"Pat!—what luck!"
Sherbrand was standing before her, tall and lean and masterful, saluting her with the touch of three fingers to a soldierly forage-cap with three buttons, set jauntily atilt on the broad tanned brow.
Ah! the delight of seeing the cold grey glance warm into sea-blue, the lean, eagle-face flash into smiles. For a little while yet he was hers, she told herself, as the hard hand gripped on hers that answered the swift fierce pressure, and her blood that the sickly chill of fear had stagnated, whirled on its crimson circle singing for joy. And then—a second glance, sweeping from the top to the toes of the tall manly figure, stopped the song.
"Alan! You—in khaki!"
"I suppose so," he said a little clumsily, echoing thousands of other men. "It's the universal wear just now, isn't it? We fellows must make good while we can—and we're all of us joining. Even Macrombie—you can't have forgotten Macrombie—has got his rating, and is acting a P.O.T. on a Destroyer in the North Sea."
Do you see the dour drunkard standing up, under the eye of the smart young inspecting Fleet Surgeon, naked save for the leather bootlace that held a battered silver locket round his harsh and swarthy scrag.
"Your age? ..."
"Ye micht ca' me forty," said the subject, with caution.
"I might, but I'd be a liar!" said the Fleet Surgeon, "so try again, my man!"
"Ye micht pit twa to the forr-ty," came rumbling from the hairy chest.
"And tack eight on to that," thus the Fleet Surgeon, tucking the hooked ends of the stethoscope into his ears, and deftly applying the microphone. "And then I'd be wide of the actual! Breathe deeply, will you!" The effort provoked a volley of coughs sounding like half-bricks pitched against the sides of an empty cistern and the Fleet Surgeon shook his head.
"Hough—hough—hough!—why didna' ye—hough! lat weel alane?" gasped Macrombie, with eyes blazing hell-fire through the moisture engendered by the cough. "Dinna ye ken I'll never no' be wanting to breathe deeply whaur ye're needing to send me? There is nae room whatever for lung-play oot o' the ordinar'," he added scornfully, "aboard ane o' thae kittle, cranky, tinpot Destroyers!"
"Hold out your hand!" commanded the arbiter of Destinies. He contemplated the extended member, wavering and fluttering like the indicator-needle on the dial of an atmospheric pressure-gauge. "Pretty wobbly, what?" he commented to the owner with the sarcastic inflection that advertised a keen advocate of Temperance.
"Man, O! man!" broke from Macrombie in a harsh rattling whisper, desperate appeal flashing in his burnt-out eyes, "you that are young enough to be my son, tak' me or leave me, ane or the tither—but shame me nae mair!"
Telegraphists were sorely needed, so Macrombie of the racking hoast and the shaky hand was passed as fit for Service, and duty rated as Petty Officer Telegraphist aboard one of the contemned tin-pots.
The Crown and winged double-thunderbolt must have nerved the arm they came back to. For, on the day of the Battle of Jutland, when a point-blank salvo from an enemy cruiser wrecked the bridge and searchlight platform, carrying away the forward mast and funnel of Macrombie's particular tin-pot, and men in respirators were fighting the smothering fumes of the fire caused by German shells of the incendiary description, a dour, stark man whose clothes were alight and burning on him, stuck grimly to his post among the wreckage of the shattered Wireless room, sending out the message last dictated by the officer who lay dead across the blistering steel plating—for the short circuit set up by the smashed searchlight had created its own separate conflagration, and the electricity was "running out of everything like oil."
When the tin-pot heeled over, and, having duly buried her steel chest and secret documents, went down with colours flying in a smother of oily steam, men who were saved on the rafts told this tale of Macrombie, who sleeps well, after Life's thirsty fever, at his post in the Destroyer's battered Wireless cabin, on the deep-ridged, sandy bottom of the wild, shallow North Sea.
Patrine felt her heart crushed as in the grip of a cold steel gauntlet. Her apprehensions had not been unfounded. She and Alan were to be parted, if not as she had feared.
