The slow dropping of water on the carpet and the sweet, heavy fragrance of roses, brings me back as it brought Patrine. She got up and pulled down the dark blue blinds with the precaution that was becoming habitude with us at this date, in view of that often bragged-of menace from the sky. She switched up the lights and moved to the table, roughly pulled off the string that tied, and lifted the lid of the cardboard box.
A rich, sweet fragrance that was almost musky enveloped her as she lifted the thin paper. A sheaf of roses of flaming sanguine crimson, tied with black-and-white striped ribbon lay beneath. Black and white are the Prussian colours. Black, white, and red the standard of the Hohenzollern. Patrine knew that von Herrnung had sent the roses, even before she recognised his writing on a thick white envelope pinned to the ribbon binding the flowers.
"If Isis desires news of 'her dearest', she will open and read the letter. From one who does not desire to forget."
The letter contained a lock of hair, jaggedly cut—she knew from whose sweet head. Half blind with tears, she lifted the lock to her lips and kissed it passionately, before she bent herself to read the careful English sentences that revealed the man in all his vanity and lustfulness, insolence, and tyranny, as though the burin of Strang or the brush of Sargent had etched him upon copper or limned him upon canvas, to show the world what depths of infamy can be plumbed by the Superman.
"Strong Woman of the race of moral weaklings, have you not yet learned to be proud that a Prussian soldier prized your beauty, and took it for his own? When the fierce men in the proud German Field-grey have swarmed over the soil of England,—when, amidst the squadron of night-birds whose feathers gleam mysteriously in the pale moonlight, thy lover flies onward, singing his war-song, laden with his cargo of explosives—when the Red Cock crows on the roof-trees of London's wilderness of houses and London's fire-bells, amidst terrific explosions, ring out the last battle of the century, will Isis then think of me? Revolvers, carbines, bombs, and poisoned arrows are among the gifts I shall bring thee in the hand that wears the mascot pearl of black and white. Coloured signalling-balls set in the silver of the searchlight, shall be thy tiara; for thy arms and thy white bosom there will be strings of rubies outpoured from the broken coffers of the House of Life. Our second nuptials will be celebrated by a mitred Death, amidst the smoking ruins of Westminster Abbey, to the roaring strains of the German Anthem, 'Now Praise Ye the Lord.' Till then au revoir! shall one perhaps say?
"Ah, were Isis of the burning beech-leaf tresses not only beautiful but wise, she would place her hand in the hand that stretches yearningly over the North Sea. I wish love more than vengeance; is not that unnatural for a Hun? A golden consciousness of happiness yet to come wells up within me. Would Isis taste that happiness, let her go to her window and open it on the night of the day that brings this letter. There are no Germans in England who are not in prison or under espionage. No, possibly! yet go to thy window! A word to him who waits there, and Isis is once more mine. But beware of turning my tenderness by scornful rejection to hatred. Cold devil!—I should then strike, and frightfully, at the head whence came this hair. Look at it well and answer. T.v.H."
She could turn no paler, her hue was that of death already. She dropped the loathsome letter from her hand upon the roses and thrust the lock of hair into her bosom, and went to a window and touched the spring of the blind. It flew up and revealed her tall shape standing there silhouetted against the electric radiance in defiance of that boasted menace from the sky.
The street seemed empty, within the radius of her vision, save for the dark bulk of a motor-car, standing before a house on the same side some way down. Its headlights flashed, once, twice, and again, as though in answer. It slid forwards with a low hissing sound: "Ss'sh!" it said, as if in gluttonous anticipation, and stopped opposite the hall-door. Again the headlights flashed, there was a gleam of yellow enamel. She recognised the Darracq car in which von Herrnung had driven her to Fanshaw's Flying Ground on that unforgettable eighteenth of July.
