding the original. How often, since her own eyes had been opened to the fact of their existence, had she not screened David's vices from strangers' eyes.
She had made him her ideal, and Mildred had revealed him to her as vicious, unprincipled. She could not forgive her mother for telling her those horrors, she, Mildred—seemed to forget whenever she was pleased. But Patrine had never forgotten. She would wake at night even now with the dry sobs shaking her.... To have been able to believe in that dead father as noble, chivalrous, good, would have been so sweet; she had shed big surreptitious tears in sympathy with the anguish of Jammes, who would have so loved to believe in the existence of Almighty God, and the dear little Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and the holy Angels, because Faith is so restful,si paisible....
CHAPTER XV
THE BITE IN THE KISS
But von Herrnung was saying, as they moved with a straggling procession of similar pleasure-seekers, over smooth sanded pathways between beds of geranium and verbena and lobelia, ivy-leaved geranium and gaily coloured foliage-plants, bordered with little twinkling lamps:
"Shall I tell you what I have just heard as those people passed us? The tall man with the white moustache, and the chic little woman in the Spanishmantilla. She told her friend that we make a handsome couple. Perhaps that makes you a little angry? ... Shall I make you still more angry? Well then, listen? ... If we were really a couple you would not have that so-black hair...."
"Why not?" He had roused her curiosity. She put away the little damp, laced handkerchief. "Would your cruel usage of me have turned it white?"
"Not that, but you would have added the one touch that makes perfection. You are too sombre—too much like a night in October with all that cloudy blackness.... You would have bleached and dyed your hair—not yellow, nor yet orange—nor even flame.... The colour of beech-leaves in winter, as one sees them burning against a snow-bank. And—all the women would be crazy with jealousy—and all the men would be dying at your feet! For you would be Isis then—you would be the Sphinx-woman of whom La Forgue wrote and Colette has sung to us. You would be hellishly, divinely beautiful!"
"Hellish again." She gave her low, deep laugh, prolonging it a trifle stagily. "What do you bet me I don't—do what you said?"
"Bleach and dye...?"
"That's it." She nodded. "To the colour of—what was it? 'Beech-leaves in winter.' ..."
"Against a snow-bank." He added: "The snow is your wonderful skin. And I will bet you four hundred and twenty marks—that is twenty pounds English. Is it agreed? ... Do you not say—Done? ..."
"Twenty pounds...." She shrugged her big white shoulders. "My dear man, I haven't got twenty pounds in this blessed old world!"
He hesitated; finally said with reluctance:
"I will lend you twenty pounds—it will cost you twenty pounds to have your hair done here in Paris.... But you will besehr schön—the money will be well spent. No? ..."—for she had shaken her head, frowning. "It is offered—why will you not accept?"
"Because I won't.... There are some things I draw the line at. Borrowing money's one of them."
"Then I will bet you my magpie pearl—you may have seen it"—he displayed the ornamented little finger—"against that not-very-good diamond you wear on your left hand."
She burst out laughing and repeated through her laughter: "'Not very good.' I call that insulting.... When it cost me fifteen francs in the Palais Royal. Well, done with you!"
"It is done! But you have not done with me." Von Herrnung's tone had a new note of triumph. He urged: "You go back to London—when? ... The day after to-morrow....Gut!... I have myself to visit London upon business—I shall see Isis with her beautiful new hair. One thing more. An address where I may call and see it. Be quick! We turn down here! ..."
Patrine protested, peering with narrowed eyes through the dusk-blue twinkling semi-darkness. "But no! ... That big marquee-thing at the end of this avenue—with all the festoons of lights and the ring of promenade about it—surely that's thePavilion de la Danse?"
"Halt den Mund!" His hand closed peremptorily on her arm: he hurried her down the trellised vine walk that invited on the left of them, as light measured footsteps padded on the gravel, and a man ran past calling, as it seemed, to somebody ahead:
"Miss Saxham ahoy! ... Lady Beauvayse——"
"He's calling me. It's Captain Courtley...." Patrine persisted.
"Let him call! Are you not with me?" Von Herrnung's tone was masterful. "You shall go to him when you have given me that London address!"
She was amused and yet annoyed by his persistency.
"Oh, all right! 'The Ladies' Social Club, Short Street, Piccadilly, West.' That's where I'm generally to be found when I'm in town."
"Sehr gut! Tell me once again, then I shall not forget, no!"
"Write it on your cuff!"
"It is written in a safer place," he told her. "We Prussian officers are trained to remember without writing things down. A face, an address, a conversation, the outlines of a country. Though forreconnaissancethere is nothing likedie Photographie." He added: "When we meet in London I shall be able to tell you everything you wore to-night."
"Really! ... How flattering! ... You've made a mental inventory?"
They were retracing their steps to the avenue recently quitted. He walked with noiseless strides behind the tall, supple figure as it moved between the trellised vines and roses, gowned with its flaunting diadem, robed in the insincere splendours of the opera-mantle already described.