"I—suppose I ought to congratulate you—" Her unwilling eyes admired the tall manly figure in the plain workmanlike uniform. The buttonless tunic with its Lancer plastron, the riding-breeches of ampler cut than the cavalryman's, the high spurless boots of supple brown leather, and the belt that carried a revolver and no sword. "What—what are you in?" she asked draggingly, and he answered with a smile and a flash of his grey eyes:
"I hope I'm in for some of what's going on!"
"How glad you are!"
"Rather. I should think so! Now that they've let me into the Royal Flying Corps as a T.S.L. Look at my wings!" He touched the white outspread pinions on the tunic-breast with a reverent finger-tip and went on pouring out his story without a break. "It's cost me some badgering of High Officials of Military Aëronautics at Whitehall, and a lot of time wasted in baby tests. Squad drill, Harris tube, bomb-dropping, air-signalling, Webley and Scott practice, and so on. Now I'm teaching trick-flying to Army aviators from 4.30 A.M. till 11 P.M. The Powers that Be have taken over the Flying Schools—Durrant's Café is our Officer's Mess now. You should see old Durrant in his glory as Head Waiter. And Mrs. D—" His white teeth flashed as he laughed.
"And they have known of this"—she nodded at the eagle-wings—"while I have been kept in ignorance! How long?"
"Not quite a fortnight. Don't be unreasonable, dear!"
The new tone stung. Did a yellow star upon the cuffs and shoulder-straps and a pair of white wings on the left breast mean so much to him that her just claims upon his confidence seemed wanting in reason now? Anger and resentment choked her as he added:
"I am here now, as it happens, because I'm crossing the Channel to-morrow at peep o' day." Something in her pale face made him add: "Don't worry!—I'm likely to be back again by nightfall. That's what I've rushed in here to tell you, though I've a man in tow, a Wing Commander of the French S. Aë. Hot from the Front and just landed at Hendon. I had to take him in my car to his Embassy, and now I've got to find him a room at an hotel. When I've done it I'm coming back here to talk to you. Where on earth has my man got to? Why, there he is, talking to Lady Norwater. The little chap with the grey moustache and the gold-banded képi."
"I am honoured by Madame's gracious remembrance," the person indicated could be heard protesting, during an instant's lull in the Babel of voices round. "But my own—a thousand pardons! is less accurate."
"Oh!" Margot expostulated, "but you can't have forgotten. That Sunday of the Grande Semaine—when you were in the Bois, timing a Flying Officer who was testing an English invention—a sort of a——"
"But assuredly, Madame!" His quick nod and the gesture of his gloved hand summoned up the scene vividly. "I remember, but perfectly, though much water has rolled under the bridges since that day. And Milord—Madame's husband?"
"He's at the Front," Margot explained, "wherever the Front is!"
"Unfortunately at the moment," returned the suave voice, "the Front is everywhere. It is easy to find without binoculars. Adieu, Madame. Merci bien de la souvenir si gracieuse, dites mes amitiés à Monsieur." And in another moment he arrived beside Sherbrand, exclaiming with his vivacious shrug and gesture: "My faith, my friend, your London Cercle des Dames is a veritable Paradise of Mahommed. Now in Paris, at least before the War—instead of ten thousand houris to every true Believer, one counted at least three Adams to every Eve. But I observe your search has been successful. Will you not present me to Mademoiselle your fiancée?"
And the dapper middle-aged Wing Commander in the gold-banded képi, whose dark plain uniform displayed the gold badge of the Service Aëronautique under the Cross of the Legion of Honour, was introduced as Captain Raymond by an off-hand young Briton who comprehended not in the least the immense condescension that had prompted the request.
"Sapristi!" thought Raymond, as Patrine gave him her large hand and assured him in her big warm voice that she was frightfully pleased to meet a friend of Alan's.—"A magnificent type of the human female animal to have paired with this bluff, simple English boy. Part femme du monde, part romping hoyden, part cabotine, she should have been a Duchesse of the old Napoleonic regime, or at least the effect that lies behind a cause célèbre of the Paris Law Courts of modern days. And she will be expected by this honest fellow to live in a stucco villa at Kensington or the Crystal Palace, and bear and rear his children, and live and die in all the deadly respectability of the British middle-class milieu!"