Holding her breath, narrowing her long-sighted eyes for better focus, she scrutinised the driver, recognising in the thick-set figure hunched over the steering-wheel, wearing a peaked cap pulled low over his forehead, and a wide white muffler twisted round his throat, the German who had brought the message from the Three in the blue F.I.A.T. car. She was sure of him when he touched his cap, looking furtively up at the window, and switched on a small electric bulb, illuminating the clock upon the dashboard as though to afford her a view of his face. Its bloodshot pale eyes, thick broad nose, and the unwholesome, purplish colour of the complexion, barred with a big light yellowish moustache with waxed ends, had stuck in her memory as ugly personal traits will stick. Of the slenderer man beside him she had no recollection. He was buttoned up in an overcoat with a fur collar, and wore a soft felt hat. She felt the eyes it shadowed were fastened on her, and recoiled as though from the touch of something unclean and horrible, roughly dragging down the blind.
She was brave, but the sense of being almost alone in the house with those alert, observant eyes outside, spying upon her movements, made her heart beat suffocatingly, and brought chill damps of deadly terror to the surface of her skin. She moved to a chair with a clogging sense of ultimate effort—the nightmare feeling of striving against a powerful hypnotic influence, bidding her creep downstairs and open the street-door, step into the car waiting at the kerbstone, and be borne away by rushing wheels and whirling screws, or even swifter wings, perhaps, to that War-torn land where von Herrnung was waiting to exact his price for sparing the beloved head.
She drew the lock of hair from her bosom and whispered inarticulate tendernesses to it, stroking its red-gold beauty with fingers and lips. Not until now those bread white strands amongst the reddish-gold conveyed their sinister meaning. When it came it was like a blow delivered full between the eyes. She swayed forwards and fell upon her knees beside the table, her forehead resting on the clenched hand that held the boy's hair. All that was maternal in her fierce, undisciplined nature urged her now to make the sacrifice. Remorse for having forgotten the child in her absorbing love for Sherbrand, was a scourge of fiery scorpions that urged her to the leap.
Its uselessness, the certainty that von Herrnung would keep no hinted promise to restore the hostage, would have been no argument to deter her. Sherbrand's influence might have counterpoised, but she had sent away Sherbrand for his own sake. Now she would go to Bawne, buy him back with body and soul, if need be, from the hands of the torturer, or at least share his agony and die by his side.
Madness was near enough that night to sweep her tattered robe before the eyes of Patrine, and beckon enticingly with her sceptre of plaited straw. She was alone and she had borne so much, and nothing else could save Lynette's boy—unless it were a miracle! Where was God—where was God now? Upon that July night of the child's spiriting away Sherbrand had bidden her pray that Bawne might be restored to them. She had petitioned in a perfunctory way when she had thanked God for taking away von Herrnung—that the child might be traced and brought back. Now she clenched her hands until the nails dug into their palms, and groaned out, as the dry sobs racked her body, words that sensed after this fashion:
"Save him, save him! For Christ's love save him—and give him back! For the dear sakes of those to whom I have been so ungrateful! hear me—only hear me! and I will—be different. I will serve Thee, O God, who have ignored Thee! I will confess Thee, I who have denied! ..."
Mean, base, said her pride, to kneel and entreat Him whom you have neglected and insulted. Even though He heard, do you think that He would answer now? But with desperate effort she thrust away the thought from her. The Hound of Heaven had leaped upon her, flying. She felt his teeth in her garments, holding her back from the invisible hands that dragged at her. She knew that unseen forces of Good and Evil were engaged in furious battle for her soul.... And strangling, she gasped out incoherent sentences, wild appeals to the Divine Pity.... In the midst of these, startling her like a thunderclap, came a hurried knocking at the door.
"Miss Pat!"
It was the voice of Mrs. Keyse, and as Patrine stumbled to her feet and stood wild-eyed and shaking, the little, matronly figure in the black silk gown of housekeeperly dignity appeared upon the threshold of the room.
"You—wanted me, Mrs. Keyse? Is it about the—the yellow car? Have they——"
The hoarse voice and the white, wrung face conveyed to an ardent lover of Patrine that something was wrong with her Doctor's niece. Tragedy was in the air—but Discretion is the better Part of Value, and nobody knew better than Emrigation Jane what fierce passions could boil in the Saxham blood.
