With her hat off and her hairpins out, and her tawny-coloured mane tumbling over her heaving shoulders, the superb illusion of maturity vanished. The three men viewed Patrine with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Stripped of the magic cloak of Circe, here was no transformer of Man into the hoofed and rooting mammal, but a great galumphing schoolgirl, pouring out a heartful of trouble, without the least concern for her complexion; mopping her streaming eyes with a little sopping handkerchief; temporarily ending its brief career of usefulness with a dismal blast upon the nose.
"Take mine!" said Saxham, thrusting the large-sized square of cambric upon her.
"Th—thank you, Uncle Owen!"
She said it in the voice of a child. The torrent of tears, so different from those shed earlier, had washed her heart clean. Something hard and cynical and evil had passed out of her. She was Bawne's dear Pat again.
A lean brown hand that wore a chipped and ancient signet was next held out to her. She grasped it and was straightway hauled upon her feet.
"Are you better?" said a friendly voice, in a crisp way.
"I—think so. Thank you, Sir Roland!" She added in a tone as tear-soaked as her handkerchief, while Saxham offered her her hat, and Sherbrand tendered tortoiseshell hairpins:
"I'm awfully afraid I have behaved like a fool!"
"Like a woman!" said the friendly voice even more crisply.
"Do you think women are fools?" she was beginning, when she caught his eye and broke off. For she had met Sir Roland's mother and she knew his young wife quite well, and her Aunt Lynette, the one living being whom she worshipped, was one of his closest friends. No! To this man women were sacred. Why had she uttered such a banality? For the life of her she did not know.
She drew a sobbing breath, and looked about her vaguely, and suddenly a mist rolled away from her brain. The net of Tragedy whirled high and fell upon her, and the steel trident was driven deep between her ribs again:
"I—had forgotten!" She stared upon them. "What must you all think of me?"
Saxham's arm came round her, and Saxham's voice answered:
"Nothing, my dear, but that you are human, and have had a tremendous shock!"
She leaned against the Doctor's great shoulder, sighing:
"Thank you! ... I'm all right now! Not going to cry any more.... But Bawne! If we wait long enough there will be news of him? We—shall get him back?"
She felt Saxham's iron muscles jerk, and his ribs heave as though the trident had found a home between them. Perhaps he could not find his voice, for it was the Chief who said:
"We are doing everything possible. Mr. Sherbrand is helping. He has been good enough to place the telegraph installation at our disposal and the Wireless also. A call, Burgin?"
The undersized clerk had waved a hand from the threshold of the cabin. The Chief vanished. Patrine sighed:
"Oh, if there should be news!"
"You are too sensible to be bowled over if there happens to be no news," said the Doctor's voice. But his arm was tense about her waist and she felt the beating of his heart.
"Uncle Owen!"
Sherbrand had withdrawn out of earshot. She squeezed the kind responsive hand, turned her mouth towards the Doctor's ear, and whispered tremulously:
"Uncle Owen! You don't know him as I do. That's why I am so—horribly afraid for Bawne! He would be cruel to anyone you liked, if he hated you. And he is furious with me! I have thwarted him in—something he wishes! He is bad!—dangerous!—do you understand?"
"He cannot be a bad pilot with such a record. And in such calm weather there is little danger of an accident. We must be patient; there is nothing else to do at the moment, but wait!"
Saxham had feigned to misunderstand her, for very pity, you can conceive. Blurting out her miserable secret in this moment of unselfish sorrow, his heart was wrung in him to an anguish of compassion for Patrine. But no less was he wrung by the truth her words conveyed. His son and Lynette's was in the power of an evil man! What was David's daughter saying?
"Uncle Owen!" The tall figure of Sherbrand had moved away into the reddish twilight, and a wild desire of confession spurred on the girl to desperate frankness of speech. She hurried on, nerving herself to the change that would presently show in Saxham. "Uncle Owen! I think you had better know! Since I met him in Paris I——"
"Stop!" said Saxham. But she would not stop. She had his blood in her, and went on, though to have set her naked foot on glowing iron would have been easier than to tell.
"I have flirted with him!—gone alone with him to restaurants and music-halls!—let him take me to the Upas!"—there was a tightness like knotted whipcord about her throat; "That's—not the worst!"
"I guessed it. Stop!" Saxham repeated:
"Who told?"—she faltered brokenly, and shivered at the deep stern whisper:
"No one told, but the reputation of the—man is known to me. His type does not hesitate where a woman's virtue is concerned."
A great sigh burst from her. "And you can speak to me and touch me kindly—you don't hate the sight of me?"
"No, my poor girl, God forbid!"
"How good!—" she began, broke off and said, shuddering: "But—Aunt Lynette! How could I bear it, if she were ever to know——"
Saxham said harshly:
"She shall not know! Who do you dream will tell her? Not I! So set your mind at rest, my girl. You are a girl—though you talk like a woman of thirty!"
She said with a miserable catch in her throat:
"Nineteen is rather young, isn't it? Perhaps things would have been different if only Dada had lived!"
The utterance was as inapposite as it was sentimental. If David had still been in existence his daughter would have had no less cause for regret. But Saxham, inwardly quivering and wrung with pity, could only acquiesce:
"Perhaps things would! What you have got to do now is—Forget! Do you hear me? I order you, and I will be obeyed! And I will have you leave this titled lady who employs you, and who is all kindness and no discretion. Resign your post to-morrow! You need not return to your mother. My house is your home!" He went on in his rare tone of tenderness, "You need no telling that I care for you as a daughter. Come to me, and to Lynette who loves you dearly. She will want comfort—now that—" His voice broke and his mouth twisted. He fought with his anguish, in silence, turning his grim white face away.
"Who will tell Aunt Lynette? Oh! who will tell her?" he heard Patrine whisper. He commanded himself to answer:
"For the present, I have telephoned her that we may be detained here until late. Suppose you twist up your hair now, and put your hat on. Sherbrand!"
A sweet, manly voice answered out of the dimness of the Flying Ground: "Here, Doctor! You called me?"
In the madder and umber light of the dying sunset Sherbrand's tall brown shape came towards them. Saxham said as Patrine swept her tawny tresses into one rough rope:
"I am going to ask you to find out whether the people at the refreshment-place could give my niece something by way of substitute for dinner. A cup of coffee, or cocoa with milk, a roll and butter, and a slice of cold beef or ham?"
Sherbrand said eagerly:
"I am sure Miss Saxham can get anything like that. Mrs. Durrant keeps open house till nine o'clock, or later, if there is reason. She caters for the School Staff, respectably, by contract. I lodge—a very decent berth—over the dining-room, where I have my grub. Noisy by day but quiet enough at night-time. Will you come this way, Miss Saxham? You too, Doctor?"
Saxham declined. They left him standing there, in the wide expanse that was filling up with brooding shadows, with his back to the dying rose of the sunset, looking fixedly to the north.