But he made his beautiful bow and murmured some civil phrases. In the spring, at the Hendon Flying Grounds of M. Fanshaw, he, Raymond, had been interested to meet the friend of Mademoiselle. Had been profoundly impressed by the displayed inventions of a young man so gifted as aviator and engineer. Had had the good fortune subsequently to obtain the consent of his own Chiefs of the S. Aë. F. to a test of an invention—the value of which had been hall-marked by the approbation of Messieurs les Allemands. True, M. Sherbrand had been the victim of their unscrupulosity. But Fortune, who knew? might be kinder in the near future. This War so grievous, so brutal, so deplorable, waged by the Prussian against Civilisation and Progress, would open up not only le métier des armes, but countless other avenues of prosperity to thousands of ardent and gifted young men. Like M. Sherbrand. To whom Raymond said with an authoritative glance of his blue eye: "My friend, we keep your auto waiting at the door!"
"Ah, but stay!" Patrine began, with a sense of hatred towards the well-used little Ford runabout standing in much grander company by the kerb outside the Club: "do stay and lunch and smoke and tell us things about the War, won't you?"
"A thousand thanks, but impossible, Mademoiselle!"
Raymond shrugged, conscious that her look of disappointment was for Sherbrand, and pleaded fatigue as an excuse.
"For these are iron times, Mademoiselle," he went on in his smooth, musical accents, "and we who live in them are unfortunately of flesh and blood. When the War is done perhaps there will again be social pleasures like the lunch you were so kind as to offer me. That I am tempted to accept I will not conceal from you. I have not eaten since I flew from France at la pointe du jour—one of the smallest of the little hours of this morning, and then I broke fast on two fingers of little red wine, and a hunch of soldier's bread."
"You mean to say you're fresh from flying the Channel?"
"Crossing the Channel came near the end of my journey, Mademoiselle. I should have arrived earlier"—he shrugged indifferently—"had not some German aviators caused delay."
"Oh-h!" Her vexation passed like a breath from a mirror. Her long eyes danced with delight under her hat-brim. Her breath came quick, her red lips curled, and a sweet faint pink showed under her creamy skin. "You're a knight of the skies hot from a fray with two flying dragons—and you were going without saying a word! What do you think we Englishwomen are made of?"
"Very desirable flesh, some of you, at least, Mademoiselle," occurred to Raymond, but he suppressed the equivoque and answered with professional brevity:
"Mademoiselle, I regret there is but little to tell you. The enemy possesses an aërial organisation of great effectiveness which is being chiefly employed in the killing of harmless civilians and the destruction of unfortified towns. But small success has hitherto attended his efforts in the Channel. Your British Expedition was conveyed across the water without the loss of one piou-piou, or any damage received by the explosion of a German bomb. As for the German aviators of whom I speak, their attitude towards myself and my pilot was modest. Flying their double-seated military Taubes, of which the wings and tail resemble those of the dove after which they have been named, they pursued our biplane half-way from Calais to Dover before deciding to attack."
"Then—" She hesitated, softly clapping her palms together and dimpling like a big child over the telling of a new fairy tale.
"Then one climbed, possessing the advantage of a powerful engine, and dropped a bomb from a height of some 600 mètres which exploded without hitting us and went to the bottom of the sea. While the second aviator, who was armed with a repeating-carbine, wounded my pilot so severely that it was only by a miracle of endurance he preserved consciousness long enough to land without a crash. So I left him at Dover and—with a pilot mechanic from the Air Station, completed my passage, descending at Brooklands at twelve demie."
"Was your pilot hurt very badly? Will he be able to fly back to France?"
"Mademoiselle, being a pious Catholic, he has already flown to Heaven."
"He is dead.... And you can joke!" Patrine reproached him. His face was very wrinkled as he smiled.
"Mademoiselle, if a soldier could not jest at Death upon occasion, Life for a soldier would be impossible! Of verity, the loss of a good pilot-aviateur is not a thing to joke about, but fortunately I have your friend to fill his place."
"Alan! You must not—I will never consent to it!"
All taken aback, her colour banished, she fixed Sherbrand with blazing imperative eyes. He reddened to the hair and his mouth shut firmly. For the first time there was a clash of wills between the pair.