"No, Miss Pat. It's not the car, yet, though I fancied I 'eard one stop here a minute back. It's the telephone in the consultin' room ringin', and ringin',—and Chewse gone to bed," Chewse being the trained maid who admitted patients and received messages. "And me with the best will in the world never could make 'ead or tail of them tellermessages—except the 'ulloing! And pre'aps you'd come and write down for the Doctor whatever it is they've got to say...."
"Very well. Don't wait, I'm coming directly!"
Mrs. Keyse vanished, and with that dreamlike sense of unreality upon her, Patrine followed downstairs and passed along the silent corridor. The electric lamp above the Doctor's table had been switched on. She took the Doctor's chair and rang-up and waited, sitting where Saxham had sat when Lynette's sweet lips first touched his forehead—where the big man had planned self-murder in the darkest hour of his despair. The frayed patch on the Persian rug beneath her feet had been worn by Saxham's usage. The triptych frame that held the portraits of Lynette and Bawne drew Patrine's eyes as she sat waiting, and the clench of her big white hand upon the table-ledge, the bend of her black brows and the stern sorrow stamped upon her face made her likeness to the Doctor more than ever apparent now.
"Halloa!" she called, and the brusque harshness of her own voice was startlingly like Saxham's. A sense of Destiny oppressed her. She felt as one stifling in a vacuum—drowning for lack of air. Her prayers had rolled back upon her soul unanswered. The sense of spiritual desolation intensified her desperate loneliness. No good to pray and cling until you broke your nails to that great Rock that upholds the Crucifix. Better let go, and be carried away by the torrent. Signs and wonders are not wrought in these days!—said that other Patrine within Patrine—and if any were, there would be no miracle. You fool, you fool, to dream of one!
She was sorry for herself as she sat there waiting. This little duty done, she would rise and obey that sinister summons from the outer darkness. Nothing on earth nor in Heaven could help or prevent. The sudden tinkle of the bell came at this juncture. The call was in Sir Roland's well-known voice.
"Halloa! ... Is that you, Saxham?"
"Halloa!" she called back in that voice so strangely like his and unlike her own.
"Good! Well, my true friend and faithful coadjutor of old time," said the crisp voice, shaken a little as though by some irrepressible emotion or excitement, "some news has been communicated to us by Wireless that will lift up your heart and your wife's. Are you listening? ... To-day, about six P.M., near Langebeke, north-west of Ypres, at the moment of the White Flag ruse that cost the Deershire Regiment two hundred men, a two-seater Taube, flying low, as though something were the matter with her engine, came wobbling over the British lines. Nobody shot at her—she had just given our side sufficient reason for consideration by dropping a highly-effective bomb on a wasp's nest of German machine-gunners—and she crashed to ground behind a battery of First Corps R.F.A. Her German pilot had been frightfully wounded. His passenger, who sat in his lap to steer—and dropped the bomb!—escaped with a shake-up. You've got the story? Then, here's the tag of it. WE'VE GOT YOUR BOY! Bawne was the lucky fellow who only got a shaking. He arrives at Charing Cross to-night at twelve sharp!"
He added, as a stifled cry travelled over the wire:
"Congratulations with all my heart, to you and Mrs. Saxham. And to Miss Pat, though I'm afraid she pays, poor girl, in sorrow for your joy. There is a report that Sherbrand's Bird of War No. 2 has been shot down by a Zeppelin he encountered returning to the Front from England to-day, to supply the place of an R.F.C. pilot—killed while on observation-service near St. Yves—for Callenby's Cavalry Corps."
There was a stifled sound of interrogation or an exclamation. The Chief continued:
"He had no bombs. It was madness to attack with only a Maxim and their magazine-revolvers, but glorious madness worth a thousand sane, reasonable acts. As it is, the Zeppelin—supposed to have been on her way from Ostend to bomb St. O—was badly crippled and compelled to turn back. It was a shell from one of her Q.F.'s that exploded Sherbrand's petrol-tank and set the Bird on fire. The machine was seen to fall in flames near Dixschoote—held by the Germans. Sherbrand and his observer must be prisoners—that is, supposing they're alive. Hard luck! Break it gently to the poor girl! Good-night!"