"As you say. I shall be able to tell you that the back of yourmantelwas cut in a V-shape nearly reaching to your waist-line. Shall I tell you why?"
"If you're keen to...." She felt a scorching breath between her shoulders and quickened her pace, making for the avenue. But he moved with her, his voice came thickly: "Because your back is so superbly beautiful you cannot bear to hide it from men!"
"Ah-h!"
She whirled about, glaring like an angry leopardess, her strong white arm upraised to strike. Face, throat, and bosom glowed with painful crimson. Between her violated, insulted shoulders, his furious kiss still burned and stung.
"How dare you touch me!" she gasped. But he had shot past her even as she turned. He was running towards the avenue, calling gaily:
"Were you looking for us, Lady Beauvayse? Here we are!"
"Cad, cad!" she stammered. "Insufferable! beastly!" Then, because a scene was quite out of the question, she went forward with head held high, and resentment heaving her broad bosom, to meet Lady Beauvayse.
"Pat! You needle in a haystack," cried her friend, "where did you get to?"
"Nowhere. We missed you at the Café Concert," Patrine began.
"And then," von Herrnung explained, "we happened to take the wrong turn. But we have not gone far before we are recalled."
"—To the path of probity," suggested Lady Beauvayse, adding: "And in this instance the path of probity leads to thePavilion de Chahut." She explained to Patrine: "Chahutis the modern version of thecan-can—famous in the days of the Second Empire; when the great cocodettes of the Court of the Tuileries—rivals of Cora Pearl and Skittles and other naughty persons—did high-kicking under the rose here, and they called the place Mabille."
It was not easy to get near the Pavilion, so dense and variegated a crowd had congregated before its illuminated entrance. But the entrance fee was doubled. Gold must be paid to see the famous São Paulo dance. Thus many would-be pleasure-seekers of the less affluent kind turned back disappointed from the row of gilt turnstiles under the blazing archway, compelled to content themselves with the outer promenade.
Breasting the human eddy caused by these, Patrine and her party passed the barrier, climbed a flight of shallow gilt marble stairs carpeted with pink plush and decorated with roses and tree-ferns and reached the elevated promenade. Set within the circumference of the outer one, it commanded a complete view of the circular ball-room, to whose level descended from it at intervals yet other flights of broad gilt stairs, similarly carpeted and flower-decked for the convenience of those who wished to join the dancers, or return from the ball-room to the level of the promenade.
The revels were in full swing. Standing upon the brink, looking down as into a cockpit, you saw Patrine, superb in her false diadem and mock ermines, leaning her bare white hand upon a velvet-covered rail. At first she could only make out a giddying whirl of arms and heads and shoulders. Presently, the picture began to clear.
To the wail, clang and clash of strange, discordant, exotic music, rendered by an orchestra of coloured performers, two wide circles of dancers rhythmically spun. The floors they danced on were set at different levels, and rotated automatically,—each floor revolving in a different direction. Coloured lights, flung at intervals from reflectors in the ceiling, conveyed to Patrine the impression of staring down upon the whirling planes of a huge gyroscopic top.
Only the central space of shining parquet was void within the double circle of gyrating dancers. A crash from the orchestra and three couples, oddly costumed, leaped suddenly out upon the floor. Patrine could not make out where they had come from. They appeared, and there was a slight commotion. A hedge of applauding spectators, four or five deep, formed about the central, stationary patch of parquet. The music changed, the six Brazilians began the famous dance.
They were not beautiful to look at it seemed to Patrine, the men, familiarly styled by voices in the crowd as Lauro, Pedro, and Herculano, being undersized, sleek-headed, lithe and sallow, attired in faultlessly fitting evening dress-coats, white vests, black satin knee-breeches, black silks, and buckled pumps. They wore shallow collars of curious cut, lawn-frilled shirts and wide black neckties. Their female companions were swarthy as Indians, even through their paint, and plain of feature. But their superb hair and eyes, the rounded grace of hip and waist and limb, the slenderness of throat and wrist and ankle, testified, like their tiny feet and high-arched insteps, to a strain of Spanish blood.
"La Rivadavia, Alexandrina, and Silvana," the eager spectators named them. They wore transparent sheaths, and brief, oddlybouffanteoverskirts, like flounced muslin lamp-shades with a boldly suggestive forward tilt. They began the dance with some familiar Tango figures. The poses, the approaches, the hesitations, were well known to Patrine.
"Nothing very new.... But—the music made by those buck niggers! 'Bizzarramente' isn't the word for it. One expects to see gombos covered with serpent-skin, trumpets of elephant-tusk, skull-rattles, and all the paraphernalia of Obeah in the orchestra, instead of those huge, superb brass wind-instruments, cymbals as big as table-tops and ten-foot silver trumpets, like poor de Souza's.... Raised in the States, but wasn't he a Brazilian by birth?" It was the voice of Lady Beauvayse, and von Herrnung's answered from behind Patrine:
"It may be so. But theBlechinstrumenteand theBlasinstrumente—for the biggest of those they have to go to Germany. Nowhere else can they be made as there.... Bravo! ...Bis—bis!"
