"Patrine!"
"Oh, Alan!—you came back after all!"
Her gloom changed to radiancy. She rose up as the tall figure of Sherbrand passed under the portico, and hurried to him, emptying her budget of regrets. "I've behaved like a cad. Do forgive me! Don't be wrathy. But you can't be—or you'd never have come back."
"You dear, it's all right!" He caught the outstretched hands in both his and wrung them. "Forget—and let's be happy." The truth about Bawne tugged at him as he said the words, but he had determined not to torture her with that horror. He went on, with the frankness that she found so lovable, "I was vexed, but it was idiotic of me not to have told you about the Commission before."
"And the man. Your French sossifer," she went on, "who looked at me as though I ought to live in a cage at the Zoo? What must he have thought of your taste in young women? What mustn't he have said when he got you out of the way?"
"Oh, not much!"
"Go on. Rub it in!"
"Well then"—Sherbrand's mouth was steady, but the laughter in his eyes was not to be controlled—"he saw I was fearfully sick at your having shown temper before him. And he told me not to be chagrined because a handsome woman had made me a little drama."
"F'ff!" She winced and set her teeth on her crimson underlip. "He knew I'd ask and you'd tell me. He saw me—squirming—in his mind's eye. Oh! and how he's hit me off. For I was awfully like the heavy leading lady of a tin travelling theatre-company. Aren't you ashamed of me? Don't you loathe me?" she wooed with entreating eyes.
"Frightfully. Tell me—where can we have a cosy talk together? I've got a whole hour before I'm due at Hendon," he said.
"The Rose-and-Green Divan—but there are sure to be people smoking there. Oh!—I know. The Little Library. Nobody ever goes in, and it's got a door opening into the Divan. Friends of Members aren't admitted into the Library—but if you're caught there—you say you were coming out of the Divan, where outsiders are allowed—and opened the wrong door—do you switch on?"
He nodded, repressing the desire to ask in whose company she had been caught there, and followed the tall lithe figure down a short corridor leading to the back of the ground-floor. The corridor ended in the Little Library, a studious apartment of bathing-machine dimensions, walled with curiously new-appearing books of information and reference, and containing two small writing-tables, each supported by a rosewood-stained Windsor, a brace of baskets, and two deep, cushiony, Rothmore chairs. A Member of mature years and mountainous proportions slept placidly in one of these, with Whitaker's Peerage balanced at a perilous angle on the vanishing indications of what must once have been her lap. The subdued murmur of voices trickled in from the adjoining smoking-room with vaporous wisps of Turkish and Virginia. Save for the stout slumbering Member the lovers were beautifully alone.
"Good! Oh, boy!—to have got you back again," Patrine said breathlessly after their kiss. She dropped down noiselessly into the springy embraces of the vacant Rothmore, and Sherbrand smiling, perched upon the chair's broad arm.
"This is an unbecoming contrast—isn't it?" She leaned her beech-leaf tinted head against the plastron of the khaki tunic as his strong hand crept behind her supple waist. "But I don't care, I can't think of anything but you, Alan. When do you start to-morrow, and from where? I suppose you mustn't tell me?" She sighed, rubbing her cheek against him as the strong arm embraced and held her. "Oh me! What it is to be the sweetheart of a soldier. Why—Alan!"
She lifted her head and looked at him, frowning, and her long eyes were black between the narrowed lids. "Do you know how your heart jumped when I said 'soldier'? Does it mean as much to you as all that?"
He began to stammer a little.
"Oh—well!—you see—we Sherbrands have worn the King's coat for ages. Ever since there were any Sherbrands—going by the portraits in the gallery at Whins—where my father lived when he was a boy. He used to describe them to me until I knew them as well as he did from the Sir Alan who fought with Talbot against the French at Castillan Chatillon as a boy, and got killed at Bannockburn thirty-five years later, down to the jolly old Sir Roger, who fought like a Trojan at Badajoz. He was my great-grandfather, so I suppose I've always had a secret hankering for the Service. Like the inherited nostalgia Hillmen's children have for the mountains, or sailors' for the sea. The kind of feeling that sets the little Arctic foxes in the Zoo howling at the first sprinkle of snow in December. Only I knew I mustn't yield to it. You know the reason why!"
"You told me, and I answered that that kind of reason couldn't affect you."
"Now you shall hear a plan I've been nursing." His arm again engirdled her. "Do you know Seasheere? It's a little grassy, cliffy, shingly village on the South-East coast, three-hours' journey from Charing Cross. There's a Naval Air Station there that was a Seaplane School not long ago. We used to send 'em pupils from Hendon: there's a cottage where they take lodgers not far off. I spent three weeks there last summer, fishing and motor-boating when I wasn't making friends with Goody Two Shoes——"
"Who's Goody Two Shoes?"
"The hydroplane!" His voice broke in laughter. "Did you think I meant a girl?"
"I'm an idiot. Go on about your plan, dear."
"Oh—well! The cottage I stayed at was jolly comfortable, and the landlady the tidiest old woman that ever grilled a chop. Now suppose—to-morrow, or a week, or two months hence you got a wire from Somewhere in France or Belgium saying: 'Seasheere—such-a-day-and-such-an-hour—Alan'—would you pack your kit for a week-end and hop into the train, and come?"