There was no answering Good-night, only a faint thud and rustle. Sir Roland did not guess what he had done as he rang off and hung the receiver up. And Lynette, coming into the consulting-room, noiselessly as a pale moonbeam, found a big galumphing girl she loved lying huddled between the chair and table, with her white face pressed against the spot worn threadbare by the Doctor's feet.
Coincidence, you say, perhaps. Well, but what is Coincidence? Is it a Dust-wind careering over the Desert in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, playing with straw and twigs and dead locusts' wings, and one stray fragment of printed paper, as a Mounted Division of the British Expeditionary Force encamped upon the slope not far from Gizeh, ride out with the dawn to exercise their horses on the plain that is partly flooded by the Nile? Or is it the ragged quarter-sheet torn from an English newspaper, that wraps itself about the spurred ankle of the big blond young Englishman who rides the vicious chestnut mare?
Long lines of horses marching in threes for miles, black and coffee-coloured natives in flowing jubbehs mixed up with tanned young British Centaurs in sun-helmets and khaki shorts—and the rag of paper clings to the leg of the one man there whom its news concerns. She who is dearer than all save Honour is once more a free woman,—and his faith and constancy are to meet their reward. His letter lies before me; a sentence pencilled more blackly than the rest stands out upon the yellowish paper:
"If this be accident it is incredible. If Design, it is miraculous. And I had rather thank Heaven for a miracle vouchsafed than owe even such happiness—to Chance."
When the deep swoon gave place to semi-consciousness, the pale lips uttered nothing but broken words. Locked away safely behind them was the glorious news that would have changed two people's lives. Thus Lynette was still ignorant of her own great happiness, when having helped Patrine upstairs to her room and put her tenderly to bed, she dismissed Mrs. Keyse to her own slumbers, and took her place beside Patrine's pillow, listening to the sighing breaths that were growing deeper and fuller, keenly alert for the sound of the Doctor's latch-key and the Doctor's step in the hall.
It was close upon the smallest hour. Something had detained Saxham. Sitting in the darkened room beside the long prone shape beneath the coverings, Lynette was free to lean her head against the back of the chair she sat in and yield herself to the bitter sweetness of memories of her lost boy.
What the sorrow of Shakespeare wrought in deathless lines no halting pen like mine dare strive to portray. Enough that the beloved little ghost that haunted the woman whose heart was breaking, was closer than ever to Lynette on this night. All day the sweet obsession had thrust itself between Bawne's mother and solid, tangible things. The red-gold sheen of the boyish head, the gay blue challenge of the laughing eyes, the coaxing tones of the treble voice had tortured the senses they deceived. She had thrust him away with both hands, for ordinary, commonplace duties claimed, and yielding led the way to madness. He had come back again and again, to be driven away once more. Now that her hands lay idle in her lap—now that she was withdrawn from the world and its realities, the beloved little ghost returned and had his will with her.
Sitting in the haunted gloom, a strange conviction came to Lynette. This was not Grief, travestying in the figure of the absent, but a visitation from the World Unseen.... Bawne was dead, and had been dragged back from the threshold of the Beyond by her own unbridled yearnings. Could there be a punishment more terrible than this? Only those who have loved and lost, and clinging to their faith in a Future Life, strive to bear patiently the burden of bereavement, can comprehend the torture of this woman in this hour.
The Presence grew more torturingly tangible. The empty shell of the house that had been Bawne's home was full of his callings, his movements, his play, his laughter. She heard his quick soft breathing behind her chair in the darkness. Once she could have vowed that a hard little boyish hand brushed against her cheek. Then she was alone once more, except for the unconscious sleeper. And then the torture began all over again.