"Alan, why didn't you ask me?"
He was redder than ever.
"Because it wasn't for you to say. It is an order from my Chiefs—don't you understand?"
She did not care that the French officer was smiling. She would have liked to have struck him in his merrily-crinkled face. Wretch! to have blurted the truth at her that Alan had hidden. What was he saying:
"Permit, Mademoiselle, that I make my adieux. I go to secure an apartment where I may repose myself." He looked at Sherbrand, saying in his cool tone of authority: "The Aldebaran,—that is in the next street and a good hotel, is it not so? A little sleep will not come amiss after a cutlet and a demi-bouteille. And whilst I eat we will settle our affaires. Eh, mon lieutenant?"
His gloved hand took Sherbrand neatly by the elbow. He was skilfully steering him towards the doorway when Patrine, white and flaming, placed herself in their path.
"My affairs come first!" she was beginning.
"Shut up!" came from Sherbrand, in an exasperated aside whisper. "My duty comes before you—or anything in the world. It should come first for you if you cared a damn for me!"
No one but Raymond had overheard the curious, fierce colloquy. She felt literally scorched by the hot look of anger. She knew an agony like the tearing of the tissues of the flesh when Sherbrand passed her and went out with that gloved hand of authority upon his arm.
"Women are the devil!" he thought bitterly, as he opened the door of the runabout Ford to admit the French Staff Officer. "She'd had a shock in being told the news so suddenly; but to ballyrag me—to make me look such a thundering idiot before him!"
He swung the crank with violence and wrenched angrily at the levers when he took the driving-seat. A gloved hand patted his arm, and Raymond's voice said in his ear:
"Bah! You are chagrined, my friend, because a handsome woman has made you a little drama. Think no more of it! I have forgotten, for my part." He added, as they got out at the Aldebaran: "I propose to detain you but a little while, mon ami. When we have completed arrangements for the start to-morrow, you will be free to return and make your peace with Mademoiselle."
"Thank you, sir. She was rattled at my telling her so suddenly about my Commission," said Sherbrand, still beclouded. "Women are all like that, I suppose?"
"Except in France," said the agreeable voice of Raymond, "where the love of Country is stronger in our women than the love of lover or even of child. It was so before 1870. They have remembered through the centuries, as their sisters of Britain have not. They—the women of England are patriotic—oh yes! but patriotism is not yet a religion to them. It will cost millions of lives, and of blood an ocean to kindle that flame within their souls. Then, they also will hold the bayonet to the grindstone with their soft white hands and say: 'Become sharp, to drink the blood of Germans!' And they will mend the soldier's ragged breeches and clean the soldier's dirty rifle, and when they do they will not be less womanly. No, by my faith! nor less beloved by men. Try one of these. You will not find them too bad."
He offered Sherbrand a cigarette and took a light from him as they stood under the Aldebaran's tall Corinthian portico.
"One should always be accurate. When I told you that in France there lived no woman who was not patriotic, I was in error. Such a woman existed since three or four days."
He blew out a puff of smoke and watched its mounting spiral. Then he resumed:
"She was very young, very pretty, the bride of a month, and passionately enamoured. When her husband received orders to proceed with his Regiment of Chasseurs to the Belgian Front, she made him a scene of desperation. She would do this and that mad thing if he did not take her. Then she became calmer. She had exacted a promise from her doting cavalryman. She should visit him at the Front at a suitable opportunity. She chose her own moment, my faith!—and what a moment! She appeared in her husband's quarters in the French cavalry camp near Antoineville when the Germans were attacking Dinant. When the Cavalry Division of the Prussian Guards, and the Cavalry of their First Division, with some infantry battalions and machine-gun companies crossed the Meuse, and we were to attack, she was lying in his arms, the little idiot! He told her to go and she would not. Then he entreated her—a fatal error that!"
The cigarette was burning crookedly, forgotten between Raymond's fingers.
"Then he commanded her. She laughed, and kissed him. He gave back the kiss, drew his revolver and shot her dead. Then he ran out—in time to mount and wheel to his place as second in command of his squadron, before the Regiment swept on to the charge. Fate was kind to him. He charged like a Centaur, and died like a soldier of France the Beloved. Tell the story to Mademoiselle Saxham. She is magnificently handsome, but forgive me! not a patriot. And a woman without patriotism is—an altar without a Sacred Host and a lamp without a flame."