He applauded.... Everybody was applauding. The gyroscopic whirl of dancers had become stationary. All now were eager spectators. And the three couples from São Paulo had reached the culminating point of a uniquely curious and exotic figure. Savage and violent, sinuous and creeping; suggestive of the nocturnal gambols of enamoured jaguars, in the deep primeval forests of Brazil.
"Horrid! One expects them to lash tails and roar.... I've got what Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch called 'cold clams walking up my backbone.'" Lady Beauvayse shuddered and made a pretty grimace. "All the same I think I'll go down and look at them a little closer. Ah-h! ... Good grapes! Why, he simply picked her up by the scruff of the neck with his teeth and shook her.... I've justgotto see that done over again!"
She was gone, with a whisk of the emerald bird of paradise and a waft ofparfum très persistant. Captain Courtley vanished in her wake. Patrine made no motion to follow them.
The tense excitement, the pungent exhalations rising from the crowded ball-room were affecting her brain. She felt giddy, and the steady pressure of the crowd behind her was thrusting her to the very verge of the promenade. She yielded automatically, unconscious of danger near.
You are to see her there, poised on the verge of the rose-carpeted precipice, her hand gripping the velvet-covered railing, her wide nostrils distended, her broad bosom heaving as she inhaled the sultry, vitiated atmosphere, heavy with a myriad perfumes, tainted by a thousand breaths. Her stare, lifeless as the enamelled, glittering regard of some Princess-mummy of Old Egypt, was fixed upon the artists, of whom two couples had retired, as though in despair of competition with the chief favourites, leaving La Rivadavia and her comrade Herculano in possession of the floor.
And the passions expressed by the rhythmical, sinuous movements of these dancers grew moment by moment less human, and more bestial. Art of the most consummate was displayed and degraded. Beauty and Truth shone pre-eminent in the hideous display. Now the woman sank towards the ground, with supple limbs outstretched and her wild head thrown back in fierce surrender. Her white fangs gleamed, her dumb mouth seemed to roar. And as her conqueror crept stealthily towards her, the play of his great muscles could be seen beneath his civilised attire, as though his supple body had been clothed with the tawny-golden, black-dappled hide of the Brazilian jaguar.
As Herculano crouched and sprang, La Rivadavia's muscles visibly tightened. She bounded high, turned in the act.... Their gleaming fangs clashed in mid-air. And from the massed spectators came a hiss of excitement, "Th-h-h!..." like the hissing of a thousand snakes.
"Great Scott!" Patrine heard herself saying. "Great—Scott!"
She no longer heard von Herrnung harshly breathing behind her.... He had moved to the leftward. His tall, broad-shouldered figure now stood against the railing some dozen feet away. His well-cut face, seen in profile, was purplish-red to the crisp, scarlet waves topping his high square forehead. The big white hands that held the glasses glued to his eyes, jerked, and as he pressed against the railing Patrine knew that he was shuddering. Now he looked at her, and his ravaged face was terrifying to the girl.
"Will you not..." he began, thickly.
She quivered, cast a look about; saw the ugly emotion under which he laboured reflected in every face within her range of vision, as round after round of plaudits rose to the roof of the pavilion, escaping through the wide-open spaces between its gilded, rose-twined pillars into the night. The rafters vibrated with demands for a repetition of the popular sensation. The dancers accepted the encore.
If von Herrnung beckoned now, asking Patrine to go down with him amongst the acrid exhalations of that cockpit of variegated lights, thronged with excited men and strangely-bedizened women, rent by devastating emotions, drunk with strange excitements, would Patrine say Yes or No? ...
Ouf!but it was hot. How thick the air was with those illusion perfumes. And from whence was that cool breeze blowing that suddenly freshened the heavy air? ...
CHAPTER XVI
THE WIND OF JOY
Patrine drew back from the edge of the promenade. A stout, swarthy Frenchman, a Southerner evidently, whose full brown face streamed with little rills of perspiration, stepped nimbly into her vacated place. His female companion instantly took his. The same movement was repeated—the packed bodies seemed to melt before her. In a few more steps she had merged from the crowd, upon the outer edge of the elevated promenade.
There was another velvet railing there, and steps leading down to the promenade upon the ground-level. Against the background of starlit sky and illuminated gardens stood the tall figure of a man. He was broad-shouldered and lightly built, the poise and balance of his figure admirable. But for the gleam of his living eyes in his tanned face, and the movements of his head as he turned it from side to side, evidently seeking somebody, he might have been a statue of Mercury cast in light-hued bronze.
For he wore loose, waist-high leggings strapped at the ankles, and a belted gabardine of thin light brown material, while a cap with an upturned brim and ear-flaps dangled from his sunburnt hand. And a uniformed official, all lacquered moustaches and gold-laced blue cloth, stood gesticulating a few paces from him, keen on defending from so unceremonious an intruder the integrity of the Upper Promenade.