Bawne was coming home, late, from the Hendon Flying Ground. The long months of misery—the horror of the War—had been a dreadful dream. She heard the long br'r' of the electric hall-bell under the impetuous insistent finger—the small scurry of his entrance, a squawk from the maid who answered night-calls—a whispered word or two, and the clumping of the heavy little brogues upon the stairs. Would he trip at the corner where he always stubbed his toe? she wondered—and she plainly heard him stumble. Then her hair stiffened upon her head, and a long shudder rippled through her. The little clumping brogues had stopped before Patrine's bedroom door.
"Mother!"
His voice called, and his well-known thump came on the door-panel. The handle clicked. She controlled her shuddering and forced her stiffened tongue to speech.
"Come in, my own!"
The tall door swung slowly inwards. A wedge of brightness from the lighted landing threw his shadow over the white-enamelled door-post.... The darkness of the room soaked it greedily up. Then the doorway was a square of radiance with a little ghostly figure framed in it. All the light was behind him. She could not see his face, but she felt his eyes upon her.... Then the voice that her ears were sick for said with a quaver in its treble:
"It's dark, but I can hear you breathing! ... Mother, why didn't you and Father come? I thought when I got there I'd be sure to see you! ... But amongst all those faces and faces not one was yours—and—Man alive!—I wanted to blub a bit! I'm not quite sure that I didn't, you know!"
She stretched her arms to the beloved little ghost, whispering:
"My poor, poor love, my baby, my treasure! Mother knows how much it hurt. But be patient a little longer. Soon—soon—your father and I——"
The woe-wave rose and swelled in her bosom, tears began to run over her stiff white face. The clasped hands she stretched to him were quivering, but she controlled them like the trembling of her voice.
"Go back to Paradise, my little son! Wait patiently, my love, my Angel! I have been wrong, but I will grieve no more! I will be patient:—O! believe——"
A man's footsteps sounded on the staircase and the great shadowy figure of the Doctor appeared behind Bawne's little shape. With a swift movement Saxham caught up the bewildered boy, made one long stride across the threshold, and put the warm, living treasure into the mother's outstretched arms...
Once again big black-lettered contents-bills shrieked from the railings and were worn after the fashion of heralds' tabards by the vendors of newspapers, and the editions were snapped up as fast as they came out. Here are some of the headlines:
"THRILLING ESCAPE OF KIDNAPPED BOY SCOUT FROM THE HANDS OF THE HUN. YOUNG HERO OF NORTH SEA ADVENTURE LANDS BEHIND BRITISH LINES AT LANGEBEKE IN TAUBE WITH A BOCHE PRISONER. FULL STORY OF HOW SCOUT WHO SAVED THE CLANRONALD PAPERS BOMBED THE GERMAN MACHINE-GUNS. DECORATION OF SCOUT SAXHAM WITH 'GOLDEN WOLF' BADGE BY ROYAL PRESIDENT AT ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS. PROBABLE TESTIMONIAL FROM BRITISH PUBLIC. AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE WAR MINISTER AT WHITEHALL. EXPECTED INVESTITURE WITH EDWARDIAN ORDER OF MERIT. WHAT YOU GET BY BEING PREPARED!"
And again:
"SPLENDID PLUCK OF BRITISH AVIATOR. FIGHTS ZEPPELIN ON WAY TO BOMB BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. AIRSHIP CRIPPLED. SHERBRAND R.F.C. KILLED. FALLS IN FLAMES OVER GERMAN LINES. HEROIC END OF SOLE REMAINING HEIR TO PENINSULAR WAR EARLDOM, AND INVENTOR OF THE HAWK-HOVERER THAT SOLVES PROBLEM OF STABILITY. WILL WAR OFFICE ADOPT GREAT INVENTION, EMPLOYED BY ALLIES' FLYING SERVICES?"
Three days later:
"SHERBRAND R.F.C. RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS HONOURS FROM FRANCE AND BELGIUM. CROIX D'HONNEUR AND ORDER OF LEOPOLD. WHY NOT BRITISH D.S.O.?"