"Without asking—without telling—Aunt Lynette or Uncle Owen?" She asked the question breathlessly.
"We'll tell the Doctor and Mrs. Saxham directly afterwards." He leaned his cheek on the beech-leaf hair and his arm tightened about her waist possessively. "You said my heart jumped just now when you called me a soldier. How it will jump when I pick you out with the glasses, a tiny black speck on the cliffs at Seasheere, waiting with the sunset behind you, or the dawn in your eyes to welcome me back from over the sea. Oh, my girl!"—his voice wooed her irresistibly—"I've dreamed wide awake of the joy of such a greeting.... It's up to you to make my dream come true!" He kissed her hair. "And we'll watch the day die, and sup together, and you'll sleep at my nice old woman's cottage. And I'll turn in at the Air Station—and next morning we'll be married at Seasheere Catholic Church!"
"Married—that's your plan? Ah, Alan! shall we ever be married?" she sighed.
He laughed softly, pressing her against him.
"The little Catholic Church I've mentioned was built for the very purpose. Perched on the cliffs as though it might spread its rafters any minute and flap away to sea." He kissed her hair again. "Don't think I'm spinning fairy-tales. I've got a Special Licence, so there's no need to bother about time, or previous residence in the district, or anything stuffy. Nothing's wanted but Opportunity, the church, and the priest. And that the local Registrar should put in an appearance. That's necessary, as we're not of the same faith—yet!"
She freed herself from his embrace, rose to her superb height, and stood over him.
"You've arranged all this—without consulting me for a minute. You and your landlady—and your Licence and your Registrar! Boy, I am sensible of a great desire to box your ears soundly for this!"
"I'd rather take a clout from you than a kiss from any other woman."
She tapped him lightly on both ears, and said, putting a butterfly touch of lips in the middle of the broad, tanned brow:
"There are both clout and kiss. Now show me the Special Licence."
He thrust his hand into a pocket behind the plastron of the khaki tunic and pulled out a note-case she had bought and given him. The shiny square of parchment-paper bearing the signature of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury drew both their heads together over it. In a compartment meant for stamps was a hard, thin, metallic circle, shining yellow through tissue paper folds.
"The—Ring?" she whispered.
"The Ring!" He nodded, smiling, as she bent her face over it, kissed the tissue paper reverently, stuck the Licence back in its compartment, and gave him back the case.
"And you had these in your pocket this afternoon when I was such a horrid beast to you?"
"They were burning a hole right into my chest. Why, Pat, you're—crying!"
She half turned away, mopping her wet eyes with her flimsy little handkerchief.
"Because—because—it's so blessedly sweet and dear of you to have planned this. Do you—do you really want it so much?"
"More than anything under the sky," said Sherbrand. "And, don't you see, it settles the question of providing for you, splendidly! If we're married, and I get—pipped—Somewhere at the Front—" He stopped short, for one of her large hands firmly covered his mouth.
"I won't have it. You're not to speak like that, ever!" said a muffled voice above his head. "If you were killed—don't you understand—everything'd be over for me! It's a kind of nasty little Death—only to have you hint at it."
"All right!" he mumbled penitently, and kissed the hand. It was withdrawn, and he went on:
"I have my little fortune, though Flying has made a hole in it. And I'd naturally like—as my mother is provided for—the stuff to go to my wife."
"Oh! if I only were—good enough, I would be your wife to-morrow!" she groaned.
He got up and took her masterfully in his arms.
"No more of that. I can't stick being made out a—bally pattern. You are a hundred times too good for me!"
"But not at all patriotic," came drifting back upon him in the voice of Raymond. His embrace never slackened, but he asked of her a question, looking for the answer to lighten in her eyes: "Pat—you've not said yet that you're glad they've given me my Flying Commission!—that you're British enough to give your man, if it came to giving—for the Old Shop! I know you are!—of course you are!—but say it—I'd like to hear you."
"I—I——" She caught her breath and her eyes wavered miserably under his steady gaze. "I'm not a little bit o' good at telling decent proper lies. I love England—but I love you heaps, heaps, heaps best!" He felt her pant between his arms.... She writhed her long white neck like a creature in desperate agony. "I want to eat my cake and have it!" she wailed, evading his eyes. "Now you know me, you'll despise me. But it's the truth—anyway! I'd like a man to send to the War—and a man to keep for myself!"
His arms wrapped her closely and his heart plunged madly against her bosom. He kissed her on her yielded mouth, and the kiss was a living flame.
"That will be when we are married and you have a son!" he whispered, and a drowning horror enveloped her. She cried out and thrust him back, and might have sunk down at his feet and told her dreadful story then....
Whitaker's Peerage intervened, sliding from the lap of the obese, reposeful Member, and falling to the carpet with a resounding thump. The indignant eyes of the awakened lady glared at Sherbrand over her gold-rimmed spectacles. She demanded, snorting:
"Since when has this room—hr'runk!—been thrown open to visitors?"
"I'll inquire," Sherbrand stammered, and the guilty couple fled. That night Patrine wrote on a card "Seasheere," and thenceafter wore it in her bosom. But many weeks were over her head before the Call came.