"Monsieur cannot possibly descend into the ball-room ... the costume of Monsieur is not appropriate. It offends against good taste. It outrages the proprieties.... It ispeu convenableeven that Monsieur should be here."
Patrine heard the protest, saw it driven home by swift expressive Gallic gestures, caught a gleam of mirth in the eyes of the oddly-garbed intruder, and the quirk of a smile at the corners of his mouth. No doubt the suggestion of the proprieties in connection with the traditions of Mabille had evoked it. She liked his face; it was lean and hard and rather hatchety, with a brave outlook of clear light eyes under the marked eyebrows, thick and straight and silvery-fair against his sunburnt skin. To her woman's eyes, Fatigue was stamped upon it and anxiety, and a kind of rueful impatience, as he apologised for the necessity of the intrusion in fragmentary but excellently accentuated French. He came in search of a friend, who was here and must be found; it was imperative...
"There is to-morrow!—there is always to-morrow!" the official stated with a wave.
"That's just the point.... To-morrow! ..." The stranger's forehead was ploughed with lines of anxiety. He spoke in English now—the well-bred, modern, clipped English of the public school and the University. "No! you don't understand"—for the official had vigorously disclaimed all knowledge of the strange, barbarous tongue in which the other addressed him. "And I don't believe I'd ever make you. If I could only hammer into you what sort of a hat I'm in!"
He knitted his brows; pulled himself together for a crowning effort. Patrine spoke, not as a stranger yielding to a sudden, helpful impulse, but quite simply, with a little, joyful catching of her breath:
"Could I explain for you, do you suppose?"
"A—thanks! You're awfully good!"
He turned to her eagerly, if with a certain embarrassment.
"If you would.... There is a man here I have to get word to. And—what French I have is simply technical.... You hardly find it in modern dictionaries—the argot of the engine-shop and the Flying School."
"Now I understand...." She smiled in his perplexed face, drinking in deep breaths of the fresh fragrant air that blew about them as they stood together behind the thick wall of bodies that hid the cockpit from their view. A deep dimple von Herrnung had never seen showed low down in one of her pale cheeks. Their whiteness was slightly tinged with delicate pale rose. And her eyes had lost their brilliant enamelled hardness. They shone like dusky stars as she went on: "Now I know why I thought of wide green spaces and a breeze blowing to me over gorse and heather as I looked at you. Sub-conscious memories of Hendon and Brooklands and Upavon. For you're a Flying Man!"
"Just that!" His ruefulness was banished. "And now you know how I come to be in Paris with the clothes I stand up in and not another rag.... Two of us flew the Channel yesterday morning.... If the weather holds decent, we should be on the wing again by four A.M. And my mechanic's given me the slip. To say he's taken French leave would be appropriate under the circumstances. Left a line—the cool—beggar!—to say I'd find him here."
"Too bad!" she said, as fresh furrows dug themselves into the tanned forehead. "Not fair to leave you in the cart like that. No wonder you followed—hot upon his track."
"Combed the whole place—everywhere they'll let me in. But my aviator's kit's against me. I've seen some rummy get-ups. But they draw the line at Carberry's overalls."
One hand rested easily on his hip, in the other hand he swung the eared cap with goggles. A pedestal in the moonlight would have suited him. It occurred to her to ask:
"What was he like—your runaway mechanic?"
"I hardly ... Oh! ... Little black-avised Welshman—barely tips the scale at eight stone. Has to be a light-weight, because I weigh all of eleven. And with the hovering-gear—but that can't interest you."
"Indeed it does. What of the hovering-gear?"
His face darkened and hardened. He said:
"It's an invention of mine. And after no end trying—our own people at Whitehall simply wouldn't have anything to do with me—the chiefs of the French Service Aëronautique consented to give it a test."
"Sporting of them, wasn't it?"
He agreed:
"No end sporting. So I bucked the tiger over the Channel with Davis—to find that an officer and mechanic of the S. A. were told off to try the hoverer over the selected area. For us to engineer the thing ourselves wasn't 'l'etiquette militaire.' That's the French for Government red-tape."
"Bother etiquette! I'm beginning to sympathise with Davis!"
His vexation broke up in laughter.
"That's whatshedid. She sympathised with Davis and carried him off here."
Patrine said, a light breaking in on her:
"Why, of course, there would be a girl.... He'd hardly come to a place like this alone, would he?"
Some query in his look made her add hastily:
"What was she like?"
"Like.... The girl who's carried off Davis? ..." He reflected a moment. "Pretty and plump and fluffy, with a pair of goo-goo eyes! She's daughter or niece or something"—he boggled the explanation rather—"to the German chap who hired us the hangar at Drancy—if you can give that name to a ramshackle shed in a waste building-lot! And Davis—thundering good man, but once on a spree..." He whistled dismally. "If I could only get my claws on him! ..."
Here the uniformed official returned to the charge:
"Monsieur has found his friend—Monsieur has explained the situation. To enter theSalon de Dansewith Madame is not permissible—in the costume Monsieur displays. No doubt Madame will understand!"