They went into the hotel. When the Frenchman had secured a quiet bedroom on the fourth floor, and intimated that no German was to serve him, they went together into the dining-room.
"Pfui! It smells of soot, and petrol, and drainage, this London air of yours," said Raymond, as he chose a table in a quiet corner. "You will eat with me? No! Then smoke and share my wine." He ordered cutlets, petit pois, a sweet omelette, and a bottle of Beaujolais, and, filling his own glass and one for Sherbrand, touched brims gaily and said with a smile: "To France and her Allies, Victory! On earth," a clink, "by sea," a clink, "under the sea," another clink, "and in the Air!"
He clinked three times, and emptied the glass thirstily. Sherbrand asked:
"Was the battle near Dinant a big affair?"
"Not big." He broke a roll and munched bread. "Not on the grand scale. A spectacle très intéressante, regarded from the—archaic point of view. An example of the ancient mode de bataille that will be dead as the Dodo in three months. Chasseurs à cheval and German Imperial Guard Regiments charging and meeting with shocks like thunder. Much slaughter. So fierce was the onslaught upon our side that the Germans were driven back across the Meuse. Many missed the bridge and were drowned. One French regiment followed them in pursuit for several kilomètres. They were led by the man of whom I have told you. A glass to his memory—and hers!"
They touched full glasses and drank. Raymond went on.
"My Flying Centre was near Maubeuge on the 16th. Some escadrilles of my command were engaged that day near Dinant. My faith! those côtellettes are slow in arriving." He munched more bread, and his blue eyes narrowed smilingly. "We had only the little bombs we used in Morocco, but yes!—we did some good work with the balles-bon. Flying low, at ordered distances—for to make War by Air successfully the science of tactics must assist the aviator.... What says your great Field Marshal, who has bent his neck to the collar-work of Administration—who has conjured an Army of trained soldiers out of your shops and counting-houses, and playing-fields,—and will make another and another when the time comes?"
Sherbrand quoted the words uttered by the great voice now quenched for ever in the bitter waters of the North Sea.
"Until aviators learn to fly, manoeuvre, and attack in regular formation, the Fifth Arm will remain a useless limb."
"Tonnerre de Dieu! but that goes to the point," said Raymond, "straight and sharp as a thrust from his sword. If we possessed that man we should make use of him. He should be Marshal of France, or President or Emperor—all we should ask of him would be to lead us. Notr' Joffre would not be jealous—they would agree like the hilt and the hand. But I was telling you of an attack by the fléchette.... You may imagine how the Uhlans loved that rain of steel. It changed the retreat to a rout. Only it spoiled so many German horses. Right through the man, you understand, into the animal! ... Sieves on four legs are useless as Remounts for French Chasseurs."
"And the German Field Flight?" Sherbrand interrogated.
"Their Fifth Arm was represented," said Raymond, sipping his burgundy, "by many Taubes and Aviatiks armed with the machine-gun and some ordinary bombs of schrapnel,—also a dirigible of 'Parsifal' type dropping big bombs. We were hampered in our offensive by a prejudice which does not trouble the Germans. To throw bombs upon friend and foe alike—that is not our idea of War. It annoyed me, and I wasted on that flatulent brute of a 'Parsifal' all my remaining fléchettes and little Morocco bombs. Aha, the côtelettes!"
A waiter set them before him. He tucked his napkin under his chin, and helped himself, and said:
"Thus, though I had damaged her steering-gear and riddled her outer envelope, and the Flying Pig wallowed in difficulties below me, I could not pursue the advantage I had got. When the pilot of an Aviatik launched himself to the rescue, all the ammunition of my carabine was exhausted. I had one cartridge left in my automatic revolver, and not a single bomb with which to return the compliments of the German's mitraille. My petrol-tank had been perforated. My single bullet missed him. The duel was too unequal, so I withdrew from the field, leaving him to cavalier the Flying Pig. We may meet again upon terms more equal, when French military aviators fight with machine-guns. And now to business. It concerns your gyroscopic stabiliser, the patent of which my Chiefs desired to buy for the use of our Service Aëronautique. You demanded, according to M. Jourdain's statement, £8,000 and a royalty for the world-patent. We will buy it of you outright for £12,000. Is it agreed?"