Patrine said, with a slight catch in her breath, as though some drops of chilly pleasant perfume had been suddenly sprayed on her:
"He supposes ... he thinks ... that I'm ... your friend!"
"I'll explain." He reddened, turning to the official, saying in the French of the British schoolboy, laborious, devoid of colloquialisms:
"Monsieur, vous n'avez pas compris. Madame elle—elle n'êtes qu'une étrangère. Pour mon ami, je ne lui vois. Si vous permettre d'entrer, peut-être——"
"Rototo! Voyez, man blousier, j'connais bien la sorte! Sufficit! Assez! Ça m' fait suer, comprends?" The gold-braided arm described a magnificent sweep, the large white kid-covered hand indicated remote distance—"Sortez!..."
The Briton, thus invited to retire, looked at Patrine.
"I can't quite follow, but it's plain he's telling me to hook it. The rest is—pretty—strong?"
She nodded, biting her lip.
"Frightfully rude. Not that I know much Paris slang. But a friend of mine—" She broke off to listen, as from under the functionary's waxed moustache rattled another sentence:
"A l'instant, ou j'appelle l' sergent d'ville!"
"He's talking about sending for the police now!" She added hastily: "Don't let him do that! Offer him a tip!"
The magic word must have been comprehended of the braided functionary. He ceased to fulminate. He waited, his avid eye upon the pair. The lean hatchety face of the aviator had flamed at Patrine's suggestion. He said:
"Don't you think I'd have tipped him in the beginning—if I'd had the wherewithal? But expenses have been frightful!—the waste lot with the shed I've stalled the machine in costs as much as a suite of rooms at a decent middle-class hotel would. Had to fork rent in advance too. Proprietor's a German as well as a jerry-builder, and when I've paid his goo-goo girl for our coffee and rolls to-morrow morning"—the speaker exhibited a disc of shiny metal bearing the classical capped and oak-wreathed head of the Republic, value exactly twopence-halfpenny—"I'll have just one of these blessed tin things left."
"How rotten!" In the gilt metal vanity-bag, Patrine's inseparable adjunct, lurked, in the company of a mirror, powder-puff, and note-book, a tiny white silk purse. In the purse nestled two plump British half sovereigns, the moiety of Patrine's salary for the previous week. "Would you jump down my throat if I asked you to let me finance you?" she pleaded, an eager hand in the depths of the receptacle. "Why not?"
"Because I'm a decent man!" If he had been previously crimson he was now scarlet as a boiled lobster. "Thanks all the same, though! I can't wait here, even to catch Davis.... I must bike back to Drancy, where I've left the Bird—the machine—in the German's shed... Not a soul to keep an eye on her! ... My heart's in my mouth when I think of what might hap—" He bit off the end of the sentence and went on: "But if you'd be so awfully kind as to take charge of this, in case you ... There's a message written on it...." He offered her a soiled, bent card.
"I understand. If I should chance to come across your Davis.... A little man ... looking like a Welshman.... But you haven't told me whether he's dark or fair!"
"Black as a crow," he told her. "Not dressed like me!" His well-cut mouth began to twist upwards at the corners.
"Quite a swell, in a silk-faced frock-coat, white vest and striped accompaniments. A silk hat, too, rather curly brimmed, but still, a topper. I suppose a friend of the lady's rented Davis the kit."
"Of the lady's? ..." She remembered. "Yes, yes! Of course! ... The German's appendage.... Why! ... Look! ... Those two people who have just passed the turn-stile at the other end of the Promenade.... If there's anything in description, here comes Davis with the goo-goo girl!"
"By—gum! You've nailed me the pair of them." As the aviator's long strides bore him down in the direction of the little sallow, black-avised mechanic in the capacious silk-faced frock-coat, and his high-bosomed, florid, flaxen-haired enchantress, and before the moustached guardian of the Promenade could renew his indignant protest, Patrine had dropped the little sovereign-purse in his deep, rapacious hand. And at that instant the music ended with a crashing succession of barbaric chords. The São Paulo dance was done.
"Merci millefois, Madame!..."
Patrine turned from the hireling's thanks to see the high head and powerful square shoulders of von Herrnung forging towards her, towering above the polyglot, variegated crowd. He hailed her with:
"So you met a friend? Is that why I found myself deserted?"
She answered coldly:
"I did not desert you—and I did not meet a friend."
His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had revelled in the final thrill. He persisted:
"Was? But what means it? I have lost you.... I think you must have gone down into the ball-room after your friend.... I follow and you are not there. I come back to find you.... Who was that dirty bounder I saw you talking to?"
"He wasn't a dirty bounder!" His rudeness enraged her. "He was a nice, clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!"
He sneered:
"'Boy' ... Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies. You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class."
"Then I'll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English—from the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes."
"How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of him?" He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers.
She answered:
"Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday—with Davis—to test his invention—and he has got to be on the wing for home at four."
"So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even? Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?"
She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the carpet.
"Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said.
"I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary, and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse.
"Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so's Herculano could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she's got vim enough for a nest of rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren't, you look it!" The speaker yawned prettily: "I'm about ready to be taken back to by-by, though it's only two o'clock."
Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred to walk, as the car was closed.
"Pardon! ..." His voice had arrested Morris on the point of starting the Rolls-Royce. His handsome face had appeared in the frame of the car-window. "Excuses! but this belongs to Miss Saxham!" His cuff shone white in the semi-darkness, the great magpie pearl on his little finger gleamed maliciously as he dropped the missing card upon Patrine's lap, and drew back, uncovered and smiling, as the car moved away. Later on, when she was safe in her room, she looked at the card, and read upon it in plain black lettering:
+———————————————————————-+| || ALAN SHERBRAND, || || PILOT-INSTRUCTOR AND BUILDER OF AËROPLANES, || FANSHAW'S SCHOOL OF FLYING. || || THE AËRODROME, || COLLINGWOOD AVENUE, || HENDON, N. W. || |+———————————————————————-+
Something was scrawled in violet pencil on the upper blank space. Being a girl with notions about squareness, Patrine would not at first read, remembering that it was his private message to Davis, whom Chance had brought within his master's reach. But later still, or earlier, when, after a brief interval of silence, the traffic of Paris began to roll over the asphalt, principle yielded to impulse. She switched on the electric light above her pillow and read:
"This Sarajevo business spells War. Must get back at once to Hendon. I trust to your Honour not to fail me. You know what this means to
"A. S."
So the young Mercury in gabardine and overalls was a professional, a teacher; a pilot who helped men to qualify for the certificate given by the Royal Aëro Club without breaking too many bones. She had seen the big painted sign in the Collingwood Avenue, Hendon, that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School.
"I trust to your Honour," he had written to his mechanic. The word would have seemed big, and awful, and imposing, spelt like that, with a capital "H," if the writer had been a gentleman.
Disillusioned, she tore the card into little pieces and sank into a heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows. And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.
She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them. She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.
It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the Société Aëronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honoré. It was brief enough.
"That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised is—'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged.
"T. v. H."
CHAPTER XVII
INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND
Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of the Harley Street corner house.
The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff, H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war slump in South African mining-stocks.
The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset. Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He was harsh and unconciliatory in manner—a perfect bear, according to Society—but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival had outrun him in the race.
Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face, with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.
While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation that tinged with violet a plump face coated with the latest complexion-cream.
"How very charming your wife is—still!"
The speaker, her recent character of patient now merged in that of visitor, plucked down her veil of violet gauze with a gesture that betrayed her wrath. But her voice was carefully honeyed to match her smile—as she continued:
"You have been married quite an age, haven't you?"
The anniversary of her own second honeymoon was due next week. She went on answering her own query:
"Nearly fourteen years, I think?"
Saxham answered, not glancing at the silver table-almanac but at the threefold photograph frame:
"To be precise, just fourteen years and six weeks. We were married on the 6th of June, 1900."
"You have a good memory—for some things!"
The undisguised resentment in her tone pulled Saxham's head round. He surveyed her with genuine surprise. She bit her lips and tossed her head, waggling her tall feather, jingling her strings of turquoise and amber, coral and onyx, kunzite and olivine, big blocks of which semi-precious stones were being worn just then, strung on the thinnest of gold chains. Each movement evoked a whiff of perfume from the scanty folds of her bizarre attire. Her frankly double chin quivered, and her redundant bosom, already liberally displayed through its transparent covering of embroidered chiffon, threatened to burst its confining bands of baby-ribbon, as the Doctor said:
"Is it not natural that I should have a particularly clear recollection of the greatest day of all my life—save one?"
"You're quite too killing, Owen!"
She laughed tunelessly, clanking her precious pebbles.
"Of course, we all know you're fearfully swanky about your wife's beauty. I saw her yesterday at Lord's—sitting under the awning on the sunny side, with the Duchess of Broads and Lady Castleclare. Your boy was with them, jumping out of his skin over Naumann's bowling for Oxford. Really marvellous! Your poor dear Cambridge hadn't a chance! Tremendously like you he grows—I mean Bawne. Really, your very image!"
"I should prefer," said Saxham, stiffly, "that my son resembled his mother."
"Ha, ha, ha! How quite too romantic!" She threw back her head, its henna-dyed hair plastered closely about it and fastened with buckles of jade, set with knobs of turquoise. A kind of stove-pipe of enamel green velvet crowning her, was trimmed with a band of miniature silk roses in addition to the towering violet plume. The plume, carefully dishevelled so as to convey the impression of a recent wetting, threatened the electric globe-lamp springing from a standard near. Her crossed legs liberally revealed her stockings of white silk openwork, patterned with extra-sized dragon-flies in black chenille, and her laugh rattled about Saxham's vexed ears like Harlequin's painted bladder, full of little pebbles or dried peas. "In love with your wife—and after fourteen years and six weeks!" Her fleshy shoulders shook, and her opulent bosom heaved stormily. She passed a little filmy perfumed handkerchief under her violet gauze veil and delicately dabbed the corners of her eyes. "You remind me of my poor David. I was always theone woman on earth, in his opinion. To the last, he was jealous of the slightest reference to you!"