Sherbrand straightened in his chair, and said, looking the other squarely in the eyes:
"No, sir, thank you! You see, though the War Office wouldn't have anything to say to me——"
"It occurs to you that now you may find a market for your invention?" To the devil with this smug young British tradesman! thought Raymond behind his knitted brows. "Come!" he said. "Another proposal. Will you make and supply us with your hawk-hoverer? Or sell us the right to manufacture a thousand for the sole use of the S. Aë.? Name your price—I shall not be frightened. It is not State money, but my private fortune that I draw upon—with the approval of my Chiefs. It has been my whim to lavish on my escadrille what other men hang in jewels upon their mistresses. Efficiency is my vice. I have heard of worse!" He scrawled some invisible figures with a polished finger-nail upon the tablecloth and exclaimed, with a laugh and a shrug: "Sapristi! At even a hundred pounds apiece you would soon be a millionaire, even without the fortune you expect from your War Office! Upon occasion it pays to be a patriot. Decide, Monsieur, lest my patience run dry before my purse!"
"I've not asked you a hundred, sir," Sherbrand said with his disarming simplicity. "I can make and sell the hoverers at a profit for £60. It's the cutting and welding of the horizontal flanged screws with the acetylene flame that eats up that money. But for the cost of the process, hang it!—I'd have had more than seventy ready by me now."
"You have seventy, you say, laid by in readiness?"
"Laid by in grease," said Sherbrand, "at the aërodrome."
"Waiting the moment when the authorities at Whitehall awaken to the fact that you are a genius, mon ami! À la bonne heure! We buy your seventy equilibrisers!"
"I'll sell you ten," said the British tradesman doggedly. "And I'll give the Belgian Government another ten, if you think they'd honour me by accepting them?"
"Parole d'honneur! I can guarantee they will. And of the other fifty?"
"They are for England to take or leave," said Sherbrand. "No doubt I'm an ass, but a man must act according to his lights."
"They are stars, your lights," said Raymond with a crackling oath, "and they point the path of Honour!" He pulled a cheque-book and a fountain-pen from a pocket within his tunic and wrote a cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais for the price of the ten stabilisers, their packing, carriage and duty, saying as he signed, and tossed the lilac slip of paper across the tablecloth: "Your endorsement is my receipt. For the stabilisers—they must be sent not later than to-morrow. I would give something if I could fly back to France with a couple in my valise. But patience! In a week at most we will give the Germans news of us. Perhaps I shall have the good fortune of a rencontre with my Boche pilot-aviator. For—listen, lieutenant! He too possessed the device that solves for the avion the problem of stability. And—listen well!—he carried a young boy with him in the nacelle. It was the man who robbed you. Von Herrnung! Could you not have guessed before?"
It seemed to Sherbrand that he had always guessed. Raymond went on:
"When I read of the finding of the wreck of your 'Bird' in the North Sea, I knew what coup the Prussian and his confederates had carried out. We had met in Berlin, and at the Hanover aërodrome, and at Paris. And—I could have shot him the other day if it had not been for the child. The legions of the modern Attila employ women and babes as bucklers and breastworks, by their Emperor's order. Perhaps he carried the boy for protection!" His moustache bristled like an angry cat's as he added:
"A beastly idea, but the German Idea is bestial. Well, au 'voir! To-morrow, six demie, we start from the aërodrome!"
He rose, whisked his napkin over his mouth, and said, giving Sherbrand a hearty hand-grip:
"I shall be punctual. Do not forget. My compliments to Mademoiselle!"
But Sherbrand was occupied less by thoughts of his angry love than by Raymond's story of the boy in the German warplane. He telephoned to Sir Roland and to Saxham before he drove back to the Club thinking:
"Bawne!—It must be Bawne!—out there in the midst of all those horrors. If I could only meet that fellow von Herrnung! ... I've owed him no grudge because he robbed me.... But—for this—I could kill him now!"