"Tome? Why should he have been?"
Mildred—for this was Saxham's faithless bride-elect of more than twenty years previously—swallowed her wrath with an effort, and went on with the mulish obstinacy of her type:
"Perhaps it was absurd. But men in love are unreasonable creatures, and David was perfectly mad where I was concerned. He worshipped me to the point of idolatry! He never couldquitebelieve that I did not regret my—my choice—that my heart did not sometimes escape from his keeping in dreams, and become yours again, Owen! He neverreallycared for Patrine, because she has a look of you.... Absurd, considering that she was born two years after you disappeared into South Africa.... Though of course I could not truthfully say that I did not—think of you a great deal!"
It seemed to the silent man who heard, that Mildred offended against decency. His soul loathed her. She went on:
"Her brother—my darling boy who died—was the very image of David!" Her tone was even womanly and tender in speaking of the dead boy. "But Patrine—a year younger—Patrine is really wonderfully like you, with her commanding figure and almost Egyptian profile, those long eyes under straight eyebrows—and all those masses of dead-black hair!" As Saxham writhed under the category she gave out her irritating laugh again. "Ah!—I forgot! When Patrine was in Paris with Lady Beauvayse for the Big Week—Lady Beau took her to the Atelier Wiber—the famous hairdresser's establishment at 000, Rue de la Paix—where they specialise inChevelures des Teintes Moderne—all the newest effects displayed by stylish mannequins—and really the change is astonishing—her sister Irma and I hardly knew Patrine when she came to see us at Kensington—looking superb, with hair—one might almost call it terra-cotta coloured—showing up her creamy-white skin."
"Do you tell me that Patrine has bleached her splendid hair and stained it with one of those vile dyes that are based on aniline—or Egyptian henna at the best?"
Mildred retorted acidly:
"It was a very expensive process.... Five hundred francs—but I understand that Lady Beauvayse was so good as to insist on paying Wiber's charges herself."
Saxham answered brusquely:
"I would have given ten times the money to know my niece's hair unspoiled. Whoever paid, the process will prove an expensive one to Patrine when she finds herself excruciated by headaches, or when the colour changes—as it will by-and-by!"
Mildred shrugged:
"She can have it re-dipped, surely? Or let it return to its original black!"
"There are many chemical arguments against human hair so altered returning to its original colour," came from Saxham grimly. "As these women who have made coiffures of orange, pink, crimson, blue and green, fashionable, had previously found to their cost. Do you not realise that from mishaps of this kind resulted the chromatically tinted heads one sees at public functions? Bizarre and strange in the electric lights, hideous in the sun."
"Ha, ha, ha!" Mildred's laugh rattled about the Doctor's ears like a shower of walnuts. "I shall certainly bring Patrine to call upon you, if her hair happens to turn peacock-green or pinky-crimson. I would not miss seeing your face for all the world! But seriously, my dear Owen, when a girl is as handsome as my girl and has nodotto back her, she must make herself attractive and desirable to eligible men."
"By trying to make herself look like a Parisiancocotte, she renders herself neither attractive nor desirable—to the kind of man whom I should like to see married to my niece. The cleanly kind of man, with wholesome tastes, a sound constitution, and an upright character."
"My dear Owen, you might be composing an advertisement for a butler or achauffeur!"
Mildred ostentatiously controlled a yawn as the Doctor continued:
"As to a provision for Patrine on her marriage, you know that I shall gladly give it. Of course, upon condition——"
"Yes, yes, I know what your condition would be!" Mildred's finger-tips, adorned with nails elaborately veneered and dyed, drummed a maddening little tattoo on the table-ledge. "That she marries the 'right kind of man, with wholesome tastes,' and all the rest of it. The question is—would Patrine be able to endure him? She is—let us say—more than a little difficult to get on with—and essentially an independent, up-to-date girl."
"If Patrine would have subdued her ideas about independence and given up this idea of taking a place as salaried companion, I would have welcomed her, and so would my wife!"
"Patrine is—as you are very well aware—something very different to a mere companion. She is reader and secretary to Lady Beauvayse. Her Club subscription is paid, she moves there amongst gentlewomen, and is treated at Berkeley Square exactly like a favoured guest. You should see the presents Lady Beauvayse absolutely showers upon her—and she gets all her expenses and a hundred a year."
Saxham was silent. Patrine might have had all this and much more, if she would have accepted the home he offered. Not only because she was his niece, but the girl was dear to him. His wife loved her, and in her strange, wild way Patrine returned some measure of Lynette's tenderness.
"She is worth loving," Lynette had told her husband. "She has a generous, brave, independent nature and a deep heart. She is not easily won because she is so well worth winning. Ah! if the Mother were only with us, how well she would understand and help Patrine!"
But Mildred had risen to depart. Saxham rose too, not without alacrity, and taking her offered hand, pressed it and let it fall to her side.
"Well, good-bye. My kind regards to Captain Dyneham." He referred to the second legal possessor of Mildred's once coveted charms. "When can I dine with you at Kensington, do you ask? I fear I have very few opportunities for sociality. Some day! ... Tell Patrine to come and see me. Half-past one o'clock to-morrow. Lunch after my scolding—and a chat with Lynette."
"You are extremely kind to Patrine." Mildred's tone was sweetly venomous. "But I fear just at present she has little time to spare. Men in love are so exacting. Dear me, what a feather-brained creature I am! ... Haven't I told you about Count von Herrnung?"
"You have told me nothing," said Saxham, "and you know it. Who and what is the man?"
Mildred said with a great air of dignity:
"He is a distinguished officer of the Prussian Flying Service, the son and heir of a high official in the German Foreign Office. He holds the rank of Count by courtesy. I assure you I never met a more agreeable young man."
"Even were he all that you say, and more, and even while I regard the German Army as a marvel of organisation and efficiency—I should not, knowing the type of man that is the product of their military system, desire my niece to marry a German officer."
Mildred mocked:
"'Marry'—who said anything about marriage? ... When they have not known each other for a month. Not"—her tone became sentimental—"that I am a disbeliever in love at first sight. No one could doubt that Patrine is attracted, and he—the Count"—she dropped her eyelids—"is simply too fearfully gone for words. Absolutely dead-nuts!"
"'Gone.' ... 'Dead-nuts.' ..."
"I give you my word. Entangled hopelessly. 'What a captive to lead in chains,' I said to Patrine—he is quite six feet in height or over, and has the most perfect features; simply magnificent eyes, the most fascinating manner, and the build of a Greek athlete. He is staying at the 'Tarlton,' and I must say Lady Beauvayse is extremely sympathetic. For since they came back from Paris together the Count has been taking Patrine about everywhere. She can hardly have had a glimpse of my gay girl.... Dinners, theatres, the opera, and heaven knows what else, they have crowded into the week!" The smiling speaker shrugged her ample shoulders. "To say nothing of cabaret suppers and dances. He even promises to take her to the famous 'Upas Club.' Wonderful, by all accounts. They say the French Regency came nowhere near it. Dancing in the Hall of the Hundred Pillars, a simply wonderful three A.M. supper, and champagne of the most expensive brands, served up in gold-mounted crystal jugs."
"Can it be possible? ..." broke from Saxham. "Are you mad, that you countenance this German in taking Patrine to such an infamous place?"
"'Infamous!' Really, Owen, your notions are too old-fashioned for anything." Her laughter broke out, and her chains and bangles jingled an accompaniment. "Do," she urged, "come out of your shell. Dine with us on Thursday. We have a box for the 'Ministers' Theatre. We'll go on, you and I, George and Irma, from there to the cabaret supper at the 'Rocroy.' We can't afford the 'Upas,' the subscription is too fearfully prohibitive. But the entertainment at the 'Rocroy' is reallychic—the dancing is as good—everyone says—as they have it at Maxim's. Do come! Of course, you can trust us not to blab to your wife! Mercy! how severe you look!" Her tone changed, became wheedling, her made-up eyes languished tenderly. "Odd! how we poor, silly women prefer the men who bully us. Come! One chance more. Dine Thursday and see 'Squiffed' at the 'Ministers'—try a whiff of Paris at the 'Rocroy' after midnight, 'twill buck you up like nothing else—take my word! Won't you?"
"I will not!"
"Why not?"
"I have told you why not. Because these places are centres of corruption, schools for the inculcation and practice of vice in every form. Men and women, young or old, those who take part in or witness one of these loathsome dances, hot and reeking from the brothels and voodoo-houses of Cuba and the Argentine are equally degraded. I had rather see my niece Patrine dead and in her coffin than know her capable of appreciating such abominable exhibitions, pernicious in their effects, as I, and others of my profession have grave reason to know!—ruinous in their results to body, mind, and soul!"
"Intolerable!"
Her plump, middle-aged face was leaden grey beneath her violet veil as she screamed at him:
"You have insulted me! Horribly—abominably! ... How dare you tell me that I frequent infamous places, and encourage my daughter to visit schools of vice! And it is not for Irma you are so rottenly scrupulous, but for Patrine, your wife's favourite! Who will do as she pleases, and marry whom she prefers without 'by your leave' or with mine! She is a mule for self-will and obstinacy—another point of resemblance to yourself! ..."
He had recovered his stern self-possession. His face was granite as he said:
"I have not insulted you, but if you will set no example to your daughters in avoiding these evils, it is my duty to expostulate."
She reared like an angry cobra, then spat her jet of scalding venom.
"I take leave to think my present example quite harmless to Irma and Patrine. Now yours—of a few years ago—was certainly calculated to damage the bodily and worldly prospects of your son." She added, as Saxham silently put out his hand to touch the bell: "No! please don't ring. I know my way out. Good-morning.... Pray remember me to Bawne and your wife!"